Monday, June 16, 2014

Monday, June 16, 2014 "Happy Father's Day Dad"

Family!

Happy Father's Day Dad!!

I am loving every single one of the pictures! Hahaha, everyone looks like they are having so much fun! That is incredible about Bubba's team! What tournament was that? Bubba looks like a stud in those pictures :) Haha Caders and Brockster are looking really good as well. Brock didn't write me about his idea! You are going to have to have him write me next week and inform me about what is going on! Hey nice job Coach Beyer! Sounds like you are tearing it up! You better be careful, if you keep winning they are going to send you over to take Leo's spot!

Okay, Nice was incredible. 

It seriously seems like a big dream. I swear that we never even went there. Monday flew by as we all drove down in the bus. It turns out that the buses were actually really, really nice so the ride down was more of a luxury trip than anything. The pizza in the hotel was delicious as well! The next day we got up and took the bus down to the Acropolis! This big conference center in Nice. First off, Nice is an incredible city. It was seriously so beautiful. The city itself is kind of dirty, but when you hit the nice parts of town there is not too much that can beat those palms trees up next to the beach looking over the French Riviera. 

It was a pretty incredible experience getting off of those buses all at the same time with the missionaries across the mission. I honestly thought it was going to be weird not talking to anyone that was not in our districts, but it was actually kind of cool. Everyone was quiet, and when we were all walking to the conference center there was like a spiritual force that I could have sworn was tangible.

We got in and sat down, and at this moment was where we got the special treatment. Because Elder Taylor is in the stake of Elder Andersen they pulled us out a little early so that we could take a picture with Elder Andersen and his wife. It was a really cool experience that I was able to tag along for. They gave him a little present, recorded him bearing his testimony and took a few pictures with him. I got to sneak in on one of those pictures, so maybe in the future you will be able to get your hands on that thing!

Okay, the conference. . . 

I don't even know where to begin. 

I can truly say that that was one of the most spiritual experiences that I have had in my entire life. With all of the preparation that went in we ended up with a spiritual downpour. Sister and President Roney started off and did an incredible job. Sister Roney talked about how important hands are in the work and how important the hands of the Lord are in the ways that they heal and lift people up. In the end her message was that we can never look at our hands the same again and we need to be reaching out to others like the Savior would. Next up, President Roney talked about choosing faith at all times in our lives. He shared examples in the scriptures where the disciples of Christ we given the opportunity to do something that compromised their earthy logic, and because the chose to follow Christ instead of their earthy logic they received a downpour of spiritual blessings that our earthy words cannot describe. Next up was Sister and Elder Kearon, Sister Kearon talked about in order to be a true message of Christ we need to give it everything that we can and not waste a single second. She said that we are here to do the Lord's will, not our own. Elder Kearon, (one of my favorites), talked about how who we are is far more important than what we say. He talked about the fact that he was blessed because the missionaries who baptized them knew who they were and they didn't just preach the message, but they lived the message. He inspired us all to become better and apply the things we learn and teach. He had another message about repentance and shared the scripture in 2 Nephi 32 that says the Lord's arm is extended all the day long and that it is always there to lift us up when we fall down. It was an incredible message. Then came to Sister and Elder Andersen, I could write for hours, but the main focus of both of them was faith and not living your mission without seeing miracles. They shared experiences from when they were in this mission and they set goals that allowed them to accomplish miracles. They shared many things about faith and they said this is what we are lacking, we need to develop more faith. In brief they said that we need to stop thinking our mission is hard and that we can't baptize, because they said we most definitely can. They did it, and they said if we believe there is not reason that we cannot do it. They then challenged us to baptize every month! So, we are going to raise the faith bar a little bit!

The trip back was great and we found ourselves in Bordeaux on Wednesday!

I just wanted to tell you about a few quick experiences. . .

S...... is doing really good. He is progressing like crazy and he is going to be so ready for his baptism. They announced it the other day in church and he was very excited. Right now he is at Helaman chapter 12! Not too shabby huh?!


Another cool thing that happened was that there was this boyfriend of a member that we have been trying to work with for a long time now. Long story short we were finally able to set something up and they invited us over for dinner last night! We went over and had a great time together, we were all laughing and joking around and we developed a great friendship. The boyfriend of the member has been asking a lot of questions about the church over the last little while so it was wonderful because we were able to explain a little bit more about what we do as missionaries and he said that he really wants to keep meeting with us and talking. On the ride home though, he explained to us that his girlfriend has a terminal illness and she only has 4 more months to live, as he kept talking about how sad he felt and everything he was thinking we just sat there not knowing what to say. So a little background on the boyfriend, he is not believing at all. . . He said that he was praying for his girlfriend during sacrament meeting and he had this warm comforting feeling come over him. He said he couldn't describe it, but it felt amazing. We were able to then testify to him of what that feeling was. It was such an amazing experience because he was able to recognize the love that the Lord has for him and he said he believes that the feeling came from God. We then expressed how grateful we are for people like him and we told him that people like him are what inspire us as missionaries and keep up wanting to go out and work. We were able to testify of the plan created for each of us, and although we couldn't do much we left him with a little more peace than he had before. I think that is one of the times that I have felt the most helpless on my mission. We are going back next week to teach him about the plan of salvation though :)

Well my beautiful family, I love you all so dearly and I hope that your week is excellent.

By the way, funny story.

People here see us in our white shirts and thing that we are controlling the trams and buses. . . so people get on without a ticket and they see us thinking that we work for the city and they get really scared and hop of the bus or the tram so that we don't fine them haha. . . If nothing else we are helping people be more honest!

Much love,
Elder Beyer

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