Working Hard!

     A big hello to all my family, friends, and coaches back home, at college, and serving around the world. I hope this email finds you happy and well! This week has been a busy week as usual, and I’ve learned a lot and we’ve seen some cool miracles. 

     Monday we had zone p-day at an America Ninja Warrior training facility in Buffalo that a member owns, so they let our whole zone come mess around and have a good time there for the day. I got to back squat heavyish for the first time in forever. I am not nearly at the strength I was at before my mission, but I’m happy to report I wasn’t nearly as sore as I thought I would be the day after.  So that was good. I also learned pegboards are fun and so are rope climbs, and I can do both of those pretty well. I’m not good at salmon ladders or warped walls though.  It was really a fun day and I’m glad the zone could spend it together! After that we drove with the Elk River Sisters down to the Anoka Zone to blitz with the Zone Leaders and Sister Training Leaders down there for the night because we had Mission Leader Council the next day in Bloomington. We hung out with the Medicine Lake Elders so that was pretty fun. Elder Booth and Hickman are so funny, and we had a party. 

     Tuesday was MLC and it was actually really good this month! I learned a lot and have a lot of things I learned that I need to work on as a ZL. I was very happy with the trainings and what we discussed. We talked about doing exchanges and the things that absolutely need to happen. Elder Meyer and I realized we didn’t do a lot of them haha, so fortunately for us we had an exchange with the Buffalo Elders planned for the next day, so that was good so we could work on stuff with them. Ok so after MLC we had a little funny story I would love to tell you all about. We drove Buffalo’s car down to MLC because apparently they were supposed to get a new Tiwi (this box in your car that yells at you when you drive too fast or peel out and whatnot). So we get to MLC and the APs are like, “Oh, actually the Tiwi Guy isn’t coming today.” So then things get interesting with rides back up to everywhere. So the St. Cloud Sisters got a flat tire Sunday night driving to Elk River (don’t know why they were going to Elk River in the first place). So they called us like 3 times Sunday night, but we had lessons and training evaluations so we didn’t call them back until like 10 pm. They’re like, “Hey Elders! We are in Becker with a flat tire. Could you call some members and see if they could help us?” So come to find out, they had been sitting there for over an hour and the only people they had called was us, the vehicle coordinator in Bloomington, and the Elk River Sisters. So anyway, a cop shows up finally and helps them change the tire and they get on their way. So the next morning they realize they had another flat tire, and so they take it in to get looked at and they have a bent rim or something so they have to put the car in the shop until like Friday.  So they’re in Elk River with no car. So back to after MLC. So we drive the Elk River Sisters back to Elk River and pick up the St. Cloud Sisters to drive them back up to St. Cloud with us. But, we had to switch our car back with Buffalo before then, so that was a whole fiasco and Elder Meyer pretty much had a mental breakdown while sitting at a train crossing waiting for it, and he just was going insane and I was too kinda, and we were just like laughing and crying and being goobers and it was pretty funny, but ya had to be there obviously.  It was pretty funny and the hardest I’ve laughed in a good while haha. So we finally got our car switched with Buffalo and got home at like 7 pm. We were supposed to have a 7 pm dinner, but it fell through so we just went home and ate some food really quick and then met Brother Casper at the church to go have a lesson with LJ. The lesson went really well and he loved Brother Casper. They got to meet at the Priesthood session of conference, so we invited Brother Casper to joint teach with us! We taught LJ the 10 commandments with hand signs, and he thought it was pretty neat.He’s doing pretty good but definitely gotta take it slow with him and review A LOT! 

     Wednesday we had our exchange with Buffalo and it was pretty good! I went with Elder Harper up in Sauk Rapids and Elder Meyer went with Elder Seng in Buffalo. We did some Facebook work and then knocked doors for about an hour for zone finding hour. We didn’t really find anyone solid, but had some really solid discussions with a few people on their porches so that was good.  After we had a lesson set up with Tara and her kids (lady that Elder Meyer and I found last week that had the inquisitive son), so we got there and her husband basically shut it down. He came out to talk to us and was like, “Yeah I’ve talked to Mormons before. I really appreciate what you guys are doing, so keep up the good work!” I was like, “So we talked to your wife and kids last week and they said we could come by today and share some more with them. Is that cool with you if we do?” He proceeds to basically say the exact same thing so I was like, “Is now a bad time? Could we come by later?” He again proceeds to basically tell us he appreciates our work and to keep up the good work.  So I was a little upset he couldn’t seem to give us a straight answer, so I was just like, “Alright my man! Thanks for your support and we will come by another time.” So we left and plan on stopping by again when the husband isn’t home haha.  After that the Sanchez family had signed up to feed us dinner, but Brother Sanchez was out of town for work, so they told us to stop by and pick up some money for dinner. So we get there and knock on the door and Sister Sanchez comes out to talk to us and give us the money for dinner. Then her twin boys come out and shut the door behind them. So apparently their door was locked and so they were completely locked out of the house. Every single door was locked and Sister Sanchez didn’t have her keys or phone or anything. So we tried every single door to no avail and finally Elder Harper was able to credit card lock pick the back garage door and get them into the garage. The garage door to the house was dead bolted shut so we got them into the garage but not the house.  They finally got some neighbors to help them out and call someone who had a key.  Pretty funny though, haha. We had some Subway for dinner and it was good as always.  After dinner, Brother Roback took us up to Little Falls for a lesson with Billy Kassel and the Dobsons. Billy’s lesson was a little weird again, and he just kind of argued his opinion of what the sacrament is and why we take it each week. He did say he knows he needs to take it though, and it’s been a while, so he should probably get on it! After that we taught the Dobsons about how the sacrament helps us each week as we partake of it. They asked if they could just do sacrament for themselves at home because they were “too busy to come to church.” We said we would ask the Bishop but we already knew the answer was no.  They seem to let so many little things get in the way of church. Both of them are working part time and say they are so swamped with work they can’t make it. I wanted to say, “So you’re telling me because you work 20 hours a week and are helping someone remodel their house on the side you're too busy to come to church?” It’s seriously just not a priority for them. Elder Meyer said it best: “You’re never too busy to do things that are important to you.” I find that very true. I see people who work 50-60 hours a week and have 5 kids that make it to church every week without fail because they make it a priority in their lives. And they are way happier because God blesses us when we make it a priority to do the things he has asked us to do. It makes me sad they can’t seem to figure that out, but I hope and pray they will soon!

