Transfers

Hello to all my friends and family back home and all my Brothers at college and serving the Lord! I love you all very much and pray all is well with all of you. Congrats to my future college team Colorado Mesa for the win against CSU-Pueblo! Very excited to be a part of the winning program there when I get home. 

This week has been a little slower as far as missionary work because Elder Long is leaving this Wednesday to go home. So we have been doing a lot of things to get him ready to leave and finalizing all the administrative stuff. Plus we had conference, so that's always good! Conference was awesome! I don't have a ton of time to write today so I'm just going to write about some quick highlights of my week and conference. 

Last Monday we had a lesson with a Brother Fors' Brother, Ted. He is married to a member, but is not a member.  He has cancer and is struggling with that and rheumatoid arthritis. We have been meeting with him weekly, which has never happened with missionaries before us. So that's a good sign! He is a really cool guy and this week we talked about charity with him. Elder Long gave the lesson and I got to bear my testimony. I bore testimony that God loves him and his wife very much and that even though he is struggling with health issues, God cares very much about him. It was a super cool moment, and the Spirit was very strong. It was a cool lesson because afterwards, he really opened up and started talking to us. This week we will be teaching about prayer and challenging them to have personal and family prayer every day.

We also had a lesson with Brother Haradon on Tuesday and Brother Ragan was joint teaching with us. It was the funniest lesson by far I've had on my mission.  So we were teaching about Christ-like love and loving everyone. It kind of got changed back into charity again. So our investigator said that charity is like Christ because it was the pure love of Christ. In the scriptures it says that charity never faileth. So he said that Christ never fails either, so if we follow Christ's example, we will never fail. It was kind of an outside the box idea the way he explained it, but it made a lot of sense. Then Brother Ragan asked him about what he did in the marines and he said he helped with marines who were struggling with depression and stuff. He said he would call them in and say, "Well young marine, every morning I get up and shave. Then I take the razor and cut my wrist and listen to the blood trickle out and it says .... "Oooooraaaahhh!!!" Yeah young marine! Oorah wooohhh!" And then he said, "Then they would just march out and be like, 'Heck yeah wahhhhhh blahhha!'" Me and Elder Long were just dying. Like I almost fell off the couch I was laughing so hard!  And Brother Ragan was like, "What the heck is going on?" It was so funny! 

We did a zone service project on Tuesday and we beautified some gardens. It was pretty fun haha. Elder Liaga, Elder Peterson and I were the gravel guys. We hauled gravel from the gravel pile to all the gardens and put gravel around the plants. We did that for 2 hours haha.  It wasn't super fun, but Elder Liaga kills me, so it was good in that regard. Elder Peterson is super cool too, and he is from Colorado and knows a lot about CMU, so it's fun to talk to him about it!

On Wednesday we met with Brother Dam who is the old Vietnamese guy in our ward. We usually just read the Book of Mormon with him and he struggles to see the little words on his blue Book of Mormon, so I let him use my iPad.  After we got done, he asked if he could buy my iPad and I said "Haha, sorry but you can't!" He seemed super sad but I can't sell him my iPad! So I told him we would try to figure out how the ward people could help him get one. I felt bad I couldn't help him out more, but I can't sell him my iPad!

On Thursday this family in our ward wanted us to come help them move some furniture in to their house. So we got there at 1pm and the mom wasn't there so we sat there for like 20 minutes and she finally showed up with donuts for us.  Then we drove down to the storage shed to get the furniture and when we got there, she had forgotten the key to the storage unit. So she had to drive home and get it, and then she couldn't find it, so she came back after like 30 minutes and said she couldn't find it. While she was gone, me and my companion and her two sons played hacky sack with donut holes. It was pretty fun! So anyways, she never found the key so we ended up doing no service. But we did build some good relationships with the sons, so that was good because they are both not super interested in church stuff and are kind of less active. Funny how things go sometimes. 

On Friday we met with a less active in our ward named Mike Pike. He is an ex-Navy SEAL and is kind of crazy but a super nice guy. He is always on pain killers because he has a super bad back from doing sky diving and crazy stuff like that, but he joined the church like 10-15 years ago and he says he doesn't really remember anything about the church, so we just went over and had a restoration lesson with him. He said the story of the first vision he remembered was that Joseph Smith was running around naked in the desert smoking paioti (which is some hallucinogen drug native Americans smoke) and he had a vision that an angel appeared to him and told him where gold treasure was. I was like, "That's not exactly how it went!" So we told him what really happened and he seemed cool with it haha, so that was good! Then he said he loved us and we handle ourselves really well because he is a big tough Navy SEAL. We were like, "Ahh thanks!" Even though he is super old and can't get around super well, it was a good lesson but kinda weird haha.

