Sometime this week, I can't remember when, we received our flight plans for when we leave. Almost our whole district is leaving Monday morning. But Elder Deschamps and I, as well as two Sisters from our district, are leaving on Tuesday morning...at 3:30 AM. I have no idea what we are going to be doing on Monday.
Last Tuesday/Wednesday we continued our TRCs (lessons) with Viktoria and Tanner. Viktoria is basically the dream investigator. On our second visit, after having not even taught her about the Book of Mormon, she says to us, "I had a question about the last lesson, so I went to the Book of Mormon..." and we were just like, "Wow, that's awesome," and so we taught her about the Book of Mormon and encouraged her to continue to read. We had four total lessons with her this week, and after each one Elder Deschamps and I just laughed and said to each other, "Why are we even teaching her? She pretty much is already doing what we invite her to do before we even extend the invitation." She really understood a lot and wanted to learn on her own, so we were basically just there to encourage her to keep doing what she was already doing. Finally, on our fourth and last lesson, we extended the invitation to be baptized. She said that it was the most confident YES of her life. Even though she wasn't a real investigator (I think) and she was super easy to teach and baptism was a no-brainer decision for her, I was super pumped. That was one of the best moments I had had as a missionary up to that point. I know that those moments will most likely be few and far between out in the field, but I can't wait to hear that "yes" with a real investigator who is really willing to take that step to change their life for the better.
During our Wednesday TRC with Tanner, we taught him about the Book of Mormon also. We taught what it is, where it came from, what's in it, and we shared with him the introduction and 2 Nephi 25:26. He agreed to begin reading, and that verse set up nicely for our next lesson with him on Friday, when we taught him about the Atonement. He kind of understood what the Atonement is already, so we shared Alma 7:11-13 and explained to him that it's about so much more than sin and death. In fact, those are the last two things that those verses prophesy that the Savior will take upon Himself. He also took upon Himself our sickness, our heartache, our temptations, our grief. In the book "The Continuous Atonement" it says, "He's got us covered." And He does. He covered everything. Elder Deschamps shared the story of when Peter walked on the water, but he began to doubt and he started to sink. However, as soon as he started sinking, the Savior was there to grab Peter's hand a pull him up. That's the same thing with us in our lives. Jesus is always there to pull us up if we will just put out our hand, grab His, and let Him pull. Tanner really liked that analogy, and as that was our last TRC with him, I felt like we ended on a high note with him.
Also on Friday, right after our TRC with Viktoria (at about 8:30 AM) we headed to class, which started at 9:30. We were so pumped about having such a good lesson with her that we didn't even realize until we got to class that President Eyring was at the MTC, and he was in the building that we had just walked out of. There is a big commons/lobby type area that we walked through on our way out of the TRC on our way to class, and that's where President Eyring was. We walked right through the same room he was in and we had no idea until we got to class and everyone was chatting about him being here. We still had about 12 minutes until class started, so Elders Deschamps, Williams, Goodrich, and I went to go see if we could see President Eyring. By the time we got back to the building he was in, there were security guards at all of the ground floor doors, so they wouldn't let us in. So we went up to the roof where there is a little study area and went into the building from there. We ran down the stairs into the lobby area where he was, but by the time we got there we could only see his entourage walking down the hallway and out the door to go outside. We were told by security to go out the door closest to the stairs we had just come down, and so we ran outside and around the building to get a look at President Eyring while he was outside. We got there just in time to see him and his group of family/security walk into another building. It would have been cool to see him close up, or maybe even meet him, but that's okay. I don't need to meet him to know he is a prophet. Anyway, that was one of many cool experiences this week.
