Monday, March 17, 2014 "You would be so proud"

Oh my goodness!!! I can't believe that he made it home. It honestly seems so crazy seeing Brockster with you guys. Sometimes on missions you forget for a little while that the people that you are writing every week are real people haha. Brock looks so good though! I am so happy that he made it home safely and that the family is doing so good.You are going to have to tell me all about the Saint George trip and how that went, I bet that Bubba tore it up this week.

ElderStrom's mom sent this for my birthday!

Okay, as for my week it went really well. Lyon was so much fun. We had a blast with all of the other missionaries that we were able to go down with. President Roney presented this new way that we are going to be doing missionary work in our mission. As of now every time that we contact someone we have a survey that we have them take. We are starting to do this because it helps us to look neutral and people become our friends a lot faster because they think that we are a lot more open to hearing their ideas. I think that it is going to bring a lot of success in the future and it has been really fun going around and asking people the questions that have been prepared.

That night when we were in Lyon President took us all out to dinner, but it stunk because we had to leave early to catch our flight. . . Which we ended up missing after running through the whole airport to catch it haha. Oh well it was fun while it lasted. Zone conference went really well though and it has been awesome seeing all of the success that we are having now because of our new way of contacting.

Ok, so the reason that I emailed so late today was because we went to the Dune du Pilat again, but this time we went with 8 missionaries! It was such a blast and we had a huge sweet game of football right down by the ocean. I got a little sun burnt though.

Well family I don't have too much time because we got back a little bit late, but I hope that you have an amazing week and have a ton of fun with Brockster! 

PS. I got yelled at on the bus for 5 minutes the other day and I didn't even say anything mean back to him. You would be so proud :)

Bises!

Elder Beyer

Monday, March 10, 2014 "Birthday was amazing"

Family!!

Oh my goodness!! Can you believe that Brock is going to be on his way home soon?! That seriously blows my mind and it is going to be so crazy to be the only missionary out in the family. It is starting to get real, all of Brock's friends are getting home. Send a hello for me and give Brockster a huge hug!

That game for Caden sounded seriously so amazing! Ahh I wish that I could have been there. You are going to have to make a sweet highlight film that I can watch when I get home from my mission. Congrats dude! Bubba is going to seriously tear it up in the tourney and I can't wait to hear how it goes.

Okay. . . The Birthday was seriously so amazing!!!

I loved the gifts that you sent so much! The faces were so funny and I was laughing so hard blowing all of them up. Troy's nice little addition with the butt kept me laughing for a little while. All of those gifts were absolutely perfect and I think that I have everything that I am going to need for the rest of my mission.

So to tell you about the birthday it was a blast. Elder Strom made me some food in the morning and then it was off to church. After church we headed out to knock some doors and then we headed back into Bordeaux to teach a "lesson." Elder Strom told me the night before that he had met someone really cool on his exchange and that they had set up an appointment for that night, he said that he lived right by our ward mission leader so we were going to have him help us teach. We knocked on his door and his wife opened up and said come on in, my husband is almost ready. As soon as I walked through the door two companionship's of missionaries and four of our members from America jumped out and said surprise!!! Happy Birthday!! I was seriously so shocked and it caught me so off guard! I was laughing so hard and was so happy. They made a cake for me that was seriously amazing and we had so much fun! It was awesome how they set it up because they moved out meeting that we normally have Tuesday nights to Sunday so that we could have my birthday party!

It was seriously such a blast and I was so spoiled for my birthday :)

Not only that, but I had another amazing birthday present in which our investigator came to church!!!!!!!! I was so excited :) She is like the coolest person ever and she is progressing really well right now, she has a baptismal date so we hope that everything continues to go as well as it is going.

This week we spent a lot of time on exchanges so we were kind of all over the place. It was a lot of fun to be able to work with so many different missionaries. This week I went on an exchange with Elder Olsen and with Elder Foote, one is from Canada and one is from Nevada.

