A big hello to everyone back home, at school, and serving around the world! Hope this email finds you all doing well and enjoying the last little bit of fall. Winter is well on its way here in Minnesota and we’ve had snow and some chillier temperatures. ️ Elder Layton is terrified of the cold because he is from St. George, so it’s been so funny to see him try to get adjusted to it. Anyway, Happy Halloween to everyone, hope it was a great time. Congrats to my brother, the other Elder Beach, for 12 week training! You’ll do great and it’s a party to have a greenie haha. This week has been pretty slow again, but we’ve had some cool miracles and lots of funny stories!
Monday was district p-day and my birthday, so we went to the Pole Barn American Ninja Warrior gym in Buffalo. It was way fun and I got to lift weights all day so I was a happy camper. I’m happy to report my power clean has stayed pretty decent despite not lifting heavy at all on my mission haha. I put up 8x3 @195 and 5x2 @205 so I was pretty happy with that. Good stuff! After p-day we headed back to Hutchinson and had a lesson with Jeana Bustamante. She’s a less active in the ward. Her brother is also in the ward and is semi less active but they’re really cool! Elder Layton and she had the weirdest/funniest discussion about a bunch of random stuff and I was just laughing at Elder Layton because he’s such a goober haha. I kept interjecting questions about how long she’s been in the church, when she went less active, why, etc. She said she reads the Book of Mormon almost every day and as we were talking I felt impressed to invite her to read Alma 36-37, which is Alma’s final council to His son Helaman. I don’t know why, but I just remembered reading something in there that I felt would apply to her! So she said she would read it this week! It was good. After that we had some dinner at Subway which was awesome (thanks Mom and Kim for the gift cards!) and then headed home and went to bed.
Tuesday we did some service at the food shelf in Hutchinson. It was pretty good but not nearly as fun or busy as the food shelf we worked at in Apple Valley. I was so appreciative of how thankful and humble the people were that came in. They were so grateful for the help they were receiving and it made me way happy to serve and help them! I learned a great lesson from working there: be humble enough to ask for help when you need it and also humble enough to be gracious and thankful to those that help you! After that we went and had some lunch and then went down to the town of Brownton, which is about 25 minutes south of Hutchinson. It’s a super small town. Like the population is like 900 people or something like that. So anyway, we stopped by every less active and potential we had there and had some luck with visiting Sister Hughes, a less active lady in an assisted living place kind of thing. She’s been less active since she was 13 and lived in Utah at that point. She said someone in the church had offended her family so they quit going and now she hates the church (except for missionaries haha). We shared the Hope of God's Light Mormon message and invited her to read her scriptures, pray, and come to church. Those are really the basics of living the gospel, but as we strive to do them consistently and with full purpose of heart they help more than anything! She told us she prays every day, and said she would read scriptures more but still won’t come to church. We invited her and she was just like, “Ehh...”. So that was kind of a bummer but everyone has their agency. After that we knocked doors for like 3 hours and met the pastor of a local church and he was super nice but not interested obviously. We also gave away like 5 Books of Mormon, so that will be good to follow up with people and see if anyone reads it and feels the spirit and wants to know more. Haha funny story: we saw a dude fixing a flat tire on his car and some other dudes were just chilling on the driveway so we walked up to talk to them. This one dude on the driveway just yells “I’m gay! Go away!” We were like “We don’t care! We have a great message for you!” He’s like, “Are you Mormons?” We were like, “Yessir!” He then freaks out and is like, “Go away! I don’t want to talk to you people!” I was like, “Man, ok, chill dude haha” As we were walking away Elder Layton was like “Man, that guy was a freak!” Haha I had a good laugh at that. Elder Layton has started talking in a southern accent and he sounds so funny. Elder Woolley talks in a southern accent so Elder Layton has started to as well and now I’m starting to as well just because I’m around it all the time haha. But Elder Layton sounds so funny. We knocked until about like 6:30 pm. As we were walking from the other side of town back to our car, we passed this house where a guy was in his garage. We walked by and we were like half a block past him and I felt like I should go back and talk to him. So we did and he wasn’t really interested, but we gave him a card and went on our way. Even though nothing happened, maybe it will later because of that card we gave him. Never know! After that we did some stop bys in Hutchinson and like no one was home or lived where they were listed. Funny story 2: We knocked on this less actives door at 7:30 pm and someone comes to the door and yells, “Who is it?” I said, “The missionaries from the LDS church.” They yell, “Go away! We are sleeping!” I was like, “How are you talking to us if you’re sleeping?” Then they screamed at us to never come back, so we said, “Ok! Have a good sleep!” And left haha. People are interesting sometimes! After that we were going back to Subway again for dinner and we drove by Hutchinson High School and they had a football game going so we stopped and watched for a few minutes and it was pretty fun to check out a football game. I haven’t watched one in a good while. After that we had dinner and called it a night!
