Transfer Week - Staying in Carey!

Hey!

Transfer week and Elder Wihongi and I are staying in Carey for at least 3 more weeks.

It was a solid week here! We are teaching someone new, Emilia, and she is very receptive and open! She has accepted to read the Book of Mormon and then to be baptized when she has received a witness that it is true. We were very excited for this! The night before we had a hard time finding people home and just working, but we stayed diligent and it was great to have this blessing come the next day.

We had many other great lessons, one of my favorites was teaching this lady that has a great love and faith in God. She has so much goodness and light in her and the Spirit was very present as we taught her! Another was teaching 4 young adults that are on a "work-away" program with a member family we had dinner with. 2 are from Spain, 1 from Switzerland and the other from Nevada. The 3 foreigners have not had contact with the LDS church hardly ever! We are going back on Thursday to teach them more. They said in their countries religion is not a big importance. One of the questions that was asked was very simple and basic question about God and I realized that there are many many people who do not know much about God in this world.

On Thursday we did an interview for a guy that got baptized on Saturday. Probably one of the most powerful ones I have experienced. He has a solid conversion, and knows how to ask questions in prayer and receive revelation. When he came to the interview he had long hair and long beard. On Saturday for his baptism he was completely clean shaven! He really knew what it meant to put his old life behind and take upon him this new life of following the Savior, and that is how he represented it.

I love this gospel so much! I know more than anything that this is the true and living Church of Jesus Christ! He is our Savior and He is at the head of the church. And more than anything, He loves us.

-Elder Bean

Crazy Week!

Hey there fam and friends!

This week was a little crazy, but great!

Had a solid Zone Conference on Wednesday about "Follow Thou Me" and following the Savior and creating a good mission culture especially with the mission changes.

Thursday we spent all day in the car! from 12:00 to 10:30 pm. Went right to sleep when we got home haha. Drove 400 miles! We had to install new smoke/co2 detectors in the missionary apartments and had a baptism interview in Challis! The lady is super cool and way converted! A little different but we need more differences in the church so it was great. :)  We drove through Stanley and that is like one of the prettiest places ever. I have pictures as well!

Also this week we helped butcher chickens with a less-active family! It was a lot of fun. I thought it was going to be nasty, but it wasn't too bad! They cut their heads off, then defeathered them, then Elder Wihongi and I did the gutting! We each gutted about 15-20. They did 65 total. We even got our own chicken to go cook up. Good times, but sadly did not get any pictures.

We have some solid things going on in Richfield and the members are really doing good missionary work to help us out. Carey is doing great as well, good families to teach and we have another pretty solid potential that we hope to meet with on Wednesday!

I love this work with all my heart! It can be so stressful and wears you out a lot, but it is so rewarding. When you realize it is not about you, but about everyone you meet, then it becomes special. You stop worrying about how tired you may be, or whatever, and you focus on making other people happy. I really have grown to love these people.

Love y'all,

Elder Bean

Blaine Tingey took us to Sun Valley for P-day last Monday! It was way cool up there!

With Sister Curtis, our mission President's wife, she is like a mom!  We love her!

Pics from our 400 mile "road trip"

Such beautiful land! I was shocked to see so much snow and it is almost June!

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