Elder Beach Minnesota Minneapolis Mission: 'Twas the week before Christmas!

Hello to all my fam, friends, and coaches back home, at college and serving the Lord around the globe. Hope this email finds you well and enjoying life and this awesome Christmas time of year! I hope you all have been able to participate in the #LightTheWorld campaign on LDS.org. It is awesome! Just wanted to thank my mom for sending us a ton of gifts to use for the campaign. I will be sharing a few stories about how we’ve been able to use them. This week has been pretty good, not a whole lot going on as far as finding new people. Just in kind of a slow stretch with that, but we’ve been able to contact a lot of less actives and stuff so that’s been great!

Last Monday we had a p-day and just went to the church and played some ball (basketball and football), and that was pretty fun! I still got the baller skills going in both of those haha. So that was good! We did some emailing and went to Walmart and Target and walked around for a while just killing time. We didn’t have a dinner so we decided to do that at 8 pm because if you don’t have stuff that’s the hardest time to fill. Our appointment with Paul and Melissa fell through and so did our one with Dan Adomnicai. Buffalo has a lot of investigators but none of them are solid, so I’m guessing we probably are going to drop them and start from the ground up again. I’ve done that in pretty much every area I’ve served in, so I’m excited to do it again! So we ended up doing some finding Monday night and then stopped by a few less actives we didn’t know. We stopped by this one guy named Marcus. He was super nice and let us in. He is currently Catholic now, I don’t know why. He said he grew up in the LDS church in Arizona but didn’t really stay active. So a few years ago he and his wife converted to Catholicism. He told us if he would’ve been baptized in any other church (Lutheran, Methodist, etc) the Catholic church said he didn’t need to get baptized again into their church. It just counted already. He said since he was baptized Mormon and we don’t baptize "in the name of the Father, Son, and Holy Ghost” he had to be rebaptized into the Catholic church. I was like, “We do baptize in the name of the Father, Son and Holy Ghost.” He’s like, “But you don’t believe in the trinity so it’s different. I don’t fully understand it but I believe in it.” I was just like “Alright, whatever you say!” Then he started talking about the how both churches have the Priesthood and I was like, “Well, there’s technically only 2 churches who can CLAIM they have the Priesthood and it’s the Catholic and LDS church.” He didn’t really get my drift, but it’s cool, he can believe whatever he wants. He’s a super nice guy! After that we had some fish, brown rice, and grilled peppers.

Tuesday we did some tracting in Monticello and it was pretty chilly haha. We knocked this huge cul de sac and like nobody was home and the only people who answered were kinda crazy. We had two huge fat dudes answer the door with no shirt on and that was pretty funny. And then like one of the last doors we knocked this girl answered and told us she was a nurse and went to school in the cities and her parents were ministers at a church in Monticello. She was super nice and took a Book of Mormon and said she would read it and pray about it. So I’m really hoping she does. After that we headed home and had some lunch and stuff. After that we had a lesson with Raul at his house. He is a dude from Cuba who’s been meeting with missionaries for years and has never gotten baptized or quit smoking or made any effort to quit smoking. He had an opportunity to move out of the place he is living into a member's house for $500, but the people he lives with dropped his rent from $600 to $400 just so he would stay there. They always buy him cigarettes and stuff. So we talked to him about maybe moving into the member's house and asked him if spending an extra $100 a month would be worth it to help him quit smoking because he won’t be around that, and having people buying him cigarettes all the time. He basically said no because it will be too hard and it won’t help him quit smoking. So I don’t know what we are going to do with him. There’s so many people here that aren’t progressing at all. Missionaries have been teaching them consistently for months and years. It’s kind of tough for us because we come in and feel like we have a bunch of investigators but none of them are progressing. It’s kind of a bummer. But anyway, we had a good lesson with him and tried to help him realize he needs to quit smoking. After that we had like 3 stop bys in a row that we got let in and got to talk and share a Christmas message with them! So that was awesome! We stopped by this guy named Kurtis. He had no info on his teaching record except that he was a member. So we stopped by and he let us in and we found out his wife isn’t a member but is kind of not super interested in the church right now. He said he wants to get back into activity in the church but his wife isn’t super interested so he is kind of playing it cool right now. We were able to share a Christmas Mormon message called, “Wise Men Still Seek Him” and invited them to do things that would help them remember the Savior this time of year. They were super cool so I hope we can help them in the future! After that we stopped by this lady named Sister Tandrian. She also had no info on her teaching record. So we pulled up and she was outside putting up some Christmas lights so we helped her with those and then went inside and shared the Mormon message we shared with Kurtis with her and her significant other. They really liked it and she said missionaries used to come over a lot and she would feed them quite often but they hadn’t been coming over much anymore. So hopefully we can get back over there more! After that we had some dinner and called it a night!

