The one with a full week of quarantine

Bonjour à tous! I hope that y'all are doing well and having fun during this crazy time in the world. 

This week for us has been interesting. Other than our occasional outing to play some basketball or go for a walk, we have spent the whole week in our apartment. We also got another missionary with us, Elder Harris from SLC, so we are now a trio. One of the elders in my district was sent home due to health issues and so his trainee has joined us. It has been an adjustment to stay inside compared to what I'm used to doing as a missionary but we are trying to keep up the work the best we can. Our work mostly consists of contacting members and teaching people through Facebook. It has been interesting. I have been learning how to use Facebook a lot more effectively. It has been fun in the fact that even when we are not personally with people still get to share the gospel through technology and the spirit is still there! It has been such a testimony builder to see that the Spirit really is there any time we share truth with people. His role is to testify so when we preach, he is there to be a second witness and speak to the hearts of those listening.

I've also seen the Hand of God during this time as well. He has been opening and softening the hearts of people all the time. He has also been revealing so much to the leaders of the church to help guide us all and protect us specifically as missionaries. I am so grateful for this chance I have to be a missionary at this time and the chance I have to stay here and continue the work. God has a plan for each and every one of His children and He will help us through this tough time. 

Sorry for the short email but I'll make sure I have more to write about next week! I love y'all! Keep being awesome and wash your hands!

Love, Elder Beckstrand

 More Murals for Mom
 
The Olympic Oval in Montreal
 

 

 ANOTHER MOUSE!  We live on the 2nd story and they climb up the winding staircase outside.  We left this one under the bowl for a day and when we checked on him he was basically dead.  So we tossed him off the balcony and it snowed that night so he was really dead that morning if he had survived the toss. 

 Basically dead.

 No one around

 

The one with poptarts and quarantine

Bonjour a tous! I hope y'all have had a great week. Man, this week has been crazy for us! 

The beginning of this week started out pretty normal just like any other week. We went around did some metro and bus contacting and also visited members taught a few lessons and was pretty normal.

On Thursday we had some questions going around the mission and present wasn't quite sure what was going on. Everyone one here in Montreal kinda slowly stayed home so there has been less and less people outside everyday.

Then on Friday we got some updates. We were doing some weekly planning and president sent out a notification to everyone telling them with we needed to get 2 weeks worth of food storage immediately in the case that get stuck home. The mission gave us some extra money she could do that so we went we got some extra food storage got all set up on pop tarts and pasta and good food like that for 2 weeks just in case. They were also telling us so we need to stay away from large crowds and Stay away from sick people and to wash our hands often. 

Sunday church was canceled so it was really weird. Members didn't want us coming over because they didn't want any anyone getting sick and so we took the sacrament to a sister in the ward that we usually take sacrament to and then we also took the sacrament then. We did some come follow me with her which is really cool . It's been super great to have a living prophet in our day that has been preparing us for this and has been helping us be ready to do church at home and ministering around so that everyone could have some one to look to for help.

Monday we got placed in semi quarantine so we were allowed to go out in have lessons and visit members that we had already planned for but we weren't allowed to go and do like contacting or finding and are supposed to stay in our home unless we had something already planned. 

Then this morning We have Have officially been placed under quarantine until further notice. We are just in our apartments now. Mission present has given us an updated schedule and guidelines and rules for how to do missionary work while under quarantine in how to best utilize this time even though we can't go out and talk to people and visit anybody. It's a good chance that we get to be able to learn how do do Facebook finding and learn how to teach over Skype and be able to do some family history work and indexing and also to do some more studying and deepen our own personal conversion in the gospel.we are not about to go outside anymore unless we need to do some shopping for essentials or to go out 2 or 3 times a day to do a quick walk to get some exercise and some fresh air. Other than that we are confined to our apartment until we find out more about what's going on . The world is in a crazy place right now but it's been really interesting and cool to be able to see how true the church actually is and how the living prophet today is truly a prophet,seer and revelator and can help prepare us for the future. 

One zone conference a while ago we talked about the role of a prophet and how he is a watchman for us in for a lives. He sits at the very top of the tower is able to see far off and see people coming in that can cause harm or danger to us and how we need to listen to him and how he can he sees the bigger picture and you could definitely tell that with the preparations that have come out in the last year or so with come follow me and all of that help us.  
I'm so glad I am able to be a missionary at this time to be able to share that with people and hope people realize that we can have some guidance in this lost world of ours and that we can always have faith in Christ site as we follow his commandments do are supposed to do God will protect us in you give us direction when we need it. 

Our zone has been sharing scripture of hope to each other so we can stay strong during this time together. One scripture I found and really liked was Alma 38:5 "And now my son, Shiblon (or enter your name here), I would that ye should remember, that as much as ye shall put your trust in God even so much ye shall be delivered out of your trials, and your troubles, and your afflictions, and ye shall be lifted up at the last day." 

