Apple Valley Week 1

Hello to all my family, friends, and coaches back home! I hope this email finds you all happy and doing well. This has been my first week in Apple Valley and it's been hard to leave Minnetonka after being there for almost 6 months. I miss the ward and all the investigators there. However, the Apple Valley ward is awesome and super missionary minded. We are really lacking investigators right now. I haven't met one investigator and we haven't had one lesson with an investigator yet. So it's been a little slow that way, but we've done a lot of member lessons and I've gotten to meet a lot of the ward! 

Last Monday while I was still in Minnetonka, we had our last p day at the Hickens for a while. It was fun and we played a lot of basketball. The Assistants to the President (APs) called me at like noon and said I was being called to be a District Leader (DL). They didn't say I was being transferred, so I thought maybe I would stay in Minnetonka and district lead. But then the transfer board came out and I saw I was going to Apple Valley, so I started calling and texting the ward members so I could set up times to say good-bye to everyone. Brother Keepman took us out to the Golden Nugget for dinner, and then we visited the Hadleys after that. It was hard to say good-bye to people.

Tuesday we had a whirlwind tour of good-byes of the area and ward members and investigators. Tuesday was probably the hardest day of my mission so far. I got packed Tuesday morning and then we went and said goodbye to Ted Fors and Jeffrey.  Jeffrey was super bummed I was leaving, but I told him I would stay in touch as best I could. Ted Fors gave me his email and phone number so I can stay in touch with him easy! Then we drove up to Buffalo Wild Wings to have lunch with the Plymouth Elders because one of the Elders had a $40 gift card. Then Brother Hansen took us to Culver's to get a shake and so we could say good-bye. He is so awesome, and I will miss him a lot! Then we went back to our place to finish packing and then went to see Johnny Chapman and Deveyon. I will miss them a lot as well. Johnny is super cool and he is a guy I'll never forget. Then we went to see Brother Haraden! That was a good visit. He said if I ever come back and visit I could stay at his house and use his hot tub and stuff. He said he wanted to thank me for helping him get back into the church and be active again. That was a super cool moment for me, just knowing that even if I didn't baptize someone, I helped someone come closer to Christ and feel of His love once again. Brother Haraden said he is going to come to my homecoming, so that will be awesome!! I can't wait for everyone to meet him. He is the funniest guy ever, and I love him.  Then we went and saw Bishop Pattersonand his family, and then Kim  and LynnRae Fors (he is Ted's brother). They are awesome and we've helped them with taking down and rebuilding their garage and shed, and he's taken us to Bakers Ribs like 4 times, so he's the man haha. I will definitely want to go back and visit them someday, too. Then we drove up to Plymouth to visit the Smiths one more time. I absolutely love them! They are one of the families I will miss so much. We talked to them for a while and shared our final spiritual message and did some pictures and then headed out to go see the Nelsons. Brother Nelson gave me a super nice note and a picture/post card thing of this painting of Jesus. It is the one where Jesus is sitting on some rocky cliffs looking up at the starry skies. It is super cool. I am going to miss them so much. They are pretty great people and do a lot for us as missionaries. After that we visited the Broadbent family. They are an awesome family as well, and Brother and Sister Broadbent are two of the greatest people I know. So that concluded the whirlwind goodbye tour of Minnetonka. Then I cried myself to sleep at about 10 pm. Just kidding - I didn't cry myself to sleep, but I was super sad I was leaving. Before I went to bed I thought about my last 6 months there and all the friends I had made and all the great people I've been able to associate with. I remember when I got transferred here that I DID NOT want to come here and now I didn't want to leave. It's funny when you put your heart and soul into an area and serving and loving the people there how much you don't want to leave those people. I thanked Heavenly Father for the opportunity I had to serve there and I knew I was called to serve there for a reason. It felt like I still had work to finish in the area, but I don't know, maybe I finished what God needed me to do there. I know there is some reason I need to be in Apple Valley now, too. I'm not sure what that reason is, whether it be a person I will help come into the gospel or helping a less active or maybe even my companion. By the time I leave, I'm sure I will know the reason I was called to serve here! 

Wednesday morning we drove down to Bloomington for transfers and it was so fun to see my mission buddies I hadn't seen for a while. The best part about transfers is just getting to reconnect with MTC companions and buddies and people you've served around. So I met up with Elder Wolfley, my new companion, and then we drove with the Zone Leaders (Kemberling and Newbold) back to our area. We all went to lunch at Costco, which is basically like Sam's Club, so that was pretty good! We went back to our apartment after that, and I got unpacked and settled in and then we headed out to meet some members and help me get familiarized with the area a little bit. We visited the McGills, Maytong and Vandie, and the Doty family.  Sister McGill is Maytong and Vandie's daughter.  The McGills are from somewhere in Asia and are super nice people. Sister McGill has to use a walker and wheelchair sometimes so she is a little depressed because she feels like she can't be as much help to people as she used to be. I really hope we can help her feel more useful and boost her spirits! The Doty family is crazy!We showed up and they had like 6 guests over plus their whole family and it was a circus haha. But they are super cool and Brother and Sister Doty are great!  Wednesday was a crazy day, and I was happy to go to sleep that night. Elder Wolfley is kind enough to do two-a-days with me still, so we are still doing 2 workouts a day. One from 5:50am-7:15am and the other from like 9:15pm-10:00pm. So we are getting some good work in physically.

Thursday I had to do some accounting calls for the first time in my life, and they went pretty well, I guess.  I just have to call the other areas in my district and see how they are doing and get their numbers and what not. The other two areas in my district are the Prior Lake Sisters and the Crystal Lake Sisters. They both seemed to be doing pretty well, so that's good! I hope I can help them in any way I can and just be a good example of hard work. I feel like that's my best way of being a leader is just by working hard and being an example that way. We tracted for about 3 and a half hours that afternoon and basically everyone we tracted was old and said they were too busy or were already part of a church. However, the mission legend is, if you get a lot of rejections tracting, you get hot wife points so I'm racking up the hot wife points haha.  We were almost done with this street we were tracting and we had an appointment at like 4 pm, so we were hurrying to finish the street. We knocked on one of the last doors and this really young girl answered and said she would grab her big sister for us. So we shared a message with the sister and left her a Book of Mormon. As we were leaving, the dad pulled up and so we talked to him for a few minutes and he said we could stop by another time for sure. So we had a cool fourth floor last door moment there. We had a lesson with a less-active guy named Brother Parsons. He is super cool! He works for Amazon and has had some struggles with employment recently. He's a ward missionary, but is less active so we are trying to help him get fully active. His wife was super sick, so we gave her a blessing. Haha I say, "Yes sir", "Yes ma'am" and "No sir", "No ma'am" because it's polite,  and Sister Parsons is from the south and she goes, "You're from the South, ain't you?" In this super thick southern accent haha.  I was like, "No.  I'm from Logan, Utah!" And she says, "Oh, you just got some good manners then!" It was pretty funny! Later that night we had dinner at Bishop Clifford's house and his wife said the same thing. She asked if I was from the south and I said "No, I'm from Logan, Utah!" Haha she also said I had good manners, too. The Cliffords are awesome and their youngest son, Spencer, is a funny kid. He has some mental problems, but he is the nicest kid and he is so funny! I'm excited to serve in this ward. The ward is super missionary minded. We visited this less active guy named Doug Watters, who lives in an assisted living facility because he had a stroke recently. He LOVES football, so we talked about football like the whole time haha. He loves to talk and had a lot of interesting stories from his life. I hope I can help him get more active into church and use football to do it. I shared the Friday Night Lights message with him and he loved it, so that was good!

