Confession by Florida Georgia Line

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Much love,

Elder Beach

#MavUp #10

Dinner at Applebees with Brother Haraden.

Baja blast freezes and Naked Chicken from Taco Bell.

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

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!