Flat Dallin flies to the Aviary

We took Flat Dallin on a field trip

That's him by a cool road runner

Golden Eagles...they have been known to fly off with a catch on 8 lbs.!

I love Flamingos! Dallin had two friends named Erika and Paul so when we moved from Logan, we named our two pink flamingos Erika and Paul.  That's what all flamingo's names are to me!

Hyrum fed that peacock!



Thank you Hyrum!

Second week there...he's getting a workout!

Beck Family!

So my goodness, i have just been having one heck of a time out here. Your not gonna believe this, but i still dont have my camera, it is somewhere in the apartment, so i still have to send you all the pics from the mtc and my first few weeks here. I know, i must be killing you, but i there are just so many things that i have to do on p day that i pretty much forget to grab it. today i woke up at 5'30 to get a haircut. My comp cut my hair, he pretty much just gave me a glorified buzz cut. I look more like i should be in the army than a missionary, but hey maybe it is a good look. Then at 6 i go to do my laundry, and since then all i have done is go shopping and clean the apartment. P day is literally as busy, or more, than every other day of the week. It is complete anarchy. But i love it all. Last week i had some crazy things happen. I had to go on exchanges without a spanish speaking companion, in my area. My comp, Elder Leon, is a district leader, so he has to go and do excahnges with the other missionaries in the district. So last week, after i had only been here for 7 days, he left me in charge of my area, and the companion i got stuck with for 24 hours didnt speak a lick of spanish. He had been out here for a while, but he somehow didnt know how to say jack squat in spanish. So for the whole day i was the one contacting people, trying to get appointments, and proselyte all in spanish. Eventually i some how talked my way into someones home, and taught the entire first lesson, all in spanish, and they actually invited us back.

They are just this perfect little family, and if i get my way they are all gonna be baptized. It was crazy, i didnt know where anything was, even how to get back to my own apartment, but i was left in charge of the area. And i got a family worth of new investigators. I dont even know what i was saying when i was in their home, but apparently it was good enough that they invited us all back. I also turned a street contact into a blessing.

This random guy we talked to just unloaded on us about all his problems, so then we asked if he wanted a blessing, and he said yes. So he took us back to his appartment, and i gave him a blessing. Just crazy things like that are happening all the time here. I am so consistently tired its crazy. I ride my bike for hours a day in the california sun, only stopping to walk entire blocks talking to people on the street. At home at night, i just kind of collapse into my bed. But somehow i keep functioning. I have a few things i would like to ask for, if you could send them in a package. If you could send me my little yellow escape tool, that would be great. All i remember is it was somewhere in my room, im guessing that stuff has all been moved anyways. If you could also send me some more stamps, that would be great. There just isnt enough time to every stop by a post office, so if you dont send em to me, i wont ever have em. Also, how much does it cost to send a letter to another country? Like France? A physical hand written letter. I mean, i have got no real reason to ask this question, you know, i was just curious. Like is it 3 stamps or what? And if you could send me a California flag that would be pretty sweet too. I has just been awesome over here, i have been challenging people to baptism, and we will hopefully have one on conference weekend. My companion is half ecuadorian and hondurian. Im not sure if that is politically correct, but close enough. He is a eating champion. He pretty much doesnt eat the entire day, but then once we get to dinner, he makes up for the entire days worth of food. I think he can literally unhinge his lower jaw, and flip on a vaccuum switch behind his ear, and just inhale the food through his gaping mouth. It is impressive and slightly frightening. But he is a great guy, and he works hard, and he never stops for anything. We get along good cause of that. I finally got bike lights today, so now i will be less scared about being hit by cars. I forgot to get them last week, and we just didnt have time in the whole week to go get them. My comp just said, "tenemos fe," and we kept on riding. I got to teach elders quarum on sunday to. Didnt find out about it until 3 minutes before sacrament started. Obviously, the whole thing was in spanish. Just one more of those crazy things we have done since I have been here. It is very nice here, it is 65 degrees the whole day, and it is just perfect. I have heard that it is about to get very hot though, so that is gonna ruin this paradise that i have got going on here. It is great to here that sierra, i knew you wouldnt get anything but 100 percent. Dont ask me how how knew, but i just had a feeling. My bike is pretty nice, its a nice smooth ride, and i have gotten going pretty fast on it when i am racing from one appointment on one side of town to the other. Our area is super big cause as spanish missionaries we cover the whole stake. But since my comp is the district leader, we do have a car. And i am the driver cause he cant drive. So when we drive, i am the one dealing with all of these insane cali drivers. But we like bike more, so we do that more. I have been eating good authentic mexican food almost every night. The members here have a calender to feed us so We have been eating with them for the whole week.

