Sunday, November 16, 2014 "Elder Dalton's Birthday Surprise"

Dearest Family!

Haha, don't you love our little massage train? We do that just about halfway through every single one of our conferences. It helps us to wake up a little bit. The only rule is that sisters can't touch elders and elders can't touch sisters! Ah Ty is such a stud! I wish that I could have been there for his homecoming. Yeah, Tyson is one of the funniest people in the world. You are going to have to make sure he applies to BYU just in case! Tell him that we are going to have to room together! Hahaha, can you believe Troy not just getting a girlfriend, but a finance! It's true, we did all make that promise with Syd. . . so when I am living as a bachelor at home for the rest of my life you will know why! Haha, Syd is so funny!

Have tons of fun in St. George! You deserve it! I haven't received the camera yet, but I will let you know as soon as I do!

This week was a fun one!

Monday was spent with all of the departing missionaries. We had a blast joking around together and eating over at the Roney's together. Dinner for us is a little bit crazy though. We spend the whole night helping serve the food, take people around, make sure everything is in order, etc. . . so for every minute sitting down we spend the next couple running around doing something. It is a blast though. After a really late night Monday from loading suitcases and a few other things, we made it to bed! After all of the old missionaries were out of there, it was off to the airport to pick up all of the new missionaries. This time was sooooo much better than the last. They came in on time! Hahaha. Yes!! I was so happy because that allowed us to be able to sleep at night instead of picking them up at the airport! 

As usual, it was a blast being with the new missionaries. They were so funny and so energetic. We got to take them contacting for the first time and they were awesome. They couldn't speak a lick of french, but they were fired up and talking to people all around them. Which made for some great experiences.

Tuesday night we got to eat at the mission home again and play some more games with the new missionaries. The best was when we played some around the world ping pong downstairs! However, we didn't play any sting!

The conferences over the next few days went great! We had one on Wednesday and we had one on Friday! The one Wednesday was with the new missionaries and the one Friday was with the missionaries who have been out for a transfer. It is cool seeing how much the missionaries grow just over one transfer. 

Okay, now for the best part.

Saturday. . . It was Elder Dalton's birthday. Elder Taylor planned it out so that we would take him to a really cool American family's house and surprise him. Although, we were brainstorming of how we could get him there surprised and somehow we came to the conclusion that we needed to kidnap him. So, Elder Taylor took them up a small alleyway and we hid behind some cars, ran out, put a sheet on his head, and carried him back and threw him in the car. On the way we fell down and got a few battle wounds, but it was well worth it. Anyways, the car ride was hilarious because we didn't say a word, but Elder Dalton was cracking jokes the whole time and it was so hard not to laugh. We carried him all the way up to the door of the apartment where some random guy just let us in. . . which was kind of strange because he didn't really even ask why we had him bagged up hahaha. We knocked on their door, they let us in and we put him on the couch, and then we took of the sheet and surprised him! He was so funny about it and such a great sport. The night was a lot of fun and we ate a bunch of pizza and ice cream to celebrate. 

I loved that quote that you sent mom! I remember you sending that to me a long time back and it helped me out a lot. The longer that I have been out on my mission the more that I have understood that the harder it gets, the more your faith grows when you get up and keep working. Which is obviously easier said than done. However, I know with all my heart that when the going gets tough, when we make think otherwise, or especially when we don't understand, but we still choose to follow the Savior, we are blessed eternally. I know that throughout our lives we are giving opportunities to show the Lord that we trust him and we show our trust in him when we get up everyday with the attitude that we are going to try again.

I love you all so much!

This week is going to be another great one! 

I promise not to kidnap anyone else! Hahaha.

Love,

Elder Beyer

Sunday, November 9, 2014 "Transfer Week"

Hey family!

I am not going to have too much time so I might have to keep it pretty short! We are just finishing up numbers because of a few unexpected problems that came our way tonight! As you already know, I am staying with Elder Elvidge! I am really excited and I think that this transfer is going to go by way to fast just like the last one. It is crazy how fast time is going by right now.

The Elder Kearon Conference was seriously amazing though. It was so much fun being with all of them! We have a few fun things planned for the upcoming conferences so I am really excited because we are going to have some really cool experiences over the next few months. Next transfer we have another special guest. . . but this time he is going to be singing the conference to us. . . David Archuletta is coming to our mission! I totally spelled his name wrong. . . but how cool is that?! Hahaha. He is coming December 18th and 19th! So cool!

