A big hello to all my family, friends, and coaches back home, at school, and serving around the world! Hope this email finds you doing well and enjoying the last little bit of January!️ This week has been pretty good here! It’s amazing how when you have basically no one to teach, we always seem to stay busy and are able to serve and teach people throughout each day! That’s been a cool miracle this week. As Nacho Libre says... “Let’s get down to the nitty gritty” and see how the week went!
Monday was p day and as usual was good! We played some basketball at the stake center and Elder Bowman and I basically ended up playing catch with the football the whole time, so that was good. We don’t have the most “interested in sports or athletic things” zone, so we usually don’t get ton of people playing basketball. We did play volleyball but it was a miracle if the ball got over the net more than once, so that didn’t last quite as long haha. But it was fun! Good to have a day off from the grind of missionary work. It ended up snowing a ton on Monday, so Monday night we just drove around and helped shovel people’s driveways. Sister Keene called us and we went to go help her with her driveway as well and she was super grateful for that so that was fun! We ended up shoveling about 5-6 driveways in 2 hours, so we did some good work! We took our dinner at 8 pm since we didn’t have any appointments Monday night.
Tuesday, when it started, looked like it was going to be a rough day because we had no lessons or anything set up. So we basically were like, “Ok, we are just going to do some finding the whole day.” So in the morning I had to account with the Sisters and so we did that and then we went and did some contacting downtown, and it was a rough day for contacting. Not many people were super interested in talking to us, but we worked hard and tried to talk with everyone, so I mean we did our best! After that we had some lunch and then had a bunch of stop bys planned out. So we got to meet with the Cammacks, who are a less active part member old couple in the ward. Brother Cammack is a member and his wife isn’t, but they’re super nice and we got to visit with them for a few minutes. We set up a time to come back this Wednesday afternoon so that should be solid! After that we stopped by like 20 or so people and no one was home or interested. We were driving around trying to figure out what to do and we decided to just pull over and look at our area book map and try to find someone we might have missed to go stop by. We both found this former investigator named Big John almost simultaneously, so we decided to go try him! When we got there he was out trying to shovel his driveway in a wheelchair. So we hurried and grabbed our shovels out of the car and ran over to help him. He was very grateful for the help. He likes his driveway down to bare concrete. Like completely cleaned off. So I would shovel, Elder Bowman would ice scrape and Big John would come behind and broom off every little speck of snow. It must’ve been quite the sight! After we got his driveway done (took us about an hour) he invited us in to show us his John Deere collection. He has basically a house full of John Deere models of every kind of tractor and rig they’ve ever made. It’s pretty wild! I’ll get a picture of it next time we go over. So we showed us all his John Deere stuff for a while and then we had to get running and go do some tracting before dinner. We tracted for about an hour and met a super nice lady who said we could come back another day and gave a Book of Mormon to this Lutheran guy who was trying to bash with us, and then we ended up giving him a Book of Mormon haha. After that we headed to Brother Oesterle’s house for “Taco Tuesday”. He’s our ward mission leader so they feed us every Tuesday and then we go visit people with him afterwards. His kids are so funny. I love them haha! He didn’t end up getting home from work until like 6:40 pm, so we had dinner really quick and then had a lesson with the Clow family. I ended up talking to Byron most of the time. He’s Sister Clow's son. He’s got himself all caught up in gangs and stuff like that, and as I was talking to him he just kept saying, “I hate it in the gangs. I want to get out, but the only way out is to get killed.” It was sad to see him in the state he was. He knows the gospel could help him out so much but he just isn’t ready to make the changes yet to let it work in his life. I feel so bad for people like that, who just can’t quite see how simple the gospel is and how much it could help them in their life. People also feel like they need to be “better or perfect” to even start, but that is so far from the truth! Start where you are! God takes us where we are, makes us into what we have the potential to become, if we only humbly turn to Him and let Him! It was a good visit, but it was also sad for me because I want them to be happy and latch on to the gospel, but they just haven’t figured it out yet.
