The one with many moves and Chris

Bonjour à tous! How are y'all doing? I hope that you have all had a wonderful week and have just been serving all those around you and being good people. The world today can be such a crazy place and needs so many people who are willing to be nice and help others. I have been blessed to be surrounded by nice people here who are always willing to help and bless others. This week here has been awesome. There were a lot of amazing things that happened. Let me tell you a few of them. 

Our friend Chris has been progressing so well lately. We had church this week so he was able to come and see what it was like. He really enjoyed it and wants to come back. He even participated in the Elders Quorum lesson and stayed for our Linger Longer. All the members came over and introduced themselves to him and were so excited to see someone new at church. We had a lesson with him last Saturday and it started off kinda scary. He had taken a few notes down from his own personal study of the Book of Mormon and told us of his concerns and of the things that he didn't quite believe in. We went over every point with him and just testified of all of it and reexplained it to him and it finally made sense for him. He thanked us for the reminder of the things that he already knew but was doubting. We had a really good lesson with him after that and talked about baptism and the importance of that. We asked him if he would like to and he said yes but not now because he sees the importance and wants to make sure that he is ready to make that covenant. We will hopefully have a date for him tomorrow however. He is amazing. 

Our other friends are doing pretty good too but we did lose one or two of them this week so we are focused on trying to find more people teach at the moment. We have been doing a lot of service recently too which has been really helpful in meeting more people. We have moved so much wood and helped about 4 people move and helping at the food bank and clothing bank. It has been really fun.  We have met so many cool people and have made so many friends here already. 

This next week we have interviews with our president and Zone Conference too so that will be really fun so I'll let y'all know how that goes! Keep up the awesome work and find someone to help out this week. Pass around the positivity and be like Christ! I love y'all! 

Elder Beckstrand

Cuts from working that I didn't even notice until the next day.

The one that canceled church again

Bonjour à tous! How is everyone doing? I hope y'all are doing well and are having fun. This week has been pretty good but not much has been going on special. If you want a good read from a missionary, go read my cousin George's email for this week! I'm so grateful to be serving a mission at the same time as three of my cousins. They are awesome and are doing great things and will have amazing times on their missions. Anyway, here are a few cool things that happened this week.

We had p-day on Wednesday so that kinda cut this last week short but last Thursday we had an amazing lesson with Chris. We also have been working a ton with members because we know how important they are and how much they can help us with the work so we brought brother MaKenzie with us and it was great! We kinda did a review of everything we had taught him up to that point and then talked about church and baptism. We had it all worked out and planned that he would come to church and we would show him around just before the meetings and all that on Sunday, but fast forward to that morning and we woke up to about half a foot of snow with it still coming down and received about 10 texts telling us that church was cancelled again so we hurried and called Chris to let him know. We were both really sad because we really wanted him to come to church and he was really excited to come but oh well. He said he is looking forward to next Sunday so he can come to church. He is such an awesome man and loves the gospel with his whole heart. The brother that came with us told us it felt like he was already a member because of what he already believes and does. Its been great working with him. 

Because of all the snow we have gotten lately we have been doing quite a bit of shoveling as well and doing service around the community and it has been great to be able to meet people through that. People here are so nice and treat us so well. We have also been doing a lot of the normal things of missionary life and been trying our best to find as many of our brother and sisters and trying to help them discover the blessings of the restored gospel of Jesus Christ. One day as we were walking around we were looking around and found a little Italian market in town and so we went in because Elder Constant speaks Italian so we thought we could find someone there that spoke Italian as well. One of the guys there did but then we found out they are all from Sherbrooke! My last area! We spoke french with them and they are such a cool little family and were super nice. We got some fresh spaghetti from them for dinner and it was super good.

Not much else has been going on. Sorry for the short email but I promise next week will be longer. We should have some fun things planned this next week. I hope you all have such a great week and keep working hard and have fun! I love y'all so much and never forget, The book is blue and the Church is true!!. 

Love Elder Beckstrand

The one with transfers!

Bonjour à tous! I hope you all had a great week! This week for us was super eventful and has been great. Winter has officially set in here in canada. We have had a few good snow falls and had a few days in the negatives. Nothing crazy yet but it's starting. Nova Scotia is generally a warmer area than Quebec is so this winter so far had been warmer than last but we still have 4 more months so we will see how it goes. We also got transfer calls but I know that if I put that in right here most of y'all will stop reading this letter right about here so I'll save that for later and sneak it in somewhere else. Here is a quick update on what happened this week.

