Death Week in Roch 1

     A big hello to all my family, friends, and coaches back home, at school, and serving around the world! Hope this email finds you doing well and enjoying the last little bit of January!️ This week has been pretty good here! It’s amazing how when you have basically no one to teach, we always seem to stay busy and are able to serve and teach people throughout each day! That’s been a cool miracle this week. As Nacho Libre says... “Let’s get down to the nitty gritty” and see how the week went!

     Monday was p day and as usual was good! We played some basketball at the stake center and Elder Bowman and I basically ended up playing catch with the football the whole time, so that was good. We don’t have the most “interested in sports or athletic things” zone, so we usually don’t get ton of people playing basketball. We did play volleyball but it was a miracle if the ball got over the net more than once, so that didn’t last quite as long haha. But it was fun! Good to have a day off from the grind of missionary work. It ended up snowing a ton on Monday, so Monday night we just drove around and helped shovel people’s driveways. Sister Keene called us and we went to go help her with her driveway as well and she was super grateful for that so that was fun! We ended up shoveling about 5-6 driveways in 2 hours, so we did some good work!  We took our dinner at 8 pm since we didn’t have any appointments Monday night.

     Tuesday, when it started, looked like it was going to be a rough day because we had no lessons or anything set up. So we basically were like, “Ok, we are just going to do some finding the whole day.” So in the morning I had to account with the Sisters and so we did that and then we went and did some contacting downtown, and it was a rough day for contacting.  Not many people were super interested in talking to us, but we worked hard and tried to talk with everyone, so I mean we did our best! After that we had some lunch and then had a bunch of stop bys planned out. So we got to meet with the Cammacks, who are a less active part member old couple in the ward. Brother Cammack is a member and his wife isn’t, but they’re super nice and we got to visit with them for a few minutes. We set up a time to come back this Wednesday afternoon so that should be solid! After that we stopped by like 20 or so people and no one was home or interested. We were driving around trying to figure out what to do and we decided to just pull over and look at our area book map and try to find someone we might have missed to go stop by. We both found this former investigator named Big John almost simultaneously, so we decided to go try him! When we got there he was out trying to shovel his driveway in a wheelchair. So we hurried and grabbed our shovels out of the car and ran over to help him. He was very grateful for the help. He likes his driveway down to bare concrete. Like completely cleaned off. So I would shovel, Elder Bowman would ice scrape and Big John would come behind and broom off every little speck of snow. It must’ve been quite the sight! After we got his driveway done (took us about an hour) he invited us in to show us his John Deere collection. He has basically a house full of John Deere models of every kind of tractor and rig they’ve ever made. It’s pretty wild! I’ll get a picture of it next time we go over. So we showed us all his John Deere stuff for a while and then we had to get running and go do some tracting before dinner. We tracted for about an hour and met a super nice lady who said we could come back another day and gave a Book of Mormon to this Lutheran guy who was trying to bash with us, and then we ended up giving him a Book of Mormon haha.  After that we headed to Brother Oesterle’s house for “Taco Tuesday”. He’s our ward mission leader so they feed us every Tuesday and then we go visit people with him afterwards. His kids are so funny.  I love them haha! He didn’t end up getting home from work until like 6:40 pm, so we had dinner really quick and then had a lesson with the Clow family. I ended up talking to Byron most of the time. He’s Sister Clow's son. He’s got himself all caught up in gangs and stuff like that, and as I was talking to him he just kept saying, “I hate it in the gangs. I want to get out, but the only way out is to get killed.” It was sad to see him in the state he was. He knows the gospel could help him out so much but he just isn’t ready to make the changes yet to let it work in his life. I feel so bad for people like that, who just can’t quite see how simple the gospel is and how much it could help them in their life. People also feel like they need to be “better or perfect” to even start, but that is so far from the truth! Start where you are! God takes us where we are, makes us into what we have the potential to become, if we only humbly turn to Him and let Him! It was a good visit, but it was also sad for me because I want them to be happy and latch on to the gospel, but they just haven’t figured it out yet. 

     Wednesday morning we accounted with the Zone Leaders and then went and shoveled Sister Smith’s driveway. It was basically straight ice so we had to like chisel it all away. So that took a little while haha. After that we had some lunch and then did some contacting down town again. We literally have like no one solid to teach that is progressing at all, so we do a lot of contacting and tracting. It’s rough because we talk to so many people, but we haven’t found anyone that’s interested. So we contacted for like 2 hours and then we were supposed to have a lesson with Cindy, and she cancelled on the doorstep (second time this has happened). So we did some stop bys in Rochester and didn’t really meet or find anyone. Then we did some tracting before dinner and met some nice people, but nobody solid that we were able to teach/share Books of Mormon with. After that we had dinner with the Millingtons! They are way cool! Sister Millington joined the church like 2 years ago and they are getting ready to go to the temple to get sealed pretty soon, so that’s awesome! They made us teriyaki chicken and veggie stir fry and it was super good. After that we did some more stop bys to invite people basketball and weren’t able to catch many people home. Wednesday was a rough day. Just top to bottom. We went and picked up Jordan Clow for basketball, and we were the only ones who showed up, so we played 21 and then about 20 minutes into us playing, Elder Bowman was driving in and pulled up and his head hit my nose and it popped super weird and I thought I broke my nose, so I just started walking to the bathroom. Anyway, it didn’t start bleeding or anything, so I was like, “My nose just got destroyed and popped weird but it isn’t bleeding so it must not be broken!” So we kept playing a little bit longer and then we had to take Jordan home so we ended up only playing for like an hour. My nose is not broken but it’s been pretty bruised and sore this week haha.

     Thursday morning we had district meeting and basically the whole zone showed up. We had us, the ZLs, the STLs, Kasson Sisters, Roch 5 Sisters, and the Austin Elders. Winona (where Elder Peterson was) got closed basically on the drop of a dime so they had to come up here to Roch and Elder Michelson went with the Austin Elders and Elder Peterson went up to Cottage Grove with the APs. He was super mad about the whole thing so Elder Bowman and I talked to him about it after district meeting and he was not a happy camper. After that, Elder Bowman had to go to the dentist really quick to get his tooth checked on that he had a root canal on, and then after that Sister King took us to lunch at Hu-Hot and it was awesome! I haven’t eaten there in like 2 years haha. I got a ton of crab, chicken, and fish and loaded up the veggies and it was super good! Super healthy and really good food! Sister King is the only member in her family and is 86 years old, I’m pretty sure. She is the nicest lady! She just has a great spirit that you can feel a mile away. It was awesome to visit with her and get to know her better! After that we went to the dollar store and bought some food coloring and spray bottles so we could draw a giant Book of Mormon on the side of the highway in the snow.  It was sweet! It took us about 45 minutes and we drew the Book of Mormon and our phone number and we got like 10 honks haha. It was cool, and I hope some people at least have an interest in the Book of Mormon from it! After that we did some tracting for about an hour. We met a nice family that said they were busy, but we could come back this week, so hopefully they work out. haha.  This one door we knocked on, this guy answers and literally just dies laughing before we said anything and then slammed the door.... it was strange. There’s some freaks in Rochester. Like, I thought Hutchinson had some weirdos. There’s some real weirdos here in Rochester. But it keeps things interesting for us, so that is good. After that we had some dinner and called it a day. 

