M4 (Many Mighty Miracles in Minnesota!)

Hello to all my family, friends, and coaches back home, at college, and serving the Lord worldwide! I hope and pray this finds you well. I hit my 7 month mark yesterday, which is insane. Time is flying by like I can't believe! I feel like I'm hitting my stride as a missionary and I'm finally figuring out how to just work hard and be a semi-decent missionary!

This week has been amazing. Easily the best week of my mission so far! On Monday we had p-day and went to the Hicken's which is always a good time. We played basketball and pool and ate some yummy food! Monday night we went to Perkins with Sister Kucera, who is in our ward. She is awesome! She is the one we were at dinner with when I had my seizure and she signed up to take us to dinner like 3 more times. She's just that awesome of a person. Anyways, Perkins is awesome. It is like Denny's and IHOP but way better and cheaper. So that was super yummy.  After that we had a lesson with Brother Winspear, who is less active. He's a really nice guy, he just told us he has some stuff he needs to work out before he comes back. He's a great guy though, and gave us a bunch of snacks and stuff. We shared the "Hope of God's Light" Mormon message and he really liked that and it seemed to help him feel the Spirit and realize that God does care about all of us and is very aware of each of us and our individual needs. It was a good lesson! After that we visited another less active family, the LePages. They are awesome and I really love their family. Brother LePage has come joint teaching with us a few times and has a super cool testimony. He is a convert and has a cool conversion story. So we visited them and shared "The Will of God" Mormon message. He said he really needed to hear that because he had been thinking a lot about why God gives us trials and disappointments and that video talks about that He gives them to us to help us grow and because God knows each of us best and knows what we can become. It was a good lesson as well! We also talked about CrossFit and working out a lot cuz he is getting into working out quite a bit so that was fun for me. Monday night we started our "2-a-days" workouts, which means we workout twice a day, morning and evening. Gotta stay fit for football when I get home.

Tuesday we decided to stop by Ke and De cuz we hadn't seen them in a few days. When we stopped by this younger kid answered the door. He said his name was Teon and he was Ke and De's little brother. We were like, "Oh cool!" So we shared the restoration with him and invited him to basketball on Wednesday. He said he would love to go and that both Ke and De would be there, too. Then we went up to Plymouth to do some tracting and some stop-bys. Nobody was home or everyone had moved with stop-bys. I don't really like stop-bys haha.  The street we were inspired to tract was these out of the way town homes off of highway 12 in Plymouth. So we started tracting at about 2:30 and the first 8 doors we knocked no one answered. So we were wondering why we'd been inspired to go there. Then things started picking up a little after that! We had a few people who talked to us and we shared our message about the Book of Mormon, but they weren't super interested. Then we saw this old lady getting into or out of her car (we couldn't really tell) so we ran over to offer our assistance. She asked us what we were doing and we said, "We are just sharing an uplifting scripture with people and offering our service." She was like, "You're just going around saying hi to people and sharing an uplifting scripture with them?" And I was like, "Yes ma'am!" She basically jumped out of the car and shook our hands and was like, "I'm Jane Hall! Good to meet you!" I was pretty much blown away haha.  But she asked about what missionaries do and what not and told us to come back next Tuesday. She said she wanted to hear our message and just talk about what we do! It was super cool and I'm so excited to go back and teach her. She is really prepared I feel like and she is the reason we tracted that street. The next door we knocked was an adventure... this guy opens the door and was like, "Are you the Mormons?" And we were like, "Yessir!" And he goes, "Stop what you are doing. Go home. I would let you in but if I told you what I know about Brigham Young you would go to Salt Lake City and raise some heck there." We are both just standing there with these big stupid grins on our faces and he's just going off.  After his rant we just said, "Have a nice day!" Hahaha it was funny! We had a few more first lessons but no one was super interested.  After that we helped this new family move in to a town home in Plymouth. The dad was a convert from Columbia and the family moved from New York. He was very hesitant to have us move "heavy" objects. Like there was like a 45-50 pound box and he wouldn't let me carry it. He made me put it on the hand cart thing and wheel it in the house. I just started carrying stuff in and then he realized I could pretty much single handedly carry everything they had haha. So then he didn't care as much what I carried in! But they were a cool family and they bought us a Dominoes pizza and then we had to hurry home because another family had a pizza delivered to our apartment haha so we had two pizzas that night.  We still have a whole box of leftovers haha. That night we had a visit with Mike Pike, who is the less active ex-Navy SEAL in our ward. He is so funny and crazy. When we got there he told us this guy who was dressed like us came to his house and told him he couldn't eat oatmeal, cheese, eggs, and all this BS haha. He asked us if that was doctrine that he couldn't eat that and we were like, "No!" He was a little chapped about that haha but we cleared it up for him. We talked about the Book of Mormon and gave him a copy to read. As we were leaving he asked if we wanted any food and we were like sure it's  free food so why not? So he opens his freezer and has literally like 60 freezer meals and tells us to take a black garbage bag and fill it full of freezer meals and I was like, "Uhhh... ok." So we now have like 40 freezer meals in the trunk of our car hahaha. It was super funny!

