Feliz Año Nuevo!

 Welcome to 2018 here in the Sunshine State! Let me just start off by telling you how my 2017 ended.

Last Wednesday while we were knocking we met a man from Cuba who spoke better Spanish than English so wanting to respect him I just sat back while Sister Smith did all the talking. In the 45 minutes we were there I realized that I can understand a lot more Spanish than I think I can which is pretty awesome. We had the Book of Mormon class that night that only one person came to but all 6 of us missionaries were there. It was nice to read the Book of Mormon together. Make sure you make it part of your daily habit! Don't find the time, make the time. If you don't have time to pray or read your scriptures, your life is far busier than God intended it to be. 

Thursday we had our first official District Training. I was fun. We talked about LIGO. It is a science instrument that measures gravitational waves but only if the lasers are exactly in sync and are ready when the waves come. We talked about how we need to be like LIGO with our companions and always be ready for just the smallest prompting of the Spirit and be ready for him to take over. While we were visiting an investigator we were sitting outside and all of a sudden this huge grasshopper jumps off the wall and lands on Sister Smith. It was pretty hilarious. Days get a little long out here so you have to appreciate all the funny things. That night we went to go visit one of the families that just recently got baptized and we realized that her son hasn't gone to the temple yet. So we are trying to be able to go on Thursday and do baptisms with him for his first time. I am so excited to get to go to the temple finally! We hope it all works out and we really can go. Make sure you guys go to the temple this week. Make time for that too.

Friday we had service which is always a party. Just making boxes of food for people who need it. For some reason I have been crazy tired this week but just figured that I must be doing something right if I am tired all the time so that's good. We ate dinner at a Latin Restaurant, Los Carnitas. It was great to have some Latin food again. 

Saturday we were finally able to have weekly planning.  We have had the blessing of finding a lot of new investigators and were just a little overwhelmed with how we were going to help them all but we got it all figured out which was a blessing. We visited some former investigators and found a mom named Greta. She is super cute and just loved having us over. We met with her again last night and was committed to be baptized so hopefully we can find out how cool she is this week. 

Sunday was New Years Eve! We went to church and during sacrament our branch president just decided to cancel the rest of the meetings so we could go home and be with our families. We were all pretty shocked. It was funny. But it gave us some more time for studies which is always really nice. We came to the realization that the entire world is split into missions which are split into zones which are split into areas and each are is ruled by two 18-25 year olds. Then we realized that that is a lot of responsibility we have and just gave us the motivation to keep on keeping on. We had to be in our houses early so we had a little fiesta! We made tacos and and bean dip and just had our own little party. We had little poppers with confetti that we set off. Then we cleaned up and went to bed. Haha. Gotta love the life of a missionary. 

Yesterday we went and visited a less active couple, Kendra and Kawona. Kawona is from New Zealand and just has the thickest accent and it was just so cool to sit there and talk to both of them. Made me think of all the family back in Australia. While we were knocking we ran into a Haitian family who let us in and gave us some soup. Apparently in Haiti when they got their Independence the first thing they did was make yellow soup so every year on the 1st they make soup and give it to anyone who comes over. It was really good. It had veggies and pork and yams and goat. It was different but really good. We went out to eat that night with Claudio, a recent convert, at Flanigans so we were all super stuffed. I will probably be full for the rest of this week. 

We were talking yesterday about our goals for 2018 and what we see happening in our lives and I realized that I have never thought about the year 2018 cause I knew that it would be on my mission. I am so excited to be serving the Lord for this entire year. Not having to worry about anything but having to worry about it all at the same time. Strive to make God your number one priority this year and I promise you that you will be blessed. 

I love you all! Go to the temple this week and start off the new year on the right foot!

All my love,

Sister Beckstrand

Florida Sunshine: Crickets! There are little crickets that sit outside my window that I listen to when I go to sleep. They remind me of home and I just love it so much. (sorry no picture)

New Years! Us working in the kitchen and our cute little table and fiesta!

More New Years! The Elders have a stash of monster cans and somehow we got some so we made a little monster man. Then Sister Noftle's grandma sent us these popper things that had confetti in them so we set them off. It was a great night but we have glitter everywhere. Good times.

FFLM
My cute room that you requested a picture of.

Sister Smith and I :)