Crazy that Mark is home! Send my love! To the cute couples as well :)

This week was really special.

Like you know, we were able to do the transfers with President and Sister Roney. It was an amazing experience. Monday after we had a fun P-Day at the Roney's with everyone in Lyon we got to work. The process involves a lot of praying, guidance, and a lot of time in President's office as we move around each missionary to the place that they need to be. It was really interesting seeing from this perspective how transfers work. I found myself trying to put myself in the place of the assistants a long time back when they were looking at my picture and moving me across the mission. It was incredible to see how that worked.

Monday, Tuesday and part of Wednesday were spent doing that. We had the occasional lunch and dinner break, but other than that it was all work!

Thursday we had a quick meeting that morning and then we spent the day doing missionary work and planning for the next transfer. 

This weekend has been spent primarily preparing for this upcoming week that is going to be insane, as the first week always is, and trying to get some missionary work done on the side!

It is crazy how much there is to plan when there are twenty missionaries coming into our mission, trainers moving all around to come into Lyon, and all other sorts of crazy things.

One thing that was cool this week was that we asked our Bishop and his wife to pray of a street name where we could go and do some tracting so that we could find a new person to teach and baptize. We didn't have much time in the week to work there, but once we had the name we were able to put a few hours in. We saw some miracles and found 2 new investigators and taught a miracle lesson in about an hour and a half! The guy we taught was a young college student who was super cool and we will be teaching again this Wednesday! Hopefully we can find enough time!

Well. . . 

This week I am probably going to sleep a total of 10 hours haha! Wish me luck!

I love you tons!

Love,

Elder Beyer

Sunday, November 3, 2014 "Trek to Bordeaux"

Bonsoir la famille!

Wow. . . football come and gone. Just like that haha. I feel like time is going by a little bit too fast right now. I am glad to hear that Caders started fast and finished strong :) Nice work stud! Yeah, I can understand what Bubba is feeling, football takes it out of you. I feel like missionary work is like that as well. Haha, when I come home I am probably going to sleep for a week straight so be ready! Waffle bar and parties at the house! Sounds like a blast!

This week was an incredible one. As you could have probably guessed.

We spent the week preparing for the conferences, traveling to the conferences, and going to the conferences. Our special guests this time were the Kearons. Elder Kearon is a member of the 70. They are two of the most amazing people that I have ever met and it was such a blessing to be able to get to know them a little bit more.

Tuesday we made the trek down to Bordeaux. We drove a big part of the day. It took us about 6 hours to get there, maybe a little bit less. It was a really fun ride though with Elders Elvidge, Kirkpatrick and Erickson. When we got there we dropped those two off and headed to the airport to pick up President and Sister Roney. After picking them up we headed over to the hotel to go and pick up the Kearons. We then drove them into town to drop them off for dinner. It was a really fun car ride with everyone joking around. We dropped them off for dinner and then headed down to the river and got something to eat for ourselves. It was so great being back in Bordeaux. I miss that place a lot. 

The conference the next day was amazing. We learned so many things that are going to help us to become so much happier in our lives and become more like the Savoir. One of the things that was a big focus of the conference was something that you actually talked about in your email. The ability to choose.

Something that we forget sometimes is that we can change so much of what happens around us just by changing our inner thoughts. We talked a lot about attitude and how we are going to change this mission based on choosing to do so. It was a really motivating conference.

That night we took a plane back to Lyon. . . but unfortunately our plane, for us and about ten other missionaries, got delayed three hours! So we found ourselves waiting on really uncomfortable chairs wayy too long! Haha. We got into Lyon around 1 and had to take some taxis to get home and had some missionaries come and get the rest of us! It was a crazy experience!

Thursday the conference in Lyon was amazing! Everything went as planned.

We drove to Geneva that night with Elder Kearon and President and Sister Roney. Although, right before that Elder Elvidge and I were able to have a quick interview with Elder Kearon at the Roney's house! It was an awesome experience! When we got to Geneva we were able to all go out to dinner to this awesome Mexican place. It was a lot of fun again listening to Elder Kearon and President joking back and forth giving each other a hard time about everything.

The next days conference was amazing as well! After dropping Elder Kearon off again we went out to eat again and then it was off back to Lyon!

