Well, I have realized (after being told several times) that in these letters home I don't really talk a whole lot about people that we meet with. Honestly, the truth is that we just don't have that many people that we meet with. We have a few "investigators," but lately we haven't been able to catch a lot of them for various reasons, and we may end up dropping several of them soon. Finding is also a struggle out here, as Scottsboro is not that populated, and Elder Hastings has been here so long that he has knocked a lot of streets that he doesn't want to knock again, so we are a bit limited on where we can find. Anyway, we just don't have that many solid investigators, though we are doing our best and having faith that we will find some. That being said, there are lots of people that I have come to love. So Dad, as you asked, here are some of my favorite people here in Scottsboro (in no particular order) -
Larry and Sandra - These two are a couple who are probably about 70ish. They love us Elders, and they sure love to talk (especially Sandra). Sometimes it is hard to teach them because they just love to talk. We met them while we were knocking doors several weeks ago, and we have been back to their house several times. One week they just decided that they wanted to take us to lunch, and that has continued about every week since then. We've eaten some great food with them. Larry loves football, and loves Alabama, so that's always a plus. They both love to travel, and they have both been to every single US state except Hawaii. We know that Larry reads the Bible every day, and we gave him a Book of Mormon, which he has been reading a little bit. Sandra doesn't read the Bible, (or anything else) and she said that she probably wouldn't read the Book of Mormon (just because she doesn't like reading). I'm not really sure what they believe as far as being affiliated with a denomination. They told us the reason that they don't go to any churches is because they don't like big crowds of people. I guess our branch would be perfect for them because we only have like 50 every week. Anyway, they are great people. They love us, and we love them, and we hope that they will read the Book of Mormon, pray about it, come to church, and do what is right.
Alex - Alex is a 19-year-old kid who lives with and takes care of his grandpa. He is a total redneck, and he is hilarious. He also is kind of tough to teach because he kind of just wants to hang out when we go over there. He is going to school right now to become a welder, and he loves to work on cars. He has like 3 trucks and jeeps in his backyard that he has just taken apart and is in the process of putting them back together. That's usually what he is doing when we go over to his house. He loves us missionaries, and if I'm ever back here after the mission, I'm definitely going to see him. He is just a crazy redneck boy who loves "cone life" and "soy sauce sugar wieners." (Both of those things are just really stupid inside jokes we have with him). Either way, we love him, and we are doing our best to help him see why the things we teach him are important so that he can experience the blessings that come from the Restored Gospel.
Roger - This is not the same Roger that I have been telling you about for the last few weeks. This is a different Rogr who is, in his own words, "Not a professional weed smoker--well, yeah I am a professional weed smoker--but I'm also a professional weed grower, and now I'm a professional weed eater." Yes, Roger eats marijuana. He spent like 40 minutes telling us all about it. It was a pretty interesting conversation. If we rewind about 3 weeks (before we knew about all the weed stuff), we taught Roger the Restoration and gave him a Book of Mormon. The day we learned about the weed, I literally just said to him, "Roger, we know you love this stuff, and that's why you have told us about it so much. Well, we have something that we love, and we want you to enjoy, and that is the Book of Mormon." I committed him to read just the introduction (which he did), and he really liked it. He told us that it was so interesting that he would keep reading the Book of Mormon. I hope that he does. I'm not sure that he will decide to change his life, but we are here not to make people change, only to invite them and to help them to. Roger is always a hoot to talk to.
Dustin - I've told you a little bit about Dustin in the past, but I don't remember what I said. He is just a crazy dude who lives in the projects down here. He lives with his wife Joan and 2 little kids. Colton and Little John. He is kind of ADHD and he gets really distracted really easily. A couple of visits ago he started doing this thing where he just gets on his tablet, gets on YouTube, and starts playing some random General Conference talk. He says we can't start our lesson until we guess 3 apostles in a row just by the sound of their voices. All of the living apostles are easy, but he always plays talks from like 1970 and I have no idea who they are. We can usually get 3 in a row without difficulty as long as he plays recent ones with living apostles. Anyway, we taught the Restoration to him a long time ago, and like 2 weeks ago we taught it to him again, really emphasizing that he needs to read the Book of Mormon, because if it is true, then everything we had just taught him is true, too. After, he was like, "So what are you guys, like Baptist, Methodist, Church of God, what?" I just said, "We aren't any of those. We believe that this church, the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-Day Saints, is literally Jesus Christ's church. He established it while He was on the earth, it was lost for a time, and has been restored through Joseph Smith. Jesus Christ continues to run this church through a prophet." That sums up basically the whole Restoration, and that is what I told him. At that lesson we committed him to read the Book of Mormon to know that for himself. Since that visit, he has lost his Book of Mormon and hasn't tried very hard to find it. We told him that he could just get the Gospel Library app, but I don't know if he will. He also tells us sometimes that he doesn't have time to read. Well, he spends almost every day just sleeping or sitting on his couch watching TV. I love seeing him, and he loves us, but he is just really lazy. He needs to read the Book of Mormon.
