April 14, 2014

Dear everyone, this has been the craziest week of my mission. All I have to say is that I am glad to be back in buffalo. It really is the promised land. The stake out here is booming and the people are prepared. We drive a lot but not as much as they used to since we no longer have unlimited miles. My companion and I work really well together ( elder bailey). He kinda reminds me of penili. Not too much work was done with numbers because of our half week but we have a good feel for our area now.

Aside from all that we had the best p day ever today. We went out to a field and I taught our whole zone how to play touch rugby...out in the rain. I will send some pictures of the aftermath. All in all I am learning lots I am working hard and I am having fun. What else is there to missionary work? Thanks for your love and support!

Love y'all

Elder bevan

 

 

 

April 7, 2014

 

 

Dear Everyone,

I hope you all had a chance to feast on some of the amazing words that were given this weekend, because they were definitely meant to help you through whatever you are going through. I have a personal testimony of this. 

I love sitting at the feet of our beloved Prophet and his Apostles and hearing God's word for me. Pretty incredible. On another note I have some pretty unexpected news. After serving in Irondequoit as Zone Leader for two transfers I will be leaving and serving as Zone Leader in the Buffalo Young Single Adult Branch. I have to say that was very unexpected and I can't lie I have absolutely no clue what to expect. We cover nearly half of our entire mission and travel at least 3,000 miles a month (for some missions that is not a lot) but it is for sure going to be quite the change in work methods. 

The good thing about this "change" is that I am leaving happy and satisfied with the work that I did while I was here. I truly feel that I did all that I came here to do, especially with some of the last minute things that came up, I now feel that I can say I have done all that was required of me. This is a good feeling. I am really grateful to be a missionary for the Lord Jesus Christ.

A quote that inspired me this week says, "When the tide comes in, every ship in the harbor rises", as members of this church we are truly what keeps this world afloat, so let's bring in that tide and lift where we stand by following the promptings of the Spirit. 

Love you all,

Elder Bevan

 

 

3/31/14

 

Dear everyone,

I heard from kaleb  that they also got some snow this Sunday. We got hammered with some really thick slushy stuff it was quite the surprise considering it is supposed to be spring time. So it was good to hear that we are not the only ones going through this.

We had a good week this week, we worked hard and did our part.

However, it can get kind of depressing when you are trying your hardest and not much is happening. I feel that things are going to change soon. I say this because we had our fifth Sunday meeting on missionary work. It was obviously directed at the members. Something cool that was said was,"if you feel guilty in any way about doing missionary work don't do it!". It may sound sort of counter productive but it is the truth. We should never do missionary work out of purely "duty" or because someone said we had to. Those may seem like good reasons, however they will not last and usually are what lead to many members being afraid to do missionary work or someone getting offended. It is only until we can invite someone out of love that we should begin to invite. I believe that this directly relates to the hastening the work of salvation. I say this because in order to hasten the work around us we must first hasten the work of our own salvation!

 (Alma 60:23). This was inspiring for me as a missionary.

Thanks for all your support I love this work!

Love

Elder Bevan

 

 

3/24/14

 

Dear Everyone,

What a week. This was probably the fastest week of my whole mission. I have no clue why? Maybe because it has been the first week of real missionary work in a while, without all the meetings. We have some good things going on in our area. We are finding people and are actually teaching people now. I feel like a real missionary again. For a while we were pretty depressed in our investigator category. We still have a lot of work to do but we know that we are going to be blessed, whatever it may be. We have two investigators that we are getting really close to setting a date with them. (the basketball guy and his family). We are really trying to get the ward members involved. Member work has been the hardest work on my mission. It takes a while to win their hearts and that is the very first step in getting them to listen to you and keep your commitments. I have a good success story this week. The young girl that I just baptized now has a calling, is faithfully going to church, has a lot of member support, and just got accepted to UVU!! I was so excited for her because right now she is going through a lot and has to deal with a very rough family situation. She has a big life changing event ahead of her. 

