June 22, 2014

Hey everyone!

Sorry about last week, I was trying to email everybody I could and didn't have much time to write you. But no I didn't get transferred, my trainer got transferred to Suva, his dream area. So I got a new companion, his name is Elder Ravutaumada. He is from Taveuni which is known as the garden island here in fiji, I want to serve on that island someday. But he is awesome, he only has 4 months left on his mission, so Rakiraki might be his last area. Everything here is really good. Unfortunately, we had to move one of our Baptismal Dates that was set for the 28th this month back because he didn't come to church yesterday. But that's okay, it won't be too long. We have 3 investigators with baptismal dates! Really good. We just need to teach them everything, 2 of them are really good and the other one is a former investigator who 2 years ago wanted to go on a mission. We never really taught him much since I've been here so we didn't know that until I went through the area book and saw his name. We saw him 2 saturday's ago and asked if he still wanted to go on a mission, and he said yes. So we talked about baptism and the reasons why we are baptized and everything. It was really good. He just needs permission from his family and come to church. But he is really good. The other day, we read in Preach My Gospel and it said something about praying for unexpected things to come into your path(something along those lines) and it really struck me. So before we started proselyting I said a prayer that we could have some unexpected things happen throughout the day, and we had one. It was really good, we went to visit a less active in this village called Vatuse(we don't go there often, I've only been there 2 times since I've been here) and she took us to the house of this other former investigator that really wanted us to come over and take the lessons again. It was great, we are going to visit him again on Friday.
That is crazy that the baby is here already! I feel like it was yesterday that you were given the Christmas present that said how many weeks till you are grandparents. That's good that he is doing okay though!
Thanks for the updates!
Love you guys!
Elder Beilman

My trainer that got transferred to Suva on the left(Elder Leota). 

My new companion on the right(Elder Ravutaumada).

June 8, 2014

Hey everyone,

That's good that you're having a good time in Kauai.
Fiji is a little different, well at least in the West. It doesn't rain everyday.
I heard that Suva gets rain more often than it does here. But that's okay.
We had a really good week. Had some awesome lessons with 4 new
investigators. One of them came to church yesterday and we only sat
down with him once. He was a referral from one of our members. We are
going to try to have a baptism for him on the 28th of June. Our
mission goal for this quarter is 220 baptisms. I guess we are pretty
behind as of right now, but hopefully my companion and I can help with
2 more baptisms. We were going for 5 baptisms each in our district,
but we only had 2 investigators come to church this week and the
quarter ends this month. So hopefully they will be able to enter the
waters of baptism this month. But its not our timing, but Heavenly
Father's. We just have to find and teach the ones who are prepared. We
are going to Nadi tomorrow for our Zone Conference, which is good, but
it puts us out of our area for 3 days, which kind of sucks because we
want to see our investigators sooner. We came to Ba yesterday after
church and going to Lautoka for Zone Pday and going to Nadi tomorrow.
Crazy week.
I can't believe how fast its going by. It has already been 4 months
since I've been on my mission. 2 more months and I will be 1/4 of my
way through. I knew it would go by fast, so I'm trying to make
everyday worth it and work as hard as possible. But that just makes it
go faster. So I don't know what to do there. Well I hope all is well!
Take care!
Love you all!
Elder Beilman

Here is a picture of our branch!

June 1, 2014

Hey everyone!

