Elder Beach Minnesota Minneapolis Mission: One more transfer to go!

What’s up to all my fam, friends, and coaches back home, at school, and serving around the world! Hope this finds ya well and enjoying whatever you’re doing. Transfers are this week and I will be staying in Lake Nokomis for my last transfer, but I will be moving to the North area with Elder Akins! My son, Elder Sherwood, will be companions with Elder Peterson and we will all be living in the Murals, so it’ll be a party for our last transfer. The Spanish District got wrecked and I was sad about that because they do super well together and work really hard. I’ll keep it short this week because I got to talk to everyone yesterday for Mother's Day!

So Sunday was Mother’s Day and it was awesome because we got to call home and talk to the fam for a while! It was great to see everyone and hear how you’re doing. I’m so grateful for my mom and grandma. They are the best and have been such great influences on me throughout my life. I’m so blessed to have them in my life. We also did a super cool chalk drawing of the Plan of Salvation yesterday as part of our zone finding challenge for the week! See pics below. It was pretty fun! Elder Peterson has the “Bob Ross Song”, so we listened to that before we chalked and then we #Rossed Minneapolis. We had 2 investigators at church so that was great! Matt and Emily McIntosh came and we talked to them for a while after church. They said we could come over this week! Emily is going to have her baby this week, so hopefully we can get there before the baby comes haha. Sunday was a good day! Everyone had to do Mother’s Day calls at different times, so we had those for most of the day and then did some chalking and contacting in between!

Saturday we found out Elder Hickman was the new AP, so we helped him get packed up and ready to go to Bloomington Saturday night. I finished a Mother’s Day movie I made for Mom in the morning, and then Elder Peterson and I biked down to the South part of our area to stop by a new bible referall we got, but they weren’t home. So we biked around and stopped by some less actives and part member families and contacted people outside. It started raining pretty good while we were biking, so my shirt got thrashed with mud haha. This lady with a baby was out doing yard work, so we stopped to see if we could help her and she’s like, “Why would you want to help?” I was like “Because we like helping people!” She thought that was pretty cool haha, so she took a card and said she might call us later to help with yard work! After dinner we had a lesson with Ibe. We’ve been trying to meet with him for like a month and half and we finally got an appointment set up. We had a way good restoration lesson with him and he had some great questions about prophets. We talked about how we have prophets on earth today and also about the Book of Mormon and personal revelation. He really liked the personal revelation stuff we talked about. He said he wanted to read the Book of Mormon and we also gave him President Nelson’s last 2 conference talks to read! It was sweet.

Friday we did service at the VA and that was super fun again haha! We made this elaborate painting of a bird with the old dudes, and they actually did really good with it! It was fun to help them out and stuff with it. They’re so funny and such nice guys. We had dinner with the Ramseys Friday night and had our deep doctrine/conspiracy theory/world news and politics discussion again haha. Elder Peterson says that’s how we minister to Brother Ramsey because his kids are crazy so we basically have “bros night” with him on Fridays while his wife watches the kids for a little bit.

Thursday I don’t remember much, but we had a lesson with the Iversons and it was really good! We read Mosiah 4 with them and then discussed different points that stuck out to us. The thing that stuck out to me was it talked about how merciful God is to us and literally gives us whatever we ask for if we ask in faith and it’s a righteous desire. King Benjamin relates that to us, how we need to be merciful and serve others and not pick and choose who we serve, but just love everyone and be kind to all! It was a really good chapter. We are gonna focus a lot more on reading the Book of Mormon with our investigators and less actives because it is so powerful! The Book of Mormon is the number one tool we have as missionaries to help with the conversion process. I’m a 100% believer in that.

Wednesday we had a couple of really cool miracles! We were out in Hopkins after district meeting and stopped by this lady we found last week. She wasn’t home and these people were chilling out on their porch next door to her house, so we talked to them and they basically said, “We are Baptist and our grandma is our pastor, so she’s right and you aren’t.” We tried to teach and testify, but they were just being really rude so we were like, “Have a good one!” After that we knocked the rest of the cul-de-sac and found this dude named John. His dad or uncle or something was out smoking and he told us to go away and no one wanted to talk to us. Then John comes out the door and I was like, “Hey! You ever met missionaries from the LDS church before?” He’s like, “No, but I just started reading the Bible.” So we taught him about the Book of Mormon and he was really interested in it. We had a way cool discussion with him on his porch while the grumpy old dude sat there and listened. I wanted to just wink at him when we left but I didn’t haha. It was super cool though that we found John! We had dinner with the Hehrs Wednesday night and Brother Hehr made “Juicy Lucy’s” for us. They’re like half pound burgers with cheese melted on the inside of the patty. They were super good! And we had a good gospel discussion with them. Sister Hehr and their daughter came to church but Brother Hehr has only come to church like once since we’ve been here, so we've got to keep working on him.

Tuesday we had a challenge to knock 25 doors, so Elder Peterson and I did some tracting and one of the first doors we knocked on this lady answers and she’s Vietnamese. However, she’s FaceTiming her daughter who speaks English, so we taught the lady who answered the door through her daughter on FaceTime haha. It was really weird, but it worked and she said we could come back, so we are in the process of finding some Vietnamese speaking people. We met a few more cool people while we were tracting and gave out like 4 Books of Mormon, so it was fun! We had dinner with the Bearss and it was super good. They just made a bunch of appetizers and it was sweet! After that we had a lesson with Brother Glover and read Enos with him and talked about prayers and receiving revelation for ourselves. He had all these super random questions about there being 19 apostles in Acts. So we read over it and it said they called like 7 disciples to help run the church. It was super weird haha. He was saying some crazy stuff. Pretty interesting. Brother Glover is awesome, though. He’s always the swaggiest guy at church.

Monday we had zone p day and played volleyball and football and I had a blast playing football. The Hermanas were good sports and played football too, and it was way fun! I’m excited to play this fall haha. Monday night we had a lesson with Eric, and he told us he got mugged on his way home from work and they took his phone, wallet, and paycheck, so he basically got screwed and had no money or way to contact anyone. We talked about how we can find peace through reading the Book of Mormon. We also gave him a blessing to help him out and he really appreciated it and said he felt way better after!

It’s been a great week! I’m excited to get this final transfer underway! It’s been a ride here in the MMM and I’m ready to finish it off strong. It was awesome to see my family yesterday. I’m so grateful for you and all you do to support me as a missionary! Love you guys!

Much love,

Elder Beach