There have been so many great things this week. However I just want you all to know that it is all true!  

Sorry its short this week.

Love,

Elder Bevan

 

3/17/14

 

Dear everyone,

What a week. The weather here really needs to stop! On Tuesday it was 55 degrees and sunny, and then Wednesday rolls around and we get a weather alert that says New York is in a state of emergency and that we are not allowed to go out and travel around. In one day we got over 2 feet of snow! It was madness! However the work must go on! 

So I guess I hit my year mark sometime this week? It does not even seem like it. It was pretty suiting that on my year mark I had to give a Zone Conference. Never would have guessed I would be where I am at now. Our Zone Conference went really well. We gave our training on Promised Blessings, and Bearing Testimony. Before my mission if someone would have asked me to train for an hour I would have died. Come to find out an hour is never enough time. 

I want to include in this email a very inspiring story that I heard yesterday from one of the people we are working with. We asked him if we could share his story and he said that it would be ok. I will use Fred as his name since we are not supposed to use people's real names. We came in contact with Fred yesterday. We heard about him from a member who passed us a note during church. I guess the member heard of fred from another member out in Newark who had asked him to send the missionaries over to see Fred. We had no other info on Fred, so we were kind of going in blind. Anyways, we went over to see Fred. He lives in this half way home for recovering addicts. We knocked on the door and this big black man answers and lets us in. We are introduced to Fred who is no small guy (one thing we had heard from the member that referred us was that he was a big teddy bear). We found a place to sit down and began to talk about his life. Come to find out he was a member. He was born and raised in the church and all of his family are members. However he chose not to be active and got involved in a lot of bad things which eventually led to a serious accident that happened back in July 2012. This accident resulted in a coma that lasted for 5 months. After 5 months of nothing he miraculously woke up! He began to tell us some of the things that he witnessed while he was under. A lot of it is very sacred but in short he saw Jesus Christ who began to ask him if he wanted to stay or if he wanted to go home and change his life around. Fred told Him that he wanted to go home and try again. It was a very powerful testimony to me that Christ lives. He said after this happened he woke up and new that his life had been prolonged. I believe this is true because of the witness of the Spirit and the teachings of the scriptures especially in 2 Nephi 2: 21. 

I know that Christ lives and that he loves us!!

Love, 

Elder Bevan

 

3/10/14

 

Dear Everyone,

What a week. The biggest news is that it is starting to warm back up. We finally are above freezing. It feels like a year since we have had it this warm. I hear however that it won't be long before another snow storm rolls in. This, however, has had little to no effect on me. I am having a good time, warm or not. For example. The other day we were walking down the hood on Laser st. in the freezing weather (wind was howling) and we saw these guys shooting a basketball in their backyard. So naturally we walked up to them and challenged them to "throw down". They accepted and it was game time. It would not be hood ball if there was no dunking and since the guys we found were white the rim was a solid 7 foot high :). The throw down began. Just imagine 4 guys on a court 12 feet by 8 feet. There were lots of elbows and alley oops. It was really fun and no one got hurt which is a good thing. The best part was once we finished, we started talking about our missionary work in a casual friendly way. This lead to one of the guys opening up and telling us that he wants to start coming to our church. This is nothing too strange in the rough parts of our area, but this guy has some Real Intent. It was a tender mercy given to us for having our line in the water at all times. I heard a cool quote about this the other day. It said, "There are no miracles, only to those who are ignorant. A miracle is supposed to be a result without a cause, but there is no such thing. There is a cause for every result we see; and if we see a result without understanding the cause we call it a miracle".  We all know God works through us, but he does this best when we promise to be who we are (faithful members) and reach out wherever needed. I have learned for myself that this is what it takes to see miracles and trust me it really works! 

 

In our week this week we also were able to go to the temple. That is my favorite place in the world. I do not know why anyone that could go would not! It is a refuge from the evils of this world and boy is it refreshing. We also had our monthly MLC (mission leadership council). I am starting to become more comfortable at these and actually enjoy them. It is always nice to have a meeting that you do not have to give a training at! 