Wednesday morning we accounted with the Zone Leaders and then went and shoveled Sister Smith’s driveway. It was basically straight ice so we had to like chisel it all away. So that took a little while haha. After that we had some lunch and then did some contacting down town again. We literally have like no one solid to teach that is progressing at all, so we do a lot of contacting and tracting. It’s rough because we talk to so many people, but we haven’t found anyone that’s interested. So we contacted for like 2 hours and then we were supposed to have a lesson with Cindy, and she cancelled on the doorstep (second time this has happened). So we did some stop bys in Rochester and didn’t really meet or find anyone. Then we did some tracting before dinner and met some nice people, but nobody solid that we were able to teach/share Books of Mormon with. After that we had dinner with the Millingtons! They are way cool! Sister Millington joined the church like 2 years ago and they are getting ready to go to the temple to get sealed pretty soon, so that’s awesome! They made us teriyaki chicken and veggie stir fry and it was super good. After that we did some more stop bys to invite people basketball and weren’t able to catch many people home. Wednesday was a rough day. Just top to bottom. We went and picked up Jordan Clow for basketball, and we were the only ones who showed up, so we played 21 and then about 20 minutes into us playing, Elder Bowman was driving in and pulled up and his head hit my nose and it popped super weird and I thought I broke my nose, so I just started walking to the bathroom. Anyway, it didn’t start bleeding or anything, so I was like, “My nose just got destroyed and popped weird but it isn’t bleeding so it must not be broken!” So we kept playing a little bit longer and then we had to take Jordan home so we ended up only playing for like an hour. My nose is not broken but it’s been pretty bruised and sore this week haha.
Thursday morning we had district meeting and basically the whole zone showed up. We had us, the ZLs, the STLs, Kasson Sisters, Roch 5 Sisters, and the Austin Elders. Winona (where Elder Peterson was) got closed basically on the drop of a dime so they had to come up here to Roch and Elder Michelson went with the Austin Elders and Elder Peterson went up to Cottage Grove with the APs. He was super mad about the whole thing so Elder Bowman and I talked to him about it after district meeting and he was not a happy camper. After that, Elder Bowman had to go to the dentist really quick to get his tooth checked on that he had a root canal on, and then after that Sister King took us to lunch at Hu-Hot and it was awesome! I haven’t eaten there in like 2 years haha. I got a ton of crab, chicken, and fish and loaded up the veggies and it was super good! Super healthy and really good food! Sister King is the only member in her family and is 86 years old, I’m pretty sure. She is the nicest lady! She just has a great spirit that you can feel a mile away. It was awesome to visit with her and get to know her better! After that we went to the dollar store and bought some food coloring and spray bottles so we could draw a giant Book of Mormon on the side of the highway in the snow. It was sweet! It took us about 45 minutes and we drew the Book of Mormon and our phone number and we got like 10 honks haha. It was cool, and I hope some people at least have an interest in the Book of Mormon from it! After that we did some tracting for about an hour. We met a nice family that said they were busy, but we could come back this week, so hopefully they work out. haha. This one door we knocked on, this guy answers and literally just dies laughing before we said anything and then slammed the door.... it was strange. There’s some freaks in Rochester. Like, I thought Hutchinson had some weirdos. There’s some real weirdos here in Rochester. But it keeps things interesting for us, so that is good. After that we had some dinner and called it a day.
Friday we did some contacting down town in the morning and it went really well! Together we gave out 3 Books of Mormon and almost 40 pass along cards! It was really fun and people just seemed like more happy on Friday for some reason. Probably because it was Friday haha. But it was much better! After that we had some lunch and did laundry at the ZLs apartment while we weekly planned. Weekly planning was rough this week as well. We didn’t have much to plan for and we called and texted every single less active or part member family and any investigator with any potential. Guess how many answered the phone or got back to us? ZERO! It was insane. We called like 50 people and not a single one answered the phone and not one responded to a text either. I was mind boggled haha. So our weekly planning session wasn’t super long this week. We figured we were just going to end up doing a bunch of tracting and contacting again, so we just planned out where we wanted to work each day. After that we tracted for about an hour and half and then stopped by a few people up by the Mayo Clinic and then had a member lesson with the Smiths. They are an older couple in the ward and we didn’t know them at all, so we visited with them and shared a message about sharing the gospel. They’re actually really good at it! They told us all these stories of people they’ve talked to and met and been able to share the gospel with! So it was cool. After that we had some dinner and worked out and headed to bed.
