Dear friends and family,

This has been a very long week and a half. We had 3 really cool experiences though this week!

1) We got a call from Sister R in the ward last Monday telling us that one of her friends ( our new investigator ) wanted to have Christmas dinner with us, and the best part is, is that he is a chef!! What a treaaaaaaaat!! :) but the reason why he invited us over is really funny. So we went to his house 2 weeks ago, and he gave us fruit cake and milo. He was asking us what we were doing for Christmas, and I told him we didn't have anything ( we didn't at the time) then he was like, "Well don't a lot of people just say 'come one over!' to you guys?" haha All I heard was come on over, and I was like, "oh yes!!!!! would you be cooking?" haha then he said that he was talking about other people.. super awkward,  buuuut he said that he wanted us over.. but not in missionary clothes. haha we will see! But it's also cool though because his wife is wanting to quit drinking, so she decided she would cancel her new years plans so she can start the quitting process! pretty neat!

2) We were riding our bikes down this street on Saturday, and to be honest I was kind of zoned out, but then out of nowhere I just slammed on my breaks and pulled up to this house. I didn't really know what I was doing, but I had the STRONGEST impression that we needed to knock on the door. So we knocked on the door, and this old Chilean man comes out! outside his window it said 'bienvenido' so I knew we were in for a treat! I spoke to him in Spanish!! It was soooo so so cool! I asked him what church he went to and why he didn't go to church anymore. ( All in Spanish btw) egh hem. ;) Then he said that he is too perezoso ( which means lazy) jajaja But he committed to read the book of Mormon, and come to church, and we have an appointment with him on Saturday!! I CAN'T wait to teach this man. He said that we can come over ANYTIME and teach him. :))))

3) Last night we went to the himopos ( a recent convert family) for dinner. Sister H's cousin just so happened to be there for dinner, and she wasn't a member. So we had dinner and then we had a lesson. Right before we went to their house Elder Macki and I made a pretty specific lesson plan for them. So we watched the new Mormon message, "a saviour is born. " then I felt prompted to read from 3 Nephi 1. We related how Nephi's praying on behalf of the people can be comparable to us when we are praying on behalf of our struggles. it's really cool that right after he prayed he was assured that the Saviour would be born the next day, and that the sign would be given so he wouldn't be killed. this really touched sister H's cousin. She said that she had the butterflies and that something really just pinched her heart. We helped her recognize that it was the spirit. She said that she really wanted to start coming to the Mormon church. It was soooooo cool! the reason it was so good was because the spirit was soooo strong. like most of the time as missionaries, we have good lessons everyday, every week, but every once in a while we participate in a lesson where the spirit is so UNDENIABLY strong. It is a whole different level when the spirit is truly there, and that's what happened last night! SO GOOOOOOD! :)

one last thing: this week I learned a lot about faith. I found that there are 3 levels to faith. it goes as follows: Grow, Exercise, and Show. Grow being the weakest, and Show being the strongest. We can grow our faith by simply listening to the word of god, and Learning of simple gospel truths. In order for our faith to grow it takes consistent effort to do atleast those two things. Then we begin to Exercise our faith,  we can exercise our faith by doing the commandments and receiving assurances from the Holy Ghost that our works are pleasing before God. The Last is Show. Our faith begins to Show when our assurances become consistent. That is when people will see us, and they will see Christ. We then have "God's image engraven in [our] countenances." Christ will be shown to others through us, and Christ himself will begin to Show himself to us in greater and greater ways. Then our faith can become as great as the brother of Jared's faith. he couldn't be kept within the veil.

My faith in the saviour has grown significantly since being out here, and the more it grows, the more my desire to serve him does.

I hope your faith is growing too! especially around Christmas time.

merry Christmas! :)

Love,

Elder Beeson

Dear family and friends, This week was AMAZING!! Thank you for your prayers, I'm convinced that is why this week was awesome!! The ties and letters have been awesome! I open one note/ tie everyday :)

So first, I was on a direct assignment from Thomas S. Monson for a bit on Friday. For reals. So The AP's called me on Friday and asked if I knew this girl named Michelle.. blah blah blah. I had never heard the name before. Then they told me that she has been going to Thornlie ward (my ward) for the past 3 months regularly. I have never met her before. So I asked how they knew, then they told me that this Michelle girl had wrote the prophet, and that she was thinking of being baptized, then the Prophet emailed my mission president, who told the AP's to tell me because I am the district leader for Thornlie ward. Woah! So they told me to figure out the whole situation asap. So I asked around, and it turns out that Michelle has been going to Jandacott ward not thornlie ward ( jandacott meets in the same building as us) and that she has been being taught by the sisters in the ward for ages. She just turned 18 and was really contemplating baptism. But apparently she is on holiday for a month until the end of January. So yeah, I felt a lot better after that. I was so confused because I make sure to meet every unfamiliar face at church!