     Friday we did some contacting down town in the morning and it went really well! Together we gave out 3 Books of Mormon and almost 40 pass along cards! It was really fun and people just seemed like more happy on Friday for some reason. Probably because it was Friday haha. But it was much better! After that we had some lunch and did laundry at the ZLs apartment while we weekly planned. Weekly planning was rough this week as well. We didn’t have much to plan for and we called and texted every single less active or part member family and any investigator with any potential. Guess how many answered the phone or got back to us? ZERO!  It was insane. We called like 50 people and not a single one answered the phone and not one responded to a text either. I was mind boggled haha. So our weekly planning session wasn’t super long this week. We figured we were just going to end up doing a bunch of tracting and contacting again, so we just planned out where we wanted to work each day. After that we tracted for about an hour and half and then stopped by a few people up by the Mayo Clinic and then had a member lesson with the Smiths. They are an older couple in the ward and we didn’t know them at all, so we visited with them and shared a message about sharing the gospel. They’re actually really good at it! They told us all these stories of people they’ve talked to and met and been able to share the gospel with! So it was cool. After that we had some dinner and worked out and headed to bed. 

     Saturday morning was like one of the weirdest stories of my mission. So we went to downtown Rochester to do some contacting and it went really well! I was able to talk to some awesome people, even though none of them were super solid. It was just great to talk to people and share my testimony with them of various parts of the gospel. We were once again able to give out about 30 pass along cards and several pamphlets to people and invited a lot of people to church. Anyway, back to my weird story: so there’s this main downtown part of Rochester we usual contact at because there’s a bunch of bus stops and some Skyway tunnels to talk to people in. So I was just coming out of a Skyway tunnel into a building. Elder Bowman was talking to someone across the Skyway, so I could still see him. So there was this guy sitting on a bench just outside of the Skyway tunnel and he looked like he was tripping on acid or something, just looked really sweaty and super out of it. So I was like, “Hey, can I help you with anything?” He’s like, “Man, I’m gonna die. I’m dying. I need to talk to someone about it.” I was like, “Ok, do you need a phone or something?” He said yeah, so I let him use our cell phone to call his case manager. I guess he had like schizophrenia or something and was tripping out hard core. So he called his case manager and gave them another cell phone number to reach him at. I guess he had a cell phone somehow. So anyway, I gave him a card with our number and told him to call us if he needed anything. Then he’s like, “Bro, my hand is broken.” So he showed it to me and I was like, “Yeah, that’s probably broken! You should go see a doctor for that!” He’s like, “Yeah, that’s where I’m going.” So anyway, he thanked me for helping him and said he was good to go, so I peaced out to go chase down this guy I felt I needed to talk to as I was helping this crazy dude. So I finally found this guy and talked to him a little bit and invited him to church and Wednesday night basketball. He said he would try to come to ball. After that Elder Bowman and I were walking back to the parking lot and the crazy guy's case manager calls us and is asking us all these questions about him. The guy was like, “I’m going to call the cops and have someone come check on him. Can I get your name if they need to talk to you?” I was like, “Yeah, sure.” Not thinking the cops would ever call us. So anyway, we get back to the car and start driving down the main road, and this crazy guy has like followed us on foot and is just chillin' on a bench outside the parking garage thing. So we just took off and drove away to go home haha. Then like 2 minutes later the cops called us and I got like straight interrogated over the phone about this guy.  Oh my gosh. The lady talking to me was freaking out at me because I knew nothing about the guy. I was like, “I literally met this dude 15 minutes ago. I know nothing about him!” She seemed a little miffed I didn’t have more info for her, but when we got home (5 minute drive) I had had enough the interrogation, so I was like, “I have to go. Sorry!” She then got super mad and said she’d call me later. I was like “Ok that’s fine, I just have something I need to do right now.” Well they never called me back and I have no clue what happened to the crazy guy. So that was my wild story. After that we had lunch (a little longer than usual because I was still trying to wrap my head around all that just happened.) After that we stopped by some people and got to meet Mina Baker. She’s a girl who is a child of record. She is the nicest girl I’ve ever met. She’s like 10 I think, and was so nice. I really want to help her family get active so she can get baptized, but we haven’t been able to meet with them. After that we had a lesson with David Midtovne, who’s a less active guy. He likes to talk a lot and I guess has like 8 kids with 4 different girls. He’s a super nice guy though, and we shared a talk by D. Todd Christofferson called, “Why the Church?” talking about why we even need a church in the first place. I’m not sure how much he got out of it, but he said he liked it and we invited him to attend church and he just said, “I work Sundays.” So I was like, “Well maybe you could ask for work off!” He’s like, “Oh yeah! I guess I could.” Haha some people. After that we stopped by the Schultz, who are a less active family. We met with their 11 year old Caden, who just got baptized like 6 months ago. He’s a nice kid and super funny. He gave us a ton of candy.  I had one Reese’s Cup so he wasn’t sad at me.  So my streak of no candy is over for the time being.  We shared "Dayton’s Legs" with him and invited him to church. He said he wants to come but it’s up to his parents. His parents never come, so we are going try to get him a ride. After that we tracted this huge street on the southwest part of the city for like an hour and a half and met some nice people and gave away a few Books of Mormon. Nobody super solid however. After that we got some gas and hot chocolate because it was cold and headed home and had some dinner. 

