What's up to all my fam, friends, and coaches back home, at school, and serving around the world! This week has been a cold one in Hutch haha. Lots of snow and wind and cold but it’s fun to be out in it all day! Makes me feel like a Bad A missionary. Elder Layton is doing a good job managing the cold weather too haha. The work in Hutch is really slow right now and we don’t have a ton do, but we do our best to stay busy and work hard.
Last Monday we had Mission Conference in Crystal and Elder Ringwood came and spoke to us. He is awesome! I think I talked about his visit a little in my last email, but I really enjoyed his message of faith in our finding efforts. It made me inspired to continue to work hard to find those that are prepared to receive us and have faith to open my mouth and talk to all those who we cross paths with. It is hard and mentally rigorous to do that, but when I do, I feel like I’m leaving no stone unturned. After we had Mission Conference we blitzed Buffalo and did some stop bys and knocked a few doors. We also got our laundry done and the members house we did it at had a messed up laundry machine haha. It would fill up with water and then just stop halfway through the load, so we had to wash it halfway and then we’d have to redo the cycle and stuff and drain it and all that so that was an adventure, We did some Facebook work too, and I got to talk to Flora and Brother Cosgrove from Sauk Rapids and see how they’re doing.
Tuesday was Zone p day in Elk River and we raked this lady’s yard (5-6 acres) and I got this gnarly blister on my hand which is getting better, but it splits open again like every day because it’s cold and dries out really easy so that kinda sucks. But it is what it is! After that we played some basketball in Elk River with the zone, and that was awesome. I haven’t had a good ball game in a while, but it was great to run around and compete a little bit. We also threw the football around for like an hour and that felt so great! So playing some ball was a jolly good time and then after that we went back to the lady’s house we raked at and she made us dinner and we had a huge bonfire in her yard. Elder Woolley, Layton, and I made it and it was blazing hot haha. Super good fire if I do say so myself! We just sat around and talked and sang some hymns and it was pretty cool! We all stayed at Buffalo Tuesday night because we did exchanges on Wednesday. So when we got there, I realized my email didn’t save from earlier in the day, so I had to rewrite the whole thing on Thursday. So that was a bummer, but I got it done. It takes a long time to write emails, so I’m always gonna make sure it’s saved from now on.
Wednesday I went with Elder Harper in Buffalo and Elder Layton and Woolley went to Hutchinson for the day. We went and helped Brother Yarco with some yard work because he tore his ACL and just had surgery. We raked up his leaves and put them in a trailer and hauled them back to his horse pasture. So funny story: the horses in the pasture got out while we opened the gate. They literally just stampeded the gate right when we were going through it, so we spent a solid hour and a half trying to wrangle them up and get them back in the pasture and keep them out of the road and stuff. They didn’t really want to go back in, but we finally got one and then the other two followed him. Horses are pretty stubborn haha. So I now have the talent of “horse wrangling” in my arsenal as well haha. After that we stopped by some less actives and met this way cool less active family who said they love the Elders but hadn’t seen them for like a year! We shared a quick message about the Book of Mormon with them and got a dinner set up with them for this week with the Buffalo Elders. So that was pretty cool! After that we knocked some doors for an hour or so. It’s easy to tell if missionaries have done a lot of finding or not on their missions by how well they can talk to people on the street and at the door. After we did some tracting we had a burger feast at the YM President's house. All the young men were there and made their own burgers and they had basically anything you could want on a burger. So I had 2 bunless bacon cheeseburgers with all the toppings and fry sauce. Really yummy! They had the baseball game on, so we got to see part of that. I’m not much into baseball, but some of the YM and YM leaders were going insane haha. I guess the Astros ended up beating the Dodgers in game 7. After that it was about time to head home, so we stopped by one or two more less actives on the way home but no luck. Elder Harpter is approved to swim because he has a bad back and knees or something, so we got to go swimming when we got home, which I haven’t done for 16 months! It was great! I am awful at swimming but I would just swim like as hard as I could for as long as I could and try not to sink. Elder Harper is like a fish and just swims right by me and I basically just would sink. He played water polo in high school, so he’s a good swimmer!