Friday was weekly planning and I basically did nothing because I don't know anyone haha. I've been trying to get to know people through the area book and asking lots of questions about people haha. It's been tough being in a new area where I don't know anyone and don't know where anything or anyone is, plus be the District Leader. It's tough sometimes. I had my first accounting call with the ZLs and it was ok I guess. Haha I didn't know what I was supposed to do, so I was a little clueless at first, but now I know what to do so I should be good. We did a lot of tracting on Friday afternoon too, but didn't have much success. We met this one kid who was like 10. He was really cool and we talked to him about basketball and stuff. He said we could come back on Saturday. So we came back Saturday and talked to his mom, but she said they went to a church already and were content with their church. She said we made a big impression on her son though, and he thought we were awesome. So that made my day for sure! Just a small success of helping someone realize we are good people and are doing the Lord's work! We did some more member visits on Friday afternoon as well. We met the Gretz family. Brother Gretz was in the Air Force and graduated from the Air Force academy, and I told him Colton was playing there when he gets home and he thought that was pretty cool. He said "I just gotta warn you before my wife gets here that she is crazy and will say some stuff that will make you laugh." Haha Sister Gretz came home like 5 minutes later and she is hilarious! She just loves to take shots at people and is super sarcastic, so she's funny for sure.  They're a fun family! Friday night when we got home we went for a run outside because it was like 45 degrees. Elder Wolfley isn't in as good of running shape as I am,  so we had to stop every now and then so he could catch his breath and what not. It was fun though! I loved being able to help him and "coach" as we were running. Just like being encouraging and helping him that way. It made me realize that I really want to work at a CrossFit gym when I get home. Doing something I love while helping people change and be more physically fit is awesome!

Saturday morning we went to the ZLs baptism in Lakeville and then did our studies when we got home. I've been reading the New Testament alongside "Jesus the Christ" and wow. My mind gets blown sometimes haha. Jesus the Christ is a super good book, but it is super deep, too. I've really enjoyed reading the New Testament and relearning a lot of the stories and lessons I learned from freshman year in seminary. I still love the Book of Mormon hands down though. It is the greatest book ever written. My testimony and love for the Book of Mormon has grown 100 times on my mission so far. I honestly don't know why I didn't read it that much while I was at home. Then we had to go back to our chapel for a zone meeting to discuss our zone focus for this transfer. We are really focusing on finding and working with progressing investigators. I love this focus because I feel like Apple Valley really needs some work on our investigator pool. So it was good that our zone focus is based on finding! We went to Subway with the Lake Marion Elders because Subway has any footlong for $6 this month. Elder Nissenbaum is in Lake Marion and his companion is struggling too, so we talk on the phone and hang out as much as we can to help him out. I feel bad for him. He's had some tough companions in the last few months.  We did some more tracting on Saturday and we had some cool and also funny stories haha.  So we did "windows of Heaven" where you pray about what street to tract, and we felt we should do this street called Flagstaff Avenue. So we go there and the first two doors we knock talked to us and listened to our message, but were like, "Oh we have a church already." I wanted to just say, "We have the true church and it will bless you so much!" But you can't really say that because it makes people mad haha. Then we get to this one house and all these kids are outside pogo sticking and scootering so we talked to them for a few minutes and then they said that their dad was inside, so we knocked on the door and before we said anything he opens the door and says, "Latter-day saints aren't welcome here. The earth is flat and we live in outer space." Then he shut the door and I was still trying to register what was said. hahah Elder Wolfley was like, "What the heck?" It was pretty funny! Then as we were knocking the next side of the street I'm like 99% sure we knocked on a brothel house. This guy opens the door and he was dressed kinda weird and he says, "This is a business house." I was like "A what?" And he says, "A working house. You guys shouldn't be here, let's just say that." I was like uh ok...? So as we were leaving we saw this sign on the garage door that said DO NOT ENTER. KNOCK ON THE DOOR BEFORE ENTERING.  So we figured it was a brothel. Or like a drug dealer house. Those are the only two things we figured it was haha. That was the interesting story for the week for sure haha. The last house we knocked on was a mini miracle. This guy answered and we were like, "Hey we are sharing a message about Jesus Christ." And he says, "Hold on one second." He runs into his kitchen and grabs these flyers for this thing called "Over the Moon", which is a fundraiser at the mall of America where you can get an all day pass to Nickelodeon Universe for $20. Their daughter had passed away from cancer a few years ago and we talked to the mom and dad for a while. Elder Wolfley's dad passed away from cancer just recently, so he bore his testimony on the plan of salvation and that we would be able to live with families forever. The mom was like, "I just felt this warm sensation, and I know that they are watching over us right now!" The mom said her dad also passed away from cancer and her dad's name was Will, just like Elder Wolfley's dad. It was a cool connection and they said they were super busy as a family right now, but we could come back at the end of March or early April. So that was probably our finding miracle for the day! 

At church on Sunday we had a Ward Council, and it was much different than the ones in Minnetonka. No mention was made of basketball haha. The Relief Society President is super funny and has no filter at all haha. Church was great, and unfortunately we had zero investigators there, but we did have a less-active family come. The Gondarillas are a Hispanic family in our ward that we visited on Thursday evening. They are having some struggles with their son named Alex. He is in juvenile detention right now and will be back sometime next month. Lots of stress for the family, so keep them in your prayers. At church I met a lot of members and also met Brother Moerschel, who is a ward missionary. He is a hoot. He is a little crazy. Kind of the Apple Valley ward version of Brother Cohen.  After church we did some more tracting and then had dinner with the Petersons. They said they have a brother who lives in Logan and their son, Devin, played lacrosse. Their daughter plays basketball right now for Logan high. Dad I'm sure you know them! We visited the Pugmires on Sunday evening. They are a cool family in our ward! The mom has MS and is in a wheelchair, but she is so nice and awesome. She said she noticed my Diabetic bracelets and said that the Nelsons in our ward have a son who is pretty young and has just recently been diagnosed with Type 1 diabetes. She said I could be a big help to him and I thought to myself that that may be one of the reasons I got sent to Apple Valley! We got a text Sunday morning from this less-active sister named Sister Jones. She has been less-active for about 10 years and just got divorced and is having a custody battle with her ex-husband over their kids. She asked that we gave her a blessing and asked me to give it. That was the hardest blessing I've ever had to give. I wanted to tell her everything would work out and things would be good for her, but I felt prompted to say it would be a battle for her and be difficult, but as she relied on the Lord for strength, then everything would work out how it was supposed to. It was hard. It was a real testimony to me, though that God knows us and knows exactly what we need, and His plan is perfect. 