     Sunday morning we had Ward Council at 7:30 am, so we had to get up for that and then after that we were hoping to have the Clows and a few other people at church. They did not show up, but guess who came?! Sister Averbeck!! Elder Bowman and I were so pumped! It was awesome when she came walking through the door. We both were pretty excited, and I think she could tell haha. We didn’t do the best job of containing our joy. It was like the best thing that happened the whole week! Sacrament Meeting was pretty good! A girl in our ward going on a mission gave her farewell talk and it was literally 5 minutes long. Super weird talk. Like usually missionary farewells are pretty long, and she just gave a pretty generic 5 minute talk and didn’t say anything about going on a mission. But it is what it is, so who am I to judge? After church we had some lunch and companion study and then drove out to Dover to stop by the dude we found last week, Dane Schwarze. He was leaving right when we pulled up, so we drove like 8 miles back to another town to stop by a less active family who wasn’t home, and then drove back to Dover and he was home that time! He said he was actually just heading out again, but he set up a time for us to come over on Thursday this week, and also gave us a referral to another lady in Dover. So we stopped by his referral and talked to her for a few minutes, and she also told us we could come back on Thursday! So we are excited for Thursday! After that we met with Mary Ann and Ricky. Ricky isn’t a member and Mary Ann is but is less active. Ricky had a date set at one point last year, and then kind of dropped off the radar for a while. We are trying to get him back into it and help him gain a testimony. Mary Ann makes it very hard because she talks the whole time, and she’s a little off mentally, so it’s usually nothing related to the gospel or makes any sense. They’re an odd couple for sure! After that we had dinner with the Bartoos. They are super cool and a really nice family. We had a good discussion with them about the atonement of Jesus Christ and all the ways it can help us. I was able to share a part from the email that Christy Christiansen sent us (thanks for that!) and they loved it! After dinner we visited Sister King down in Chatfield with Brother Oesterle (older one). She is so awesome. Just big old hugs for all of us at the door and just makes you feel like a million bucks haha. We ended up having a way cool discussion about the second coming and missionary work, so it was really cool! After that we got home at around 8:20 pm so we went to do some Facebook work at the church. I noticed Elder Meyer and Flora were both on Facebook, so we set up an impromptu video chat and it was fun to talk to them and catch up on everything with Flora! So that was a great way to cap off the night. 

     Well, the work here is super slow, but we are working hard and having fun in any way we can haha. Elder Bowman is super cool and we get along really well, so that’s been good! I’m excited for winter to be over, but we still got about a month or so left of death cold haha. I’m loving my mission right now and there’s no place I would rather be right now. It’s awesome! For anyone considering serving a mission, do it. It’ll be the best choice you ever make. Your faith and testimony grows so much. Looking back, I honestly didn’t even have much of a testimony before my mission compared to what it is now. Missions are amazing! You bless so many lives and are able to be a light to so many of God's children. It’s seriously the coolest thing on the planet! So if you’re thinking about serving a mission, do it! You’ll never regret it. I promise! Love you all, and hope you have a great week!

Much love,

Elder Beach

#MavUp #10

Our Book of Mormon snow print!

District Meeting that basically ended up being Zone Meeting!

Vikings got thrashed!

     A big hello to all my family, friends, and coaches back home, at school, and serving around the world! Hope this email finds you all doing well and enjoying life! This week has been a little crazy, but it’s been really fun and we are working really hard to find people to teach. All the investigators we have right now basically just expect us to come over and hang out. As soon as we start bringing up anything gospel related they seem to not like it, so we’ve been doing a lot of finding and the usual stuff when you have relatively few people to teach haha.  But I love the area and ward. It’s a really small ward but the members are so awesome and I love serving them!

     So Monday was P-day and we basically get like zone p-day every week in Rochester because there’s 5 teams in Rochester so we always hang out at the stake center. It was MLK day so a bunch of kids from the different wards came and balled with us. So that was fun! There was this one kid that came that thought he was the next Michael Jordan or something.  He was rocking the Nike dri fit shirt and the knee pads and all that, and thought he was some hot stuff. So our first possession on offense he was guarding me, and I caught it in the post and just destroyed him haha.  I just drop stepped and basically put my shoulder through his chin and just put in the nice layup. He just looked at me like, “What the heck just happened? I can’t guard that.” Anyway, we had a good time and it was good to get the competitive juices going a little bit! We had a lesson Monday night with a less active lady named Sister Keene. She was super nice and seems like she has a desire to return to activity in the church. She had some questions about some doctrinal things she didn’t understand. We were able to answer all of her questions and she said she felt much better about the questions she had by the time we were done. Her goal is to get her temple recommend so she can do her parents' temple work for them! So we set some goals and plans with her to help her work towards that! 

     Tuesday morning we all met at the stake center to watch the First Presidency message. That was super awesome! I’m grateful to know that President Nelson, Oaks, and Eyring were all sustained by the Quorum of the 12 and they have my sustaining vote as well. I know they are men called by God, not self-appointed, or voted in by the people. 

     So after that we did our personal studies and planned for the day and then had some lunch at Perkins with Bishop Roberts. He’s a great guy! I like him a lot. He runs marathons and is like 60, so he’s in pretty good shape haha. We talked a lot about members we should work with and how the work is going in the ward. He wants us to work with the Young Men a lot, too, so they can get excited to serve missions and get a feel for what it’s like. That helped me a lot when I got to go out with Elders Murphy and Comerer before I came out here. Those guys were a party haha. After that we headed down to Stewartville and stopped by a bunch of people on the way down. We got an appointment with this less active lady named Sister Averbeck set up for later in the evening on our way back up from Stewartville. We stopped by pretty much everyone in Stewartville and met with Brother Swenson, who is a less active. He’s super nice and has a super cute little baby boy. His wife is a pharmacist and he’s a stay at home dad. We got his Facebook contact info so we could communicate that way and send him stuff each day so they can read the Book of Mormon and watch videos and stuff we send them. I’m not sure why he doesn’t come to church. He said his wife works Sundays and he feels weird going to church by himself, so I’m not sure. After that we knocked some doors for like an hour and it was super cold haha.️ We gave away two Books of Mormon but not sure how solid either of them were. But you never know! After that we had dinner with the Oeltjens. They live in Stewartville and are super cool. They remind me of the Gretz family, that I knew in Apple Valley, a lot. Brother Oeltjen joined the church like 2-3 years ago and they have a kid that struggles with drug problems. They’re awesome though, and made some bomb spaghetti for us. After that we had a lesson with Sister Averbeck. She is really cool. She joined the church in Idaho about 20 years ago. She’s from the Rochester area originally and moved out there for work and joined the church. When she moved back to MN her husband had an affair and now is with his girlfriend who is 26 and he’s 50. Kinda weird. So she’s still kind of struggling with that. We talked about some things that are holding her up from coming to church and stuff, and talked about how to work through them. She’s got a lot of potential, so hopefully we can get her some fellowship from the ward! After that we accounted with the Sisters.  The Winona Elders (Peterson and Michelson) came over to spend the night. It was a night to remember I’ll just leave it at that. 

