The one with crazy transfers!

Bonjour a tous! I hope you are all doing well. Lets jump right into this with the subject line ahaha. We got transfer calls this last Sunday night and we found out that I am staying here in Sherbrooke for the next transfer which will actually be 8 weeks long. Elder Taruoura will be going to my training grounds of Drummondville with a new kid from the MTC. I will also be receiving a new kid from the MTC but along with another that came in the same time as Elder Tarouora. They are both from France. I was super excited! This morning we get a call from our wonderful mission president. He called to inform me that this next transfer will be different for me. I will be staying here in Sherbrooke for only 2 weeks. My job here is to help train the newbie and also train the other on how to be a trainer. Double training! I am also helping them get to know the area while I wait for my new comp to come from the MTC in two weeks. When the other one comes, I will go with him to the complete other side of the mission to Nova Scotia. We are also opening up an area that has been closed for a while. I was completely mind blown ahah.  This will be an interesting transfer but I'm so excited! Anyway ahah. Here is a little about what I did this last week.

Wednesday we had district council out in Granby and it was pretty good as always but on our way home from there we got a text from Jean-Michele saying that he didn't wanted us to come over that day or ever again. He said he was good off in his own religion and didn't want to learn anymore with us. He said he respects us still but if we kept trying to talk with him or tried to visit that he would block us so we didn't. He still blocked us anyway. We  know what happened to him between our lessons with him but it did teach us two good lessons. First was that Satan really focuses on those we get ready for baptism and does everything that can to shut them down and stop the work of the Lord here on earth. Second was that God did really give us our agency and we have the choice to chose if we want to follow Him or not. He will help us as we ask for help but he always leaves the choice up to us. It was kinda sad to see him take that choice but he is just not ready right now. He has a good heart still and I believe he will one day run into the missionaries again and accept. After that we did a little bit of service and had a lesson with the wonderful Bernadette. She really opened up to us and started asking us some questions that she was kinda afraid to ask earlier because she didn't want to offend us. We had a really good lesson with her. She said she wants to baptized but her husband isn't super okay with it but she is talking to him ahah. 

Thursday was pretty good. We had a lesson with Francois where we kinda went over all the lessons again asked him if he was willing to be baptized. He is not super ready right now but he is not closed to the idea. He wants learn more and make sure that he is ready before he gets baptized. Super good. Later that night we had a lesson with Mary and talked more about baptism and she said she could be baptized the 12th October! Pascal is also getting ready for it because she asked him to do it. She is ready for it and we also have more time to make sure she understands it all too. It was a good pick me up from the day before. Lose one and pick up two haha. 

Friday and Saturday were kinda slow and not much happened. We did a lot of finding and tried to visit a lot of the less actives in our ward. We took a trip out to some of the little side towns to even visit those less actives. We were able to find and get in contact with a few that we have never met before so that was nice but other than that not much happened.

Sunday was good. We didn't have anyone at church but we did have a recent convert give his first talk that we helped prepare so that was really good. After church we passed by a couple members and had a lesson with Christ and Esther! Its been a while since we have seen them because of vacations but we were able to see them again and have a really good lesson with them. He has some questions about the plan of salvation but other than that they are progressing well too. We then had dinner with the Herring family which is always nice. That night is when we got our transfer calls round one haha. 

Monday was good. We had lunch with the bishops family and then we had a lesson with Jessika who we found two weeks ago. She has been sick for a while so we gave her a blessing and talked a bit. After that we just went around and visited some of our friends and members so that Elder Tarouora could say bye to them. That night we had dinner with the Salvador family. They make the best Mexican food I've had here in Canada. We then had another lesson with Mary and Pascal. They are awesome and she will be ready for her baptism. 

Yesterday was interesting. We started off the day with a lesson with Bernadette where she asked more questions about the baptisms for the dead and the apostasy. That was a really good lesson and she learned a lot more because she wasn't holding back her questions anymore. After that we had lunch and went over to the church to help with a Blood Drive. It was pretty good. The time went by fast and we were able to talk to a quite a few people and even showed one of them around the church. There were a lot more people that came that I thought would be. When we were all done, we went and got some dinner and had a lesson in the restaurant with a friend of the member we were with. He accepted a Book of Mormon and we set up another time to go visit him. It was cool.