They just know how to do mexican food right. But I am biking so much that I am still actually losing weight out here. Hopefully by the end of this transfer I am gonna be all leaned up. I have already lost 9 pounds since that first mtc week. I am just running and biking and doing all sorts of crazy pushups. I am actually getting in better shape out here, even with all the incredibly fattening food that i am being fed at night. I guess when you work this hard you can just eat whatever you want. I cant enough pronounce half of the food that I am eating, but it all includes beef, is spicy, is some part of it deep fried, and is delicious. On sunday it was fast and testimony meeting, and with a little encouragement from my companion, i went up there and bore my testimony in spanish. My comp makes me do a lot of things that are a bit outside my comfort zone, but are good for me. Well i hope this is long enough for ya'll, I think we should just call this the Epistle of Elder Beck. Being a missionary is awesome. Things are just going great here. Love ya'll.

 

Beck out,

Elder Beck

 

Hey Dallin can email everyone now!

So guess what, I can now email everybody! There is no longer the rule that I can only email my family, i can use email to communicate with everybody.

Still keep sending me blog link to everybody, cause i dont want to have to add everyone into my contacts, but what you should do is ask for all of my friends, (or atleast tonys) emails and then I can start hitting them up to.

Writing all the paper letters can kind of be a pain, so this will be great for keeping in touch with everybody. If you just get me tonys email i am pretty sure i will then get all of my friends emails. Also, sorry, but i forgot my camera today, so i cant send home any pictures. i guess next week i will be able to send home some pics, if i remember it. Anyways, thanks for all your doing with keeping everybody up to day on my adventures. I forgot to tell you one though, when i am biking around, it is pretty crazy.

LIke if you remember premium rush at all, that is basically what i am doing every day. It just takes lots of faith and prayer that you wont get hit by every single car that is just flying around. For real, the drivers here at the worst drivers i have ever seen. They just cut people off for fun it seems like, and if you leave any gap between you and the car in front of you for safety, another car will cross 3 lanes of traffic just to take that spot cause it looks faster. For real, nobody here took drivers ed, cause they are road monsters. So that is what i am trying to bike through every day, it really gets your blood pumping having to dodge on oncoming sedan becasue he wasnt looking at you and only the car he was trying to pass.

Just fun times in the LBC.  So anyways, just keep sending people the link to my blog, and just get me tonys email, and that is about it. Love ya'll

 

Beck out,

Elder Beck

Dallin is in Cali!

Beck Family!

So yes, my p day is monday, just so ya'll know. Oh my goodness i have had so much stuff happen in the last couple of days since i got here that i hardly know where to start. I am in the north HUntington Beach area of the mission for my first 12 weeks at least with my trainer. My trainer/companion is Elder Leon, he is a native spanish speaker but knows english pretty darn well to. He works hard and talks to everybody, he is like a big old teddy bear that likes giving out hugs, hes great. My area is pretty large, it overlaps atleast 4 companionships of english speaking elders. I bought a bike and have been riding that thing everywhere, and i am convinced that if i keep it up at the pace i am, i will have tree trunk legs in no time. My area is pretty sweet, and were me and my companion do most of our work is back in the ghetto, which is awesome. But its not really dangerous, just a lot of nice humble people that are willing to listen to us. Everyone says that the longbeach and compton areas are the real dangerous ones, and that where i am at is just where all of the good humble people are, so its a good place to start. I have to say though, they did not teach me spanish in the mtc. I dont know what language they are speaking here, but it definetly is not what they taught me for 6 weeks.

Everybody speaks so fast and mumbles, i cant hardly understand a single word, thats why i am so gratefull for my native speaking companion.

Literally the best thing that happens is when i start contacting someone in spanish and they just kinda look at me funny until they say "I dont speak spanish," cause then im like "great, neither do i." Then i start converting them. basically. My first day here i had a full day of work, and that was after i had woken up a 3 to catch the flight from the mtc. My first day i placed a book of mormon, met a straight up crazy dude who threatened to bring down the 4 horsemen of the apocolypse on us if we didnt leave, and taught 4 lessons that night, all in spanish. I could literally feel my brain cracking and breaking inside my head as i tried to understand what everyone was saying. Also, i have finally experienced real mexican food.

