Monday, March 31, 2014 "Crazy Week"

Fam!!

Oh my goodness!! Everyone looks so big and so grown up! It is literally crazy seeing our family, the frosts, and the argyles all looking so old! (I mean the kids of course ;) ) You all look so amazing and it seems like you are having the time of your lives so keep it up! Hey Bubba and Caden! Start spending some time with your parents!

Caden! Keep tearing it up in lacrosse! That is seriously incredible! I don't think that I could even score a single goal if there was no goalie in front of the net.

As for the conference, it was amazing! I love being able to help set up and be a part of that process because it is a lot of fun, it does get kinda crazy at times setting everything up while doing missionary work at the same time, but I love it.

Okay, so we had a crazy week and we have a crazy week planned so I will try and fill you in real quick. . .

We had a sweet miracle on the bus the other day. . .

So, it was the end of the night and we were exhausted. We had been working and contacting all day and we hadn't really found anyone that would listen to us say more than five words. We were kinda bummed out, but we said to ourselves that we would finish out the night strong. I was like, we are going to make our contact work right now haha. So I turn to this lady and her daughter and start talking to them. It turns out they are Muslim and after a long chat they were interested in learning some more. So we got there number and set up a teaching appointment. . . So yesterday we went over for our appointment and after talking and introducing our families with our photos we started the lesson. Through the daughter as a translator the mother explained to us that she believes that Jesus Christ is her Savior and that he died for our sins, she said that she used to carry around a bible with her but she would put a different cover on it so that she wouldn't get killed for having it. And we thought that we had it hard. . . Haha. So anyways we had the most spiritual RDV ever and at the end she said that the only thing that she doesn't agree with in the Christian Religions is that they believe Jesus and God are the same person. . . Thank goodness for the restoration. They were super excited to hear our message and we are going back to teach them again next Sunday. They were so excited when we found the Book of Mormon in Arabic online and they said they couldn't wait to start reading. When we were finishing up the lesson they said, you can't leave! We made food for you because we thought that you would be hungry! So we ate some amazing couscous type dish with them and some hummus! Pretty cool miracle right?

Our investigator Carine showed up for church as well! It was amazing seeing her there and she loved it. Not only that but she is progressing really well right now and we re fixed her date for the 26 of April. That is next transfer so hopefully I stay here in Bordeaux.

This week Carine invited us over to her house to have some food from her hometown in Gabbon, Africa. So we went over there and she made us some really good chicken, rice and some kind of hotish plant smashed up. I can only explain it too look a lot like seaweed, but it was a lot harder. . . It was really good though and it was a blast with her and one of the members that she invited to come as well. We are teaching her a lot right now so hopefully it keeps up and she will be ready before the 26!

I was looking through my notes that I have taken since I have been on my mission the other day and I looked to the very first conference where President Roney said the most important thing that you can do on your mission is develop more love and learn to trust the Lord. I think I am finally starting to understand that a little bit more. I have noticed that when we do everything out of Love not only are our missions a much happier experience, but we see so much more success and people wanting to hear more about our message. Trust in the Lord is what pushes us to follow the Savior especially when our mental logic says differently.

Well today we have a great day planned out!

We are going to a castle with our ward mission leader and the other missionaries here in Bordeaux! It is going to be sweet!

Love,

Elder Beyer

Tuesday, March 25, 2014 "Zone Conference"

Hey fam!!

You are all looking so good! That is awesome that you were able to see KG! You are going to have to tell him congratulations for me on making the team! As always he is looking gigantic so I can tell they have been feeding him nothing but protein up there haha. Caden is looking good as well. . . but I can't tell if he is on the right or the left. . . :) Hahaha.

Brock is looking good on the vespa and that is the funniest story ever :) Just wait till he gets on it and he will probably change his mind again.

Yeah, last week was a blast, but I think it is going to be nice taking it easy today.

Seeings how you are probably wondering, I am emailing you a day late because we had conference yesterday. Oh my goodness, it was seriously the best conference that I have ever been to in my entire life. We were blessed to hear from President and Sister Roney and two of their neighbors, Elder Lund (A member of the 70) and Sister Lund, they both know Gordon Brown really well. Our conference went all day long and I think that was the most spiritually mind blown that I have ever been in my whole life.

I will just recap a few of my favorite things that I learned. . .

Elder Lund told us a few stories about President Roney when he was first getting started as the head of Nu Skin. Elder Lund was working as a lawyer at the time and President Roney offered him a job. He took it immediately because he didn't really enjoy what he was doing currently. He said he knew it was the right job when the third week of work President Roney told him, "Make sure you wear a suit tomorrow. . . because tomorrow we are going to be taking our wives to the temple."

He told another story about President Roney. He said that they would be meeting with the heads of companies from all over the world, big senators and city council men, and very important people. He said that midway through the meeting President Roney would give him the one minute finger and hold up his phone. . . He said as soon as President Roney left the room he was never going to be coming back haha. He said that every time he gave this sign he was leaving to one of his kids baseball games or some kind of event of that sort. He said that it set the tone for Nu Skin that if the family is this important to the head of the company than it should be the same for the rest of them. So, President Roney made sure that everyone in his company was spending time with their families.

He told us the coolest stories about how President Roney always put the gospel first, and according to President Roney he swears that that is the reason for his success.

President Roney expanded on the Savior's life by explaining stories from his life and the importance of learning to trust the savior on your mission. The stories that he shared were amazing and I can't wait to someday share the incredible things that I have been learning out here on my mission.

Okay. . .

As for this last week.

It was pretty nuts preparing for conference. We had to purchase all of the food and prepare everything so that it was ready, but in the end we pulled it off and it was an amazing conference.

Our investigator Carine is doing really good right now. She is still progressing fairly well and this week we taught her about the word of wisdom. Hopefully all goes well this week and we can re fix her baptismal date.

Most of the people we are teaching right now are college students and they are all super cool. We spend a lot of time around the institute which is right next to a big college, so we meet a lot of students through out the day.

The night before conference we had about 10 missionaries stay in our apartment and quite a few were kids that I came into the MTC with so it was a blast being able to see them and to talk about all the crazy things that have happened so far.

Well,

I love being a missionary for Jesus Christ. It is the greatest blessing in the world. This conference really helped me out to see how amazing missions are and how much I truly love being out here. Thanks for all of your support and have an amazing week.

With all the love in the world,

Elder Beyer

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!!!