     Wednesday we had to get up at like 5:45 am to be on the road by 7 am for Zone Conference up in Lakeville. We got there about 8:30 am, which was good, and then headed in to get the party started. Zone Conference was good! Lots of focus on driving in snowy conditions and how to avoid frostbite and all that good stuff. We played this crazy game where you had to run in the gym and answer a question correctly about technology safeguards, and I won in my group even with my cowboy boots on haha. The Rochester Zone took the championship, so that was dope! After that we went to go see Brother Stanich in Apple Valley since we were up this way. He was happier than a kid on Christmas morning when we walked in his room haha. So we visited with him for a little bit. He’s doing much better. He’s lost like 50 lbs and looks good. After that we started the trek home to Rochester. We dropped off the Winona Elders at our place and then went and had dinner with Sister Fieck at Bakers Square. I got this turkey bacon pita sandwich thing that was super good! We got to know Sister Fieck a little better, and she is so awesome. She’s a single lady who joined the church a while back, but is an awesome member missionary and is super solid. She’s way cool.  After that we went and picked up some less actives for basketball and then headed to the church and balled out with us, the ZLs, Winona, and some investigators and less actives from all our wards. It was way fun! And I got to do some missionary work with one of the sisters' investigators after we got done playing. He was on my team the whole time so we were like best buds by the time we got done playing haha.

     Thursday we basically did service the whole day haha. We accounted with the ZLs in the morning and went and got some more food because we were running low on veggies and stuff. After that we went to Channel 1 food shelf and all we did for 2 hours was take bread out of its package and throw it in this ginormous bin. We filled 5 bins completely full and the dude working there was just like completely blown away at how much we did. He’s like, “This would’ve taken me like 2 months to do by myself. Thank you so much!” We were like, “No problem, my man!” It really wasn’t that much work, haha, we just worked really fast for 2 hours straight! After that we stopped by a few people we found tracting but none of them were super interested except this dude named Bakeel we found who was a Muslim. He said we could come back on Saturday, so we got that set up with him. After that we helped the Gregsons pack up their moving truck because they are moving to Illinois. We helped them with that for about 2 and a half hours. We were the only people from the ward besides Brother Osterley that showed up, so I’m glad we were there or they would’ve been packing all night haha. After that we stopped by to see Tess, and she wasn’t there unfortunately. After that we had some dinner and went to the church to workout and then called it a night.

     Friday we did some laundry and weekly planning at the same time. The ZLs have a washer and dryer in their apartment, so we threw in some wash there and then weekly planned at the church and then went back and forth for like 3 hours haha. Weekly planning was death this week. We went through the whole less active/part member family list and decided who we want to focus on and also all the investigators and formers who have any potential at all. So that took a good chunk of time, and then we tried to schedule stuff with them and got like 3 things set up and just planned in stop bys the rest of the week and knocking doors and contacting down town. After that we drove down to Spring Valley and stopped by a bunch of people down there. Literally no one was home.  It was rough. We only got to meet with one person down there, and that ended up being a really good visit! He was a less active dude named Brother Larson. He joined the church like 5 years ago and is now less active. Not sure why.  We shared “Waiting on our Road to Damascus” by Elder Uchtdorf with him and he really liked it. He said he felt like that’s how he is sometimes. He doesn’t always fan the flame of his testimony and sometimes just waits for things to happen in his life rather than make them happen. We ended up giving a Book of Mormon to his daughter who is like 7 or 8. She said she loved the Bible and I was like, “Do you ever read the Book of Mormon?” She’s like, “No! What’s that?” So we gave her one and left her with Moroni 7 to read because her favorite chapter in the Bible is 1 Corinthians 13 about charity. She was stoked out of her mind to read it haha.  So that was pretty cool! After that on the way home we stopped by this less active elderly couple named the Lexs. They joined a while back and said they had issues with the doctrine of “becoming Gods.” So we talked about that and cleared up what it meant. Sister Lex had never read the Book of Mormon and knew basically nothing about church teachings except that, so I don’t know how she even got baptized. Brother Lex has dementia, so I’m not even sure he remembers anything. It was kind of a weird visit, but they were super nice and said we could come visit them anytime we were down there. 

     Saturday was a crazy day.  We did some stop bys in the morning and met a super nice less active lady who said we could come back on Mondays because that’s the only day she doesn’t work. So we will probably be going there next Monday because we have a couple appointments set up for this Monday. In the afternoon we went to downtown Rochester and did some contacting. We were there for like 2 hours and I talked to a ton of people.  I’m pretty sure 95% of the people I talked to were insane to one degree or another. There are some crazy weirdos in Rochester.  So basically I just ended up having a bunch of super awkward conversations with people, so that was fun. Most people didn’t want to hear anything about the gospel, but were more than happy to talk about anything else, so I tried to be nice and talk a little with everyone, but if they weren’t interested I would move on pretty quick to the next person. I met this really cool dude named Jonquel who is from Chicago and is living in Rochester while working. I got his phone number and he told me he had met with missionaries before and had a Book of Mormon. I actually passed Jonquel on the street and felt impressed to go talk to him, so I chased him down and ended up walking about 4 blocks with him while I talked to him. After that I went to go see how Elder Bowman was doing and he had discovered this women’s rights rally going on downtown that was nuts. There were hundreds of people there protesting Trump and how he apparently is suppressing women and won’t let them vote. Mom, you voted correct? People are so strange haha. Anyway, we ended up getting caught in that because they did a march and we couldn’t really get out of it. So we had to wait for it to finish. About 25 minutes after that we had a lesson with Bakeel. It went really well and he had read the first couple chapters of the Book of Mormon and had some questions about that. So we talked about it with him and ended up teaching part of the Plan of Salvation to him. He asked a bunch of questions right at the start that fit perfectly with what we had planned to teach, so it was a money lesson. After that we had dinner with the Dali family. They are way cool and love smoking meats, so next time we go over they’re hopefully going to smoke something for us. After that we did some tracting and some stop bys and then some Facebook work because we ran out of stuff to do around 8:30 pm, and people aren’t super happy when you knock on their door at 8:30 pm.  So that was our crazy Saturday!