This upcoming week is going to be a crazy one though. Right now we are just finishing up some last minute P-Day things before we fly off to Lyon. So we are going to fly out tonight, stay with the assistants who are a blast, and then go to zone leader council, and then fly back to quickly prepare for our conference this Thursday.

This week I read something really cool that I wanted to share real quick. I was doing a study on Repentance and I was turned towards Alma 34 and it talks about how repentance is the only way that the plan of salvation can work. It talks about the importance of having an Atonement and how there was no other way. The thing that I really liked though was that after it talks about those that are repentant it talks about being in the Safety of His Arms. I thought that was a really cool the way that that was phrased. One thing that our mission president often emphasizes is how the fact that we can repent is a wonderful thing and that it is actually a happy topic. When we use our agency to repent not only are we freed from those bad feeling that we feel, but we are brought into the safety of the arms of the one who gave his life to allow us this wonderful blessing.

Cool huh?!

I love you all very, very much! Send my love to the missionary coming home!

Love,
Elder Beyer (No longer need to be identified with a C.)

Monday, March 3, 2014 "Happy Birthday!"

Hello there most amazing family ever!!!!

 

Ahhh thank you so much for all of the birthday wishes. . . since you said happy birthday already I am going to take that as a green light to open my package. . . Yes, it did come :) I was so excited when I received the package after a long, hard days work! I am so happy to hear that they lacrosse tournament was such a success and that Caden did such a great job. Caders is such a stud. I can't wait to hear about how Bubba and his team does in a few weeks.

 

Hahaha I loved all of those pictures that you sent. Nothing like a blast from the past. That is a crazy story about when I made my first appearance into the world, and to think I could have been a spring baby. . .

 

Well, you will be happy to know that Elder Strom and I are staying together!! We are going to be able to celebrate our birthdays together. His birthday is on the 12 of March, so we are going to have a huge party for ourselves next P-Day! Although, we did already have a pretty sweet party the last P-Day out at Arcachon. . . Oh my goodness, that is probably one of the most amazing things that I have ever seen. So there is something that you need to know, it rains every second of every day here in Bordeaux. . . Literally all the time. So last P-Day it was kind of a gamble spending the money to go out to the ocean if it wasn't going to be a really nice day. . . But, we totally lucked out and we like to think that the Lord blessed us for all of the hard work that we had been doing. It was the only day this transfer that was sunny and there was not a cloud in the sky. We got to enjoy the most amazing day ever laying out on the hot sand in the sun staring out at the ocean. It was a blast just running around on the huge sand pile and it was so much fun that we are actually going to be going back this transfer as well. This next time though we are going to invite a bunch of other missionaries and we are going play some football so it is going to be a blast.

 

There isn't too much that went on this week. We met a few really cool people when we were over at the college dorms though. We talked to about 5 college students and got 4 of their numbers and fixed 2 appointments to go back and teach them! The college students are seriously sooooo cool. One of the people we are teaching, well I should say two, are seriously so cool. They are twins!! When Elder Strom and I first contacted them we were looking back and forth and they looked completely identical. . . we just figured that we must be really tired after a long day of walking and talking to people, but nope, our minds weren't playing tricks on us. So right now we are teaching these two twin college girls who are studying to be nurses. It is pretty cool because we teach them at the institute with another young adult there all of the time. We have taught them 2 times now and we have an appointment with them tonight so fingers crossed that everything will go well!!

 

We have been still meeting quite a few really cool people and although we have had a lot of trouble contacting our old investigators everything is going really good right now.

 

Ohhh, I am so excited because Elder Crawley is actually moving into our zone and he is going to be one of the district leaders!! So we are going to see him all of the time and we are going to be able to go on some exchanges together!

 

Thank you so much for all of the wonderful birthday wishes! I loved the banner and seeing that everyone is celebrating my birthday back home! I don't know if they are celebrating my birthday or Brock's though. . . ;) I am just kidding, I know they are celebrating mine :)

 

I love you all so very much and have an amazing week!

 

Oh, by the way, I think I am going to buy a huge new umbrella this week and I am going to be spending all of P-Day at the Gare helping all of the missionaries who have been transferred.