Wednesday morning we had district meeting and the ZLs came cuz they were going to exchange with us Wednesday. I stayed in Minnetonka and Elder Nielson went to Lake Nokomis with Elder Richins. I was with Elder Atwood! After district meeting we went to McDonald's with the whole district and it was a party haha. So after that we went and stopped by to see Stormy and Robert and they were finally home! Like the last 4 times we've stopped by they haven't been home. So we found out Stromy is still smoking and struggling with lung cancer and COPD. It's really sad that she is basically killing herself faster by smoking. Anyways, Robert seemed to be doing much better with his mental health. Like he was a lot more with it and remembered that we had told him he wasn't excommunicated. They told us their apartment just isn't working for them and they are moving back to Little Rock, Arkansas. So that sucks cuz they are pretty cool. I like Robert a lot. He's a really kind, warm-hearted guy! After that we did some tracting in these town homes we discovered right off of main street in Hopkins. We found a young mom that said we could come back another time and share a message with them. We also found this middle age lady who was from the south and she listened to our whole restoration message and took a Book of Mormon so that was pretty cool! The last guy we tracted into was named Phil and he told us he was a preacher for another religion and was also a missionary at one point in his life. He already knew a lot about the church and said the Book of Mormon wasn't true because there wasn't any evidence of it and I was about to go off and tell him there was lots of evidence of it and that you could say similar things about the Bible. That's where faith comes in and you just have to have faith that it is true and take Moroni's challenge. Elder Atwood, being a little wiser than me, just calmly side doored a really good testimony of the Book of Mormon in and I was like, "Dang! I definitely learned something right there." Like I know you're just supposed to bear testimony when someone tries to bash with you, but I just hate listening to people's BS about why the church isn't true cuz I KNOW it is. Anyway, good learning experience for me! Then we went to visit Brother Armstrong who is another less active guy in our ward! He is so funny and I love him. So we show up and I told Elder Atwood to expect to get a knife from him. Brother Armstrong had a whole bunch of knives all ready for him haha. He also had a big foot documentary that he wanted us to watch. So we watched that for a few minutes and he told us he is convinced Big Foot is real and that Cain is also Big Foot. I don't have anything to say about that so I just was like, "Yeah I can agree with that!" Haha.  It was so funny! We shared a lesson about keeping the Sabbath day holy because he never comes to church. So we taught him some other ways to keep the Sabbath day holy if he isn't going to come to church, like praying, reading scriptures, reading the Ensign, etc.  It was solid and I feel like it helped him out! Then we hurried home to have a quick dinner. While we were home, Brother Cohen called us. When Brother Cohen calls, you're lucky to hang up the phone in under 20 minutes. So we spent about half of dinner trying to help him out and listen to him talk to himself about directions to the temple. It was weird but I think it helps for him just to talk to someone haha. We hustled over to the Wilcock's, who are an older couple. The husband has been less active for like 40+ years and his wife is still active but has dementia a little bit. We visited with them for a while and then Brother Wilcock started talking about our "weapons" we have as missionaries like the Book of Mormon, prayer, our iPads, etc. We had a little message planned but I thought this would be a good opportunity to share a little from the Book of Mormon about Captain Moroni! So we read a little from Alma 48:11-13, 17 and talked about how if all of us are "like unto Moroni" then the world we live in would be a pretty great place! He also didn't fight because he wanted to, he fought because he had to to defend his family and liberty. Brother Wilcock seemed to like it so I hope he gained something from it! Haha then we hurried up to the church and had a bomb lesson with KeAndre, DeAndre and Teon. We read 2 Nephi 31 and talked about baptism and how we can't do it half way and be half in. They seemed to get it and set new baptismal dates for February 4! I was hopeful they would figure it out finally and start keeping commitments. Then we had a super fun basketball game and called it a night. Also, Chris Clark, the less active kid we met with, came to mutual and played basketball as well! While we were playing, it was obvious to me that DeAndre had been keeping his word of wisdom commitment better than KeAndre cuz KeAndre was sucking wind, hands on his knees like 10 minutes in and DeAndre played fine the whole time. It was cool to see that and show DeAndre that word of wisdom works! Then we called it a night.

The next morning we did a ZL interview and just talked about how our area was going and things I'm doing well and stuff. It was good! Then we went to FMSC (Feed My Starving Children) for zone service. Our whole zone was there this week and we went hard! We packed 67 boxes as a zone which is pretty dang good haha. Then we went to Taco Bell cuz it's our tradition. Thursday night we visited Carol. She is Howard Phillip's girlfriend but then Howard left and is now living in Blaine in his truck so yeah.... She is doing ok but she won't get over Howard, which is weird. She basically just unloads all her problems to us and we just sit and listen and try to get in a word or two. She said she is struggling to get over him and she wants to take him back but knows it isn't the right thing to do. So we listened to her relationship problems for like an hour. Sometimes you double as a "Date Doctor" haha. We shared a message about the atonement and how it helps us overcome anything we are going through. We left her "The Master Healer" from this general conference to read and she texted us the next day and said she loved the talk and it helped be at peace with "Aba" (that's what she calls God).  So I guess we helped in some way! Then we had dinner with the Hadley's and they are great! They are a younger couple in the ward who help us out with missionary work a lot in this ward. They are super cool! For our dinner message I shared the part of the email dad sent in like October about how the Friday Night Lights halftime speech and the atonement are similar. I kind of made it into a dinner message so thanks for sending that! After that we stopped by some former investigators that we had dropped in the last 6 months and we had a lesson with one named Tabitha, and she told us to come back on this upcoming Friday! So that was a cool miracle we saw this week for sure. 

Friday was weekly planning day. We went ham on weekly planning this week. Like the creative juices were flowing or something cuz it was just working this week haha. Then Brother Cohen called us and wanted to meet us at Wendy's. So we got weekly planning almost done, headed over to Wendy's and had a lesson with him. He struggled with depression so we help him out sometimes just to get outta the dumps. He said he's been trying to go to the temple daily which is really good! I'm glad he is doing that and it seems to be helping him. He wanted to talk about how God is our father but he doesn't feel like he has a good relationship with God like he had with his earthly father. I honestly don't remember what we shared with him but it was really good and helped him a lot. I think we just went with the spirit cuz I remember we shared scriptures and discussed them and stuff but I don't remember a whole lot of what we talked about.  It was really good though! After that we had a lesson with Ted Fors and we talked about baptism and he set a new date for June 8, which is his wife's birthday. He said he wants to come to church, he just can't cuz of the cold weather and his lung cancer. He doesn't do a lot during the day and he said once it warms up enough to get out he will be at church! We also watched the restoration movie and he liked it and said he learned that when we are investigating a church we need to pray about it and ask God if it's true. He said his prayers are getting better and are more centered on others now rather than himself which is cool to hear. He has come a long way from where he was when I first started teaching him! Then we went to Wendy's for dinner and finished up weekly planning. When we were at Wendy's they had the cash register all messed up and we had to wait like 10 minutes so they gave us a huge frosty for free and a 10% discount! Blessings for working hard! When we got home we did the Dungeon Workout in the parking garage.  (see attached photo)