Wednesday was actually a relatively busy day! We went down to Glencoe and just walked around and stopped by people. We met a guy named Curt while we were out walking around whom we taught a short restoration lesson to and gave him a Book of Mormon. He said we could swing by whenever and share some more with him so I’m hoping he reads it! After that we tried to stop by Tim Keifer, this less active guy we can’t get ahold of haha. The last two weeks when we stop by he’s literally leaving right when we get there! It’s crazy. So we missed him by like 10 seconds and then we stopped by this less active member named Dale Whipple. He’s a great guy. Super nice and he loves to talk haha. Like the dude can talk. We sat there for almost and hour and said nothing. Just because we couldn’t get a word in! We had a lesson at 5 pm and I finally was like, “We have to get going, unfortunately, but we’d love to hear the rest of this story when we come back next time!” He basically told us half his life story of working in the trucking business. After that we had a lesson with Sister Ackerson and her daughter. They are also less active. Lloyd Thurn joint taught with us and that was awesome! He shared some good insights as to how the Book of Mormon has helped him in his life. We invited them to read the Book of Mormon each day and we would follow up with them next time we came over. After that we had a lesson with Victor who is a dude who got baptized, and then took his name off the records for some family issues. It’s a long story. But anyway, he’s a way cool guy and still comes to church pretty regularly and even gave us a referral. We’ve been asked to just share spiritual messages with him once a week or so and invite him to keep coming to church. So that’s what we did!He’s got a super strong testimony. The referral he gave us was for his friend in Brownton, so that’ll be good for next time we get down there! After that we had the branch trunk-or-treat at the church so we went to that. We bought a big bag of candy for the kids at ALDI so we gave out the candy and all the kids loved us haha. I also got to meet a bunch of the branch members so that was great! After that we had dinner and called it a night!
Thursday we went to go visit this guy named Tom who is a sort of investigator that’s been reading the Book of Mormon but hasn’t been to church and isn’t really progressing in any other way. He had family over so we asked if we could rake his lawn and he said, “Sure!” So we raked his lawn and it was crazy. The wind was blowing like 30 mph so we’d rake and then the wind would just blow it all away and then we’d rake it again and same thing would happen haha. It was rough, but we finally got his front yard done. The backyard has like 3 inches of leaves so that’s for another day! After that we accounted with Buffalo, had some lunch, and then headed out to Silver Lake! We stopped by this lady named Jen that we found last week. She had her dog staked out front of the house and it was going nuts and barking at us and looked like it wanted to eat us. So I “dog whispered” it and then it loved us and wanted to us to pet it and stuff. So we knock on the door and no one answers, so we start to leave and we get like halfway down the sidewalk and it just freaks out and starts chasing Elder Layton and trying to eat his leg off. He basically almost got straight murked by the dog. That’s a new word we use that basically means killed or died or anything bad that can happen to you. After that we knocked doors until we were pretty cold and then headed to a gas station to get some hot chocolate to warm up. Then we went to Lester Prairie and stopped by this guy who had met with missionaries before but hadn’t had any contact for a while. So we stop by and this dude is crazy. He’s got some weird ideas about the Bible and stuff. He told us he was a missionary for his church but he doesn’t really do anything so I don't know what classifies or qualifies him as a missionary. He told us we do too much to be “saved” and that all we need to do is have a personal experience with Christ that is on the same level that Saul/Paul had in the Bible. He said he had been personally visited by Christ so he was saved. I was like, “Ok, so what about John 3:5 where Christ says, “Except a man be born of water and of the spirit, he cannot enter the kingdom of God?” He said that meant you are physically birthed by your mom and then born of the spirit means you have a Paul/Saul moment. So I was like all you have to do is be born and then have a coming to Jesus moment?? He said, “Yeah, pretty much!” I was like ok whatever you say dude haha. One of a thousand reasons we have the Book of Mormon is it teaches us exactly what we need to do to receive salvation: exercise faith in Christ unto repentance, be baptized by proper Priesthood authority and receive the Holy Ghost by the same authority and then endure faithfully to the end of our lives. Not just be born and have a coming to Christ moment. Nobody can agree on what bible verses mean so I’m glad we have the Book of Mormon to clarify all the doctrines of Christ. After that we stopped by a few more people who weren’t home or interested and then headed to the Jacobs for dinner. Brother Jacobs is a recent convert, so he had some questions about the pre-earth life and the war in heaven. I’ve never really taught a whole ton about that stuff on my mission so it was cool to dive into that a little bit and why it all happened and how it is all part of God's plan for us! After dinner he wanted to play “Settlers of Catan” with us, so we played that and it was really fun! I hadn’t ever played it but it was cool. Brother Jacobs murked us, but it was still fun! After that we headed home and called it a night and went to bed because I pretty much had the plague. So that was no fun this week.