     Thursday morning we drove down to Clearwater to switch back companionships and then Elder Meyer and I drove back up to Sauk Rapids. We were supposed to meet Joel at 2 pm on campus and we got there and he said he waited around for us and then had to leave for class. It was like 2:01  when we got there. I was a little sad about that but I learned to be exactly on time.  As we were walking out of the Atwood building there was this guy sitting on a bench with a pit bull, so we decided to talk to him about his dog and we ended up finding out he knows Bryce Sorensen that we met with last Saturday that’s a less active member of the church. So good connection there and he was pretty interested in what we do as missionaries and even said he wanted to be one.  So he followed us on Facebook and we told him we would message him about a time to meet! After that we knocked doors for like 2 hours and gave away some Books of Mormon to people so that was good! Haha cool sorry while knocking doors. We met this kid riding his bike in the street and he asked us who we were and what we were doing? After we told him, he told us to go knock on his door and talk to his mom. So naturally we did.  We knocked on his door and his mom came out and we ended up talking to her for like 15 minutes. She has family who are members of the church and so we ended up teaching her and her son (who is like 7) a basic restoration lesson on their porch and gave them a Book of Mormon and invited them to read it pray about it. She took the book and said they would read it! (They’re Catholic so I don't know if that will happen, but hopefully it does!) haha After we left we got a picture with all the neighborhood kids because they thought we were really cool or weird or something, but they wanted to take a picture with us with their “pet eagle”.  So naturally we obliged and took a picture with their pet eagle.  It was fun to be a kid again for like 2 minutes. Growing up is awesome, but it ain’t all it’s cracked up to be. Like I love it, but sometimes I miss being a kid, where your only worry was what to eat for lunch and what games to play with your buddies. My advice to all people under the age of 18 is to enjoy life and have as much fun as you can with family and friends. Don’t sit around wasting your time with video games and saying, “I wish I was older so I could do X, Y, or Z....” Just love life and enjoy every second! Ok enough of my preaching haha. So after that we drove out to Foley to have dinner with the Cosgroves. It was really good and we read part of Elder Holland’s talk with them called “Be Ye Therefore Perfect - Eventually.” Brother Cosgrove loved it and said he really needed to hear the message in that talk. I’m so grateful we have modern prophets and apostles to teach us what God needs us to hear. I’m also grateful to the help of the Holy Ghost in our missionary efforts that inspires us to share the words of our prophets and apostles with those we are teaching! It’s awesome!  After that we stopped by Rosalie in the actual town of Foley and she wasn’t home unfortunately, so we did a few more stop bys and no luck with those either.  Our area book and area book map apps got a new update and combined into one app, so we decided to go figure out how to use it before weekly planning the next day. It’s nice to have everything in one app, but the calendar part of it I really don’t like. It’s hard to tell what you’re doing when with the new app. Also, the members are different so there’s only members and then you have to add them to a “focus group” if they are less active or you are working with them. It’s a little more confusing and complicated but we are getting the hang of it.

     Friday we raked leaves for Connie and mowed part of her lawn because we ran out of gas and she didn’t have any more. She told us she couldn’t come to church this Sunday because the pastor at her church was retiring, so for Sunday services they were just having a big dinner and memorial/tribute party for him at church. I found it odd that that’s what the service was, but it is what it is.  After that we weekly planned and did accounting until 5 pm. It was a little trickier to do weekly planning with the new area book app, but I feel like it forced us to actually plan better so that’s good! After we had dinner we knocked doors for about an hour and a half and found some solid potentials so that was great.  We are going to stop by them again this week! We stopped by a couple less active people in Sartell we had never met, and one of them told us to set something up with his wife. We have actually met him like 2 other times and he says the same thing every time. I wish people would just tell us they’re not interested if they’re not interested. It saves us a lot of time.  Anyway, we did meet this one less active guy whom I guess “left” the church in high school but he’s still on the records so we stopped by and he was pretty nice but doesn’t want us stopping by more than once a month and never to share a message with him. He did give us a referral for this elderly couple down the street we might be able to do yard work for so that was cool! After that we had a lesson with LJ and it wasn’t the best lesson we’ve had haha.  He was so out of control. He couldn’t stay focused at all and it was just way scattered. It was like teaching Primary! So Friday ended on kind of a bummer, but it’s all good.

     Saturday morning we went to see Bill again. He told us he wouldn’t read the Book of Mormon and is basically just going to wait around to die. He said he prays every day for God to take him home. I feel like that’s kind of a sad way to live your life. I’m guessing the reason we found him was so in the Spirit World he will remember us and the Book of Mormon and all that and be more receptive there. So we probably won’t be seeing Bill much more unfortunately, but he just isn’t willing to do anything right now. We helped the Sisters' investigator move into a house in St. Cloud and that was fun! It was funny because people from like 4 other churches were there campaigning to get them to their church. I just had to smile and shake my head. I’m a “by their fruits ye shall know them” kinda guy, so I’m hoping that they recognized the LDS missionaries hard at work and being friendly and helpful wherever we could! We did a ton of stop bys and tracting on Saturday afternoon. It was quite warm and I was actually sweating for the first time in a while haha. One of the first doors we knocked on this lady answered and came out to talk with us and she said she had known several Mormons from work and had been introduced to the Book of Mormon by them. She said their family used to be Catholic but left because it was too strict and then they go to a non-denominational church now. She said if she gets a sign from God to push her in the direction of the church then she will check it out. I wanted to say, “God inspired us to come knock your street today. Is that a good enough sign for ya?” But I didn’t because I don’t know how to say that nicely haha.  It’s all good though! One day she’ll figure it out. After that we did a Facebook messenger with Ashlee. Her mom was in the hospital so she couldn’t meet with us. Her mom had a stroke, so we talked to Ashlee and shared some of W. Christopher Waddell’s talk from conference about turning to the Lord in our trials. She liked it, and I’m hoping she can start to apply the gospel and see the fruits of peace and hope it brings. It was a good “lesson” haha - our first one over Facebook messenger just doing DMs. After that we had dinner with Sister Kennedy and she made some really good lemon pepper chicken.  After that we had a lesson with Flora and Brother Charter at the church. Flora got to go to the temple to do baptisms for the dead for her first time on Saturday, so we talked about how that went and then reviewed highlights and any questions she had from conference. It was a super good lesson and she’s doing so well. It makes me so happy to see her embracing the gospel and seeing the happiness it brings her.  After that we did our coordination meeting with Brother Charter and called it a night.