This week was really good, had a lot of lessons. That's the only bad
thing here in my area, its really spread out and we usually have to
walk pretty far to get to our lessons. Sometimes we are pretty late to
the lessons because of that. Hopefully we can get a truck or something
soon. The bikes don't do much because most of the roads are "gravel"
but really its a dirt road with boulders. Well not that bad, but the
rocks are baseball sized in a lot of areas. Its hard to walk on, too
actually haha. Thanks for the Ecco's. These sandals are awesome. They
will last a long time here. My companion went threw like 6 pairs of
sandals that he bought here in Fiji. But they are all leather, or fake
leather not really sure, and they don't last long. So I'm really
grateful that I have these sandals. I have a tan line on my feet(from
the little holes on the sides) that looks pretty funny when I take my
sandals off. That's probably the only down side haha. I also have a
sweet tan line from my watch, I guess it's bound to happen here in
Fiji though, can't really help that.
Yesterday was really good. We had some good food. At the unit we cover
in Nakorkula, we had Roro and Dalo/Kassava(which was alright, I can
eat it) but Sunday night, we had Fish and Chicken and Dalo. The
chicken was so good! Best chicken I've had since I've been here. They
don't take out the bones in the chicken for the curry, so it sucks if
you ever want to get chicken curry at a restaurant, but this chicken
was boiled, I think, and it was the chicken breast so it was really
good. The fish was good too. We had a lot to eat. That's the good
thing here if you can get used to the food, the Fijians will keep
feeding you until you can't eat anymore haha. Well, I hope all is
well! Thanks for the email and the support!
Love you guys!
Elder Beilman

Here is a picture of roro(in the bowl) and dalo on the plate:

May 25, 2014

Hey everyone!
This week was amazing! Saturday was full of miracles, pretty much the whole day was a miracle.
We got invited to a wedding in this village called Namuaimada and it was the first time we've been to this village because we didn't have any work out there. But when we got there, my companion told me that the last elders that were here in 2011 were ran out of this village! Crazy! But when we were there, we got to meet a lot of people and even had an intro lesson with a man named Weis.
Another man had a lot of questions, but we were unable to sit down with him because we needed to go back to the flat and do our studies. So we just gave him a restoration pamphlet. I think we will be going back there in a couple of weeks. Probable take it slow with that village. But while we were waiting for the bus back to town, we had this woman come up to us and ask us if we were LDS and we said yeah, we are the missionaries and she was talking about another woman in the
village that was wondering where the church was. We were able to meet the one who was looking for the church and she told us she is currently living in American Samoa for work, but she was just baptized at the end of April!! Crazy! When we were talking to her, a bus came, but we still needed to talk to her and the bus wasn't going to wait, so we decided to stay and talk to her and the bus left. When we finished talking to her, we saw 2 men that were at the wedding that we talked with a little and they offered us a ride back to town(about 30 minutes away). When we got to town, we stopped at the market to buy some bananas so we can have pancakes with them and we paid $1.50 for like 50 or 60 bananas, we thought it was too much so we gave some away to some people that we know, and we still had like 20 or 30. When we were walking back to the flat we got another ride from this Fijian man that we always see when we walk to the bridge that is out. He gave us a ride in a really big truck that is used for carrying rocks and dirt and stuff. That was really nice, then we tried to give him some
bananas, but he wouldn't take them! He told us that picking us up and dropping us off was a blessing. Hopefully one day we will get to sit down with him. We are just way busy! But thank you for the email and everything! I got the package about 2 weeks ago, but my district leader still has it.
I'll pick it up tomorrow. Thank you for everything!
Oh and we had a baptism in the ocean yesterday!! Yawa(far out) hahaha
Love you guys!
Love, Elder Beilman

May 18, 2014

Hey everyone!
Thanks for the email and the pictures. Unfortunately, I haven't heard from my mom in a while.
She hasn't e-mailed me back for about a month or so. Don't know why. So I only got to skype my dad. That was really good though. I'm really happy I got to do that. I think it really helped him too.

But everything here is going well.  My companion and I didn't get to proselyte much this week. Lots of things happened. Monday and Tuesday we were in Ba which is like 2 hours away from our area. But we were there so we could skype.  On Wednesday I was sick as well as Thursday.
Just a sore throat and a bad cough. I still have the cough, but its slowly going away.
On Friday, we got to proselyte for about 5 hours and that was good. We went to visit our Second counselor's, President Besetimoala, son Xavier. He is awesome, he is really thinking about going on a mission. Hopefully he does, that would really help his family. They are all less active. We had dinner with them and shared a little bit of the gospel. It was really good. Then on Saturday, it rained all day.
And it rained a lot. Town started to flood and we had to go back to the flat. We couldn't proselyte anywhere because everywhere we would/could go was getting flooded. And we didn't want to put
ourselves in any danger. Then on Sunday we had church cancelled because of the flood/weather, but we went to visit one of our investigators, Shayal who was supposed to be baptized yesterday, and
town wasn't flooded anymore and all the water was gone. So I'm not completely sure why it was cancelled. We could have had church in my opinion. But it's not up to me. The worst part is that Xavier walked an hour to church yesterday to come and we had to tell him it was cancelled. Hopefully he comes next week though. Thanks again for the e-mail! Hope all is well!
Love you guys!
Elder Beilman

