Another Great Week In Carey

It was another great week in Carey! :)

So first off news: my official release date is now July 30th, so I will be seeing y'all in about 2 months! Till then!

Some solid things are happening. We are having family home evening with a member family and a potential investigator tonight, then on Tuesday we are going to teach another lesson to that family we found last Monday. 

We met with a less-active guy, John, who is Polynesian and his wife is not a member, but he said we can come back this week and have a family home evening with them!

We went to mutual last week and helped teach. They had 5 stations with members telling about their mission experiences, and then we had a station as well. It was fun to fellowship with the youth and to teach them. We had a great time and I hope that we somehow influenced them to want to serve a mission. As I shared one of my experiences on my mission about the power of the Spirit, I truly felt that the Spirit of God has so much power in our lives and others if we let it. I am really learning to not trust in myself but to really trust in the Spirit. I have seen great things come as I do that.

This week is going to be super busy with lots of driving but it will be exciting :)

Love y'all so much, and I know my time left on the mission is short, but I know more than ever that this is such an important work that goes until the very last day! 

-Elder Bean

Big News!

So first off it was a great week and yesterday we found a new family to teach! This lady and her 5 kids, who are all pretty interested! We are excited and hope that the Spirit really touches them. Also helped this part member family build a fence. It felt great to do some work.

Now the Big News: As of July 1st our mission will be splitting! Part of our mission will go to the new Idaho Falls mission (Pocatello is splitting as well), and part of our mission will go to the Boise Mission. This is to even out the areas and numbers of missionaries in each mission. So because of that I will most likely be in the Boise Mission, which would change my date to come home. It could be as early as July 30th! We will find out more information in the future though!

I love Carey! We are working with some great people. Haha on Sunday when I was skyping y'all, you asked who I was teaching and I just drew a blank, but we are teaching people. We are actually working with 3 different families that do not come to church, but have 8 year old children they want to be baptized. So we are helping them come back to the gospel as a family so that can happen.

I miss and love y'all! Stay great!

-Elder Bean

P.S. The Patterson family fed us a cool meal this week. It is called Rou-Ladin ? (how it sounds, probably not the right spelling) It is a German food, where you wrap thin beef over a pickle with mustard and then fried with flour! It was great :)

P.S.S We drove a lot last week! Went up to Challis and I stayed with the Elders there and Elder Wihongi went to Salmon with those Elders. Then yesterday we went up to Hailey/Bellevue! It is so pretty up there and I think I want to live there someday

 

I Love Serving the Lord

Hey there! Things are going great here in Carey. We were able to go to church in Carey this week and meet so many awesome people. 

So first off some great news!! :

I shared an experience a couple weeks ago about finding that young man on the side of the road and taking him to the church and having a very spiritual experience. Well this week I just found out from the sister missionaries in Twin Falls that he is getting baptized on Saturday! They told me a couple highlights from his conversion that included attending a baptism and feeling the Spirit, and touring the temple grounds and praying about baptism! It was so great to hear such powerful things happening. I KNOW the Lord has been so involved in his life. 

We have been meeting a lot of great people here in Carey. This one Christian couple was so nice and exciting to talk to! We all shared our conversions with each other and the Spirit was there. They have a big log house and they use it as a non-profit retreat for pastors and other people they know that need to get away for a little while. It is in a very pretty spot in the mountains and they are the nicest people ever! She even prayed for us as we left and told us we are welcome anytime. :)

I love this work. I love serving the Lord and having the privilege to bless the lives of His children here in Idaho! They have blessed mine as well. I feel so honored to be where I am and I don't ever want to stop. 

Love y'all,

Elder Bean

Twin Falls group from a couple weeks ago

First Week In Carey!

Things are great here in Carey, ID. We cover the Richfield ward and the two Carey wards which consists of Richfield, Carey, and Picabo.

The work is a lot slower up here than Twin Falls. Due to A LOT less people and majority are LDS! However we have already seen some good things happen. 

Elder Wihongi has only been here 7 weeks so we are both pretty new, which opens up a lot of opportunity!

We received a referral for a lady named Dani, and we went to go see her and her son was outside and he was super cool, then she came out and was very nice! We ended up helping them plant some flowers right there and met her other two kids. We connected well with her and she is open to having us back. She seems very prepared with what we have heard about her from members.

Met this guy named Ken, through knocking the wrong house. He is agnostic and lives on the edge of the world in the middle of nowhere ahha. He agreed to have us come back though! It will be a little different teaching someone without a background belief in God. He threw out some good food for thought though by saying religion causes wars and contention. He is right, but it is not God's commandments that cause that. It is people disobeying God or twisting the commandments or making religion what they want it to be. 