Saturday was a great day! We went over to the Kennedy's again to help them out with painting their house. We finished getting everything taped off and started painting. It was pretty fun and she made us super good Mexican tacos and rice again so that was definitely a plus.  After that we tracted the streets around the church for about 2 hours. Whenever we do "Windows of Heaven" for tracting we always seem to end up at streets around other churches. Most people around those churches go to those churches. So we figured maybe the people around our church would be more open to going to our church haha. It ended up working pretty well! We had 5 first lessons and two of those 5 lessons said they didn't have churches and would love to have us back next week for a lesson! It was super cool and I know God's hand is in all the work we do. If we ask Him for help and inspiration as to where to tract, He will help us know where to go! We had another lesson with Brother Hartranft Saturday night after we tracted and it was really good! He is such a nice guy! We read Moses 1 with him and talked about different things we each learned from it. We all had some really cool ideas and they were all really different. It was a great lesson. He seems to enjoy our visits a lot and I love bringing a little sunshine into his day! Then we went to Chipotle for dinner to save miles and I had a Chipotle gift card from Christmas. As we were eating, this dance group came in for dinner. It must have been a high school dance from one of the high schools in the area. It brought back a lot of good memories of all the dances I did and didn't attend. I realized how much I DO NOT miss that part of high school haha. After dinner we did some stop-bys in Plymouth and we also stopped by the LeBarbara family to do a member lesson with them. They are super cool! Brother LeBarbara always just lets us right in and they give us snacks and stuff.Their kids are really cool as well. They are 10, 8, and 7 I'm pretty sure. The oldest one, Brigg, showed us this magic trick with cards that was pretty crazy and I don't know how he did it.  It was a good visit and we shared the Larry Gelwix "I'm a Mormon" video and talked about being the best at every role we have in our lives, whether that be father, mother, son, daughter, athlete, etc. It was a really good lesson and the Spirit was definitely there! I love lessons when the Spirit is there and Elder Nielson and I are getting much better at creating an atmosphere while teaching for the Spirit to be there. So then we went by KeAndre and DeAndre's place to make sure they were still good for church cuz we got them a ride. So we knock on their door and Ke answers and we are like, "Hey what's up? You guys still good for church tomorrow?" And he says, "Not exactly..." and we are like, "ok...?" And he says "De is in jail right now and I don't know why but he gets out on Monday. I will be at church tomorrow though." That was pretty sad for both of us to hear that De was in jail. I have no clue why but it was pretty disheartening to hear that. So we told Ke that Brother Haraden would be by at 10:40 to pick him up for church and he said ok! Then we visited this lady who lives below Ke and De. She is like 65-70 and isn't married and has been going through a rough patch. She met missionaries in Switzerland like 50 years ago and said she knows all about the Mormons but she loves when we come by and visit her and she has gone to do family history work with Sister Ashford before! She was having a rough day when we stopped by so we shared D&C 58 with her and talked about enduring trials and having faith. It was good to see a smile on her face at the end of our chat! I love helping people in whatever way we can. Sometimes it's just talking to them and brightening their day, sometimes it's inviting them to basketball, sometimes it's sharing the gospel with them. But it always puts a smile on my face. 

Sunday morning started off with a bang in ward council again haha. So we were a little late so we came in and low and behold they were talking about basketball again. Go figure. So the YW President is just going off again about how she feels that her YW are unsafe in the church when we bring our investigators for basketball. She thinks they're gonna get attacked or something. I don't know, it's so dumb. We bring our investigators and have lessons with them at 7 pm then play basketball at 8 pm. They are with us the whole time so there's no way anything would happen, and even if they weren't with us, they're not gonna do anything when there's like 100 people in the church. She just makes it seem like the people we bring to basketball are predators and then it makes us look bad in front of the whole ward council. Brother Broadbent and Brother Nelson bailed us out again and said one of the YM we brought, went to mutual and played basketball and that all the investigators we brought have been to church and are taking the lessons. Bishop even said the same thing, that he hasn't seen anything bad come out of it and that he's seen lots of good. I was getting really mad and I just sat there. When they asked us if we had anything to say I just said, "I trust the people we bring here. They're not gonna do anything to endanger anyone here." I feel like the church and gospel is about helping people and loving them not judging and condemning. I was not happy after ward council. We talked to Brother Broadbent after and he said we might need to move it back like 15-30 minutes so all the YW can get outta there. But half of them stay and watch so yeah.... It's a dilemma for sure. Sacrament meeting was soooo good though. Brother Haraden texted us and said that Ke wasn't there when he went to pick him up. Go figure. I was super sad about that cuz sacrament meeting would've been so good for him. Kevin was there again and Elder Stacey from the 70 came and spoke to us. He gave a really great talk on the atonement. Haha the opening song we sang was "The Spirit of God" and I don't know why, but I was feeling the Spirit super strong and I was just crying while we were singing. It was cool. Kevin said he wanted to have a lesson with us after church at Mary's house, so we had coordination meeting with Brother Broadbent, and he gave us some great scriptures for our lesson with Kevin and some good ideas about questions to ask him. We arrived at Mary's house and prayed that we would have the spirit of discernment and know how best to help him and how to meet his needs. We ended up having an amazing lesson! We talked about the atonement and how it isn't just about washing away our sins, it's about helping bear our burdens and comfort and strengthen us as well. We read from Alma 7 and also from D&C 138. It was really good and the Spirit was definitely there because it clicked with Kevin. We told him we felt he was ready for baptism now. He knew all the stuff and had a testimony. We asked him if he had received an answer about the Book of Mormon and he told us that this morning he was reading before church and prayed to God to know if it was true. He said he felt such an overwhelming feeling of love and gratitude and he knew it was true! I have never been more elated in my life! I was so happy to hear that!! We set his new date for February 3, which is next Friday. He said he needed to talk to his parents about it and make sure they were good with it. Please pray that his parents will allow him to be baptized next week! He said his dad didn't really care, but his mom was a little more hesitant. We are going to meet his parents sometime this week or next week and just get to know them and answer any questions they have. Hopefully that goes well. I was just so happy to see that God had not only answered Kevin's prayer, but ours as well. We had fasted and prayed that day to see some more success in our work and we sure saw it on Sunday. How cool is that?! It was great!  After that we had dinner with the Smiths who have a bunch of little kids and a labradoodle dog haha. It was a little crazy at their house but they were awesome and really nice and made some great pot roast. We had another FHE with Rebecca Nielsen and her 3 girls and the Sister missionaries Sunday night. It was really good and we talked about missionary work and they shared their family mission plan with us. It was insanely good and I would recommend all families have a family mission plan! We did a few stop-bys Sunday night and went to see why Ke wasn't at church and he said he slept over at a friends house and forgot to let us know. Typical Ke!  I love those guys, but man they are the biggest flakes haha. Sunday was so amazing. I was on cloud 9 like the whole day!