On Friday night we had about an hour and a half open because several appointments fell through, so we decided to go Deveyon's soccer game in Hopkins. We figured we could at least talk to people there and also support him. He is Johnny Chapman's nephew who just joined like a year ago. So we went to the game and while we were almost there we saw this guy walking down the road that looked like Jaelen. So we pulled over and parked by the game and it was him. He was supposed to have an improv performance that night we were going to go to, but he hadn't ever gotten back to us on the details. So we were like, "What's up? Don't you have improv tonight?" And he said he had gotten in an altercation at school and had gotten kicked out of the show. He was really mad and was just walking around trying to clear his head. He said a guy at school had pushed him from behind and he turned around and grabbed the guy's shirt and then they got pulled apart. I don't know exactly what happened, but that's what he said. So he was pretty down in the dumps about not being able to do his improv show. We took him to the game and talked for a while about general conference. About 8pm the game got done and I felt impressed that we should go for a walk with him. So we went for a walk around downtown Hopkins and just talked about life. He loves to talk about all his girls. He is a heartbreaker for sure. It's so funny how when you are 16 that's what matters, and when I was 16, I guess girls kinda mattered to me too, but now it's like I couldn't care less. Like, we were walking down main street and we saw this girl that went to his school with some of her friends, and he's like, "Man, she's cute! I wanna get her number!" And then he's like, "Maybe y'all could get her number." And I was like, "The only reason I would get her number is for a return appointment, bro. Haha." We are here to teach the gospel to people not date people.  It was pretty funny! He is a good kid and he hasn't really been replying to calls and texts as of the last few days, and I wonder if his dad has anything to do with it. Hopefully as we keep trying, we can eventually get him to church and get his dad on board!

Conference was soooo great! I loved it and I think the reason why, was because I listened to find answers to questions and concerns I had, and I didn't just count the minutes till it was over so I could watch the football game after it haha. One of my favorite talks was the one by K. Brett Nattress.  He shared the story about his mom reading the Book of Mormon to them every morning and he once told her, "Mom I'm not even listening!" She replied that a general authority made a promise that if she read the Book of Mormon every day with her children she wouldn't lose them. That really touched my heart as I thought about my own mom and all she does so that she doesn't lose any of her children.  I just want to give a personal shoutout to all the moms in my life. You truly are amazing and bless my life more than you know. The other talk I really enjoyed was Sister Linda S. Reeves talk on repentance and the atonement. My favorite line from the talk was, "You can't sink lower than the light of the atonement." That hit me so hard that no matter what we have done, there is always a way back into our Savior's arms. No one is too far gone. That should bring such great comfort and joy to everyone. 

Later Sunday evening we stopped by a potential investigator named Robert who had been excommunicated from the church and wanted to talk to us about coming back to the church. He told us he thought he couldn't come back because of his past mistakes and I looked him right in the eye and said, "You can come back to the church." I knew what I was saying is true because I had just been taught that no one can sink lower than the light of the atonement. It was such a cool teaching moment for me! 

Well, Elder Long is heading home and Elder Gooch is coming in! He came out the same transfer I did, so it should be fun. I'm really excited to take over the Minnetonka area and really work hard to bring people unto Christ. I've been reading this book called "Member missionary work and finding the elect of God" by Scott Marshall. It is probably more helpful than PMG in my opinion, but don't tell anyone I said that.  It has great ideas on inspired tracting, how to use your time most effectively and how to also use members most effectively. I'm using it this transfer as the foundation of our work here and it promises success and joy as you serve the Lord. I'm really excited for this upcoming transfer! I love you all back home and keep you in my prayers. I hope all is well with you and that you are all finding happiness and joy in your lives. My brothers at college and on missions, I love you dearly and am grateful to have all your examples to follow. Family, I love you all so much and couldn't do what I am doing now without your support, prayers and love. Thank you so much for giving me the opportunity to serve the Lord!

Much love,

Elder Beach

#10 #MavUp

Me, Elder Long and Deveyon.

Our Zone at Minnehaha falls.

Zone service project.

Elder Long and me at Minnehaha Falls.

Colorado Mesa license plate because it says, "MAV".