Monday, December 30, 2013 "I feel so blessed"

Hello Mom and family!

Hahahahahahahaha, I was laughing so hard when I saw that picture of Charlie with a cast. Ahh that is seriously so funny. Same with what Caden said. You guys are such a crack up.

That is crazy for Brock. I bet that was so exciting and crazy. That was seriously polar opposite of our scenario because we have known where we were going for Christmas for months now. That is awesome that they finally found a place to spend Christmas. . . From the way he made it sound Christmas ended up being amazing for him and they found some new investigators because of it :) I am happy to hear that Cole is doing so good as well. :) OH come on mom, you expect me to believe that Christmas was quiet with Caden, Bubba, Troy and Blair?!

Okay, as you could have guessed there is not too much new that has happened since we last talked. After we got done with our call we watched Tangled in French for our Christmas present and then we played some card games. The days that followed Christmas went by seriously so fast, but they were really good.

All of our investigators have been out of town because of Christmas, so we didn't have much going on, but this week were are going to make up for all of it and teach twice as much.

We had a couple of cool experiences this week. . . 

So we were sitting at church in our class for the investigators and all of the sudden one of the members brings in this lady who decided to come to church today. The lady sits down and starts to explain her story that about 2 years ago she was contacted by the missionaries on the bus, although she was not interested at the time they handed her a card and told her that one day she would go to church. This last week she was helping her uncle move to Gex and she passed the church at the Gex when she realized it was the same church as the missionaries that had contacted her. So Sunday came around and she decided, why not go to church. She said that she was a little nervous at first but as soon as she walked in she said to one of the members, excuse me, can I come in? The member welcomed her right in and made her feel so happy that she said she knew she was in the right place. That story was a miracle to say the least and that is proof that no effort that we do as missionaries is ever wasted. The only problem is that she doesn't even live near our sector. . . but that is okay because other missionaries in our mission are going to teach her and baptize her :)

We have no idea what this is...Elder Beyer needs to explain!

Another cool thing that happened was that we were going to do a service project for someone behind the church and right as we showed up they were all done. We were kind of bummed out because it was a potential investigator. . . but as soon as we left the apartment we contacted this lady on the street. She explained that about a year ago she had taken the lessons from the sister missionaries, we asked her name and she told us, sure enough it was a lady that we thought had moved out of our sector but it turns out that she is still living here! This lady used to have a baptismal date and we are not sure why the contact was lost with her. . . but this week were are teaching her again! It is amazing to see how the Lord places people in your path, or in other words how he has a a perfect plan that we may not understand at first, but in the end if we keep moving forward with faith things work out better in the end.

I feel so blessed to know about the restored gospel in my life and be able to share it every single day with the people of France.

Have an amazing week :)

Love,

Elder C. Beyer

Monday, December 23, 2013 "See you in 2 days"

Hola!

Well hello there amazing family! I loooooved the pictures that you sent hahaha. They were seriously killing me. Good old Bubby with his cheeks. I looooved the Christmas card. The transit ties are pretty sweet too, so definitely keep mine at home for me to keep it in a good condition. So did he like trade the bus drivers or something??? That is so weird but awesome.

 

Okay, as for the training of new missionaries. Yeah it is the best thing ever. It is by far the most fun thing ever too. You are always laughing about something. It is pretty nice right now because with Elder Crawley and myself we just kind of take turns talking to people and helping out Elder Einerson, but every once in awhile we don't say anything and let him work through it haha. It is the best. He is doing a great job though, he is learning very quickly so before no time he is probably going to be teaching me how to speak French.

 

I am glad to hear that Bubba is still the toughest one in the family. . .

 

Mom! What are you doing doing last minute Christmas shopping? That should have been done months ago!! Haha. As for Christmas day, we are going to be calling at 5:00 our time so 9:00 in the morning for you. Be expecting our calls! Like I said before I am only going to have an hour so come prepared! I will go through my journal and find a couple funny stories to tell as well :) As for our Christmas shopping. . . we don't really do any. The other day we bought a present for our investigator Jie and today we are going to buy a gift for the Pelucchi's and the Fontanella's (the Italian families), but other than that not really. That is too bad for Brockster, I know that if anyone can deal with that it will be him though. That would be so hard if you were a young missionary, but I think it wont even be a problem for Brock. Besides there are some families that he needs to go and baptize back in London that he was not able to baptize the first time around.

 

Keep hitting up the slopes everyone!

Okay, so this week was a pretty cool one.