The work here is going so well! I'm so grateful to be able to serve in the Minnetonka ward at this time. I know that God is aware of us and he knows exactly what we need to grow and progress. We have been working so hard and I've been having a hard time seeing the success and results. God was teaching me that faith and hard work always precede the miracles. I saw that very much this week! I love you all back home and pray all is well with you. I love all my brothers serving missions and fighting the good fight at college. You guys are great examples to me and I pray for you every day. My family is the greatest blessing I have and I love and miss you all so much. I pray for you every day that you can have happiness and success in all you do! You are so great and thanks for all the support and prayers you give me. Love you all! Have a blessed week!

Much love,

Elder Beach

#MavUp #10

The "hoodlums" at Wednesday night basketball.

Things that make you go hmmmmmmm...

Great day of tracting - we had a total of 7 lessons, helped an inactive family, and met a new investigator.  And Olaf is in the background! 

Our Dungeon Workout in the parking garage.

Elder Nielson, Kevin and Mary, and Elder Beach.  Kevin receives a testimony that the Book of Mormon is true and he wants to be baptized!

My twitter feed in another language.

Good Week (not including the seizure)!

Hello to all my family, friends and coaches back home, at college and serving worldwide! I love you all and hope and pray this finds you well! First off I would like to give a happy birthday shoutout to my Grandpa Gary! I love you and appreciate all you've done for me and the family! Also, I wanna give a shoutout to my cousin Andrew for his decision to get baptized! What an incredible day for you. I'm grateful for your example in following the Savior!

Well, this week started off pretty much like any other week. We had a fun P-day at the Hicken's house playing basketball with the zone and then we had to take the Lake Nokomis Elders back to their place and it took 2 hours to go 20 miles. Traffic in the twin cities is a joke during rush hour. We decided to work from 10-noon Monday morning so we could go to Applebee's and catch a little bit of the Clemson vs. Alabama game for dinner. So we went there with the Plymouth Elders.  When we got there we found out that Applebee's has a Monday night special where any burger and bottomless fries is $6.99, so we scored big time! We stayed till 9 pm, so we only saw the first half, but found out the next morning that Clemson had won a thriller right at the end. So that was pretty cool. 

Tuesday morning we woke up to a few inches of snow, so we decided to finally use our shovels we acquired from a member. We shoveled some less actives' driveways and one of them, Brother Armstrong, gave us little smokies haha. So we shoveled about 5 driveways and then we decided to go out to Orono and shovel/tract this one street. So we drove out there and as we drove around this street, I realized most of the driveways were already shoveled. I think it was about at this point that I started getting a little out of it because I don't remember a whole lot else after that. I remember just driving around for like an hour and getting to Hopkins Crossroads for dinner and that's about it. Elder Nielson said I drove us like halfway to Minneapolis and back from the very west side of our area, so we now have a joke that I was giving him an area tour...I am honestly very grateful to be alive, and I'm not sure how I even got us to dinner safely, but I know God had a hand in all of it. The next thing I remember is waking up in the hospital (worst feeling ever), and I felt really crappy and I was throwing up in a blue bag. The doctors said I had a seizure and I was doing better now. They tried to get me to eat some food but I wasn't feeling it. I drank a bunch of water but just puked it all up in like 5 minutes. So they decided to keep me over night in the hospital. Elder and Sister Fife (the mission doctor) and Elder Nielson were there with me until like 10 pm and then the APs (Assistants to the President) came and gave me a blessing with Elder Nielson. That was a really cool blessing! I remember that Elder Oldroyd gave the blessing and he said something like, "God still has a very special mission for your to accomplish here, and he has kept you alive so you can fulfill that mission." That kinda floored me and I realized I needed to quit almost killing myself and do a better job with my health. I get so caught up in the work and helping people that I just disregard myself sometimes. My grandma gave me some great advice though! She said, "You can't help others if you are in a hospital bed." or something like that. But it is very true, and I realized I need to take care of myself so I can be able to help others as best I can. I've tightened down on checking my blood sugar more often and making sure it is good before and after exercising. It's been really good this past week so I'm optimistic that there are no more seizures on the horizon at all.

Wednesday at about noon I got checked out of the hospital and went back to the mission office to meet Elder Nielson and get back to work. I love the Mission President's wife, but she babies people too much haha.  She was like, "Just take it easy the next few days. If you need to work in the mission office for a few days then you can." I was like N-O. Send me back to work in my area. haha  So we went back to work Wednesday afternoon. Wednesday night we had basketball at the church and I played like Michael Jordan in the "flu game." I hit like every shot which was weird cuz I usually don't but it was fun. We had a couple less actives make it out but no investigators, which was a bummer.  But we should have KeAndre and DeAndre there this week and a guy we met at the Y when we went with Brother Chapman! Brother Steve Nelson finally was able to come play with us and he was talking crap like the whole day before basketball via text and then he showed up and was like, "I'm guarding Elder Beach." Haha I owned him the whole game. But he's still got a good jump shot for a 57-year-old. I'll give him that. He hit a few shots on me, but he didn't play much defense. 