That's it for this week! I hope you are all doing well and are having fun. If you have any questions about the things I talked about go to the nearest church or ask a friend who is a Member of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter Day Saints and they can explain it to you. I know this church is true and that God blesses us as we follow his commandments! Keep up the good work.

Love y'all!

Elder Beckstrand

The one with a baptismal date

Bonjour à tous! How are y'all doing? This week has been pretty good and it felt like it just flew by. We had some pretty cool things happen this week and I definitely saw the Lords hand in my life and in the life of others this week. I hope you have too. Here is what happened this week. 

Last Wednesday we decided to go over to a part of town we haven't visited yet and pass by some of the people we haven't seen at church. Some of them were not home but we did get to meet this awesome family that let us right in. The best part of visiting members that you don't know is that they know who you are. They have had missionary visits before and were super nice. They are not ready to come back to church but said they would be open to having a Family Home Evening each week with us! As we were talking however, it was clear that they haven't been to church in a while because they didn't know that President Nelson is now the Living Prophet of God on the earth. We helped catch them up on some things. We also did some finding while we were down there and found this dude who is super cool and has a lot of good questions. He has talked to a lot of different people about every religion there is and is looking for the right one to join. We are excited to visit him again. After all that we went to another small town to visit a friend that elder Arnold found forever ago and a member. Our friend was super nice. We accidentally visited right as they were eating dinner but they invited us in and sat us down at the table with a giant t-bone steak! It was soo good because we decided to skip dinner because we were running late but we were blessed for being diligent! She ended up not being super interested in our message but we did have a wonderful talk with her. We then visited the Côté family. They are awesome and live on a very beautiful piece of land out in the countryside of Sherbrooke. 

Thursday not much happened other than the two lessons we had. The first one was with Jean-Michel and two of his friends. It was pretty good. His friends were not super interested in learning more but he seemed to understand it all and wasn't afraid to show his beliefs to his friends. The second lesson we had was with Mary. She is just awesome. Her daughter sat in on the lesson with us but her sons didn't want to yet. We shared the plan of salvation with them and then also talked about baptism. Her daughter wasn't sure if she was ready for it yet but Mary agreed to be baptized! We don't have a date for her yet because they want all the kids there so they have to figure all the things out with their ex's. Mary is Pascal's girlfriend and they are both divorced from their first marriage and both have kids and they have to change things around so they can have the kids on the same weekend for the baptism. They are currently looking at that and finding a date! 

Friday we did a lot of finding and found this awesome lady named Crystal. We introduced ourselves and she invited us right in. We taught her the restoration and she had a couple questions about church and our meetings so we just invited her to come and see and she agreed! She is amazing. She has been here in Canada for 2 years and hasn't been able to find a church to attend yet but she wants to have one. After that we visited a less active lady that we didn't recognize. She was home and when we stopped by she asked us why. We told her that we have just been trying to visit all the members and she was on the list. She then told us that we were actually an answer to her prayers. She had been praying lately because it been hard for her and she humbled herself and told the Lord that she would do what He wants her to do. A couple days later we showed up at her place. It was really cool. We had a really nice discussion and invited her back to church. Later that night we finished with a lesson with one of our friends we haven't seen in a long time. He is a pastor for the Seventh-day Adventists. We have really spiritually good discussions with him but he is not open to change at this time. With him we spent a whole hour just talking about enduring to the end. That could be to the end of a trial or difficulty or to the end of your life but in any case, we have to stay strong and continue to do what we know is to be good. 

Saturday wasn't too exciting either. We had a lesson with Jean-Michel where we read over Alma 34 and talked about how the time that we have been given here on earth is for us to prepare to to return to live with our loving Heavenly Father again one day. Along with that we talked about baptism and how that is the first step and we asked him if that is something he would do and he said yes. We then invited him to be baptized on the 14th of September and again, he said yes! He is doing really good right now but we are going to keep doing what we can to help him prepare for that date! 