 

It has been a little crazy because all of our investigators are leaving on vacation. . . but we were able to have some teaching appointments with a couple of them. So the coolest thing that happened this week was that on Tuesday we decided to have a fast for one of our investigators, Jie from China, so throughout the whole day we fastest for him and it seriously went by so fast and we were not really even that hungry. A couple days after that we had our appointment with him and we taught the end of the Plan of Salvation. We testified of the eternal family and how that comes from living the Gospel of Jesus Christ and even though we had asked him to be baptized a few times in the past where he said not yet, the spirit was soo strong so we decided to ask again. It was seriously was of the best feelings that I have ever felt on my mission and he immediately said yes :) So it is going to be tough with his work schedule right now because he is really busy, but hopefully within the next month we are going to able to help our amazing friend to make some covenants with our Heavenly Father.

 

Well, missions are seriously the best, especially over Christmas. People are just happier. A lot more people stop for a second on the street, people have smiles on their faces more often, and all of this is because of our Savior Jesus Christ who came into this world to save us. I know that because he loves us he was born, he died, and he was resurrected. Because he loves us we can change and repent so that we can have joy in this life. I remember an awesome quote that I heard in seminary one time that said, "The best smell in the chapel is the smell of cigarette smoke." That is one of my favorite quotes because sometimes people see change and repentance as a negative thing, when in reality it is a positive thing. . . now that doesn't make it easy, but in the end we will be happier than we have ever been.

 

Well my dear family, keep being amazing, keep going to the temple and doing missionary work for our ancestors because it is just as important as the work that the full time missionaries are doing, and have a wonderful next few days! I am soo excited to see your faces. . . Even if they might not be as cute as they used to be Caden and Bubba. . .

 

 

Love,

Elder C. Beyer

Monday, December 16, 2013 "I gave a talk"

Bonjour ma famille!!

 

How in the world are you doing?? CRAZY HUH?! Two companions. Soo, Elder Crawley is from Palmdale, California and he likes longboarding. I am loving being with Elder Crawley now. We are having a ton of fun and it has been awesome to combine all of our investigators. My other companion is named Elder Einerson and he is super cool. He is seriously like my twin from Blanding, Utah. Almost everything that he did before the mission was the things that I did. We have been having a ton of fun together with our 3 person companionship. Elder Einerson looks kinda like Troy Hinds and acts a ton like him too, so I feel like I am hanging out with Troy all the time. The only problem is that we might be having too much fun talking to people on the street now.

 

New companions

Geezzzz. . . Caden is growing up! Mom and dad you are not going to appreciate what I am saying. . . but when his hair is clean it is actually pretty cool. I am likin the vest too, keep the ladies away from him. That seriously blows my mind that troy is getting married. I seriously can't believe that. Tell him that I am expecting a wedding announcement in the mail soon. I am happy to hear that Bubba is still living the life of a little kid and that he is staying away from the ladies. Wow, Brock is coming home soon. . . That blows my mind! And Jenna is leaving soon! CRAZY!!

 

Well,

Dinner at a ward members

life is so great for me right now. I am so happy to be here in Gex. I love being in a 3 person companionship and it makes it so much better with the companions that I have right now. This last week has been a good one. I actually gave a talk in church on the birth of Christ that went really good. I ended up having to give a talk because we asked one of the members in the bishopric if we could help him out with his calling and he said, yeah! You can give a talk this Sunday! :) Hahaha so I ended up giving a ten minute talk.

 

It is cool to be a Mormon!!

My ward right now is seriously the best. They are all so happy every time that we see them and lately they have all been coming up to us to and inviting us over for the holidays. The funniest is the Italian families in our ward the Pelucchis and the Fontanellas. . . They both really wanted us over for Christmas so they came to common ground and now we are all spending it together at the Pelucchi's haha :) I am not sure what time we are going to be calling. . . Maybe sometime in the afternoon. . . around three or four for us. What time does that put you at?

 

Hey I don't know what a transit tie is but sure! Go ahead and send it! If you don't want to risk it getting lost in the mail, go ahead and keep it. By the way I am going to send home some cool ties after Christmas when everything goes on sale :)

 

It was pretty funny this week. . . We were at a door contacting and it was Elder Einerson's turn. . . I am going to tell what happened in English, but this was all in french. He said to this lady who opened the door, Hello Ma'am. And she responded with, Why are you here? And then he said, "Because." Then we all kinda sat there waiting for him to go on and when he didn't the lady said I don't have time right now and shut the door, but as soon as she shut the door we started laughing so hard because for some reason it was hilarious. This transfer is going to be a blast.