It's been a good first week in Apple Valley! I'm excited to get to know everyone and find new people to teach. I miss Minnetonka and love all those people, and hope I can get to that point with this ward as well! I love you all back home and serving the Lord! Thanks for the prayers and support. I wouldn't be able to do this work without them. You are all in my thoughts and prayers.

Much love,

Elder Beach

#MavUp #10

This bear suit was in our apartment closet.

Tom Brady is the GOAT!! (Greatest Of All Time)

Hello to all my family, friends, and coaches back home in Cache Valley, at college, and serving the Lord worldwide! I love you all and hope this email finds you well. Well, this week has been pretty great but also somewhat of a grind haha. I also received a call from the APs that I will be a district leader in Apple Valley area. My new comp is Elder Wolfley. He came out with me, and I've heard he is a good missionary so it should be fun! I'm so sad to leave Minnetonka, though. 

On Monday we had like a half p-day because we went to the temple on Wednesday and you have to count your temple trip day as a p-day. (I don't know why, that's just how it is.) So Monday morning we went and did some stop bys in Hopkins because we didn't have the car till Wednesday when we were with the ZLs. So we walked around and stopped by all our investigators and potentials in Hopkins and the only one we talked to was Kendall. He used to come play basketball with us quite a bit but hasn't been coming much lately. He smokes weed and stuff but then he goes to the gym like 3 hours every day. He is in insanely good shape, but he smokes a lot and that slows him down a lot. But anyway, we talked to him for a little bit just to see how he was doing and if he needed anything from us. He said he was doing good for the most part and offered to give us a ride, but we were super close to our next person so we declined. I hope he can figure stuff out someday soon. He is a good guy, he just has some things he needs to change that would make him be a great guy! No one else we stopped by was home, so we tracted for about 45 minutes and didn't have a lot of success in that regard.  We emailed and did laundry till about 4:30 and then Brother Keepman came and picked us up for dinner at their house. They are awesome!  They've fed us quite a bit, and I love going to their house! I shared the Friday Night Lights dinner message again about being perfect in effort, and they loved it. It seriously is a hit here. After dinner we did some more stop bys and called it a day. 

Tuesday was a jolly good time. We biked 12.5 miles up to Plymouth for an appointment that fell through on the way up. I absolutely hate when stuff falls through. Because then it throws off like the rest of your day. So we tracted for 2+ hours on this street we decided to tract on. We actually had a decent amount of success, so that was good! We taught this high school age girl and her younger siblings on their doorstep. She said she knew Audrey Smith in our ward so that was a good connection there! Then the next house, there was a dad and two little boys out front getting into their car and we said, "Hey we are sharing a quick scripture about Jesus, can we share one with you really quick?" And he was like "Yeah, sure!" Haha his boys, Sam and Joey, were like, "Why are your names Elder?"  It was pretty funny! Anyway, we shared Alma 7:11-12 with them about atonement, and I bore my testimony on the power of the atonement and how it can help us so much in our lives. It was awesome! They listened intently and I was able to speak with the spirit. It felt so good! It's hard to explain, but when the people actually listen and you can bear your testimony, it just feels like everything clicks. It's amazing! Then the dad's mom came out and we talked to her and she said she was Roman Catholic. We talked about her beliefs and ours for a little bit and offered her a Book of Mormon to teach her more about Jesus Christ. She kindly declined, but we may have planted a seed with the dad and the kids. They seemed to feel the spirit when we spoke with them. We will have to go back sometime this week. We also met this super nice lady who answered the door and said she was on a call for work but she would love to hear our message. She said just stop by whenever and try to catch her at home when she isn't busy because she works from home. She was super nice though! We decided to go to Jimmy Johns for dinner because it was close to where we were and sounded good. When we got there, biggest tender mercy of my mission: "This Is How We Roll" by Florida Georgia Line was on the radio. Me and my companion were just jamming and singing to it and everyone was looking at us like what the heck are you guys doing? It was good though! Then we had an appointment at 6:30 up by the church and we get there and the guy says he forgot we were coming over and then said he actually didn't want to meet with us anymore. It was a guy we found tracting like two weeks ago. It was a bummer. So then we started the long bike ride home to visit Jeffrey.  One thing a mission has taught me really well is how to deal with rejection and how to just roll with the punches. Things get changed up so much and people cancel and nothing ever goes as planned. You just have to be able to adjust on the fly and make the most of what happens. On the way home I got the WORST quad cramp ever on my bike. We were going up this hill and it just locked up. Like I couldn't bend my leg at all. So I'm just on the side of the road trying to bend my leg and get the cramp out and my companion is trying to help me and it was bad. It finally went away and then we walked for like 5 minutes and then biked to Jeffrey's. Haha it was not fun, but super funny after. Jeffrey had been in Washington DC for the last two weeks, so he told us about his trip and stuff. He got to inside the Pentagon because his cousin works there, so he got a VIP tour which was super cool! We reviewed the Plan of Salvation because he didn't really remember it from last time. It was a rough lesson because he kept falling asleep, so yeah... He's a good guy though, and told us it was good to see us and talk to us! We had a super good lesson with him on Sunday though....

Wednesday was the temple trip day!! We all met at the Lake Nokomis building and took the van to the temple. I haven't been to the temple since August, so I was very excited to go! We were supposed to go to the temple with a question that we could find an answer to while in the temple. So I had a question in mind as I went. I've done this before when I've gone to the temple and I never feel like I get an answer until we go in the Celestial room. I had such a good experience there and found the answer to my question, so it was good! The temple is such an amazing place and I love it there. After that we hit up Panda Express really quick. They jacked their prices up so everyone boycott Panda till they lower them again! Then we went back to the church to get the cars and go to the ZLs apartment to play games and stuff. So we are riding with the Plymouth Elders and Elder Pierson is the driver. I'm getting my stuff in the back seat of the car and he pulls up on top of my foot and parks. So he's parked on top of my foot and I'm like, "Elder!  Elder! ELDER, GET THE FETCH OFF MY FOOT! BACK UP!!! BACK UP!" I was so mad, and my baby toe got smashed. It was the one I broke against Fremont last season in football. So I'm screaming in my high pitched scream voice to get off my foot and he (thank the heavens he backed up off my foot and didn't pull forward over my foot) finally did. I learned in that moment that the mission does change you to be a better person. Pre-mission, I would have dropped some serious cuss words right there and on my mission the worst word I said was fetch. So I'm definitely becoming better! We then went to the ZLs apartment and had some birthday cake cuz it was Elder Heden's birthday. We went shopping after and went and tried to see Ke and De to get them a ride for basketball. They weren't there and then Johnny texted us and said he wasn't going to basketball, so we didn't have a ride for anyone.  Kris Clark said he was coming, so we showed up at the church and he was the only one there. Like literally. It was us and Kris that showed up, so we just played 21 and then the Plymouth Elders showed up and we threw the football around for a while. It was frustrating when no one shows up because the whole point is for the members and less actives and investigators to be there and build relationships. But oh well. Sometimes it doesn't work out.