     Sunday was awesome! I’ve really come to appreciate how amazing Sundays are as a missionary. We had our coordination meeting with the Bishop and then Ward Council before church. We had Brother Charter take us to pick up Larry, this former investigator we’ve been working with. He decided to come to church this week but lives in a group home as well, so we had to pick him up. I found out talking to him on the ride to church that he has the exact same birthday as me! We both turn 20 on the 23rd of this month.  So that was pretty cool! Anyway, we had 5 people at church on Sunday. Larry, LJ was finally able to come, Dan Smith, Shyanna Zurn and her husband came, and this lady named Jessica, who is from West Africa. She met Sister Otis before and then decided to come check out church! Jessica and Larry stayed all 3 hours and it was way cool. We gave Jessica a Book of Mormon and tried to set up a teaching visit with her, but she was a little hesitant to set something up. So hopefully she comes to church again and it all works out.  Larry loved church so that was great! After church we were supposed to have a lesson with Stephanie and Jean but they weren’t home.  I was pretty sad. So we stopped by Adam instead and got to talk to him and play some catch with his kids.  His kids love us haha.  He said he would talk to his wife and get back to us about a time we could come by and share a message with them. So that was good. After that we had dinner with the Rodebushes and it was so good! Sister Rodebush made chicken enchiladas, cowboy caviar with chips, mixed fruit, and cilantro lime rice. I had literally 4 extra plates of the mixed fruit haha. It was so good and she made an insanely huge bowl of it. Nobody was eating it, so I was like, “I love it so I’ll eat it haha”. It was very yummy. After dinner we drove up to St. Stephen to meet with Rick and Shauna and their family. Alyssa (the girl we originally met and gave a Book of Mormon to) was out front with Taton and this other girl we didn’t know when we pulled up. Taton had a football out, so naturally I played catch with him haha. He plays RB and is in 6th grade, so I got talking to him about football and stuff. Rick came driving up after like 10 minutes so we ended up sharing the Plan of Salvation with all of them right on the driveway! It was really cool and the other girl there was Alyssa's friend who lived next door, and she was pretty interested too, and said next time we are up in St. Stephen we could visit her family too. Hopefully that works out as well as Alyssa’s family has. Rick said his wife keeps reminding him they need to read the Book of Mormon as a family, but he’s been super busy with work (he works construction) and they haven’t had a free minute yet this week. He said by next time we come up they will have read some of it! So we set up an appointment with them for the 22nd and headed back down to Sauk Rapids. We had a lesson with the Birds and it went really well. We read 3 Nephi 11:1-15 and told them as we read to mental imagery yourself into Bountiful when Christ descends to the people. As we read it was really cool to feel the Spirit and I just had a witness that Christ truly did visit his “other sheep” in the American continent. We invited them to pray to know if the Book of Mormon is true and if Christ really did visit the people in the Americas. They said they would and Emkly said she had been reading some of the Book of Mormon when she gets free time. I’m loving it!! After that we and did numbers and training evaluations and called it a night. Funny story: Elder Layton in Hutchinson lost a tooth on Sunday. 

This week's been great and I’m loving Sauk Rapids and the work here. It’s still tough and we still gotta work hard, but it’s definitely paying off. It’s very satisfying at the end of a long, tough day to look in the mirror and know we gave it our best, even if it seemed like nothing worked out. That’s a pretty satisfying feeling, let me tell you. I’m so grateful to be a part of this church and this work of sharing the message of the restored gospel of Jesus Christ. I’m grateful we have the Priesthood and the Book of Mormon and a prophet and apostles to lead and guide us. I know this is His church and His work and it will never cease to roll forth.  Love you all, and thanks for for the prayers and support. I seriously couldn’t do it without them. Congrats to the Bobcats and Mavericks! Keep on winning and kicking butt. Can’t wait to suit up again next fall.  But for now, I’m in the best suit I could be in. 

Much love,

Elder Beach

#MavUp #10

Hanging out with the kids in the neighborhood and their "pet eagle".

A minion fire hydrant we found.

Fall in Minnesota!

Gotta look the part for zone training over skype...

This Week Was Lit!

     A big hello to all my family, friends, and coaches back home, at school, and serving around the world! Hope y'all enjoyed General Conference as much as I did and learned a lot from our prophets and apostles. I was very much spiritually uplifted and edified and learned a lot of things I can work on and also had some questions of mine answered. It was amazing to say the least! This week was awesome so I will give you the highlights really quick. Most of the cool stuff happened Saturday and Sunday.

     Monday was p-day. As usual and we did laundry at the Dohms and emailed and threw the football around for a few hours, so that was a good time as always.  We had dinner with the Beckrich's after that and it was awesome. Brother Beckrich did some grilling for us so we had brats, corn, and grilled chicken. It was way good!  After dinner we gave Brother Beckrich a blessing because he's been struggling with some health issues, and we somehow ended up talking about temples for like an hour. He hasn't been able to go to the temple and really wants to get worthy to go back. We talked about how amazing the blessings of the temple are and talked to him about some things he needs to do to get worthy to go back so he can have those blessings in his life once again. It was a really good lesson, and we definitely got him thinking about some things he can do to get back there. He really loves the temple, and I know he wants to get back there someday. For now we are going to support him in his efforts to return there! After that we had a lesson with LJ and it went pretty good! He is still a little wild, but he seems to be able to focus better and has been reading the Book of Mormon and praying more so that's been awesome. We taught him how to recognize and understand the Spirit because he struggles big time with that. Not sure how much we helped him, but I think he understands what the Spirit is a lot better now and how to identify it. It's hard to teach someone what the Spirit feels like when they don't understand it at all haha.  But all in all it was really good!