Thursday morning we had FMSC (Feed My Starving Children) service project, which is always a good time! They always show this video at the start giving like an overview of what you will be doing and stuff, and the director of FMSC has a little part where he talks about it and one thing he said really stuck out to me: "This is people helping people, and bringing hope to those who have none." That's basically the gospel for you. It's people (missionaries, ward members, bishops, etc.) helping people (investigators, less actives, etc) and bringing hope (the message of the gospel that all can be changed, redeemed and perfected in Christ) to the outcasts, the downtrodden and the sick and afflicted. It was pretty cool when I thought about it in that regard. After FMSC we went to Taco Bell as usual and then we did some tracting before dinner. I feel like so many missionaries say tracting is a waste of time and doesn't work, but it does work! It is an act of faith for sure, but if you work hard while you tract and bear testimony, God blesses you in lots of other ways. It's cool! Thursday night the Baks took us to Wayzata Country Club for dinner which was pretty crazy and cool! It was like $15-45 a plate haha! Brother Bak gave us a referral for a porn producer that lives by him, so we are stopping by to see him this week haha. Not sure how it will go, but it's a referral, so we will take it!  Thursday night we had one of the Young Men from the ward, Jacob Ragan, come joint teaching with us. He is really great! He killed it with both lessons we had Thursday night. We had a lesson with Jeffrey and taught the word of wisdom and the young man had a cool story about how living the word of wisdom saved his life. It was super good. We have been using music way more when we have been teaching Jeffrey and it is working so well. We just play hymns and mess around on the guitar with him for like 20 minutes then have the lesson and it really brings the Spirit, and I feel it helps him retain what we teach him. We taught the restoration last time but did it with the hymn "Joseph Smith's First Prayer" and he remembered a lot of what we taught last time which was a huge step in the right direction. He is a cool guy and I'm hoping he can continue to progress and get his answer that this is the church for him and that this is God's church on earth today! After that we taught this lady named Carol who is Howard Phillip's sort of girlfriend. Howard is the guy we were teaching, but I guess he ended up being a drug dealer or something so now we are teaching his ex-girlfriend who still likes him but wants to break up with him, so it's a sticky situation right now. She is way into alternative medicine stuff, which I don't fully understand so we are trying to help her see how the gospel will help her way more than alternative medicine and all that weird stuff. She is still getting her head wrapped around that right now, but she's getting there slowly but surely.  She has been reading the Book of Mormon, so that's been good!

On Friday we had weekly planning which is not my favorite, but I'm getting way better at it! Planning is seriously the hardest part of being a missionary. After that we had zone finding hour where we all prayed as a zone on a conference call and then did some finding for an hour. We went for 1.5 hours though and we had 2 first lessons and that was about it. We were almost done and knocked on this door and a dad and his young kid answered and we shared our message and the kid was like, "Yeah I want to hear more!" But.... the dad said he would pass. So we almost had a miracle with the zone finding but not quite. That night we had a really good lesson with Ted Fors and his brother, Brother Fors, came too for the first time. We watched the living scriptures video when Nephi builds the boat and sails to the promised land. We each had to pick one thing we learned from the video that applied to us. Ted said that arrogance, greed, and ignorance leads to destruction. I thought that was pretty cool that that's what he got out of it! He's progressed so much from where we first started which is cool! I've really seen the atonement work in his life even though it is bit by bit and inch by inch. It's working! 

On Saturday we helped a less active family with cleaning their house and painting it. It was the Kennedy family and they are really cool! Their kids are awesome and I really hope I can help make a positive difference in their lives. I'm really trying to befriend them and help them with school and missions and stuff. But anyways, we and the Minnetonka Sisters helped them out and it was really fun! Sister Kennedy made us "real" Mexican tacos and they were pretty tasty. After we finished cleaning and stuff we went to visit the Seefelts, who are another less active family. They have 4 boys that are all less active. They're nice kids but whenever we try to bring up anything related to church they shut it down or act uninterested. They also always request work on Sunday so they don't have to come church. But we had dinner with them and played "Scriptionary" which is scripture story/character pictionary. That was super fun! I felt like everyone had a good time and it was a good activity for them. Then we had a lesson with Brother Hartranft, who is the nicest guy, but has been through the ringer the last few years. We had a great visit and Elder Nelson asked him if he wanted a blessing at the end of the visit. He said yes and asked me to give it. It was amazing. I have such a strong testimony of priesthood blessings because every time I give one, I feel God's love so strongly for the person I am able to bless and I know the Spirit is speaking through me. It's hard to describe, but it's a very cool spiritual experience. I'm grateful I was able to give him a blessing and offer words of comfort and healing that weren't my own. It was a great way to end the day!

Sunday was crazy.  We had one investigator at church, Kevin. He is doing super well and progressing really quickly towards baptism. Brother Haraden, who is the less active guy in our ward I helped reactivate, spoke in church and did such a great job. He is the funniest guy and his personality was on full display during his talk, but he also just kills it with his testimony, so that is awesome! He also came joint teaching with us Sunday night! After church we had coordination meeting with Brother Broadbent and then drove out to Orono to the Sherman's house to do a lesson with Kevin. It was super good and we taught the law of chastity, word of wisdom and law of tithing. He said he would live all three and pretty much already does except for tithing haha. He's awesome! We talked about if he had received an answer yet about if baptism was the right thing for him and he said not yet but was really hoping to get one because he feels everything is really good for him he just wants to be 100% sure, which I am good with. I got to share my experience of how I decided to sign with CMU on that Sunday before signing day and it was really cool and spiritual. I'm hoping it helped him understand how spiritual answers can come to us through thoughts and impressions we receive. Sunday night we were going to go to Mission President's fireside with KeAndre and DeAndre, but they flaked again. They said we could stop by on Tuesday and do a lesson with them though. And they are coming to basketball too this week! Sunday night we visited Chris and Kayla who was that newer family again. Chris is soooo funny! I was dying while we were talking to them haha. We had a good lesson though and he said he would come to basketball and she is coming to YW and church this week! It was a great ending to a week!

