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