 

Avec beacoup d'amour,

Elder Beyer

Monday, February 24, 2014 "Missionary Day"

Hello there beautiful family!

Dad no need to worry the years haven't been hard and you, you still look like a teenager. . . although if the stories that mom tells me are true then it sounds like you are getting a little tired, so you need to cut out of that quick before Brock gets home. . . you can't let him think that he is stronger than you. That is awesome that you were able to have such a relaxing birthday, I think that sometimes we forget to just relax every once in a while when in reality that is exactly what we need. Oh my goodness, that countdown just made it that much more real haha. I love it though. My companion was loving the Canadian flag as well :) Brock is still looking very happy and from his letters it sounds like he is finishing out strong. Don't worry, before too long he will be there so that Caden can punch him so that he can get out the frustration before he goes to lacrosse.

Wow, today was a really nice week. Man did it fly by. We had a few cool things happen this week. One of my favorite things that we did was that we had a missionary day for all of the youth in our ward. We had about 16 youth show up and we had about 10 missionaries there. We spent the morning doing studies and role playing how we were going to talk to people during the day and then at 11 we hit the Streets. It was a lot of funny seeing the little kids go an contact people. There was a 12 year old kid that acted like Bubba and was super shy, ahh he was the funniest little kid ever. At around 12 we headed back to the Church and Grabbed a bite to eat and then it was back out for finding some people. We actually lucked out because we were able to have a RDV during lunch and it went so good! We committed our investigator to baptism!! Her date is the 22 of March, and although she doesn't think that she is going to be ready she fixed the date with a hole lot of faith behind her decision. After that we went out and we tried to find a less active. After searching for what felt like forever we found his building, but he had moved :( To add to that it started to pour! My companion and I had umbrellas, but the two little guys we were with didn't have any. . . so we gave them up. Yeah I know what you are thinking, you would have thought that being me I would have kept it. . . But, I figured it was going to grant us some miracles in the future. Finally when we got back to the Church we were soaking wet. It was a lot of fun because all of the leaders were joking about how they were able to experience a real day of missionary work. The thing that was cool though was that the kids we were with had huge smiles on their faces the whole time and on the way back we were singing there is sunshine in my soul while we were getting soaked. As we finish up every day of missionary work we had a baptism. . . Okay, maybe every day is not like that, but the sister missionaries in our ward had a baptism!! It was awesome because I was finally able to see some of the fruits of all of the work that we do! I was laughing because that was actually the first baptism that I have seen on my mission. The next day I was able to take part in giving the gift of the holy ghost and that was really cool. Well, the whole day was a great success and in the end all of the youth were very excited to serve missions.

The ping pong day was so much fun last week. It was one of the few days that it was really nice outside, so we actually took the ping pong table outside and played. The game was that you have to let the ping pong ball hit the ground once before you can hit it. We had a lot of fun joking around and hanging out with the other missionaries. Like I had mentioned last week, my companion and I had decided to go out to this huge sand dune this week. . . and well, that is where I am writing you from! I am in a little cybercafe in a city called Arcachon. . . In about thirty minutes we are going to be hoping on a bus that is going to take us to this world re noun sand dune called the Dune du Pilat! People come from all over the world to see this attraction so we figured just in case of one of us getting transferred this week we need to enjoy our last p-day together. . . We are right next to the ocean and thank goodness that we lucked out with the weather today. It seriously has rained almost every single day since we have gotten to Bordeaux, but today it is so beautiful and the skies could not be more blue. . . There is a slight breeze, but it kinda feels nice so that is okay.

