Hello to all my family, friends, and coaches back home, at college and serving worldwide. I hope this email finds you doing well and loving life! This week was pretty great and we had some very cool miracles this week! Since it was Mother's Day and I chatted with my family a lot yesterday, I will just include the highlights from the week and lots of pictures and videos.
Last Monday we went mountain biking with Brother Humphries and Brother Lewis at Lebanon Hills mountain bike trails. It was really fun and it was actually a fairly difficult trail we rode. Brother Humphries and Lewis are both really good mountain bikers so they were pretty far ahead of us most of the time. Aside from a few "nut buster" landings off of jumps, it was a great time! It was fun to hang out with Brother Humphries and Lewis. I really like both of them a lot! We had dinner at Applebee's Monday night because they have any burger and bottomless fries for $6.99 so we decided to eat there. It was really good! Then we had a lesson with Jaidyn Gretz and taught the Gospel of Jesus Christ lesson by reading 2 Nephi 31. We tied it all into the Sacrament and how faith leads to repentance and repentance leads to an ordinance of either baptism or taking the Sacrament. We talked about why taking the Sacrament is so important each week to renew our baptismal covenant we make. She said it made a lot more sense why it is so important and helped her see that she should be taking it each Sunday! It was a good lesson.
Last Monday we went mountain biking with Brother Humphries and Brother Lewis at Lebanon Hills mountain bike trails. It was really fun and it was actually a fairly difficult trail we rode. Brother Humphries and Lewis are both really good mountain bikers so they were pretty far ahead of us most of the time. Aside from a few "nut buster" landings off of jumps, it was a great time! It was fun to hang out with Brother Humphries and Lewis. I really like both of them a lot! We had dinner at Applebee's Monday night because they have any burger and bottomless fries for $6.99 so we decided to eat there. It was really good! Then we had a lesson with Jaidyn Gretz and taught the Gospel of Jesus Christ lesson by reading 2 Nephi 31. We tied it all into the Sacrament and how faith leads to repentance and repentance leads to an ordinance of either baptism or taking the Sacrament. We talked about why taking the Sacrament is so important each week to renew our baptismal covenant we make. She said it made a lot more sense why it is so important and helped her see that she should be taking it each Sunday! It was a good lesson.
Tuesday we had district meeting and interviews with the Mission President. These are his last interviews with missionaries because he is going home at the end of June. I'm really going to miss him and his wife. They are amazing people. Sister Forbes gave a training at our district meeting and literally kept roasting me for no reason. She loves to tease and joke around, and I was in the front row, so I was the person of interest for her jokes haha. She is awesome. I love her! After interviews and stuff we had a super good lesson with Daren! Sister Abrahamson came joint teaching with us. She and her husband just got home from a mission in Albania, so she was really excited to come out with us! Daren wanted us to teach about reverence. I had never taught a lesson on reverence so we started doing some studying and stuff about it. We decided to read some parts of the "Teachings of the Presidents: Spencer W. Kimball." It has a whole chapter about reverence in our lives, church, and homes. It was a super good lesson! Daren told us he's been feeling conflicted about his church, because it is a rock and roll church and he feels when he worships it should be more reverent. We talked about how the spirit is a quiet voice and used Helaman 5 and the story of Elijah (I think) from the Bible where it talks about the spirit being very quiet and still but very powerful as well. Daren completely agreed with that and agrees that we should worship more reverently. I'm glad God is helping him see good things in our church, even if it is just the fact we are reverent. Daren wasn't at church this Sunday because it was Mother's Day, but he is going on a camp out with our ward and YM this weekend! That should be great! After that we did some tracting and found this girl named Lucy. She was having a fire out on her deck so we went over and talked to her and taught her about the Book of Mormon and the restoration. She said we could stop by this week! Then we had a lesson with Lorraine Haines, the lady that the sisters baptized and she used to hate the Elders until like a week ago. Scottie Pugmire came with us. He just got back from his mission so he's been helping us out a lot. Lorraine told us she feels like devils are living in her home but I didn't feel anything out of whack there. We read some of the BOM with her and told her to start praying to feel God's love for her and to know He is there. She said there is no way to know that there is a God or any of the stuff we know. We told her to pray to feel God's presence because he loves her and wants to help her!
Wednesday we had a pretty sweet miracle! So last week, this former investigator named Natalie texted us and wanted to meet with us. We looked through our area book at her records and it didn't have a whole lot on her. She had a few lessons with the missionaries and the Pugmire family last summer and then it just dropped off. Like there wasn't a lot of info. So we met with her on Wednesday morning with Scottie Pugmire again. We just asked her about how she came in contact with the church and why she wanted to meet up again and stuff. She tells us that Zach, Scottie's little brother, introduced her to the church last spring and she had met with the sisters 3-4 times at the Pugmire's home. Then when she went to college she had been doing lessons over the phone with missionaries she had gotten a hold of through Mormon.org. She then told us she wants to get baptized ASAP! I was like, "uhhhhh... Great!" So we set a baptismal date for June 17 because she is out of town on a cruise in the Mediterranean until the end of the month. Then she needs to finish up the lessons and come to church a few times. But she is super solid! She has a really solid testimony and loves the Plan of Salvation and has read half the Book Of Mormon already. What a miracle from heaven! Wednesday afternoon we visited with Bob Hosman. He lives in the Ecumen assisted living facility. He told us about how he met his wife again and told us that when we get married, to always love our wives like we did on the day we marry her. Some very good advice from Brother Hosman! Wednesday night Brother Abrahamson came out with us. We went to see the Bigboys and the Wades. We talked to Justin Bigboy for a little bit and set up an appointment with him for this Wednesday at 6:30. He told us he finally got a job! Woohoo. I was so happy to hear that! Then we saw the Wades and had a super good visit with them. Sister Wade was finally there so we got to meet her! They are super cool. John joined the church about 5 years ago and they have been kind of up and down with the church. So we are trying to help them get back into an up haha.
