Elder Beard

Happy New Years!!!   Hey Y'all, I hope that y'all had a great Christmas and that today will be a great New Year for y'all. Hopefully this year will be the greatest one yet. Things are going pretty well here in Palm Harbor. The first of the week was all Christmas stuff. We had a dinner with the Garff's with the Sister missionaries on Christmas eve. It is a fun time. We got to watch a few Christmas videos with them and it was nice. They gave us all our favorite cereal and a nice blanket. Then the next day was super packed. We had Breakfast with the sisters at the Bishop's house which was super nice. They also gave us our favorite cereal. Then we had district council which was nice. We also went to the Marcucci's house and then the Gardners for dinner. We then went to the Glausses and got to call home. That was by far my favorite part. I am so glad that I have the family I do. We also stopped by the McGrew's and taught Phillip so it was a great day. I also got ...

  Merry Christmas! Hey y'all, Merry Christmas and a Happy New Year this year! I hope it truly is the greatest time of year for all of you. Things are going pretty well here in the Palm Harbor area! This week has been pretty cool. One of the ideas that Elder Mainor and I had was to write a whole lot of Christmas cards for people that we are teaching or that we have previously taught. One of the coolest miracles that came out of that is we were able to get in contact with a lady that Elder Christensen found and that I had met only twice. Her name is Kelsey and she is pretty sweet. We were able to show her light the world and she invited us back in the next two weeks to share some scriptures with her. I am so excited for that. We also got to go to the temple this week. It was super nice to go back to the temple and feel the spirit that is there. I know that those buildings are the house of the Lord. I felt so much peace sitting in the celestial room and I was able to have a question a...

  Amazing Sacrament meeting!   Hey Y'all,   I hope things are going well for y'all. Hopefully you were able to survive finals or whatever else was thrown at you right before the Christmas break.   Things are going pretty well here in the Palm Harbor area. One of the greatest things that happened this week is we had an awesome time doing a service project with the young men on Wednesday at Chad and Kris C's. It was super awesome since we were able to have a lot of young men come and fellowship the son CJ and invite him to mutual. We were also able to teach Chad and Kris C about the doctrine of the Godhead and explain to him and Kris C the promise of the Book of Mormon. Chad already believed that Heavenly Father and Jesus Christ are 2 separate beings which was really cool. We are excited to see them again and help them continue to receive the restored gospel.   We were also able to go to mutual that night and Cyrus and his cousin Daniel came. They both seemed to e...

Very crazy week. Hey y'all, I hope y'all had a great week. There was a lot of exciting things that happened this week. The craziest day by far is Satruday. We had a missionary meeting at 9:00 with ELDER DALE G. RENLUND AND HIS WIFE, ELDER SHAYNE M. BOWEN OF THE GENERAL AUTHORITY 70 AND HIS WIFE, AND ELDER PATRICK OF THE AREA 70. It was an amazing time. We got to shake hands with all of them and it was amazing. They all gave us help on how we can improve on finding including telling us to be where the people are and some ideas on how to contact them. Elder Renlund taught us how having a great attitude and great effort will produce miracles. That night we also had my first baptism!!! It was really fun. Patrick did pass his interview this week and I had the privilege of baptizing Patrick. He is a great man and I can promise you that the Gospel of Jesus Christ has changed him and blessed his life. He has had a lot of struggles recently, but as he has built his faith in Christ, the ...

Light the World!!!   Hey Y'all,   It's officially the Christmas season! I am excited to go out and make this year one of the best Christmas seasons ever. I hope y'all will be able to enjoy all of the traditions you have at home as well.   This week was really cool. We were able to see a lot of great things happen. One of the biggest things that happened was we had an amazing lesson with Patrick at the Bleakley's. We were able to teach him the rest of the commandments including the law of the fast and tithing and he said he would live all of them. He has already seen that living these laws brings blessings. I am so excited to see him enter the waters of baptism THIS WEEK ! He truly is prepared for the gospel and is going to become a great converted member.   We also were able to volunteer at the Shepherd center. This is a facility that does a lot of outreach to help members of the community in Tarpon Springs. There are quite a few homeless people that really benefit f...

Thanksgiving and Transfers!!!   Hey y'all! Hopefully Thanksgiving went well for y'all. I know that it went well for us here in the Palm Harbor area.   This last week has been full of miracles. I have gained a surety this week that Heavenly Father is aware of me and everyone and that he truly is in the details of our lives. Multiple times this week Elder Mainor and I have received promptings on where to go and miracles have occurred. One of them is we felt like we should go to a neighborhood with a couple of people that we could stop by, but would most likely not be home. One of the people was Walt. He is always busy and the last 3 times we have tried to contact him it has not gone well. Then on Saturday he was supposed to work all day for one person and he finished early. That is how we were able to see him in his garage and talk to him. He was very kind and had us give him a couple of chapters to read from the Book of Mormon. He promised us that he would read them some day. I...

Date Set!   Hey Y'all. I hope things are going well for y'all. Hopefully your Thanksgiving will go well for you.    Sorry this email is going to be really short. We just got asked to help someone move in an hour and we have a couple more errands we have to run today. This last week was really good. The highlights are that last Monday we had another lesson with Patrick and he accepted a date to be baptized on December 8th. I am so excited for him. He also came to church this week which was amazing.   I also got to go on exchange with Elder Galland. That was really fun. He is a great Elder that I was able to learn a lot from. He was the Assistant to the President and picked me up from the airport so it was nice to be back with him after 6 months.   We also had a member meal with Brother Hartzog. He is a really rich member who gave us a tour of his house which at least part is like Versaille in France.   We also did a lot of service for Chad and Kris C. They a...