The other day I was walking on the street and I remembered something that Brock had told me, he said to contact one person every single day that you would not normally contact. So we are just walking by and I see this huge guy covered in tattoos with long hair storming by on the street. . . I am just thinking in my head ohhhh no, he is going to turn me down SO bad and he is probably not going to have anything nice to day, but then I figured oh well, might as well give it a shot. So I stopped him, he was in a hurry so I asked if we could walk with him. . . We started to get to know him and took the Lucky guess and said, you look like you are from Tahiti! Sure enough, that was his home country. . . So long story short we followed him to his tattoo parlor, where he was working and set up a time that we could return. . . He then invited us to eat with him on Sunday! So we went this Sunday and had an amazing Tahitian meal with this really cool guy and in talking with him it turned out that on his dad's side of the family they are all Mormon! Cool huh?! We invited him to come to Church and he said he was too busy right now, but he said we could come back anytime that we want. . . so we are going to be passing by and seeing him soon.

Well my most amazing family, I hope that you have the most amazing week ever!

I read something cool about the Sons of Mosiah the other day where they were really discouraged because they were having no success and all of the Laminates were persecuting them and right as they were getting ready to give up and angel appears and comforts them. . . Through the angel the Lord declares that if they support their afflictions with patience, and if they show a good example (very interesting) to their brethren that they would bring many souls unto repentance. . . So, sometimes if we are patient and endure our trials showing others through our example how the Lord would want us to act that is how we can bring others the closest unto Christ.

Love,

Elder Beyer

Monday, February 17, 2014 "Year Mark!!"

Chére Famille!! Je vous aime tous!!

 

How in the world is everyone doing? Can you believe how old we are getting?? Brock is turning into an old man, dad is turning into a. . . slightly older man :) And everyone looks like they have grown up so much in the pictures! Can you believe that I am hitting my year mark. It was crazy because the other day I saw a lot of members from Perigueux and they were commenting on how much older I look and how fast the time goes by. I honest remember it like it was yesterday when you were dropping me off at the MTC haha, crazy.

 

You all sound so great and I hope that dad has the most amazing birthday this week!

 

Thanks for the package coming! I think that I am going to be here in Bordeaux as well.

 

Okay,

this week wasn't too crazy, but it was still a lot of fun. I spent all of my time in Bordeaux because we did an exchange with the other missionaries here. . . I got to work with Elder Liechty again! It was such a blast and it bought us both right back to Gex haha. Gotta miss that place. It was a wonderful week also, it was sunny for a whole day! Basically every single day since we have been here it has rained haha. . . But, I am starting to really enjoy it, so maybe when I get back from my mission I will end up living in Washington or Oregon or some rainy place like that.

 

I forgot to tell you last week, but when we were trying to email last week there was this Bulgarian family behind us in the Internet cafe that were just screaming and laughing because they were skypeing someone from their family back home and it was so loud that we could barely even hear haha.

 

So this week was kinda funny, we went out really, really far from our house to try and pass this old investigator. We ended up walking for about 1 hour and we were seriously in the middle of nowhere, but we were almost to the address so we kept going. After another twenty minutes we end up at the college dorm rooms haha. We knocked on the door of our old investigator. . . and he wasn't there. So we just started knocking doors and talking to everyone that was around. After a few doors knocked we had three numbers and some random guy actually let us in! We walk in and once we started teaching him my stomach started to growl and he was like, are you hungry?? I was like no I am totally fine, no worries at all. . . And he was like, you have to eat, I know you are hungry. So the cool thing about this was that this guy was actually studying to be a chef! So, the food that he gave us was this amazing bread with some kind of meat spread to go over it. We thought it was going to be terrible, but it was actually amazing. Not only that, but he gave us a cake to take home with us! What a nice guy :) So basically that was our miracle of the week. . .

 

We had such an amazing week at the start of the week and we had like six lessons! We were on a role to have a an amazing week. . . a week unheard of. . . but, on Friday we had 2 appointments fall through, Saturday we had 3 fall through, and Sunday our investigators didn't show up :( It was kind of a sad way to finish off the week, but none the less it was a good one.