Friday I felt like death, so that kind of sucked. We were supposed to have a lesson with this dude named Roger. He lives right next to our apartment but when we got there his 3-year-old daughter told us he was asleep so that was kind of bummer. So we just started weekly planning. That was a little better this week, but still tough. I still don’t know a lot of people and so it’s tough to plan for people, but we got it done and I was having a rough time because I have the plague and my nose is plugged up and I’m super tired. After we got done, we went and knocked doors in Elder Layton’s first snow storm! It was a jolly good time and I thought he was gonna die haha. He isn’t used to the cold and snow. The wind was a killer and just cuts through you, but I’m used to it and he isn’t haha. We gave out a few Books of Mormon, but nobody super solid was found but it was still fun to get out and teach and testify, even if only for a few seconds on someone’s door. After that we had dinner with the Alveys and that was really good! We had venison tacos and they were the bomb. Really good! At least from what I could taste they were good haha. After dinner we were supposed to have a lesson with Lorraine that we found last week and we knock on her door and she answers and we see her daughter is there. So Lorraine comes out and gives us the Book of Mormon back and says she read it but doesn’t want it and thanks for coming but she isn’t interested. So that was a bummer. Then we were gonna see Sister Gonzalez and she wasn’t home either. So we stopped by a bunch of less actives and none of them were home either! I was feeling like crap and wanted to just go home and sleep. It was like 7:30 and I was like go until 8:30 pm and then go home. Keep working hard until then. So anyway, we kept stopping by people and at 8 pm we stopped by this former investigator named Steph. She let us in and we were able to teach her and her kids the restoration and it was pretty cool! I was so happy we got to teach someone finally. It was a good way to cap off the night! After that we went home and I took a steaming hot shower and passed out haha.
Saturday we went to Litchfield and it was like a beautiful fall day! It was like 40 degrees and sunny and no wind. So we walked around and stopped by a ton of people and like no one was home but we met some cool people and got to talk to them! We met this guy who wanted Elder Layton to play at some place he made called the Jam Shack, which is a music shop where people can go to get free instruments and learn how to play them. The dude was pretty cool! He said he had lost a daughter a while back so he quit believing in God because he felt God wouldn’t take his daughter away. We gave him a plan of salvation pamphlet and invited him to read it! He said he would check it out, so I hope he does! We then met this dude named Jorge from Mexico who moved up here like 10 years ago to work with his cousins. He was working on his rain gutter so we offered to help, but he was good to go. We talked to him about what we do as missionaries and the Book of Mormon. He said he would love a Spanish one, so we went to the car to get him one and when we came back he wasn’t there. So Elder Woolley and Layton are going to bring him one today! We had a dinner with Sister Taylor at 5 pm and we got there at like 4:30 pm, so we knocked these duplexes across the street from her. Crazy cool story: So we knock and knock and keep going and the last door we knock on this lady answers and is like, “The Elders! How are you doing?” We were like, “uhhh... good!?” She told us she had met with missionaries when her family used to live in Willmar and they were super good friends with the Elders and had all the lessons with them. She said her family was looking for a church right now and she was friends with Sister Larson, who is the Branch President's wife. She is awesome and I guess they’d been talking a lot about the church. So this lady we met named Erica was super happy to see us and Elder Layton and Woolley are having dinner with her and the Larson's tonight so that should be sick. After that we had dinner with Sister Taylor and I was still like super sick so I wasn’t able to eat much haha. After that we had a lesson with the Lindquist family and that was good! They’re pretty cool! Then we went and knocked doors for a while and then we had a lesson with the Larson family. They had just got back from Florida, so they were a little wiped out but I already love their family. They are so awesome. There is such a great spirit in their home and they are just the nicest people. They’re awesome! After that we headed home and I passed out haha.