     Sunday was good! We had a good Sacrament Meeting, and I got to help pass the Sacrament again this week. I really enjoy participating in the Sacrament. Now that I understand the importance and reason for it, it means a whole lot more to me! So I love it now.  Brother Busby gave a really good talk about how we can attain Christlike attributes. After the meeting, Dr. Coleville asked him where he could get a copy of the talk. Brother Busby just gave him his talk right on the spot. Dr. Coleville comes over and is like, “I asked where I could get a copy of his talk, and the man just handed me the whole damn thing! Imagine that! What a kind man.” I was dying. Dr. Coelville is a hoot and half haha.  He swears at the most random times, and it’s so funny! After church we had lunch really quick and drove out to Dover on the far East of our area. There was a less active part member family out there, so we stopped by and they weren’t home. As we were getting in the car to go stop by someone else, I felt like we should knock the street they lived on. So I was like, “Elder Bowman, we should knock the street haha”. He’s like “Uggggnhhhhh..... ok.” So we did, and met this awesome dude named Dane who was so nice! He was like, “I would love a Book of Mormon!” and took one and said he would start reading it that day. He said he just had shoulder surgery and would be off work for the next 2 months so we could come by and chat whenever we wanted! So that was sweet! Nobody else was home (out of 4 houses) but it was awesome to find him! After that we did some stop bys and then had a lesson with Sister Mancini. Her husband isn’t a member but is a way nice dude. She’s had a tough go the last few years. She’s broken her ankle and had some other health problems. We showed her the “Mountains to Climb” Mormon message and she really enjoyed it! She has such great faith. I was like, “Man, I wish I had faith like hers." After that we had dinner with the Voigt family. They’re a little unique, but super nice! Their kids were so funny.  They all loved us and we had such a great time with them! Dr. Coleville invited us over to watch the Vikings game, so after dinner we stopped by to see Tess, but her boyfriend said to not come back anymore.  I was pretty sad about that. After that we stopped by a few more people (most of them were watching the Vikings game and weren’t super happy to see us), and then headed over to Dr. Coleville’s place. We got to talk to him a lot about patriarchal blessings and how we receive answers to prayers while we were there, so that was awesome! The Vikings got destroyed so that kind of sucked, but it is what it is! Hopefully people will be brought to the depths of humility and be ready for the gospel now! 

     This week has been really good. The work here isn’t super popping right now, but I’m confident we can get it going again. We've just got to work hard! I really learned the importance of following the Spirit this week. Sometimes I get promptings and I just play it off like it was my own thoughts. I tried to follow those more this week and some good things came out of them! I know that God really knows who is ready to hear his gospel and we just need to follow the promptings to talk to those people. It is awesome! We got about 8-10 inches of snow here today, so we are going to be shoveling people out probably the next day or so because it snowed a lot and is still snowing. The mission is great! I’m having a good time and really enjoying it. Thanks for all the prayers and support. They help so much! There are some days I’m so worn out physically, mentally, and spiritually I honestly wonder how I can keep doing it. I know the prayers from back home help so much and I appreciate them a great deal! I love you all and have a great week!

Much love,

Elder Beach

#MavUp #10

The "First Presidency of the Rochester Zone". :)

Me and Elder Gooch - one of my comps from Minnetonka.

We went to visit Brother Stanich in Apple Valley.

Me and Elder Peterson - my MTC companion.

Me and Elder Nelson.  He is in Minnetonka now and came out with Elder Layton.

Me and Elder Searle.

Week 1 in Rochester

     Hello to all my fam, friends, and coaches back home, at college, and serving around the world! Hope this email finds you all doing well and enjoying the cold winter (at least here in MN). First off, shoutout to my Grandpa Gary for his birthday this weekend. I love you and you are such a great example to me! Thanks for all you do for me and my family. Second, shout out to my man Jake Pitcher for getting engaged this weekend! Super pumped for you and Ashley! Congrats bro! I am now serving down in the Rochester 1st Ward. It’s been great so far! I like the area, it’s very diverse. It has the southeast part of the city and then a whole bunch of little towns all the way down to the Iowa border.  So it’s a big area, but I’m excited to be here. The ward is great!

     So Monday was p day and we had a zone p day at the Pole Barn in Buffalo. It was fun and I did some back squats for the first time in a while and actually did pretty well on the weight, all things considered haha.  I put up 245 on my last set of 7x5 rep scheme. So I was pretty happy with that haha because I haven’t squatted for like 18 months! So that was fun! After that we went to Applebee’s with the Princeton Elders again to watch the National Championship. It was a wild one, and we missed the best part of the game because we had to go home due to our curfew haha. But Alabama pulled off the win in a crazy game, so I’m sure my brother is pumped about that. Good day!

     So my area book reset, so I don’t have all our schedule from last week, so I will just throw in the highlights of each day haha. Tuesday we did a bunch of stop bys in Buffalo and knocked some doors as well. We’ve really been struggling to find anyone in Buffalo knocking doors, but it seems to be working in helping us find people still because we keep getting referrals left and right that are pretty solid. We’ve chalked it up to tracting, so we keep doing it! It was good though, and we had fun because it wasn’t super cold! It was in the 20’s and 30’s early in the week and you don’t even have to wear a coat. It’s nice. Tuesday night we had dinner with the Yarcos and that was a party. They made us chili and cornbread and then we ended up having this like hour long discussion about President Monson and what we remember about him and stuff we had learned from him. One thing I remembered from him was he always seemed so happy and cheerful. Sometimes I can get a little grumpy or down and I seem to let it show pretty well on my facial expressions, so I’ve been trying to exude happiness and cheeriness this week! And it seems to be working out pretty good so far. After we had our super long discussion, Brother Yarco wanted to show us some fireworks he had bought, so we went out and shot off some sweet fireworks for a while haha.  So that was pretty cool! After that we headed home and cleaned up the apartment a little bit!

     Wednesday we found out they moved transfers back to Friday instead of Thursday because of some huge storm that was supposed to come through the twin cities on Thursday. It ended up being nothing, so that was kind of a bummer! But Wednesday we went to Rockford and did some stop bys and tracting and also went to Delano and stopped by some people we had previously found tracting. We didn’t have a whole lot of luck on Wednesday haha. It was just one of those days where it was kind of rough. Wednesday night we went up to Monticello and stopped by a few less actives and got to see the Breiwicks. They are super cool! Elder Harper and I discovered them on exchanges a while back. They’re less active but absolutely love the missionaries. They said the Elders hadn’t been over to visit for like 2-3 years so we started going over again. They’ve been pretty sick the last few weeks so we haven’t met with them much, but we got to visit a little bit and see how they’re doing. We got a dinner and lesson set up with them for next Friday, and unfortunately, I will be gone. But it was good! After that we went to the apartment and cleaned up a little bit and I started the “pack of death” as Elder Layton calls it. Basically just packing up all my stuff haha. 

