"I'm so thankful and so tired"

Thank you for the title, Sister Lloyd, my sentiments exactly!

This week has been incredible. Can I just say? Two incredible weeks in a row, and now I'm so very tired. This week we had two people get baptized!!! They are the best people ever!! And then S got the priesthood the very next day, they were confirmed in sacrament meeting and then in priesthood he was conferred with the Aaronic priesthood and ordained of the office of Priest! Unfortunately we missed to ordination because Sister Lloyd was playing piano in primary. But that's ok, we were there for everything else.

Ashley and me 😃 (and Sister Lloyd in the background)
when S&A were getting interviewed.

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Brett (the Ward mission leader), S & A, Brother Gonser (Brett's Dad)

This whole week was great. It started off with a bang when we were actually productive in cleaning the house, and we swept the WHOLE HOUSE, and I'm pretty sure it had never been swept before since the missionaries first moved in. So it was a pretty big pile we had to throw away. Then we had S&A's interview, and it went really well. And then we had a great lesson and dinner at the home of a part member family who shall not be part member for long. 😋 anyway, they are a super neat family, and they make some good soup.

Tuesday we went and helped out at the Stone County museum. It was FREEZING ❄️❄️, and super fun. I ended up learning a lot about this area's history. I probably won't remember much, but it was fun. Then we went and tried a bunch of people, no one was available. We finally had a lesson with a sweet lady and it was great because the Relief Society president was able to be there with us. She is preparing for baptism in the upcoming month and so far she is loving the things we teach her.

So then on Wednesday we had an incredible zone meeting (that we had to drive our own car two hours (138 miles) to get to😞) and we learned sooooo much! And our role play went really well. It was fun, and a neat new way President had us do it, we all broke off into groupie of four or five companionships and then took turns teaching each other and evaluation it. We were introducing the Book of Mormon and then leading into the Restoration. Also, the mission is moving onto phase three, we are now using Skype and FaceTime to work with our investigators and members and such (warning: don't even try to contact me, I will turn you down). Also, we are going to have a giant mission wide meeting in North Little Rock (yes, you heard right, the whole mission in one place) with Elder Neil L. Anderson of the quorum of the Twelve Apostles. It's going to be incredible. I'm so excited! After the meeting we did a lot of finding in our area. We found one guy that could be promising. We'll see how that goes. Then as we were knocking one last door, when it was nice a dark outside we heard a howl. I thought nothing of it until Sister Lloyd said that it was wolfs, so then I started booking it to the car and she followed. We totally almost got eaten by wolfs! Just kidding, it was probably an overreaction, and probably just dogs; she was just joking. We had a good laugh though. We went back and knocked a couple days later, no one answered that time either.

Then Thursday was yet another day that began with several hours of service. We help out every week at a cute thrift store/food pantry and help put together bags of food for the people that need it. It's really fun, and I like the people there. Later that day we had a really good lesson with a guy the missionaries have been teaching for a while. He's got some pretty rough concerns, but he keeps coming back trying to figure it out. Hopefully he'll be able to get the answer he needs. Pray for him y'all, he could use it.

And then Friday came, along with weekly planning. It blindsided us, this week went by so fast. Other than planning not much happened until dinner, we had dinner with some members, and then after we had another lesson with the family that we had taught on Monday at their house. It was really great. We get a lot of Preach My Gospel and The District type lessons here (setting-wise, I don't know about the teaching). It's really fun.

On Saturday we had kind of a slow day, but surprisingly we got some big stuff done. And then in the evening we had S&A's baptism!!! And we even had an investigator (she was their friend) there!! Another investigator we had invited tried to come, but she came too early and left before we were able to catch her 😢. Oh well, it was a good service anyway. Afterwards we went out to dinner with the Ward mission leader and his recent convert girlfriend and our recently baptized members and their friend. It was really fun to see how excited they all were, and be with young people our age for a minute. We also had a really neat conversation about the Book of Mormon, and the friend who came to the baptism (we'd had a lesson with her a couple weeks ago) had been reading the Book of Mormon, and studying it and been finding connections and answers from things in the Bible she's wondered about. It was really neat.

And Sunday was just fun. S&A were confirmed, so that was a plus. After church we had a potluck with some really great food. And then we went out to work and had a couple really good lessons before we finished the week.

It was a wonderful week, and we had several people mention that Sister Lloyd and I teach really well together and that our companionship unity it really good. It was so funny, many times this week we would go to do the same thing, or have he same thought of what to teach, a scripture to use, something that needed to be done. And even just an opinion about something. It was really funny.

This whole week was just great. We had so many things happen, and just as Sister Lloyd said, "I'm so thankful and so tired."

Thank y'all for all your prayers and support, I love y'all!

Kimber
Sister Beckstrand

I love this pic of the mirror in the baptismal font!