Elder Beach Minnesota Minneapolis Mission: Good hot week!

What’s up to all my fam, friends, and coaches back home, at school, and serving around the world! Hope this email finds you all doing well and enjoying the nice toasty weather. It’s been a pretty hot, humid week here in Minnesota. I can slightly sympathize with my brother, Jackson, but we are nowhere near the heat and humidity you’re at in Alabama haha. Also, happy 19th birthday to Jackson! Hope you had a great birthday in the mission field! This week has been pretty good! Lots of biking, finding, etc....

So for my last transfer I’ve decided I’m just going to share things I’ve learned, insights, etc., plus include stories from the week instead of doing a “travel log” haha.

This week I’ve been able to realize how much I’m going to miss Minnesota and the people I’ve come to know and love here. Elder Sherwood and I got to go on exchanges this week. He’s the ZL and I’m the DL so we exchange once a transfer. I trained him about a year ago in Apple valley and now we live together again. It was fun to talk about our experiences, challenges, successes, and humorous times we had a year ago and then work together now and see how much we’ve changed and grown! I’m really going to miss the missionaries I’ve been able to serve around this transfer, Elders Akins, Peterson and Sherwood. Those guys are awesome and I’ve learned a lot from each one of them! It’s also been fun to reconnect with some people I’ve taught or been friends with earlier in my mission. My parents are coming out to visit at the end of my mission next month and I’ve been getting stuff set up with people to visit them. It’s crazy how many people I’ve become friends with! There’s so many members and others here that I’ve grown to love so dearly. As excited as I am to go home, it’s gonna be so hard to leave all those people behind. Anyway, back to exchanges with Elder Sherwood! We found a guy named Jeremy who just got out of teen challenge. He lives like 4 blocks from the church and told us he’s looking for a home church for himself because he just moved from Lakeville to Minneapolis. Crazy part: we met him on a bike trail bridge going over highway 35W which is like 4 miles from the church. He was just sitting on a bench and we biked up and stopped to talk to him. We shared a Book of Mormon with him and hopefully we can meet with him again this week! He said he would come to church, but didn’t show up. That was probably our coolest story from exchanges. We basically did a lot of stop bys haha, and most people had moved.

One thing I really learned on Saturday and Sunday is that things work out according to God’s timing and plan, not ours! We planned to stop by Eric (we taught him a few weeks ago at Sister Wetzel’s house and haven’t been able to contact him much since) in the morning and when we got to his apartment Saturday morning, we realized I didn’t have my bike lock and neither did Elder Akins. So we had to call the South Elders and have them bring them up to us. While we were waiting we did some area book work, and then we went to try to get into Eric’s apartment building. We got to the front door and it was a lockout building, so we tried to get the buzzer to work and it didn’t. Then Elder Akins just grabs the door and it opened right up so we got in! We knocked on Eric’s door and nobody answered, but it sounded like the shower was on so we walked outside and met this lady named Alexis. She was sitting out front of the apartment smoking and we talked to her about prophets and the Book of Mormon for like 20 minutes. She had some interesting beliefs, but we found a lot of common ground and she was excited to have a Book of Mormon to read. After we talked to her, we went back inside and knocked on Eric’s door and he was there and working us in! We ended up having a really long talk with him and he just told us about all the struggles he is going through. We shared some advice and shared a few scriptures with him and downloaded the gospel library app on his phone for him! We also got him a ride set up for church with Sister Wetzel, and he told us he was for sure coming to church because he had the whole weekend off. As we left, I thought it was awesome how everything fell into place perfectly so we could meet Alexis and still meet with Eric even though I forgot my bike lock and we were running a little behind schedule. Nothing happens by accident. So that was awesome!

Sunday morning, we waited for Eric forever and he didn’t show up. So we were some sad pups for about 30 minutes. We had to run home really quick to get Thome’s baptism form so the bishop could sign it. When we got back, Eric was there! He ended up taking the bus to church, so he was late, but he showed up and stayed for the whole time! The members were awesome fellowshipping him and he’s going to “Solo” with the Elders Quorum today for their activity haha. In Gospel Principles we talked about studying the scriptures. Eric had told us he had a friend struggling with depression and suicidal thoughts, so we shared Alma 7:11-12 with him to share with his friend. He talked about how he shared it on Saturday with his friend and his friend texted him and said, “Where did you get that scripture? Cuz it isn’t in the Bible!” Eric told him it was from the Book of Mormon. His friend was amazed and really liked it. Eric said it impacted his friend a lot and helped him tremendously. I’m so grateful for the power of the Book of Mormon to “comfort, cheer and lift our souls” as President Nelson said last October. The Book of Mormon truly does that. The impact it had on Eric’s friend was some convincing evidence of that. I am very grateful for the Book of Mormon, Bible, and all other scriptures and revelations we have. They have helped me so much in my life. They contain answers to literally any questions we have. The answers aren’t always found in the words on the page, but as you read, the spirit can speak to you. It is an amazing revelatory process and evidence that God truly does speak to us. So those were some cool miracles as part of a huge story haha.