Mom, dont take this the wrong way, you make great food, but the mexican food isn't quite accurate. The authentic mexican food that i have eaten has blown my mind out the back of my head. It is crazy good, like so good i might convert to their religion if that was a requirement for more of it. I also went to the spanish ward yesterday, that was a great experience. I got to introduce myself, pass the sacrament, translate, and went to a baptismal service. I dont think I have so consistently felt exhausted every night since football camp. but football camp was only a week. this is two years.

How is this possible? I did some grocery shopping this morning, bought lots of hamburger helper and instant potatoes, gotta keep feel. Looks like everybody had fun down in moab and destroying the grill, truly done in the beck fashion. I am trying to pick up the language, i am giving myself 3 months. Thats just cause everybody since the mtc has said that it takes about 6 months to learn the language, so i am intent on doing it in 3. With my native speaking comp and being totally immersed in spanish every day, i think i can do it. Also my comp says that it is possible for me to be a trainer after my first 12 weeks, so i figure i better be able so speak the spanish by then. My apartment is pretty nice, gotta kitchen and all, definitley not hurting on the living side of things. Pretty much every missionary is pretty cool here, and is just trying to help all us newbies adjust to this new stuff. I am just loving it here, and i love how hard the work is, and how i just feel totally drained and completely fullfilled at the end of the day. it is a great time to be me. Well i love ya'll, and keep hittin me up.

 

Beck out,

Elder Beck

Dallin leaves the MTC

Hi
Dallin leaves the MTC on March 12th.  California, Long Beach, here comes Elder Beck!

Last week in MTC---Push ups!

Beck Family!

Isnt it absolutely crazy that in one week i will be in the field? actually in 6 days. I guess i shouldnt be that suprised, i have no perception of time in this place. My district has taken on a very difficult task for our last week here, and that is to not speak english at all. Not a single word for any reason for the entire week. No exceptions in the class room, in the residences, or in the showers, no english. And everytime someone does speak  english, they have to do 10 pushups for every single word in english that they spoke. I have been doing pretty good, that was, until i went to gym. In gym i kind of get worked up, and slightly competitive if you can imagine, and it is possible for me to loose my cool and spew off a sentence of 2 in english. It doesnt take many words before you are doing 700 pushups. it was only like 2 sentences, but my goodness did i pay for it. It literally feels like i have a constant headache all day when i am trying to speak only spanish, but i have heard that that means it is working. my brain just aches, but i am getting a bit better at communicating solo in espanol. This means that tonight when i get to orientate the new group of missionaries, i have to do it entirely in spanish. They are gonna be so confused, i remember the first day after my teacher spoke to me all day in spanish, that it was such a relief to hear the zl's talk to us in english.

quick funny story, when the elder in my district got surgery on his hand, they put him under with anesthesia when he woke up, he was speaking fluent spanish, in fact, he couldnt remember english. the nurse was getting mad at him cause he wasnt talking in english, but he just couldnt stop, he just kept going right along speaking the most fluent spansih he has every spoken. eventually the drugs wore off and he lost his gift of tongues. Note to self, if in need fluency with a language, drugs, not class, is the best and fastest way. Just kidding, but hey, its something worth remembering.

 

Beck Out

Elder Beck

Wow! Dallin's a worker!

So here are a few of the highlights from Dallin:
this is his longest day far.  He literally had to do all his zone leader responsibilities in one day.  I'll just give you the list

1. Organize, conduct and carryout a zone conference(which was his companion and him leading the whole zone in a discussion for a hour about what they can do better
2. then interview everyone in zone
3. take care of every problems that everyone has---which was trying to get people to get along and there are 46 in his zone
4. had to organize sacrament meeting
5. write a talk for sacrament
6. organize zone priesthood meeting
7. prepare his separate talk
8. take care of 4 sick elders who were puking their guts out all day
9. and teach 2 investigator
10. create new poster for all zone goal that they made for their zone

What an exhausting day!
But he also says that he is amazed about how little sleep he can do all this on. And he had a little bit of fun bowling down the resident halls! And he's become quite the volleyball player and some of the college volleyball players there have asked him what college he has played for!
also there are 4500 missionaries at the MTC and they are growing by 300 missionaries every week.  And their max capacity is 3000. By the summer there will be 8000 missionaries there.  For his service, he has been moving beds into the rooms.  6 beds in every room.  And he also loves his branch president.  He was a professional musician and actually drummed for Ozzy Osbourne!  No wonder Dallin gets along with him so great!  They both love music and hard work!.
He also says that getting letters and packages are making his day! So keep it up!