I hope you all are doing great and are staying healthy! Keep being awesome and keep washing your hands!

Love Elder Beckstrand 


We heard a mouse but couldn't see him so I made a trap.  a ramp up to a peanut butter jar full of water. But when he gets to the peanut butter the top part of the ramp falls because of his weight and he falls into the jar.  Then he drowns.  But I didn't know #1 that it would really work and #2 that it would freeze and his head would get stuck to the ice.  oops. sorry.

 Cleaned out.  But a great sale on frosting!

 Bread isle.

Still had POUTINE!

 Everyone cleared out!

We are prepared with our Candles.

The one with CoronaVirus

Bonjour a tous! How is everyone doing this week?  I hope y'all are having fun and preparing for General conference coming up! 

Also, I'm not sure if y'all have heard from other missionaries already but we have this new rule where we can't shake hands anymore because of the Coronavirus. It's been an adjustment ahah. We found out Saturday night and Sunday was just a full day of trying to break the habit of shaking hands with people. It was quite the challenge. Other than that, this week was pretty good for us here in Montreal!

Last Wednesday we had our first district council of the transfer and my first council as district leader. It was really good and learned lots but there were some other things I can improve on as well. That's my favorite part of having this new leadership position and my past positions as a trainer because I get to learn so much about myself and others and how to be a better person and missionary. The Lord doesn't call the qualified but does definitely qualify the called. I have felt that a lot this last week working with all these missionaries and depending on Him and the spirit even more than before. 

The rest of the week has been really good too. I come home every night just exhausted from the work. We run around the city of Montreal all day contacting and visiting people. One cool thing about Montreal is the amount of different cultures there are here in the city. It is such a melting pot of people who come from all sorts of different countries and speak all sorts of languages. I'm just grateful that the two common languages are first French, and then English. We are currently teaching two really cool people. Kervins and Patrick. One is Quebecois and the other is Haitian and they both came to church on Sunday and stayed for our potluck after. It was really good. We had tons of people at the potluck and tons of food. We also had president and sister Low speak at church on Sunday and my district did a special musical number. We all serve in the same ward so all 8 of us got up there and sang an arrangement of I am a child of God. It was pretty good. 

The rest of the week has been pretty good. We had a couple lessons and passed by a couple members to get to know them a little more. One fun part about the big city and using the metro and buses is being able to see all the weird and unique things about the city. I've seen more weird things this last week than probably my whole mission already ahah, but that's why I love Quebec so much. It's been a blast. I know God sent me here for a reason and I'm so grateful he did. This church is so true and I love being able to share that with others. I love you all so much and hope you have a wonderful week! 

Elder Beckstrand

I bought some souvenirs this week!

The one with a lot of changes

Bonjour à tous! I hope yall are doing great. This last week has been crazy with transfers and everything. I am now back in the great province of Quebec serving on the island of Montrèal! It's been quite the change but let's get right into this week.

Last Wednesday back in Bridgewater, we helped a recent convert move and visited some members to say goodbye, then we had dinner with the Whyknot family before heading into Halifax Saturday night for transfers. 

I am going to miss Bridgewater. It is such a great area filled with such a great ward. There will continue to have great miracles there in the future! We stayed the night with the zone leaders there and spend some time weighing and checking our luggages so that they were not overweight for the flight and then we went to bed and got up the next morning at 2:45. Finished packing up our bags and then went to the airport by 4:00 a.m. to get on the flight by 6 and then we flew into Montreal got here around 8:00 in the morning. Then got back to our apartment here on the island of Montreal around 10 and ate some breakfast and then got to work. It was such a long day haha. The work here is so much fun. There are so many people and so much to do. We cover more than half of the island and are in the same ward as 3 other teams of missionaries. I am also the new district leader here which is fun. That is a position I havent had yet so that's been a fun learning curve but it's just kinda like being a trainer for multiple people at once and I know how to train haha. We take the metro and buses everywhere we go because we dont have a car but that just gives us so many opportunities to find people to teach.

Friday and Saturday we had a few meetings and visited some members her to get to know them and had some time to go finding and teaching a bit. We are currently teaching this guy name patrick. He is awesome. He has been coming to church for quite some time now and knows so much about the church already. He just have a few problems we are working with so that he can be ready for baptism one day. 

Sunday was really good. We got up and went to ward council before church and then had sacrement meeting which was really good. The ward here is really big and full of strong members. It is a very diverse mix of people. We have people from all over the world here. States, Native Quebecois, Africa, Haiti, Syria, Lebanon and Greece just to name a few. It's so cool to see that no matter where you are in the world or where you go. The gosple is the same and the spirit can be with you and church is always going to be the same. There are no other churches that can do that. You can go from one Baptist church to another within the same town and its a different feeling and different teachings where as Gods true church is the same everywhere. I love that. After church we walked with one of the our other friends we are teaching back to his house. He is thirteen years old and loves the church but his mother wont let him get baptized yet. He is such a good kid and is so happy to be at church and waits for it all week long. He is such a good example to his friends and family. We then visited a few other members and shared a message with them to help everyone prepare for the upcoming general conference. It's coming up so quick so make sure that you are doing what you need to be prepared for that. It will be so amazing. 

