Elder Beach Minnesota Minneapolis Mission: Interviews

A big hello to all my family, friends, and coaches back home, at school, and serving around the world! Hope you’re all having a great week and loving life and enjoying what you’re doing! Happy birthday to my mom on the 18th! Love you so much and hope you had a great day! You’re the best! This week has been pretty good! We’ve had a lot of meetings and stuff this week, but we’ve still had some good finding experiences and some cool miracles.

Monday was P day and we went to Minnehaha Falls with the North and Spanish Elders and President and Sister Barney! Minnehaha Falls is this big tourist attraction here, which I don’t really get because it’s a 20 foot waterfall and that’s about it. It’s currently frozen, so it’s just a giant block of ice right now haha. We had a good time chilling with President though. He’s always a good time. After that we played some catch at the church and that was great. The hoops were up in the gym so we’d throw the football and try and make it into the hoop, and I hit 5 in a row from full court into the hoop, so I guess I still got my accuracy going if nothing else. After P-day was done we had a lesson with the Ludwigs again, and it was much the same as last week. They shared some scripture in Galatians 5 with us about not “being in bondage to the works of the law.” They basically told us if we felt in bondage to the law of Moses (which we don’t follow) then there was an easier way (Just accept Christ as our Savior and we are good to go). We both were just like what the heck? So this week we are just going to invite them to get baptized by proper authority as Christ has asked us to do, and if they say no then we are done teaching them.

Tuesday morning we gave a training on Repentance at the Waconia District meeting. It went pretty well haha. We basically opened it up as a discussion on what Repentance is, and then we ended up talking about forgiveness, too. This one Elder asked how we can forgive people and so we had like a 10 minute discussion on it and then Elder Peterson says, “So, did that answer your question?” And the Elder just like freaked out and was like, “No. You can’t just keep throwing “atonement and grace” at me and expecting that to help!” I was like, “Ok my man. Let’s see if this helps.” So I talked about humility, charity, and faith all working together to allow us to forgive others. We have to be humble and have faith that Christ can help us forgive them and help us to forgive them. Then we need to develop charity for them, which is hard, so we need to have humility and humble ourselves and let the atonement of Jesus Christ help us and the person who wronged us. Kinda confusing, sorry. But it seemed like it helped him a little because he wasn’t super upset with what I said. After district meeting we did a bunch of stop bys of some less actives and met this older dude named Greg while we were walking around some town homes. He had been to Salt Lake and visited the tabernacle and stuff there, so he knew a little bit about the church and missionaries! We were able to share a Book of Mormon with him and teach him about the restoration of the gospel. He was pretty interested, so we set up a time to meet with him again in 2 weeks because he’s going to be in North Dakota for a while. After that we were supposed to have a lesson with Steph and she cancelled last second so we did a spirit walk by our apartment. We just walk and go wherever we feel prompted to go and knock on whatever houses we feel we should and talk to everyone who's outside. We walked down this one really long street and nobody was out and we weren’t really feeling any houses to knock on. So we got to the last house and I was like, “Let’s just knock this one.” So we did and this older lady answered, and I was like, “Hey, we are missionaries for the LDS church and we are going around offering to do service for people, just helping people out in any way we can!” I’ve never used that approach before, and I’m not sure what prompted me to use it right then, but she was so happy to see us and grateful we offered to help her out. She said her husband just had a heart attack and she had been doing all the house work and stuff and needed some help! We transitioned that into talking about the Book of Mormon and we shared a copy with her. She said she would give us a call for some service help! Hopefully she does. A while later, Elder Peterson felt inspired to knock on this white house with purple trim. We talked to this dude who was about 20-years-old and shared a Book of Mormon with him as well! So our spirit walk was pretty sweet. After that we had dinner and did a bunch of stop bys after dinner because Eli and Ryan fell through and dropped us. So that kinda sucked, but it is what it is!

Wednesday we did exchanges with the North Elders and I went with Elder Hickman to the North side of Lake Nokomis. We had a good time and did a decent amount of walking around and contacting people. We contacted on the most ghetto street in our area and met some interesting people. I bought some food for this homeless lady because she kept asking for cigarettes and I was like, “I’m not gonna buy you something that’s gonna kill you!” She didn’t seem to get that, but I bought her some food at a gas station and she seemed pretty thankful for that. We had 2 really good lessons with less active/part member households. We stopped by this one less active guy named David and his roommate was Baptist and had all these questions for us! He’s like, “My pastor keeps telling us all this weird stuff about Mormons and it seems so far fetched I just can’t seem to believe it! I’ve heard Mormons can’t be naked, you have a different Jesus, etc.” I was like, “I’m naked pretty much every day so I don't know what your pastor is talking about!” He thought that was pretty funny and was a little mad his pastor had been telling him a bunch of BS about us. It’s so funny the things people teach about us. After that we had a lesson with Blong Her, whose Mom is a less active member and is investigating the church right now. He’s pretty cool and we had a really good lesson about the Book of Mormon with them. They both committed to read each day and pray to know if it is true! So that was sweet! After that we got a referral from the Kellingtons in Apple valley for a less active dude in this nursing home. He’s blind and almost deaf, so we basically had to yell to communicate with him. He’s a really nice dude and served in the Korean and Vietnam wars. He’s pretty lonely, so we are both going to go visit him each week! After that we had dinner with the Showleys and then did splits to visit some less actives. I went with Brother Ramsey and visited the Perez family. They’re awesome and have been going through some struggles but are working to become active again. They came to church on Sunday and took us all out to lunch on Friday, so they’re doing good.

