Monday, May 27, 2013 "Keep being Awesome"

Famille!!

Bonjor! Vous me monquez!

Hello everyone! It seems like it has been so long since I have talked to you! Okay, so that awesome little old lady is one of our eternal investigators who is the mother in law of one of my favorite families here in Perigueux. Her name is "Mami". She is 94 years old and she is still kickin and probably has more energy than me, she kinda reminds me a little bit of Great grandma Beyer. Mami is so hilarious and she always makes me laugh every time that I go over there. That is so crazy about Olivia! Yeah of course I remember her! She is going to be an amazing missionary and I am so happy for her, that is going to be an awesome mission for her. Get her started on the language right now. I am not even worried about Bryton a little bit, I always looked up to him and truly he is going to be such a great missionary. He will be twice as happy as me in no time, guaranteed. Have Pam tell him that it is really hard at first, but it WILL get better (eventually). I can't wait to hear where Ashton is going, that is one I have been wondering about. That is awesome about Jensen too! Tell Bubba to just work hard and enjoy it because it goes by in the blink of an eye. . . and Caden better not quit football, that would be one of the biggest mistakes of his life. Football teaches you some valuable lessons and my favorite experiences from football are not from being on the field, but messing around at practice and hanging out with the football team. ( I can't believe Layton made it that far too! Crazy.)

Awesome! So I am doing really really good right now! I have a lot of stories for you and I don't even know where to begin. Okay so these past couple of months have been really hard for me, I have been really happy at times, but really sad at times too. We just didn't really have very much work going on here and I felt like we hadn't really helped any one here in Perigueux. Well, all of that went out the door this week. After all of those long hard weeks we started to see some miracles! Just this past week we got 3 people engaged for baptism! One of the people that we found is scheduled to be baptized before this transfer ends too! It is so incredible to see what the Lord can do if you continue to show faith and endure the trials. That was the main message from Bleus Conference as well, President Roney said that the most important thing we can learn on our missions is how to love everyone and how to have faith. He always says that the difference between a good missionary and a miraculous missionary is faith.

So we exercised a lot of faith this week and it payed off! Not only that, but while we were sitting in church this Sunday with our investigators that we had there a huge young family showed up from England, they were visiting for vacation. It was the best experience I have had on my mission so far! I loved every second of trying to scramble around and find chairs for this visiting family. Who would have thought that the best feeling in the world is going to find chairs during sacrament meeting???! This family was awesome though, there was two cute young couples and about fifteen cute kids, they were all wearing bright summer clothing and really brought the meeting well needed energy. My companion and I turned to each other and said, man this is how church really is and needs to be every week.

It was such an amazing experience and one that I will always remember for the rest of my life. Well needed to I might add.

This week was awesome! It really made me get an awesome feeling of why I am out here walking around all day looking for people to share the gospel with. The gospel is true, and I know that it brings happiness. It is a lot easier to see when you are surrounded by the opposite of the gospel haha. The language is still incredibly hard and I don't speak very well, but I am still happy. Keep praying for me!

1. Treat: Flavored licorice? Rice krispy? Really whatever you want to send.

2. Favorite cereal: Maybe frootie pebbles right now. . .

3. No we took a train back, but I like the trains because you see the countryside.

4. Football game was amazing, best P day so far and it was awesome will all of those missionaries. We went street boarding with all of them that night, that is where you write a big message on a board to get people to talk to you. The more ridiculous the better!

5. Favorite memory: Eating KFC in the outfield while dad played his softball games.

I love you all so much! Keep being awesome!

Love,

Elder Beyer

Monday, May 20, 2013 "Thanks for the Support"

Ahhh it sounds like everyone is doing amazing at home! Yeah seriously you need to put Caden to work! Tell Bubba that he is welcome to drive the Subaru anytime that he wants to :) That is awesome with the missionary farewells and all of the missionaries heading out! They are going to love it! It is really hard, but they are going to love it. 

By the way I think that is a great look for dad with the compression socks and I think that he should wear those all of the time, I think it looks very professional, haha that look was just so not dad though!

Okay, so everything is going really great right now! Perigueux is really slow right now, but I really think that the work is going to be picking up soon. I am really happy to be with Elder Asay for another transfer though, he always keeps me laughing and we have a ton of fun while we are out here working hard. There isn't a whole bunch of new things going on though, one crazy thing is that I am actually writing you from Lyon right now. . . and you are not going to believe how I got here. By Plane! Yeah, I know it is awesome! So we are down here in Lyon for our Bleu's conference and it turns out that it was actually less money to fly us here, so we flew in this morning from Bordeaux. It was awesome, and it saved us eight hours on the trains. I don't know if you have heard anything about this conference, but what it is is a conference for all of the new missionaries, so tomorrow I will get to see all of my district from the MTC! I am so excited to see how everyone is doing and to hear some stories about how they are doing!