May 12, 2014

Hey everyone,

Snow in May?! That's kind of crazy... but there wasn't much snow during winter anyway, so maybe it will help. Sounds like you are still pretty busy. Yeah, I got the email with the PIN number, thanks. I still haven't got the package from Easter. It's probably in Suva right now. The Zone leaders are probably going to pick it up soon and I'll get it at the end of May. That's the only bad thing about living away from Suva. But oh well. As long as I get it.

We had a really good week this week. The whole mission set a goal for 220 baptisms this quarter (April, May, June.) We get our new mission president in July, so it's supposed to be a little going away present for President Klingler and a Welcoming present for President Layton.
So we set a goal as a mission to get 6 new investigators last week and invite them to baptism after the 2nd teaching appointment. We got 7 new investigators! It was so cool. We had service on Wednesday last week and we were finished early so we were looking for another man's house that said we could help him anytime we need service, but we wer looking for about 45 minutes then we walked by this house that had this young woman and a little girl that said "Bula" as we walked by, and I was prompted to go over there and OYM them. But at first we just walked by, but all I could think about is talking to them. So we went back and set up another appointment. When we came back, the young
woman, Vani, seemed really excited to see us come back. We are going to see them on Wednesday. Way excited. Grateful to be here.
Anyway, I don't have much time.
Love you all,
Elder Beilman

This is what I had for dinner the other night. It's called Duruka. 

It was pretty good. Looks way gross though, haha.

May 4, 2014

Hey everyone!

Sorry, I don't have much time again.
But that's funny that Jane's clogging thing at Lagoon and Curt's State tennis is the same time again. That was a lot of fun last year! I can't believe that was almost a year ago already. Time is flying by. But that's good that Curt is doing really good again in tennis and got to go repelling. 5:40 Mile-Alli! Whoa, I think that is faster than any of my times, that's way good.  Nice photo bomb, Jane, haha. I miss you guys haha.
We are super busy. Everyday. I can't believe that I'm tired before 10 pm every single night. We walk so far. The other day, it was around 7-8 miles.  I always tell my companion there isn't enough time in the day.  I wish we could see everybody more.  Right after studies and lunch, we proselyte and then it seems like 30 minutes later we are back at the flat, even though its like 8:30 at night.  We have permission to get back at 8 because we never have dinner appointments.  Nobody can afford to feed us.  It's kind of sad.  Sometimes our 2nd counselor in the Branch Presidency feeds us but that is usually it.  We walked about 3 miles to get to this village to visit a less active on Friday night.  She called us the night before and really begged us to come and visit her. She is about 60-70 years old and really really nice. When we got there it was dark, and she had made us food.  But there wasn't a man in the house so we couldn't go inside.  We had asked her if it was okay if we could sit outside (which is what we do a lot if there isn't a man in the house.)  At first she was confused, but we had to explain to her we can't come in if there isn't a man in the house.  We were able to sit on the "porch" of somebody else's house.  And we got to visit with her for a while.  She hasn't been to church in over a year.  A lot of people ask if there is transportation to get to church, because a lot of people say they can't come because of that.  I wish it was different here and everybody in the village had a car- that way they don't have an excuse like that, but most of them don't even try to come. We are really trying to get more people to come to church, it would help out so much.  Hopefully they will realize soon how important it is to come to church to remember the Savior.

