Niner Niner

What a week it has been the Miami South Zone of the Florida Fort Lauderdale Mission. This letter is a bit of a long one but it has some awesome things in it I promise :) Sister Dees and I were thinking about what it was like last year at this time and we have agreed that last year was way hotter and we are getting lucky that it hasn't been so hot. Maybe there wont be a hurricane this year *fingers crossed*. 

Last Monday, once p-day was over, I remembered that Aunty Jo and Uncle Kyle had told us where Uncle Kyle lived when he served here so we decided to go knock them to see if they were actually as sketchy as Aunty Jo had described them to us. Well, turns out, they are some of the nicer apartments I have knocked on my mission. We met some super cool people in that short hour because we had to head to FHE but we are planning on going back to see if we can find some YSA. 

Tuesday we had District Training and talked about how we can have more meaningful prayers. In Doctrine and Covenants 88:64-65 it basically says that if you just pray to check it off the list and you don't really put any thought into it then you condemned yourself with that prayer. So I have been working on being more meaningful with my prayers and I have seen a huge difference on what I am learning and how God is helping me everyday. I encourage you all to do the same! That day we had some really cool lessons set up but they all ended up falling through. We had dinner with Grant that night at Ihop and Sister Dees and I got him laughing pretty hard. I had some videos but sadly my phone broke so I might have lost them. More on that later. That night we exchanged with the Coral Reef Sisters!

Wednesday I had the opportunity to spend the day with Sister Holbrook in Coral Reef South! Our stake is a bilingual stake so I got to put my Spanish to the test while we were knocking on doors. They have some really cool friends that they are working with that I had the opportunity to meet. Shane is this super awesome guy that is in his early 50's that knew they showed up one day to change his life. We had the chance to teach him about the sacrament and why church is so important. We talked about how living in Florida, you walk outside and it's pretty muggy. You are sweaty all day and getting bit by bugs all the time. It rains non stop so you are constantly walking in mud and are just pretty disgusting and can't wait to go home and take a shower so you can be clean again. Well, when we go throughout our week we sin, we make mistakes, we go against God's will and just don't do things right because frankly we are all human. Well, the sacrament is that nice shower that we get to take at the end of the day that washes us clean from whatever went on through the week as long as we are willing to scrub (repent) and get rid of it. After our lesson with Shane we had dinner with a member in their ward. Their recent converts, Penny and Aniah, were there too! (Mom, Penny says hi!) They are all a hoot. I love the people here so much. That night we saw a cool little miracle when we got to teach their friend Juliam that Sister Holbrook and I found knocking last week. We had the chance to teach him about the Restoration because he recently started going to church and was trying to figure things out so the message we shared really touched his heart. He just moved here from Mexico to be with his sons so he is learning English but wanted us to teach in English so he could learn more. Some things we had to clarify in Spanish but as we neared the end of the lesson we linked it into the Gospel of Jesus Christ and invited him to be baptized! He said yes right there and I am excited for the Sisters to continue teaching him (small note, he came to church on Sunday and loved it!!) After our lesson we headed up to the church to exchange back. 

Thursday morning we had a bunch of lessons set up and they also all ended up falling through but it gave us some time to go talk to people at Miami Dade. We talked to this one kid who just started and is playing baseball. We talked to him about commandments and how the commandments God gives us are like the rules to a sport. It's totally up to us if we want to follow the rules or not but more often than not, if we disobey then it doesn't turn out too hot for us. It's the same with God's commandments. If we keep them, we may not know what it may be like otherwise but God will be on our side. Later that day we went home to do our weekly planning. Back story, last transfer the app on Sister Dees' phone that allows us to have the missionary stuff on it and puts filters on everything stopped working so for the last two transfers we have just been using mine while we have been in communication to fix hers. Well, about a half an hour into our planning, we pick up my phone to look at something and put in the password, and no luck. We tried a million more times and it kept saying it was wrong but we for sure knew it was right because it was working like 5 minutes before that. So we thought we would try and restart it to see if that would help. On our phones there is a backup password that you have to do before the phone starts up as like a backup security. We got to that point, put in the password, no luck. We tried 3 more times and then realized that literally everything else that we needed for the rest of our day was on it. And we no longer had communication with anyone. So we went next door and asked the guy working on our neighbors house if we could use his phone. Luckily he said yes so we called our technology missionary, Elder Peterson, to have him call Salt Lake so they could unlock my phone. Well, he called us back about 5 minutes later saying they couldn't find it. So they tried a bunch of different things and in the mean time we realized we were having dinner with Ben that night at some random Subway. Luckily I had followed the promptings I got a few days earlier to write down Kevin, Grant, and Liz's numbers so we went and grabbed my planner and then called Kevin to get a hold of Ben so we could get the address to where we were going. So while Elder Peterson was trying to figure out my phone we went and had dinner with Ben and then went back to Kevin's house to call Elder Peterson. He gave us a new password, it didn't work, and then my phone told me I only had 8 attempts left before it factory resets. We need to avoid that because then it is useless. Well, they gave us some instruction to try the next day so we ran home, grabbed my stuff, and then headed down to the Zone Leaders house for a zone wide exchange!

