End of August

Hola mi Familia!!!

How is everything going up in North America. Things are going great here, still. Like always :) This week we have been really busy working in 3 big sectors. 2 of the sectors are Elder Garcia's and the other sector is for Elder Baquerizo and I. We have mostly been working in Elder Garcia's sectors because they have lots of people that are just about ready to be baptized. We put 2 baptism dates for this Saturday and they both accepted :) It's so great and fun to help people know the truth and take the steps that open the doors to eternal life. It never gets boring, either.

Yesterday, we didn't go to our ward in Salinas cause we went to the other 2 wards. The people that we visited in the afternoon were joking around with us and asking if we were inactive now, if we slept through church, etc. It was funny lol. That would be pretty bad if missionaries went inactive while they were IN the mission field...haha

I've liked working in a threesome. We get along great and there is always stuff to talk about. Elder Garcia was asking about all of the girls in our neighborhood and ward...he wants to marry a 'gringa.' lol He is a funny missionary. And he is going to be training this week....wednesday, we think. So after wednesday we'll be back in 2 companionships working in our normal sectors.

HAPPY BIRTHDAY TO ALEXA ON FRIDAY!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! Alexa, I can't believe you are going to be 15! I hope you enjoy your birthday..and enjoy bowling. Get a strike for me. Remember how good I am at WII bowling? haha Too bad I am awful at real bowling.

Thanks for the 3 PACKAGES that I got last week!!! Warheads, gum, pics of Carlie's fam, grey pants, letters. Sour patch kids, socks, reese's pieces, church news. More church news, more letters, navy blue pants, cheez-its, SHOES (my old pair is almost unrecognizable next to the new pair lol), cake, peanut butter!, M&Ms, oil vial (other missionaries have asked for oil vials like that if they are cheap and you want to send some more :) ), granola bars, fruit leather, cocoa roast almonds. Thanks SOOO much!!! I love getting packages! :D

The 8 lessons that we were taught in the last 2 Zone conferences were Doctrine of Christ, The Function of the HG in conversion, Revelation through Prayer, Revelation through the BoM, Revelation through Church Attendance, Teach People not Lessons, We Invite them-They Commit-We give them follow up, How to begin to teach. I hope that is understandable...that is translate from Spanish to English haha.

Well, that's the news for this week! I hope you all have an Amazing week this week! I love you all so much! Thanks for the letters and pics..i love it all!

I LOVE YOU!!

Love, Elder Beck

Changes...

Hola mi querida familia!!!

How's everybody doing this week? I hope everyone is great. Things have been going well here in Salinas. Elder Estrada finished his mission today...I 'killed' my first companion haha. I think that he flies home tomorrow. I think he doesn't really wanna go home, but that's what you have to do after 24 months in the mission haha.

This past week we had the other half of the 8 lessons that I talked about before..Zone Conference in Guayaquil. It went well. I need to write down all of the lessons so I can tell you what they are next week. It's basically all stuff from Preach My Gospel, but more focused on some important parts to help us be better teachers. The experiences that some missionaries share in Zone Conferences are so neat...it always makes me more excited to keep preaching the gospel. This time they gave us pizza in the zone conference...it was pretty good, but not Barro's haha.

More traveling this week....on wednesday we went to Playas de Villamil to inspect the house there and to do a baptism interview. Things are going well there. Elder Parkinson from QC is in that sector. This week he got moved up to District Leader :)

On Friday we did 3 more baptism interviews and then a Stake Activity put on by the missionaries :) We had a movie night and watched the Joseph Smith movie (the one from the temple and the JS Building) and we made popcorn and drank soda. Not very many members came, but every sector had investigators there, so that was good. That movie is so powerful! I love it :)

Last week Elder Estrada and I gave talks in Church again. I talked about some of the quotes that are in Chapter 1 of Preach My Gospel and related them to the members and the importance of the members in missionary work. Some people commented and said they enjoyed my talk....we'll see if they actually start helping us now haha.