Well that was pretty much my week. I hope you are all doing well. Before I go I want to share my tip for you this week. It is something I learned from President Francis. He said this when someone asked, "how long do you read your scriptures each day?". His response was, "I read until I feel the Spirit, then I read a little more" what an awesome piece of advice! I have learned this applies to everything spiritual in our lives! Try it out!

Love,

Elder Bevan

 

3/3/14

 

 

Dear Everyone,

Another Transfer week has snuck up on me! It is almost surreal how quick everything is happening. Anyways the big news is that I am getting a new companion! I am a little curious how things will go since I have only been Zone Leader for a transfer and my companion has never been any leadership position before...I better figure it out quick! My companions name is Elder Knudson. I served around him in cattaraugus. I am sure you will hear more about him later on. 

A lot of great things happened this week. One of them was that Prince our Recent Convert was given the Aaronic Priesthood! Also, his wife came to church and is now, almost officially, investigating the church! I am way excited for this, it has been something we have been praying about a lot! They are by far my favorite family :) The reason they are my favorite is because they live in the Hood and yet they are so wholesome and spend time together as a family just reading. That is something you never see anymore. 

We have been helping them move out of their house to one just down the street. Their new house is a lot better however it is still in the hood. Some of the things you see down there are sketch...from loose Pittbulls running around terrorizing the neighborhoods to broken syringes...life is very interesting. All of this stuff has just added to the experience :) 

Well I wish we had more time but Transfer days are always crazy for time!

Love,

Elder Bevan

 

 

2/24/14

 

Dear Everyone,

It has been a great week around the board. I have come to love change (at least at this point in time :). My new companion and I get along really well.  We are both "Brand New" zone leaders. I have been a zone leader for 6 weeks and he has been one for 1 week. They pretty much flushed this area and the leadership. I believe it is for the best. We get to start out fresh and not adopt the wicked traditions of our fathers ahahaha. We have a lot of learning to do however especially when it comes to giving trainings. I am still not super comfortable giving them especially at Zone Conferences…I guess that will be my mountain to climb this transfer.

We had to walk a lot this week because the other elders in our apartment wrecked their car and it was getting fixed. This was good because it helped us get to know the area better but boy was it cold!!!! Elder Knudson and I have also had some time to get to know one another, and come to find out he is deathly afraid of dogs. Uh oh because in this area there are pitts everywhere and they just roam the streets. He is getting a good taste of the hood. This is not bad but we have made a goal to find Kingdom builders (aka Families). This area has a good mixture of both nice and ghetto areas and for some reason every missionary that has served here has focused on the ghetto areas. I think they do that just because it is easy to find work. However not much has come from it. This goal that we have is going to be a struggle but we know we can do it with some assistance.

 I found out something this week that I thought was an amazing miracle. So about two weeks ago Elder Haines and I went to give a member's non member husband a blessing (if that makes sense). Anyways we drove over to Rochester General with another member to give him a blessing. At this point is when things started to happen, and I realize now that something great was brewing. We had no clue where to go, but ended up parking in the perfect place where we just happened to catch Sister K leaving. She was so happy to see us even though you could tell she was under a lot of stress, because come to find out her husband was laying on his death bed. He had just overcome cancer but because of the chemo he could not get rid of a fever and had some other complications. Anyways he was not doing too well. However she was full of faith that all he needed was a blessing to overcome this. So we gave him a blessing and that was it, until a few days ago when we got a phone call that he was completely free of the fever that they could not get rid of and was almost completely recovered. It was a miracle and a testimony builder that came at just the right time. We had two of these experiences in the same week! I really cannot say much more than God has a reason behind everything and is doing some good work! I was just grateful to be worthy of being a part of these miraculous healings. 

Well I hope you all are doing well and are nice and warm J

Love,

Elder Bevan