 

So right now we are still teaching our amazing Chinese little friend. He has a lot of work so it is tough to see him, but he still loves seeing us. This last time that we went to his house he opened up the door with the biggest smile on his face that I have ever seen and said, "Hey! Missionaries! How are you doing?! I missed you guys!" He is my favorite person that I have taught on my mission, so I really, really want him to follow our Savior and be baptized :)

 

We are also teaching a really cool guy named Remy, he has a baptismal date and for the next little while we are going to help him to stop smoking.

 

Well my dearest family I love you so very much. I could not be more excited to talk to you this Christmas! Make sure you come with a lot of questions because like last time I am only going to have an hour :)

Bises!

 

Elder C. Beyer

Monday, December 9, 2013 "I am Staying!"

Hello mother!!

Don't you just love going to church? That is seriously my favorite thing out here on the mission. . . especially when investigators show up. By the way, one of the things that I want for Christmas is for our family to start reading Preach My Gospel together. . . The more that Caden and Bubba read that, the better missionaries that they will be :)

Geezzzzz! Bubba doesn't look like a little. . . well Bubba any more. He is totally turning into a Bridger! Ahh Caders with his dates :) Stay away from those girls they have cooties!

Dropping Elder Liechty off

So. . . I am sure that you have by dying to find out. . . 

I am staying! I am very, very excited. So, transfer calls did not really turn out the way that we thought they were going to. We got our calls on Friday with President Roney telling us that Elder Crawley and I would be staying and training again. . . Our children our leaving us and going off into the world. Elder Liechty is moving to Bordeaux! Okay, so they crazy part is that President called us last night and said. . . So it turns out that there is one less missionary coming into the mission this transfer for some odd reason, so instead of training one missionary each we are actually training a new missionary together! Hahaha crazy! So now we pool all of our investigators together and work with all of the members until another missionary shows up into our mission.

Elder Crawley ate all the cracker's!

This week was a really awesome one. We had the annual Gex Christmas party. It was seriously a blast hanging out with all of the members and we actually had 3 investigators show up! One of which is our Chinese friend who is absolutely loving everything about the gospel. We are hoping and praying like crazy that it will keep going that way and that he will accept baptism soon. . . Keep praying! So the Christmas party was actually a talent show and us four missionaries ended up singing with 4 sisters in the ward! We sang Song of Bethlehem and it turned out really, really good.

We found a really cool family this week as well! A few weeks ago we had a week where we tried to work as hard throughout the whole day. . . it was called miracle week. During that week we had some terrible weather. It was downright awful! Although, we continued to work hard through the cold weather. We met a guy when we were going from door to door who had a few kids around him when he answered the door and told us that we could totally come back another time. After about three times of passing him we finally found a time that worked and we went in and had a quick lesson with him. It turns out that he works with some Mormons in the U.S. so he knew all about the mission, why we were there and some slight basics about our message. We had a really good lesson with him though and we have an appointment scheduled for a few weeks down the road when we can go back and teach him about how he can have an even happier family. It was an awesome lesson that is going to turn into a miracle in the future :)

Christmas presents from the Pelucchi Family!

I am very blessed to be out serving the Lord right now. I wouldn't want to be anywhere else in the world and I know that the Lord needs me here in France with these amazing French people. I love this gospel and there is no greater feeling seeing those around you change through this good news.

I hope you have the most amazing week ever and I can't wait to see your faces soon!! Yours too Caden. . . :)

Ps. . . I am never getting married so that I can always go to Grandma's annual sleepover :) (Carsen said this because I told him the married kids were not invited to Grandma Peggy's annual sleepover)

Bises!

Elder Beyer

Monday, December 2, 2013 "Thanksgiving"

What???!

 

Looks like a sweet vacation! Yeah right, with Brock and myself there we would have pestered Caden and Bridger to the point of tears. . . so it would have been less fun with us there. That is awesome! You can't forget to have fun sometimes :) That is so awesome that he was able to send that to you! He is seriously one of my favorite people in the ward, he helps us out so much and he comes out teaching with us about two or three times a week. We have about three or four returned missionaries like that in our ward.

That is awesome for Caders and Bubba.

 

Okay, transfer calls. . .

 

I am seriously so nervous. I am not going to lie, I really, really don't want to leave. I know for sure Elder Liechty and I are probably not going to be staying together (which is sad because I would seriously love that). So now it is just a matter of who gets to spend Christmas here with the amazing Gex ward. . . and who is going to get moved.

