The one with general conference!

Bonjour à vous! How is everyone everyone doing? We have officially started week three of quarantine. It has been pretty fun and crazy.

This week was pretty "normal" for now but we did have a few meetings which led help break up some of the routine. We had a meeting this week about family history and how that is such an underused tool that the lord has given us. In preach my gospel, family history takes up 2.5 while finding through our own efforts as missionaries is only one page. That definitely shows how important it is. There is a lot we can do in our family history and I encourage you all to try it out. Even those of you out there that say that your tree is full and there is no more work for you, it might be true all of those files are there and accounted for but go in there and add stories or memories about those people so those files turn into actual people. There are so many blessing that come from doing that. It can also prepare those who can go to the temple so you can have names to do when you are able to go again. 

General conference was awesome! It was such a spiritually high weekend and I'm not going to write a whole lot about it because there is too much to say but I highly encourage everyone who hasn't seen it, members or not, to go watch it. If you have already seen it, re read it or watch it again because there were so many blessings, promises, warnings given and so much doctrine taught. We are so blessed to have a living Prophet in our day. A modern day Moses or Abraham who receives prophetic revelation from God to guide the earth at this time. We will be so blessed and prepared for anything in life if we hearken unto what the Prophet and Apostles have spoken of. I was completely blown away with this conference and the spirit it had even through it was all through technology. I absolutely loved it! 

That's about it for this week. Hopefully we will get out more this week after this special fast on Friday! I hope you all join us in this, I know it will help. Keep up the great work and keep being awesome! Sorry for the short email but I love yall! 

Elder Beckstrand 

My indoor exercise.  

I ran 60 laps around the basketball court at the church which roughly translates to a 5k

The one with zoom zone conference

Bonjour a tous! I hope y'all are doing well and having fun in whatever state of quarantine you are in. Here in Montreal we have just hit our two week mark but don't have any signs of getting out of this soon. All of our missionaries from outside the US  and Canada went home this week though if they were able to get into their countries. That made us lose about another 17 missionaries but the rest of us are still holding on and taking care of multiple areas at once to make up for lost people. We are hoping to get a lot of missionaries get reassigned here this next transfer so we can get somewhat back to our normal areas. We did have some fun things happen this week however. 

Last Wednesday we had zone conference which was really weird because we had to do it over zoom video calls. We stayed home and set it up on our phones. It was really different from previous zone conferences but it was still really good. We talked about how to use this time to our advantage and how to continue the work from home. Some missionaries have shared some really cool miracle and blessing they have seen from this already. We learn from the Book of Mormon that people tend to turn back to their God when a hard trial comes into their lives and we have definitely seen that happen. I then also had a district leader meeting after which was new for me. Those meetings took up most of that day. 

We have also been getting a lot of referrals from other missionaries. The other day we got a call from some sisters down in Las Vegas who have been talking to this man named Mathew. We were able to get in contact with him and he was super awesome and super nice. He said his life used to be really bad but once things got terrible, he decided he needed God back in his life to help him and it worked. He now wants to share that with everyone else that God can help. We talked to him for quite a while and did what we could but the next day he got kicked out of his house for talking to us because his roommate hates God or anything religious. Mathew said he would rather be homeless and on Gods good side than to live in a place that doesn't allow him. It was such a proud moment of his faith and love for God. We tried to keep in contact with him but he had to find a place to live and we couldn't do much to help. We tried checking up on him a few times but then he ended up blocking us all on Facebook so that kinda ended it. We did however give his information over to the YSA elders so hopefully they are still helping him. On the bright side we did have an amazing call with another man we are teaching named Jean-ive. He is awesome. He read the first couple chapters of the Book of Mormon and called us because he had some questions.  It was about an hour long call but it was really good. He had great questions.

 

Other than that we haven't done a whole ton of stuff this week that's worth writing about. General Conference is this weekend so I hope y'all are going to watch it. It's going to be good. If you haven't started preparing for it yet, there is still time. Go read the first vision and pray about it. Then read some of the Book of Mormon. If you don't know where to start, I recommend 3 Nephi 11. It talks about when Jesus appears to the Americas after his death. Then pray about it! I know it's TRUE and I know that you can know for yourself as well. I love y'all! Have a great week and stay safe!

Elder Beckstrand

p.s.  We were just told that our mission is closing over 30 area's because we are not getting any missionaries this transfer like we thought we were.  So, hopefully when this is all over things will get back to normal or better because people will be humbled and ready to hear the gospel.  Transfers are next week so I will let you know what happens.

This is what you do to pass the time and when the Dial soap is on sale.

 

 

Our mission President told us to all go buy Hockey Sticks and some sort of fake puck to keep ourselves entertained.  They are all super cheap right now!

 More murals for Mom.

Some guy picking up trash.