     Thursday we weekly planned at the church. We usually do it in the community room in our apartment but this crazy guy was in there that always talks to us non stop for like 3 hours when we go down. He seems like a lonely dude, but he just doesn’t know when to stop talking haha. 2 weeks ago when we weekly planned, we were sitting in there and he comes in at around 1 pm and he talked until 3:30 pm and we didn’t say a word. We just communicated with each other over Facebook messenger. We try to talk to him and get to know him, but it’s hard to get a word in! He’s a nice enough guy, just likes to talk a lot haha. So we decided to go to the church so we could get it done quicker. Oh I forgot, before weekly planning we visited Brother Archibald in Annandale. He was super sad I was leaving, but I told him I would come visit him when my family came and picked me up to head home. He was pretty stoked about that, so we better go see him when we are out here! He’s a cool guy and was like, “Elder Beach, I can’t wait to meet your parents!” So that was cool! We shared a Mormon message with him and invited him to read Alma 5 as it coordinated with the Mormon message we shared. So after that, we went and weekly planned. It was weird planning for a week I wouldn’t even be there for haha. Elders Layton and Woolley did most of it which was good! I was glad to see them take the lead on it. I still helped out just not as much as I usually do. After that we headed down to Delano for dinner and then back up to visit Paul and Melissa to read the Book of Mormon with them. We talked to her about what our purpose as missionaries was: to invite others to come unto Christ by helping them receive the restored gospel through faith in Christ, repentance, baptism, receiving the Holy Ghost and enduring to the end. She was just like, “I’m happy where I’m at.” So I think we will go over less or just drop her because she isn’t really progressing at all. After that we went home and finished the “pack of death” and headed to bed.  

     Friday we got up and got all packed for transfers and it was cold as heck. Like -15 not including wind chill. So that was fun packing the car and getting the bike on the rack when it was that cold haha. We got to Rockford and I remembered I left my razor charger in the bathroom, so we drove back really quick and got it. Elder Woolley drives really slow, so the second time we got to Rockford, I was like, “Bro, let me drive so we can get there on time.” So I drove the rest of the way to Bloomington haha. Elder Layton was going off on Woolley about how he can drive 7 over before TiWi yells at you in the car. And he would set cruise control right at the speed limit so most of the time we were going 2-3 MPH under the speed limit haha. So I was like, "Let me drive, dude. Cuz I drive a little faster haha."  So we made it to transfers like 1 minute early, so that was good, and then we got everything switched to my new car and then went to Chik-fil-a for lunch with like 50 missionaries haha. After that we drove down to Rochester and got all my stuff dropped off at the apartment and headed out to do some work. We went and saw Dr. Coleville first haha. He got baptized when Elder Gooch was here like 15 months ago. He’s a hoot! He’s like 80 years old and is like a male performance doctor or something like that haha. He’s such a nice guy though, and we hit it off pretty quick. After that we went to the Mayo Clinic to give a lady a blessing. She was actually asleep when we got there, and her husband had just left so we ended up not being able to do it. As we were walking around the Mayo Clinic I thought, “This is like a place Jesus Christ would come to to heal and cheer up people.” I hope I will get to spend some time there just visiting people and helping lift their spirits. It seemed like people there could use some of the Light of Christ or just a friend to talk to! After that we hit up some Subway for dinner and then went to the church and got my area book synced. After that Dr. Coleville wanted us to go to this thing called, "Celebration Recovery" with him. It’s this thing that people go to to help them overcome addictions and stuff. He just goes to learn about it.  So we went with him and it was a little strange. I wasn’t sure exactly how it was supposed to help people. Basically what happens is you go sing gospel rock songs, say a couple prayers, break off into small groups and just talk about random stuff. It was seriously the weirdest thing!  Afterwards, Dr. Coleville was like, “I’m gonna go talk to someone in charge and find out what the hell is going on. That was the strangest thing I’ve ever been to.” I just died laughing.  It was pretty funny!

     Saturday we had nothing planned, so we basically just winged it because I don’t know anyone or anything in the area. We stopped by some potentials and visited with this husband/wife named Karl and Denise. They found them tracting and basically they just go over and chill with them and haven’t really taught them much. So when we went by we tried to talk about the Book of Mormon and Denise told us she has started reading it a little bit and feels like it was easier to read than the Bible. So we talked about why it is easier and just some basic background stuff about the Book of Mormon with them. I feel like this area has a lot of “investigators” that the missionaries just go hang out with and don’t really teach at all, so we are going to change that! After that we tracted for about an hour and half and literally the first 5 houses we knocked on were Muslims. It was crazy haha. They are such nice people though, and one dude let us in and let us teach him about the Book of Mormon, so that was pretty cool! We ended up giving away about 4 Books of Mormon, so that was pretty sweet. After that we had some dinner and then went and visited Ricky and his wife. Ricky is a former investigator that just got picked up again. His wife is a less active member. At one point Ricky had a date set and was progressing really well, and then he just kind of cold turkey backed out at the last minute because of pressure from his family. So we retaught him the some of the restoration and really focused on him reading the Book of Mormon and coming to church and getting an answer for himself if this is the path he needs to follow. He seems like he wants to get baptized, he just needs to get the motivation and determination to do so! After that we visited Sister Klow and her family. She got baptized like 5 years ago and loves the Elders, but is also less active and never keeps commitments. I don’t know what to do about people like her. She literally says she will come to church every single week and then never does, so I don't know what’s up?  It’s odd. Anyway, she super nice and hopefully we can help her and her family get back active again! After that we just drove around and stopped by some potentials and invited them to church and then headed home and called it a night!

