This week was pretty good, it was a little weird cuz we found out we are moving apartments next transfer so we've been preparing our apartment for people to come view it and also helping the Lake Marion Elders move out of theirs. We will be moving into their apartment at the end of next transfer. We are a little confused as to why we are moving there, cuz it's about 3/4 of a mile out of our area and it is a really trashy apartment. But it is what it is so yeah...
Monday was p day and was pretty fun! We played basketball at the Lakeville chapel, which we do every week haha. It was fun! I love playing basketball so you can get some competitive energy burned off. It builds up all week and it's good to use some. After p day we had to do another baptism interview with Pat who is the Crystal Lakes Elder's investigator. She had one thing she needed to talk to a member of the Mission Presidency about. She passed, so she is getting baptized today! I'm really excited for her to make this decision and know it will be a huge blessing in her life.
Tuesday was a good time! We had zone conference in Lakeville with the Minneapolis and Lakeville zones. It was fun to visit with Elder Peterson and Nielson. Glad we can see each other like once a transfer at least! President Forbes gave a really good training on finding. The thing he talked about that really stood out to me is that we need to pray, plan, and prepare each day with the mindset that we will find a new investigator each day. That really was inspired I felt like. That is something we've tried to do much better this week and in future days and weeks. After zone conference the APs were like, "Hey we are going to go on exchanges with you guys today!" We were like, "Uh, ok!" So they told us to run home and get Elder Sherwood's stuff so he could go to Bloomington with Elder Oldroyd and Elder Anderson was coming with me. It ended up not happening though, cuz we had a lesson with Daren at 4 pm and they were running late getting zone conference cleaned up. But maybe this transfer it'll happen. So our lesson with Daren was pretty good this week! We read Mosiah 18 and talked about the baptismal covenant and also read the sacrament prayers and talked about how the sacrament and baptism are connected. He feels like his baptism was already good enough, so we started talking about Priesthood authority again and he's like, "Well man, I need to ask my pastor where he got his authority!" I was like, "Daren, your pastor doesn't have authority from God. Our church is the only church that has the proper Priesthood authority haha." I didn't say that but I was thinking it. Anyway, we had a really good discussion about baptism and the sacrament and he said he would be at church this Sunday! He ended up coming for all 3 hours, but more on that later! After that we had dinner with Brother Ruff's family. His son, Bryant, is my favorite haha. He literally just roasts everyone on his track and cross country team at dinner. Then Brother Ruff came out with us and we had a lesson with Bert Goff. He is a less active guy in our ward who is working towards getting the Melchizedek Priesthood. He has a smoking problem, but is really close to kicking it so that's good! We had a lesson about how prayer, reading the scriptures and listening to hymns invites the spirit, which helps us resist the urge to smoke. It was a super good lesson and he really got it! I'm hoping that can help him when he has really strong urges to smoke that he can use other things we talked about like prayer and listening to hymns to help him. Then we did a few stop bys and called it a night. The apartment had called us at like 7 pm and told us they were showing our apartment the next day, and we were like "What? Why?" They told us we were moving out in June and we didn't even know that. So we were a little upset about that. We had to clean up our place for like an hour on Tuesday night.
Wednesday we tracted about half the day. We did a lot of tracting this week haha. In the afternoon we had a pretty successful street we did. We found this lady named Karen who was super nice and said we could come back this week. She let us in and we taught her a short restoration lesson and gave her a Book of Mormon. She seemed really interested in it and said she would for sure read it. We had her read 3 Nephi 11 where Christ visits the Americas. Hopefully we can see her again soon. She seemed pretty interested! Then we went for like 40 doors where no one answered and then this one lady answers and basically tells us to go to heck. I don't know why? She said something about our religion being wrong or something haha. I usually just zone out when people start yelling at us. Anyway, the last door we knocked on, this teenage boy let us in and sat us down at his kitchen table. We taught a restoration lesson and you could tell he was feeling the spirit. Like it was strong when we were teaching about the first vision. It was like the "Best Two Years" 2.0. So we get done an,d offer him a Book of Mormon and he looks at us for a second and then just says, "Nah. I'm good. I have homework to do so you guys can leave now." I literally almost fell out of my chair. I know he felt the spirit and then just straight up denied it. I felt so bad for the kid but we did what we had to do and he made his choice. That's how it goes sometimes. Then we had a lesson with Jaidyn Gretz at Starbucks in Target. We talked about the Sacrament and how we don't have to be perfect to take it, but rather it helps us work towards that ultimate goal of being perfect. It was really good, and she told us she was planning on going to Utah or Idaho for school! So she's doing great right now! Then we had dinner with the Seamans and that was really good! They're pretty great and I still don't know why Sister Seaman isn't a member. I noticed they had a coffee pot out and I wondered if word of wisdom might be part of it. I don't know, though. She comes to church every week and believes Joseph Smith is a prophet, so I don't know, haha. After that the Gretz came and picked us up to go to Daren's talk at Celebration Church about how to show love to people in the gay community rather than push them away or think they are not worth helping. It was a very different church atmosphere than our church. They had a band playing for the first 20 minutes or so and singing gospel songs. Everyone was supposed to sing along and dance and all that kinda stuff. We got pretty into it haha. It was fun, but not how I feel comfortable worshipping at church. It was interesting to see how other groups do it though! Daren's presentation was really, really good! He just talked about how we need to recognize people as children of God who need our help and the Savior's help and not a gay person or someone who is homosexual. It was an interesting way to look at it and I've never thought of it like that. Definitely a good perspective for me to think about going forward. We got to talk to Pastor Lewis for a while afterwards, and he was a really cool guy! He loved what we did as missionaries, so it was fun to talk to him! Pretty solid night all in all!