The coolest thing I did this week, and quite possibly the coolest thing I have ever done in my life, was on Saturday night, when we had another fantastic lesson from Brother Abadillo. I think last week I said he was 5'2", but I think he is really like 4'11". But let me tell you, that man is a spiritual giant. I love all of his lessons, because he is so smart, and has such good ways of explaining things. Often times he doesn't actually explain things, but just sits there and asks us questions that perfectly lead us to finding answers for ourselves. Anyway, this lesson was focused on invitations and commitments. The steps to doing that he explained as follows: 1) invite, 2) promise blessings, 3) testify, and 4) follow up. Most of the lesson was focused on #2, promising blessings. People often accept invitations, but they probably won't often actually follow through with them unless they understand why they need to do what we ask them to do. And that's where promising blessings comes in. Bro. Abadillo took our class, split up our companionships, and placed us each with new companions for a few minutes. I was assigned to be with Elder Williams for this activity. Brother Abadillo then says to us, "Okay everyone. You have three minutes to receive revelation for your new companion. I want you to use the scriptures, teach them something, invite them to do something, and promise them blessings from our Heavenly Father." This was no mere role play, like we had been doing for the last 11 days. This was us, receiving revelation from God specifically for our companion. We were all pretty much in shock. How were we supposed to do that? We didn't know what our fellow missionaries needed promised to them... but God did. I said a quick prayer and just opened my Book of Mormon to some of my favorite chapters, hoping to find something that Elder Williams needed to hear. I quickly went through 2 Nephi 2, 2 Nephi 9, Alma chapters 34 and 42, and finally settled on Alma 26. And by "settled," I mean that I felt very strongly that this was where I was supposed to be in the scriptures. I shared with Elder Williams verses 27, and 30-31 of Alma 26. These verses talk about one of the struggles of being a missionary: feeling depressed when you feel like you aren't successful. They speak of being patient in your afflictions, and God will give unto you success. You will find joy in the salvation of many souls, and you will be able to look back on your mission and recognize not just a few successes that you have had, but many of them. I invited Elder Williams to be patient with himself and with others, and I promised him these things. Or rather, God promised him through me that he will be a successful missionary, and that he will find joy in the many successes that he will have. It may not sound that cool, but as we sat there and bawled together, I realized that that wasn't me talking. I was being led the whole time. A quote from Bruce R. McConkie came to mind, called "Our Missionary Commission." The quote goes like this: "I am called of God. My authority is above that of the kings of the earth. By revelation I have been selected as a personal representative of the Lord Jesus Christ. He is my Master and he has chosen me to represent him. To stand in his place, to say and do what he himself would say and do if he personally were ministering to the very people to whom he has sent me. My voice is his voice, and my acts are his acts; my words are his words and my doctrine is his doctrine. My commission is to do what he wants done. To say what he wants said. To be a living modern witness in word and deed of the divinity of his great and marvelous latter-day work." This quote became very real to me on Saturday night. In my journal I wrote, "I literally spoke for God tonight. I promised things that God Himself would have promised if He were on the Earth...Brother Abadillo said that this lesson would change my life. I have yet to hear that man tell a lie. I have power as a missionary and as a representative of Christ that I didn't fully understand until tonight. I'm excited to exercise that power again."
Sundays are long days here in the MTC. I've had some pretty busy Sundays in the past 6 months, with home teaching, mission prep class, homebound Sacrament, and interviews with the Bishop or Stake President all in the same day. But Sundays here are twice as long. They are really awesome, especially when I don't get chosen to give a talk. Actually this week, the Elder that does comedy all night long in our dorm building, got called on to give a talk. His name is Elder Duford, and I can in no way take him serious because of his stupid stories he tells every night. He got called on to speak and everyone laughed. His talk was better than I expected, but he still didn't seem totally prepared to give it. We have lots of classes on Sunday, but all of them this week were really good. We had a couple of lessons from Brother and Sister Garlick (from our Branch Presidency) about the Apostasy/Restoration, and later about Family History. We also had a Priesthood lesson about recognizing and feeling the Spirit, from Elders Rippy and Johnson. It pretty much turned into a discussion rather than a lesson, which is what you want, so that was good. I gained a lot of insight on how/when the Spirit speaks, and how the environment has to be right for it to happen.
