Daytona Beach!

Hello favorite people ever! I love you! This has been one of the hardest, most trying weeks of my life, and I have been super humbled. I wanted to wait to tell you until after you got the letter from President Hall ha ha :) I am training! Woo hoo! I am super excited and humbled about it. My trainee is Elder Dylan Larsen from San Jose, CA. He is an awesome missionary, and we've had tons of fun together already! I am also District Leader here and "Whitewashing" the area. So we have no idea where to go or anything like that; it's all completely brand-new. Scary. Plus this is my first time on a bike in the mission so we're getting used to that as well. Oh, btw, we are in Daytona Beach! Which is a way cool area!

So, Tuesday morning President Fort (Sumterville Branch) took Elder Stock and I to the mission office to drop me off and pick up their new Elder. Pres. Hall had a meeting with all of the trainers before we met our trainees, and basically just helped us realize what a huge trust the Lord had in all of us to train these missionaries. There were also a bunch of new things they are implementing into training, and had specific material they wanted us to cover over a specific timeline. It makes it nice to know what specifically they want us to cover when, because I guess in the past they pretty much just left it completely up to the trainer. Well, my trainee and I met and then we had to wait at the mission office for a while for our ride from Daytona Beach to come pick us up. We rode back, took our bags up into the apartment, and then the Zone Leaders (Elders Brown & Ellis) took us shopping to get supplies for the rest of that week. Our apartments are SO nice! Wow. They are super sweet. I'd send you pics, but I guess on these computers you can't do that... so it might be a while before you get some pictures :/ I'll send you another cd or something though. And yes, of coures you can look through everything I sent home! You are my family and I want to share it all with you! So feel free.

Oh, so after we got some food, we went to a neighborhood (Elder Brown took us there in the car) to do some tracting, and told us to start on one street. The first house we knock on, the man opens up and invites us right in. He is getting pretty mad at someone over the phone, arguing how they "owed him 50 G's and he's going to have it by the end of the week." Well, there was another guy in there who was playing with some pretty big knives on the couch. He also had a gun. We were just kind of wondering what was going on, and if we were going to get stabbed or shot or something, when they started laughing. Apparently it was a setup and we got "punk'd" ha ha. It was pretty funny. I guess one of the guys, Josh, who was in on it put it on youtube. Search "Breaking in the New Elder" and the channel/user should be something like "metalagainstmetallic" and you'll see us on the video! Let me know how it is... The other man in the movie, the one on the phone is called "Grandpa" and he watches out for the missionaries a TON! He has already taken us out to eat twice this past week, and apparently feeds the missionaries all the time. He is super nice and always making sure we have everything we need. I guess they do that trick to all of the new missionaries.

Being on a bike is fun! It's super tiring though, and it takes a while to get around. We will be in good shape though by the end of this transfer! Well darn it :( My time is up. I'm working on a tape to send to you with more details about everything. I love and pray for you all. Keep on keepin' on! The Lord is real and loves us. Elder Larsen and I have seen that this past week; He's really led us to some neat people. Love ya bye :)

-Elder Beckett

p.s. Church was fun, the ward is great! Now we just need to get to know them better.