 

Right now for P-day we are going to meet the other missionaries at the church and a couple of our members to play a modified version of ping pong. . . we are pretty excited because it is going to be a blast getting some energy out. I don't know how that works, every night you are so exhausted you think that you are not going to be able to get out of bed, but then you wake up ready to go again. Next P-day is going to be sweet though, we are going to head out to check out this really big sand dune in the area! We have just been waiting for a nice day :)

 

We are still teaching a few really cool investigators, one of which is progressing really well and we were going to fix a baptismal date with her this last Saturday, but the appointment fell through because she was sick :( It was a sad day for everyone. . .

 

Well my amazing family, I love you so very much!

 

I read something cool today that said, Suffering allows people to become Saints. In this life we cannot ask God to give us experiences and at the same time ask not to suffer, have a hard time, be sad, struggle, etc and then someday expect to rest in the glorious presence of our Father in Heaven having not done the same things that allowed him to become the God that he is. Suffering is what teaches us and helps us to grow in this life. (Rough Recap)

 

Have a wonderful week!

 

Love,

Elder Beyer

 

Happy birthday Brock and Dad!!!

Monday, February 10, 2014 "My favorite thing is tram contacting"

Bonjour!!

Ohhh my goodness! Isn't it crazy how fast time flies by?! When I saw all of those pictures I remembered that just a year ago I was there getting ready to leave. It is amazing how fast that came by! Ha ha who ah! That is a lot of family history :) The funny thing on top of that is a lot of my favorite family memories are up in Park City as well. . . I think that is one of my favorite traditions that we have :) It looks like you all had so much fun up there and I am loving Caty's new hair style ;) Hey now mom, you can't be blaming it all of the time on the skis. That is my excuse :) I think you will be happy to know that in honor of Baja Cantina we have fajitas the other day and we made some guacamole!

Yeah. . . I am glad that I grabbed that kid too. :) We were in the right place at the right time. (Last weeks story)

This new zone leader thing has been awesome. Very time consuming, but amazing. We spend a lot of our time doing exchanges and working with other missionaries. That is one of my favorite parts, but that is also one of the hardest parts. Sometimes when you are exhausted all that you want to do is go and crash in your bed. . . which you don't get to do too often on exchanges. I loved my zone leaders in Gex though. They were seriously so funny. The night that they showed us their dog we were laughing so hard.(Stuffed Animal) They said that he is very obedient and the Tahitian Elder said that he eats spit. . . 

My favorite thing to do is tram contacting with my companion. His name is Elder Strom. He is from Salmon Arm Canada, I think that is in Hunter Murray's mission. He is such a stud and I have so much fun with him. Together we can get whole trams of people laughing and having a good time. He is really good at talking with big groups of people around.

I liked that quote that you sent this week. (Never, Never, Never give up!) Sometimes it gets hard and the natural man inside of us wants to give up so so bad. There have been many times this week where I have contacted the meanest people in the world, or so I thought at the time, and for a second it kind of sets you back. At that point you kind of want to give up and just go back to the apartment where you can be sure everyone will be nice to you. . . but, every time that we continue the Lord always blesses us with the strength to keep going and in the end he shows his mercy and grants us a miracle.

Our mission president likes to tell the story when Peter is fishing all the day long. Peter a skilled fisherman had caught nothing that day and his spirits were kind of down in the dumps when Christ approached him. Jesus then asks him to do something that required a lot of faith, to through back down their nets. . . They followed his council, didn't give up, and in the end they saw a miracle. 

This week we saw some pretty cool miracles.

We were working so, so hard and it seemed as if we had had no success. Towards the end of the night we received a call from another missionary on the other side of the mission giving us a referral, a friend of someone they had just baptized. We called the referral the next day, set up an appointment and then went and taught her at the church with a member. She is so prepared and she is so wanting to know more about why her friend, who grew up with her in the same church, decided to change and be baptized in our church. We are teaching her again tonight. . . So, I will let you know how it goes next week :)

We had a few more instances where we found people who were ready to hear our message and actually listened. . . That is truly the most rewarding thing at the end of the day.

Well my dear family, I love you all so very much. You are the best support system anyone could ever ask for.

With all the love in the world,

Elder Beyer

Tuesday, February 4, 2014 "Zone Conference"

Hello there amazing family!!

