This week was really long, but it was great!

Women's conference
We had her sisters conference this past week. It was awesome! All of
the sisters from the mission got together at the Mission home and went
to a bunch of different workshops together. It was all based off of
Elder Klebingats talk from conference.  President Calderwood talked
about being spiritually self reliant.  I think we sometimes forget to
build ourselves up spiritually just as much as we do temporally.  Our
spirits can be much older and wiser than our bodies, we need to make
sure we are helping our spirits to continue growing as we get older.
If we aren't continuing to grow our spirits, that is when the natural
man starts to take over.  President explained it much better than I
do, but it was a great workshop. One of the other speakers was Sister
Glass, a lady that lives here in New York that has a Im a Mormon video
made about her.  She felt abandoned as a child by her father and had
to learn how to forgive him. Her workshop with about Obedience and the
blessings that come from being obedient.  It was really good!

Mareike got baptized!
Yesterday Mareike got baptized! I got to go back to Lynbrook to watch.
She was so excited and this whole process has been really quick. She
started meeting with the missionaries in January, Developed a faith in
God, and was baptized on the 15th of February. It is amazing to me
that someone who has never had a belief in God can develop so much
faith so quickly.  Both her and James were so happy and their new goal
is to go to the temple in a year. They both told me that they are
planning on coming to visit me in Patchogue someday. That would be
sweet!

Nicole came to church
When we came to this area we only have one investigator in our
teaching pool.  (We have a lot of finding to do) Her name is Nicole
and she is really sweet. She knows that the church is true but has to
work some things out with her husband before she can be baptized. But
she always return scriptures, prays and is getting better about coming
to church.  Hopefully things will work out for her so that she can be
baptized soon.

Service is the best
The past couple weeks it has snowed a couple inches each week. We have
had lots of opportunities to go shovel and provide service for people.
Today it is about 9° outside and the wind makes it even colder.
Hopefully it will warm up a little bit this next week.  On Valentines
sister Passey and I went and heart attack a bunch of people doors.
Little did we know the other sister missionaries had done the same
thing. So some people were just extra loved on Valentine's Day and
were heart attacked twice.  :)

6 months!
I hit my 6 month mark on the 6th so I get to go to the temple this
week!  Yayyyy!  I am so excited.  It has been so long since I have
been able to go.  The temple is such an amazing place, don't take it
for granted. That is my highlight of this next week :)

I hope this past week was amazing and everyone is looking forward to
this up coming one!  I know I am!  Thank you again for all of your
love and support.
Love,
Sister Beecher

Snow, China town, Transfer calls, and more Snow!

This week was an exciting one for sure!  Wow, a lot has happened I
don't even really know where to begin.  I guess with last Tuesday.
Tuesday was the day of the big snow "blizzard".  It did snow all
through Monday night and most of the day Tuesday.  But I guess I have
a different definition of blizzard.  A blizzard to me means the snow
is coming down in thick sheets and you can barely see I front of you.
Basically all it did was snow all day.  Just steady flurries it wasn't
too thick or wet.  Anyway, we ended up getting a little over 20 inches
which was enough that were not allowed to drive the car that day.  We
had to cancel our appointments and decided to have a snow day.  We
went shoveling from 8-5:30.  We started at the Malinkas house and then
shoveled out their whole road.  We also went to Sister Tessells and
shoveled her house as well.  It was really fun, exhausting, but fun.

Wednesday we had our first lesson with a Spanish family.  Husband,
wife, and two little boys.  They are so amazing and very ready to
receive this Gospel!  Of course I couldn't really communicate with
them, Sister Coleman had to do all the talking but I did get to
testify at one point and she translated for me.  Xiomara, the mom,
came to church this past Sunday!  Her husband had to work.  But she
said both her and her husband are practicing praying and will be
willing to say a prayer this next week.

On Thursday we had a mission wide Sister exchange.  I was assigned to
the Flushing Queens, Chinese district for the day.  I was serving with
Sister Hironaka (from Hawaii).  I felt like I was in China, almost
everyone I saw was Asian, the majority being Chinese.  After we
exchanged we went to a ward counsel meeting for their ward.  That was
interesting.  Everyone spoke chinese except for me and Sister Jones (a
sister from my zone that was also assigned there).  So the two of us
sat there for 2 1/2 hrs not understanding a word.  Except for one
sentence about half way through the meeting.  One of the men said
"Chinese no like white."  Hahahaha we were trying to hold in our
giggles considering we were the only white people in the room.  We
found out after that he was talking about white paper.  Apparently the
Chinese print their funeral programs on white paper.  It was really
funny.  After the meeting we went to their apartment and went to bed.
The next day after studies we met up with the other sisters at the
food mall.  That was such a cool place!  It had about 2 mini grocery
stores and a million little food chains all squeezed into one
building.  It had every kind of Chinese/Japanese/Korean type of food
you could have wanted.  I was told I needed to try the dumplings so I
went in there with that goal in mind.  I ended up getting Chinese
dumplings and some rice balls.  I had tried Italian rice balls a
couple weeks earlier and loved them so I was hoping these would be
similar.  Boy was I wrong... It was like the outside layer of Mochi
ice cream except 5 times thicker with this weird black bean sauce
inside.  I could only down four and then I gave up.  The dumplings
were alright, nothing too special.  But Sister Jones got fried
noodles, oh those were good!  She was nice enough to share with me.
We also stopped by a Korean/French bakery on the way to the church.
Oh man was that place fancy!  You took a little wooden tray and some
tongs to go pick out what pastries you wanted to purchase. It was so
classy.  After we ate we had a lesson with a 60 year old lady named
Grace.  She could speak a little English and really wants to learn
more.  It was a simple lesson about hope but I think she understood
most of it.  We ended the day with a district street sweep passing out
flyers for English class.  I can now say free english class in
Chinese.  "Meinfei yingwen ban"  People just looked at me crazy as I
was saying it, probably cause I couldn't say it fast enough as they
walked by.

Then on Saturday we had transfer calls!  I'm OUT!  Which means I am
going to a new area tomorrow!  I'm really sad to be leaving Lynbrook,
there are so many people I love here, but I am ready for a change.  I
will let you all know where I end up next week!

Today, it is snowing/raining again.  I've been told that when the
temperature drops all this slush will be black ice.  Sooo maybe we
won't be going to transfers tomorrow??

Have a good week everyone!  I love you all and hope you have a blessed day!
Sister Beecher


This is half of my zone.