Hello to all my fam, friends, and coaches back home, at college, and serving around the world! Hope this email finds you all doing well and enjoying the cold winter (at least here in MN). First off, shoutout to my Grandpa Gary for his birthday this weekend. I love you and you are such a great example to me! Thanks for all you do for me and my family. Second, shout out to my man Jake Pitcher for getting engaged this weekend! Super pumped for you and Ashley! Congrats bro! I am now serving down in the Rochester 1st Ward. It’s been great so far! I like the area, it’s very diverse. It has the southeast part of the city and then a whole bunch of little towns all the way down to the Iowa border. So it’s a big area, but I’m excited to be here. The ward is great!
So Monday was p day and we had a zone p day at the Pole Barn in Buffalo. It was fun and I did some back squats for the first time in a while and actually did pretty well on the weight, all things considered haha. I put up 245 on my last set of 7x5 rep scheme. So I was pretty happy with that haha because I haven’t squatted for like 18 months! So that was fun! After that we went to Applebee’s with the Princeton Elders again to watch the National Championship. It was a wild one, and we missed the best part of the game because we had to go home due to our curfew haha. But Alabama pulled off the win in a crazy game, so I’m sure my brother is pumped about that. Good day!
So my area book reset, so I don’t have all our schedule from last week, so I will just throw in the highlights of each day haha. Tuesday we did a bunch of stop bys in Buffalo and knocked some doors as well. We’ve really been struggling to find anyone in Buffalo knocking doors, but it seems to be working in helping us find people still because we keep getting referrals left and right that are pretty solid. We’ve chalked it up to tracting, so we keep doing it! It was good though, and we had fun because it wasn’t super cold! It was in the 20’s and 30’s early in the week and you don’t even have to wear a coat. It’s nice. Tuesday night we had dinner with the Yarcos and that was a party. They made us chili and cornbread and then we ended up having this like hour long discussion about President Monson and what we remember about him and stuff we had learned from him. One thing I remembered from him was he always seemed so happy and cheerful. Sometimes I can get a little grumpy or down and I seem to let it show pretty well on my facial expressions, so I’ve been trying to exude happiness and cheeriness this week! And it seems to be working out pretty good so far. After we had our super long discussion, Brother Yarco wanted to show us some fireworks he had bought, so we went out and shot off some sweet fireworks for a while haha. So that was pretty cool! After that we headed home and cleaned up the apartment a little bit!
Wednesday we found out they moved transfers back to Friday instead of Thursday because of some huge storm that was supposed to come through the twin cities on Thursday. It ended up being nothing, so that was kind of a bummer! But Wednesday we went to Rockford and did some stop bys and tracting and also went to Delano and stopped by some people we had previously found tracting. We didn’t have a whole lot of luck on Wednesday haha. It was just one of those days where it was kind of rough. Wednesday night we went up to Monticello and stopped by a few less actives and got to see the Breiwicks. They are super cool! Elder Harper and I discovered them on exchanges a while back. They’re less active but absolutely love the missionaries. They said the Elders hadn’t been over to visit for like 2-3 years so we started going over again. They’ve been pretty sick the last few weeks so we haven’t met with them much, but we got to visit a little bit and see how they’re doing. We got a dinner and lesson set up with them for next Friday, and unfortunately, I will be gone. But it was good! After that we went to the apartment and cleaned up a little bit and I started the “pack of death” as Elder Layton calls it. Basically just packing up all my stuff haha.
Thursday we weekly planned at the church. We usually do it in the community room in our apartment but this crazy guy was in there that always talks to us non stop for like 3 hours when we go down. He seems like a lonely dude, but he just doesn’t know when to stop talking haha. 2 weeks ago when we weekly planned, we were sitting in there and he comes in at around 1 pm and he talked until 3:30 pm and we didn’t say a word. We just communicated with each other over Facebook messenger. We try to talk to him and get to know him, but it’s hard to get a word in! He’s a nice enough guy, just likes to talk a lot haha. So we decided to go to the church so we could get it done quicker. Oh I forgot, before weekly planning we visited Brother Archibald in Annandale. He was super sad I was leaving, but I told him I would come visit him when my family came and picked me up to head home. He was pretty stoked about that, so we better go see him when we are out here! He’s a cool guy and was like, “Elder Beach, I can’t wait to meet your parents!” So that was cool! We shared a Mormon message with him and invited him to read Alma 5 as it coordinated with the Mormon message we shared. So after that, we went and weekly planned. It was weird planning for a week I wouldn’t even be there for haha. Elders Layton and Woolley did most of it which was good! I was glad to see them take the lead on it. I still helped out just not as much as I usually do. After that we headed down to Delano for dinner and then back up to visit Paul and Melissa to read the Book of Mormon with them. We talked to her about what our purpose as missionaries was: to invite others to come unto Christ by helping them receive the restored gospel through faith in Christ, repentance, baptism, receiving the Holy Ghost and enduring to the end. She was just like, “I’m happy where I’m at.” So I think we will go over less or just drop her because she isn’t really progressing at all. After that we went home and finished the “pack of death” and headed to bed.
