Welcome to December

Happy December! What a great month to reflect on the Savior and His life and Atonement. I am loving it already =] It is fun to just see and feel the change in people's attitudes and countenances this time of year.

It is still nice and warm here in Florida! A couple of nights it has gotten a little "cold" ha ha... Florida cold anyway. Elder Mullen let me use his sweater (he had 2) which was nice, but I think I'm going to buy one today if I see one on sale. It's kind of different here than I would've thought... it does get cold in the winter! Especially when the wind blows.

This week was the Festival of the Nativity, which was great! It is a festival the Stake puts on where they invite all sorts of people from the community to bring in their different nativity sets and paintings and things. Then they also have a little Christmas program and different arts and crafts for the kids, a room where you can dress up in the nativity clothing and get a picture, and just fun things like that. It was a great activity and a lot of non-members were there. It went Friday, Saturday, and Sunday night; which concluded with the First Presidency devotional. Wasn't that great? I hope we somehow have access to those video clips as missionaries. Hopefully we can get them on dvd or something, or get permission to just use them on the internet in lessons. What a blessing :)

Hey, for Christmas I don't think I really have some specific needs... not that I can think of anyway. I think it would be more practical for me to just buy pants and a sweater here where I can try it on and all. I would love some printed pics of the family though, those are always fun =] How about I take a rain check on that and if I need anything I'll let you know ;) Maybe you can just save that until I get back and need some new clothes or something ha ha. I'm actually trying to get rid of "stuff" right now, so that I just have the bare minimum of what I actually need. Otherwise it gets too crazy trying to bring it all around. Oh, btw, I bought some more contacts to last me for a few months.

The work is really picking up here =] The members are getting so involved! There were some great testimonies borne yesterday by lots of people.

So this past week we met a girl named N, who came to church last week with a friend. She is probably about 16, and is a great girl! She has been going throuth some hard times right now in her life, and the Lord is just blessing her with the gospel to help her at the perfect moment. We had a wonderful lesson with her at the Fs' home, and the Spirit was so strong. She came to church again yesterday and loved it, and is thinking about joining the church.

Unfortunately M & L weren't able to make it, none of the R, and neither T & K. They are all still solid though, and excited to learn more. Just one thing or another kept them from coming :( They will be back though! Plus our ward Christmas party is this Friday, so we are hoping to get a good turnout there.

Man oh man I am really having a hard time focusing right now because the place we are emailing (the family history center) is sooooo loud... other missionaries & watching things on mormon.org, etc. Normally we'd go to the library or something but E. Mullen doesn't have a library card yet and so we can't unless he wants to pay $5. Lame.

I have this bad habit of accidentally bumping the car horn. We were at McDonald's this past week when the most recent incident occured. We were in the drive-through line, and it was a rather loud, somewhat drawn-out and mean sounding honk. They guy in front of us sat up pretty quick and looked in his mirrors to see what was up. I just started laughing... and waved and said, "Sorry, that was an accident!" It was funny though lol.

Well, I really can't think much, it's still pretty loud :/ I'm sorry. Just know I'm doing great at writing in my journal right now, so all the good stuff and faith-building experiences that the Spirit brings to remembrance will be in there. I just can't quite focus here unfortunately. I will share them though someday =] Love you all! And can't wait to talk to you for 40 mins soon!

love, Elder Beckett

p.s. how ironic.. everyone just left and it's quiet now that my time is gone... ha ha such is life :P

p.p.s. Mindy you are great and will do awesome at your talk! Let me know how it goes :) Hmm you can just talk about patience and charity, and how you learned all about them and developed them growing up with me ;)

p.p.p.s. Thank you so much for the answers to those questions mom & dad! At least the ones you've answered :) I loved it!