Thursday we had FMSC (Feed My Starving Children). We show up and no one is there. So we are like what the heck? So they had us put stickers on bags for 2 hours.  After that we had a lesson with Brother Armstrong. He is a less active guy in our ward we have been working with. We talked to him about the Priesthood and how he can receive the Melchizedek Priesthood. He is way into like supernatural stuff, so we told him he has the power to cast devils out of his house with the Priesthood. He thought that was pretty cool, because he thinks he sometimes has ghosts or demons in his house or something. Anyway, it was a good lesson, and hopefully we can get him to come to church soon so he can get the priesthood! He is such a nice guy and hopefully we can help him. He has some really bad social anxiety issues so he struggles in that regard but we are working with him! After that we had a lesson at the church with Steve Jordan and Brother Broadbent, who is our Ward Mission Leader. We taught the plan of salvation and it was really good! We drew it on the white board as we taught it so I think that helped Steve get a visual of what we were teaching. He seemed to understand most things we taught and liked the idea of us being sons and daughters of God and how we have the potential to become like Him! He read the first 5 chapters of the Book of Mormon like we asked him, and he said he didn't really understand what was going on. We went over them with him, just like the general story of what was going on, and he said he was going to read it over again! He is so committed and I love that! It makes me so happy to see someone who is really trying to change and become more Christlike. 

Friday was weekly planning. We got that done pretty well this week, creative juices were flowing again. We went to go stop by a potential because their bio on the area book said stop by at like 3:30. So we went by, but they weren't there. On the way back I had a thought to call Brother Cohen.  So we called him and he was like, "Yes, let's meet at Wendy's right now!" So we met him there and he just unloaded all this stuff on us that I didn't really want to know about.  It was bad. He said he had almost gone into a depression slump again right when we called so he was super glad we called him. It was the weirdest lesson I've had with him, but it seemed to help him a lot to get some stuff off his chest and if that's what we can do to help then I guess that's what you do. Then we had a dinner up at the Smith's house in Plymouth. They are awesome! I am going to miss them a lot! They had some Dominoes pizza for us, and we just talked and had a fun time and then, I got to share my Friday Night Lights dinner message, and it was a hit once again.  It must be a good one because everyone loves it. Then we had to hurry down for our lesson with Ted Fors in Minnetonka. We were going to watch a Living Scriptures movie with him, but we couldn't get ahold of his brother, so we decided we would read the story out of the Book of Mormon we were going to share with him. We read Mosiah 17-18 which is about Abinadi getting killed and Alma and the waters of Mormon. It was super good! We had a great discussion about repentance and basically the gospel of Jesus Christ. It ended up being a super good lesson and I think I learned as much as he did during the lesson!  After that Brother Cohen wanted to meet at Wendy's again so he wouldn't be depressed right before bed, so we met him again and had another interesting conversation.  Friday was like the rainbow of types of lessons in Minnetonka. 

Saturday was so hectic. Oh my gosh. So we had zone service and there was 2 different shifts. One was 2:45-4:45 and the other was 4:45-6:30. So we were slated to do the afternoon session, so we scheduled all our stuff so we could do the afternoon one. Then the ZLs told us we were going to do the evening session because the Minnetonka Sisters had to do something in the evening. So then we had to switch up our whole schedule again for that to work for them. Every Saturday we have coordination meeting and breakfast at the Bishop's house. So we show up and the Sisters are like, "You're going to afternoon session right?" And we were like, "No.... the evening one." And they're like, "No, you're going to the afternoon session because we need to go to the evening session." I was pretty chapped at this point and basically said screw it, we are going to both sessions. Haha so we went to both sessions.   Before we went, we finished tracting this street in Plymouth we had started on Tuesday. We talked to this one old lady who had Alzheimer's and her husband was sick so we said a prayer for them. It was cool and it really made the lady's day that we talked to her for like 15 minutes. Then the next two houses we knocked basically told us to go away. The first one this guy answers and tells us to get off his property and we were never welcome back. The second guy says that there is no such thing as an uplifting scripture and to get off his property. Just getting some hot wife points so no complaints from me... There's a joke that every time you get rejected, you get a point towards how hot your wife will be. After that we headed up to the zone service thing. We got to run this thing called Viking Sleds, which are like dog sleds but someone sits on the sled and you push them and then stand on the runners. It was pretty cool! So the event we were at was called Plymouth Fire and Ice on Gleason Lake. It was literally on a frozen lake. There was hockey, dog sleds, Viking sleds, ice fishing and all kinds of cool stuff. It was pretty fun! They did a fire dancing show after the evening shift and then this huge fireworks show after that. It was so much fun. There's been a lot of drama in our zone between Elders and Sisters and there was some more at the zone service. That is the part of leadership I'm not looking forward to at all. I have like a zero drama tolerance. After we left there we had a few lessons to go to and the first one was with Kris Clark who is the less active young man in our ward. We showed up and no one answered the door, even though it looked like people were home. Then we stopped back by our apartment to grab some Books of Mormon for tracting. We tracted for about an hour and fifteen minutes. We didn't see much success, but I had a cool experience. As we were knocking doors, I had this like vision of my dad doing this in his mission in Texas. I realized that I'm part of something much bigger than myself and the Minnesota, Minneapolis Mission. This is the Lord's work and nothing is going to stop it from progressing. Even if things are tough at times, everything we do is helping the work move forward. It is my job to continue to help the work progress and continue the legacy left by my dad and the many missionaries before me and leave a legacy for future missionaries to continue as well. It was a really cool revelatory experience for me. It gave me a new fire to be a better missionary and share the gospel with everyone. 