The next few days were awesome because we were able to get some regular old missionary work done and work in our sector! We found a couple of really cool people! One of the cities that we went to and found a really cool person was this city called CHATILLON! How cool is that?! We decided to go and find someone there because we thought we would run into some of our ancestors ;)

One of my favorite parts of conference was the fact that we can change our futures by the way that we act on our missions. It was mentioned often that the harder we work the more value that we add to our family and the more that we love them. I have noticed that the harder I work out here the more I love each one of you. I truly love my mission and I feel very blessed to be here right now.

Another thing mentioned was that faith has a short shelf life. Everyday we need to work to have spiritual experiences to keep us going!

I love you all so much and pray that you have an incredible week!

Love,

Elder Beyer

Sunday, October 26, 2014 "Saw a lot of the mission"

Salut Famille! 

Hey no worries at all, I got on really early this time so don't worry at all. We have all kinds of crazy things to do tonight to get ready for conference, so we are going to have a long night typing up a lot of things, translating, and all sorts of other things that need to be ready for the missionaries tomorrow. Haha, so tonight is going to be pretty crazy!

Ah, Brother Shumway is such a great man. I love him so much. 

I was thinking that my life was getting pretty crazy. . . and then I realized that I have it easy compared to you mom! With your new you new job, all of the things you are doing for the family, all of the quotes that you are finding, my application, it sounds like you have a ton going on right now so I can imagine why you were sitting in your pajamas at 10:13 haha. Thank you so, so, so much for doing that application for me. I cannot thank you enough.

I am really glad to hear that Bubba's ankle isn't broken! That is so awesome! Hahaha, Caden is a nut.

Happy birthday Grandma Peg! I love you. You are such an amazing person and have influenced me so much in my life.

This week was a great one again. As you could have guessed, we saw a lot of the mission again this week. . . 

We started off the week by doing a service project Monday that completely wore us out. We cut logs for this really cool guy from Afghanistan that we met when we were knocking doors. I thought that I was tired before we started working, boy was I wrong, I was exhausted once we were done!

Tuesday was a blast because I was able to work with some of my favorite companions from the past, Elder Dalton and Elder Taylor. It was awesome because we set it up that in the morning I was able to work with Elder Dalton, and then in the afternoon I was able to work with Elder Taylor and we taught Neson and Michael! Neson is doing so great and is as happy as can be!

Wednesday we headed over to Grenoble to do a huge a activity with a district over there. We spent the day with a bunch of different missionaries and we set the goal to pass out a whole box of Book of Mormons and teach twenty lessons together. We totally did it! However it was freezing over there!

Thursday was great! We went out to this little city called Bésiers. We went to a small district meeting with some of the missionaries over there and then in the afternoon I was able to do an exchange with another one of my favorite companions, Elder Crawley over in Montpellier! It was so much fun! :) We got some great work done as well!

Friday we headed over to Marseille and I got to watch another one of my favorite companions Elder Einerson give an amazing district meeting. He did such a great job. The meeting was so inspired and it was well needed because during the conference we were able to take some time, relax and think with some music playing in the background and set some goals for the future. In the time that I had to think I sat back and tried to pick one attribute that I thought was one of the most important attributes that can be found in all of the people that I love the most, and among others one of the attributes that came to mind was happiness. We talked about that same thing in an email a few weeks ago as well. 

One of my favorite talks is called the Abundant Life, it is a talk by Joseph B. Wirthlin.

In this talk he says that happy people:

1. Drink deeply of living waters.

2. Fill their Hearts with love. "We don't have tears here." Joseph Smith

3. With the help of their loving Heavenly Father they create a masterpiece of their lives.

I love all of these points. The first one is great because it talks about scripture reading and the importance of that. I have seen my life change as I read my scriptures. Next, we focus on love. Everything that we do is out of love. As we learn in Matthew 22, the most important commandment is to love the Lord and the second is to love our neighbor. I can testify that the key to happiness is love. When we constantly feel the love of God in our lives, we are happy. Having and feeling the love of God daily in our lives truly changes us and allows us to create a masterpiece out of the clay that our Heavenly Father has presented to us when we came to this earth. One of my favorite quotes is, "Hell is where the man I am meets the man that I could have become." Joseph Smith. We have the opportunity to become something great in this life. I know that happiness is a great place to start, and true happiness comes from the gospel of Jesus Christ.

I love you all so dearly,

Elder Beyer

Sunday, October 19, 2014 "2 days in Corsica"

Family!