     Sunday was pretty wild haha. We had PEC and Ward Council back to back at 7 and 8 am so we had to get up at 6 am and get to the church. When we got there they said all the water pipes were frozen and the water wasn’t working, so they were only going to have Sacrament Meeting. Then like halfway through Ward Council someone came in and was like, “The pipes are fixed!” So church ended up being all three hours haha. I got to pass the Sacrament and Elder Bowman gave a way good talk on Christlike attributes. We had one sort of investigator at church, the husband of a member. After church we headed home and had lunch really quick and then Brother Joslin came and took us to Mayo to give a little baby a blessing. The baby’s mom is friends with a member in the ward, and she asked that we give her baby a blessing of healing because it has something wrong with its spine and isn’t moving its legs. They aren’t sure what’s wrong yet, but are working on it. After that the Rochester 5 Sisters needed us to give them a ride and joint teach a lesson with them because a sister took their car keys to her new area with them and they lost their apartment keys and were locked out of their apartment. So they were “up the creek” as Grandma says haha. After that we had dinner with the Jostlins and they are awesome. We had a great time with them and their family. After that we knocked this neighborhood out on the south end of town we felt inspired to go to. Now this is right during the 4th quarter of the Vikings game, so this is a huge act of faith on our part. So literally the first door we knock on, this super nice like mid-20’s lady opens up and is like, “Yeah, I’m watching the Vikings game, but what’s up?” So we told her who we were and she’s like, “I have some really good friends from back home who are Mormons!” I asked her where she’s from and she said, “Birmingham, Alabama!” I was like “Nooooo.... that’s where my little brother is serving his mission right now!” She thought that was awesome and invited us to come back Thursday to meet with her and her husband! So that was sweet! After that, literally every single person said they were watching the game or weren’t interested, so I guess we were just meant to find Tess (the first girl we talked to). Haha so after that we stopped by a few less actives who weren’t home and then we had to go drop off the Sisters' iPad to them because they left it in our car.  So that was the night! 

     I’m pretty excited to be down here in Rochester! It’s fun! I love the people, I feel like this area has a lot of potential, and the ward is great! Should be a fun transfer. Thanks for all the prayers and support from back home. Keep ‘em coming my way so I can finish strong the last few months of my mission. I love you all! Have a great week!

Much love,

Elder Beach

#MavUp #10

The "Hutchalo" Elders and Elder S from Princeton.

The Three Amigos at transfers!

This dog reminded me of my dog, Hallie!

Transfers

     What’s up to all my fam, friends, and coaches back home, at school, and serving the Lord around the world! Hope this email finds you well! I’m so grateful to be serving a mission at this time. As I’m getting nearer to the end, I’m truly just so grateful to be here. As my family and I have been talking more about school and my life decisions after my mission, I’m just grateful for this time I have where I can just fully focus on Jesus Christ and devoting my time to sharing his gospel. It is truly a marvelous time where I can just have one goal and purpose and I don’t have to worry about anything else but helping others and myself come closer to Christ. It’s awesome, and I’m sad my time is winding down, but I’m loving the mission and it’s awesome! I am getting transferred to Rochester 1st Ward this Thursday, so I will be down there probably for the rest of my mission or pretty close to it. I’m super excited to serve with Elder Bowman. He came out with me and it should be fun! So here’s how our week went:

     Monday was p day and also the New Years 6 bowl games for college football, so we moved our p day back to the evening and worked in the morning so we could catch some of the games at Applebee’s in the evening. We had a bomb lesson with Diane in the morning. We taught her the gospel of Jesus Christ and she loved it. I’m so hyped for her and I’m sad to leave. We got a date set with her for baptism and now I have to leave. It’s sad. So anyway, we read 2 Nephi 31 with her and it was great. I love how simple the gospel is, but how great and awesome it is at the same time as well! We got another appointment with her set up for Sunday afternoon, so more on that later. After that we stopped by a less active dude named Terry. He lived in Annandale and we visited with him for a little bit. He got baptized in Apple Valley (go figure) and then moved to Annandale and hasn’t been to church since he’s been here. So we are going to start working with him to help him get active again! After that we went to Rockford to get some free Dominoes pizza from Brother Herdklotz. He’s a good dude and hooks us up with some pizza sometimes. We got the pacific veggie one and it was pretty good! We did our laundry and emailed and stuff and then went to Applebee’s to watch the games! It was fun and the Princeton Elders came with us, too! We got some bottomless chicken tenders and fries and we kept telling them just chicken tenders and and not fries and they would always bring us fries and we were like, “We don’t want fries!!” It was pretty funny! It was fun though, and I’m glad we got to do that.

     Tuesday morning we did some stop bys in Monticello and then got some groceries on the way home. We met a few less actives that had some good potential so that was solid. After that we had some lunch, comp study and then headed to Rockford to do some work for the day. We hadn’t worked in Rockford ever, so we figured it was time to get down there haha. We did some tracting for about an hour and fifteen minutes. We talked to a bunch of people but nobody was interested and we didn’t give away anything. Not even a card.  It was rough. And it was snowy and pretty cold. But we got it done and had a good time haha. After that we stopped by Sister Cagle. She is the only member in her family. Her husband took his name off the records and is pretty anti church now for some reason. All her kids are less active and a few of them took their names off too. She told us she just had a solid testimony of the gospel and didn’t have a falling away. So she’s still active and teaches Primary, but she was super appreciative of the visit. I was able to give her a blessing and it was great! She was very glad for it and I was glad I could help her with that! After that we did a few more stop bys and met a few crazy people haha. After that we had a lesson with Paul and Melissa and read the Book of Mormon with them.  We asked Melissa if she had prayed about the Book of Mormon. She said she had and she knows it’s true, she’s just content with where she’s at. She isn’t allowed to take sacrament at Catholic Church and I don’t even think she goes to it because she comes to church a lot with Paul. She said she’s happy where she’s at. There isn’t much we can do with her at this point. She won’t get baptized, so it’s tough to know what to do. She knows the church is true, she just won’t make a commitment to join even though she knows it’s true. So that’s a bummer.  After that we went home and had some dinner and worked out and called it a night.

     Wednesday we had district meeting in the morning and then did some finding after. It was cold! And nobody wanted to chat with us much so that kind of sucked, but it was good haha. After that we did some lunch and comp study and then we went over to the Yarco's house in Monticello and met with Kyle for a little bit. He’s a young man in the ward and likes the missionaries a lot so we went over and just visited with him for a little bit and talked about how he’s doing and some stuff he’s being struggling with. He’s a good kid, just needs some good friends and direction in his life, so the missionaries have been that for him over the years.  We are continuing the tradition! After that we had dinner with the Murdoffs. He is the Ward Mission Leader and we’ve never met with him. So we called him last week and were like, “Are we ever going to meet and have a coordination meeting?” So he said to come over for dinner and have a coordination meeting, too. So we did that and it was good. After that we had a lesson with Kristen Lamont and her family. We met her sister, who lives with them and is also less active, and she sat in on our lesson too. We taught them the restoration and invited them to read the Book of Mormon each day. It was really good and they seemed to like it and committed to read it as a family each day! So that was pretty good! After that we stopped by some people we had found tracting and this one dude we had very briefly met named Brett let us in. We found out he was Jewish and was super nice and was really interested in the Book of Mormon. He took one and said he was for sure going to check it out! So that was sweet. We had a good evening of stop bys, so that was awesome! It was great!