Saturday morning was like one of the weirdest stories of my mission. So we went to downtown Rochester to do some contacting and it went really well! I was able to talk to some awesome people, even though none of them were super solid. It was just great to talk to people and share my testimony with them of various parts of the gospel. We were once again able to give out about 30 pass along cards and several pamphlets to people and invited a lot of people to church. Anyway, back to my weird story: so there’s this main downtown part of Rochester we usual contact at because there’s a bunch of bus stops and some Skyway tunnels to talk to people in. So I was just coming out of a Skyway tunnel into a building. Elder Bowman was talking to someone across the Skyway, so I could still see him. So there was this guy sitting on a bench just outside of the Skyway tunnel and he looked like he was tripping on acid or something, just looked really sweaty and super out of it. So I was like, “Hey, can I help you with anything?” He’s like, “Man, I’m gonna die. I’m dying. I need to talk to someone about it.” I was like, “Ok, do you need a phone or something?” He said yeah, so I let him use our cell phone to call his case manager. I guess he had like schizophrenia or something and was tripping out hard core. So he called his case manager and gave them another cell phone number to reach him at. I guess he had a cell phone somehow. So anyway, I gave him a card with our number and told him to call us if he needed anything. Then he’s like, “Bro, my hand is broken.” So he showed it to me and I was like, “Yeah, that’s probably broken! You should go see a doctor for that!” He’s like, “Yeah, that’s where I’m going.” So anyway, he thanked me for helping him and said he was good to go, so I peaced out to go chase down this guy I felt I needed to talk to as I was helping this crazy dude. So I finally found this guy and talked to him a little bit and invited him to church and Wednesday night basketball. He said he would try to come to ball. After that Elder Bowman and I were walking back to the parking lot and the crazy guy's case manager calls us and is asking us all these questions about him. The guy was like, “I’m going to call the cops and have someone come check on him. Can I get your name if they need to talk to you?” I was like, “Yeah, sure.” Not thinking the cops would ever call us. So anyway, we get back to the car and start driving down the main road, and this crazy guy has like followed us on foot and is just chillin' on a bench outside the parking garage thing. So we just took off and drove away to go home haha. Then like 2 minutes later the cops called us and I got like straight interrogated over the phone about this guy. Oh my gosh. The lady talking to me was freaking out at me because I knew nothing about the guy. I was like, “I literally met this dude 15 minutes ago. I know nothing about him!” She seemed a little miffed I didn’t have more info for her, but when we got home (5 minute drive) I had had enough the interrogation, so I was like, “I have to go. Sorry!” She then got super mad and said she’d call me later. I was like “Ok that’s fine, I just have something I need to do right now.” Well they never called me back and I have no clue what happened to the crazy guy. So that was my wild story. After that we had lunch (a little longer than usual because I was still trying to wrap my head around all that just happened.) After that we stopped by some people and got to meet Mina Baker. She’s a girl who is a child of record. She is the nicest girl I’ve ever met. She’s like 10 I think, and was so nice. I really want to help her family get active so she can get baptized, but we haven’t been able to meet with them. After that we had a lesson with David Midtovne, who’s a less active guy. He likes to talk a lot and I guess has like 8 kids with 4 different girls. He’s a super nice guy though, and we shared a talk by D. Todd Christofferson called, “Why the Church?” talking about why we even need a church in the first place. I’m not sure how much he got out of it, but he said he liked it and we invited him to attend church and he just said, “I work Sundays.” So I was like, “Well maybe you could ask for work off!” He’s like, “Oh yeah! I guess I could.” Haha some people. After that we stopped by the Schultz, who are a less active family. We met with their 11 year old Caden, who just got baptized like 6 months ago. He’s a nice kid and super funny. He gave us a ton of candy. I had one Reese’s Cup so he wasn’t sad at me. So my streak of no candy is over for the time being. We shared "Dayton’s Legs" with him and invited him to church. He said he wants to come but it’s up to his parents. His parents never come, so we are going try to get him a ride. After that we tracted this huge street on the southwest part of the city for like an hour and a half and met some nice people and gave away a few Books of Mormon. Nobody super solid however. After that we got some gas and hot chocolate because it was cold and headed home and had some dinner.