Sunday was great! We got to teach Primary again and then we had combined 5th Sunday for Priesthood and Relief Society and we had a “deep doctrine” discussion on tithing and fast offerings and it was really cool! I learned a lot haha. I never thought I would ever learn that much about tithing and stuff but I sure learned a lot. After church we visited Sister Gonzalez with Brother Patino, and that was good! We basically just played with her kids the whole time and showed some Mormon messages to them haha. It was good though and Brother Patino talked to Sister Gonzalez about some stuff with her house and coming to church and all that! After that we had dinner with the Mitchells. They are way fun! They are super good at doing member missionary work, too. Like they kill it in sharing the gospel. So we had a great dinner with them and played “Liars Dice” that they play in Pirates of the Carribbean 2. It was way fun and I had a come from behind win. We shared a message about the atonement of Jesus Christ with them and it was super good and they had some great insights. We invited them to share their testimony of the atonement of Christ with someone they know. After that we got packed up and headed up to Dassell and Cokato. We ended up being in Dassell the whole evening haha. So we stopped by Dylan, Nicole, and Caitlyn and we talked to them for like 45 minutes. They really love talking to us and we were able to talk about the Book of Mormon more, baptism, and what we do as missionaries! Caitlyn hasn’t been baptized yet, so she was asking us about that so that was sweet. After them we stopped by Marcus that we gave a Book of Mormon to last Sunday. We weren’t expecting much with him, but he let us in and was like, “Yeah so tell me more about your church and stuff.” He’s Catholic and thinks the Catholic Church is the true church and has some weird ideas on stuff that he thinks is in the Bible but isn’t really in the Bible. So we started teaching him the restoration and how the apostles were killed off and couldn’t call more after Christ was crucified. He said that Peter was the first pope and that the church was run through him and the Priesthood went in an unbroken line. We talked about how the apostles were killed off and then the church fell into apostasy. We shared Acts 1 with him where they call Matthias to be a new apostle and he got all confused about that and then said all this weird stuff that we believe there’s 11 apostles and then 13 apostles. It was weird but we did our best to explain to him the restoration and reason for it. He seemed convinced he was right until we started using the New Testament to show him he wasn’t right then he starts talking about the apocrypha and how there’s stuff in the Bible that was taken out. I was like, “Yeah, those are biblical books that are taken out of the Bible.” He goes, “Except in the Catholic Bible.” I said “The Catholic Church is the one who took them out of the Bible in the first place!” He didn’t have a whole lot to say after that, and he finally started listening a little haha. Then his dad came over and started talking to us too, and his dad was a good dude. He was super friendly and really nice and listened to what we had to say and all that! It was great and we ended up having about a 2 hour discussion with them. By the time we left we were all friends and it was cool! We drove up to Buffalo after that to sleep over with them before mission conference the next day!
Monday we had mission conference in Crystal and Elder Ringwood came and talked to us. He talked a lot about having the faith to find and told us a ton of stories from his mission and experience as a Mission President about cool finding miracles. He talked a lot about the seed planters, the harvesters, and how each one is just as important but being a seed planter is sometimes harder because you don’t always see the results of your efforts. It really motivated me to keep working hard to plant seeds here in Hutchinson so one day they can be “harvested” by other missionaries or members. It was really good and I loved mission conference. I also got to see a lot of my buddies around the mission!
Tuesday was zone p-day in Elk River so we raked leaves for like 3 hours at someone’s house and I got this gnarly blister on my thumb. Basically all the skin between my thumb and pointer finger got ripped off. It didn’t and still doesn’t feel too great haha. But I’ll survive so no worries. After that we played some ball at the Elk River church and threw the football around for a while, too. It felt so good to throw the ball around. After that we went back to the lady’s house we raked for and had a big bonfire and sat out under the stars and chilled. It was pretty fun! Good time with the zone and it was awesome to see Elder Meyer again. We hung out like the whole day and had a lot of good laughs!
Thanks for all the birthday wishes and cards and gift cards. I am grateful for all the Subway gift cards. Those are money out here because we don’t get fed quite as much as Sauk Rapids. So they come in handy for sure. I’m grateful to be out here planting seeds in the Lord's vineyard and inviting everyone to come unto Christ and be perfected in Him. This is truly a marvelous work to be a part of and I love it! Love you all and have a great week!
Much love,
Elder Beach
#MavUp #10
Zone P-day!
Hanging with Elder Nissenbaum at Mission Conference.
Got to see my trainer, Elder Cordara!
Good times with Elder Nielsen!
