Saying Goodbye to my dear friends in Eau Claire:(

September 8

Happy Monday! I'm so happy to read your lives every week! I'm so happy you're keeping in contact with my loved ones in Eau Claire... I really do miss them a ton. 

 

Well... I am with Sister Smith (a former comp of Sister Szabo as well:)) and she is great!

 

Well. This week has been NUTS. I really will probably just give you a bullet pointed summary:

 

*Left Eau Claire

 

*Rode down to transfers with Sister Ballif

 

*I'm surrounded by Liberians! I am over 4 sister groups: YSA Sisters, Spanish Speaking Sisters, Hmong Speaking, and Karen Speaking...  I'm really excited, I know most of them, and they're all adorable. I'm really happy!

 

*Sister Smith is a runner. So... yeah. I run. Every morning. CAN YOU BELIEVE IT. I breathe like a fat kid though so...

 

*Elder Christofferson's son is my Ward Mission Leader! So that's unique... and even cooler, Brother Christofferson was going to bless his new born baby for Sunday's meeting, so you KNOW who came! Elder Christofferson! It was super cool. We called soooo many people (random people we didn't even know) and said "One of the Lord's 12 Apostles is coming to our service!!!" And sooo many people came! It was a miracle!!! Elder Christofferson approached us personally after sacrament meeting, and asked where we were from... and uh I can't remember hardly anything because I was so nervous.. BUT. He was born in the AF hospital! CAVEMAN CHRISTOFFERSON! And then he patted my shoulder 3 times, I died.

 

*I'm in the citiesss. It is super sketch here, but we're being safe, I promise. Oh, and Sister Louie (my 'not missionary' companion who ended up going to mexico) her uncle who I met is now in my ward! So it was super cool to see him and his family again! All these connections. Crazy.

 

Well, I love you all and I miss you too! Have a week filled with MIRACLES!

xoxoxo

Sister Beeson

 

Hello! 

Sounds like you had a great week! This email is gonna be extremely short, because a member offered to color my hair... YES. Oh, and... because I have packing to do.

Yep, after a wonderful 11 months, I'm headed out of Eau Clarie! WHAT?!?!?!? 

Again, it's pretty rare to leave your trainee, usually you do the whole 2 transfers with them, but... nope! Elder Hardy, the Elder I've been serving with for 8 months is leaving his trainee too! And we are going to the same place... what the heck!! He is going to be a Zone Leader in the St Paul Zone, and President Forbes called me last night telling me I'm assigned to be a Sister Training Leader!!! AHHHHHH. I'm stressing... a lot. I didn't sleep a wink last night, and I'm just nauseous and... Sister Anderl and I had a good cry. She is terrified. I am too. It's hitting me how IN LOVE I am with Eau Claire now that I'm leaving... jk, I knew that before. :) But.... yeah. Nuts. So, that's the update. I'll be in New Brighton with Sister S.

I love you all and I'm so happy you're doing well! GO TO MOLLY SZABO'S HOMECOMING FOR ME! She gets home Wednesday, and then... I'll be home in 2 transfers. Gross. See ya later!

xoxoxo

-Sister Beeson

August 25, 2014

Hi hi hi! School is starting already? Man! That is nuts.Everyone looks soooo much older! I am dying that Buzz is a senior and Claire is a sophomore!!! WHAT? I wish school would start up already over here.. we need people to contact on campus! It'll start up soon though in a couple weeks. 

I honestly don't have a huge update this week. It was a VERY humbling week for Sister A and I. Very very. We faced a ton of rejection, no one wanted to talk to us for a huge chunk of the week including many many of our appointments falling through, one of our progressing families met with us only once, and the other not at all,  Sister A got really sick, and no one came to church, it was just ROUGH! But. It was ok, because I learned some cool things from it. 

I keep a prayer journal and write in it nightly. I write thoughts or ideas that come to my head as I'm praying, and this week particularly, Heavenly Father helped me see that all these rotten things were happening this week because He wanted me to learn/better apply Christlike attributes. 

