What’s up to everyone back home, at college and serving around the world! Hope you all had a great Easter/conference weekend. I loved General Conference so much this year. It was awesome to be part of the Solemn Assembly and to sustain President Nelson as the Lord's prophet on earth today. This week has been sweet! I’m just gonna share some cool highlights from the week that we’ve had, so this email may not be quite as long! Elder Peterson and I are both staying in Lake Nokomis another transfer, so hopefully we can go one more after this and finish it out together.
So I’m gonna start off with my conference weekend highlights first this week and kind of work backwards in the week! On Saturday we were supposed to have a big potluck in between sessions of conference at the church, but literally no one showed up except the missionaries and like 3 members. So we were like, "What the heck?" The potluck was our meal on the missionary calendar, so we were a little confused. However, Brother Glover came in clutch and ordered like 3 huge things of fried chicken for everyone, so that was sweet haha. See pics below. Then the Sisters bought us all Wendy’s haha, so we ended getting a lot of food. I gave away like half my Wendy’s haha. So anyway, it was good! The things I got out of Conference I will include in picture quotes below. President Nelson is God's prophet. I know that without a doubt. I also had the spirit witness to me that Elders Gong and Soares are apostles as well. It was awesome! President Nelson’s quote: “In coming days it will not be possible to survive spiritually without the guiding, directing, comforting, and constant companionship of the Holy Ghost.” That really stuck out to me. He knows that there are things ahead that will challenge our faith and our ability to follow Christ and keep His commandments. He told us what we need to do to be able to combat the powers of evil in days ahead. I’m grateful for his ability to be the “Watchman on the Tower.”
Sunday night after conference we had a sweet tracting experience! We stopped by a potential and then knocked a few doors around her house because she wasn’t home. These 3 guys were all outside of her duplex having a drink and smoke and we started talking to them. One of the guys there, T, told us to knock on his neighbor's door. So we did! This older lady came to the door and we said, “Hey we are missionaries from the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-Day Saints! Could we share a message about Christ with your family on this beautiful Easter Sunday?” She looked at us for a second and then said, “Sure! Come on in!” So we went into her home and taught about 15 people the restoration. They all were just sitting on couches and chairs in a semi circle and we just got to stand in front of them all and teach and testify that God had a prophet on the earth today and that the Book of Mormon was true and testified of Christ. It was seriously one of the coolest experiences I’ve had on my mission. We gave like 4 Books of Mormon away to different family members. Most of them lived outside of our area, but several of them had some questions and we were able to answer them and they were very thankful we stopped by. If nothing else, we brought the spirit into their home so they could feel of God's love for them on Easter! It was so awesome. It just made me so happy and I was on cloud 9 the rest of the day. The family was African American, and some of the guys looked like they were involved in gangs or just kind of hood rats. 4 or 5 of them just thanked us for teaching them and were so kind and grateful. It was so awesome. It’s hard to put into words how I felt, but it was sweet. Haha the first dude we talked to, T, gave us a dollar bill for “Preaching the good word.” Haha he took a Book of Mormon, too. So the weekend was awesome!
A big lesson I have learned in my life through football is if you work hard till the end, good things always happen. So Tuesday was basically one of those days as a missionary that suck and you just have to grind it out but then you see a ton of cool miracles at like 8 pm. Literally everyone was either gone or cancelled appointments on Tuesday. It was rough. So anyway, like 8 pm rolls around, and we literally have nothing to do, so we were just like “Let’s knock some doors. Why the heck not?” So we knocked this street and talked to some sweet people. We knocked into this one guy who was like, “Yeah, I’m not gonna convert or anything, but I’ll listen to your message.” So we talked about his religious background and then I was like, “Could we come in and share a 10 minute message with you?” He’s like, “No, probably not.” I was like, “You literally just said you’d listen to our message....” He’s like, “Ok.... come in.” So we just taught him about the Book of Mormon and testified that God has called a prophet on the earth today, Russell M Nelson. When we told him that President Nelson is a world renowned heart surgeon, he really started to listen because he was all about science and not faith haha. After we told him that and shared our testimonies of the Book of Mormon, he was like, “Yeah, I’ll check out the Book of Mormon for sure!” So hopefully he does. We had a few more people similar to that on the street after him. So it ended up being a great send off to Tuesday evening. At the end of the day I was like, “We basically got boned the whole day, so God threw us a couple of bones at the end of the day because we worked hard all day haha.”