1 Question about the package with the shoes. It got here to Ecuador and supposedly I'll receive it tomorrow. But do they not let you send a package that big with a Green sticker? No big deal that you sent it with a white sticker, I just had to give permission to an Elder in the office to pick it up. But I was just wondering.....?

So, on to the changes of the week. Elder Estrada is going home so now I am with Elder Baquerizo. He is from Ecuador, born in Guayaquil, but lived in Quito. He is one of the elders that got here to Ecuador with me. And we are with Elder Garcia, too. But we are guessing that we will only be with him for this week and that he is going to train. But for now, we are in a threesome, and we are going to be working in 2 sectors. Should be fun! haha

Well, I think that's all the news for this week! Thanks for everything you do for me, family. I'm so grateful for your support! I love you all SOOOO much!

Love, Elder Beck

Super P-day

Hola mi querida familia!!!!

How's everybody doing this week? I imagine that everyone's good..since you always are :) haha We are blessed!

Today is Super P-day..again. I can't believe how time flies by. So, today we cleaned the house EXTRA good and that is why I can't reply to about half of the letters that I got this week. Sorry :( We left the house really late..but we left it really clean too. We even cleaned the screens on the windows :) haha You all know how nice it is to have a clean house...and a clean house is slightly rare in the mission lol.

HAPPY BIRTHDAY TO BRADY on Saturday!!!!! I hope you have a great day :)

Nasty food that I ate this week: Chicken foot soup. The soup looked like a normal soup, but I stuck my spoon in to start eating and in the first spoon-full there was a chicken foot!!! Completely in-tact, except for the toe-nails (they cut those off). I gagged a little bit (loud) when I saw it and Elder Estrada started laughing. But it was disgusting and I couldn't help it lol. I decided to just eat the vegetables and broth and leave all the other chicken 'parts' in the bowl...thankfully the Hermana didn't say anthing to me about it haha.

This week was Ecuador's Independence Day (August 10th). So nobody worked Friday, Saturday, or Sunday. Which means that practically all of Ecuador came to Salinas! haha The beach was FULL. Tons of people and tons of umbrellas (even though there wasn't one ray of sunshine this weekend lol). And it was cold this weekend...too bad for the vacation-ers, but great for the missionaries! haha All of the tourists went home last night, so now we're back to the peaceful Salinas that I know and love. Lots of people came in expensive cars that one RARELY sees in Ecuador. Like the new Camaro and a Range Rover...so those were fun to see lol. Things that one sees daily in the states..but here, I think I've seen 2 range rovers in this past year haha.

Well, that's the news for the week. We are looking for lots of new people to teach. Fighting to get people to come to church....that seems to be a challenge in all of Ecuador :P But everything is great!!!!! I love being able to share my testimony every day. And help other people receive the blessings and happiness that we've received thanks to the Restored Gospel. I love you Family!!! You are incredible! Thanks for everything!

Love ya!!

Love, Elder Beck

Zone Conference

Hola mi querida familia!!!

How's everybody doing this week? Everything is great here in Salinas, like always :)

First, I think I forgot to write this last week.... THANKS TO ABY AND BRENT for the package!! Propel/crystal light powder, a camel, peanut M&Ms, Sour Patch kids, Gum, the HUMP DAY card, and your letters! Thanks a ton! I love you!

This week we went to Guayaquil again on Wednesday for a giant Zone Conference. THere were 7 zones there and about 100 missionaries. Normally there are about 3 zones and about 30 missionaries in zone conferences. We had to wake up at 3:30am to be in the church in Guayaquil at 730 am, so I was super tired. But I slept the entire 2-hour bus ride.....I'm pretty much a pro at sleeping in buses now haha. The zone conference was from 8am till 5pm...and they gave us lunch! haha It was the same sandwich from the leadership council a couple weeks ago, and it was still delicious :)

So, the Zone Conference was so long because the church is starting some sort of new program to simplify the missionaries' teaching. There are 8 lessons and President talked about 4 of them. We are going to have another Conference like that one soon for the other 4 lessons. Almost the whole time we were just looking at scriptures that we are all familiar with but analizing every single part of the scriptures and sharing lots of mission experiences. It was a great (and looong) Zone Conference...and I was really tired of sitting down :) haha