 

So I have some amazing things that happened this week for Thanksgiving.

 

So, earlier in the week I got to do an exchange over in Martigney, Switzerland, which is seriously one of the most beautiful places in the world. We drove around lake Geneva to get there and about two hours later we found ourselves surrounded by mountains in this little beautiful city. Beautiful.

 

Next up was Thanksgiving dinner. . . As you know we were lucky enough to spend it with the only American family in our ward. They hooked us up with the goods, and I hate to break it to you, but my Thanksgiving dinner was a lot better than popcorn and coke. They made everything that you could wish for on Thanksgiving, even Sweet Potatoes. . . Yeah that's right :) That was a lot of fun to be able to spend Thanksgiving in "America."

 

The next day might have been even better though, a while back we helped this family move who is in the Geneva English ward (this ward consists of all of the Americans in Switzerland), so anyways they called us up Friday night and were like, Hey! Do you want to come to our Turkey Bowl tomorrow morning?? And we were like, heck yeah we do! So believe it or not, Saturday morning we played some real American Football with about 30 Americans! Crazy huh?! I think that I might be serving in America right now, we were joking about it because this is the only place in the mission where we would be able to play American football.

 

After the Turkey Bowl we were able to go out to this Oscar night in Geneva that our Stake set up for the youth. So what it was was over the past few months the youth have been making these hilarious videos that have some kind of funny church theme behind them. . . The videos were seriously hilarious! So well done. They set it up like an actual awards ceremony so everyone of the members showed up in suits or tuxedos and we all watched the videos together while we had some funny hosts who hosted the event. Our ward made the best video ever and they actually won the contest, it was about a less active young adult who changed his life around for a girl, went on a mission and actually ended up getting married to her in the temple. They did a really good job and the night was a blast. . . Although, we had to leave at nine :( So we weren't able to see the awards ceremony.

 

So, the cool guy I told you about last week who is from China is progressing really well right now and we actually invited him to church last week. . . and he came! To the wrong church though :( We waited for him at church and when he didn't show up we were pretty sad, so around three we went over to his house for our lesson and he explained to us he couldn't find our church so he went inside a random Catholic church hoping to find us. . . But, now we know he sincerely wants to come and next week we are going to help him find the right one :) Hahaha. . . oopppps.

 

Life is going so great right now. The only problem is that time is going by too fast. I can't believe that Brock is going to be home in the next little while. That blows my mind. Well, I better take advantage while I can. I am so happy to be out serving the Lord and truly I wouldn't want to be anywhere else. I love France and I love the French people with all of my heart :)

 

Love you all so much,

 

Elder C. Beyer

Monday, November 25, 2013

This was sent by a family in Gex. They had all of them over for a Thanksgiving dinner!

Family!!

 

Ohhhhh my goodness! I cannot believe that Kole is engaged to Courtney!!! That seriously blows my mind! That is awesome. As for our plans for this week, there is one family that is from the states in our ward and they invited us over on Friday so that we can spend Thanksgiving together and celebrate it with real Thanksgiving food. We are all so excited.

 

That is really interesting about what you said. That is exactly what our mission president has us do. There is this thing he created called the Roney Pattern and what you do is you pick a topic, study it with and eternal perspective and you find scriptures or talks that correlate, then you recreate yourself. . . you imagine yourself in situations where you could use this quality or maybe in the past your should have used this quality and you envision yourself with this quality. Next you pray that the Lord will grant you this quality, and then you focus and exercise this quality throughout the week. One of the things that you do when you are studying is your pick a sentence that you can say in your head throughout the day that will help you. . . for example if you are studying love you can say in your head, I love you before you talk to everyone. . . and in 30 days the trait you are studying will become a part of you. Cool!

 

Well this week was another really good one. It seriously flew by. There were some really tough times this week in which we lost our aim with a baptismal date. . . that was a little tough, but none the less we kept working. The next day after we had a lot of things planned and it was around four thirty in the afternoon and everything that we had for the evening fell through, including our back-up plans, we found ourselves wondering what we should do. We headed back to the car and decided to say a prayer and ask where we should go and as soon as we finished our prayer we had the impression to go to an area that we had been in earlier that day. We had the idea to go and pass the investigator that wasn't there for our RDV. So we headed back and passed her. . . she wasn't there. So we passed another old investigator. . . who also wasn't there. The same thing happened again a third time as well. We weren't quite sure what we should do next, but in leaving one of the apartment buildings we saw someone and we started to contact him. It turns out he is actually from China and eight months ago he met two missionaries in TORONTO. Now he loves Jesus Christ because they helped him to gain a testimony in him. Long story short now we are teaching this amazing person who is ready to learn more. Not to mention we fixed two other RDV's that same night!