This whole week Elder Macki and I were praying specifically that we would find someone who has been waiting for an invitation to come to church. Then on Saturday, we were on a district blitz in our area, and we went to see this less active which basically lived in the bush! Super cool! We knocked on the door, and this Maori lady comes to the door, and she said that she and her partner just moved in 2 weeks ago. So the less active moved obviously, but then we kept talking to her. We got talking about her beliefs, and she believes that families are very important, and she is only really religious when her family is around. So we rolled with that and started talking about the plan of salvation with her. It was cool you could just see the light come into her eyes as we were talking about it. Then she told us that she had an accident with her 6 month year old son a few months ago, and that was when she and her Christian partner really started to turn to God. Ever since then they have been talking and they decided that they wanted to come to church, but they didn't know what the "requirements" were to come to church, so they haven't come. So we told her that there were none, and she was like, "Oh really?!" she was really shocked, so we invited her to church, and she said that she will come to church very soon 100%!!! Miracle. She kept saying after that, that she feels it was meant to be for us to knock on her door! We are going back to teach her tomorrow. She asked us if we could come back! We didn't even realize it was an answer to our prayers until later in the day!

Last night we went to the Christmas devotional at the church. We were late showing up. Then as we got off our bikes this Indian couple walked in right behind us, and asked if they could worship with us. I said, "yes, you can worship with us right now." So they came in and watched part of the devotional, and then they said they liked it, and they said they wanted to come to our Christmas mass. We told them that we didn't have one on Christmas, but that we did the following sunday, so they said they would be there. Then they asked for our number and we got their number and they said that they'll see us this next sunday at church! They asked us to pray for them and their family, then they left!!! holy cannoli! it was super cool!!

There were other small things in between all these bigger things, and it has been amazing to see how the Christmas season does change people. When I see people on the street I smile and tell them Merry Christmas, and they say, "thanks,You too mate, cheers!" I love that people are nice at this time of the year :)

I love you all, I hope your Christmas is white and stuff because mine isn't haha!

love, elder beeson

December 7th

G'day family and friends, 

This week was something else. We biked sooooooo so so so much. The thighs are strong.

Here are a few experiences of the week:

We had a referral from a member in the ward to see this kid named RS. Sister Richards told us that he lived on the street right behind the Sikh temple. She didn't know the exact address to his house, so she said to look for a post van on outside the house.There weren't any post vans outside... and there were like 40 houses on the street! So we got to the end of the street and I said a tiny quick little prayer in my head to know which house it was, and I found myself staring at this one house, and it just seemed like it was the house we needed to go to! 

So we knocked on the door, and this black girl from Zimbabwe answers, and we start talking, and then as we are talking to her, I started to realize that this kid is probably black, because I realized that RS is probably a black name, haha so I asked if R was there, and she was like, "oh that's my brother! He's not home right now though." What the heck?! that was pretty neat. 

We gave her a book of Mormon, and she thanked us sincerely for it! What a treat! So I learned how to recognize the spirit in a different way this week! :)

A few days later, we were going to see this less active lady who we never met before, so we got to her house, and knocked on the door, but it looked like an abandoned house. Then we realized that there were two houses that had the address 11 on it it was 11 and 11a. So we tried 11a, and that one looked abandoned too! So we tried it anyway, and yeah no one was home. Then as we were about to bike away, Elder Macki noticed that one of the nearby neighbours had opened their blinds on their house, so we knocked on the door, and This really nice lady answered. She told us that both of the houses were abandoned and that no one lived there for a few months. But then we got talking with her and she said that one of her really good friends was a Mormon. So we talked about that and we got talking about what she believed. It led into how the only way we can know of spiritual truths is through prayer.  She was VERY satisfied by that answer.She also told us that she could heal people! haha that was interesting, but we told her that we believe in healings, so she was happy we accepted her haha! but yeah, She said we can come back sometime to teach her! 

Other than that, just heaps of biking. On Friday I did the math and we literally did around 35 K's! woooo!!

I hope you are enjoying the winter! CTR!!

love, Elder beeson

November 29th

G'day friends and family! This week can all be summed up in Tuesday! It was one of the most diverse and eventful days of my mission so far haha! This is what happened:

We walked to J's house in the morning, he wasn't home, then we went to a few former's houses. One wasn't home, the other I think doesn't live there anymore.. we never really got a straight answer on that haha! 

 Then we walked up to this street we tracted a few weeks ago where we found 3 pretty solid potentials, and apparently there was a former on that street who just didn't happen to be home the day we tracted so we tried him as well!