Man, the mission is hard, especially when you don't always see the results of your hard work. I'm doing my best to just be a positive influence in someone's life each day! I love serving the Lord and the people of the Minnetonka ward. This gospel truly changes and blesses lives and it is an honor and privilege to share it with people. I love you all back home and pray all of you are doing well! Thanks for all the prayers and support this week.

Much love,

Elder Beach

#MavUp #10

"When you finish a 2 mile run and body weight circuit while your comp does his 2 mile run."  

#stayinfit  #TwoADays"

Winter and wildlife in Minnesota!

Bike Week!

Hello to all my family, friends, and coaches back home, at college, and serving worldwide! I hope and pray this email finds you well! I heard Cache Valley got like 2 feet of snow and was -26 so my heart goes out to all those back home who can experience what a Minnesota winter feels like! 

This week was bike week... so that means we get to bike in the nice warm weather here haha.  On Tuesday we biked up to Plymouth which is a 10 mile bike ride from our place. On the way up I was turning off a bike trail onto a paved stretch of the trail and completely wiped out on black ice and slid like 10 feet on my back haha. It wasn't as bad as I thought, but it was a pretty decent wipeout! Elder Nielson wiped out twice after that and a third time right when we got into the church parking lot haha. I was dying because he just turned to come up onto the sidewalk and wiped out right in front of me. Tuesday was easily the suckiest day this whole week. We had two appointments that were scheduled up in Plymouth and both fell through so we did some stop bys in Wayzata which is about 2 miles from Plymouth, and one of the people we stopped by said to come back in an hour so we biked up to Plymouth to finish tracting this street then biked back down to Wayzata to visit this less active guy. Well... he wasn't there so we were pretty chapped haha. So we tracted in Wayzata for an hour before dinner. No one wanted to talk to us and some people said it was too cold and come back later. Then we went to Chipotle for dinner because our ward mission leader gave us $30 gift cards there for Christmas. It was pretty good so at least that was a plus. Then we biked back up to Plymouth to meet Brother Hunsaker to go visit less actives and families who don't have home or visiting teachers. So we did like 15 stop bys and one lady said the sisters had stopped by a lot and said she was going to call the cops for harrassing her, and Brother Hunsaker was like, "If you write a letter to the bishop, you can get your name taken off the records so people quit stopping by." She didn't like that idea and just got more mad at us haha. So yeah... that's basically how the rest of the night went. It was a rough day.

Wednesday was really good, though! We went to FMSC (Feed My Starving Children) for district service and that's always a good time. Then we went to Taco Bell after because that's our tradition. Taco Bell has these $1 double decker tacos that are super good so that was nice! Then the Plymouth Elders blitzed our area Wednesday evening so we could get more work done. We taught this lady named Carol Hedding who is an investigator. She's been through a lot recently and loves talking to us about all her problems, and literally all of them we give her answers to with gospel principles, so that's pretty cool. Wednesday night we stopped by Brother Cohen's because we hadn't seen him for like over a month. We figured he was dead in his apartment, so we better go stop by. He didn't answer, but the TV was on so we figured he was still alive haha.  As we were driving out of his apartment complex this guy stopped us and asked us for a bible. We didn't have one, so we gave him a Book of Mormon and said we would come back this week and bring a bible! Then we went up to the church and had a lesson with ,DeAndre which was super good! We went over the Word of Wisdom and the Law of Chastity and he agreed to live both of them. We also answered some questions he had about the Book of Mormon chapter he was reading. Then we played some basketball and that was really fun! I love playing ball on Wednesday nights with our ward and investigators! Then we went back to our place with Plymouth and did district leader interviews with Elder Shelley till like 11 pm.  They were really good. though, and he told me a lot of encouraging things I really needed to hear, so I'm grateful for that. I was struggling a little with feeling like we weren't having success and he pointed out a  lot of little successes and some big successes I hadn't thought of, and it helped me a lot!

On Thursday we had district meeting at our church and also the Mission President came up for interviews. Elder Nielson and I gave a training on finding through tracting. It was a really good training and I was pleased with how it turned out. So many people say tracting doesn't work, but I am here to tell you if you do it the right way it DOES work and miracles happen. (Email me for advice) Then President was like 45 minutes late, so we played basketball for a while, and had some lunch at the church. Then President interviewed the sisters first and each one was 30-45 minutes long and when he got to us they were like 10 minutes and not that great so I was kinda bummed about that. But it's ok because he's a busy guy and stuff.  Thursday night we visited a less active lady named Kathy who is so awesome haha. She loves to talk about the end of the world and how she feels bad for us because we will be here and she won't. Then we had a lesson with Jeffrey that was super good! He has a hard time retaining the stuff we teach him but he loves music and music brings the spirit, so we played piano and guitar for like 30-40 minutes before and he loved it, and that really helped the lesson go much better.  He said he had prayed several times that week and felt it went well! He also read the Book of Mormon assignment we left him so that was good! He showed me a little on the guitar so I could resurrect my long lost guitar skills haha.  But I still suck.