Sunday morning we had Ward Council at 7:30 am, so we had to get up for that and then after that we were hoping to have the Clows and a few other people at church. They did not show up, but guess who came?! Sister Averbeck!! Elder Bowman and I were so pumped! It was awesome when she came walking through the door. We both were pretty excited, and I think she could tell haha. We didn’t do the best job of containing our joy. It was like the best thing that happened the whole week! Sacrament Meeting was pretty good! A girl in our ward going on a mission gave her farewell talk and it was literally 5 minutes long. Super weird talk. Like usually missionary farewells are pretty long, and she just gave a pretty generic 5 minute talk and didn’t say anything about going on a mission. But it is what it is, so who am I to judge? After church we had some lunch and companion study and then drove out to Dover to stop by the dude we found last week, Dane Schwarze. He was leaving right when we pulled up, so we drove like 8 miles back to another town to stop by a less active family who wasn’t home, and then drove back to Dover and he was home that time! He said he was actually just heading out again, but he set up a time for us to come over on Thursday this week, and also gave us a referral to another lady in Dover. So we stopped by his referral and talked to her for a few minutes, and she also told us we could come back on Thursday! So we are excited for Thursday! After that we met with Mary Ann and Ricky. Ricky isn’t a member and Mary Ann is but is less active. Ricky had a date set at one point last year, and then kind of dropped off the radar for a while. We are trying to get him back into it and help him gain a testimony. Mary Ann makes it very hard because she talks the whole time, and she’s a little off mentally, so it’s usually nothing related to the gospel or makes any sense. They’re an odd couple for sure! After that we had dinner with the Bartoos. They are super cool and a really nice family. We had a good discussion with them about the atonement of Jesus Christ and all the ways it can help us. I was able to share a part from the email that Christy Christiansen sent us (thanks for that!) and they loved it! After dinner we visited Sister King down in Chatfield with Brother Oesterle (older one). She is so awesome. Just big old hugs for all of us at the door and just makes you feel like a million bucks haha. We ended up having a way cool discussion about the second coming and missionary work, so it was really cool! After that we got home at around 8:20 pm so we went to do some Facebook work at the church. I noticed Elder Meyer and Flora were both on Facebook, so we set up an impromptu video chat and it was fun to talk to them and catch up on everything with Flora! So that was a great way to cap off the night.
Well, the work here is super slow, but we are working hard and having fun in any way we can haha. Elder Bowman is super cool and we get along really well, so that’s been good! I’m excited for winter to be over, but we still got about a month or so left of death cold haha. I’m loving my mission right now and there’s no place I would rather be right now. It’s awesome! For anyone considering serving a mission, do it. It’ll be the best choice you ever make. Your faith and testimony grows so much. Looking back, I honestly didn’t even have much of a testimony before my mission compared to what it is now. Missions are amazing! You bless so many lives and are able to be a light to so many of God's children. It’s seriously the coolest thing on the planet! So if you’re thinking about serving a mission, do it! You’ll never regret it. I promise! Love you all, and hope you have a great week!
Much love,
Elder Beach
#MavUp #10
Our Book of Mormon snow print!
District Meeting that basically ended up being Zone Meeting!
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