Jesus Christ experienced discouragement, rejection, hurt feelings, stress, a broken heart, and everything else my companion and I felt this week. Yet, Christ was miraculously still patient, charitable, humble, diligent and obedient. No one likes feeling (the above) feelings. And there are many ways of coping with those feelings. I'll admit, I was a little more bugged or hurt than I should have chosen to have been this week, but that's why day after day this week there was always another person to reject us, or another investigator calling to drop us, etc. Because... it is NOT easy to apply Christ's attributes. It takes work! I've been so humbled this week to understand in which ways the Savior would react to the day by day experiences we've had and then try to apply it myself. It was wonderfully difficult! 

Our companionship theme song for the week was: "Come Thou Fount" specifically the line: 

"Streams of mercy, never ceasing"

Heavenly Father is so patient with us. He wants us to be happy and for us to receive His mercy, even if we may not feel like we deserve it, and He will give it to us time and time again. What a BLESSING!

I'm super grateful for weeks like this, it's where I seem to grow the most, and understand my purpose and my Savior more fully. 

Since I'm a missionary, I'll leave you with a commitment this week. :)

We had a Zone Call this past week and it was about conversion. I liked it a lot so I want to share it with you and invite you do this yourself:

Read Omni 1:26

What does this mean to you?

A talk by an Apostle said this:

Pick one thing you know you should not be doing, write it down, and STOP doing it.

(do that now. :))

Pick on thing you know you should be doing, write it down, and START doing it.

I promise that if you do this, your relationship with Jesus Christ will AMPLIFY! It's a cool thing.

I love you all a lot! xoxo

-Sister Beeson

August 18th 2014

Happy Monday! It is great to hear from you, my stomach got a little queasy when you told me you got my travel plans... ALREADY?!

Mom,  Happy Birthday to the most beautiful, talented, hilarious, kind, strong, loving qwerky mom! You are so wonderful! I love you and miss you dearly.
I don't think I have thanked you enough for your example that has impacted me.  You are FORSURE my #1 role model!
When things get a little rough and tough over here, it is your strong testimony that pops into my head and has helped me stay out here just a day longer. I love you a lot for that.  I love you Mommy.
xoxox

Well, this week was wonderful. Pretty sure I gained 50 pounds on Monday.

We had a dinner appointment at 5 with some members and we were stuffed because it was their daughters birthday and so we had dinner AND dessert, and then at 7, our Muslim friend, I invited us over for food (we were originally gonna go over to eat with them when they broke their fast, but we never got the chance) so... they started us off with dried dates and date cookies, and then the dinner was ready and they had all these funky meats, and rice, and french fries, and salads and hummus and pita bread and cheese wrap things, and Sister Anderl and I were already full... :/ ahh... but we put a little on our plates, and of course they were like, "More! More! Go get more! Would you like this? or that?" noooooooooooooo. I really wouldn't. But... I didn't want to be rude. I was dying. I was just eating really reallyyyyyyyyyyyy slow. And then we were about to leave and they were like, "Wait, we have one more thing for you." And they pulled out this MASSIVE chocolate icecream cake that was bigger than my face. (And my face is BIG. :(  ) I literally couldn't walk after we left. We were DEAD. So. That was NO BUENO. I wanted to barf SO bad, but you know me, I hate barfing, so... I just dealt with a big stomach ache :( 

On Andy's birthday, it was just a really hard day. And funny thing is, is that I remember Andy's birthday perfectly from last year too. I was with Sister Szabo and it was probably one of the top 3 most discouraging days on my mission, it was the first time we both cried in front of each other. Annnnnd... guess what? Same thing with Sister Anderl. Haha... So, Andy, your birthday hasn't given me the best of luck on my mission! But it's ok. I'm glad you had a good day!:)

We had the chance to take the elders appointment for them the other day. We went to a trailer/mobile home of their recent converts, and it was tiny. 2 bedrooms. 8 humans. 13 animals. Mmm. It was a GOOD time. They had psycho cats though... one of their cats, Nugget, has a history of jumping onto elders heads and licking their hair, or par-core-ing onto a moving ceiling fan. Yeah, these animals liked us... I was dying. ICK!!! It was VERY difficult to teach.. haha

Then we drove to Minnesota AGAIN for new missionary training, and it went well! We had an appointment that evening with J, some guy we met, and... we just felt better about having the elders teach him, so we asked the elders if they could take our appointment, and then they started acting all weird and hiding their smiles... they said:

"Umm... our stomaches kind of hurt... so we will probably just go straight home..."