Wednesday morning I went and got an x ray on my shoulder because the insurance needs me to do an x ray before I can get an MRI which is kind of dumb, but it is what it is. So I got to talk to the nurse doing my x rays quite a bit about missionary work and the church because she didn’t know much about it! So that was cool. After that we had district meeting and then had some lunch. After that we went up to Clearwater and stopped by like pretty much everyone in the town and didn’t find anyone new or anything haha. We found that several people had moved but that was about it. After that we knocked some doors for a while and then went and picked up some money for dinner from the Marschels and then went to Subway. Subway is my fav, I love it haha. After that we met with Brother Archibald at the church and helped him get his Patriarchal blessing requested on lds.org. We also did some family history work with him and got his whole side of his family tree filled out back like a couple hundred years haha. After that we got invited to do a YM activity where we did a Q&A with the YM where they asked us like basically any question they wanted about being a missionary, preparing for a mission, etc. It was really fun, and I think it helped them a lot. I don’t ever remember doing stuff like that for young men’s, but I would’ve liked to do that before I left on a mission. So it was really good, and Elder Layton was a hoot, so everyone loved that haha. He’s the comic relief of the trio.

Thursday was a great day! We went to Willmar and Hutch for the day and had some great successful lessons there. We met with Sister Christensen in the morning in Cokato. She is a less active lady in the Hutch Branch and so we got to meet with her and shared a Christmas message with her and gave her a little nativity that my mom sent. Mom, those were awesome! We’ve given them out to less actives and investigators and they’ve been a hit. So we visited with her and then drove to Litchfield and had some lunch at Subway again haha, and then stopped by Rocky in Litchfield. She’s the older lady Elder Layton and I found our first transfer in Hutch. She let us in and we taught her the whole restoration lesson and it was great! She said she felt really good about everything we taught and we set up a time to come back in 2 weeks, so I’m way excited to teach her some more. We gave her the little nativity gift and she loved it! After that we headed out to Willmar to teach a lady named Diana, who was a referral we received who wanted a Book of Mormon and Bible. So we got there and she let us in and we were able to teach her the whole restoration, too! She was born Catholic and is currently a Jehovah's Witness and had some interesting ideas. I’m not sure how much she really understood about the lesson. Like as we were teaching, we would be ask her questions and stuff and her answers were like way off topic and weird haha. But she said she wanted to read the Book of Mormon, so I’m hoping she can do that too! We also have an appointment set up with her for 2 weeks as well. After that we headed back to Litchfield to meet with Angie, the lady we knocked into last week. She said they were really busy and couldn’t meet that night but said we could come back after Christmas. We gave her a little nativity thing and she loved it as well! After that we drove back to Monticello to meet with a less active member we found named Kristin. Her family isn’t members but are really cool! She’s married and they have 4 kids and we got to meet with her, her husband Kevin, and her kids, Alaska and Alton. It was super good! We taught them the Plan of Salvation using the Plan of Salvation package my mom sent, so that was awesome! The kids helped us put it all together and loved it. It was great. They are definitely someone we need to work with! After that we headed home and had some dinner and called it a night!