 

This week one of the attributes that I was studying was diligence. I studied hard. I picked some phrases to say in my head. . . good old football Start Fast- Finish Strong. . . I envisioned myself with this attribute, I prayed and then did my best to apply. . . When the Lord gives us things, particularly attributes, he gives us trials so that we can develop this attributes. For example, maybe before you had me you had been wanting to have more patience in your lives. . . and then because you asked to be more patient you had me who tried your patience every day :)

 

I found that out to be very true this week. It was hard when we had so many things fall through this week. . . but because we kept pushing on we found more amazing people to teach and we were able to see miracles, and more importantly we were able to see ourselves changing to become better. . . More like the Savior.

 

That is our goal in this life, to become more like our Savior. Sometimes times are easy, but that is not when we learn anything, it is through trials that we learn. . . become more refined. . . and eventually grow.

 

Some of us just have more trials because we have a lot more things that need to be refined :) aka. . . me

 

Well, life is more than wonderful right now. I absolutely love it here in Gex and wouldn't mind staying here until my mission is over. The only thing is that it is getting really cold, so I might be buying some thermals soon so I stop looking like a marshmallow. . . (See the pictures) :)

 

(Thanks for sending that package to Elder Robles, he needs some support, he is an awesome kid and I know he is having a hard time because his family doesn't support him very well)

 

With lots of love,

 

Elder Beyer

 

Monday, November 18, 2013 "No crazy mishaps this week!"

Hahaha no crazy mishaps this week! But man was that a bad one last week! I felt so terrible. I asked him if I could buy him a new one and he said no way. . . but I will keep asking. Well. . . That makes me feel a lot better that I am not the only one who cuts the cord, good old Grandpa Gene. We talk a lot about baptism when we are out here on our missions and I keep laughing my head off every time that I remember that I was baptized twice. . .

 

Caden seriously looks so so different! That is so crazy! I bet he is stoked to have those things off, I still remember the day that I got those off and I actually think that Sammi Swan was one of the first people that I talked to as well. Yeah that picture looks a ton like Brock, crazy!

As for Derek I bet he was a stud missionary, I love that advice and I am going to try and make a running list. Our mission president has said some similar things and he said that we should always have a prayer in our heart before we contact someone, but I definitely need to be saying more prayers. My companion and I have decided to pray every 30 minutes this week in hope that we can find new investigators and the investigators that we have already will want to be baptized soon.

Exchange with my Zone Leader Elder Kaiha and Elder Crawley

 

Well family, life is really good for me. It is getting freezing here in little old Gex, but I love spending as much time as we can in this freezing cold weather looking for those who are prepared to hear our message. Since we have gotten here we have seen so many incredible blessings that the Lord has given us. When we first got in we were only teaching about three people, but now we are teaching about seven or eight people and we have a few that are getting really, really close to baptism. They have testimonies, but they just don't realize it yet.

 

This week we had an appointment scheduled with this Brazilian family that we met not too long ago, but the appointment fell through. We were pretty bummed out because every single one of our appointments had fallen through that day. . . but, we still continued to work hard and we finished out the night strong. A few days later we passed this family again to see how they were doing, we went in and started talking with them and it turns out that they had experienced a death in the family over in Brazil. We talked to them for about ten minutes and then asked them if we could share a really important message with them. We started with a prayer and then started to explain the Plan of Salvation very simply while the man translated what we were saying in Portuguese for his girlfriend. It was such an awesome experience because they were so happy to hear this amazing message that they could live with their families again after this life. However, we did explain that there is some important stuff that we need to do in this life in order to make that possible. We told them about baptism and the importance of Jesus Christ in our lives and invited them to follow his example and be baptized once they knew these things for themselves. They said they weren't ready yet, and we agreed with that, but they said when they knew they would be baptized. There is still a lot that needs to happen (aka. marriage, all of the lessons, etc.) before they can be baptized, but none the less it was a pretty cool experience.

 

Cool members house that used to be a barn..now a sweet modern house.

Once again we had some awesome experiences with the members this week, because we have the best members in all of France here in Gex. One of my favorite things that happened this week was that we had a huge stake conference in Geneva where we got to see a lot of missionaries, our members, and our mission president and his family.