"What happened...?"

Then Elder H pulls up his suit sleeve and reveals a hospital bracelet... hahaha

"WHAT HAPPENED?!"

Well... here's the story, briefly.... something Buzz would totally do:

At district meeting, the elders brought a BAG full of thai peppers... and some of the elders were just popping them in like candy, and Elder Hardy  just starts CRYING because of the heat, he is shoving slices of bread into his mouth and squirting honey from the tube into his mouth, and as he is doing this, another elder says:

"You're gonna die tonight if you can't even handle a thai pepper!"

They were going to eat ghost peppers that night.

Well, supposedly they did, and Elder Hardy was dying, and his mouth and body were just on fire, he put everything/anything into his mouth that he could find: honey, bread, watermelon, milk, etc. and then he said his hands were going numb (pretty sure a ghost pepper is against the Word of Wisdom.)

Well, at like 2 am his stomach was WRECKED and he thought he had an ulcer, so he woke up the elders he was on exchanges with, got a blessing, and then afterward still felt horrible. They took him to the hospital at 2 am! The doctors gave him some sort of numbing meds and before they released him they said:

"The problem with your stomach wasn't caused by the ghost pepper, it was from some rotten watermelon you ate."

HA! And sure enough, the elders looked at the watermelon the next day and saw some things growing on it... hahah nastyyyy. 

Ok, but on the more spiritual side....

Sister Anderl and I got a referral from some members that we went to see right away, and the street that this referral lived at was like... hmm... a fairy tale street. It was so quiet, and green, and ADORABLE. We knocked on all of these houses, met a nice fellow who lived at a Snow White looking cottage, and over all it was just empty... we didn't even get in contact with the referral person. So, we knocked on the last house of that street, and again, no answer. We started walking back to our car when suddenly we hear a sweet soft voice call out:

"Excuse me! Did you knock on my door?"

we turned around and it was this beautiful woman from India. 

"Yeah, we did!"

"Well.... did you want to come in?"

UH YES, LADY. 

"We'd love to!" 

She didn't even ask who we were! She introduced herself as A, and walked us into her home, we met her white husband B, and sat in their beautiful home. We started chatting a little bit about religion and such, A being Catholic, and B non-denominational. They were asking ALL the right questions though:

"Wouldn't God just have one true church?"

"The Bible just has way too many interpretations, it's hard to know what to believe..."

You know, just the golden investigator questions.

And then it perfectly led into the opportunity to share Joseph Smith's first vision... after it was recited, we paused in silence for a second, and then asked how they felt.

A said, "The clock stopped. Everything stood still." 

UM, best description of the Spirit EVER. The Spirit was really strong.

We continued talking, and introduced the Book of Mormon, and A was very interested (she being an English professor ) and B was a little skeptical. But... we asked them what questions they've had on their mind about religion and we'd leave them a place to read.

A wanted to know how to have better faith and trust in God, gave her Alma 32

B struggles with life after death, gave him Alma 40. It was the saddest thing. He said to us:

"All of my siblings tell me that everything is ok because even though mom and dad have passed away, they are looking out for us... and that is not true. They don't even know each other in Heaven." then he looks at A and says, "I won't know you when I die... the only relationship I'll have when I pass away is with God. I won't know my kids or my friends, none of that will be in my memory." 

WHAT? B NO. It broke my heart! Mainly to see A's face as Blooked her in the eyes and told her that! 

"B,  then why do you think God would even put us into families in the first place if we weren't meant to have a relationship after this life?"

He thought... and then completely danced around his words, eventually leading to "the Bible doesn't say we will!" ... well, it doesn't say we won't either.

It was sad, so he HARD CORE needs the P of S. We're so excited to go back and see them!!!

Sorry how MASSIVE this email is. I'll quit, but hey. I love you all. I'm so grateful for my testimony of how the Gospel BLESSES FAMILIES. I'm very very sure of that. It amazes me. Have a super week, I'll be praying for you! (esp Aunt Julynn!!)

<3 Sister Beeson