Thursday we did accounting calls in the morning and then headed out to Feed My Starving Children for service with the Waconia District. That was pretty fun, and we packed like 80 boxes of food, so that was sweet.After that we hit up some Chick-Fil-A with the gift cards, so thanks for those, Mom and Dad! We did some stop bys and knocked some doors after that and found 2 new investigators who are Hispanic! Both of them speak English and are familiar with the church, so we are just going to teach them haha. We are meeting with both of them this upcoming week, so that should be sweet! After that we had some dinner and then we were supposed to have a lesson with this potential named Princess, that Elders Peterson and Jamieson got in contact with on exchanges, but that fell through, so we did some knocking doors and stopped by some more potentials. Most of our potentials are not super great so we are trying to weed out the good ones and the ones who have zero potential. Going somewhat well so far haha.

Friday morning we accounted with the APs and did some apartment shopping because we are moving out at the end of next month, so we are looking for a new place to live. I’m basically just looking for a place with a nice fitness center, so I’m pretty sure we found a place about a mile from the church that’s like $1000 a month, so I’m pretty sure we are moving there. After that the Perezes took us to Hibachi Grill and buffet and it was good! I just had a bunch of sushi! It was pretty solid! The Perezes are so funny. They’re a lot like the Gretz haha. After that we weekly planned and then had some dinner with the Ramseys. Their daughter was having a temper tantrum and it was pretty funny. Brother Ramsey was just trying so hard not to laugh half the time, so we all had a pretty good chuckle at that. After dinner we had a lesson with the Tolbert family. They’re less active and got baptized like 3 years ago, so we taught them the Plan of Salvation and it was awesome! The kids seem to remember a lot and helped us out a ton with the lesson, so that was awesome. They also came to church on Sunday and Kwami (Priest age son) blessed the Sacrament! So that was sweet!

Saturday we had district meeting for the Spanish and Lake Nokomis District and interviews with President Barney. Elder Peterson and I went basically last of like 16 missionaries, so we were basically at the church until like 3 pm. Then President took us and the STLs to Subway and then we went to the Crystal building to meet with a bunch of youth and Brother Stephen W. Owen and Elder Stacey. They had a big discussion on missionary work and preparing the youth for missions. It was really cool. Brother Owen is super cool, and Elder Stacey is in our ward haha, so he’s a homie. It was awesome! After that we played some basketball at the Plymouth chapel! Jeffrey (whom we taught and was baptized in Minnetonka) was there because he brought the Elders, and I got to talk to him for a while. He said he’s kind of struggling right now, so I talked to him about some stuff. He’s such a good guy! I can’t wait for Mom and Dad to meet him. Johnny Chapman, too. He’s pumped to meet you guys. So that was Saturday! Kind of a weird day because we didn’t do a whole lot of “proselyting”, but I felt like we still helped people.

Sunday was sweet! The Andersons came to church (less active fam we’ve been working with and their son passed the Sacrament), the Perezes came and the Tolberts came as well! So we had like 8 less actives there, but no investigators. But still way solid. Choir was a hoot and half again this week. Like half way through us singing, Brother Patrick gets up and starts like kind of doing his own conducting for the girls' parts haha, and then this guy who’s in the choir in our ward who has dementia gets up and starts dancing and snapping his fingers and then goes over to Brother Patrick and starts conducting with him. Elder Peterson and I were dying. Like you literally had to be there, but it was the funniest thing. So we basically had 3 people conducting and our choir doesn’t sound the best either haha. Hermana Hudman had to leave because she was laughing so hard. It was so funny. After that the North Elders came and had lunch at our place and Elders Hickman and Peterson passed out on the couch for a while, so I just talked to Elder Jamieson about how his mission is going and how things will get better and be awesome for him! After that we stopped by some potentials and new investigators and literally all of them were like, “Yeah, we aren’t interested.” So I mean, I guess that’s good because it cleans out our area book, but not good because they were interested like a week ago. After that we had some dinner with Sister Bearss and the North Elders and then they went to the President's fireside and with another member and we drove down to help Sister Bearss set up. We had invited like 30 people, so we were hoping one of them showed up, but no one did. We waited around until 7 pm, but no one we invited showed up, so we peaced out to go do some work. There were a lot of missionaries there that didn’t have investigators or less actives there and traveled a very long ways to get there. You’re not supposed to come unless you bring a less active or investigator, but I guess that’s none of my business! There were people from Rochester, Elk River, and Brainerd there. Two of those areas are over 2 hours drive time, and we were like, “What the heck?” It’s weird. However, we knocked some doors and met some cool people and gave out a Book of Mormon to a lady, so I was glad we didn’t stick around, even though it would’ve been easy to do so! After that we did numbers and called it a night and had “Sunday Night Sauna” at our apartment.

It’s been a good week! I’m enjoying my time here in Minnesota. It’s sad to see it nearing the end, but I’m excited for the 3 months that lay ahead. Hopefully we can see some cool miracles. I know this church is true, and this is God's work. Nothing is ever going to stop it from going forward. People may not always want to listen, which sucks, but we are literally hastening the second coming of Christ to the earth. He will not come again until the gospel has been preached to every creature. So we literally are hastening His return to earth! Pretty cool thing I learned in my studies this week. I love you all, hope you have an awesome week, and thanks for all the love and support! It means the world!

Much love,

Elder Beach

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