Bubba what are you doing trying to break your foot?! You shouldn't be letting those big guys roll on your feet! That is so great with Caden though. Nice work big guy! Keep working hard and enjoying every second of it. Mom! That birthday sounds so amazing. I would have loved to have had the same thing for mine! Dad, you didn't spoil me like that last March! ;) I am glad to hear that you had such a great time though. I started laughing so hard when I read about your experience golfing with Brock. . . He has matured so much. . . before he never would have come back hahahahaha. I love it. I can't wait to get back and play some sports with him to see for myself. :)

This week was as usual a pretty crazy one and man did it go by quick.

Monday we worked so that we could move our P-Day to Wednesday and do something fun with the Elders in Corsica. Later that night we headed out to Aix-en-Provence to do an exchange with the Elders over there. By the way, most of the time when we are traveling it is to do exchanges, not really to speak at conferences. So, we did an exchange with them Tuesday that went really good. I was with Elder Palmer. That night we actually headed down to Toulon to take a ferry to Corsica. You would not have believed the boat that we took. It was this giant cruise ship looking thing. Not only that, but the inside of it looked exactly like a cruise ship! Minus a lot of the fun things. . . but there were a lot of similarities. Before the boat took of we headed up to the top deck so that we could get an awesome view of the coast while we we floating away. . . it was pretty sweet :) It was really dark so we couldn't see much, but it was still a really cool experience.

We slept the whole boat ride over that night and we got to Bastia in Corsica around 8:00 that morning. We then hopped in the car and headed on over to meet Elder Pedersen and Elder Castillo. Elder Pedersen planned out a sweet day for all of us so we hopped in the cars and started heading up into the mountains. In a small city we met up with Elder Powell, Elder Smart and Elder Andersen and then drove a little bit further to our destination. Corsica reminded me a lot of Utah to tell you the truth. The area that we were at looked a lot like the mountains back home. For the next few hours we went on an amazing hike up the side of a rocky mountain until we arrived at a seriously breath taking little lake. We stopped and ate lunch there. It was such a pretty place. After sitting there for a little bit we headed back down and this is where it got interesting. . . 

We were making our way down and at about the halfway mark Elder Elvidge slipped and fell and completely sliced his hand open. He walked over to us to show us the blood running down. We then quickly made our way down, so that we could shoot on over to a hospital to get his hand stitched up. As you can imagine, Corsica was not the most ideal place for that. Finally we found a hospital in a nearby little town. To keep it short this hospital was tiny, when they finally realized we were there they took us to a small room, the doctor might have been intoxicated and was wearing jeans and a tee shirt (normal for France though), and then they stitched him on up haha. . . that is definitely an experience that we are never going to forget. The whole time the doctor just joked around about how much he hated people from England. Crazy experience. However, the nurse was really nice and after joking around with her about how that doctor scares away all of the children and how we chose a bad day to stop by she gave us some free bandages for his hands. When we went to pay after everything was all finished up the nurse said that everything was all closed up, and because we were leaving that night across the Island she didn't charge us anything haha!

That night we drove to Ajaccio! The next day we had an awesome exchange and I got to work with Elder Powell again and Elder Smart. It was a blast. We taught four lessons!

That night we took the boat back again and found ourselves in Toulon again the next day.

The weekend went really quick, but we were able to do a lot of missionary work in our sector which was wonderful.

I really like that quote that you sent mom. One of my favorite quotes in PMG is that more important than speaking is listening. Now, this concerns teaching lessons, but the principle is the same. In life we have so many instances where we forget to listen. We are so busy that we forget to take a little bit of time, relax, and listen to what our Heavenly Father wants us to do. 

I know that when we take time in our lives to kneel down and try and figure out what our Heavenly Father wants us to do that we are truly blessed. Our lives change by listening instead of speaking.

I know that this church is true. I know that Christ lives and that He loves us.

Have an amazing week!  Love,

Elder Beyer

Monday, October 13, 2014 "Mission changed my life"

Dearest family!

Wow! Football season is truly in the air! The photos that you sent out are seriously awesome! I loved them. I looked at the photo of Bubba and for a second there I thought it was Caden. . . stop growing or I won't be able to beat you up when I get home. . . Ha ha. Congrats on being a captain Caden! That is so cool! Oh, by the way I love that primary song! That is one of the best! I think that that is a great idea to try and come back in March. Were you thinking to do it the same way that you did it with Brock and just go with you, dad and me? Elder Taylor is such a great guy. I was really excited because he actually got transferred back to Lyon and he is currently serving with Elder Dalton where I used to be! So I get to see them every once in awhile! He was able to write that note because they came in to watch the last session of conference and he wanted to jump on and say a little something before I finished up.