     Thursday we blitzed Princeton, and Elder Woolley and I went with Elder Loveland. It was pretty fun! We spent a lot of the day in the car just driving around doing stop bys. It wasn’t the most productive blitz I’ve been on but it was fun to hang out with Elder Loveland for the day because he is a funny dude haha. So we basically just drove around and stopped by a bunch of people haha. After that we headed home and had some Subway for dinner. After that we had a really good lesson with Chase at the church! He’s doing good, and we taught him the Plan of Salvation. He really liked it and had some good questions and insights. One thing I thought was really cool was he had some really similar beliefs to us on the fall of Adam. He was like, “Yeah, there was a lot of good that came out of it!” So we were able to discuss the pros and cons of the fall and how Jesus Christ overcame the cons of the fall. So it was really cool! We also set a baptism date with him for February 10th. So that was awesome! I’m super excited for him. He’s got some great potential and seems genuinely interested in learning and making and keeping commitments with this.

     Friday morning we did some more tracting and didn’t really find anyone super interested, but it was good and we gave away a few Books of Mormon. After that we headed to Hutch and met with the Baptist Pastor dude we met while tracting. He was such a nice guy and we talked to him about his church and stuff. He’s the Pastor at Cornerstone Church, which is one of the biggest churches in the area. He basically was like, “If you follow Jesus then you’re good to go.” He didn’t believe you have to be part of a specific church, so we ended up teaching him the restoration and talked about the Priesthood authority you need. He had read the Book of Mormon before and said he didn’t agree with things in it, so he didn’t believe in it, just the Bible. I find it odd that so many people that read the Book of Mormon say they don’t believe it. There is literally nothing in it that contradicts the Bible. There are things that expound on teachings in the Bible, but nothing directly changes what’s in the Bible. It just enhances and makes it more clear. He didn’t seem to want to accept that though, so that’s his choice and there isn’t much we can do about it. After that we tracted in the death cold for like an hour and didn’t find anyone, so after that we headed down to Hutch and had some dinner and weekly planned and that was pretty much our day haha. We played some church trivia game we found in the apartment Friday night and that was pretty fun. We were pretty good at it haha. 

     Saturday was a good day! We went out to Cosmos in the morning and nobody Elder Layton and I found was home.  Then we had a lesson with the Herrins. We showed the “Hope of God's Light” Mormon message and invited them to pray each day as a family. They said they could do that, so that was good. After that we headed to the the Smoky Hollow down in Fairfax for some lunch. The Gohnerts in the Willmar Branch own it, and they said whenever we were down there to stop in for a bite to eat. So we stopped in and had some burgers and visited with them about some people we should visit in the Willmar Branch and who would be worth visiting with the High Councilman over the Willmar Branch. So we got some names and headed out. We stopped by a bunch of people in Buffalo Lake and Gibbon and some other towns around there. We ended up visiting with Sister Goodeman, whose husband is not a member of the church. She’s had some crazy health problems in the last few years, so it was good to see her. Her husband was a hardcore German Catholic haha. But he’s a super nice guy. We shared the Mormon message called, “Lifting Burdens” with her that talks about the atonement of Jesus Christ. She really liked it, and we invited her to make it to church as much as possible. She said she would be there as often as her health allowed, so that was great to hear. After that we had dinner with the Patinos in Glencoe. They’re awesome! Brother Patino is in like full on member missionary mode and is getting after it with sharing the gospel with people, so that’s awesome!  They’re good people and we had a good time with them. After that we had a lesson with Lloyn Thurn. We watched the conference talk by Elder Renlund from this last conference about the Priesthood and the atonement of Jesus Christ with him. He’s working on getting the Priesthood, so we felt that that would be a good one to watch for him to learn more about the Melchizedek Priesthood and the duties and why we even need the Priesthood! He liked it and he’s doing good. I feel bad for him, he’s a pretty lonely guy I feel like, so visiting with him always brightens up his day. So that was good! After that we headed home and did some working out and called it a night!

     Sunday we had church at the Hutch branch and I got to bear my testimony in Sacrament Meeting. We watched “Joseph Smith: Prophet of the Restoration” this week in our spare time, and I just received once again such a strong witness that he was a Prophet of God. It was cool, so I shared my testimony of Joseph Smith. After church we got all our stuff packed up and headed up to Annandale to meet with Diane again. We retaught the restoration, just to make sure she fully understands it. It was a really good lesson and we were able to relate it super well to her. She loved it, and we also gave her a priesthood blessing. She said she felt like she had evil spirits inside her and was angry a lot so we gave her a blessing to help her have the Spirit and feel peace and love. We left her with Moroni 7 to read about charity and how we can attain it, and told her to pray each day to know if the Book of Mormon is true. We showed her part of the restoration movie of the first vision. She said she had this weird feeling and felt like she had butterflies in her heart. We explained to her that that was the Spirit witnessing the truth of it to her. We told her to pay attention for that feeling as she reads and prays. We also set a date with her for February 10 for baptism, so that is sick. After that we headed down to dinner in Montrose with the Otises. We ended up being there for almost 2 hours because they just kept telling us stories about how they joined the church haha. It was really cool, and they seemed really happy to have someone visit with them, so we figured it was ok to be there that long. They’re good people and love the church a lot. We had 2 lessons set up with less active families Sunday night and both fell through, so we ended up tracting some town homes in Rockford and found like 5 people, so that was awesome. We also found this lady who told us her husband was a member that we had no clue even lived there and we could come visit them next Sunday. I won’t be there, so that kind of sucks, but it was a cool thing to find them! After that we headed home and called it a week.

     I’m loving my mission right now! It so awesome to be out here. The work has really picked up in Buffalo and Hutch and I’m excited for it to continue to roll forth. I’m grateful to be able to start working in Rochester and helping people there come unto Christ and be perfected in him. I truly am so lucky to be part of this work. It’s awesome. Love you all and hope you have a great week!

Much love,

Elder Beach

#MavUp #10

We thought we saw the "real" Santa in the parking lot.  However, he was smoking, so we knew it couldn't really be him...

Lunch at Smoky Hollow.

Elder Layton literally falls asleep every time we get in the car! 

If he's not sleeping, he's posing...

Zone P-day!