Also, I got the package! Thank you so so much, all of that stuff is going to be awesome and I am probably set on hygiene products for quite awhile ha ha, so thank you. All of that stuff was perfect and thanks for sending me some updates! It sounds like from what I heard all of my friends are doing really good, that is awesome! I sent a lot of them emails this last week just to see how they all were doing and they all sound really cool. I think it is so sweet to be serving right now with my brother and all of my friends, it just makes it that much more awesome to be a missionary and have all of that support. Not to mention they can relate to the crazy things that happen on the mission.

I don't really have too many crazy stories for this week. One thing that happened while we were knocking door to door was my companion called over a crazy stray dog and while it was running over to us it was running in a zig zag patten and had foam dripping from it's mouth. I was like what the crap are you doing?! So we took a turn down a side street and started into a jog, the dog followed us for a little bit, but luckily it got distracted and we were able to get away. Hopefully we learned our lesson and will no longer call over crazy rabid dogs ha ha. 

I really love all of you so so much and thanks for all of your support. It would be really hard to do it without an awesome family and friends behind me. This week I was having a hard time and all of the walking and talking was getting to me when we stopped off to finish the night at a members house for a little birthday party. This family as always invited us right in, sat us down, got us some food, and made us feel like we were right at home. The members are what keep you trucking here because they are your family away from your family. Don't worry too much, I am still in good hands here all the way over in France. I love you all so much and miss you a ton. The gospel is true and I love being a missionary! Have an awesome week!

Love,

Elder C. Beyer

Monday, May 13, 2013 "Happy Mother's Day"

Happy Mother's Day again!!!

I hope that it was so amazing for you and I loved being able to talk to all of you! Ahh it went by wayyy to fast, but it was so awesome!  I am not surprised that Berkeley did an amazing job because she is such an awesome person and she is going to be a great missionary! I love all of the pictures! Congrats Megan! Heal up those legs Jenna! Grandma I love the wall! Ha ha and I am not surprised at all that Brock was eating while he was talking to you guys, he is so funny. Brock sounded awesome though so tell him to keep up the good work! Ahh Bryton is going to be awesome too! So exciting!

Okay. . . So as you could have guessed there is not much new going on around here. After I talked with you we ate with that family and then headed right back to our apartment to plan and then today we have just been taking it easy and just relaxing this P Day. Everything is going really really good right now though. I am really happy and Elder Asay is a stud so I am happy to be with him for another transfer. Ha ha yeah it is pretty obvious that he is a lot older that the other missionaries and is a lot more mature, he is a funny guy though. I am excited to be staying here is Perigueux for another transfer though and I think we can get a lot of work done here too, we have been meeting a lot of really cool people lately and I know that we have a few baptisms coming just right around the corner. President Roney said that the difference between a good missionary and an excellent missionary is that the excellent missionary just has more faith. So, I need to just have more faith that we will find more investigators here in Perigueux!

Missions are hard! But I am love being out here and I can't wait to see some miracles here in France!

I love you all so so much and it was amazing to hear from you!

Love,

Elder C. Beyer

Monday, May 6, 2013 "I love Perigueux"

The birds realize that you are starting to be empty nesters out there in good old K-Town so they were just looking out for you! Ha ha, but hey if it counts for anything I would do anything to be at a Bees game with you guys right now! I miss all of you a ton and I really miss Bees games, a ton! It sounds like everyone is doing really good though. That is a funny story about the asking with CJ and Aubrie though, I still can't believe that! I also cannot believe how many people are getting their mission calls! That really is so crazy! Missionary work is amazing right now!

I am doing really good right now though! We had an awesome week this last week and we worked really hard. I love Perigueux too. It is so beautiful here, and the members are amazing. They really take care of the missionaries here. Elder Asay reminds me a lot of Brock and we get along really good, I hope that we get to stay one more transfer here together. We find out this Friday though! I am so excited to hear where I will be going, or staying for that matter! I can't believe how fast this transfer went!

Everything is still roughly the same here, the French are still the French and man are they funny sometimes. Some of the stuff that my companion and me see on the street we just cannot help but laugh about it. Funny stuff. Just a few days ago we had a big youth missionary day and we spent the day doing missionary work with the young men of our ward. It was a really fun day and we contacted so many people in our little town, it turns out that it makes it a lot easier to talk to people when you speak that language natively ha ha. Who would have thought? It was an awesome day and all of the youth had fun, they really realized how hard missionary work is though, and they were really nice and compassionate this Sunday :) ha ha.

I still don't understand a lot of what people are saying, but I have gotten really good at just smiling and nodding my head and laughing when they laugh ha ha. Although, with that being said I have gotten called out a few times and that was really awkward ha ha. A lot of the members mess with you too when they know that you are not understanding what you are saying, they think they are so funny haha :)

I love all of you so so much and I miss you all a ton! I cannot wait to hear from you this Sunday! I think that I am going to sky
pe around 5:00 our time, but it could be a couple hours any time around that. I really hope that works out. Talk to you soon!

Love, Elder C. Beyer