 

I feel very blessed to be out serving a mission. It is truly one of the greatest blessings in my life. I was just thinking the other day that before I know it I am going to be hitting my year mark, it is incredible how fast time can fly by. So, I need to take advantage of every single second I have out here; work harder than I ever have in my life and change to become more like the Savior while I still have a little bit of time that rests out here :)

 

Love,

Elder C. Beyer

Tuesday, November 12, 2013 "Zone Conference"

Well hello there my dearest family! You are probably wondering why I didn't send an email the other day. . . I was actually in Switzerland the whole day at my conference! So we moved our p-day to today. I can't believe that Bubba is growing up so fast. That is honestly so crazy. Hahaha I loved that picture of dad, so so so awesome. Caden needs a better haircut! Good old Brock, always such a jokester.

Zone Conference

That sounds great for Christmas, I loved the peanut butter, it was very very good because they don't have that type of peanut butter here. . . But I am good with whatever you want to send, any Christmas present will make me happy.

 

Okay so you are probably wondering how my week was, it was such a good one. This week our President gave us a schedule that we had to follow that gave us things to study during the day and certain themes throughout the day, for example one day we studied about eternal families and we spent the whole day looking for families. It was a lot of fun and we worked really really hard. At first we didn't see much success though and it was kind of frustrating, but as we continued to work hard and move forward in faith we were able to find some amazing people and some of which we are going to be teaching this week. At the end of the week we had not taught as many people as we would have liked, but because we continued to work the Lord showered us with old investigators and this week we have a lot of RDV's set up.

 

We still have one investigator right now who has a baptismal date set for the 30 of November so maybe with enough faith and prayer we are going to see a baptism at the end of this transfer.

 

Soccer in the RAIN!

Okay so I have a really funny story for you this week. So, we were over at a members house doing service for them. It was so awesome because we were able to cut his grass, trim his bushes and do a lot of awesome work that you don't normally get to do as a missionary. So we were getting close to being done for the day and the member that we were with had this really nice extension cord. . . One thing that you need to know it that here in France you cannot find nice working equipment. . . that cord was one of a kind. So I am just trimming up all of the bushes when the member turns to me and says you are doing a good job, just make sure that you do not cut my new cord. I kinda started laughing because I had gone the whole day without a problem, but I said don't worry I wont cut the cord. . . I think you can probably guess what happened next. Yeah, I cut the cord.

 

Ahhhh it was so terrible. I felt absolutely horrible. The machine immediately stopped and I said, oh no, Brother Jardin, you are going to kill me. He was like, oh no, did you cut the cord? I responded, Yes, I am so sorry. Where can I find a new one to pay you back. He of course said that there is no way I would be paying him back for that, but I kept probing him and asking please, where can I find a new cord to replace the one that I broke. . . Finally he told me that the cord I cut was really expensive and that it can only be ordered haha, he still wont let me replace his industrial cord that I cut, but don't worry he said it was no big deal at all and that he still loves the missionaries. It was horrible, I told him it was his fault though because he jinxed me. . .

 

Another funny thing that happened was Elder Crawley gave himself an interesting haircut this week. . . I will send you some pictures so that you know what I am talking about hahahahahaha.

 

Elder Crawley's haircut.

Anyways, life is great right now. I feel so blessed to be out serving the Lord and I know that the things that Derek said are so true. If we allow our missions to do so they can change our lives and turn us into the people that the Lord wants us to become. Even though it is hard and disappointed sometimes when results are not seen, I know that every time we push through a trial we come out stronger and the Lord blesses us with more blessings than we can even imagine. I love you all very much! Have a wonderful week!

Zone Conference

 

Love,

Elder Beyer

Monday, November 4, 2012 "So Happy"

Well hello there my wonderful family!

 

I love hearing that life is still good back in good old Kaysville. You can't tell me that little Bubba is growing up. . . First off, I am not going to believe it. And second off, he will always be just a little boy. Crazy! I can't believe how many people are coming home and how many people will be leaving soon. That blows my mind that Jenna is going to be leaving, it feels like yesterday that she got her call. . . It blows my mind even more that Landen only has that much time left, that is honestly so crazy and he is going to have so much fun for the last little bit of his mission. That means that Brock is right around the corner. . .

 

These are my ward mission leaders!

They are soooo sweet!

Life is so wonderful right now though. First off it is starting to get really really cold here. I love it! I love the cold so much! Hopefully that will mean that we can find more people in their houses as well :) Gex is such an interesting little place because we are in such a small area, but we have such a big ward. I love our ward so much :) They are honestly some of the most amazing people that I have ever met in my entire life. I will probably cry when I leave Gex. One of my favorite parts about this ward is that we have such a cool young single adult program in our ward with a ton of young single adults that we are able to work with. Most of our ward mission leaders are young returned missionaries or they are preparing to go out, I love teaching and being able to work with them.

