Sister Sophia's Florida Fun: Just Baptized!

Bonjour! Hope you all had a great week because I sure did.

Last Monday we had another lesson with Phillip and Kimberly. Phillip makes everything so complicated so it's a challenge for us to make everything really simple for him to not be able to make complicated. We never have a dull moment in our lessons that's for sure. Kimberly is doing great. Our only struggle right now is getting both of them to accept a baptism date. They have really weird concerns but we know that everything can be overcome with prayer. Hopefully tonight goes well.

Tuesday was another day full of meetings for Sister Jensen and I. It's really weird serving around so many sisters and going to so many meetings. Our zone is huge. I'm usually in a little zone with only two other sisters. But it's been good :) Some of us in our zone (Elders Egan, Watkins, Tucker, Sisters Jensen, Gibbons, and myself) got nominated by the APs to sing a musical number this Tuesday for zone conference with Elder Shayne M. Bowen. So we did a lot of practicing on Tuesday. Actually all week. We're pretty nervous but hopefully it all goes well. That night I went back with Sister Oliveira for our ward correlation, mostly to get everything ready for David's baptism on Saturday!

Wednesday morning Sister Jensen and I went and surprised some of our sisters with Halloween candy. We kinda scared them but we had a great time. We spent most of our Halloween visiting new members that had recently moved into the ward. I am still trying to get to know all the members here. There are so many ahhhhh. Which is a good thing but I'm used to only have 20 people at church my entire mission. We went and knocked with the Boca Raton sisters later and then went and decorated their door and surprised them with candy too :) then we headed over to our members house for dinner. The food wasn't ready yet when we got there so they let us carve one of their pumpkins for them. So one of the stinky parts of Florida is that because of the humidity you can only carve pumpkins the day of Halloween because they are moldy by the next day. Even if its inside. We threw out a pumpkin yesterday that probably shouldn't have been in our house all week lol. But dinner was fun and then we headed home because we had to be home by 6:30. Don't worry mum, our Halloween was lame too. We spent the rest of our night studying for the zone conference we are having tomorrow. Elder Bowen asked us to study the Abrahamic Covenant so we took advantage of the extra time we had to study that night. Still a lot of things I don't get. Hopefully it makes sense tomorrow.

Thursday we had a lot of planning to do for our upcoming week but halfway through planning we were supposed to have a lesson with our friend Estella. Well, we got there and she wasn't there so we decided to stop by Yogurtland on the way home. It was a good decision. That night we had dinner with Brother and Sister Milton and David tagged along. We taught him the last couple things he needed to know and made sure everything was all set for Saturday. David is such a funny person. He told us about his trip that he just recently took to the Galapagos Islands. It's now on my bucket list. Then we ended the night at the chapel practicing for our musical number. The whole zone met at the chapel that night for our zone wide exchange!

Friday Sister Paniagua joined me in Boynton Beach! It was a busy day to say the least. We had a lesson with one of the recent converts named Lauren in our ward. It was really cool because the sisters that baptized Lauren lived with Sister Paniagua so she knew exactly who she was when we went to see her. Then we went home and had some lunch and then headed to see our friend Poliana. She is from Brazil and is soo awesome. We taught her the restoration and she kept telling us how her home is centered on Jesus Christ. She's basically a member of the church but just doesn't know it yet. After her we went to see Sona. She loves to talk. We were there for a hot minute and didn't get to really talk much but she said she would talk to her son about coming to church soon so that's good. By then it was almost 6 so we stopped by Five Guys on our way home and then had our studies. We met up at the church once again to exchange back and once we all got there and said a prayer, it started pouring rain. It hasn't done that in a long time. It definitely rained way more last year than it has this year. But the weather is finally cooling down so that's good!

All of our time on Saturday was dedicated to David's Baptism. That morning we made some treats to take for after and then we had to babysit the font all day to make sure it didn't overflow. We made sure everything was all set up and ready to go! When the man of the hour got there he had brought his friends and some family which was awesome!! The baptism went great. All the missionaries in our district sang a musical number for him and the Spirit through the whole night was just awesome. After the baptism and he came back in from getting dressed, he had a shirt on that said, "Just Baptized." We were all dying. Oh David. He really loved everything and that's all that matters. One of the members even brought pizza for after. That night we went around dropping off treats to some members and doorbell ditching them. It was a lot of fun because we mostly scared them all so that was great haha.

Sunday was daylight savings!! Yay for an extra hour of sleep! Boo for it getting darker earlier now because people stop talking to us sooner. It's fine. David was 3 minutes early to church because he didn't know it was daylight savings. I guess that's another good thing. Had it not been for daylight savings he would've missed his confirmation. But it went well. He even bore his testimony after. It was awesome. Two months ago he decided he needed to go back to church. He prayed and two days later the sisters knocked on his door. He was busy and didn't give them the time of day but they invited him to church and that following Sunday, he came!! And now he is a member of Jesus Christ's true church here on the Earth. How cool. David is awesome. After church we went home and did our studies and then went to the Rane's for dinner and then went to visit our member Dennis. I love it when people have a bunch of questions and we just get to help answer all of them. It's so fun. If you have any questions, ask the missionaries! They can help :)

But that's about it for this week folks! Stay tuned next week when you get to hear our musical number that we are singing tomorrow. It's going to be great :) I hope you all have a great week! Keep being awesome, read your scriptures, say your prayers, and go to the temple!

All my love,

Sister Beckstrand

Florida Sunshine: the huge Hibiscus flowers right outside our chapel.