I hope you all have a good week! Thanks for the e-mails!
Love you all!
Elder Beilman

April 27, 2014

Hey everyone!
Sounds like you had a pretty busy week!
Angels Landing is awesome, I have done it one time. But its beautiful at the top.
We have what is called here in Fiji a "flat" which is what they call their houses.  I'll try to send you a picture of it.  I don't know if it will work today though. But yeah there are grocery stores here. They are way small though and don't have a big selection like they have in America. In Rakiraki, where I'm currently serving, we have like 3 main stores and they are all about the size of your house, on the main floor of your house anyway.  Maybe smaller.  But we get enough food.  Rakiraki town is really small. There is a block that has a bunch of small stores in a big square and everybody lives away from it.  It's hard to explain.
This is kind what it looks like. Just a big square with stores on all sides. But everybody lives away from it. Its a 10 minute walk from our flat. 
---------------------------------------
l                                     l
l                                     l
l                                     l
l                                     l
l                                     l
l                                     l------------------------------------------
l                                     l (this is a road going in to town.)
-----------------------------------------------------------------------------


But this week was good. We didn't have much lessons because we have been out of our area a lot this week. We had to go to Suva on Monday which took all day to go there and back. Tuesday we had district meeting in Tavua which is an hour away. Wednesday we had to leave at 5 to come to Ba which is 2 hours away.  Well I stayed in Ba and my companion and our District Leader went to Nadi which is 4 hours from Rakiraki. We didn't get back till 10ish on Friday and we had to do weekly planning that day.  Had to go to Lautoka(3 hours from Rakiraki) on Sunday morning for Stake conference and we are staying in Ba right now because we have Zone p-day in Lautoka Today and Zone Training Meeting tomorrow. So we haven't even been in our area much this week.
It has been crazy. We had a couple of good lessons though.
Anyway, thanks for the update and the e-mails. I appreciate them!
Love you guys!
Love, Elder Beilman

*Sorry, I can't send a picture today. I don't have to right cord to plug in to the computer.

April 20, 2014

Hey everyone!

Thanks for the e-mail!  I really appreciate them. We had a good week this week, we were able to have sacrament and we can get authority to preside if it happens again so we will be able to have sacrament. We were watching the Sunday session of general conference and my companion realized that is was Oct 2013's session. The Stake gave everybody the wrong one haha. But the Saturday session was the right one. We previewed it. But we watched the last conference one anyway. It was actually perfect because in one of the talks, it was about the law of chastity, and one of our investigators is awesome but we can't get her baptized until her "husband"(they aren't techinically married, that's just what the fijian's say) gets divorced from his "ex-wife" who I haven't ever met or seen. And he is a member of the church. We met with them a week or so ago and talked about the Family Proclamation with them so hopefully everything can get figured out with that soon.
Thank you for sending a package! You didn't have to do that. It will probably be a while before I get it, it will take at least 2 weeks. So I'll let you know when I get it.
Thanks again! Love you guys!
Elder Beilman

April 13, 2014

Hey everyone!

Sounds like you will be busy! Yes that is the correct address. You can just mail the packages to the GPO box #215 if you want, I guess it doesn't matter. My companion got his packages sent there.
So I guess we were supposed to watch General Conference this weekend, but our Branch President is going back to his old ways.  Our 2nd counselor is less active again (my companion and the Elder before me reactivated him) because our Branch President doesn't listen to him at all and he is fed up with our president. We didn't even have church yesterday because President Ratu was at work.. and he didn't tell anybody.  Our 1st counselor is in a different village looking over a unit that is there in Nakorokula which is about 30 minutes away(by bus). So we usually go there on Sunday's as well to pass the sacrament, but the bus ran late and we were unable to do sacrament because all the men that were in the unit had to leave to go to a different village that some of them live in and help out with the 2 deaths that happened on Saturday. But I guess most missionaries watched General Conference this weekend. Our president was supposed to get it so everybody can watch it, but that didn't happen. We talked to him on Saturday night because we had a lesson with these 2 investigators that wanted to meet him so we told our president after the lesson they want to meet him so we were going to try to set up a lesson that he could come with us and teach them. But while we were there, he didn't tell us he would be working in the morning on Sunday. So its really frustrating here in RakiRaki.  I don't want to tell our investigators to come to church if we aren't going to have church. We had a lot well, most people who showed up on Sunday are less active members some walked way way far!! And we had to tell them we can't have church. It sucks! I feel bad for them.  They don't deserve to have this bad experience at church.  Almost all the recent converts in the area are less active. I don't want to baptize someone and have them go less active because we don't have a good president. There are no callings in the branch at all. Only the Branch Presidency. Its really frustrating. But we'll see, it can only get better from here right? haha.  I've been told "if I can survive RakiRaki, I can survive my mission." haha- coming from missionaries and our 2nd counselor who is less active.