Sunday was another hectic morning. We had like 5 people who were supposed to come to church. Steve Jordan texted us at 8 AM and said he had the flu and couldn't make it. Go figure. Then Antonio texts us and says his mom won't let him come to church. Then Tabitha texts us and says she couldn't find a babysitter for her kid so she won't be there either. I'm about ready to throw the phone through the wall at this point. We know Kevin is going for sure. And that's it. Jeffrey won't answer our texts or calls, so we have no idea with him. We get to church and Kevin is there with a new tie on looking sharp. It was cool to see that! And we called Jeffrey again at like 10:50 and he said he was coming. He got there at around 11:10, but hey! He made it so that was great.  A lot of the ward knows him so like 15 people said hi to him and stuff right after Sacrament meeting. He loves when people talk to him, so that was good. For Elders Quorum we ended up having a discussion on prayer because Jeffrey said he was struggling with prayer. It was sooooooo good. Johnny Chapman killed it and helped Jeffrey out so much. Jeffrey totally understood everything and the spirit was finally working in him! It was so cool.  Jeffrey left church very happy he came, and very much uplifted spiritually. That is what church is all about.  After church we ran home and broke the fast because we were both starving. Then we went and tracted these town homes for about an hour before dinner. Most people weren't home and the ones that were said they either 1. Weren't interested  2. Already went to church so they didn't need to listen to us  3. Were watching the super bowl pre game. So that's about how that went for an hour. Then we had dinner at Steve and Kerri Nelson's house and they are awesome. The other Nelsons in the ward had dinner with us too, so that was pretty fun. We had a fun time talking about the super bowl and who was going to win and stuff. They are awesome. I'm going to miss them so much! Then we tracted some more town homes, but there was this guy who had his dog out for a walk and told us everyone was gone or watching the super bowl and wouldn't talk to us. He was right!  So we went and stopped by Mike who lives in Stormy and Robert's building because we hadn't seen him forever. They were watching the game and it was half-time, so we were let into the apartment right in time to see Lady Gaga doing some weird dance thing on a piano bench. Then we left pretty quick haha. We got invited over to the Smith's to watch the super bowl, but we felt we should only spend an hour or less there. So we tracted their street until 8 pm and then went and watched the 4th quarter and overtime, which ended up being the best part of the game by far. All I have to say is that Tom Brady is the best quarterback and probably football player to ever play. Hands down. No questions. No disputing that. He is the best or the GOAT (greatest of all time). It was a fun evening with them and throughout the game, we kept relating things in the football game to missionary work or to life and lessons we learned from the game. Lots to be learned from that game as the Pats were down 28-3 and won 34-28. It was a good time and I'm glad I got to witness the best super bowl ever...

It was a good final week in Minnetonka. I'm soooo sad I have to leave this ward and people I love so much. My heart pretty much broke when I found out I was leaving. I'm going to miss the people here a lot and hope I will be able to serve here again towards the end of my mission. That would be so fun. I'm hoping the Lord can mold me into a good district leader because I have no clue what I'm doing at all. Should be a good learning experience for me though, and I know I will learn a lot and grow as a missionary and leader as well. My favorite scripture is Alma 26:12 "... I will not boast of myself but I will boast of my God, for in his strength I can do all things." Love you all and hope your week is awesome!

Much love,

Elder Beach

#MavUp #10

Watching the Super Bowl and the GOAT.

Dinner with one of my favorite families!

Temple day!

I love the temple!

Confession by Florida Georgia Line

Hello to all my family, friends and coaches back home, at college, and serving worldwide! I love you all and hope this week was a good one for all of you. This week was pretty fun but a little crazy as far as our schedule goes. We didn't really have a normal day in Minnetonka this week, but we still managed to get a lot done!

So on Monday, we had our P-day, which is always a good time! We helped Sister Hicken take her Christmas lights down cuz we got to her house a little earlier than everyone else. We started talking about how her son wanted to watch the Super Bowl but she didn't let him watch football on Sundays cuz she felt it was breaking the Sabbath. She asked us our thoughts on that and I told her I've grown up watching football on Sundays, but it was always after Sunday dinner was over and we always watched the Super Bowl as a family so it was time we spent as a family. I have some great memories of being at Grandma's house with the family over, watching the Super Bowl and enjoying good food and each other's company. Her reasoning behind not letting her son watch it on Sunday was just because it's the Sabbath, and it's one day a week we give the Lord. It made sense, not saying I feel the same about watching football on Sunday, but it was a good conversation nonetheless. Then we played some basketball and pool and had a good time with the zone. When we got home we did some tracting, but didn't have a lot of success. Sometimes you have a lot of people who talk to you and sometimes not any.   But we also took Brother Haraden to Applebees that night cuz he has been helping us out a lot with rides and joint teaching. So we went to Applebees and had a super good time with him! He said his girlfriend wants to come to church with him soon. He is on fire right now! He's a great member missionary and help to us!

We moved our service at FMSC to Tuesday so we could get a ride from the Plymouth Elders and then be able to watch the worldwide missionary broadcast at the church on Wednesday. So Elder Nielson and I tracted these town home things in Hopkins by our apartment and had 2 first lessons and met a few cool people. This one guy we found was Hispanic and we said our thing, and he said he was just heading out the door to work, so we asked if we could come back later. He seemed really interested and right as he was about to say "Yes" his wife goes, "Tell them to go away. They can't come back!" He looked really dejected about that and I was sooooo sad. I could tell he was someone that was interested and might be ready for the gospel. We are still gonna go back though. Then this other dude answered the door with a stack of hundreds in his hand. I think he thought we were his dealer... But he listened to our message, and we said a prayer with him, too! Haha I swear you see the strangest stuff as a missionary sometimes! FMSC was fun. We were the only people who showed up so it was us, the Plymouth Elders and the Eden Prairie Sisters. We went ham on the packing food though, and packed like 25 boxes of food with 6 people, so that was cool!  Then we hit up some Taco Bell as usual, and headed up to Plymouth (the part in our area) for a lesson with Jane Hall, the lady we met tracting last week. We were going to blitz Plymouth's area Tuesday night and stay over at their place. They went with us to our lesson with Jane cuz we needed rule of 3. Anyways, we get there and it was the coolest lesson I've had haha. She let us right in and gave us water, juice, offered us beer and tea as well! It was pretty cool! She is 92 years old and just the sweetest old lady you ever could meet haha. She told us she loves meeting new people and I think that's why she had us come back... but anyway, we had a restoration lesson with her and it went really well! She had a ton of questions about the church in general, so we were able to answer all those and then she gave us cookies and milk when we left. She is so great! She said she would read the Book of Mormon and pray about it, but for the time being would keep going to her own church. Super cool lesson and lady though! After that we hurried up to Plymouth's area so they could grab dinner from a member. Then we ate really quick at their place and Elder Shelly and I went out with this guy from their ward (totally forgot his name) and did some stop bys for like an hour and a half. So basically I just sat in the backseat of the car and looked out the window while they talked. I was about to fall asleep and then he asked me about diabetes cuz he works for a company that produces and sells insulin, so then I couldn't fall asleep. After the stop bys we played basketball at the church with Plymouth's church ball team. They said they needed a practice cuz they sucked and got creamed in their last game. They weren't lying...Anyway, despite the lack of talent on the floor, it was still fun! Then we headed home and hit the hay.