So Friday was crazy. We did this thing called a niner niner. So basically we woke up, exercised, got dressed, read the Book of Mormon and were out the door by 9. The next 12 hours were full of only finding activities. 9-9. No visiting friends, no members, mostly just knocking and visiting formers. For 12 hours. We had a goal as a zone to find 21 new people to teach. I got to go back to Coral Reef South with Sister Dalton and we got right to work. One of the people we found was way cool! We knocked on her door and she said she was looking for a church! We taught her about ours and she said she would be at church! Nice. Then we talked to this one guy who was getting his food truck all set up to head out so we talked to him for a bit. He wasn't interested but he gave us each our own bags of lychees. Nice. Then we worked and worked and worked and then had dinner with Elder McCombs and Elder Duval with the Smith family. They made us some of the best homemade pizza I have ever had. It was pretty good stuff! That night we tried to visit someone but they weren't home so we decided to knock. It was 8:30 and we only had 30 minutes left. It was dark, there weren't a lot of cars home, and we had only found 20 out of 21 people so far. Well, Sister Dalton and I had a lot of faith and we met Nora. She is this cute Cuban lady. We were talking to her husband as well but he left because their grandson, who was darling, had just woken up and he had to go take care of him. 21/21 When we got home that night we were all exhausted and ready to sleep. We saw awesome miracles and had a great time! 

Saturday morning we woke up nice and early and headed to the Methodist church to hand out food and exchange back. They usually do the food stuff outside but they cleared out their gym thing so we got to do it inside in the air conditioning! What a blessing haha. After service we went home and showered and got ready and then went to the church and finally got Sister Dees' phone up and working again! The people in Salt Lake called us and walked us through everything and now we have a phone! Mine is still in the fixing process but hopefully we can figure it out this week. We had our studies and finally did our weekly planning. We didn't have time for a ton of stuff that day but we did get to eat dinner with Grant's family! I love the Palacios and all that they do for us. Sister Chugg has a ukulele with her and has let me keep it for a bit so we took it to dinner and sang some songs for them. It was a fun time :)

Sunday was pretty normal. They always seem to be for some reason. Our member Hannah gave a super awesome talk in sacrament meeting. Hannah plays volleyball for UM and we love her! She talked about how their team has a big whiteboard in their gym called "The Change Board". Each player has a box with their name in it and the thing they are the worst at so they can always see it. That way everyone knows what they are working on and they do all they can to change bad habits. Every day after practice they watch film to see if they fixed it and if they finally fixed it and everything all practice was perfect, they got to erase it from the board and put up the next task. She linked it to repentance. We all have our own things that we are working on every single day and want to get better but sometimes we make one mistake. But as we continue to work on it then we eventually become perfect at it and get to start working on the next thing. It can be really hard to fix it but it is always worth it in the end. Sister Dees and I taught Relief Society on Elder Bednar's talk "Meek and Lowly of Heart". If you haven't read it in a while, do it today! I love that talk with my whole heart. Elder Bednar is awesome. After dinner we had dinner with the Brown family. I love Sunday dinner with them. After dinner we knocked with the Country Walk Sisters and then when we got home we called our friend Robert. He kinda dropped off the face of the Earth all week but he answered and is doing awesome! We were so excited to finally hear from him again. He will hopefully be moving here this weekend so we can't wait to meet him in person! 

This week has been super awesome and super busy. This is Sister Dees' last week so we are going to be working really hard and I will be soaking in all I can of her before she is home. I hope you all are keeping busy with school starting and what not. Keep reading, praying, and of course, go to the temple!!

All my love,

Sister Beckstrand

Florida Sunshine: Lychees!! They are this little fruit that has hair on it and you peel off the shell and eat the inside. It has a seed in the middle as well but the part you actually eat is like a grape.

Group pic from the Zone Exchange

Basically the gist of service. 

Grant's awesome fam minus dad