Sunday was good. We were hoping to have a lot of people at church but Marie's son got sick and a couple other people didn't show up. We did have Crystal show up. She came and said she really liked it and is planning on coming back next week! Talk about elect! We also had our less active lady come back too. We have been seeing a ton of really cool things happening with less actives here in our ward. After church we went around town with our bishop and handed out flyers for a blood drive our ward is doing next week. It was pretty funny to see that some people still wont listen to us even though we aren't talking about the gospel. We had a couple of other people be more open because of the same reason though haha. 

Yesterday we had a first lesson with this new lady named Adeline. She is super nice. We taught her the restoration and also invited her to church. She is pretty open to hearing the Gospel. After that we passed by a couple more less actives and were able to connect with a few of them more and we figured out a couple of ways to help them more. We also had FHE with the LaRoche family again. They are awesome and it's been fun learning more French sign language and being able to speak with the dad more. We think we have finally convinced them to come back to church ahah, we will see. Sister LaChance said she would make a real effort this week. It will be a great day when they are finally able to come back to church. 

That's about it for this week. I just want to end this by giving y'all the same advice that our high council man gave us Sunday during his talk. His name is Brother Poulin and is from Drummondville. He advised us to put our priorities straight by putting God first, Family second, work third, and everything else after. He promised us that if we do so then we will have more joy and Happiness in our lives. That really applies to all of us especially those who have just started school or are soon going to. Make sure you have your priorities down and follow them. It will help you so much. I hope you all have a wonderful week! 

Love y'all!

Elder Beckstrand

That One With The Bruises

Bonjour à tous. How is everyone doing this week? Good luck to all those who are starting school back up here soon. Don't forget to have fun! I hope you are all doing well. This week here in Sherbrooke was pretty normal and went by pretty fast. Nothing super exciting happened but I'll get right into it and let ya know what did happen. 

Last Wednesday we started off the morning like we do most mornings at a field not to far from our house and we run or play with a soccer ball. This particular morning we were playing with the soccer ball and it ended up going over this giant hedge into another field. After looking around we realized that someone was going to have to jump over to get it so I got up in top of the fence to find out that the hedge was wider on the other side. I tried to jump over it all but my legs got caught on some branches which broke my fall a little but left me with a couple of good scratches and bruises ahaha. I learned a couple things from that. The first that comes to mind is from a John Bytheway talk where he says, "Don't do things that kill you". Hahaha  That's not going to kill me but God did give us these wonderful bodies and we need to do our best to take care of them. That doesn't only mean eating well and exercise but also staying away from things that can hurt us or harm our bodies. God gave us these bodies and they are truly such a great blessing and gift no matter what they might look like on the outside. Its what's on the inside that counts ahaha but really our body takes very good care of itself too. The bruise that I got was kinda fun to watch how the body was working to repair itself from the inside. God didn't just give us any ol piece of bones and skin, its truly a work of art. Anyway, we went back home after that and I cleaned myself up and we went out and worked. We had a district council in Granby which is always fun to see some of the other missionaries. After that we had a quick lesson with our friend Michel Dupuis who kinda dropped us for now and then we visited our buddy Jimmy. He has been coming back to church more regularly now and that has been good. Other than that we did some finding with a less active that is trying to come back to church. He has really changed and is trying to get back to church and do what is good. Its really fun to watch people change and have that desire to do what God wants for them. 

Thursday was a little rough for us because we had a couple of really good lessons that we were excited for get canceled and one of the lessons we did have ended up being them dropping us because they don't want to join any church and are well of how they are. It was kinda sad but God has given us all our agency and we can chose what we want in this life. There are obviously consequences to all things but we still have that choice. We did have one really good lesson that night however. It was with Mary and pascal. Pascal is a new convert who is just on fire right now with his missionary work. Mary is his girlfriend and she is interested in the church. During the lesson we talked about baptism and she didn't seem against the idea. We haven't officially invited or set a date but she is on a good path right now. Pascal is really excited about that too. 