     Tuesday morning we had a lesson with Ashlee, and it went super good as well. Last time she wanted us to talk about why we have trials in our lives. So we talked about how it's part of God's plan for us to go through difficult things in our life. We can either turn to Him in those trials or turn away from Him. She recognized that she had been turning away from Him, and that is why she's not super happy. So we talked about some very basic things we can do to help us turn to God, including church attendance, prayer, reading the scriptures, and listening to uplifting music. She said she wants to work on church attendance for right now, but she always seems to be out of town on the weekends, which is a bummer, but it is what it is.  We gave her a children's Book of Mormon and she LOVED it haha.  Like she was so happy to have it because she said she just doesn't understand the normal Book of Mormon at all. I'm so happy she will be able to read and understand it now.  We had a lesson with Jared after that and talked about General Conference and getting his temple recommend. He said he wants to go to the temple soon, he just wants to wait until Spencer Baker and Laurel Dickerson come home for a holiday and go with them so he can go with someone he knows. So that's awesome he wants to go finally. Tuesday afternoon we knocked doors for like 2 hours and literally the only people we talked to was this family outside playing with their dog. We played with their dog for a little bit as Elder Meyer taught them because I'm better at playing with dogs than teaching, and he's better at teaching than playing with dogs.  So it works out well! So we taught them a restoration lesson and gave the mom a Book of Mormon and she said we could come back next week! Her son was also very inquisitive and was like, "Why are we here on earth? What's the point of life?" I was like, "Hey buddy, I've got some answers to your questions!" I gave him a Plan of Salvation pamphlet for him to read, and he seemed pretty excited to have it! He said his pastor never could answer that question for him and his mom said the same thing, so yeah... I'm so grateful we know why we are here and what the purpose of life is. That is such a blessing to me.  After that we had dinner with the Broads haha. So they have like 5 cats and when we got there, their really dumb cat was sitting on Elder Meyer's plate. So he kind of moved it off and then it sits on his chair and won't move. So Brother Broad grabs a shoe horn and starts whacking the cat with it and it literally just sits there and does nothing. So he starts whacking it a little harder and then it starts hissing at him and trying to claw the shoe horn.  I was just trying not to bust up laughing. It was so funny. Then Brother Broad commented about how, "If the cat had 2 more IQ points, it would move up to moron status and also double its IQ." I seriously died. I couldn't hold it in haha. Anyway, funny moment from Tuesday! After dinner we decided to stop by Jill Charter. She was just getting home when we pulled in so we ended up having a chat with her outside about General Conference and invited her to watch a session with her family. She gave us this huge plate of banana no bake cookies and they were so good. They were made out of bananas, peanut butter, oats, and craisins. I loved them haha. We had a lesson with Flora and Brother Poulsen after that at the church and it went super well. Flora's testimony is so strong. It's awesome to see it. We read Mosiah 2 with her to get her pumped for General Conference by reading about the original General Conference haha.  It was really good, and we all had some really good insights and takeaways as we read.

     Wednesday morning we did service for Christy's mom, Linda. She wanted us to rake her whole yard, which was huge so we did that for about 2 hours. There was a ton of leaves, so we raked them all into huge piles for her. She said to just leave them there, haha, so I don't know what she's going to do with them.  She isn't interested much at all in the church, but she was very grateful for the service! We did some contacting on campus Wednesday afternoon, and it went really well! I met this dude from Costa Rica named Joel. He was sitting at a bus stop, so I sat down and talked to him for like 20 minutes. I pretty much taught a full restoration lesson to him and invited him to read 3 Nephi 11 in the Book of Mormon. He was very hesitant to do so, but I bore my testimony to him about it and how it's helped me in my life. He agreed to give it a shot and also he followed me on Facebook, so that was sweet! After that I met this guy named Jean from Florida. He was way cool and I don't know how interested he is, but I got to talk to him about the church and what we do as missionaries! He also followed me on Facebook, so that was sweet. Elder Meyer talked to this couple on a swing set for like 30 minutes while I was doing all this, and gave them a Book of Mormon and I'm pretty sure he set up a return appointment for this week. So it was way good! So this morning Joel messaged me on Facebook and said he had read the chapter I gave him, but didn't really understand it. I said we could get him a Spanish Book of Mormon and he was like, "Yes, I would love one!" So we are going to set up a time to meet with him this week, too. After we went to campus we had a lesson with Erik that Elder Kershaw and I found on exchanges a while back. We finally got another lesson set up with him and it went really well! He had read some of the Book of Mormon and we ended up setting a baptism date with him for November 11. So that was way exciting! After that we drove down to Clear Lake to have dinner with the Fichtnerovas. Sister Fichtnerovas's son James is less active and her daughter Anne is active. We had never met James, but he's a cool dude, and we seemed to hit it off well with him! They made veggie pizza for dinner and it was so good.   I loved it. After that we had to drive it like we stole it and haul back up to the church to do a church tour with Tony. He's the atheist dude we talked to like 2-3 weeks ago, and we texted him and asked him if he wanted to do a church tour. He was like, "Yeah for sure!" So we showed him around the church and answered all his questions. It was really good, and we also started a group chat on Facebook with him and he said he would watch General Conference this weekend, too. I'm not sure if he did because he never messaged us back haha. After that we had the stake report meeting with Pesidents Baker and Barney and called it a night!