I think I talked about this last week, but I’m grateful to be able to serve others. I love it! I’m so excited to get home and be able to minister to others through serving them and being their friend! It’s exciting! On Monday night we helped Brother Parsons haul a bunch of wood from his back yard to his truck and then we cleaned off this huge tarp he had. It was fun to help him out, build our relationship with him, and be able to serve! We also were able to do a lot of yard work for Sister McLain this week. We did a lot of landscaping with bricks and cinder blocks in her yard. We put in a couple of retaining walls in her garden areas and that was pretty fun! I’ve never done it before, but I enjoyed it. It was super hot on Thursday. Elder Akins and I were pretty dead after we got done. We dug out a 30 foot ditch and laid cinderblocks in the bottom. We had to level out everything and make sure it was all straight and stuff. It was hard work haha. Sister McLain is awesome and she fed us Thai food every day we helped her this week. She’s a great lady, and I’m thankful we were able to help her out a lot! We also were able to help Sister Scott and Sister Solie dig out a big bush in their yard and replant it in another part of the yard. I’ve never done that before either, but I think it turned out pretty good. haha We also got to go to the VA again this week for service. We made some collages where we cut out pictures from magazines that represent us. So I cut out football stuff and outdoors stuff and I look over at Frank who’s sitting right next to me. He’s cutting out Sports Illustrated swimsuit models. I almost lost it. These guys are like 80-90 years old and that’s what they’re cutting out for their collages haha! Elder Peterson and I had a good chuckle at that. Pretty funny!

Another lesson I learned this week is to always, always, always share your testimony with people. People can gain a testimony for themselves, but hearing others share their testimonies is so powerful. Elder Akins and I have had the opportunity this week to teach and testify together while finding and it is powerful. The spirit is so strong when we both teach and then testify together. Friday night we did a zone finding hour and Elder Akins and I tracted this street in the northwest part of our area. We didn’t find anyone super solid and we were walking back towards our car to hit a few more houses before we had to leave. There was a lady sitting out on her front lawn and we stopped to talk to her. Elder Akins shared his testimony of the power the Book of Mormon has had in his life, and then I was able to share mine too. She accepted a copy of the Book of Mormon. She didn’t want to meet again, but I know she felt the spirit and I’m hoping that she will read so she can feel the spirit again! Yesterday we were way over by the Mississippi River doing some stop bys and we were walking down the road and this guy was behind a big row of bushes trimming them up, so we stopped to see if we could help. We ended up talking to him for nearly 30 minutes. He was Jewish and we talked about our beliefs and he talked about his as well. He didn’t believe in Jesus Christ as the Savior or Messiah, and Elder Akins and I both shared our testimonies of Jesus Christ and of the knowledge we’ve gained from reading the Book of Mormon. In the title page of the Book of Mormon it states that one of the purposes of the Book is “convincing the Jew and the Gentile that Jesus is the Christ.” I’m thankful for the Bible which testifies of His life and mission here on earth and the Book of Mormon which gives us additional knowledge and a second witness of his reality and divinity as Savior and Redeemer of the world! As we shared our testimonies, I felt the spirit so strong. I was hoping and praying our words would touch his heart and I don’t know if they did. He wasn’t super excited about anything we said, but hopefully he felt the spirit and feels it again as he reads the Book of Mormon and prays about it!

Well, it’s been a great week here in Lake Nokomis! Only 4 more weeks. Pretty wild! I’ll be forever grateful for this time I’ve had here to serve the Lord and the great people of Minnesota. I always find it funny when we knock on someone’s door at 2 or 3 pm and it’s 100 degrees and we are just dripping in sweat and they say, “What the heck are you doing outside?” or “Why are you doing this?! It’s so hot!” We usually just say, “Yeah it is pretty hot! But we have a great message we are sharing today!” I’ve thought a lot about why young men and women leave home for 18-24 months to face the unknown, all sorts of extreme weather, angry/rude/ignorant people, illness, homesickness, stress, etc...the list goes on. When I first came out I was just here because it was my plan all along to serve a mission. Other than that, I couldn’t really give you a solid reason I was here. The longer I’ve been out, the more I’ve come to know why I am still out. I’m still out because I love God, my Father in Heaven, and His son, Jesus Christ. I’m humbly grateful to be their voice and hands in the work of salvation. I do what I do because I have a testimony of the restored gospel of Jesus Christ. I have seen the fruits of it in my own life, in my family’s lives, and those evidences along with the spiritual witness I’ve received help me know it is true. I love serving others and helping them feel of God's love that I am so lucky to feel each day. I have truly grown to love the work, even when it’s hot, hard, tiring, stressful, depressing, etc. It is in the fiery furnace that God refines us and makes us into something more pure and better than we were. I’m grateful for my family and friends back home! I love you all and hope you know how much I appreciate the impact you’ve had on me to help me get where I’m at today. I’m also grateful for the family and friends I’ve come to have here in Minnesota. It’s been my home away from home for the last 23 months. I love being a missionary and I love sharing the gospel with others and serving them in any way I can. It’s amazing! I love you all! Thanks for the prayers and support! Have a great week!

Much love,

Elder Beach

P.S. I did Memorial Day “Murph” workout today in 49:41!

1 mile run, 100 pull-ups, 200 push-ups, 300 squats, 1 mile run

Elder Sherwood was kind enough to do the runs with me! 95 degrees with 65% humidity. It was a scorcher haha.