What’s up to all my fam, friends and coaches back home, at school, and serving around the world! Hope you are all doing well, enjoying the start of summer and having a blast in whatever you’re doing! This week's been pretty good! It’s been kind of a different than your “traditional” week of missionary work, but I’ve learned some good lessons! So continuing my last transfer tradition of lessons I’ve learned, and cool stories, here’s the weekly email:
So this week we had mission conference on Thursday in Bloomington. Elder Dyches of the 70 came and did a few trainings with us. He used to be the Mission President of the Oregon, Portland Mission and he’s an intense guy. President Barney is super chill and I love him to death and would run through the wall for him. Elder Dyches I would also run through the wall for, but just because he’d be right behind me chasing me through it! He’s a pretty fire and brimstone kind of guy. He did a training about reading the Book of Mormon with our investigators and recent converts. I’ve found the longer I’ve been out, the more I try to get everyone we work with in the Book of Mormon during lessons. He said the church did a study in the Alabama, Birmingham and somewhere in Fifi missions and when members read the Book of Mormon every day with recent converts, they had a 100% retention rate. 100%! That’s amazing! That just goes to show how powerful the Book of Mormon is in conversion and retention. I’m so grateful God has given us the Book of Mormon in this day and age because heaven knows we need it! I really can’t even put into words how grateful I am for it and the additional knowledge and spiritual enlightenment it has brought into my life. Another thing he taught us was to show gratitude to members. He taught us how to make a little origami missionary thank you note. It was pretty cool and I need to start making them for members or investigators! They’re pretty cool. I’m so grateful for all the members in Minnesota that have opened their homes and hearts to me in the last two years. As I look back on all of them, there are so many that come to mind! It’s amazing all the awesome people and families I’ve been able to meet and associate with as a missionary. What a blessing that has been for me!
Cool finding story this week: Elder Akins and I were walking down a road about a half mile south of our apartment. We were doing a “spirit walk” where you just walk around and knock whatever houses you feel inspired to knock on and talk to people outside. So we were walking down the road and this lady comes out of an apartment on our left, so we headed over to talk to her. Her mom pulled up right when we started talking to her and she said she had to leave. We quickly shared a few sentences about the restoration and gave her a Book of Mormon, got her address, and set up to meet with her the next day. So we went back the next morning and she actually kept the appointment! Her name is Arnisia, and she’s actually 16. She looked a lot older haha. Both her parents were Baptist pastors when she was growing up, but she hated church and all the talk of going to hell and stuff. She’s currently living in foster care (not sure why?) and told us her relationship with God isn’t quite what she wants it to be. She felt like bad things just kept happening to her and she didn’t know why. We spent a good deal of the lesson just talking about who God is, our relationship to Him and how we can build our relationship with Him. We also taught her the restoration and after we shared the first vision she’s like, “I’m speechless! That is absolutely amazing!” As we taught her we also were able to use a lot of Book of Mormon scripture to support our testimonies. It was a great lesson and the spirit was super strong. She said she and her foster mom would be at church on Sunday, but they didn’t show up and we’ve tried to stop by and haven’t been able to get ahold of her since then. Keep us/her in your prayers that we can get back in contact with her!
One thing we’ve been doing a lot this week is ministering to members. I feel like my mission has prepared me a lot to minister to members back home in whatever ward I end up in. I’ve also come to realize that some members have been ministering long before the new ministering program came out. Brother Ramsey (they feed us every Friday) is the epitome of ministering. He works with so many members who are less active or need some extra help behind the scenes. The longer I’ve been here, the more I’ve seen just how much he does. If you weren’t in ward council or knew him well, you’d never know that, but he ministers and befriends so many members and helps them out a lot! He’s awesome! So we’ve been working with this semi-active member named Robbie Virkus. He’s got Schizophrenia and is working to get off smoking and coffee and drinking. We’ve been meeting with him like once a week and reading the Book of Mormon with him and sometimes help him clean up his apartment! We call him every day and see how he’s doing with reading and he’s gotten to the point where he will read a chapter and then call us and ask for another one. He’s a little off mentally, but he’s a nice guy and has a good heart. His birthday was on Sunday, so Elder Sherwood baked him a cake and we all went and visited him Sunday night. He was pretty stoked we came over to visit him! He said his birthday went from a 5 to an 8 after we came over. So I was glad we could help make his birthday a little better! Another way we were able to minister on Sunday was we visited a member from the Buffalo ward in the VA hospital. He had open heart surgery last week and has been in there since Tuesday last week. We visited him for about 45 minutes on Sunday afternoon and he was so happy to have someone to visit with. He told us his conversion story and it was really cool! I was glad to see him again and glad he’s doing well! After that we took Brother Barrett (he’s a ward missionary and he’s blind) to visit the Soogers. He’s their ministering brother and told us he hasn’t been able to set up anything with them, so we we got an appointment set up with the Soogers and took Brother Barrett with us. We had a great visit and I felt like it went really well. Brother Barrett was super grateful to be able to visit them because he hadn’t been able to connect with them for a while. I also got to know Brother Barrett a lot better while we drove there and drove him home! He’s such a nice guy. I like him a lot!