It is so good to hear from you! I cannot believe that Troy is married! The day that we have been waiting for since he got home from his mission! Ah that seriously is so excited and I am so happy for him. He is lucky that I held him from his last gf so that he could find his wife. . . :) They look really, really good together. I am glad that you got to spend some time at the old stomping grounds. . . That is funny because those are all the memories that I have of American Fork except for the one where I hit my head, I guess I must have hit my head really hard and I can't remember it. I feel like sometimes that hit might still be affecting me today because I feel like I can't remember anything lately haha. That is awesome with the little brothers though. Don't worry, Brock will be home before too long to knock those bad attitudes away :)

We were pretty lucky because in our conference the other day our mission president treated us to one of the Superbowl commercials and we got to watch the new Doritos commercial. . . So in reality I didn't miss the Superbowl at all. It was one of the funniest commercials that I have ever seen of him sticking his finger through the wall and the guy in the office licking it off. . . Too good :)

So, that is why I am emailing you late again. We had conference all day yesterday here in Bordeaux. We also had our conference this last Thursday with our zone that was giving by my companion and me that was a lot of fun. We were talking about when Christ fed 4,000 with 7 loaves of bread and 3 little fishes, so my companion and I bought some little fishes and a small piece of bread and did a little presentation. It was a lot of fun because we had everyone laughing and everyone could see how miraculous it was that that many people were fed and there was still food left over. It was a lot of fun giving the conference with my companion, we had everyone laughing for most of the conference and we work really well together. My comp literally has more energy than anyone that I have ever met in my life. He just goes all day long haha, it has been a lot of fun this transfer.

Man is time flying by though, we have been so busy lately and we have literally had no time to do anything. We are always running all over the place and we always have something to do. It is incredible how the week starts and before you know it the week is over. This zone leader thing entails a lot of work too. Hahaha weather it be calling the zone, preparing for conference, doing our own work, etc. . . We always have something that needs to be done.

Last week we were going to pass this family. We had a cake for them because it was her birthday the other day, so we wanted to stop by, teach them a little and wish them a happy birthday. They weren't there at the time we had chosen for the appointment. We were kinda sad because we were hoping to fix a baptismal date. . . So we decided to wait for ten to fifteen minutes to see if they would show up. We were standing outside of the gate when all of the sudden we heard some scratching at the gate. . . We weren't sure who it was or thought that it was maybe a dog when all of the sudden this family opens up the gate door. We had a really busy road to our back and there was an SUV flying by, as soon as the door opened a little kid darted out. At first when I saw him running I was like, Oh no! I can't pick up kids. . . It is against the rules! But obviously I used my better wisdom and moved quick and snatched him up! The SUV then flew by and the expression on the parents faces was unreal, their faces were white as sheets and they were so thankful. We returned the child and they couldn't be more grateful. Sometimes the Lord puts you in places for reasons that we may have no idea why, but there is always a big reason hidden around the corner.

You would think that they would be interesting in our message after that. . . Maybe next time :)

Lyon was so much fun though. We got to fly out with a few other zone leaders and it was a blast. We all got to spend a lot of time together and the conference that we had with President Roney was probably the most spiritual conference that I have ever been to. The conferences that we have with the zone are always incredible, but that was something else. Not to mention there are a lot of incredible missionaries there add a lot of great input. It was really cool because President taught us the secret to being successful in this life and being a great leader, he said everyone needs to be done out of Love. Love is the center of everything that we do in this life, and when we love others we do all that we can for them and we do all that they ask.

For p-day today we went to the church and played some basketball with the Roney's kids, it was a lot of fun to play and have a little bit of fun with them.

Hahaha I love that as far as anyone knows our family is normal. :) That is one of my favorite quotes. I love telling people how amazing my family is and telling them about all of the crazy, fun things that we do together.

Well my amazing, wonderful family, thank you so much for all that you do for me. I love you all so much. Have a wonderful week and try not to have too much fun!

Love,

Elder Beyer