Friday was good. We spent a good amount of time down in a smaller town called Magog. We did some finding with one of our ward missionaries down there. There is also this lake that starts at this town that is called Lake Magog........ It has a long and weird name that starts with Magog. I'm not sure how it is spelled or how to even write it. Anyway, it is super long and goes all the way down to Newport Vermont where my cousin was serving not to long ago. Not to long ago he took a picture on the south end so I got a picture on the north end. If you want he has the name and the distance on one of his old emails ahah. Or you can google it. We didn't find a whole ton of people who were interested but the town was pretty. We had dinner that night with our ward missionary and it was just corn on the cob. For some reason everyone here goes crazy for corn at the end of August and crazy for maple syrup at syrup season. I ate 5 full ears of corn that night and nothing else. It was kinda a weird dinner but good either way. After that we went back to Sherbrooke to have a lesson with Madame Rada with our less active buddy Dany. It was a pretty good lesson but we did find out that she is going into the hospital here soon and worst case scenario is that she has open heart surgery. If you could keep her in your prayers, that would be awesome and greatly appreciated. 

Saturday was our day of service. We helped this family move and the whole thing wasn't super organized. We had a ton of stuff and only a little went to the next house, some went to storage and the rest went to other family members houses. It took a lot longer that we thought but we did get to talk to everyone about the church which was cool. Her brother is a taxi driver and we rode with him for a little in his taxi. It was cool because I've never been in one before and usually you pay for the ride but this time he actually paid us with a Gatorade. We also invited the couple that was moving to church the next day to see what our church is like and talked about it over dinner. They are pretty open to learning more which is nice. That was about it for that day. 

Sunday was really cool at church. We had about 7 non members there and our buddy Pascal gave his first ever talk during sacrament which was really good and nice because 6 of the non members where there because of him. His girlfriend Mary was there with three of her kids and then the two people we helped move are friends of Pascal and they showed up! The other one was a friend of one of our other ward missionaries. They all seemed to like it and had good experiences and most of them said they would come back next week! After church we did some finding and then had dinner with the Herring family which was nice because they have been back down in the states for a while and we haven't seen them.

 

Yesterday after studies we got some knocking in. We found a new part if town that has a ton of block apartments so we have been looking there and hopeful will find some people who are ready to receive the gospel into their lives. Other than that the two things that happened yesterday was we visited Jimmy again and helped him move some couches and chairs from his friends apartment to his and we also had family home evening with the LaRoche family. Last week it was our turn to give the thought and the week before it was sister LaRoche's turn so this week we decided it was our ward missionary's, Serge, turn. He had a great idea for the topic but didn't prepare so we ended up doing it again which is never bad ahaha. They are an awesome family. That was about it for yesterday. 

Well, I hope you all have a fabulous week and have fun. Say your prayers and read your scriptures. It really will help with anything you are going through. Don't forget who you are and where you came from. Keep being awesome.

Love y'all! 

Elder Beckstrand

Lake whatever in Magog

Swing pictures

Soccer pics 

Taxi 

Moving

Coin pic

Cat that thinks it's a parrot 

That week with Zone Conference, Exchanges, Skunks, and a Raccoon.

Bonjour à tous! How is everyone doing? I hope everyone back home is enjoying the end of summer and is excited for school to start ahah. This week here in Sherbrooke was spent more outside of Sherbrooke than inside the city ahah. We got a lot of travel in this week and were able to work in two other areas which always brings some adventures and miracles. Here's what happened.

Last Tuesday we started the day with studies like normal but then right after lunch we had to leave and go down to Montreal for interviews with President Lowe. He is super cool and really nice. I'm grateful for both of the mission presidents that I have had. After our interviews we were going to stay there and work with the zone leaders for the rest of the day because we had Zone Conference he next day and we didn't want to take the 2 hour trio again aha. When we got done with interviews however, the zone leaders had to run to the mission office to grab some things so they just gave us an address and told us to go finding for them. It was really weird but we obeyed and went finding in a new place. It wasn't too bad though because we do the same work where ever we go. As missionaries we just want to share the gospel with everyone and help them come unto Christ. Sadly we didn't find anyone while we were there but then the zone leaders found us and we went on a little exchange for the rest of the night. I was able to work with the wonderful Elder Tehei. He is also from Tahiti. We passed by a couple of their friends and invited one of them to church. We also did a little bit of finding and found this amazing couple who had a ton of faith and were open to the gospel. They were really cool and Elder Tehei was stoked to have found them. 

