Simply Perfect and Perfectly Simple

Hey everyone!! 

This week was a good one! Every week is a good one when you are in the service of your fellow beings. Last Monday night we had FHE with our branch and there was an awesome turn out! Usually there are like 3 people that come but we had about 20 people there! Mary was there and a lot of our less actives! Probably because we were carving pumpkins. Also, apparently no one here really carves pumpkins or really goes trick-or-treating. That was really weird for me. So we got to help teach people what to do! Fun times. 

Tuesday we had district training. We talked about a farm and how on a farm there are a lot of things that need to get done so you have to decide where to start. We likened it to missionary work and how there are so many places we can start but we need to start with the ones that need the most help. I made peanut butter fingers and everyone loved them. 

Wednesday we went to FIU. It is a super nice campus. They are the panthers so I love going there :) We found some people but the coolest was Will. More on him in a second. In my studies this morning I was reading about how Moroni strengthened the weakest cities first. It made me think of Alma's letters to his sons. He had a lot more to say to Corianton than Shiblon but Corianton needed it more than Shiblon. I think a lot of the time we are trying to do everything right we can in our lives and we feel like God doesn't talk to us. But usually it's because we don't need any fortifications at the moment but we need to go out and help others. 

On Thursday I had my first exchange! With the hurricane last transfer we didn't get a chance to do exchanges. I got to go with Sister Brown. It was tons of fun. She is from Cedar so it was fun to talk to her about home and she knew what I was talking about. I got to teach her the ways of YSA and she got to teach me some of the things that help her. It was a lot of fun.

Friday we went back to at night. Someone told us there would be a lot of people there but boy were they wrong. We did find a family though. The parents names were Jason & Kelly. They were waiting for their daughter who was in Bible study in the auditorium. Turns out that Jason is one of the pastors of their church but they have gone to a temple open house before and had a lot of questions so we got to give some answers. We talked to them for about an hour about the restoration and plan of salvation. FIU is about 30 minutes away from our home and when we go we have to park at a high school down the street and walk about 20 minutes. So we got done talking to them around 8:45 and the Elders came and found us and had called the APs to get permission to drive us back to our car. Lots of fun. We are so grateful for them. 

On Saturday we got to teach Will! The one we found on Wednesday. He is pretty cool. He is from Africa and has been looking for truth. We shared the Restoration with him and he loved it. We prayed with him and he said he would read the pamphlet and pray about it and is excited to continue meeting with us as are we. 

Yesterday we had an Area 70 come talk to us with his wife. His name is Elder Klebingat. He started by talking about the Gospel. The church is perfect and it is simple. We just have to do what we need to because Christ already has our exaltation taken care of. It's simply perfect and perfectly simple. He also talked about how as missionaries we can go through a mission without the mission going through us. The same thing is true about the temple. He said we need to make the sacrifice of time to be able to go. When we go we need to think about being literally endowed with power to help us on this earth because that is really what is happening. We need to make the temple our best friend because we cannot progress here on Earth without entering the house of the Lord. He also talked about how we were all chosen to come to the Earth at this time in the Gospel because God trusted us to be able to bring all of his other children who weren't so fortunate unto the fold. We have to be the best missionaries we can to bring everyone unto God. 

I hope you all have a great week. Be awesome member missionaries. Pray for opportunities to share the gospel and I promise they will come. Also, go to the temple. Make it your best friend. There are so many blessings that God want's to send our way as long as we go. The gospel is true. I love it. I love you all! Stay awesome!


All my love,

Sister Beckstrand

Florida Sunshine: Pelicans! We spent some time over by the beach this week and we saw a ton of them. 

 Peanut butter fingers.

 With the Elders.