Thursday was a rough day. We didn’t do much in Buffalo. Elder Harper is going home this transfer so he’s getting a little trunky. We sat at the church for like 4 hours while he accounted and did “My Plan” for getting you ready to go home. I just tried to do Facebook work and study and stuff but 4 hours is forever and I got sick of sitting around really quick. After that we had a lesson with one of their investigators named Raul. He’s a cool dude and has lots of medical problems, but he has a great faith in God and that God loves him and has power to help him. We read the Book of Mormon with him because he has a hard time understanding the Book of Mormon when he reads it but gets it better when someone reads to him! He loves the Book of Mormon and also prayer, so that is awesome! After we met with Raul, we drove down to Howard Lake, which is a pretty small town in the south part of the Buffalo area. We knocked some doors for about an hour and it was pretty good! The first door we knocked this guy answers and I was like, “Hey, we are missionaries from the LDS church, sharing a message that God has called a prophet to restore the Church of Jesus Christ, etc. etc.” He says, “The Book of Mormon isn’t true. It says in the Bible that you can’t add or take away from it.” So I explained that it says that in Deuteronomy 4 as well as Revelations, and it’s talking about the Book of Revelations, not the whole Bible. I then invited him to read the Book of Mormon, and he said no because it wasn’t true. I asked, “Have you ever read it?” He said, “No.” I said, “Well then you can’t look me in the eye and tell me it isn’t true if you’ve never read it!” He didn’t like that and got mad and said we were a corrupt church and he belonged to the true church. So I asked him if he belonged to the Catholic Church because the only two churches on earth that can be true are the LDS church or the Catholic Church. He looked at me like I was a freak and said, “No, I’m a born again Christian!” I was like, “Ok...?” Then he went off on a rant again and slammed the door and told us we were corrupt and going to hell. Haha oh well. The next door we actually got let in and we taught this guy with 2 kids the restoration lesson and he said he and his wife were looking for a new church because their church had a bunch of old people in it and they were all dying so they wanted to find a newer and younger church. We taught him about how the church was restored and about the Book of Mormon and he seemed really interested in it and told us he would talk to his wife about it. (found out today he wasn’t interested) So anyway, that was pretty cool though! After that we had dinner and that was really good! We ate with this member family and we had a great discussion about the atonement of Jesus Christ and invited them to share their testimonies of it with someone they knew. It was 8:30 pm when we got done with dinner, so we headed home and did some more swimming and called it a night.
Friday was interviews, so the Buffalo Elders drove all 4 of us up to St. Cloud for interviews and district meeting. It was really good! President Barney is awesome. In my interview he was like, “Elder Beach, I know Hutchinson is like one of the toughest areas to be in right now, but I appreciate your hard work!” I was like,“Haha thanks President!” Hutch is really slow right now. He talked to me about maybe closing the area next transfer. I suggested that Elder Layton, Elder Woolley in Buffalo and I work in a trio and work the Buffalo and Hutch areas. President really liked that idea, so we might be doing that next transfer but spend most of our time in Buffalo and a few days a week in Hutch just because there isn’t much work to do there right now. I’m hyped and hope that happens because the Buffalo area has a ton of potential and we would explode it if we all worked there because we all get along really well and we all work really hard! We will continue to work hard in Hutch though, and try to find some people to teach! After interviews we went to Subway for lunch because it was “National Sandwich Day” so if you bought a foot long and drink you got a foot long free. That was pretty great! We headed back down to Buffalo and then got packed and headed home to Hutch. We started weekly planning and got about halfway done and then had a lesson with Jeana Bustamente and her brother Robert. Robert is a crazy guy. He is obsessed with Japanese things and is just a little weird haha. Jeana said she doesn’t understand why we always talk of Christ and put so much emphasis on Him when she felt like He would want us to just do the things He did but not spend so much time teaching about Him and focusing on Him. We talked about how without Him, His teachings, Atonement and example, we basically couldn’t do much as far as progressing in this life and building our faith. She said that made sense and then asked why we always ask her to read scriptures but never tell her to do anything else. So I had a cool idea: I said “Jeana, this week, we are still going to ask you to read the scriptures, but I want you to pray and ask God what he wants you to do to serve and follow Jesus Christ (because she loves serving others and wanted to know why we don’t just ask her to do that). Then you read the Book of Mormon. Doesn’t matter where, but read it and God will tell you who to serve and how to serve them!” She loved that idea and said she would do that. So that was pretty cool and I hope it works for her. I know it will if she really does it with faith and asks sincerely and then reads sincerely, too, God will speak to her as she reads the Book of Mormon and tell her what she needs to do!