Thursday was kind of another bummer of a day. We had to take the car in in the afternoon to get it checked out because we were having shifting problems. So we drove all the way down to Lakeville and took it to a chevy dealership. We sat there for 2 1/2 hours. It was crazy! And nothing was wrong with it. Go figure haha. So after that we tracted for a little bit and then went over to the Gretz for dinner. Then they drove us up to a Living Legends performance in Minneapolis. It was a show where BYU students who are Native American, Latin American, and Polynesian do dances and tell a story as they do these dances. The story was literally the Book of Mormon story, just told in a Native American way so if you knew the Book of Mormon storyline, you could tell. It was really awesome though! The Pugmires brought a non member family they are friends with, and we met them and talked a little bit. Sister Pugmire said they are close to asking them to take the lessons. The dances were really awesome, especially the Polynesian and Native American dances. They had some amazingly talent people in the show. It was fun!
Friday was weekly planning and then we had a lesson with the Bradfords. They are the older couple that lives in Ecumen assisted living facility. We had a nice visit with them and talked about how our missions are going and shared some miracles we'd seen with them! Then we tracted this street we prayed about out in Rosemount and nobody talked to us on this whole street. When we got done, we had about 45 minutes until dinner so we got to this street that T'd into the street we were tracting. Elder Sherwood and I were both like, "Hey let's do this street, too!" This street we had a lot more success. The third or fourth door we knocked this lady let us in and we taught her the restoration. She was in her mid 20's and her mom was cooking in the kitchen. They were Asian and the mom yelled to us, "We are Catholic! Not interested." However, Dana talked to us for about 10 minutes and took a Book of Mormon from us too! It was cool. Then we got to talk to a few more people but not a whole lot of success. We had a cool conversation with a lady who had actually just served a two year mission for her church. She took a Book of Mormon and said she would read it! She was really nice but not sure how interested she is but at least she took a Book of Mormon. After that we had dinner with the Gordhamers and that was pretty fun! They have 6 kids and the oldest is in 8th grade haha. After that we tracted some more and found this guy who was a black guy and said he had investigated every single religion and none of them were true because every religion that's Christian doesn't portray Jesus and other "major players in the Bible" as being colored. He said obviously all of them had colored skin. So basically he said he couldn't listen to anything we talked about because we portrayed Jesus as white and not colored haha. It was weird. Then we went and helped the Gretz unload a truck full of firewood! That was pretty fun. They had some huge logs and there was only one I couldn't carry by myself.
Saturday we had zone service at this 5k race up in Eagan. A lot of the missionaries from the twin cities were there so it was fun to see a lot of people. Elder Sherwood and I and Elder Nielson were in charge of the 1 mile run. There were 5 people that did it so it was pretty quick. This chubby little kid got first place and then this family of 4 walked it so it wasn't much of a race. Taylor Peterson from the Apple valley ward won the 5k and set a course record at 19:03 minutes. After that we went to Bishop Clifford's house for lunch and to do coordination meeting. Bishop had this game called "Bean-Boozled" where you spin a spinner and it will tell you a color of jelly bean which is one of two flavors. Really yummy or really nasty haha. So then you just go till you tap out basically and say I'm done haha. Sister Clifford got screwed. She got booger and sour milk on her first two and Bishop Clifford got rotten egg and had to tap out on that one. I got dead fish twice in a row and it was nasty. haha It was great to have a little bit of fun with bishop's family! After that Sister Gretz wanted us to come over and help out with some heavy duty landscaping and yard work. We moved a ton of rocks for them so they could plant stuff along the back of their house. Then we planted all the plants and and Sister Gretz thatched the yard, so we raked all of that up and bagged it, too. So we were supposed to have dinner with the Dotys but they canceled because it was Mormon prom and also like every high school in Apple Valley's prom as well. So Mikey and Katelynn were at prom all day so we got to do all the landscaping! It was a good Mother's Day present for Sister Gretz, though. Then they took us to Pizza Ranch for dinner so that was great! We met their next door neighbor, Jeff, and talked to him for a while about what we do as missionaries and where we were from. We also met another neighbor that lives down the street that we are going to help move some rocks sometime soon as well! Hopefully those people can become investigators.
Sunday we had a few less actives at church including Lorraine! So that was pretty good! After church we did some stop bys, chalking and tracted a little bit. We were able to teach a first lesson to this lady named Jennifer that we had found a few weeks ago. Her husband is a Jehovah's Witness, but she was pretty interested in our message. So hopefully we can keep teaching her more this week! We chalked a big "Happy Mother's Day" and some bible verses and Book of Mormon verses about loving our mothers and stuff like that! After all our stop bys and everything we went to the Gretz to call home for Mother's Day. That was amazing. It was so great to talk to my family. I love you guys so much and I'm glad you are all doing so well. Thank you for all the support you've given me the last 11 months as I've been doing the Lord's work. I know this is His church and Joseph Smith is his prophet called to restore the gospel. The Book of Mormon is true and Jesus Christ is the son of God, and Savior and redeemer of the world. I'm forever grateful for his atoning sacrifice that allows us to repent and change and become like our Father in Heaven. I also know we can live with our families forever and I am so grateful for that! I love you all and hope you have a great week.
Much love,
Elder Beach