Wednesday we had a similar situation happen as to what happened on Tuesday. We had a lot of appointments fall through in the afternoon and evening. We ended up knocking some doors again and found this lady named Virginia. When she opened the door she was super nice and wasn’t super interested at first. She said she grew up Lutheran and then fell away from organized religion. She liked learning about all religions and we were able to teach her basically a full restoration lesson. I am 100 percent sure she felt the spirit as we taught and testified. At the end she invited us to come back this Wednesday afternoon to teach her and her family! She didn’t take a Book of Mormon unfortunately, but we will make sure she takes one this week. Once again, a cool miracle that came only after working until the end of the day!
Thursday we did accounting and weekly planning and then I had my doctor appointment with the endocrinologist downtown. So the North Elders dropped us off at that and then after we walked over to pay our parking ticket we got when we got towed. We go in and the lady's like, “I see you paid the towing cost, so I’m just gonna waive the parking ticket.” Haha we were pretty stoked about that! Another cool miracle! Thursday night we were able to go out with Brother Shaffer and visit this less active lady named Sister Collins. It was one of the stranger visits I’ve had. Her son is in the ward and is active, but she hasn’t seemed to have done anything with the church for about 5 years. Hasn’t watched conference, been to church, read the Book of Mormon, etc. She was pretty shady as to why, so we still aren’t really sure. We shared our testimonies of living prophets and the Book of Mormon and invited her to read the Book of Mormon and watch conference. I’m hoping she did because Conference was awesome!
Friday we got to do service at the VA again! I love those old guys that are there. They are so funny and such loving people. They LOVE the Sisters. It is hilarious how much they flirt with them. I just sit and watch and laugh at them haha. We got to paint some flowers and make wreaths with them. They loved it and it was fun to talk to them and get to know them better. I love visiting the elderly! They have such great hearts and so much wisdom for us! We just did a bunch of stop bys and tracting after dinner on Friday. Good lesson I learned from my ZL responsibilities: so the Plymouth Elders are both kind of new to the mission life. We’ve stressed a lot the importance of setting realistic goals and making sure your finding and sacrament and baptismal goals are lined up. We’ve given several trainings, conference calls, etc. on this and how to do it and set goals properly. They sent in their goals and they were super high for an area that has had little to no success the past year. I was a little frustrated at first, so we decided to have a video chat with them that night to talk to them and just understand their train of thought and then how we could help them. As we talked to them, I realized they were doing the best they knew how with the knowledge they had. They had names behind all their dates set and baptism numbers. I was happy to see that and I realized they just didn’t know what they were doing all the way. So we were able to walk them through how to set reasonable goals and help them understand how their finding and teaching would coordinate with their sacrament attendance and baptisms. By the end, they really got it and we were all on the same page! So I learned that instead of getting frustrated with people, I need to talk to them, understand what their thought process is with stuff, then help them understand how to do it and then let them redo it the right way! Then instead of me just being frustrated with people, I can teach them and help them get better. So that was a great lesson learned for me!
Well it’s been a solid week! I’m excited to stay here in Lake Nokomis with Skinny Pete. It’s been a party so far, and I’m looking forward to another good 6 weeks of hard work! Hard to believe I only have 2 transfers left. Gotta make em count! I love you all and hope you have a great week! Thanks for all the prayers and support. Keep working hard in whatever you’re doing. God helps us when we put in the work and do our part. Thanks for the prayers, keep them coming my way! I need them every day. Some days are a grind and I’m so dead tired I just wanna sleep all day. Those prayers get me through those days and help me give it my all! Love you all once again, prayers up from Minnesota!
Much love,
Elder Beach
#MavUp #10
"Skinny Pete" and I are staying together! Brother Glover saved the day with chicken wings!
