8-30-10 (Mom's Birthday!!)

HEY MOM! Happy happy birthday! I love you so much! Please have a wonderful day of enjoyment and low stress :) Have any sweet plans? I hope so. This has been a wonderful week with many ups and downs. Mostly ups :) The Lord always blesses us with ups if we turn to Him and endure to the end through the downs. Never give up, never give in, never surrender!

Ok.... first off I guess I'll let you know what happened last Monday evening. We were just finishing up dinner when we got a call from a less active member, Sister B D (about 58 years old and has lived here for 3 months). We had met her once before with our ward mission leader Brother D, and had given her a blessing. As we answered and asked her how she was she told us she was terrible and was going to kill herself. WHAT?!?!? We told her to NOT do anything and calm down. We kept asking her what was wrong and where she was but she wouldn't tell us. She just kept crying and saying over and over that she was going to kill herself. We told her we'd have a prayer and said a quick prayer with her over the phone. Finally we got her to tell us where she was, and she said, "I'm in the Walgreen's parking lot. You have one chance to talk me out of this." Woah lady! We threw our ties back on and hurried to the car to drive there. We called our ward mission leader to ask him what to do and he said to go but if the Spirit prompts us then call the police immediately. I called Bishop W (the one on the skateboard ha ha :P) and he called the police and another ward member to come be with and help us out. It was pretty stressful. We got to the parking lot and talked and prayed with her, but she was just sitting in her car saying those same things over and over again about how she was suicidal. Anyway, the police eventually showed up and searched her car and ended up taking her to a mental health facility nearby called Lifestream. Apparently she had gotten in a fight with her daughter (who she lived with), and her daughter had kicked her out of the house. It was pretty sad because she felt like God didn't love her and she had nowhere to go... she had been sealed to her husband a long time ago and she said she knew that if she committed suicide then she couldn't be with him, but she didn't care anymore because life was so bad. We kept telling her how God does love her and cares about her, and that she could do it and life WILL get better. So, basically, we are lifesavers ;) It is the best thing in the world to be spiritual lifesavers everyday! It was also cool to be a physical lifesaver as well :P

So I can't believe that Mindy is at BYU! WAhooo! I bet she is having a blast. I've been praying hard for you everyday to adjust, get into the swing of things, be safe, make new friends, and for the guys to stay away ;) Hope all goes well.

Good news, I am becoming a smoothie master. I use that blender everyday and it works fantastic! I usally put in frozen peaches, pineapple, strawberries, mangos, blueberries, carrots, and a banana! And milk and some orange juice. No sugar or anything but it tastes really good and is healthy :)

Thursday we had a service project with Bishop W and he is the man! He has a way cool family too - a daughter on a mission, a son going to BYU, a daughter going to BYU who will be going to BYU Jerusalem (same thing mom did I think) and then a mission, and then two more daughters who live at home. They are way nice, and the cool thing is that Bishop and his wife are converts! He is a doctor and doing pretty well; he wrote a book on thyroids and has a company that sells some sort of something or other. Funny thing... he and his wife met in a bar (before they were converts of course). You never would have guessed that though, they are amazing people! Anyway, we went there Thursday morning and helped him replace 2 or 300 feet of wire fencing! It was hard work but so much fun. Bishop is hilarious! He is really smart too. About an hour before we finished it just started pouring rain on us and we were SOAKED! It was a blast. Bishop is crazy though lol he did a front flip thing over the fence and then when we walked back to his house he just pulls out his skateboard and starts riding on his hands! I was laughing so hard. It was fun to be with him and talk to him though, he is really cool. It was nice to have a buddy almost as cool as Dad to be with and work with for part of a day =]

In the words of Allie, "HAPPY DAY!" Although I'd like to also add in "Happy Week!" and "Happy Life!" and actually "Happy Eternity!" Yeah! Thanks Bal :) I always think of you smiling and saying in your th-th-th voice little things like that and it cheers me up. You all cheer me up!

Hey, feel free to send me any church cd's if you desire... yes, even Hillary Weeks ha ha. Any good music (in accordance with the White Handbook) would be appreciated. Don't feel like you need to do that immediately though, just throwing that out there for the future if you have a chance to get around to it. By the way, I hope you are putting my iPod to good use. Please share it or use it as much as you'd like! I want it to not just sit there dead. Enjoy it please :)

Cool random fact - we are teaching Oneill Chambers' (wide receiver on BYU's football team) uncle! He seems pretty receptive and open to the message. He has seen a big change in his nephew's life as well.

A neat story real quick before I go - We went out with brother C Tuesday night (we usually go home teaching with him the last tuesday of the month. I think he forgot tomorrow is though or something idk because we went last week) and we stopped by a less active family. We didn't think much of it at the time, just a normal visit. We left them with a scripture and prayer, and noticed that after the prayer the mom A had gotten teary eyed. We talked about it after and it was neat because we could tell she had felt the Spirit. We called them the next day and got a return appointment to go back and watch Joseph Smith - Prophet of the restoration with them on Friday. We went back Friday and were talking with them after the movie and A just broke down and said she knew they needed to come back to church. She told us that before we stopped by on Tuesday they had been in the middle of a fight and there was a bad feeling there. When we came there was a peaceful feeling and they knew that they needed to come back to church! She said it was like a sign from God :) It was so cool because we were just doing the normal rounds I guess you could say and yet the Lord was guiding us! He knows what everyone is going through and if we just do the small things he asks, then we can be a huge help to people. We can be instruments in his hands, and there is great joy that comes from that! Check out Alma 29:9.

Well my time is up, but I love you all so much! Happy birthday mom, I hope you have a wonderful week! I love you all and do some extra cleaning or something for me for mom :) Did that make sense? Ha ha love ya!

-Elder Beckett