Friday we went to the YMCA with Brother Chapman and DeAndre and played some basketball. It was super fun and we found a new investigator as well! This guy named Diarra, who was jacked and was like 50. He is super cool and said he would come to basketball at the church on Wednesday this next week! He talked to me quite a bit about playing college football, so it was fun to talk to him about that. After that we had a lesson with Eleshea, and went over the baptism interview questions. She passed everything except the Law of Chastity. She is really tough to figure out for me. She believes everything, reads the Book of Mormon, but won't come to church and won't move out or get married.  It is so weird to me. And we have taught her everything like twice so it's basically to the point where it is on her to keep commitments. Friday night Brother Christensen came out with us and we had 3 super good lessons. We visited Brother Hartranft, an older single guy in our ward. Please keep him in your prayers.  He is struggling with health issues and family issues as well. He's a great guy and I love visiting him. Then we had a lesson with Ted Fors and went over some of the commandments. He said he will come to church when it is warm enough for him to breathe outside. He has COPD and lung cancer so he says he can't breathe outside when it is below zero. He is still praying and reading the Book of Mormon daily with his wife, which is awesome! Then we visited the Kennedy family, who is a less active Hispanic family in our ward. Brother Nelson works with their two teenage boys a lot to help them be more involved with stuff. The oldest son, Adam, is super cool and we've become friends really quickly. He's a good kid, and I'm glad we can help them out in any way we can! 

Saturday we weekly planned and did a lot of knocking doors. We also had a, lesson with Brother Armstrong who is a less active guy in our ward. He loves talking about Muslims and how they are liars and stuff, which is super weird, so we just usually listen to him rant about that for a while then share a message and just try to be his friend haha. We stopped by DeAndre's Saturday night at 9 pm to make sure he was good for church on Sunday and he said he was, and was bringing his little brother who is a freshman in high school. 

So Sunday morning we had Ward Council and then we get a text from Johnny Chapman, who is DeAndre's ride, and he says DeAndre isn't answering the door or the phone. So we called him like 10 times and he never answered and didn't make it to church.  So we were pretty bummed about that. Now we have to move his baptism date back at least another week. However, Jeffrey and Kevin made it to church and loved it. It was super good to have them there and the Kennedys came and so did some other less actives. So it was a super good turnout for church even though DeAndre didn't make it! Sunday evening we had dinner at the bishop's house with the Sisters. His daughter had a ukelele and was showing me how to play it a little. I decided I'm going to learn how to play the ukelele when I get home. Like I'm serious -  I think it would be sick! So that's one of my goals when I get home. After dinner we did some stop bys to people we tracted into and told us to come back. We had 2 first lessons with people but no one seemed super interested, but oh well! We are master seed planters haha.

This week has been fun but challenging at the same time. I've really started to see a change in my desires to serve and help others. I hadn't really noticed it till this week, but I found myself thinking a lot about how to help our investigators and where God needs us to find more people to help. I feel like I've changed a lot for the better in the last 6 months and it is cool to see that change in myself. It made me think of a song by Chase Rice called "Boy Into a Man" which talks about how his high school football and college days made him grow from a boy to a man. I always thought when I listened to that song back home that that's kind of how my life was like. It is true. I grew a lot during my high school and I loved high school more than anything, but I've seen so much growth in myself in the last 6 months that I couldn't have gotten by being at home or at Colorado Mesa. It's really cool! I'm grateful I have the opportunity to serve a mission at this time and serve in this area. I love the people here and love the ward so much. I will be very sad to leave them. I finished reading the Book of Mormon for the second time on my mission, and I know without a doubt it is true. I feel that reading it every day has played a huge part of my change for better. It really is the word of God and I love reading it each day. President wants me to start reading either D&C or the New Testament, which will be good, but I'm still going to study the Book of Mormon every day because I love it!

I hope you all have a great week and know I love you and care about you so much! Thanks for the prayers and support, it means the world to me. Have a great week and live in the moment because time goes too fast to not enjoy each one!

Much love,

Elder Beach

#MavUp #10

Playing Wednesday night basketball with DeAndre and the crew!

Happy New Year!

Hello to all my family, friends and coaches back home, at college, and serving the Lord! I hope and pray all is well with you back home. This week has been fast and my mind is blown that it is 2017 haha!

Elder Nielsen and I are getting along great! We are having a good time and he loves to work hard so we've been doing some good work this week. Our goal is to have 20 new investigators and a baptism by the end of the transfer. We are gonna have to work really hard to get those goals, but I'm excited to see what happens!

On Tuesday we did a bunch of stop bys for some investigators and former investigators to kind of clean up our area book. We also tracted for a few hours and didn't really have a lot of success but we met this guy who was our age who was in the marine corps that we were able to share a Book of Mormon scripture and a Mormon.org card with. He was super cool and said he was back to basic training after Christmas so we just left him a card and told him to check out the website and stuff! One of the last houses we knocked had a no soliciting sign on the door, but as missionaries that doesn't stop you at all haha. So as we are walking up to the guy's door, his dog comes running up to us and it was a cool dog so I started playing with it and then Elder Nielsen knocked on the guy's door. He answers the door, points at the "no soliciting" sign and says, "Take a f***ing hike!" Then Elder Nielsen goes, "We are just sharing an uplifting scripture to brighten people's day!" He just shut the door haha. It was pretty funny!

We had a lesson with the Wilcocks Tuesday night. Brother Wilcock is less active and has been for like 50 years. His wife is active but is starting to get Alzheimer's and is starting to struggle.  Anyway, we go to their house and he is watching the Holiday Bowl on TV and we started talking about football! He told us he used to be friends with the "Purple People Eaters" (really good defensive line for the Vikings) and it was cool. He said they would throw some wild parties that he and his wife would go to haha. So right when we were going to start our message, he says, "Well, I'm gonna watch the game if you don't mind!" And I, being me, was like, "Yeah, I don't mind!" So we watched the game for about 20 minutes and talked while we watched it. We ended up having a cool chat about how the gospel is a blessing in our lives and it was pretty good haha. I'm not sure how we ended up talking about that, but it happened!

