Hey my forever family! I hope you had an awesome time at Bear Lake and told everyone hi for me! I sure miss all of you. You'll have to fill me in on all of the fun details of what went on! I always loved family reunions. By the way thanks a BUNCH to the Canadian Becketts for the licorice! It has been an awesome treat for Elder Brown and I! And thanks to Mindy and anyone else who contributed to that package... the candy, card, cd's, and PICTURES were incredible. I loved it and love you all! I was looking at the one of Grandma folding socks and saw in the background "families are forever" on the wall. It was cool thinking about that and how much I love you. Even though we aren't together now, this life is extremely short in comparison to the eternities! Yet so much depends on what we do here. However, because of Jesus Christ, we can overcome the times when we mess up and make it as an eternal family for FOREVER! That is so long that we can't even comprehend that. And we have no idea how awesome the Celestial Kingdom is going to be! I can't wait :) Now all we need to do is keep doing what we're doing, continually working to improve, and bring as many of our brothers and sisters as we possibly can with us!
Ok, so sorry if I didn't tell you about the "cow" part of my last email. Apparently I just... forgot ha ha. I was writing super fast and had lots to say. All the cow was in reference to was this lady we saw while we were out tracting. We look across the street, and see a lady down on her hands and her knees looking up, and she just starts mooing! Like a cow. It was the most bizarre thing, and confirmed my assumption of the ratio of weird to normal people here. It definitely keeps things interesting. This lady was also cutting the grass with hand trimmers (ones that you clip little branches or things like that with). We talked to her and she didn't want to hear what we had to say. If only she knew...
Speaking of knowing, we (Elder Moultrie and I) were the Leesburg elders this week! He has been out just as long as I have, and so it was kind of crazy. Since it was my area, I was the "senior comp" for the 3 days and did the majority of the planning and coordinating and everything. It was a good experience. Anyway, one lady we talked to just kept saying, "Oh, if only you knew what I knew!" And we were like, "What do you know that we don't know?" She just kept saying that and we eventually just told her to have a nice day and left her with a passalong card because she was obviously biased against the church. It's different here, one of the main problems we run into when trying to share the Gospel isn't that people don't know about Jesus Christ or what He did (or they think they know - in reality what we share could add so much to their knowledge and faith of Him), it's in helping them realize what we are actually saying and that our message is unique. A certain other church has kind of given us a bad rep around here and so people often confuse us with them. A lot of times when we tell people we're sharing a message about Christ they just say, "Oh, I already know about Him and am saved," and then close the door. It gets really old really fast. That's something I've been working on lately is to not get into the rhythm of rejection (as Elder Brown put it). I really have to believe and be sincere at every single doorstep, and talk to people as people, rather than a robot who is going to say (99% of the time), "Nope, not interested." I think it will be a lot easier once we find someone who is really looking for truth and who we can help progress.
Another crazy thing happened... I got yelled at worse than I have ever been yelled at in my life. Elder Moultrie and I were walking along tracting one evening when a girl and her brother rode up to us on their bikes and asked what we were doing. I told them we were sharing a message about Jesus Christ and the girl was like, "Hey, my sister is looking for a church to go to! Can you come to my house?" Apparently she lived up the street because her dad saw them talking to us and yelled something (I didn't really catch what he said). Anyway, I figured it probably wasn't best to stay so we said we'll knock into their door in a bit but for now to give this (we gave her a passalong card) to her sister. We kept walking and didn't think much of it. A minute later this car pulls up next to us. At first I was I was thinking, "Awesome, someone saw us and wants to learn more about the Gospel!" Boy was I wrong.
In the car is a white guy, about as tall as me, without his shirt on and a red bandana on his head. Apparently he was the dad of the kids, and he did NOT want us anywhere in his neighborhood. I have never heard more profanities used than how many he did when talking to us. In much nicer language than he used, he told us to leave because nobody in the neighborhood was interested and they'd come to our church if they were. He told us if we didn't get out of there right then he was going to mess (not mess though) us up. Then he got out of his car and walked up to us and told us he wasn't joking around. We told him we're leaving, to calm down, and then went and got into the car. He got back in his car as we were walking towards ours, and so we thought he was going to leave. Nope. He backs up and starts yelling at us again, saying pretty much the same stuff. I told him to calm down, we're leaving, and the only reason we are doing this was to help people be happier. He then told us to give him our money. We said no, and drove away. This guy was ridiculous. It didn't matter what we said, he was just ticked at us. I was pretty mad about it all that night, and I couldn't wait to go back and finish tracting that area another time with Elder Brown. The Gospel needs to be preached. If the Spirit tells me I shouldn't be somewhere and I don't feel safe then of course we're going to leave (which is why Elder Moultrie and I did), but if it's just some dummy yelling at us and there's no prompting to get out of there then you can bet we're going to share the Gospel with those who we can!
Another awkward thing... we were walking up to a house and there were some trees where I could see a guy standing behind them, and I thought he could see us but apparently not. We were about thirty feet away when he just undid his pants and started relieving himself. I was like, "Shoot! This is going to be really awkward if we just walk up on a guy peeing..." yet it was on a long dirt driveway and we didn't have anywhere to really go. We just pretended to read our scriptures for a minute and then walked up and talked to him after he was done. Thankfully he didn't shake our hands because he definitely didn't wash his. I guess he was a landscaper or something and just woke up and had fallen out of a 20 foot tree the day before. Sometimes things happen here that are just so crazy that I wonder if this is all just a dream! So far my mission has been pretty crazy from day to day ha ha!
Well, I'm about out of time now, but I know that the Gospel is true! One of my favorite things each day is the time we have for personal study. It really makes a huge difference in my life, and I know that if each of you will put aside some time (morning is best because it sets the mood for the whole day) to study about Jesus Christ and His Gospel it will make a huge difference! He gives me the strength to make it through each day. There is no way I would be doing this if it wasn't for Jesus Christ. It's sad how many people don't even know about Christ and what He did for him. They "know," but they don't KNOW, you know? I love "The Living Christ." That has so much goodness about Christ and what He did packed into it! You should read it as a family often, it's great. I've also really enjoyed reading the Christ edition of the Ensign, the one with the see-through cover thing and His picture on front. There are tons of great articles in there, and I've been studying it this week. This is His Gospel and He loves each one of us! He really is there and cares, even though we can't see it and it sometimes may not seem like it. Just remember, "Blessed are those who believe, who haven't seen," or something close to that. You know the point. Believe :) I love you all!
Until next week,
Elder Beckett
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