Letter from August 2... :]

Hello again everyone! Thanks for all of the letters, I love hearing from everybody! It really boosts me up and rejuvenates my attitude throughout the week. Alright so this was cool, I got a letter from Dallin Gomez about his great great great great grandpa's brother, Joel H. Johnson! I guess we are related because he is our ancestor as well! Sweet. Oh, and I played that hymn in District Meeting btw. It was pretty great. Also, congrats to Dallin on going through the temple, that's super exciting!
Just a quick note, were you able to mail the magic bullet? That would be great if you could. I have a bunch of frozen fruit I can make smoothies with, but our blender is broken and it's kind of weird to ask Elder Brown to borrow his personal blender ha ha. Ok... so I got a phone call this morning from the Zone Leader, and he asked if he could write Mindy. Ha ha I was wondering if he was joking at first, but he was dead serious. I went on exchanges with him once and he seemed like a cool guy so there you go Mind, you now have a letter coming :P Btw, I'm not just advertising my sister or anything, in fact far from that. I'm trying to keep you hidden, but people tend to look at other Elder's pictures whenever they visit and pretty much everyone is in love with you. Hey, no getting married until I'm back.
So church yesterday was once again interesting. A nice brother got up to give the opening prayer to fast and testimony meeting, and halfway through the prayer he was like "I'd now like to bear my testimony," and then went on to bear a 2 minute testimony. I admit I peeked to see if we were supposed to be watching and if he was looking around or what, but it was still a prayer. How odd ha ha. Although that is the 2nd time that's happened; the first actually being in our home ward (if you remember :P).Ok, so I haven't heard anything about Courtnee and her wedding. How did it go? Did you go to the reception? Can you send me the announcement or something so I can see? Hopefully everything was great :) That would be awesome if you could keep me updated on stuff like that - weddings, mission calls, etc.
OH, guess what is way cool? Elder Brown was on the Price is Right! He went there with his mom and aunt and cousin for his 18th birthday. Guess what else? He got called up to play, and ended up winning a hot tub, iMac, and recycling cabinet (the total worth over $5000). How awesome is that? I didn't believe him at first. We are going to see if President Hall will approve his family sending us the copy of that episode to watch on a P-day sometime or something.

Last P-day we went golfing for like 9.50. It was my first time and pretty fun! We golfed 18 holes and had carts, so apparently that's a really good deal. I probably won't be doing that much though, I hate spending money. Today for P-day we are going to go to some thrift stores to check out if they have any good deals on ties. Very cheap yet nice looking mission ties that I can wear out.
A funny experience this week was while we were out tracting, we ran into a "deaf" lady. I told her we were sharing a message about Jesus Christ and she mouthed she was deaf. I pulled out a card and pointed to it and that's what she did again. After that I just signed "R-E-A-D" to her and pointed to the back of the card. She still just said she was deaf and closed the door. Elder Brown and I were just laughing because she was an older lady and just flat out lied to us from what we could tell. Apparently if you are deaf you can't read either.

Alright, so to fill you in on other stuff I thought I'd include a journal entry.
July 30, 2010:
"Aaaaaaants have invaded my bathroom. It's bad. So bad. I walked in tonight and they were all over the counter. Hundreds. Crawling over my toothbrush, paste, q-tips, haircutting set, shaving tools, retainers, and everything else. They were crawling out of the sink drain too. Anyway, I found the hole in the wall where they were coming from, and sprayed it with killing spray. Before that though I stuck my head in my sink and yelled as loud as I could at the ants in there. It felt really good and they all stopped moving for a second. Then I sprayed the hole so they had no means of escape, and turned on the water. I began sweeping them up like crazy! Just with one hand I probably killed 60 ants in one swipe. I didn't stop until they were all gone! My counter is now clean."
They have stopped crawling out of our walls for the moment thank goodness. There are still thousands all over outside though.

Saturday was kind of a cool experience - in that it was one of the first times where someone was actually really happy to see someone representing Jesus Christ, rather than really ticked and hateful. Most people "don't have time" or just "aren't interested." This is SALVATION PEOPLE! Come on... Anyway it was just a little girl, so not really an investigator. She totally broke the rules by running up and hugging me from the side before I even knew what was going on, but it was still nicer than the normal door slam. We were knocking doors, and we'd actually seen her biking with her friend (the night the crazy guy yelled at E Moultrie & I). She got all excited when she saw us again at her house and we gave her and her sisters pictures of Jesus again and they were way happy! She said thanks and then just ran up and hugged me. I just told her to high 5 instead. Anyway, it really made me think about how little children are innocent and pure and can teach us all a LOT. They love Christ and know more about Him than most people in the world. Christ also loves them an incredible amount. He loves all of us, so much!
Well I love you all and pray for you. Keep on keepin' on! This life is the time to prepare to meet God, and so let's not waste it. We will have all eternity to think about what we did in this life, so let's live with no regrets. A mission is like a mini life.. I will have all of my earth life and eternity to think about how I spend my 2 years of complete dedication to serving the Lord. I'm giving it my all because that's what He deserves! Have a great week!
Love,

Elder Andrew Beckett

p.s. I'm going to try and attach some random pics :)First is of my haircut, the second is me with a little lizard I caught in our apt, the 3rd a sweet banana spider (he forgot to send that one, but he did send one of him and some packages from Mindy and dad!), and last was Elder Bennett, Brown, Wilson, a recent convert named Luke Bergquist, and Me golfing.