Quite a week!

Hello all!!

I love getting all your letters and hearing about the things you are doing. I'm so glad that you got to spend so much time with Ari and Ava (her new cousins after her uncle got married). I miss those girls a ton, I miss you too. A lot, but only when I think about it. Usually I'm too busy to remember that I'm not at home.

We have been focusing on getting to know the members here. Last week our focus was the Primary. We even offered to sub for all the Primary teachers. It'll be interesting. We even offered to sub for Seminary.
It's all going to be learning experiences.

We had a ton of awesome things happen this week. First we have been teaching a part member family for about a week now. It started out that we had gone by to meet them because we were trying to meet all the members, and the husband is not a member. So we went back again to visit and asked if he wanted to take the lessons. He said "not yet" we said that we'd take it and love to keep visiting them every once in a while because they are really fun to talk to. A few days later the wife texted us and said that he wants to take the lessons. So now we are teaching him, and he has come to church the last three weeks. He is a really interesting guy. Super fun to talk to, very smart, and does his research. We're really excited to talk to him and teach him the lessons. I'm not sure if he'll get baptized, but this is the first time he's ever consented to listen to the lessons, and he's been offered a lot. I have high hopes though. I think we can get him there.

Speaking of which, we have a baptism this Saturday!!!!!! Not the lady I talked about before, but a sixteen year old kid, T. He's pretty awesome. We found T in our area book, and went to meet him our first week. He really wanted to go back to church because he hadn't got to go in a while, so we got him a ride that first week. Ever since then we've been wanting to get him to baptism, but we weren't sure how to get him a reliable ride to church. So we finally got that all worked out, and then we had to figure out a way to talk to him and set up a baptismal date with his parents involved. Both of them are deaf so that had been a big barrier this whole time. But we asked a deaf member in our ward to come with us. Her name is Bronzie, and she totally rocked it. She is really good at reading lips and communicating with hearing people. So she was able to talk to his mom and help us set a date for him. It was awesome.

Bronzie is one of the coolest people I have ever met. She says that she is the missionary mom out here. It's really kind of true. She has been so fun to get to know. We rode up with her to talk to T and then when we came back we couldn't find our keys!! We searched all over the car, her driveway and her house. Her husband got out this big flashlight and was shining it all over the ground and under the cars and in them. It was crazy, and late. It even got to around 10 before we decided to go all the way back to Memphis to find them. Bronzie was so willing to take us, and we were so stressed out because we were supposed to be home an hour ago. We found them right as we got there and we were able to get home by quarter to eleven. We were so tired that we went straight to bed and did daily planning in the morning. It was a crazy evening.

We have been back to Bronzie's house pretty a ton since because she had T at her house for stake conference this weekend and we needed to go through the baptismal interview questions with him. We had to explain a lot of things about he questions so that he understood them, and her testimony during that was so incredible, it really helped him to understand because she explained everything in ASL. I think it helped him because he grew up with ASL parents. Then she has us over for dinner on Sunday. She is teaching us a lot of
sign, I'm just trying to remember all that we learn. She is so cool.

During our stake conference all the missionaries in our district had a ton of people there. It was so cool. We were getting a new stake presidency, and the area seventy that was here for that gave an incredible talk on the Book of Mormon. It was so good. Reminded me a lot of the way Elder Holland talks. But a little bit nicer though. Our bishop got called as the new first counselor in the stake presidency. So now we are about to get a new bishop in our ward. That will be an interesting experience.

We had zone conference this week. There were some really good talks. President Wakolo was sick, but he gave an inspiring talk anyway. It was just so sad to see him feeling so bad. He is such a big strong happy man. It was hard to see him so quiet and tired. His talk was great nonetheless. He talked about teaching and learning, and how they are like to two sides of a ten dollar bill. Neither one without the other. They come hand in hand.

I saw Elder Gram Carmen at the zone conference! We graduated from high school together. All four years at Maeser we spent there. It was really cool to see him and say hi. I didn't get to get a picture because I had to go to a training meeting for the new missionaries right after the zone conference. But we'll get one next time. It was really fun to see him though. Weird too though. I haven't seen him since graduation. Crazy how God works though, it was fun to talk about Maeser a bit.

It was a crazy busy week, but I enjoyed it all. I'm learning, and I'm pushing myself to talk more and get to know people. I'm getting better. One thing we all have to do is memorize all the doctrinal points in lesson three of preach my gospel, and have a Bible and Book of Mormon scripture for all of them. I've got a lot of the points down, but I'm still trying to find and memorize the scriptures. It's been so fun. I love the ward. I love the work. I love the gospel. I love the Lord. And I love all of you, thank you so much for your prayers and support.

Love you!!!

*If you want Sister Beckstrand's mailing or email address, contact Mom B, or if you have her old phone number call that-but not during school hours please-her brother will answer it and tell you how to contact her mom.