 

 The former was this Sri Lankan fellow. He can't speak very good English, but he has an awesome heart. I bet the other missionaries dropped him because of the language barrier. Anywho, then we went to another house in the same cul-de-sac, because there was this totalled car on the front lawn. So we knocked on the door to ask about it, and to see if everyone was okay. It was this kid from Hong Kong. He said he was fine, then I felt prompted to start talking about how God is our Loving Heavenly Father. He was really intrigued, so he said to come back, and he'd listen. Nice! Our other potentials on that street weren't home, so we walked home for lunch and did some contacting on the way home.

We did some inspired knocking, and we talked with everyone. haha We talked to this one middle eastern dude at the back of his van. He looked like he was just packing up from doing an electrical job, so we asked him a few questions, and he didn't seem to interested, so he got in the drivers seat. Then as we were walking  away there was a passenger in the car and he he honked his horn and put up his hands, so I thought he was mad at us for some reason, so we started walking a little faster haha. Then they started their car, and pulled up next to us and asked if we were the Elders, we said yes, then he said he had a question for us, he said, " I saw missionaries like you in New Zealand a lot, and I always ask them the same question, " then he said, "What kind of clothing do you think Jesus Wears?" haha I just told him that I had no Idea, then he said, " I'm pretty sure he wears this kind of stuff," ( he was pointing to his clothing because he was wearing this robe looking stuff. haha I just started cracking up. I told him that he was very Christlike and he just started busting up! haha kind of weird. But he was a really funny guy. He asked for our number because of our humor! nice haha.

 

Then we had lunch, then we were on our way to Brother R's house annnnnnnnd Elder Macki got hit by a car. It was pretty full on. I was crossing the street, I kind of gapped it between cars, and he didn't look at all, and so he pulled out in front of this car and got NAILED. So I turned back around, and he was in the middle of the street just trying to get to the side of the road. A few people pulled over and asked if he was alright. Haha we were actually able to get a few potential investigators out of it! 

 

He was looking just fine. haha except his shoe was like 15 meters away from him. I guess that's how hard he was hit. Anywho, one of the dudes who saw it happen, said to call the ambulance because it looked pretty bad. So I did, and they came. He didn't break any bones or anything! He had a few massive scrapes, but all in all he was totally fine. His bike was messed up though. His kick stand got stuck in his wheel, so the ambulance guy helped us out, but he broke of his kick stand in the process. Oh well!

Then I rode his bike to the church, and he rode mine because mine was good. We washed up a little more there.

After that we went to M's house and taught him out of Helaman 5. He really needed hope when we arrived so we read that with him and it was super cool to see how much the feeling in the room absolutely changed! 

 

After that we tried a few members. They weren't home ( we were on foot for the rest of the day because Elder Macki's bike was in bad shape.) Then we tried this less active lady and she came out and she was suuuuuuuuuper anti. Apparently she hasn't gone to church in years because she thinks everything is fake in the church.  I realized that the best way to get me mad is to discredit the Book of Mormon, because that's what she was doing, and I just bore suuuuuuper super super in-your-face bold testimony about the book of Mormon. She had a look of shock by the end of our "discussion"d

Then we went to a potentials house. On our way there, there were these two young blokes following us and I just could not tell what language they were speaking! So we turned around and talked to them and they were German guys! One of the guys shares a birthday with me! The other looked exactly like Isaac Tolman. It was cool because they said that they are here to work so they can travel more of Australia before they have to go home. I really hope we catch them this week. They seemed super keen for us to come by and share stuff too! Nice! Then our potential wasn't home and so we went on ward split offs. I went with Brother H as usual. NO one was home. Then we had ward council, and that was the night.

Suuuuuper crazy diverse day. Oh oh oh ! One last story. In the morning on our way to our potential's house, we contacted this war vet, and he was getting upset that we were talking about God. So we left obviously because he was suuuper ticked off. Then at lunch Elder Macki felt like we had to go back. 

 

So we prayed about it, and my thoughts before the prayer was that I wasn't going to go back no matter what, but then after the prayer, I had an UNDENIABLE feeling that we had to go back. I was really shocked. So we did, and the same thing happened. He was upset we came back. Elder Macki wrote his testimony in a Book of Mormon after he slammed the door in our faces, and set it in his garage. So we will see what happens. But yeah, It was crazy, because Elder Macki and I did a role play of this guy's EXACT situation before. He just wouldn't let us get a word in. But I'm glad we followed the spirit

Yes, that was all on Tuesday. crazy, long, and hard working day. haha

Love you all, CTR

love, Elder Beeson