This week has been great! We have seen so many miracles both big and small. Our biggest miracle this week wasThursday. Just a solid day from top to bottom! We got to do a lot of service that day with Brother Fors who is awesome and is taking us to get some of that super good BBQ again this week. We helped him finish tearing down his shed because they are building a new garage where his shed used to be. So after that, the person that was supposed to come joint teaching with us couldn't go, so we had asked Brother Haradon to come with us. He is the less active member we had been working with. He is on fire right now and he is amazing. So he came joint teaching with us and did fantastic! We went to see Stormy and Robert, and they weren't there so we started talking to these two guys named Mike and Austin that live in the same apartment complex as Robert and Stormy. They know us because we have talked to them quite a bit and we had a quick lesson about the Book of Mormon with them. Right as we were about to leave, Robert showed up so we talked to him for about 20 minutes. He is really hung up that he can't come back to church because he said he has committed some sin twice and it is unforgivable. We got to bear really cool testimonies to him that the atonement covers anything we do and we can always be forgiven for our mistakes. He really liked what we had to say and wants to meet again this week! After that went to Brother Fors' brother's house. His name is Ted and he isn't a member of our church, but his wife is. We have been meeting with him pretty regularly (Brother Fors told us we are the first missionaries he has ever talked to in 20 years), so we are excited about that! We had a quick lesson planned on prayer and were going to challenge him to pray daily. The lesson really went in a totally different direction and we started talking about baptism. He told us that at his brother's baptism, he had this overwhelming, warm feeling in his chest and it scared him so bad that he ran out of the church because he thought it was bad. We were like, "That's the Spirit you felt." He sort of agreed with us on that haha. Brother Haradon bore such a great testimony in the lesson too, and you could feel the Spirit really strongly. We offered to give him a Priesthood blessing because he is really struggling with his health and he said we could. This is a guy who has turned down multiple Priesthood blessing offers from his own brother. But we gave him a blessing and I got to do it. I honestly have no clue what I said, but I was feeling the Spirit and I could feel God's love for him. It was super cool and I hope he could feel it, too. Brother Haradon's testimony was amazing and to see how far he has come in like 6 weeks is amazing. He is pretty much fully active again and I believe will be getting a calling soon. I love how much he has changed his life around and how the gospel is helping him!
Wednesday was probably the funniest day of my mission so far. Brother Cohen, who is this kinda crazy less-active guy wanted to joint teach with us so we were like, "Ok, I guess." He took us to Cub Foods in St. Louis Park to find Marty, who is the guy we set a date with to be baptized, because Brother Cohen didn't know his address or phone number. Since it's hard to meet with people when you have no way of contacting them, we needed those pieces of info, so we went to Cub Foods. Marty works in the check out lines, so Elder Gooch and I bought like 50 cent crackers so we could go through the line and then get his info while we went through. BUT.... Brother Cohen had his own plan all figured out haha. So he wrote like 5 questions on his hand in pen and then when we went through he was like, "Marty, can you write the answers to all these questions down?" And shows him his hand and Marty is like, "What the heck?" So we just hurried and got his address and got outta there because Brother Cohen was making a scene haha. Then Brother Cohen is like, "Oh, I forgot to buy something." So we are like, "Ok...." So we went and sat on this bench in the front of the store and next thing we know Brother Cohen is literally dragging people over to talk to us. He is like 5'7" 125 lbs and just looks like a mad scientist type guy and we are like, "Brother Cohen, what are you doing?" It was so funny! Then later that night he gave us a ride and his car is stick shift and he isn't the best at driving stick or just driving for that matter. So he's trying to merge onto the highway and he's going 40 miles an hour... and we almost got killed and he's like, "I'm the king driver here," and I was like, "We are gonna die!" He didn't know how to shift to fifth so he would be in 4th gear and shift back up to third and it would rev super high then he would just slow down and go back into 4th and I was like, "Oh my gosh!" It was bad haha!
On Saturday we had 4 appointments set up and all of them fell through last minute so we had like 4 hours in the afternoon with nothing to do. So we said, "Lord, we are going tracting and contacting for 4 hours. Please put someone in our path to teach." Well, we ended up teaching 6 lessons and found a whole family of potential investigators while we were tracting. It was pretty cool. We walked like 5 miles total and we talked to like 12-15 people. We talked to this one girl who was sitting on a bench in Hopkins and as we got talking to her we found out she was homeless and she was like our age. I felt so bad for her and I was like is there anything we can do for you? Could we buy you dinner or something? And she just said yeah if you have some money for food that would be awesome so we gave her 10$. I don't think you are supposed to give people money but if Jesus was there he would've helped her out with a meal so I figured it was ok. But yeah, we taught a lot of lessons with people so that was good!
This Sunday was the primary program and we finally had an investigator come to church! His name is Kendall and he is a friend of Johnny Chapman's and he has been coming to play basketball with us on P-days. So he brought his 2 little kids and himself to the primary program and it was pretty good. His littlest kid is so funny and paid pretty good attention for the most part, but his older kid was goofing off the whole time. But Kendall enjoyed it and said he will probably come again next week. He played basketball with us again today so at least we are becoming good friends with him!
Haha, yesterday we were doing some tracting before dinner and these people were watching the Packers and Cowboys game in the garage so we stopped by to see the game for a minute haha. We started talking to the guy that was in there and he is from the Dallas area and is a huge Oklahoma Sooners fan. I told him that my dad served in Dallas and he said he knows right where the mission office or church is or something haha. I didn't know if he meant church or mission office, but he told us he was a flight attendant for Delta so he sees missionaries flying out from Salt Lake all the time! He also said he travels through Grand Junction a lot so he knows about Colorado Mesa and said he would keep an eye out for me when I got home haha. He was super cool and gave us Dr. Peppers, too, which was awesome. He didn't really want to hear our message, but he liked talking to us so we just talked to him for like 20 minutes!
We had dinner at the Nelson's house yesterday and they have a huge, super nice house on the lake. He is a CEO at United Healthcare and he is loaded haha. He is seriously one of the most humble guys I know though, and does so much member missionary work! He gave me and Elder Gooch like 8 ties. He had a bunch of his older ones and was like just take whatever you want! So that was cool. He also sent a picture of the Elders and Sisters home so hopefully you liked that.
It's been a fun week, lots of hard work and relying on the Lord to get us through the downs, but we have been blessed a lot and the work is progressing here. We set a baptismal date with Jaelen for the 26th of November and also got to meet his dad finally, so I feel like we are making some progress there! Hopefully he can progress like we know he can and get baptized! As I've been thinking about it, the mission is seriously the hardest thing I've ever done. Hands down. It's mentally and emotionally like really draining. But it really is the coolest thing, too. The people I've gotten to associate with and see the gospel change their lives has been incredible to see. It's so awesome! I've really grown as well. In 4 months it is really easy to see some changes that have taken place in myself as a person. It's cool! I miss you all a lot and love you all and can't wait to see my family at Christmas. I would like to leave with a big hello to my future coaches at CMU and also would like to say thank you for hosting my parents and making them feel welcomed and loved by the CMU staff. I love hearing about how the season is going and always rep my CMU gear on P-days.
I love you all, family and friends, coaches, fellow Band of Brothers and all those who have gotten me to this point. I appreciate all the support more than you can know!
Much love,
Elder Beach
#10 #MavUp
Elder Gooch feasting upon the words of God (book of Mormon donut).
Funny bumper sticker we saw.
Elder Gooch
My background photo (dad this is what's it's been for like half my mission and then you sent that quote today! Interesting coincidence)