Last Monday night we got to go down to the Gretz for a BBQ at their new house. It was super fun to see them again! They’re one of the families I’m super grateful I’ve been able to meet on my mission. We helped set up and take all the tables and chairs down and had a little bonfire afterwards. It was a big ward party in the Lake Marion ward so Elder Meyer was there, too, and we hung out for the evening with them. It was really fun to reconnect with great friends I’ve met in the mission!
One last insight I’d like to share from this week is from my studies of “submitting our will to the will of the Lord.” It talks about this concept in my patriarchal blessing, and I realized it’s something I really suck at, so I figured I should study it and work on it! As I was reading the Book of Mormon, I am in Mosiah right after King Noah kills Abinadi and then is killed himself. Then King Noah’s son, Limhi, takes over as King. His people are in bondage to the Lamanites and decide to go to war against them 3 times in a row even though they get murked each time they go to war. It says in Mosiah 21:13-16:
13 And they did humble themselves even to the dust, subjecting themselves to the yoke of bondage, submitting themselves to be smitten, and to be driven to and fro, and burdened, according to the desires of their enemies.
14 And they did humble themselves even in the depths of humility; and they did cry mightily to God; yea, even all the day long did they cry unto their God that he would deliver them out of their afflictions.
15 And now the Lord was slow to hear their cry because of their iniquities; nevertheless the Lord did hear their cries, and began to soften the hearts of the Lamanites that they began to ease their burdens; yet the Lord did not see fit to deliver them out of bondage.
16 And it came to pass that they began to prosper by degrees in the land, and began to raise grain more abundantly, and flocks, and herds, that they did not suffer with hunger.
So after doing their own will for a while and nothing good happened, they submitted themselves to the will of the Lord and were humble and accepted what he wanted them to do. Even though it sucked and they were in bondage to the Lamanites, eventually the Lord prospered them in the land as they were humble and submitted patiently to the will of the Lord. Later on in chapter 24 it uses those exact words of “submitting patiently and cheerfully to all the will of the Lord.” I’ve learned that submitting to God's will for us is often hard because it isn’t exactly what we want and often times it forces us to go through the refiner's fire a little bit. However, as we are patient and cheerful, relying upon the Lord and His knowledge and goodness, things always work out in the end for our benefit! The people of Limhi eventually are found by Ammon from the land of Zarahemla and escape the bondage of the Lamanites. So in the end it all worked out for them! They just had to be patient. I am absolutely sure they grew in their faithfulness and ability to trust in the will of the Lord from this experience though! Pretty cool stuff.
Well, it’s been a good week! 3 more to go, haha pretty wild. I’m excited to give it my all the last 3 weeks. I’m so tired some days. It’s like the last 100 meters of a 400 meter sprint. You’re just dead, but gotta keep going haha. I’m grateful for the strengthening power of the atonement of Jesus Christ that gives me the ability to do this work. I have nowhere near the ability to do it on my own. Thank you for your prayers and support from back home. They help so much and mean the world to me! Love you all, you’re always in my prayers.
Much love,
Elder Beach
Visiting the VA hospital.
On our way to Mission Conference.
Mission Conference!
Hanging out with Elder Meyer at Mission Conference.
On our way home from Mission Conference... :)
Hanging out at the Gretz for Memorial Day.
