I Wish I Was a Convert

Man this week was full of so much fun stuff. I will see if I can get it all on here.
 

We started last Tuesday with Zone Conference! Those are always great and are such a huge spiritual high for the entire mission. We talked about how we have to begin with the end in mind. Getting baptized isn't the goal, going to the temple is the goal and baptism is the first step. It was cool to talk about that and get us focused on getting our friends to go to the temple. 

 

Wednesday night we had our family history class that we were excited for everyone to come to but to no avail. People confirmed and we were excited but no one came. We are in the process of tweaking our plans for next time. We did have an awesome Book of Mormon class that night though. If you ever get the chance to just sit and read the Book of Mormon with a group of people, take it. 

 

Thursday we went and visited the AP's recent convert Sophia and her kids Lanoria and Kendrick. They are awesome. We were talking about the Plan of Salvation and Lanoria, who is 17, mentioned how she was so exited to tell someone today that she was a Mormon! And then 20 minutes later, the kid showed up at their door and wanted to know more! We had Claudio with us and all 4 of them were just so excited to share the Restoration with him. So between the 6 of us we shared the Restoration to Benjamin. It was a super awesome moment to see how excited the recent converts get about the Gospel. I think us as life long members just forget sometimes how lucky we are to have what we have and we take advantage of it.

 

Friday we were able to watch President Monson's funeral. It really strengthened my testimony on how important the organization of the church is and how we really do have a true living prophet on the Earth today. I love this gospel so much. That night we went to visit Shernette and her family and she made us some amazing spaghetti. She told us she is going to open a spaghetti shop and name it LDS: Low Down Spaghetti. It was really funny but she seems pretty serious haha.

 

Saturday was a pretty normal day in the mission. We had a comp study with our district leader about space and then we just went to go do visits before church. No one had been texting us back but we had faith that they would all be home anyway and they were! Miracles! It was awesome.

 

Sunday was sweet. We had a regional broadcast and Elder Bednar talked about repentance, something our mission has been focusing a lot on. It was cool to hear it from an apostle of the Lord and just hear him be so straight up about it. That night we went to go visit our investigator name Mohamed. He is awesome. We got there though and some lady who only spoke Arabic let us in and told us to wait for him. So we sat on the couch and texted him and he said he was on his way home so we waited. In the time we were waiting, whoever lived at the house with him came home. One of them was this girl who was like 6'8" with her 8 inch heels on. She was from Russia and looked way to young to have a 16 year old daughter that she kept talking about. In the midst of talking to her another guy came over from Canada and he could barely understand us as well and we could also barely understand them both. We explained that we were missionaries but they just didn't get it. Then the guy from Canada insisted that we come have some wine and we declined but he dragged us over and lucky Mohamed came home right then. It was definitely a Jesus moment. We had a super cool lesson with him about the Restoration. We taught him the Plan the first time we saw him and he taught us about how he is Muslim but he was really cool about the whole thing and has just been so excited to keep learning. 

 

Yesterday we had a pretty full pros Monday. We had lunch as a district which was great and then went and did service at the food bank. It was nice to spend a lot of time with the district. Then we tried to visit some people before we had a blitz but no one was home. So we met up with the district again and knocked for an hour. I got to go with Sister Murdock which was super fun. That night we had FHE at one of our members house with Shernette and Claudio. Claudio is going through a divorce right now and he really opened up about everything. It was inspired though because the members each went through a divorce too and so did Shernette. It was cool to see her help Claudio with what he is going through. I just love how tight all the recent converts are with each other and how willing they are to help each other out. They also are really good at recognizing the adversary which has been cool to see.

 

That's about it for this week. I love you all so much! Keep going to the temple and keep being awesome! 

All my love,

Sister Beckstrand

Florida Sunshine: The Sunsets!! They are just so much better than the sunrises.

District lunch

 

 

 

 

Us at zone conference

  Had to take a picture of the MLK street sign since that was this week. Also, Utah Ave. is right behind out apartment.

 

 

This is side note from Penny - These pictures were given to me by the mom of one of the Elder's in Sophie's district.  Apparently they had a lot of fun at Zone Conference as well.  They had some District against District challenges like pie eating, face painting and of course, rugby.  You can find Sophie in the group picture by looking for her pink rugby ball.

 

 Pretty sure Sophie won the face painting competition.  She's had some practice.  Not so sure about those Elder's.