Friday we did some finding down in the southern part of Buffalo city in some newer developments, but didn’t have much luck down there unfortunately. We did help a lady catch a stray dog that was injured though,so that was kinda fun! After that we had some lunch and then did weekly planning with some pool breaks in between. Weekly planning is so mentally draining. You have to take breaks like every hour or you die basically haha. You’re just so focused on who you’re going to work with, where you’re going to be, when, dinners, what you’re going to teach, coordinating between two areas, etc. It's just draining haha but it’s good because it makes weeks go much more smoothly! After we got done we stopped by a referral down in Montrose that we got a while back. We had previously set up appointments to drop off a Bible and Book of Mormon and she wouldn’t ever be there when we’d go. Same thing happened Friday night, so that was a bummer, but it is what it is! After that we had dinner with the Elwoods. Weirdest thing happened to me while we were there: I just was sitting there eating dinner and I just got super hot. Like I was dripping sweat so I took my sweater off and went out on their back deck to cool off. So I was out there for like 5 minutes and was still hot. Then I just started getting freezing cold so I came back inside and was freezing for like 10 minutes then got way hot again, then just went back to normal. It was super weird. I don't know what happened, but it hasn’t happened since then, so that’s good. After that we went and saw the Aeblys in Delano. They’re a less active family that loves the Elders. We stopped by and they let us in and it was a riot. Sister Aebly was just telling us all the stuff going on in her life and then Brother Aebly comes in and just starts roasting all his kids and we are just like, what the heck is going on? While all this chaos is happening, their two dogs are fighting and trying to eat each other and then the other one just sits right in front of me and stares at me but won’t let me pet it. Such a funny experience! Then they just were like, “Oh crap! We gotta go to gymnastics! We are way late!” So they almost just left us in the house and took off. Pretty nuts! We are going to their house on Christmas evening to spend some time with them, so that should be fun!

Saturday was a good day, too! We had a lunch with the Bradys and their oldest daughter Natalie has a friend named Chase who is checking out the church, so he was there, too! Elder Layton was the star of the show again and had everyone in tears with his Nacho Libre impressions and Napoleon Dynamite impressions. Sister Brady loved it haha. We taught them a really simple restoration lesson and asked Chase if he had any questions. He has been to church once already and the Bradys are way solid member missionaries, so we figured he’d been taught some stuff already about the Book of Mormon and the restoration. He said he didn’t have any but he showed up at church the next day with a big old list of questions for us. We are meeting this week to answer them! So that’s been a huge miracle here for us, and hopefully Chase can keep progressing! After that we did a bunch of stop bys to people nobody knew and met some crazy people. Like insane haha. So we stopped by this one guy and he just goes off about how the church is the most corrupt thing, and he doesn’t believe in the church's stance on gay marriage, and “Can’t support a church that spends so much money on temples but not any on humanitarian aid.” I almost said, “Didn’t the church just donate over a billion dollars to the hurricane relief in Florida and the Caribbean?” But I figured it wouldn’t do any good. The dude was pretty set that the church was not for him and some day we would realize it isn’t true. Poor guy! After that we stopped by this lady that apparently is a hoarder lady. Her whole house is full of stuff and she literally has tunnels to walk through. We met in this old trailer in her yard that was freezing cold and she talked to us for an hour and half straight about how the ward and county was in cahoots to kick her out of her house. It was pretty nuts some of the stuff she was talking about, but we just listened and then had a prayer with her. She was very happy we came to visit her! We will be taking her the socks my mom sent us because she definitely needs them! After that we went to a gas station to get some gas and hot chocolate. The hot chocolate regular flavor thing was broken so they gave us free any size hot chocolate and I got some mint hot chocolate and it was so good! Haha tasty stuff. After that we knocked some doors and found some pretty cool people. We met this one Hispanic dude outside shoveling his driveway, so we stopped to help him and he was super nice and declined the offer, but we gave him a Book of Mormon and our card and he said we could swing by this week and share some more with his family! So that was pretty cool! Kinda sad story: Brother Archibald called us Saturday morning to tell us his wife had passed away. She had been in a nursing home for like 2-3 years and wasn’t doing super hot. We met with him at the church Saturday night and found that his Patriarchal blessing had been found and was available on his lds.org account. He was able to read it for the first time in 15 years and was in tears as he did so. It was a tender mercy that it happened to get there so quickly and seemingly right when he needed it most. He said there were a lot of things in it he really needed to read at that moment. It was really cool but super sad, too. He seemed to be doing pretty well all things considered. The High Priests Group Leader visited him Sunday after church to check in on him, too.