Jerry - I don't think that I've told you about Jerry. He is probably about 35-40, bald, kind of looks like a frog, and he is the funniest guy ever. He also lives in the projects, and we love him. He's hilarious. He is pretty much an eternal-gator, but we still see him every once in a while and talk with him, read the Book of Mormon with him, and have a laugh. He loves telling us jokes, and he has literally called us on the phone multiple times (once at 3 AM) just to tell us a joke. The time he called at 3 AM we didn't answer because we were asleep, but he left a message. I couldn't even understand what he said because he was laughing so hard. It was hilarious. I put a picture in my drive a couple of weeks ago with him.
Roger - This is the Roger that I have been telling you about. This week we have tried to see him a few times, but he is avoiding us. We caught him outside last Tuesday when we went over to his house, so we got to talk to him. He let us inside, and we had just decided to go back to the basics to see where his testimony was at. So we watched the Restoration video with him, and talked about Joseph Smith and the Book of Mormon. He told us, as he had done a few weeks ago, that he believes the Book of Mormon is true and that Joseph Smith was a prophet. We committed him to read the Book of Mormon every day, and he told us that he had been, and would continue to do so. I felt like that lesson went really well, but we have not seen him since then, though we did stop by on Friday and Saturday. (On Saturday we could actually see him inside when we knocked, but he just ignored us). I'm not exactly sure what his deal is. We love him, and we want what's best for him. We want to see him again to just help him connect the dots between the Book of Mormon being true and Joseph Smith being a prophet (which he knows to be true) and doing what he needs to do to prepare to enter the waters of baptism. We planned to help him connect those dots and set him a baptismal date on Friday/Saturday when we saw him, but he didn't answer and he won't answer calls or texts. I want him to do the right thing, but even if he chooses not to, I wish that he would just tell us. I want him to either progress, or just tell us to stop coming by. I hate being in the middle of those 2 things. Either way, we will still continue to love him and pray for him to do the right thing.
Whelp, those are a few of my favorite peeps from out here in Scottsboro. There are a lot of people out here to love, and those are just some of them.
This week we went to Huntsville 3 times for various reasons. On Wednesday we had to go so I could get my A1C, which was kind of a pain because Sister Dillard (the mission nurse) was the one who set up the appointment, and the people at the lab that I went to had lost the fax from the doctor who gave the orders for me to get an A1C check. I ended up calling Sister Dillard like 5 times, talking to her, having her talk to the people at the office, and lots of other phone calls were made. While they were getting it figured out, Elder Hastings and I went to lunch with the Zone Leaders. By the time we were finished they had figured everything out and I got to go do my A1C, so that was good. Thursday we went back to Huntsville again for interviews with President Sainsbury. It was a short and sweet interview. He basically just said to keep it up, keep working, and all that good stuff. He also told us what we pretty much already knew: most likely next transfer Elder Hastings will leave Scottsboro and I will stay here with a new Elder. We had kind of figured that much already, and it still isn't guaranteed, but that's what I have to look forward to at this point. On Friday we went to Huntsville again for a multi-district meeting. (For whatever reason, we aren't allowed to have Zone Meetings anymore, but we still do, we just call it a "multi-district meeting" instead. Haha, whatever). That was really good, and lately the whole mission has been working a lot on extending specific commitments and invitations in a "1) Will you...? 2) I promise... 3) I Testify..." pattern. I've really been working on that recently because in that way our commitments are very specific, and people are able to see the blessings that can and will come to them if they follow through with those commitments. It's a good way to do it.
Funny story this week: we were out knocking doors one night, and right as we knocked this one door, Dustin drives by in his truck and yells "Elder Beach! Elder Hastings!" and then he revved his engine super loud. I don't know why, but because it was Dustin, that was hilarious. I was really glad that the person whose door we had just knocked didn't answer because I was just bent over laughing. It would have looked very unprofessional. So, a few days later when we went over to Dustin's, we decided that we were going to deny that whole incident. He told us that he saw us a couple of days before and yelled at us from his truck, and we were just like, "What are you talking about? We never saw you. You must have yelled at the Jehovah's Witnesses or something." We had him going for like 5 minutes before we finally came clean. Haha, sounds stupid but it was hilarious.
So on Friday night since Roger didn't answer the door we kind of didn't have anything to do for a little bit. We went to the store to try and talk to people, and there was a lady who was just chilling in her car in the parking lot. She yelled to us, and we went to go talk to her. She asked if we were JWs, and we told her no. We ended up talking to her for like 20 minutes, got her info, address, phone number, and she said she would be at church on Sunday and she told us we could come by her house and teach her sometime. Her name is April, and we were pumped for that little miracle that happened on Friday night. She actually didn't come to church, which was a bummer, but we are going to go see her later this week.
Well, that's about it for this week. We have been doing our best to teach, invite, find, work, and serve. I'm thankful to be here, despite it being a kind of slow week for teaching. I know that the Lord will provide for us if we put forth our best effort and be obedient. I love all of y'all, and hope you have a great week.
Much love,
Elder Beach
#RollTide (future 2017-18 CFP champs, haha)
We went to a cave called Cathedral Caverns for p-day. It was cool!
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