The one with Elder Bassette

Bonjour à tous! J'espère que tout va bien. How has everyone's week been? This last week here has been pretty good. We have had so much happen this week and we have seen the Lord truly lead and guide us to be in the right place at the right time. We also had Zone conference this last week with General Authority Elder Bassette. He is one of the councilors for the missionary department in Salt Lake City. He knows so much about missionary work and life and the Gospel. Lets jump right into this weeks review.

Last Wednesday we met with this awesome lady named Emily. There is a sister from our ward who is serving her mission in Portugal and she got a message from one of her friends that was asking for a picture of Jesus. We got together and ended up giving her not only a picture of Jesus but a whole Book of Mormon with a different picture of Jesus in different chapters that we loved that talked about Him. She was super excited to get that and we also showed her around the church building with all of the pictures we have here. She seemed to really like it. She even said she would try to read about a chapter a night and then let us know what she thought about it. It was super awesome! After that we did some street contacting and played some chess at the library with a group there that has been pretty cool. We then ended the night with a member visit. They are so cool and one just got home from a mission and one is out and another is preparing to go so it's fun to learn from them and also help them as well. 

Thursday was a little slow with our studies and weekly planning but we were able to have some time to do some finding and visit a few members. Then that night we had our french class were we kinda did a review of everything we have taught our group. They are doing really well and remember a lot of what we have taught them. French is full of random rules and weird exceptions but it is definitely a lot easier to teach when you have someone like Elder Constant who is native and knows all of that already and can explain it well. It is also helping me with my french so I don't lose it in this english area aha. After that we drove down to Halifax to pick up some Elders and to camp the night there. 

Friday was great. We spent most of the day there for Zone Conference. Elder Bassette started off the conference and we talked about the importance of sacrifice and the importance of our calling. If any of you have seen Elder Hollands or Elder Bednar talks from the MTC, that's the kind of talk that was given at Zone Conference. It was so good and I will probably remember it for a long time. We also talked about the importance of Member missionary work. That was very interesting as well. As missionaries, we do all the hard parts of sharing the gospel and all the members work is to invite non members to church activities where the missionaries will be. Members do the finding and Missionaries do the teaching. Missionaries can and will do the finding part of it as well but the members are much better at it and know so many more people than we do. Sister Bassette then also talked to us about our roles as missionaries and how we cannot become discouraged in our missionary efforts. When we get discouraged, our desire decreases, our spirit softens, and our effectiveness drops by a lot. We talked a lot about staying happy and working the best with what is given. It reminded me of one of my all time favorite quotes that goes, Comparison is the thief of joy. We only need to think about how we are doing personally and not comparing ourselves to others because we are not them. Everyone has different skills and backgrounds making us better at some things than others. That's just how God made us and he did that for a reason. Another really good story they shared with us was one about a boy named Benjamin Landert. It was a story shared by President Monson. I encourage all of you to go find it and read it. Anyway, it was a very good zone conference and I enjoyed it very much. After that we dropped some elders off at the airport and then went back home. We contacted a few people when we got home and then we had volleyball with the youth in the ward. It is always super fun with them and they are just great Missionaries. One of them told me he had given out a Book of Mormon to one of his friends earlier that week! I'm so glad I get to work with them. 

Saturday we went to our french group and then visited a few members down in liverpool and got a return appointment with someone who I don't think is a member. If they are, they are very inactive aha. I don't remember much else of what happened that day. 

Sunday and Monday were both kinda slow and boring. We did a lot of walking that day because all of the allowed miles in the mission got reduced quite a bit so we walked which is good because we get to see and talk to more people but it has also been raining. We got to have a lesson with our native guy that we are teaching. He is doing really well and likes what we believe and there are a lot of similarities of our beliefs already. We also met with a couple members and watched the face to face with Elder Gong for the new youth program. It was very good and I think that it will help so many youth. We also visited with one of the less actives and helped her write a talk for Sunday and then we also found out that we will be speaking as well so we got to plan all three of them together. It was really good and we got a lot done. 

That's about it for this week. It's been really good and it's starting to get colder and nice here. I hope you are all doing great and having fun. Keep up the good work and if you didn't get a chance to see the Light the World Video go do it! its great. Also share it with others! 

Love ya

Elder Beckstrand