The next morning was the worldwide missionary broadcast at the church. So the Plymouth Elders drove us to that and we watched it together. It was really good and I learned a lot of good stuff to help me as a missionary! One thing that really stuck out to me was how they talked about how we as missionaries need to live the gospel of Christ before we can fully have a testimony of it and share it with the people we teach. We consistently need to repent and change to become better each day. As we do that, we see the atonement work more fully in our lives and then that grows our testimony of it. Then we will be more powerful teachers of the gospel and the atonement. Pretty cool stuff. I've really tried to live it more this week and focus on little things I can improve on each day. I feel like there is A TON of stuff to work on haha. They also changed the daily schedule so you have more flexibility as a missionary to plan your day and do certain things when it is more convenient for you. It doesn't change much for us, but it's nice to have more flexibility in the schedule. After that we shoveled some people's driveways who lived around the church and tried to share the gospel with them, but no one was super interested so we ended up doing more shoveling than teaching. But that's ok, cuz it was fun and we got to serve people and I didn't have a seizure this time...So that was good haha. Then Plymouth dropped us off at our place and then Brother Chapman came and picked us up to go to Sister Kucera's house for dinner. So Brother Chapman and Deveyon came to dinner with us and that was super fun! Haha we ended up just talking about the NBA and NFL the whole time with Sister Kucera's son-in-law who lives there with his family. It was pretty funny once Johnny got going on the NBA. After dinner we picked up DeAndre for basketball and this kid named Antonio that Johnny met. Antonio's mom works with Johnny's wife so they knew each other that way. Anyway, Antonio's mom said he could come to church and join our church if he wanted, it was entirely his decision. He is 11. Wish Kevin's parents would let him do that. Oh, I totally forgot. So we set Kevin's baptism date for this Friday and then Monday night he texts us and said his parents won't let him get baptized till he is 18. But he can still come to church and mutual and all, that so that's good! So anyway, we drove up to the church and had a lesson with Antonio and DeAndre. We taught Antonio the restoration and had DeAndre help us teach it so we could refresh it in his mind, too. Antonio had so many super good questions about plan of salvation stuff that we basically taught the restoration and plan of salvation. He has some funny ideas about stuff, but he liked everything we taught and thought it was cool that we have a living prophet today! It was a really good lesson and it is way fun to teach people who are interested and open to the gospel. After that and right before basketball, I took DeAndre into a room and had a "man to man" talk with him about keeping commitments and stuff. I told him he wanted change in his life, but he needed to do stuff that would help him change for the better. If he just kept living his current lifestyle, he wouldn't ever change or get where he wanted to go. He told us he lied to a cop and told them he was KeAndre, so he had to be in jail for 3 days and pay a $100 fine. I'm guessing he tried to take one for something KeAndre did.  I don't know, though. Anyway, it was a good talk and DeAndre seemed to be more committed afterwards. I wish he could just catch the vision of how good his life would be if he would read the Book of Mormon, pray, and come to church. The sky's the limit with him if he would just keep his commitments and more work towards baptism. We had a fun time playing basketball and called it a night. 

So Thursday was an interesting day! We weekly planned on Thursday cuz we had zone conference on Friday in Lakeville. So we weekly planned and basically the creative juices weren't flowing quite as well as last week so it was a grind this week. We also don't have a car until Wednesday evening so it's hard to plan stuff on bikes cuz you can't do nearly as much cuz our area is huge. Anyway, Brother Cohen called us and wanted to meet at Wendy's at 4:30ish for a lesson, so we walked to Wendy's from our apartment. It's about 2 miles away but there's lots of bus stops and places to talk to people on the way there. So we talked to a few people briefly before their buses picked them up. So we get to Wendy's and Brother Cohen calls us and tells us he is just gonna go to the library and do family history instead. So we basically wasted like 40 minutes walking to Wendy's. We decided to just eat dinner there and finish planning. So we finished planning and our brains were fried. Like KFC fried.  As we were sitting there like zombies this super weird song about having sex came on, and I was just dying cuz it was literally the weirdest song I've ever heard.  Elder Nielson and I had a good chuckle cuz you can't do anything about it and we were just like, "What the heck?" Weird stuff for sure. Brother Smith was going joint teaching with us Thursday night, so we walked back to our apartment so he could pick us up. On our way back, we ran into this guy named Peter who is from Russia. We first saw him running across the street right as a car about ran him over and then he proceeded to cuss out the driver of the car quite loudly so we heard all of it hahahaha.  He had a broken arm cuz he said he beat up 3 guys in a bar who were harassing this lady. Then he said "You should see the other 3 guys. They're still in the ER!" I was like mmhhmmm.... Anyhow, he asked us why we were all dressed up, and we told him we were missionaries and a little about what we did and shared a little message about the restoration with him. He thought it was super cool and actually lived in an apartment on our way home from Wendy's. So we dropped him off and said a prayer with him and he told us we could come back the next day and give him a Book of Mormon and a restoration pamphlet. He was super funny and nice. He even wants to go to service with us on Thursday at FMSC! Thursday night we had an appointment scheduled with this guy named Steve Jordan. So a little back story: since I have been in Minnetonka, I have received one member referral named Kevin. This Sunday we fasted to get more referrals, and low and behold, our prayers were answered Monday night. This lady from Colorado called us (not sure how she got our number?) and said she had a friend who lived in our ward who wanted to learn more about the church and have Jesus in his life more. So we had called Steve earlier in the week and set up a lesson at the church with him for Thursday night! Fast forward to Thursday: we get to the church to meet with him and he is a little shy/reserved. Brother Smith was the man and really was a good friend to him right off the bat and helped him feel comfortable around us. Steve told us he is going through a divorce right now and his wife didn't want him to meet with us or go to church, but he felt it was what he needed to do. We taught him the restoration and it was the best restoration lesson I've ever taught. The spirit was sooooo strong and it was amazing! You really live for moments like that one on your mission. It isn't baptism, but all those hundreds of hours of knocking doors pays off when you can have a lesson like the one we had Thursday night. It was fire! At one point in the lesson we started talking about how Steve felt he needed Jesus in his life more and I started bearing my testimony of the Savior and of the atonement and he just lost it and started bawling. It was a humbling sight to see a man feel the Savior's love and feel some amount of relief from the weight of his trials. The spirit was there throughout the whole lesson and it just seemed to flow so well. Elder Nielson just nailed everything he said and so did Brother Smith. It was just an amazing lesson! He committed to be baptized on February 25, but that may get moved up depending on how fast he progresses. He is so humble and ready to hear the gospel. I'm excited to teach him more and help him see that through living the gospel and through the ordinances of baptism and receiving the Holy Ghost and ultimately going to the temple, his life will be greatly enriched! It was a super good lesson and he said he would read the first 5 chapters of the Book of Mormon and come to church on Sunday. I was so happy! 

After that lesson we had a lesson set up with a less active sister in our ward who is single and is struggling with some health issues. Brother Smith hadn't had lunch or dinner, so he said he needed to run to Taco Bell on the way there so he didn't die haha. He bought us some Baja blast freezes, which are pretty good! So we went to Sister Kaimondo's apartment to visit her, and we get there and she has this full on African feast prepared for us. It is 8:30 pm and we've already had Wendy's, a Baja blast freeze, and Brother Smith just ate a big box from Taco Bell. And to top it off, we had a sprint workout planned for that evening, so I was like, "Lord, give me strength to eat this! I had a smallish plate of food and ate really slow so I wouldn't be roped into seconds. Brother Smith is the OG and threw down a whole plate on top of Taco Bell. We visited with her for a while she really needed a visit cuz she gets super lonely, so I'm glad we could offer our company and an uplifting thought to her. As we were driving home Brother Smith was like, "I'm probably gonna throw up." It was a solid night all in all. Then we capped it off with running about 25 sprints in our parking garage and ended with me dry heaving African food and some fiery diarrhea the next morning...The two major things I learned from Thursday: 1. God answers prayers and literally gives us people to teach when we work hard and have faith in him. 2. NEVER, EVER eat Wendy's, a Baja blast freeze, and African food, then do a sprint workout. It destroys you!