 

There isn't too much new over here in Gex, we are still teaching the same people, but one of them is getting really close to baptism. We hope that she is going to be baptized over the next few weeks and that her sister and her sister's family will follow shortly after. We will see :) Send a lot of prayers our way!

 

This week we were able to spend some time in Lyon for the returning conference for my companion. It was a ton of fun being with all of the missionaries and another cool thing about the trip was that we were able to spend some time in Switzerland the night before to take the train to go to Lyon. I don't know what it is about Switzerland, but I loooooove going in there so much.

 

France!

We have come up with an idea this week that we hope is going to fire up the missionary work here. We took a little spin on the 12 days of Christmas and every night we are going to plan something that the members can do with their families. Some of the things are make cookies and drop them off at your neighbors doorstep, ring the doorbell and run, and then there are some that ask the family to pray about their friends that they can invite to church and then the next day they go and invite them. We hope this will help everyone remember the true spirit of Christmas and at the same time will help us to have loads of fun here with our ward.

 

Well family, I love you so much. I love hearing that you are all doing so well and that you are all happy. I am very very happy right now, I really want to see some baptisms here, but I will keep working in faith knowing that miracles are just on the horizon :)

 

Thanks for all that you do for me!

 

Love,

Elder C. Beyer

 

PS. My actual address is

 

Batiment 17 les Chanterelles

514 rue de Vertes Campagnes

01170 Gex

France

Monday, October 28, 2013 "I am Staying!"

Famille!

Bonjour! Je vais. . . rester! I am staying in Gex with Elder Liechty! Actually all of us are staying in Gex! We are so excited, the only difference was moving apartments, which was actually kind of nice because it is awesome being in Gex. We are right next to the church now and I think that I going to be really helpful when we have RDV's there. Ohhhhhh myyyy goodnessssss, I cannot believe that Troy is getting married! Talk about trying to change my whole world out here! Who in the world am I going to hang out with in two years??? Everyone is getting married and dropping off the edge of the world! Hahaha but that is really awesome for him and I am really excited for him. Aren't the members here awesome? Yeah last night we had a crepe party with the members and it was seriously a blast, he asked me if I wanted another crepe and I was like no thank you, but I would love to cook one! So, he filmed it and sent it home :) That other night with the investigators was really good as well, the Aubin family is so awesome and they help us out so much. Their son is the Ward mission leader and he just got back from his mission about a year ago, he is so awesome, but the only problem is that he is in Lyon for school so we don't get to see him very often :(

That makes me so happy to hear that Jenna's farewell went so great! I knew she would do great. . . I just can't believe that she is actually going to be leaving this week, that blows my mind.

Okay, so this week was another really good one. I finally got to do an exchange in Switzerland. . . So now I can officially say that I served in Switzerland. It is truly one of the most amazing places in the whole world. Last week I was in Lausanne which is this amazing city right on the Edge of Lake Geneva and at one part of the day we were on top of one of the mountains overlooking the lake and the amazing mountains in the distance where the hills all around us were lit up by the many houses attached to the side of the mountain, ahhhh so amazing. I wish that I could stay over there for a few months.

We have been finding a few more people to teach this week, we had a few lessons with some investigators and most of the ones that we have right now are progressing pretty well. We really hope that all will continue to go well and that we can see some miracles of people wanted to be baptized here in Gex. It has been tough because the investigators that were here when we had gotten here have been taught for more than fifteen years, so we have been really bold with them this transfer and we have seen a lot of progress out of them.

I am so blessed to be on a mission right now. I will always say that this is the hardest thing that I have ever done in my life, and I know that I have many hard things to come, but it has been one of the greatest blessings of my life. Missions are incredible. I have a million other things that I need to learn while I am out here and I have not changed nearly as much as I need to, but I know that all of that is possible through the Atonement of Jesus Christ. We have such a blessing to know that through Christ we can change, something that I feel so blessed to learn about every day when I am talking to these amazing French People.

Je vous aime trop! Et aussi. . . La France est le meilleur. . . :)

Love,

Elder C. Beyer

Monday, October 21, 2013

Hello family!