Friday we got up and got all packed for transfers and it was cold as heck. Like -15 not including wind chill. So that was fun packing the car and getting the bike on the rack when it was that cold haha. We got to Rockford and I remembered I left my razor charger in the bathroom, so we drove back really quick and got it. Elder Woolley drives really slow, so the second time we got to Rockford, I was like, “Bro, let me drive so we can get there on time.” So I drove the rest of the way to Bloomington haha. Elder Layton was going off on Woolley about how he can drive 7 over before TiWi yells at you in the car. And he would set cruise control right at the speed limit so most of the time we were going 2-3 MPH under the speed limit haha. So I was like, "Let me drive, dude. Cuz I drive a little faster haha." So we made it to transfers like 1 minute early, so that was good, and then we got everything switched to my new car and then went to Chik-fil-a for lunch with like 50 missionaries haha. After that we drove down to Rochester and got all my stuff dropped off at the apartment and headed out to do some work. We went and saw Dr. Coleville first haha. He got baptized when Elder Gooch was here like 15 months ago. He’s a hoot! He’s like 80 years old and is like a male performance doctor or something like that haha. He’s such a nice guy though, and we hit it off pretty quick. After that we went to the Mayo Clinic to give a lady a blessing. She was actually asleep when we got there, and her husband had just left so we ended up not being able to do it. As we were walking around the Mayo Clinic I thought, “This is like a place Jesus Christ would come to to heal and cheer up people.” I hope I will get to spend some time there just visiting people and helping lift their spirits. It seemed like people there could use some of the Light of Christ or just a friend to talk to! After that we hit up some Subway for dinner and then went to the church and got my area book synced. After that Dr. Coleville wanted us to go to this thing called, "Celebration Recovery" with him. It’s this thing that people go to to help them overcome addictions and stuff. He just goes to learn about it. So we went with him and it was a little strange. I wasn’t sure exactly how it was supposed to help people. Basically what happens is you go sing gospel rock songs, say a couple prayers, break off into small groups and just talk about random stuff. It was seriously the weirdest thing! Afterwards, Dr. Coleville was like, “I’m gonna go talk to someone in charge and find out what the hell is going on. That was the strangest thing I’ve ever been to.” I just died laughing. It was pretty funny!
Saturday we had nothing planned, so we basically just winged it because I don’t know anyone or anything in the area. We stopped by some potentials and visited with this husband/wife named Karl and Denise. They found them tracting and basically they just go over and chill with them and haven’t really taught them much. So when we went by we tried to talk about the Book of Mormon and Denise told us she has started reading it a little bit and feels like it was easier to read than the Bible. So we talked about why it is easier and just some basic background stuff about the Book of Mormon with them. I feel like this area has a lot of “investigators” that the missionaries just go hang out with and don’t really teach at all, so we are going to change that! After that we tracted for about an hour and half and literally the first 5 houses we knocked on were Muslims. It was crazy haha. They are such nice people though, and one dude let us in and let us teach him about the Book of Mormon, so that was pretty cool! We ended up giving away about 4 Books of Mormon, so that was pretty sweet. After that we had some dinner and then went and visited Ricky and his wife. Ricky is a former investigator that just got picked up again. His wife is a less active member. At one point Ricky had a date set and was progressing really well, and then he just kind of cold turkey backed out at the last minute because of pressure from his family. So we retaught him the some of the restoration and really focused on him reading the Book of Mormon and coming to church and getting an answer for himself if this is the path he needs to follow. He seems like he wants to get baptized, he just needs to get the motivation and determination to do so! After that we visited Sister Klow and her family. She got baptized like 5 years ago and loves the Elders, but is also less active and never keeps commitments. I don’t know what to do about people like her. She literally says she will come to church every single week and then never does, so I don't know what’s up? It’s odd. Anyway, she super nice and hopefully we can help her and her family get back active again! After that we just drove around and stopped by some potentials and invited them to church and then headed home and called it a night!
Sunday was pretty wild haha. We had PEC and Ward Council back to back at 7 and 8 am so we had to get up at 6 am and get to the church. When we got there they said all the water pipes were frozen and the water wasn’t working, so they were only going to have Sacrament Meeting. Then like halfway through Ward Council someone came in and was like, “The pipes are fixed!” So church ended up being all three hours haha. I got to pass the Sacrament and Elder Bowman gave a way good talk on Christlike attributes. We had one sort of investigator at church, the husband of a member. After church we headed home and had lunch really quick and then Brother Joslin came and took us to Mayo to give a little baby a blessing. The baby’s mom is friends with a member in the ward, and she asked that we give her baby a blessing of healing because it has something wrong with its spine and isn’t moving its legs. They aren’t sure what’s wrong yet, but are working on it. After that the Rochester 5 Sisters needed us to give them a ride and joint teach a lesson with them because a sister took their car keys to her new area with them and they lost their apartment keys and were locked out of their apartment. So they were “up the creek” as Grandma says haha. After that we had dinner with the Jostlins and they are awesome. We had a great time with them and their family. After that we knocked this neighborhood out on the south end of town we felt inspired to go to. Now this is right during the 4th quarter of the Vikings game, so this is a huge act of faith on our part. So literally the first door we knock on, this super nice like mid-20’s lady opens up and is like, “Yeah, I’m watching the Vikings game, but what’s up?” So we told her who we were and she’s like, “I have some really good friends from back home who are Mormons!” I asked her where she’s from and she said, “Birmingham, Alabama!” I was like “Nooooo.... that’s where my little brother is serving his mission right now!” She thought that was awesome and invited us to come back Thursday to meet with her and her husband! So that was sweet! After that, literally every single person said they were watching the game or weren’t interested, so I guess we were just meant to find Tess (the first girl we talked to). Haha so after that we stopped by a few less actives who weren’t home and then we had to go drop off the Sisters' iPad to them because they left it in our car. So that was the night!
I’m pretty excited to be down here in Rochester! It’s fun! I love the people, I feel like this area has a lot of potential, and the ward is great! Should be a fun transfer. Thanks for all the prayers and support from back home. Keep ‘em coming my way so I can finish strong the last few months of my mission. I love you all! Have a great week!
Much love,
Elder Beach
#MavUp #10
The "Hutchalo" Elders and Elder S from Princeton.
The Three Amigos at transfers!
This dog reminded me of my dog, Hallie!
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