Friday was Zone Conference which was super good! We all met at the mission home in Bloomington and then took the van and the AP's truck down to Lakeville for Zone Conference. Elder Nielson, Shelly and I rode with the Mission President and his wife because the van and truck were completely full. As we start driving, Sister Forbes whips out her sunglasses and throws them on and then makes President Forbes wear his, too.  Then she's like, "Elder Beach! Say a prayer that we won't die on the way there!" I was like, "Uhhhh, ok!"  She cracks me up hahaha. I got to see my MTC companion, Elder Peterson, again finally! It was so good to see him and we had some good laughs reminiscing about the MTC and talking about his adventures in Thunder Bay. He is seriously the funniest missionary I know, and I hope we can serve together sometime soon. His companion is Elder Smith from Logan, and he is super funny as well, so it was a good time with those guys on Friday! 

The ZLs gave a really good training on asking inspired questions. You can really make or break a lesson on how you ask questions. If all you ask is yes or no questions, it never goes anywhere. You need to ask questions that make the person think back to times they've felt the hand of God in their life, felt the spirit, felt something like that and help them remember those. You also have to ask questions that get them to bring up things they are struggling with or concerns they have so you know how best to help them. It was really good and helped me a ton! Elder Peterson told me that his brother is engaged, so I need to give a shout out to him and his wife to be!  Congrats bud! 

Another thing that was reiterated from the worldwide broadcast was the need to follow the rules exactly. As we do that and show obedience to God, we are allowing the spirit to be with us. Then when we teach or find people to teach, the spirit is with us already and we will be much more powerful teachers! That was also super cool! We got back from Zone Conference at like 4:30, and then we went to see DeAndre. He wasn't there, so we tracted some apartments around his place that we hadn't tracted yet. We also ran into Peter again and gave him a Book of Mormon. He was super excited about it and said he would read it! Haha this apartment building we tracted was a zoo! We met this guy named Pedro who said we could come back on Tuesday to teach him a lesson and then we met this gay black guy who was playing Xbox, and his girlfriend or mom or someone was going insane and yelling at someone.  It was so funny, but you had to be there haha. Then Brother Broadbent picked us up for dinner at his house with his family. It was really good and I love them. They are really great people and do a lot for us as missionaries. Dad, you'll like this: I've been sharing the Friday Night Lights analogy about being perfect for the dinner message, and it's been a hit so far, so thanks for sending that! I love it cuz it makes a lot of sense to me, so it's easy to share!

Brother Broadbent came joint teaching with us on Friday night. We went and saw Carol again and that was easily the strangest lesson I've had on my mission. She did this like yoga sit thing on the couch the whole lesson and started talking about this herd of 72 angels she had been researching and all this weird stuff. Brother Broadbent was trying to answer her questions cuz I didn't even know what she was talking about half the time haha. Then she asked if we believed in angels and if we had any personal angels. We talked about angel Moroni a little bit, and she seemed to like it. She just researches so much stuff on churches and angels and all this BS and then gets it all mixed up and it is crazy sometimes. After that we went to have a lesson with this lady named Tabitha who was a former investigator that dropped us after we passed her off to the Sisters to teach. Elder Nielson and I went back like a week or so ago and she wanted to be taught again, so we picked her up. We read 2 Nephi 31 with her which is the most bomb chapter about the doctrine of Christ. It is so good, I would advise everyone to read it this week! Tabitha said she had been reading the New Testament to grow in her testimony of Jesus and she said she felt that it was growing a lot. I've been reading the New Testament right now as well, so we talked about lots of stuff from it and it was cool! She said she's been feeling the spirit as she's been reading the New Testament and I said, "Tabitha, I'll make you a deal. If you come to church and don't feel the spirit, then you don't have to come to church anymore." She seemed to like the deal, so she committed to be at church next Sunday! I know she will feel the spirit at church because I feel it every single Sunday. 

Saturday we had coordination meeting at the bishop's, which is always a good time! He always buys us either Brueggers Bagels or Great Harvest, which I love. So we had a good discussion about how to help our investigators and build fellowship with the ward members and had some good food. Then we went to the Kennedys house again to finish painting their kitchen and start painting the entryway in their house. It's so fun to help them out and their oldest boy, Adam, is really cool. I like him a lot and he said he is trying to decide whether to go on a mission right after high school or go to a year of school first. I told him that whatever he decides, just go on a mission no matter what because the blessings that come from it are tremendous and will help his less active family a lot! We had dinner at the Ashford's at 5 pm and didn't have a car, and we were in Plymouth. So Adam drove us to the church, then Brother Hunsaker drove us to the Ashford's and then we tracted a few streets by their house until dinner. They are awesome, and their son, Spencer, is serving in the Sweden, Stockholm mission right now. We talked about Brother Ashford's mission in Germany and what kind of stuff they did and how they would drive insanely fast in the Autobahn in Germany.  I shared my Friday Night Lights message again, and Brother Ashford loved it cuz he is from Texas originally and knows all about Odessa Permian and MOJO football.  So it's been working really well to use that as a dinner message. One more shoutout to dad for that! Then Brother LePage picked us up to joint teach with us that night. When we got in his car, "Confession" by Florida Georgia Line was on for a second, and that was my jam back home, so that brought back some good memories. 

We had a lesson with Brother Hartranft again, and he seemed to be doing a little better, but I'm so glad we get to visit him. He told us he loves having us over cuz he gets a little lonely there sometimes and my heart just broke. He is such a nice man and I feel so bad for him. We read about the brother of Jared in Ether and how we need to have faith and also put forth our best effort in order to see miracles occur. I've gained a strong testimony of faith + work = miracles. It really is amazing how that works!  It's just awesome to see how much just visiting with someone and sharing the gospel uplifts their spirits. After that we went and visited Kris and Kayla Clark. He was asleep when we got there but she woke him up so we could visit him. What happened next was hands down the funniest visit of the week, and possibly the mission, if you don't include Brother Haraden. So Kris comes upstairs and he is telling us about how he has been getting ready for track and doing his workouts and whatnot. Then we started talking about "Call of Duty" somehow and Brother LePage said there's this place in Bloomington called "Black Ops" that is a laser tag place, but they have real guns that shoot blanks and you wear like body armour and stuff while you play. Kris was like, "Man,that's dangerous!  Some kid finna come in with a real clip in his gun and start killing people. Radadasadadasdrddads (machine gun noise)..." Oh my gosh, I've never laughed so hard in my life. Kris is like a ghetto black version of my friend, Jake. He just has super funny stories about random stuff haha. Then he told us when he came to basketball on Wednesday like a week ago that DeAndre's little bro Teon wouldn't pass me the ball. And I was like, "Yeah, I know. Why wouldn't he?" And Kris is like, "Bro, he told me that you wouldn't pass to him." He said, "He came up to me and was like he don't believe in me! He don't believe in me man!" I was dying. Kris is so funny haha. Then he told us about how he would drink a whole slushy and fill up his car and then get a 65 cent refill while his car was filling up haha. 