Thursday we were supposed to go to zone service at Prince of Peace, but they called us like 10 minutes before and said they didn't need us there. So us and the Lake Marion Elders were carpooling and we decided to go visit Brother Stanich instead. He is this old guy in Lake Marion who loves the missionaries. He drives up to all the transfers and takes us out to lunch and stuff haha. Anyway, he has been in the hospital and is in an assisted living facility right now and hates it there, so we went and visited him and it was a hoot and a half. There is a fish pond thing in the dining area and he grabs some crackers and is like, "Here! Feed the fish, they love it!" And starts throwing crackers into the fish pond. I don't think you were supposed to do that, but he's a little crazy so we just went along with it haha. Then he started trying to catch a fish with his hand and then we were like, "Ok, time to get back to your room!" He's such a funny guy, he's just a little crazy haha. Then we went and visited the Bradfords. I had loaned Brother Bradford my "Continuous Atonement" book and he had been reading it and absolutely loved it! He said he had bought a copy of it online for himself already. Thanks for sending me that book mom and dad! We just shared some cool tracting experiences we had had the last few weeks and stuff like that with them. Then we went and tracted until dinner. I don't think we found anyone, but Elder Sherwood and I made up this fun little game we do while tracting. We take a country song or rap song we know and make up new words to it that has to do with the gospel or missionary work haha. We made up some dang funny songs haha. We had dinner with the Abrahamsons. They are a couple in our ward that just got back from a mission in Albania. They're pretty cool! We had some good chats about missionary work and they told us some funny stories from their mission. Then we went on splits with Brother Amott and Brother Moerschel. I went with Brother Amott. He went to USU, so we basically ended up talking about football the whole time haha. We just stopped by some prospective Elders and part member families. We stopped by this family that all the teenage girls were members but the dad wasn't and the mom passed away last summer. So they let us in and the three girls are like 14-17 years old. Brother Amott and I literally said nothing for thirty minutes. THIRTY MINUTES. They talked for 30 straight minutes about nothing. Like their boyfriends and their jobs and all the drama at work and all this stuff and makeup and I was like, "What the heck are we doing here?" We finally got outta there and Brother Amott goes, "Well, that was unlike anything I've ever experienced!" I was like "Same here. Same here." It was pretty crazy! That pretty much wrapped up our night so yeah! Elder Sherwood and Brother Moerschel had a lot more success though, so that was good! They got in with a part member family and also found some less actives no one had seen for a while!
Friday was a joke. The apartment lady called us into the office and said we needed to clean our apartment so it was like brand new. So Sister Gretz bought us some cleaning stuff and we literally cleaned for 6 hours on Friday. They were showing our apartment Friday night and Saturday morning so they wanted it spotless. So we cleaned out all the cupboards, the fridge, the oven, the bathroom, bedroom, vacuumed, swept, mopped, cleaned literally everything within an inch of its life. It was such a waste of a day, but we had to do it so yeah. And it's nice having a basically brand new apartment now. This less active lady in our ward named Lorraine called us and wanted us to come help her move stuff for this huge neighborhood garage sale on Saturday. So we go over Friday night and we get there and she's like, "I'm pretty tired, so we aren't gonna be moving anything tonight. Can you come help tomorrow?" We told her we couldn't cuz we had Steve's baptism up in Minnetonka. So it was kind of a waste of time. She doesn't really like Elders much and basically got baptized cuz she loved the Sisters. So as soon as Elders came to Apple Valley, she went less active. After that we had a lesson with Katelynn, who is Mikey's girlfriend. Mikey and Brother Gretz sat in on the lesson with us. We taught about the restoration and Katelynn participated pretty well and we had them read some scriptures and committed her to come to church and read the BOM. She also said she would get baptized if she kept doing the lessons and came to know it was true for herself. I'm really hoping she keeps commitments and stuff, but it isn't really looking like she will, but you never know. Anyway, it was a good lesson and she definitely felt the spirit!