Saturday we cleaned up the apartment because it is still just thrashed and I was sick of it. It’s like 90% clean now, so it’s good enough now haha. So we did that in the morning and we literally had nothing planned, so we were like, ok let’s pick a town no one's ever been to and go tract it haha. So we found this town called Cosmos, which is like 25 minutes west of Hutch, and we drove out there and knocked it for 4 and a half hours. It was really cold. ️ Like 20 degrees and the wind was pretty good too haha. We knocked the south half of the town in 4.5 hours and didn’t find anyone super solid. We knocked the weirdest trailer park ever. Funny story: we saw this old guy with a big beard taking a wagon full of propane tanks with his granddaughter to the gas station to fill the propane tanks. All of a sudden we hear him yelling at something and we turn around while we are on a porch and this random girl had run out of her trailer and tried to steal the wagon. He was like yelling at her to get out of there and then she just turned around and ran back into the trailer. We also saw this really crazy dude taking pictures of a whole bunch of random things all nailed together on a trailer (basically looked like a shack made of random things and full of random things). We walked by to see what it was and he was trying to sell it for $2500. It was like a bunch of crap smashed together on a trailer for $2500! It was a weird place. I’m just going to say that haha. We got done at like 6 pm and so we went home and finished weekly planning and had dinner and hit the hay.
Sunday was Stake Conference and it was way good! It was broadcast to our building so we got to watch it with the branch and then had a potluck after. That was fun and it was good to interact with everyone and get to know people better! After the potluck we headed up to Dassell and Cokato and stopped by people we had found. None of them could meet in Dassell, so we knocked for like 2 hours and found this dude named Tim. We knocked on his door and he was like, “Ah, I’m not super interested. I’m just moving a couch right now.” So we offered to help and he let us in to help!! We moved it from his living room to his garage. He has a monster Great Dane dog haha. It’s huge. He made us some hot chocolate after because it was cold out haha. We ended up talking to him and his wife for about 30 minutes and gave them a Book of Mormon and restoration pamphlet. He said he works crazy hours and stuff but we were more than welcome to stop by whenever we were up there! So that was pretty cool! After that we went to Cokato and stopped by some less actives and formers. We got in with some formers who also lived in a trailer park. Their last name was Samuelson, and they were super nice! They’re an older couple with 2 kids who are 7 and 5. Sister Samuelson's Mom and Dad and sister are members in Texas, but they aren’t. We taught them the restoration lesson and I let Elder Layton teach most of it because he never gets to teach anyone and I hate it! We don’t have anyone to teach ahhhhh! It’s frustrating as a trainer because I want him to be able to teach well, but we never get to teach anyone. But it was a blessing to be able to teach them so he could get some good experience! After that we knocked doors in the “death cold” as Elder Latyon says for about an hour. We were knocking this street and it was really dark and I just had this weird feeling about it. Like we knocked a few houses after I got the feeling but I just have had that feeling a few times on my mission and it’s a weird feeling so we just got out of there. I don't know if anything bad would’ve happened or what, but I just felt really uneasy where we were, so we got out of there! After that we stopped by the Christensens who are a less active family in Cokato. They’re super nice so we got to visit with them for a few minutes. Brother Christensen is a really good dude and I’m excited to get to know him better. He works in Alexandria as a cop and works like 60 hours a week, so he has a crazy work schedule. But they were awesome. After that we headed up to Buffalo to spend the night with them before district p-day!
This week's been pretty good, even though it is slow. I don’t know how I find so much joy and satisfaction in the work haha. It’s weird because we don’t see much results like you do in football or weightlifting or crossfit, but I still get the same satisfaction of working hard and inviting others to come to Christ. I also learned it is very important to follow the promptings we receive from the Spirit. Whether those are to talk to someone, walk down a certain street, get away from a certain street, etc. Having the Spirit guide us is so awesome and is crucial to our work as missionaries. I’m grateful we have the Priesthood to give the gift of the Holy Ghost so we can have it as our constant companion to have it guide us and help us in all we do! I pray you will take time to consider what can I do in my life to increase the influence of the Spirit in my life? I’ve found many things I can do each day to help me. Praying more frequently is one, always reading the Book of Mormon is another, praying for charity is a huge one for me as well. I hope you can find one that you can do to help you, too! I know you each can. Love you all! Hope you have a great week and keep loving life and enjoying what time we have here doing the things we love with the people we love even more!
Much love,
Elder Beach
#MavUp #10
P-day at the Mall of America.
The "horse whisperer"... Exchanges with Elder Harper in Buffalo.
My delicious lunch.
It's freezing! 20 degrees!