Wednesday was our first Zone Conference with President Lowe. It was just as good as all the rest of them. We talked about patience and member missionary work. There are two really good quotes that I've heard on my mission that relate with patience. The first one says that God is not a Genie. He is not going to grant our wishes and give us what we want but he will give us what we need according to his timeline. The other is that God is our loving Heavenly Father, not our loving Heavenly Grandfather. Grandparents are known just to give stuff to their grandkids because they like to spoil them and all that. (I'm not complaining ahaha.) God is our Father and he will make us work for things, he will give us opportunities to grow and gain the things we are asking for. At the base of both of those, if we know who God really is and who we are, that can answer a lot if our questions and give us strength through our trials. Zone conference was pretty good overall. Afterwards we drove all the way back to Sherbrooke for a dinner appointment and we passed by a couple people that night. 

Thursday we had almost the full day in Sherbrooke and we spent a good part of it doing some good old service. Helped someone move again. We were able to talk to them too and hopefully they will come to church soon. After the service we finally had another lesson with Bernadette. We had kinda lost her for a while but she called us up and asked us to come over and visit with her. We had a really nice lesson on Jesus Christ and hopefully she will have a baptism date here soon. After that we visited bishop and then packed our stuff again to head out to Granby for exchanges!

Friday was spent all in Granby with Elder Kunzler and Elder Moellmer. I got to spend some more time with my awesome trainee and do some finding and service. We found this super nice old lady. We just talking to her at her door and Moellmer starts to introduce himself so I do too and she thought I was from France! That's the first time! The gift of tongues is real y'all! She was super nice and was open to the gospel. We taught her most of the restoration and set up a return appointment with her. After that we changed and headed over to Annie's house. She is a very short 90 year old sister in the Granby branch. She lives on the edge of town and almost everything she eats is from her garden but recently she has had skunks and raccoons eating her garden. She decided to pull out some of her traps and get them. The only problem she has is she is to old to kill the animals and bury them so that is our job and she pays us with a dinner after. When we got there she said she had caught another skunk just the day before so we had 2 that we needed to bury. As we checked everything out, one of them was already dead but one was still alive. She gave us this thin blanket to cover the cage so we didn't get sprayed but it sprayed the blanket any way and then elder Moellmer with his skills as an exterminator before his mission, grabs the rope of the cage and throws the whole cage into this little pond with the skunk inside of it. It was so sad but it also stunk sooo bad. As we went to bury them we saw that there was an empty hole where they had buried the last one and as we looked around, we saw a giant bloated raccoon about 50 yards away. We couldn't tell which animal smelt worse. The raccoon or the skunk. We realized we needed to dig a deeper this time so the fox doesn't get these ones. We dug the whole and as we put all three of these dead smelly animals into the same hole  the smell got even worse. Soo bad. I've never dry heaved so hard in my life . We hurried and buried them all and then went and washed up for dinner. The dinner however was really good. It was all natural and home made. After that we unexchanged and headed off to Sherbrooke again. Exchanges are always wild but filled with adventures and miracles. 

Saturday we were back here in Sherbrooke. We had an interesting visit. We had decided to visit some of the people that we had phone numbers for but didn't know yet. The second person we called invited us over so we decided to go. As we got there we realized it was a guy we were supposed to meet not too long ago. He used to be a Hell's Angels. Super fun. We found out that he was actually thinking about suicide and needed to talk to someone right at that time. We actually had a member with us that works that works at the hospital so he called some people and got a suicide prevention person to come. We waited for them to come and then we left. After that not much else happened. We did some finding and found a new Guy who is pretty nice and we will have another lesson with him later this week. 

Sunday was pretty good. Church was just as good as normal. Nothing super interesting happened Sunday either. We did a lot of finding and found this lady that has seen missionaries before but hasn't really talked to them before. We talked with her for about an hour and a half just answering her questions. she was super interested and loved learning more about our church. We then also met with her on Monday too and talked more about the church and the restoration of the Church. She even asked us if she could come to our church this week to see what its all about. She is super awesome. 

Sorry, I'm all out of time for this week but ill write more next week and let ya know who comes this week to church! Pray for them! I love you all and hope you have a great week! 

Elder Beckstrand