Wednesday we had a lesson with Eleshea about overcoming trials and relying on the Lord to help us in hard times. She said she hadn't been able to move into her new apartment because she got a bad letter of recommendation from an apartment she had lived in like 3 years ago. It was weird and I didn't get it, but she said she really appreciated the lesson we shared and said she would come to church on Sunday. As we were teaching her in the stairwell, this guy came down the stairs and asked if we were the Mormon missionaries. And we were like, "Heck yeah, we are!" He said he had been taught in Brooklyn Park by some missionaries and said we could come by sometime. We have stopped by twice but he hasn't been home either time so... we will see if we can get ahold of him. 

Thursday we had service at Feed My Starving Children,and that's always a good time. We always go to Taco Bell after for lunch and so we can hang out for a little bit. Elder Nissenbaum is one of my good buddies I've made and his companion is Elder Fabrizio. They were not getting along and I guess Elder Fabrizio had been trying to beat up Elder Nissenbaum. So Chaska and Waconia districts were on exchanges while we were at service so yeah... it was kinda awkward haha. We had a lesson with Brother Hartranft who has gone through about every trial imaginable in the last 3 years. It's crazy what he has been through, but he is still staying strong in his faith. We shared the "Will of God" Mormon message with him and he really liked it. He's a good guy and I feel so bad for him. We try to visit him every week just so he has some company! We also had a lesson with Jeffrey on Thursday and we retaught the restoration because he didn't understand it that well. He struggles with understanding gospel concepts and stuff so we have had to teach him very little at a time and super simply. He's doing well though and he is progressing so that's good! We also had a lesson with the Smith family in our ward. They are so awesome and I love them. Brother Smith is the nicest guy and their second oldest son is at USU right now. Their oldest son is on a mission and then they have 2 daughters and another son at home. They are great and always have a great spirit in their home. We shared "The Hope of God's Light" Mormon message and both just bore our testimonies about how God loves us and knows each of us individually. It was really good!

Elder Nissenbaum called us when we got home and said he and his companion had gotten in a huge fight and his companion flipped out on him and some profanities were exchanged and then his companion threw him into a wall so Elder Nissenbaum was in Waconia with Elder Lish, and Elder McCleve was in Chaska with Fabrizio. Elder Nissenbaum was so mad and he said things just weren't going well in their district. We decided to take them out to Buffalo Wild Wings on Friday so Elder Nissenbaum could just have a break. He is district leading a district with some tough missionaries in it and his comp is crazy haha, so we figured he needed to get away for a few hours. We went at 7 pm and got some really good food and had a good time watching a little bit of the Michigan vs. Florida State game. Elder Nissenbaum was feeling a lot better I felt like when we left and just being around some new people so it was a win-win.

On Friday before we went to B-Dubs (Buffalo Wildwings), we tracted for 2 hours. We prayed we would find a young family to teach and also be an answer to someone's prayer. The first door we knocked on was a young family and we shared a short message with the mom in the doorstep and had a prayer with her as well. We ended up teaching 5 first lessons while we tracted and the last door we knocked, this lady answered and said she had been struggling with work and stuff and the uplifting scripture we shared with her was really good. She said we could come back this week and teach her more about the church and the restoration. It was super cool! When we tract we pick an area where we want to tract and then pray over the area map and ask god to inspire us as to which streets to tract. Then we each pick 5 streets and compare the ones we got and we always have one street that is the same so we go to that street and usually have pretty good success. It's a good way to tract. 

On Saturday, we didn't have a dinner and so we decided to have dinner at 8 pm at McDonald's so we could watch some of the Clemson/Ohio State game. It was basically over when we got there and Clemson was killing them so we just got our food and went home and went to bed early on New Year's Eve haha. We tracted for a few hours from like 6-8 in this one neighborhood we felt we should tract. So we knocked for like an hour and nobody was super interested. We started down a street in the neighborhood and it started getting really dark and not well lit. I started getting a kind of uneasy feeling. It was a more wooded area and the houses were spread out more. I don't know why I had a weird feeling, but I did. I didn't really think anything of it, I just thought I was being paranoid. So we kept knocking for about a half hour and I finally got to the point where I was like terrified out of my mind so we basically ran back to our car haha. While we were on the way back, we passed a certain point on the street and that uneasy feeling left. I don't know why I had that feeling and I probably will never know but I'm glad we followed it! It was weird haha.

On Sunday we had one investigator at Church named Kevin, who is the boyfriend of a member of the ward. He had a good time and we had a lesson with him on the gospel of Jesus Christ after church. He moved his baptismal date up to March 4 and that is super good! He said he wants to read the whole Book of Mormon before he gets baptized, but I totally respect that! He's doing great!

KeAndre and DeAndre are the biggest flakes on the planet. We've set up 4 appointments with them and they aren't there for every single one. It makes me mad, and I want to help them, but if they aren't able to keep commitments with us, they obviously won't be able to keep commitments with the Lord. So we are going to lay off for a while with them. 

On Sunday, the bishop told us he got this text from a lady who had moved in to the ward and her daughter was wanting to get involved in the church. We stopped by their house and the daughter and son were there but the mom and dad were gone. We talked to the son and daughter for a while and they are super cool. The son is a junior named Chris and he plays basketball and raps and stuff haha. We showed the "Hope of Gods Light" to them and he made his mom and non-member dad watch it after he had already watched it. He said we were an answer to his prayer. He said he wanted God to send someone to him as a sign that God cares about him. So it was cool to be an answer to his prayer! The daughter is coming to church next week! The mom, daughter and son are members but are way less active so we are going to help reactivate them.

The work is going well here and I'm happy to be here at this time. I know this really is the work of God and that nothing will stop the work. We had a lesson on Sunday about the second coming of Christ and how we would live our lives differently if we knew 100% that Christ was going to come in 2017. That really made me think about some things I would do differently if I knew he was coming in 2017. I would like to challenge you all to ponder that question and make changes you feel are necessary to help prepare yourself to stand in the presence of the Lord one day! I love you all and pray for you all each day. Hope you have a good week!

Much love,

Elder Beach

#MavUp #10