Saturday was amazing!! The Gretz took us up to Steve Jordan's baptism in Minnetonka and it was awesome! I'm so happy for him. Elder Nielson and I fasted and prayed for a member referrall in like January, and the next day this lady called us from Colorado and told us about Steve and that he wanted to learn about Jesus Christ and all that. So we started teaching him and a few months later he was baptized and confirmed a member of the church! It was super cool to see everyone from the ward except Bishop Patterson, the Nelsons, and the Keepmans were out of town so that was a bummer. I'll get to see some more of them at Jeffrey's baptism next Saturday though. Steve had to get baptized twice cuz his foot came up one time, but it was awesome and the spirit was super strong. It just seemed like a huge weight was lifted off of him when he came out of the water. It was amazing! After we got back we had mission wide finding hour. We tracted some town homes we hadn't done yet in the south part of our area. I've found something really interesting while tracting on my mission. Right before we start I always feel like really pessimistic and Satan tries to get me to feel like no one is going to talk to us. But if I just fight that off and pray for charity in my heart for all those we talk to it goes so good. After like 2-3 doors I'm just loving it and that feeling is completely gone. It's funny how Satan tries so hard to make me not want to find people and be complacent. I'm glad I've learned hard work is fun and to just push through the downs and make the ups. It was good! We didn't find anyone, but we still had a good time and we worked hard and shared our testimonies with a lot of people so that was cool. The Dotys were supposed to feed us but were at the temple, so they gave us a Dairy Queen gift card. So we hit up DQ for dinner. It was pretty good! I got some chicken tenders and they were yummy. Then we did weekly planning because we had no time to do it on Friday. Elder Sherwood decided he was gonna bake a cake from scratch, so he whipped one out and it ended up being pretty good haha. We had a fire at the Gretz with the whole crew after that for a little while and just talked about school and church and stuff. It was good, and I'm glad we've been able to help their family out a lot. Mikey is going to U of M Rochester, which is pretty cool! They spoil us so bad haha. I'm really gonna miss them when I get transferred.
Sunday was really great too! Daren came to church finally! Brother Lyon and Sister Carly Almgren, who just got home from her mission in Brazil, spoke in Sacrament Meeting. It was such a great Sacrament Meeting! Brother Lyon spoke about how we need to build a solid testimony on the Book of Mormon and on our faith in Christ so when the storms come, our foundations are strong and sure and aren't like sand. Sister Almgren spoke about the atonement and how she had to deal with a lot of difficult things on her mission, but through Christ she was able work through them and have a good mission. It was so good! We had members and everything all set up to come to Gospel Principles with us. So we show up and Brother Ruff is like, "Can you guys teach? The teacher isn't here." So we had about 30 seconds to pull together a lesson on discovering and improving upon our talents. It ended up being a stellar lesson if I say so myself. God definitely helped us out and the member's input we had was so good. It was a great lesson. Who would've thought that a lesson on talents would be super spiritual? But it was awesome! Definitely a miracle we saw on Sunday. They are doing a "Living Legends" Polynesian, Latin American and Native American dance show on the 11th of May and Sister Pugmire and Gretz got tickets for us and said Daren and Rhoda could come, too. So I'm pretty sure they are going to come with us to that, so that will be sweet! After church we tracted for an hour and half before dinner and then about an hour and half after dinner. It was raining most of the time, but we worked hard and had fun. The very last door we knocked on this guy named Jesse answered and he was pretty interested. He said he was busy but he took a Book of Mormon and a restoration pamphlet and said we could come on Tuesday or Wednesday this week. He gave us his number and told us to call him. The Dotys invited us over for homemade donuts at their place at 7 pm so we could share a message with them. We ended up being there for like an hour and didn't share a message cuz they had some other families over and were being pretty crazy. I was like, "Wow we just wasted an hour haha." It was kind of stupid. We just sat there and couldn't really get a word in to say we needed to leave, so finally I just grabbed Brother Doty and was like, "We need to peace out, so we will see you!" Then we left haha. We finished off by doing some stop bys and called it a night!
This week was pretty good! I'm really enjoying the mission and I would really encourage all those who are considering serving to do so. You'll learn and grow so much and help so many people. You really don't understand how many people you will help on your mission. A lot of the time you will never see the end result, but you will still help people nonetheless. It's an honor and a blessing to be a missionary for the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-Day-Saints! I love you all and hope you have a great week! Prayers up from Minnesota.
Much love,
Elder Beach
#MavUp #10
Steve Jordan's baptism!
At Daren's speech with Pastor Lewis.
Listening to Daren's speech.
