Elder Beilman

Elder Beilman

Tuesday

Christmas Skype with Elder Beilman

We had a great Skype with Clayton on Christmas evening.  
He sounded happy and looked good.  It was great to get to talk to him.
His return date is coming fast- Jan. 30th he'll be at the S.L. airport
and his homecoming report at church will be Sunday, Jan. 31st.
Everyone is invited to come!

Clayton's 2015 Christmas Letter to the Missionaries

*Here is Clayton's Christmas letter that went to 70 missionaries serving missions from the 2 Richfield Stakes.  (Each Mom collected letters from each missionary's mom at a luncheon to send to her son for Christmas.)  Each missionary got a packet of letters from missionary friends in the Stake to hear about all the missions.
 _____________________________________
Elder Beilman here, I'm serving in the Fiji Suva Mission (if you don't know where that is, its a small island close to Tonga-I know just about all of you have seen "On the other side of heaven" so its similar to that. Not so much bush though). It is October 19th as I write this which mean I've been serving for about 20 months now.

One thing I've really liked to eat is ika vamiti(fijian word for fish with this coconut cream stuff with tomato onion) Oh and Fijian lovo(an earth oven thing). The worst thing I've had to eat is probably sea cucumber-not so much the taste, but the texture, its like eating a chewy muscle cartilage.

The most memorable experience that I've had so far is finding this family that is prepared to come back/get baptized. I was going through our membership record a couple of weeks ago and looking for names of members and where people stay and organizing it by area(it was organized by last name). And addresses are not a thing here in Fiji. But we were able to find this less active family that was baptized about 20 years ago, but since then had fallen away and even went to a different church for a while. But one day we had some time planned to find them. We found the house, but they were busy when we went, but we came again a different day and they received us gladly. They had told us they wanted their son, Vili, to be baptized because he wasn't baptized yet. They have about 5 others that arent members and a couple more of them want to be baptized. They've been coming to church since the first week we visited them. They are amazing. Not all of them are members and a couple don't want  to be, but they sit down with us anyway. But a couple of lessons ago we finished teaching the lesson, then invited them to share something they learned or if they had any questions. Then everybody at the house ended up sharing their testimonies. It filled the house with the Spirit. A couple of members that live nearby had told us that they are a lot happier now that they have been reading the Book of Mormon and coming to church. Its amazing. The hardest thing I've had to overcome physically is waking up every day at 6:30 am.

If I could share one thing with newer missionaries it would be to love the people. No matter what they do to you, whether they swear at you, or kick you out or anything like that. Just love them. And love those who do let you in.
Probably the most important thing I've learned on my mission is that the Lord will never put you through anything that you cannot handle. Everything that he does will be for your benefit. Though you may not think it will, it always does work out for you.

My testimony(in fijian)-
Au via wasea noqu ivakadinadina, ni'u kila tiko ni dina na lotu oqo. Dina na matabete, na ivakavuvuli ni lotu, na parofita kei iratou talega na iapositolo. Se bula tiko na Turaga Jisu Karisito ka lako mai vuravura me mate e vukuda me vukei keda lesu tale ki vua na Tamada Vakalomalagi. Koya talega na colata na noda icolacola, ka bokoca na noda ivalavala ca kevaka keda na vakabauti koya ka veivutuni. Au sa vakavinavinaka vua na Kalou me talai au ki Viti me'u wasea vei ira na kosipeli oqo. Au lomani ira kece sara na kai Viti. Sai ira na noqu vuvale.

My testimony(in English)-
I want to share my testimony, that I know this church is true. The priesthood, the teachings of the church, the prophet and apostles are true. Jesus Christ is still living, and came to the earth to die for us to help us return to our Heavenly Father. He will also carry our burdens and take away our sins if we believe in him and repent. I'm thankful to God to send me to Fiji for me to share to the people here this gospel. I love all the Fijians here. It is them who are my family.

Au lomani kemuni kece!
I love you all!
Loloma Bibi,
Elda Beilman

Sunday

2 Baptisms! Kula and Ruci


Dec. 13, 2015- 2 baptisms!

Hey everyone!
We had 2 baptisms on Saturday! Kula and Ruci, they were prepared to hear the gospel and it was such a blessing to be able to be the missionaries that got to teach them. Our ward also had a christmas party on Friday and that was a lot of fun! Our investigator Kula played Mary in the Nativity drama, and they didn't have anybody to play Joseph, so they asked me if I could play Joseph. So it was pretty fun. We had a lot of non-members attend so that was really good. We also had a lot of food to eat! But here are some pictures from last week. 
Loloma Levu,
Elda Beilman


Dec. 6, 2015

Hey  everyone,
We had a way good week!
Elder S. Gifford Nielsen came for mission tour, it was amazing!
we are planning on having 2 baptisms this week!
Love you!
Loloma,
Elda Beilman

Tuesday

November 29, 2015

Well first off, I just received your package! Thank you!!
This week was great!!! I had the opportunity to go to a different island to go on exchanges and do a baptismal interview. So the island is named Ovalau, but I went to the town called Levuka. It is the old capital of Fiji. It was way beautiful out there! We took a boat at like 4 pm on Tuesday and arrived in Levuka around 7 pm. We stayed with the two Elders on the island, Elder Kubera and Elder Young. They are doing really good! They had 2 baptisms on Saturday so they are working hard out there. There is a tuna packaging plant there in Levuka town, so it smelled really bad in town all day. After a while you kind of get used to it, but if you leave town and come back, it hits you really bad again. But we stayed until Saturday morning. We had to wake up at like 3 in the morning to catch a bus to the jetty(dock) that takes us to the main island. It was a lot of fun.
This week we are having a baptism on Saturday and having Mission Tour on Wednesday! I'm really looking forward to having a good week this week. The only bad thing is I think it will go by really really fast!
Well I have to go, Thanks for everything!
Love you guys!
Loloma,
Elda Beilman

Nov. 15, 2015

Hey,
Things have been a bit rough lately. Well, just trying to find the investigators the sisters were teaching and also finding the members has been really difficult because they didn't really leave a good map to find them. But we are getting there slowly. We have had a couple of miracles lately though. Even though we've been super busy trying to find people and working with all the members of the zone, we are receiving referrals and finding really sincere investigators. So things have been really good. We had 4 investigators come to church on Sunday, and one of them has a baptismal date for the 28th of November. So yeah.. Doing good here!
Loloma levu,
Elda Beilman

Nov. 8, 2015

Hey everyone!
Sorry, this will be super short.
Things are good, we are white-washing, and we had 2 new areas open so we've been crazy busy these past couple of days! Driving everywhere. Our mission just got bigger so they split a zone into two zones now and I'm one of the Zone Leaders for the Northern Zone. My companion is Elder Sterr. He is the man. From Arizona. We are going to do work here!
I was pretty excited to hear that the Royals won the World Series as well. Its been a while!
Planning on just coming back and living with Warren till I can find a job before school starts again.
Thanks for Everything!!
Loloma levu,
Elda Beilman