Well, I hope things are going well!
Love, Elder Beilman

Oh and yes, I'm adjusting to the food. This is what I had for lunch with some members on Sunday. It was pretty good. There is some gray potato like food called Dalo that is really bland and starchy that I hated at first, but I'm getting used to it. It's not in the picture though.

My companion(Elder Leota) and I.

April 6, 2014

This is some new missionaries and their trainers. We had a training on Tuesday last week. 

Hey everyone!

Thank you all for the e-mail! Before I forget!! Julie, if you send a package, don't send meat including Beef Jerky, I guess customs confiscates it and they have been having problems with that. I don't know why so many people want to send meat through the mail, but okay. I guess they don't have much beef here though.
I haven't been able to watch General Conference yet. I heard we have to wait a couple weeks to get the DVD's then we can watch it.
We have like 15 or 16 investigators right now. They are all pretty great. My companion set a goal of 15 baptisms before he leaves this area, so we are shooting for that.  He has had a total of 3 so far. Hopefully we can hit that number. Before I got here, there was a general authority that challenged the mission to find the best month they had for baptisms and double it. March was the month that they were going to try to double it. The most in one month was 50 so we had to hit 100.  We had 78 the 3rd week and had to get 22 to hit the 100.  I guess we got 42! So we ended up getting 122 baptisms in the Month of March!! Crazy.
My Mission president leaves at the end of June and we are going to try to get 120 that month. So it will be a good challenge.  I think we will do really well in our area these next coming months though so that's good.  We have 2 investigators with baptismal dates around May, and one hopefully in the next 2 weeks!  I'm really excited for them.  One of them is Shiyal, she is an Indian woman and really really wants to be baptized! The only problem is her husband's mom, who is catholic.  I guess her husbands mom is putting a lot of pressure on her husband because he is catholic as well, but he isn't active.  But he doesn't want to get disowned from his parents because of the decision his wife, Shiyal, is making. Its really sad, but I think she will be baptized. Her husband really didn't want to take the lesson's at all and always avoided my companion and the one before me, but the other day, we had dinner with them and read from the Book of Mormon.  It was amazing, her husband( his name is Koresi) sat with us and I had asked him if he wanted to read a verse for us from Ether chapter 2 and he did.  We just went around the room reading chapter 2 and 3. It was great! But one of our investigators before I came here, was an MJ(Micheal Jordan)-Investigator with a baptismal date.  And I guess someone talked to her and the next lesson, she said she had already been baptized and that she will be busy. So my companion didn't see her for a month or so and she went down to a Shaq (Investigator that isn't progressing) But she went up to a LeBron(Progressing investigator) recently and after last week, she became an MJ again. Its amazing! Her name is Vasiti. We have another investigator that is doing really good as well, his name is Isimeli, we are going to extend a baptismal date next time we see him. Its really hard though, because he lives 40 minutes away in a small village and we have to take a bus every time. So we have a 10-15 minute walk to town then we wait for the bus to leave, then when we get there and finish our lessons, we have to wait for a bus to come down the road. Which can take anywhere from 5 minutes to 2 hours. so it would be way nice if we had a truck, but that's okay.

Well that's about all that I have for today. Oh yeah, last night, we went to visit our 2nd counselor in our branch presidency, President Besetmuala who was supposed to be in a different town, well we originally went there to visit his less active sons(they are 17, 19, and 21 i think) but he came back last night. And we have to go down this way long gravel road on the bikes and it sucks a lot!  The gravel roads here are terrible, a lot of the rocks are pretty big and it sucks when you hit them on the bike. My butt hurts from the seat.  I'm praying that we will get a truck soon, that would be so helpful. But if not, that's okay.
Much love!
Love, Elder Beilman

*Oh! and tell Kara happy birthday for me!

 This is the bridge now. It was pretty sketchy when I was going over it.