On Monday (yesterday) we got new investigators for TRCs. One of them, Benjamin, is like the worst investigator ever, and yet I loved talking to him. It's so hard to describe him and his views. Basically he believes in God, but doesn't understand who or what God is exactly. We explained to him that God is our loving Heavenly Father, and kind of tried to go through the Restoration lesson. I basically told him that he can't just take our word for things, and that he can find out if what we taught is true, and if God is really there and if He loves you. I asked him, "What would it mean if God Himself told you these things were true?" I was totally unprepared for his response: "Honestly, that wouldn't mean anything to me." He has some interesting beliefs, and I think the strongest of those is that he fails to see why we need God, Jesus, the commandments, or religion in general at all. He told us this: "Here's what I believe... If you do good things, good things happen to you. If you do bad things, bad things happen to you. I don't know why I need religion to just live those beliefs." It was super weird talking to him because he wasn't disrespectful or rude in any way. He just told us what he believes and that he wants to keep that while we keep what we believe to be true. He also told us that he hates the concept of faith, because its almost like a self-fulfilling prophecy, or "confirmation bias" as he called it. He thinks that faith is dumb because if you believe in something (have a hypothesis about it), and then you test it out (by praying), he explained that whether you receive an answer or not, you will believe in your mind that you did receive an answer just because you wanted to receive an answer. Man, the whole lesson with him was super weird. If I didn't have a strong testimony of these things that we teach, my own faith might have been shaken--why do we need a God? Why can't we just do good and let good things happen to us in return? I know these answers. He doesn't. But I'm still having a hard time explaining these answers to him. And yet, he wasn't out to bash with us and/or prove us wrong in any way. He just didn't want to accept what we had to say. At the end of listening to him, Elder Deschamps and I just bore our testimonies. It was a super weird experience, and yet we both felt like the Spirit was there. Honestly, if we weren't obligated to go back and talk to him (since that is what is on the schedule on Wednesday), I don't know if I would. I have no idea what to say to him about the stuff that we discussed yesterday. We talked to Brother Abadillo about it last night, and he helped us with a few things, but honestly, I don't have any idea at this point how our next 2 lessons with him are going to go. We went to the temple this morning and I specifically had the question of what to say to him in mind. I'm still not sure what to say to him tomorrow night, but I do have a testimony of the lesson-planning process. Elder Deschamps and I will continue to employ it, and hopefully receive inspiration about what course to pursue in our next discussion with him. Our purpose is to help him come unto Christ, and I have hope that if we make that our goal while we plan and while we teach, our thoughts and our mouths will be filled with what God knows he needs to hear. I have had that experience before (see 2 paragraphs previous), and I have confidence that it can happen again if that's what God wants.
Anyway, the MTC has been fun, and I'm going to miss it when I leave next week. At the same time, I'm really excited to get out in the field and actually do real missionary work and teach real people. I'm very glad that God has answered my prayers by giving me such an awesome companion and district. I'm going to miss the ones that aren't headed to my mission. I hope God will answer my prayers for my future companions, especially my trainer. I miss all of you, but I'm happy to be out here serving. I can't wait to go serve in Alabama. Thank you for your prayers in my behalf. I pray for all of you every day. I love you all.
Love,
Elder Beach
The Temple, "Merica"
Elders Goodrich, Beach, Williams, and Deschamps at the temple.
Me with Elders Rippy, Champlin, and Deschamps.
Me with Elders Hart, Barden, Goodrich, and Williams.
Me and Elder Champlin.
There are murals on each floor of buildings T3 and T4 (the newest classroom buildings). This one is on floor 3 of building T$. It is of Moses at the Red Sea, and it's my favorite mural. If you go to the MTC Open House, go check it out!
Elder Champlin (aka "old man Frank") in a wheelchair that we found in the dorm.
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