We shared a Mormon message with them and invited them to church. Kris said it was his birthday on Sunday and they were going out to dinner and we were like, "Church is at 11 am, dude." He's like, "I'm finna still be asleep." Hahaha, so we told him we would get him a birthday present and bring it to church, and he said he would come. So on the way home we bought him some Reese's pieces and peanut butter cups cuz he loves those. We also stopped by DeAndre's and had him call Johnny Chapman and set up a ride to church. He told us Teon wanted to come, too, and would be there tomorrow. We were planning on having 6 investigators and 1 less active to church on Sunday so we were hyped Saturday night! 

Sunday morning we decided to make it 5 weeks in a row and fast again that all our investigators could make it to church. We got a ride from the Hadleys to church and got there like 10:55 and ran in to find all our investigators and make sure they had members to sit with and stuff. Steve sat with Brother Smith and his family so that was good, and Antonio was with Johnny and Deveyon. DeAndre was nowhere to be seen, so we went and asked Johnny, and he said he showed up to get them and no one answered the door or phone. I was so sad/mad. DeAndre had literally told us less than 14 hours ago he was coming to church and set up the ride himself and then didn't show up. I don't know what his deal is, but we may need to drop him soon if this keeps up. It makes me sad, but it may need to happen cuz he isn't keeping commitments and keeps flaking hard core on us. 

Church was awesome cuz it was Ward Conference, and the Stake Presidency was there. The Stake Presidency is awesome in this stake! Bishop gave a great talk on the power of the scriptures and President Kerr spoke on something similar. Both were very powerful talks and I loved them! Second hour in gospel principles we talked about Moroni 10:3-5 and really went deep into those verses. I learned that in verse 4 if we ask with "real intent", meaning to act on the answer we receive, even if it isn't the answer we want, a "sincere heart" meaning a conviction to know that what we are asking about is true, and "having faith in Christ" then we will receive an answer to our prayer by the power of the Holy Ghost. It was really cool and struck me that that is how all prayers should be. It was solid.

President Beecher gave the lesson in Elders/High Priests Quorum and he is awesome. He is seriously one of the best teachers I've ever listened to. He is so animated and funny but he really knows his stuff. He keeps you engaged but also just nails it and brings the spirit. It was so good. He talked about the gospel of Christ and it was awesome. I know that the leaders of our church are called of God. They have a special spirit about them and their faith and testimonies make it very clear to me that they are servants of the Lord. 

After church we did some stop bys around the church till Brother Hansen was done with his bishopric meeting and could take us to his house to dinner. We set up 2 appointments with some investigators we found while tracting for this week so that was good! Then we talked to Brother Fish about joint teaching with us. I love Brother Fish. He is super cool and we get along great haha.  Anyway, he invited us over for dinner next Tuesday and is going teaching with us that night, too.   I hope dinner isn't too awkward. 

So after that Brother Hansen took us to his house for dinner and we had these super yummy sandwich things. It was an artisan roll, mozzarella cheese, pesto sauce, bacon and tomatoes. It was dang good! We shared the Friday Night Lights message again and it was, once again, a hit! Then he took us to the Sherman's house so we could do another lesson with Kevin. Kevin was at church, which was super good! He told us the stake leaders thought he was just another Priest in the ward.  We had a good chuckle at that haha. We read Alma 13 with him and talked about the Priesthood and the duties of Priesthood holders. We also talked about the temple and we all were able to bear our testimonies about the temple to him. Nothing brings the spirit faster than bearing testimony. That is a fact! The lesson was really good and he is so solid. I wish his parents would let him get baptized. Haha he wanted to see a picture of me with a beard, so I showed him and he thought it was pretty funny. Then Brother Keepman picked us up and took us to the Wilcock's cuz he is also their home teacher. We talked about Lewis and Clark with Brother Wilcock for a little bit and then about church and diabetes. He is a type 2 diabetic, so we discussed the differences and how to manage it well and stuff. It was cool. We had been struggling to know what to share all week with them and decided to leave it up to the spirit. Brother Wilcock loves art and is a great painter, so I shared the Jadeite Cabbage story with them. If you haven't heard it, look it up! It is really great. I felt like he really liked the story and it resonated well with him, so that was good! 

Then we visited the Nielsen family so Brother Keepman could give Margarte, their youngest daughter, a blessing. She was really sad that day (the parents are divorced and all the girls live with the mom), and she was having a tough time with some stuff. I showed her a picture of my dog, Hallie to help cheer her up and she liked it a lot! Haha I love my Hallie dog. Brother Keepman gave her a great blessing and then asked if we had any thoughts we could share. I just shared my testimony about how God answers prayers. That was one of the coolest experiences I've had with bearing my testimony because I felt like the spirit was speaking directly through me to someone there who needed to hear my testimony. It was so cool! Then we did a few stop bys and called it a night!

This week has been hard but fun! I love the moments when you can bear testimony and you really feel the spirit is there and bearing witness that what you say is true. I have a strong testimony of the power of prayer. I've seen miracles happen here that never would've happened without faith, prayer, and a lot of hard work. I know this gospel brings true happiness and blesses all of us more than we can know. We were talking to Brother Keepman about how you don't realize how much you take for granted back home till you come on a mission. Just little things like camping up on Colton's farm with my buds, or spending a fall afternoon raking leaves as a family. I realized growing up in the church was also a huge blessing as well that I took for granted. I see so many people every day that are lost and need the gospel, but they just can't get out of their old habits and lifestyle. I'm truly very lucky to have the family I have and the friends I do. I love you all so much. I need to give a shoutout to my boys Colton, Jake, Max, and Alex. You guys are awesome and I love all of you. Keep up the good work and know that you are all great examples to me. Thanks for being such a great support in my life. Shoutout to my family as well. I'm beyond blessed to have you in my life. I really would not be anywhere close to where I am today without you guys. I'm working my hardest out here to bring people joy and bring them to Christ. I'm proudly wearing the name of Christ and the name of Beach on my chest every day. I'm doing all I can to make the Savior proud of me and my family proud as well! I hope and pray I have done that. I love you all and pray you have a great week!

Much love,

Elder Beach

#MavUp #10

Dinner at Applebees with Brother Haraden.

Baja blast freezes and Naked Chicken from Taco Bell.

Reunited at last!  Elder Beach and Elder Peterson - former MTC companions!