 Eating after church with the members. 2 boys that are members.

 Some fijian food. 

A spider that i had to kill with a 2 liter fanta bottle. 

They have pineapple and raspberry fanta here! It's way good!

March 30, 2014

Hey everyone!

Sorry this will be short!
We had a baptism on Saturday. I did the confirmation on Sunday. It was amazing. Our branch president showed up 20 minutes late, so it's amazing that we were able to have the confirmation.
I prayed way hard that he would show up so we could have church and a couple of minutes later he came.  It was awesome.

I gave another missionary, Elder Utai a blessing last night because he was way sick. He felt a lot better right after the blessing, but today he isn't feeling too well again. Hopefully he gets better.
We got 2 new bikes finally. But it doesn't help a whole lot because there is a bridge that is out that we have been able to walk/ride in a boat across so far, but there is no way we could get the bikes across.

I got an e-mail from somebody else with my same last name today!!! He spells it with 2 n's at the end though, that's how mine used to be spelled. Way cool! I'll send the email he sent me. Anyway, I love you guys!

Love, Elder Beilman

Oh, and I don't eat a whole lot of Fijian food, because they are super poor and don't have enough money to feed the missionaries, but I did have fish a couple of times. It's just in this area that I'm in that the people are really poor. My companion said its the poorest area he has had on his mission.
So the only thing you have to worry about with sending a package, is the postage. I don't have to pay to pick it up. Just probably don't send anything expensive. I talked to my companion and he said he hasn't had to pay anything to pick up his packages up.

*Below is the letter Clayton received from a guy at Dixie univ. with his same last name:
_____________________________________________________________
Bula,
 I saw your picture on the wall of the institute in St George and I just had to write you.
I had always thought that the only Beilman(n)s that were members of the church were my immediate family since it isn't a very common name and my dad was a convert to the church and none of his siblings are members. I am interested in hearing about when your family joined the church. I am also into genealogy so it would be great if I could get some of that information too. Even though the spelling is a little different we could still be related.
   It is also cool your in Fiji. I was there about 2 years ago. If you happen to end up in the ward in Nadi tell everyone hi for me. They may remember my mom Donna better since she has been there three times and I have only been there once. Too bad you can't go swimming, the waters great all year around. I suppose that is why I got sent to Peoria Illinois for my mission. I probably wouldn't have made it 2 years without swimming (no one wants to swim in the Mississippi river). At least I didn't have to drink kava for two years, it is gross. If you haven't had the pineapples yet go get some, they are the best I have ever had. Go get some strawberry Oreos, too. It is too bad we can't get either in the USA.
   Well I don't want to take up too much of you preperation day so I'll stop here. Don't let the fijian's relaxed attitude and "Fiji time" get in the way of the work. That is especially true for the bishop you mentioned. He should know better.

Don't get eaten,
Eric Beilmann
_____________________________________________________________

Fiji first letter! March 23, 2014

Hey everyone!

I flew in on Monday morning. It was a way long flight, like 10 hours and I only got like 3 or 4 hours of sleep. And when we got here, it was like 6 in the morning so I had to stay awake the rest of the day or I would have been jet lagged so I was way tired when we got here. But the first day, we got our sulu's (man skirts) and they are so nice! It is pretty hot down here so its nice that we don't have to wear slacks.

The area where I'm serving is called Raki Raki.  It's on the main island but pretty much at the north-most part of the island. We are in a bicycling area, but 2 of the 3 bikes are broken, so we walk a lot!  It's pretty hard though, we have a really big area, sometimes it takes like more than an hour to walk to the house we are going to. It's an area considered "bush" which kind of means there are gravel roads and farms and wooded areas. The town raki raki is really small.

My companion is way awesome!  His trainer was Brother Stock, who was one of my teachers at the MTC so its way cool.  My companions name is Elder Leota and he is a fantastic missionary. He is teaching me a lot.