     Thursday we did weekly planning because Friday was interviews with the Mission President, so we did that in the morning and afternoon. The Hutchinson Elders came up to do a blitz exchange before interviews, so I got to work with Elder Meade! He is from Dallas, Texas and is a great missionary and cool dude. We visited Rustin Bird, and that was an adventure. He was drinking and smoking again when we got there. He told us he wanted to be baptized and had been contemplating it for a few weeks. (He's been baptized already into the LDS church). So we just kind of played along and answered his questions. We ended up reading some of 2 Nephi 31 about baptism and as soon as I started reading it he's like, "Oh my gosh, I've already been baptized. Thanks guys." It was super weird. Then we got General Conference set up for him on his computer because he said it sucks and didn't work, but it worked fine, he just doesn't know how to use it or was super drunk.  He wanted us to bookmark the LDS.org website for him so he could find it easier. I bookmarked it and then showed him how to get back to it from his bookmark bar. He had some not super great stuff bookmarked on his computer.  Anyway, it was a super weird visit! After that we went out to Foley and stopped by the Gillams because we hadn't seen her in forever. B said he got a job finally, and he had been reading the Book of Mormon daily and had seen a difference in his life for sure. I was glad to hear that! We invited him to General Conference and he said they would come, but didn't show up, as usual. I wish they could figure it out and just come and do the things we tell them because it would bless their lives so much! It makes me so sad.  After that we knocked doors for about an hour and found this dude named Jesse. His house was at the end of the street and we almost decided to not knock it because it was out of the way a little, but I felt like we should at the last second, so we did and it ended up being sweet! Elder Meyer threw down some super hot fire about the Book of Mormon, and Jesse was super interested in it, and said he was for sure going to read it and see what he thought of it. So that was sweet! We all had dinner together at 7:30 because both our dinners fell through last minute haha.  After that we had a meeting with the STLs about the zone focus, and it was good and also a waste of time in my opinion. Like we got the zone focus done but it took an hour and could've taken 25-30 minutes. Meetings like that really bug me, but it's part of mission life and God's way of teaching me patience I guess! Anyway, after we finally got done, Elder Layton and I went for a 3 mile run to end the night, and it was fun to talk to him and get to know him a little better.

     Friday was interviews, and basically like half the zone is struggling so they went until like 3:30-4 pm. In my interview with President, I asked him how I can help missionaries that are having problems that they honestly should be able to just "man up and work out on their own." I just don't have a lot of empathy for missionaries who can't get along with companions and are checked so their companionship sucks. I asked President how I can be better at having love and empathy and patience for those missionaries. His answer made me laugh.  He said, "Elder Beach, I'm not gonna lie. I feel the same way you do sometimes with those missionaries. I just want to tell them to work it out and grow up a little sometimes. But I always have to ask myself, what would Christ do? As I've done that it's helped me try to understand them a little better and be more patient with them. But trust me, you aren't the only one who feels that way!" We both had a chuckle about that, but I came away realizing that I just need to be more patient and take time to understand everyone's situation before I just say, "Oh you just need to work it out and be more mentally tough." Because I want to say that to people more often than not, but that's not what Christ would do. He would talk to them and and be a friend to them and all that good stuff, and that's what I need to do, too. After interviews we had a really good lesson with Cassondra on campus. We taught her the Plan of Salvation, and it was super good. One thing Elder Meyer and I have been doing is trying to make each lesson personally relatable and applicable to the person we teach, rather than just teaching at them. It seems to be working so much better for us, and we are seeing much better results in people keeping commitments and having a desire to search more into the gospel. It's way cool.  We also invited her to watch General Conference this weekend and got her all set up with LDS.org so she knew where to watch it! After that we had some dinner and then knocked this street as a backup because a few of our stop bys fell through. After that we had a great lesson with Sister Hagen that we first met last week. She was able to come to church and she loves having us over. I feel like elderly single folks so often get forgotten about in wards, and I'm grateful as a missionary to be able to visit them and help them know we care about them. They're always so appreciative and it makes me so happy.  After that we had a lesson with LJ about following the prophet and reading the scriptures each day. He was a little wild this time, and there's this other resident who always tries to get on his nerves, so they were having a little spat.  But other than that it was good! 

     Saturday was awesome! General Conference all day pretty much! We went and saw Bill again in the morning before conference started, and he tried to give us back the Book of Mormon we gave him. I was like, "No way, Bill! That book will help you out so much!" It took some persuading, but he finally decided to keep it.  We invited him to watch conference if college football got boring for him, and he said he might check it out haha. Anyway, after that we basically just watched Conference all day! We had a lesson with a less active YSA guy that served his mission here like 6 years ago and moved back to go to school at SCSU. He just makes a lot of excuses for not coming to church and stuff like, "I'm busy and I have too much homework and I don't have a car, etc." He was a little odd, but seemed like a good dude.  Anyway, after that we watched some more conference. For the Priesthood session, LJ and this dude named Abdul, that works at the group home, came! It was awesome and LJ got to meet the Bishop and Brother Charter, so that was sweet. He stayed for about an hour and then had to go, but it was awesome that he got to come for that much. I don't have my notes with me for conference, unfortunately, but I will have to share them later in another email. I really enjoyed Conference though, this year. It had some amazing messages and council from our prophets and apostles. 

     Sunday was by far the best day of the week. The Bridensteins invited us over for breakfast and conference and it was a hoot.  Their youngest daughter can eat more food than anyone I've ever seen. No joke. Sister Breidenstein made 2 huge pans of cinnamon bread and she ate an entire thing by herself throughout the duration of conference. Plus she had ham and eggs, a banana, and yogurt. She had to have eaten at least 10,000 calories. It blew my mind!  George watched conference with us and made several comments about how much he liked a talk or a certain story, so that was awesome because usually he's not super "interested" or open about his feelings about the church or anything like that, so it was good to see him open up a little bit! After that we stopped by Stephanie, the lady we edged her whole driveway and stuff for her! It was awesome! Right when we got there, her husband, Gene, came home so both of them let us in and we taught them a whole restoration lesson, and they were both super engaged and her husband was super excited to get a Book of Mormon and said he was excited to read it. We also set a return appointment with them for next Sunday! We then watched the final session of conference at the church. I think that was my favorite session by far. Neil L. Andersen gave such a great talk. I loved the compilation of the quotes from earlier in conference and from Elder Hales. I was glad to hear what Elder Hales had to say about having faith and how that prepares us to stand in the presence of God. General Conference was just amazing. After that we had dinner and headed up to St. Stephens to knock some doors and stop by some people we had found. We stopped by Alyssa's house first, and her dad, Rick, had talked to us last week and was super nice and said we could come by whenever. So we stopped by and he let us in and we ended up teaching a restoration lesson to his whole family!! His wife, Shauna, and kids, Evan, Taton, and Gavin. They all listened intently and she seemed really interested. We promised them the same blessings Russell M. Nelson promised in conference if we read the Book of Mormon each day. The Spirit was so strong and it was seriously the coolest lesson ever. They also said we could come back next Sunday, so I'm way excited to teach them more next week! It was awesome. After that we had our weekly coordination meeting with Brother Charter and called it a night. 