Sunday was great! Chase came to church so that was sweet! Brother Brady got called as the Elder's Quorum President, so he’s the man now. President Baker came down to set him apart, so I got to talk to him for a while. He’s such a good dude. I love President Baker! He was in the Sauk Rapids Ward when I was up there. He’s the St. Cloud Stake President right now. So after church we had lunch really quick and then finished up our stop bys in Monticello that we didn’t get to the night before. We met some pretty nice people and found a few people who didn’t live at the address listed for them. We stopped by this one girl who was listed as a member but was age 12-17 and no one else was listed as living with her. So we stopped by and her sister answered the door. Her sister was like 20ish and was super nice but was like, “I have no idea if she’s a member or not so I’ll have her give you a call!” We got to talk to her sister a little bit so that was good! Definitely need to get in there and figure out what the heck is happening there haha. After that we headed down to Delano and knocked some doors for about an hour. We gave out 2 Books of Mormon and one lady was super nice and seemed pretty interested so that was good. After that we had dinner at the Poll's house and then went out chiming with them to some less actives and non members in Delano and Rockford. That was way fun! We had a blast with them and the Sniderich family. We talked to sister Poll after about the hoarder lady (Sister Reisewitz) and she said that people had been trying to help her and visit her for like 10 years and it was just hard because she was hard to work with and easily got offended. She said many, many efforts had been made by the ward to fellowship her and stuff, so I’m probably going to take Sister Poll's word for it because she is on the ball with stuff like that. We stopped by a few less actives after that in Rockford but most of them were like, “It’s 8:30 pm! Come back earlier!” If you don’t have anything going on at 8 pm as a missionary in the winter in Minnesota, it’s kinda rough because people tend to basically hibernate in the winter haha. ️ But it’s all good! Part of the fun of being a missionary!

I’ve done a lot of thinking about a few verses of scripture in 3 Nephi 27 that I’ve read this week:

9 Verily I say unto you, that ye are built upon my gospel; therefore ye shall call whatsoever things ye do call, in my name; therefore if ye call upon the Father, for the church, if it be in my name the Father will hear you;

10 And if it so be that the church is built upon my gospel then will the Father show forth his own works in it.

11 But if it be not built upon my gospel, and is built upon the works of men, or upon the works of the devil, verily I say unto you they have joy in their works for a season, and by and by the end cometh, and they are hewn down and cast into the fire, from whence there is no return.

In Branch Council in Hutch we had a good discussion about these verses and I’ve pondered them a lot recently. Verse 11 really sticks out to me. Many people we talk to say, “Oh, I’ve already got a church. I’m comfortable in my faith or I’m comfortable where I’m at right now.” Basically saying I have joy in my works for a season. Everyone can have joy in their works for a season. But by and by the end cometh and they are hewn down and cast into fire. If we are in the church of Jesus Christ, we are built upon his gospel, and his Priesthood. We will always have joy in our works, in this life and the next life, because of the fact that we are built upon his church and his gospel. That was something that really hit home with me. You can find joy anywhere for a short amount of time. But when the trials come or the end comes, the only place we can find true, lasting joy is in the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-Day Saints. I know this is His church and is led by living prophets and apostles. I know the Book of Mormon is true and is the keystone of our religion and our testimonies of Christ. I love serving here in Minnesota and inviting others to partake of this gospel and come unto Christ and be perfected in him! It is truly amazing. I love you all, have a great week and Merry Christmas!

Much love,

Elder Beach

#MavUp #10