To start off, I want to talk about our friend Chris that was a member referral a couple Sundays ago. We have been able to meet with him twice this week. He is super smart and knows so much about a lot of different things. The first lesson we had with him, we invited him to read 3rd Nephi chapter 11 and the restoration booklet that we left with him so when we went back this week, we asked him what he had read and he read from chapter 11 all the way to 18 and the booklet. It was awesome. We were not expecting that so we went over all of it and he really did understand it and we talked more about the book of mormon and he already has such a strong testimony of it. He knows that it is true because there is no way in his mind that anybody could write a book like that especially with the education and the time he had to do it. He also believes all the teaching he has found within the Book so that has been incredible. He had quite a few questions for us and we were able to answer a few but then had to leave so we gave him the plan of salvation booklet and a few more chapters to read and the next time we came he had read all of it and had taken notes and had questions prepared. He was so relieved to know that there is a church out there that really believes in the same things he had believed his entire life. He had some questions on the atonement of Jesus Christ and so we had a very deep and meaningful conversation on what that was and what it truly meant to each and every one of us and how it really cleans us of our sins as we repent and turn to Christ. He said he has always had questions about that but at the end of our visit he thanked us for everything we have done so far because we answered questions that he has had for a lifetime and have never been answered. He said that he loves our visits because he learns when we come by and teach him which was such a great complement and super nice to hear. Elder Constant and I have had a focus on praying to be guided by the spirit of God in everything we do and say that we can do what needs to be done and we could feel that in the lessons with Chris. We didn't teach him anything. We just presented the message to him and the spirit of God testified of its truthfulness to him. It was awesome to see that happen. Before we left his place he asked us about baptism. He wondered how one gets baptised into our church and what that means for us a members so we explained it to him and asked him if that would be something he would like to do one day and he said yes. He is planning on coming to church this week and he is just great and progressing greatly. It's been fun to work with him. 

Other than that we had a great couple lessons with some of the other people we are teaching and played some volleyball with a few less active and non-members. We also got quite a bit of service done this week which is nice. I love having a truck because then we can help out with service that we couldn't do otherwise and we did find out that they will be selling my truck and we will get a rogue or rav 4 or something like that so that kinda sucks but oh well. We have also been doing quite a bit of deep cleaning this week because of transfer and the mission office told us to take some time out of each day to deep clean each apartment so that it is clean for the new people moving into each area. We got it all done and found out that we will both be staying another transfer! This is the beginning of my 4th transfer here and my 3rd transfer with Elder Constant. That's the longest i've been with any of my companions and now tied for the longest time in an area so that's fun ahah. I'm excited to stay another transfer here and be able to continue the work here. 

That's about it from me here in Bridgewater, Nova Scotia. I'm so grateful for this opportunity that I have to be one of God's missionaries and to be here on a mission. There is no place I would rather be, even if it were on a surfboard out at sea, lingering in the ocean blue. But, If I had one wish come true, I'd serve till the sun sets beyond the horizon. 

Love you all and I hope y'all have a great week! 

Elder Beckstrand 

District lunch with amazing banana splits. I ate a full by myself and everyone else split the two others.

Picture outside goes left to right:

Elders Albertson, me, Thacker, Constant, Hsu, Sousa, and Sisters Watson and Rhodes.

The one with snow and service

Bonjour à tous! I hope you are all doing well and had a great week. This week has gone by really fast. We finally got some snow up here and it has stayed. Here is a quick update on my week. 

We had district council in Halifax last Wednesday and then we came back home to Bridgewater and helped a recent convert move out of her office and into her house which took up most of the day. 

Throughout most of the week we were just going around trying to visit referrals that we had gotten. We got two from the St. George Visitors Center that ended up being the same person but that's fine. We tried visiting him a couple times and then he ended up not even being interested but we did what we could. We had a lesson with one of another referral named Chris. He is super nice and knows a ton about the gospel and is super smart. He read the brochure on the Restoration and and some of the Book of Mormon. We talked a lot and he had a lot of questions that we helped answer and he really likes some of the doctrine we teach but still questions some of the other ones. It's been good. 

We also had a lesson with our friend James. He is also progressing pretty well. He has been reading in the Book of Mormon and we have been finding a lot of things in common. He has been trying to get back in touch with his first nations values and traditions and he has been finding our religion very close to what he believes so that has been awesome. We are really working hard with him because he is so nice and wants to learn so much. We have a really good relation with him right now too so that helps. We talked a little about the plan of salvation with him the last time we were over there and he agrees with a lot of it. After our lesson we had with him we were supposed to meet up with a couple of other people that day but they had to run to the hospital and were not able to meet with us we are going to try again this week. The work here has been going pretty well here and has been progressing which really nice because this area was kinda considered a slow or dead area before but there is still good people here that have a lot of potential. 

Sunday we woke up to a giant snow storm so I was super excited and we got ready for church and went early to shovel the sidewalks and get things ready for church and as the time got closer and closer to 10 am, there was no one there. Apparently, church got cancelled and no one thought to call the missionaries. It was all good. We had some other things we did instead. We also grabbed our shovels and went around helping different ward members. I absolutely love service. Every single person we went to go help we were able to visit with them and even talk to a few people not of our religion. It was super cool. Service is the Key to people's hearts. Everyone should get out there and do some random acts of service this week and see how you feel after you do that because not only will the person you helped feel good and loved, you will feel better too and closer to God. I can promise you that. I love service! Other than that, not much else has happened. I hope you are doing well and are able to get out and do some service and have fun this week. 

I love yall!

Elder Beckstrand

 This was his Christmas present!  It's one of those things that covers your windshield so you don't have to scrape it!  Look how great it worked!!!