     I've absolutely loved this week! God has been so good to us this week. I'm glad we are finally finding some success in our work here. I'm so grateful that as we've patiently (well, sometimes haha) kept working and having faith that we finally were able to see success in our finding efforts. I'm reminded of one of my favorite scriptures in the Book of Mormon, Alma 26:12 "Yea, I know that I am nothing, as to my own strength I am weak. Therefore, I will not boast of my strength, but I will boast of my God, for in His strength I can do all things. And behold, many mighty miracles have been wrought in this land, for which we will praise His name forever." I cannot agree more with that scripture. I'm so grateful to be here in Minnesota serving the Lord and sharing His gospel. It truly is a gospel of happiness and hope and peace. I love seeing it change others' lives and also change my own. It's amazing! It's been a great week, and I'm looking forward to another good one. I love you all! Congrats to my Bobcats for kicking Logan's butt this week. Keep up the good work. Stay humble and work hard. Shoutout to my future team the CMU Mavericks, too! I'm so excited to play there when I get home. Have a great week and enjoy every minute. They go by fast, and you never get to live the day you are in ever again! So enjoy it and seize the day. Thanks for the prayers and blessings! 

Much love,

Elder Beach

#MavUp #10

Our Zone went to a Ninja Warrior gym for P-day.  It was awesome!

LJ and Abdul came to watch the Priesthood session of Conference.

A scary Halloween decoration we knocked into.

Our fridge.  We eat healthy!

Friday Night Lights

     Hello to all my family, friends, and coaches back home, at college and serving the Lord around the world! Hope this email finds you well and enjoying football season and general conference season as well. Best time of the year! This week has been good even though we've had insanely hot, humid days and also torrential downpours as well. But we still work regardless of the weather. 

     So Monday was the usual: laundry, email, throw the football around. Can't complain about that. We had dinner with the Robacks down in Becker so we headed down there at about 5 pm for our 5:30 pm dinner. It was fun! I love them. They're a great family and Brother Roback is the Elder's Quorum President and is one of the only people who will drive us around and joint teach with us haha.  Funniest thing happened at dinner: we were eating and their youngest daughter just lets out this huge burp.  I was so surprised because she is like 3 and not very big and it was huge haha.  I had a good chuckle at that! After that we were supposed to have a lesson with a less active YSA guy named Keegan at the church, but he cancelled last minute so we messaged a bunch of less actives on Facebook and then went to our lesson with LJ. It was a little scattered because LJ was kind of crazy and not really focused, but we reviewed the Plan of Salvation with him and he remembered a decent amount of it, so that was good! We also talked to the manager of the group home and he said there is only one guy working there on Sundays so there's nothing they can do to get him to church. So that sucks, but we are going to see if we can get his parents to sign a thing that allows us to drive him to church on Sundays. Hopefully that works out. 

     Tuesday we had a blitz exchange in Alexandria with Elders Searle and Bentley. It was pretty fun! I went with Elder Bentley for the day and we did a lot of finding and stop bys and biking. It was nice to get out and bike cuz I haven't biked since Apple Valley. Elder Meyer doesn't like biking much, not sure why? I've suggested it several times and he never seems too stoked to bike, but oh well. We went to Qdoba for lunch, which is kind of like Chipotle but way better in my opinion. You get the same thing pretty much, plus all the add ons for free. So at Chipotle, guacamole is like $2 extra, which is dumb, but at Qdoba it is free. So I got this way good grilled chicken bowl with a lot of pico, cheese, guacamole, corn, grilled peppers, and pinto beans. It was way good! Elder Bentley and I basically biked around all day and stopped by people who weren't home. We didn't do much finding (knocking doors, contacting, etc.) but it's not my exchange, so I just do whatever they have planned and suggest doing other things along the way! It was fun though and we talked to a few people who were pretty cool! Alexandria is definitely a "sticks" area. Just lots of little farm towns and not a lot of people haha. It was fun though, and after the day was over we went on a 3 mile run, which was awesome. I'm in way better shape than I was when I first got to Sauk Rapids, and I can definitely tell haha. Elder Bentley was a champ and ran all 3 miles with me. 

     Wednesday morning we headed back to Sauk Rapids and had district meeting in the morning. I went to the Buffalo district meeting and it was good! We had a couple trainings on using Facebook messenger effectively and also on finding because for some reason, our zone does little to no finding each week, and sets really low goals for finding new investigators and doesn't usually hit them. However, this week we did a lot better, so I was super happy about that! We are going to start doing some zone "Tracting Hours" where we will start with a conference call and get everyone hyped to go knock doors and then everyone will knock for an hour in their areas. Then we be able to share cool experiences we had, and hopefully this will encourage the zone to keep working hard at finding people to teach! After lunch we contacted everyone on Facebook and sent them this General Conference hype video we found and invited them to watch General Conference this coming weekend. After that we went to campus to do some contacting and low and behold, another church was there doing some contacting as well.  So we walked around and talked to people for like 15 minutes, but everyone thought we were Jehovah's Witnesses, so we figured it wasn't worth our time haha. Oh well! We went and stopped by the dude we found a few weeks back. He wasn't home, but some of his neighbors were mowing their lawns and stuff so we offered to help. This one dude basically tried to run us over with his mower and wouldn't talk to us, so we figured he wasn't interested.  The other people weren't super stoked to see us either. Then we stopped by Sharon who we found a few weeks back, too. She is a parole officer and works like all day, but we stopped by anyway. Her husband was there and he was not the nicest guy I've met. He basically told us to never come back because his wife wasn't interested and never would be. Some people make me shake my head and laugh haha. The Sisters wanted us to give one of them a blessing after, that so we did that and it was good! The Priesthood is for real, everyone. I have such a strong testimony of Priesthood blessings! They are truly from God! We went and saw Rustin Bird after that, and he was drinking and smoking a lot so we didn't talk to him for long. He seemed really depressed and not himself, so we called his sister-in-law and told her because she and Reegan help him out make sure he doesn't die or do stupid things haha. She said she and Reegan were going to check on him that night when Reegan got home from work. Hopefully he's doing good! We haven't heard anything from her, so I'm hoping no news is good news. After that we went out to Foley and knocked doors for about an hour or so and met some really nice and cool people but nobody was super interested. People always think we are just trying to get them to convert to the LDS church. Which I guess we are, but we really are trying to get people to convert to Christ. This is His church with His gospel and His Priesthood, so by converting to Him, you would convert to His church. But it takes a lot of time and repeated effort with each person to help them see that, so we just share our small message and hope it plants a seed that will one day grow and blossom into "the fruit of the gospel!" We had a really good lesson with Rosalee that night too! She had started reading the Book of Mormon, so we taught her a full Restoration lesson and she seemed to like it and enjoy the message. We both bore our testimonies at the end, and I could tell she was feeling the Spirit. I hope she continues to read the Book of Mormon and pray to know if it is true. If she does, she will gain a witness of its divinity and of the truth of the restoration of the gospel through the prophet Joseph Smith!