That's about it for this week! I hope yall have a great week and have fun! 

Love, Elder Beckstrand 

The one with a baptism

Bonjour à tous! I hope that y'all had a great week. Mine was awesome! Chris got Baptized! It was super cool and tons of other things that happen this week to so let's jump right into this. 

Last Wednesday we had our last district council here in Bridgewater for the transfer and it was pretty good. We then had a pretty good lesson with Chris that afternoon. He cut his hair. It used to be kinda long and shaggy but he cut it nice and short! It was quite the change.

That was about it for that day and Thursday was kinda slow. We did have our French class that night and we had a little spiritual thought right at the end and it was really good. We showed them a video from the church in French and then talked about it in English together after. They were pretty open to it and then we also explained how transfers work with the mission and they asked us for a hug before we left because they were not sure if we would see them again or not but sadly we had to explain that to them too. 

Friday was really good. It was completely filled with service opportunities. We started at the food bank and got quite a bit done there and then went over to the Daisy, which is a clothing bank for the Hospital. After that we went and helped an older lady from our ward move some end of season firewood into her house. She took us out to dinner after that which was good. I have eaten so much fish and chips here in Nova Scotia its crazy but it's soo good ahah. 

Saturday was really good too. We went down to Liverpool for our French conversational group. We had thirteen people there this time! It was super good. The librarian said if we get any bigger they will have to put us in one of the back rooms because there is not enough space in the library itself. It's a good problem to have. We then had lunch with the Mckenzies. They are awesome. They feed us every Saturday after the french group. After that we had another lesson with Chris just to help him prepare for his Baptism on Sunday! 

Here is where the real fun happened. 

So Sunday morning we woke up and went to the church by 9:00 a.m. and We started filling up the font with hot water but after 40 minutes the hot water went out so we had to turn it off and wait for the hot water to turn back on again and then we turned the font and later let it fill for 40 more minutes and then stopped it but then we're running out of time and then decided just to let the cold water run and get hot water from somewhere else. Elder constant and I along with our Ward mission leader and a couple other people grabbed big pots from the kitchen and filled them up with hot water from the kitchen and ran and dump them into the baptismal font. We just kept doing that until we thought we had enough hot water in there to keep it somewhat warm for the baptism and then we had a quick prayer meeting with Bishop beforehand to run through the program. Then we opened the program with the prayer and the songs and then Bishop gave a talk on baptism and Elder Constant played a piano piece and then we went in to perform the baptism after Chris was baptized we went back into the chapel and Brother Harlow gave it quick talk on the holy ghost and then Chris got up to bear his testimony. He started off by saying he has never spoken at a microphone before and that he is nervous and that if he said anything wrong that we should correct him but then went on for 10 more minutes just bearing the most pure and sweetest testimony and I have ever heard it was almost like a general conference talk. We all just sat there in silence because we were in awe of how awesome it was. Bishop got up right after, said some little final words and welcoming into the Ward and just talk about how great of a testimony Chris has already even though he's a brand new member. Then we closed with a song and a prayer and had a little linger longer activity afterwards, when four more members got to come to Chris and thank him for what he decided to do in also told him how amazing his testimony was in how much it affected them. Then that was it. After church we visited with some members and it our studies and went over to the Nilsson's again. That night we got our transfer calls which were cool.  I am going to MONTREAL were I can use my French!  Elder Constant is staying here to make sure every keeps moving forward.

Monday was a pretty average for Monday. We went and did some street contacting that are studies visits and members and that was about it. 

Tuesday were very busy we went around and did our studies and then went and visited some members in Liverpool and saw Chris again. He shared with us that he had tried to write down the testimony that he shared on Sunday and it take up 9 full pages front and back. He was just so happy and smiling and in such a good mood and so excited for next Sunday where he gets to receive the Holy Ghost and hopefully the Aaronic Priesthood. Then after that we ran over to our friend James's house, which was was really cool we haven't seen him in a while. We shared the, Ask of God video with him and he really enjoyed it and then after that we ended the night with the little ice cream run with him and one of the members here in town.  He is awesome.

 

Overall it was a good week. The mission is going well and they church is so true and can change people in ways you would never think of. I have seen it happen and I know it can continue to change and make us better. I love y'all and hope you all have a great week! 

Elder Beckstrand

 Elder Constant, Chris and Me

 Our Church

 

Steamy!

The contents of my bag.