God is God and Jesus Christ is His Son. They have a plan of redemption for all of us to be made clean so that we can come back into their presence. The church and gospel are there for us to prepare to live with God and strive to be like Jesus Christ, thus bringing about the most joy into our lives. That is the truth and what God has intended. 

Funny Exp: Met this Hispanic couple that spoke broken English, and they even let us in. So we communicated with our broken Spanish and actually had a good talk with them about Jesus Christ! They even fed us some food! Love Hispanic people, they are so kind and genuine. We have a couple Spanish people here, so hopefully my Spanish will improve!

Love y'all! Hope It is a great week for everyone!

-Elder Bean

Transfers, Gonna miss Elder Payne

Transfers!

New companion, Elder Wihongi

 

Carey, Idaho

Transferring to Carey Idaho!

Transfer week is always crazy!

I am leaving Twin Falls and going to Carey, ID! I am excited, but sad to leave such a great area here. My new companion is Elder Wihongi and he is so cool! He is from New Zealand and it is going to be sweet.

I love this work here!

We actually met this guy from New Zealand this week. He is less-active but has a neat testimony of the gospel! His accent made him 100% cooler. I am really hoping he gets active! He has a young son that comes to church and he has older kids that have been sealed in the temple.

Yesterday in the ward here, there were two missionary homecoming talks and one farewell. Austin leaves May 11th, but did his farewell yesterday because one of the homecoming's was his brother Kaden's! There was a very powerful Spirit there yesterday. As Kaden bore his testimony you could tell that he loved the Lord and really served him with everything he had. I hope to be able to do that as well. He set such an example and is such a great older brother to that family. 

So many great families from this ward that I am going to miss greatly. 

Saturday we attended two baptisms. One in Burmese and one in Spanish! It was pretty interesting.

Love y'all!

Elder Bean

Brother Robert's mustang!

Price family

With Bishop McKee and his family

Panter kids

Baird family

God Loves Us All

It was such a great week. I am not sure where to begin!

I am loving Idaho and especially the Twin Falls 10th ward. This ward is filled with great people that I have come to love a lot.

Elder Payne and I really relied on the Lord a lot this week and it made a very big difference in the work. Our days and hours were filled with people to see and promptings on where to go!

Met this guy, John, who is a less-active that is struggling but amidst tears he told us he wants to come back and be better. He has many friends in this ward and that will be a big help to him!

So as we were leaving an investigators house I noticed in the rear view mirror a lady trying to flag us down. We got out and talked to them. They just moved in and don't have many possessions. She told us that her mom has been reading the BofM and she would like to as well. We introduced her to the Book of Mormon and taught a little about Jesus Christ. Very prepared people and we are teaching her, her mom and her son now.

An amazing experience this week happened as Elder Payne and I were driving down the road. We saw someone pulled over off to the side so we got out to help. We met a young man and found out his car was fine but he was struggling with what to do with his life. He even had thoughts of not living any more. We took him to the church and took him into the chapel. Had a very powerful spiritual experience that I will not forget easily! We all felt the Savior's love there and this young man offered a very powerful prayer before we left. He later told us that moments before we pulled over off the road, he had been praying to God for a sign of what to do with his life. I was so touched that God had sent us to this young man's aid.

God really is aware of us. He loves us more than we know. He answers our prayers, sometimes through other people in our lives. It is up to all of us to be worthy of the companionship of the Holy Ghost. So that if and when we are prompted, we may recognize the prompting and follow it so that we may bless someone else's life! 

Love y'all!!

-Elder Bean

General Conference Weekend

General Conference was awesome and I enjoyed the insights and strength I gained!

The week was a busy one for sure, but we made it work greatly!

Janice went to the family history center with us on Tuesday and we were there with her for about an hour, and then she stayed a couple more to do more family history work! She was very excited about it. Also she really enjoyed conference as well and it is so cool to see her embrace every ounce of the gospel. 

We are teaching this guy, Will, that is originally from Texas! He is awesome, but been through the ringer. Just listening to him I felt God's truly infinite love for him. It gave me hope for Will to progress and get his life on track to where he can be successful and have joy. 

We ate dinner with this one family this week and the husband was late coming home so we ate on the porch with the kids until he got home. He got home when we had about 10 minutes until we had to leave so we came inside briefly. He is not a member, but his wife texted us the next day saying that he felt pretty bad about that and wants us to come over again. He is a great guy and we are hoping he opens up to let us teach him.

Our monthly focus for April is the Book of Mormon and it has been great so far. There is so much power in that book. It was written for this day and age, so it pertains especially to us. It is a divine witness of the Savior Jesus Christ and it contains His gospel in fulness. It teaches so plainly and the power of the Spirit is so evident as you read it! As we have shared more of the Book of Mormon this past week, I have definitely seen the influence it has!

 It's power can 'change our hearts' and 'bring light and understanding' to our lives.

Love y'all!

Elder Bean

General Conference talks