     Thursday we did some service for Connie again, and that was good! We raked a bunch of leaves for her and then mowed her lawn. We also set up a church tour with her for the following morning so she could come check out the church and get a feel for it before she comes sometime. After that we had a quick lunch at Subway, which was great. I used to hate Subway, but I love it now haha. After that we did some service at the humane society, which is always a good time! We hauled bags of dog and cat food into storage for them and then helped set up chairs for a presentation, and then, of course, we washed dishes and crates. It was fun! I like helping out there. After that we had to get an oil change in St. Cloud, so we went to the Toyota dealer there and I had a way good cup of hot chocolate from their free hot chocolate and coffee shop thing that was there! After that we went and stopped by Christy's mom who Christy referred to us. Christy lives out in Foley and her mom lives in St. Cloud and has a lot of yard work and needs some help, so we went to her mom's place and got some yard work service set up for Wednesday morning, so that should be fun! After that Ethan Olson took us up to Rice to have a lesson with the Squires family. Brother Squires is less active and their kids kind of are too, but Sister Squires is way active and wants her whole family to be active. We taught a Restoration lesson and talked about if we have a testimony that 1. Jesus Christ is divine, 2. The Book of Mormon is true, and 3. Joseph Smith is the prophet of the Restoration, then we have a solid foundation of testimony. We invited them to read the Book of Mormon as a family and pray to know if it is true and to help their testimonies of the Savior and of the Book of Mormon increase. Brother Squires seemed really not engaged in the lesson and his answers to questions were a little concerning to me about his faith or testimony or desire to have either of those. He's a tough nut to crack, so we are going to keep working on them. They all came to church this Sunday, so that was great! After that we had a lesson with Sister Davis and Luke and Russell. We taught them the Plan of Salvation and used Elder Meyer's little wooden Plan of Salvation kit as a visual. It was fun and we tied it into how we can be with our families forever when we are sealed in the temple, and invited them to attend the temple and get recommends for the temple trip that is coming up! After that we went down to Brother Massey's place and he took us out to the Mexican restaurant called Giliberto's. It was really good and only like $6-7. I got a way yummmy grilled chicken burrito.

     Friday morning we had a church tour with Connie, and it went about as bad as possible. Sister Hoese from the St. Cloud ward was our joint teacher because we couldn't find anyone else to go, and she loves us haha. So we showed Connie around the church and then she starts talking about polygamy and how she could never belong to a church that practices polygamy. Elder Meyer was like, "Well, some prophets in the Old Testament were polygamists, so does that change anything about their teachings?" Then she proceeds to go on about how the guys just wanted to have sex with all the women and it didn't benefit the women at all. It was so weird and Sister Hoese was trying to help her understand why there was polygamy, and she just wasn't getting it. Then we showed her a picture of Christ in the Americas and talked about the Bible and the Book of Mormon and how, if we come to know the Book of Mormon is true, we know God has called prophets to lead us on the earth once again. She literally cannot understand the difference between the Bible and the Book of Mormon. It's so frustrating. Like we brought a Bible and a Book of Mormon and held them in our hands and were like, "This is the Bible. A record of the Jews and the life and teachings of Christ. This is the Book of Mormon. A record of the inhabitants of the ancient Americas and their dealings with God and teachings of the gospel of Jesus Christ." She still thought the Book of Mormon was just some book written by Joseph Smith that was just his take on the Bible. So frustrating. Anyway, we did our best to testify and teach and allow the Spirit to be there, but Connie just won't listen, and she talks the entire time, and it's just hard haha. But hopefully one day she will read the Book of Mormon and feel the Spirit witness to her it is true, and then she will realize what we've taught her is true and will bless her life! But until then, not sure what's going to happen with her.  After that we weekly planned and then we were supposed to have a lesson with Cassondra on campus, but she didn't show up (later found out her mom came up to visit and she forgot to cancel), so we knocked doors for 2 hours before dinner. It rained really hard Friday morning and then the sun came out and it was 92 with like 85% humidity. So we knocked doors from 4-6 pm, and basically sweated our heads off for two hours and no one talked to us haha.  It was good though, and we had fun, just one of those days where people weren't interested! We had dinner with the Bridensteins after that and then we had a lesson with Sister Hagen and Brother Charter. Sister Hagen is this lady we had never met and decided to stop by last week. She is less active because of health issues, so we set up a lesson with her for Friday night. She absolutely loved having us over. She said she hardly ever gets visitors, and so it was awesome to just talk with her and socialize I guess.  She was adamant that we come by regularly to visit her, so we are probably going to start doing that weekly! Brother Charter is also going to give her rides to church now, which is awesome!  After that we had the best lesson with LJ we've had by far. We went over the gospel of Jesus Christ again and he remembered quite a bit of it. He also was way more focused and everything just went super smoothly. He wants us to get him a big print Book of Mormon so he can start reading the real one since he read the children's one in like a week haha. So we are getting one of those for him soon! 