Good luck everyone with the games this week! 

Okay. . . so, like I said, this week has been absolutely crazy! 

We have pretty much driven all over France this last week. We have been able to see so many beautiful things over this last little while. I think that my favorite part of our mission that I was able to see this last week was when we were in Switzerland. It was seriously breath taking. We got to drive through mountains, rolling green hills, all sorts of beautiful scenery for quite a few hours. 

The drive was actually pretty great too. Elder Elvidge and I got to spend about four hours talking to President and getting to know him. The more that I get to know him and his family the more that I love them. They are such great people and they have such righteous desires. It was so interesting talking to him finding out how almost every single thing that he does in life or in business is centered on moving others closer to the Savior and strengthening his family. I really loved getting to hear some of his secrets on how to have a happy family. One thing that he said that is very similar to what we have in our family is that everyone needs to be each others best friend. He talked about how you need to spend lots of time with your family and extended family to the point that they all want to spend more time together than with their friends and eventually they replace their friends with their family. So thank you for all of the family trips and times that we went up to our grandparents houses to spend time with the family. 

To answer your question. . . there are two office elders and they are awesome. We get to spend so much time with them and they help us out a ton. There are two other senior couples in the office and to thank us President and Sister Roney took us out to eat Friday night to the nicest restaurant! It was a lot of fun being together with everyone in the office. They are all so amazing because their work is so hard and tiring and yet they always have smiles on their faces!

The other day I was talking with my mission president and he said that someday you will get to a point in your life, you might already be there, where you will say and be scared as you say it, What would my life be like if I had not served a mission? My mission has changed my life so much. I couldn't imagine what my life would be like right now if I had never chosen to serve the Lord, and it truly scares me thinking about that.

This next week is going to be crazy again. We are driving down to Aix tomorrow, taking a boat down to Corscia the next day, spending a few days out there, then coming back and going to Nice. . . then finally coming home. 

This week is going to be very tiring, but I am really, really excited!

Good luck with work this week mom and dad! 

I am very lucky to be where I am at right now. I have learned so much already and I think that over the next few months I am going to learn a lot of valuable things that are going to help me all through out my life. 

I love you all so much!

Have a great week!

Elder Beyer

PS. . . I didn't get the package yet! I probably will not get it until next Saturday because we are never here!

Monday, October 6, 2014 "Crazy Week"

Hey there family!

Oh no! Coach Beyer! Bubba! What happened? Don't worry. . . now you can just work them in the mini bowl. It's true Bubba. . . if you can drive with mom she getting really nervous and yelling because she is so scared you are going to crash. . . then you can drive in any situation :) Hahaha! I forgot about that until now! That is really funny.

I will make sure to thank Sister Clark and Elder Kennard. They are so awesome. :) Thank you so much for getting that ready so fast mom! You are the best :) Brother Shumway is seriously the greatest. :) 

When I left on Thursday Elder Dalton went with another couple of Elders who are serving in the same area as us for a little while and he also spent some time with the office Elders. Yeah, Elder Taua was the old AP. Hey! They sent the photo! Her parents were seriously so awesome. We had some much fun entertaining them for a couple hours while they were waiting to see their kids. The Richarson's actually left me a BYU shirt in the office too! You are going to have to send them an email thanking them for me!

Okay,

This week was seriously so crazy. It started out by doing numbers Sunday night. We finished numbers around 3:00 and got up around 6:00 to get everything finished up and sent off. Monday we took care of all of the missionaries going home and we drove them all over to the Roney's at night to have dinner and a testimony meeting. Elder Elvidge and I got to cook the chicken on the grill and after we ate we got to go and entertain the families who were coming to pick up their missionaries! It was a blast!

We got home late Monday night and we just stayed at the office elders apartment to avoid having to go all the way back home and losing lots of sleep on the trip over. Tuesday morning we got up bright and early to start preparing for the new missionaries coming in. We had everything prepared for the conference so we headed off to the airport to pick up them all up. We got there about 10:00 and started the wait. After a few hours we got a call from one of the missionaries telling us that they were stuck in the London Airport and wouldn't be coming in until midnight! That completely ruined all of our plans! We had sandwiches in the car already ready for them and our whole day was planned out on them getting in that morning. . . so we quickly headed back to the office to try and plan out what we needed to now do with them coming in so late. 

We have got to finish up so I will try and finish my email later!