 

I am so glad that you liked the letter!! I was afraid that it was not going to get to you. These families here are honestly so awesome, I love them all so so much. They have been awesome lately just by taking random pictures and being like, what is your parent's address? They deserve a picture. Haha. Also, I am glad that you had a successful hunt. . . and that Caden is such a good shot. The real question is how much did mom pay you to miss the deer twice and bring nothing home? And what is the deal? Give your mother a hug and say hi to her Caden. . . :)

 

That is a really cool experience that Brock had. I will half to learn from that and apply that into my own life and my own missionary work. I am trying to be the best missionary that I can be, but there are always things that can be improved. There was a missionary who had an experience similar to that that he shared in one of our last conferences as well. Cool!

 

Okay so I have some crazy news. . . We are moving! Yeah that is right, we are moving into Gex into a new apartment! Crazy huh? So this P-day we don't actually get a P-day :( The office elders called us up last night and we like, we will be there in the morning so hopefully you can have everything ready to go. So as of tonight I will be living in a new home. We think that they are doing this so that we can be closer to the church and so that we are closer to the buses. . . so we might be losing the car :(

Elder Beyer said this is what happens when you tell Elder Crawley to buy us some pastries. He buys the whole store!

Right now I am doing so good though! We had a wonderful week and man did it pass by quick. We had some amazing dinners with the families here and I think the French food is just getting better and better. The other day we had this thing called a Raclette. First they boil potatoes that you put on your plate, then there is a giant grill right in the middle of the table that grills the meat and melts the cheese that you dump on, ahh it is so amazing :)

 

The work is really starting to pick up for us as well! Last week we found two new investigators and recommitted an ancient investigator for baptism! So hopefully all will go well with them over the next little while and they can continue to progress. So one of the new investigators that we found last week is actually from Brazil, so another day we went back to his house to teach him. As we were teaching him he would translate to his wife what we were saying. . . it turns out that her sister is a member! Her father in law as well! Crazy! So she already knew a little bit about our message and it was so amazing because they were so so so receptive :) Next week we are going to be going back to have another RDV with them :) So awesome!

 

Well this being the last week of this transfer we have planned to have a monster week where we work harder than we ever have here! So, I am going to be exhausted this week, but we are going to see some miracles :)

 

I love you so much family and I hope that you have the best week in the world! The church is true!

 

Love,

Elder C. Beyer

 

PS. . . The pictures made me laugh so hard!

Monday, October 14, 2013

Hello my dear family!!

 

I sure hope so. . . I always feel like I am corrupting my poor little companion. (I told Carsen that I thought he would be a great trainer)

He is awesome though. We have been having a lot of fun together. We haven't found too many people to teach yet, but I think we are going to have a killer week soon and find all kinds of new people to teach. . . and BAPTIZE :)

Happy Birthday Mom!!!!! I hope that it was one of the most amazing ones ever!! You will be happy to know that we celebrated your birthday in our apartment! Hahaha. . . We even had cake! That sounds like an amazing birthday though, gotta love classic Market Street. I was just thinking about that place the other day because my companion and I were talking about the day that we came into the MTC. It sounds like everyone is doing really good though! Everyone looks great! I love the grey beard!

 

Okay so I am doing so so wonderful here right now. Gex is truly heaven on earth. The members here have been incredible to work with and they have had us over very often to eat in their homes. I honestly don't know if I am ever going to be able to leave this place. Not to mention it is so beautiful here right now. At the mountains by our house it snowed up on the peaks and it looks so amazing. I tried to take some pictures, but it was just not the same. This week for P-Day we are going to hiking so I will take a lot of pictures and send them home!

 

This week was a good one! We had zone conference in Geneva and it was honestly one of my favorite ones yet. The Roney family is seriously the most amazing family in the world and honestly I cannot even imagine this mission without them. I don't know how he does it, but he can invite the spirit, while everyone is laughing, and motivate everyone in the room. So I am very motivated right now to get to work. Another cool thing about zone conference is that we are in an awesome zone! Most of the missionaries that we meet with are from Europe or Tahiti because they are the only ones that can stay in Switzerland, so it is a lot of fun being together with all of the different cultures. I hope that I get to stay here for a little while.

 

We haven't found too many people to teach lately, other than we found this awesome kid the other day from Canada who loves to ski! He is so cool! So we got talking with him and after a little bit we invited him to church and he said he would love to come. . . so he should be coming this Sunday! We need lots of prayers! We have had quite a bit of adversity lately, but that only means that we are right on the verge of a break through and that if we keep working hard (or work harder) we are going to see some miracles soon :)

 

Well my dearest family, I love you so much! Thank you for being the most amazing people in the world!

 

Love,

Elder C. Beyer