     Saturday we knocked doors in the morning and met quite a few cool people and gave out like 4 Books of Mormon. The last house we knocked on was awesome. So we knocked on the door and I could hear a football game on tv through the door. So this older gentleman answered and I said, "Hey! We are the missionaries from the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-Day Saints. We are sharing a message about Jesus Christ, that his church and gospel have been restored to the earth by a prophet named Joseph Smith." He cut me off and told me he wasn't super interested. So I asked him who was playing on tv? He proceeds to open the door and invite us in to watch football!! It was all I could do to not cry tears of joy. Anyway, we went in and sat down to watch and started talking to him about his life and stuff. His name was Bill and he's 94-years-old and lives alone because his wife passed away recently. He is Catholic and a way nice man! He said it gets pretty lonely around the house being by himself, so we told him we'd come visit him! He seemed pretty stoked about that. We started talking about what we do as missionaries and gave him a Book of Mormon, Plan of Salvation pamphlet and had a great prayer with him, too! He invited us back for next Saturday, so hopefully we can watch some of conference with him (and college football jk haha). So it was way cool to meet Bill! After lunch and comp study we went to campus again to try our luck and talked to a decent amount of people. Campus wasn't popping like it usually is during the week, but we gave out a few Books of Mormon and a lot of pass along cards. After that we did some stop bys down in the ghetto part of St. Cloud. Not a lot of people were home, but we did get in contact with this lady named Sarah who is a potential, and she followed us on Facebook, so that was good! After that we knocked some doors and stopped by a few more people and then had some dinner at our place. After dinner we knocked this street up in north Sauk Rapids and most people weren't super stoked to meet us, but we met this nice dude and his red bone hound named Otis. I got a picture with Otis because one of my favorite books ever is "Where the Red Fern Grows", so I had to get a photo haha. After knocking, it started pouring right when we got done, and luckily we had a lesson with Flora at the church on Facebook scheduled. We taught about serving in the church and doing member missionary work. She told us she had a friend at school she had been talking to about the church, so we encouraged her to continue to do so, and if her friend was interested to give her our number or Facebook or whatever! After that we had coordination with Brother Charter and then called it a night.

     Sunday morning we had coordination meeting with the Bishop, and I guess my blood sugar got low during it becaues I have a hazy recollection of the meeting, and then I remember eating yogurt at our apartment like 30 minutes after the meeting got done. Elder Meyer did a good job realizing I was low and drove me home and fed me granola bars and yogurt and bananas! So I kind of came out of my low blood sugar haze and it was like 11:15 am and I was like, "Why are we at home and why am I eating yogurt?" Anyway, my blood sugar was 40, which is weird because I've been lower before and have been fine. But all is well now. Not sure why it went low, I ate the same thing for breakfast and took the same amount of insulin I always do. But anyway, I'm alive and well haha. Anyway, after I was in my right mind, we went back to church and had Ward Council and it was good! Sacrament Meeting was awesome, even though we only had one investigator there, Dan Smith. After church we had the ward potluck and it was super good! Lots of soup and salad so I had a ton of salad haha. I forgot to mention that Elder Meyer and I taught primary to the 5-6 year old class and it was pretty fun! They are very energetic and the Primary Presidency gave us lots of treats to keep them on task haha. But it was fun and went well. After the potluck we had a lesson with a less active family down in Becker, so we went to Clear Lake first to stop by Rebecca. She wasn't home and her husband told us to come back in 10 minutes and he would talk to us. So we knocked some doors in Clear Lake and while we were like 200 yards from the car, it just started pouring. Like raining buckets of water on us.  So we sprinted back to the car and by the time we got there our shirts and pants were completely soaked through. And go figure, as soon as we got in the car it quits raining like 10 seconds later. So we were soaked to the bone and then talked to Rebecca's husband, and he very politely told us to never come back because they already had a church they went to. So that kind of sucked, but hopefully she reads the Book of Mormon and feels it is good and true! After that we went to Becker to have a lesson with the Duke and Callan families. They live in the same house and are both kind of less active, but are way cool families. So we had a lesson about the atonement of Jesus Christ with them, and watched this Mormon message called "Lifting Burdens". It's really good and I would encourage everyone to watch it! We also sang "I Stand All Amazed" with them because singing brings the Spirit, even if you are awful at singing like me. So it was good and the Spirit was definitely there! After that we stopped by Dan Duncombe in Becker and shared a quick message with his family about general conference and how God has called living prophets and apostles to teach us and speak to us! We invited them to watch conference this weekend, so hopefully they do because Dan's brothers and parents are all active! After that it was like 8:20 pm, so we headed back home to good old Sauk Rapids and called it a week. 

     On Friday we were at the church and I was running in the parking lot. I was running like imaginary plays and then scrambling or running the ball like 40-50 yards. There is a high school like a half mile from the church and I could hear the Friday night football game going on. I kind of checked out and had some good times reminiscing hearing the crowd at Hansen Field in Smithfield on Friday nights. It was fun for me to be able to relive some plays from the "high school glory days" haha. Still under the Friday night lights, they were just church parking lot lights and I was a missionary. As I thought back on high school I realized how grateful I was to be able to be where I was at that moment in time. Serving the Lord and sharing His gospel with those who are looking for it! Nothing will ever be able to replace the experience of serving a mission. It has helped me in so many ways and built my foundation of faith 100x. I strongly advise all young men to serve missions and to put your heart and soul into it. God will open doors you never thought possible and if you sacrifice school, football, girlfriends, jobs, whatever, God will bless you so much for it. It's a small sacrifice in the grand scheme of things, and you will never regret your decision to serve the Lord. It's a privilege and blessing to be out here! Love you all and hope you have a great week! Congrats to my Mavs and Cats this week both getting the W's. Keep up the good work. Thanks for all the prayers and support, seriously couldn't do it without them. Also happy birthday to my sister, Addi, and Dad! Love you both so much and hope you had great birthdays!

Much love,

Elder Beach

#MavUp #10

Me and Otis.

Working hard on keeping in shape.

The delicious taco salad I had.

Lunch at Qdoba.