The experience on the bus ride back to Salinas wasn't so great. First, in these buses there are assigned seats. We were in 2 seats in the very back of the bus, which was bad because the bus moves a lot more in the back and sometimes it makes me feel sick. But, it was even worse cause the guy sitting next to me was huge! He was definitely big enough to be a 2-seater lol. He was basically suffocating me, and on top of that he smelled bad and SNORED like I've never heard anyone snore before. I might have shoved my elbow into his side a few times to try to wake him up......but apparently he couldn't feel anything cause he just kept snoring! lol So, that's my fun news for the week! ;) LOL

Well, that's the news from Salinas this week! Thanks for writing me everyone! Thanks for all of your support, prayers, letters, love, etc! You are all amazing :) I LOVE YOU SOOOOOOOOOO MUCH!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

Love, Elder Beck

pics

Elder Estrada and Me in Gran Chef...enjoying delicious food

Man's best friend. A dog that followed us for like 1 mile across Salinas! lol

Elder Siebert and I (from the MTC, one year later)...he is skinny, right?!

I love you!!!
Elder Beck

August?!

Hola mi querida familia!!!

August already....but what happened with July?!?!?! It went by way too fast, that's what happened. I'm already in my last August in the mission haha. Next August I will be eating homemade oreos at home....that's what I've been craving this week lol.

This week I have also been SOOOOO thankful for my testimony. I have never met so many inactive members of the Church who don't have a testimony. The majority that we visited this week have never prayed or read the scriptures...no wonder they are inactive. But it's really sad. I'm so glad that I grew up in the Church and that I've always had my family there as support for me :) I know that this Church is the ONLY true church on the earth and I know that the Book of Mormon is the word of God. It has the answers to all of our lives' questions. I know that God hears me when I pray and that he answers me. I know that Joseph Smith was a prophet who saw God and Jesus Christ in the Sacred Grove. I know that Christ atoned for our sins and that he forgives us when we make mistakes. I know that families can be eternal, and that we can live together forever with our Heavenly Father and Jesus Christ. I know that Thomas S. Monson is a prophet of God and that he guides us through revelation.

Yesterday's testimony meeting was great. There were lots of spiritual testimonies from members who DO have testimonies :) And there were a lot of inactives that came for the first time in years yesterday :) It feels so great to see them back in Church and happy. There was one pretty funny line though. One lady (named Mary) cried a lot during her testimony and said 'I'm not crying cause I'm sad, but because I'm so happy.' A few minutes later, another lady (Cecilia) was bearing her testimony and said 'Mary mentioned that she wasn't crying cause she was sad, but because she was happy..... Right now I am shaking like crazy. But I'm not shaking because I'm nervous, but because it is FREEZING COLD!!!!!' (and she got so close to the mic when she said freezing cold that she almost swallowed it! hahaha) It was funny. And it was freezing cold in the chapel. It was funny because they can never get the chapel to a comfortable temperature..always too hot or too cold.

This week I'm pretty sure that I ate goat meat. It was gross and the hermana was telling us what it was, and my companion was trying to describe what the animal looks like. But I didn't know what it was until we got home at night and I looked up the word in the dictionary lol. I never wanna eat that again!

On to better food...that I ate today! Today, while we were in Guayaquil, we went to Gran Chef to celebrate my hump-day and Elder E's last change. It is a buffet with a ton of food!!! I ate 4 plates of food and 2 plates of desserts. And it was delicious. I was only missing root beer haha. My favorite part was the self-serve, hand-scooped ice cream with pieces of chocolate cake. Tasty!!! Actually, my favorite part was that I didn't eat ANY rice or soup!!! hahaha

So, that's all for this week :) I love you alll SOOOOOOOOOO much!!!!! Don't forget to read the scriptures and pray every day!!!

I LOVE YOU!!
Love, Elder Beck