My first lesson that I taught was to the chief of the village!! It was kind of nerve racking, it was the very first time my companion talked to him too, so it was really crazy. we are meeting with him today so it should be good. We have like 14 Investigators right now and we are super busy.  The big problem here in Raki Raki at the branch is that our branch presidency isn't doing their calling very well.
So there isn't a lot of good leadership. The 2nd counselor does almost everything, and he didn't even show up to sacrament yesterday because he is fed up with the branch president not doing anything. we were supposed to have a baptism yesterday morning, but the branch president cancelled it because he wasn't prepared. It's really sad, because the investigator Paula is doing awesome, his aunt and uncle are members and he lives with them, and they didn't come to church yesterday, but Paula walked all the way!  It is a way far walk too, like an hour walk at least.  He is 15, but we are going to do the baptism on Saturday, so hopefully everything works out.

We have a couple of other investigators that are doing way good too, we are going to invite one to be baptized sometime in the next couple of weeks tonight after we teach our lesson.  But the only problem with teaching is that we have to have permission from their parents if they are under 18 and if they are married, their, spouse.  And a lot of the husbands won't let their wife be baptized which is really sad. There is one investigator named Shyal that wants to be baptized, but her husband said he will leave her if she does so its way sad. Anyway, I have to go now. I'll attach some pictures.

Love, Elder Beilman

-Oh and the people here are super poor.  It's way sad.  Most of their houses are made from cement blocks and metal.  It's crazy.  And they sit on the floor all the time.  It's hard to get used to that, but I'm getting there. Oh! And the food is kind of gross, not going to lie. But I'm praying that I'll start liking it because I don't want to be disrespectful if I don't eat it.

Here are some of my teachers at the MTC and everybody in my intake.

 First meal and sunset. Here, they leave the bones in the meat, so when you eat it, you have to pick out the bones as you chew it, it kind of sucks, but oh well.

Fiji tomorrow!

Hey everyone!

Thanks for the email! I appreciate it when I get those from all of you.
Yeah, I received the banana bread, thank you!  It was way good! I wasn't able to eat much of it, so I gave a lot of it to some missionaries that are going to Russia that I talk to every now and then. Their class is in the same building as mine so they have come over to our class to share their testimony and scriptures and other things in Russian and we share things with them in Fijian.

It's pretty fun here, I will actually miss it! I love my teachers, they are the best! I'm really grateful for the things they have taught me and for the love they have for us.  I keep forgetting to ask what I can receive in packages sent to Fiji! sorry! But I am going to send you 2 boxes of clothes that I won't need and a couple of other things that I don't need to take with me so just a heads up on that.  I appreciate the love and support I have from you!  The next time you hear from me, I'll be in FIJI!  Can't wait to get there.  Just one more day!  I can't believe how fast these past 5 weeks have gone by.  Hopefully I'll be able to be able to kind of slow down a little when I get to Fiji and enjoy the time that I have there!  I'll send pictures of me in the Sulu when I get them!  It will be the best haha!  My teacher actually brought some of his in the other day and we got to try them on.

Love you!
love, Elder Beilman

March 7, 2014

Hey, this will be a super short letter! Sorry!
My time has come to an end on the computer today.... I feel like it was 10 minutes ago that I got on here.  Thanks for the email and the updates on everything.

This week we got our flight plans! We leave on Saturday the 15th at noon and board a plane to LAX at 3:30 and land in LA at 4:25 or something like that. then we have a 7 hour layover and board a plane at 11:35 to Fiji and arrive in Fiji on MONDAY at 6 in the morning! We skip Sunday!  That will be kind of weird.  But we cross the international date line so we will be on Monday when it's Sunday here. its an 18 hour difference.

My companion and I were asked to serve as the zone leaders in our zone.  So we will take over on Sunday.  It will only be for like 5 days, but hopefully we do a good job.  We have 24 new missionaries coming on Wednesday! And we have to give them the new missionary orientation Wednesday night. And we are hosting on Wednesday, too!  We got to host on Wednesday this week and it was a lot of fun so I'm glad we get to do it again.

Oh and I did get the package Amy and Royce sent me, can you tell them I said thanks? I don't have their email or anything. I  guess I should write them a letter soon.  I'll try to do that. 

Sorry I didn't send any pictures, I didn't really take any new ones this week.

Thank you for everything,

Love you all

Elder Beilman