Temple Week!

Hello to all of my family, all my good buds, my neighbors, and everyone else as well.  I hope this letter finds you well.  We are going to the temple today in Birmingham which will take up pretty much all of our P-day (which is okay, it's the temple), so I might not write a whole lot because we don't have much time.

Last week I told y'all that we were going to teach Drew.  We actually did this time, so that was super awesome!  We had planned to teach him the Restoration, but we didn't get through a lot of it.  Actually, Drew talked for most of the time that we spent with him, and he talked about all kinds of things (mostly life stories).  He's had a tough go, but things are finally shaping up for him after years of depression and just all-around negativity.  He is a happy guy, and I like to think that it was at least partly thanks to our friendship with him.  We love Drew and he loves us.  Anyway, we did get to teach him a little bit, and we focused a lot on just helping him understand better that God is in fact our loving Heavenly Father, and that the Savior and His Atonement really can make everything right.  We also began teaching the Restoration, and explained dispensations, prophets, the authority/priesthood, and we finished at the Savior's earthly ministry.  We helped him realize that Jesus Christ did establish His Church (something that almost nobody agrees with.  I will never understand why.  What was Jesus doing by teaching His doctrines, calling leadership positions like Apostles and Seventies, and sending them out as missionaries and instructing them to teach and baptize, if not establishing His Church?)  Anyway, Drew actually understood that, unlike most, but that is about as far into the lesson as we got before we had to leave to Huntsville for interviews with President Sainsbury.  Drew is one of our best friends out here in Scotty B, and I'm really excited to keep teaching him.  During the whole lesson/conversation, he just kept saying how happy everything we said was making him feel and how much he loved it.  We helped him realize that it was the Holy Ghost, and that the Holy Ghost testifies of truth.  We also let him know that "the best is yet to come," and that everything we taught him that day was just a tiny part in comparison to all that we teach.  That just got him excited to meet with us again, and we look forward to that day.

We were expecting Dustin at church two Sundays ago, but he decided to go to Ohio.  He told us that he would be there for about 2-3 days, so we were expecting him at church this past Sunday.  We went by his house on Friday or Saturday to re-invite him, but nobody was home and his truck was gone.  So we texted him early Sunday morning and just said, "Hope to see y'all at church" and he responds and says, "We're still in Ohio."  His 2-day trip turned into an 8-day trip, so he didn't come to church this Sunday either.  We did go see him last night really quick, and gave him the assignment to read 2 Nephi 31.  We made an appointment with him for Thursday, and we will talk about that chapter with him then.  It should be pretty good.

This past Sunday, Deana came to church!  We were super pumped to see her there, and there were several members in the branch who were super nice to her and made good friends with her, so that was awesome.  Unfortunately, she had to leave after Sacrament meeting, so we only got to talk with her for a tiny bit, but she told us that she loved it and that is was a huge blessing.  Several months ago, before I was here and before she ran into anti material, Deana was a great investigator and was getting ready to be baptized.  I hope that her coming to church and our future meetings with her will rekindle that testimony that she had gained and help her again have a desire to be baptized.  We look forward to it.

This week we also had an exchange with Elder Gibbons and Elder Layton in Fort Payne.  It was fun to go to their area, see some new things, meet some new people, and spend some time with a couple of our good missionary friends.  One cool thing about the exchange is that Elder Gibbons and I got to go to Georgia.  Fort Payne is the only area in the mission that has any part of Georgia in it, so I got to be a border hopper that day, which was pretty awesome.  We actually ended up finishing our exchange in Scottsboro for a couple of reasons.  One is that we all had a multi-district meeting in Huntsville the next morning and Scottsboro is about 40 minutes closer to Huntsville than Fort Payne is.  Also, there was a new family moving into the Scottsboro branch and so all four of us went over there to help them unload the truck.  Their last name is Bible haha, and they were super nice people.  They actually don't live in Scottsboro, they live in Pisgah, which is like the middle of nowhere.  But the Bibles invited us out to their house for a barbecue sometime, and they told us that we could go up there for p-day and do some fishing because they have a giant pond in their backyard.  I don't really care much for fishing (besides the eating part) but Elder Marshall was all over it, so we might go up there for one of these p-days.

This week we went to go see Mickey (I'm pretty sure I told you a bit about her before).  Elder Hastings and I met her tracting during his last week here, and then Elder Marshall and I had the first sit-down lesson with her on his first day in the Boro.  Mickey is a lady who is really tender-hearted and emotional about a lot of things.  She is also kind of depressed and just has a lot of negativity in her life.  Anyway, we talked with her about the Restoration pamphlet that we had left with her a few weeks ago, and we taught her about the Book of Mormon and gave her a copy.  We left her with 2 Nephi 2, which talks about there needing to be opposition in all things, because she was just sad that bad things always happened to good people.  We talked with her for a bit, introduced the Book of Mormon, and invited her to read.  When we were about to get going, Elder Marshall told her about how we are able to give people blessings, and asked her if she would like one.  She accepted and asked me to do it.  I was so grateful for the chance I had to give Mickey a blessing and ask our Father in Heaven to help her with her struggles and give her strength to endure them.  I remember after I received my Patriarchal Blessing, Brother Jensen said, "You may be all happy and feeling the Spirit, but I am just exhausted."  That's exactly how I felt after I gave Mickey a blessing.  But I also just felt fantastic knowing that we helped her out in the best way that we could.  After that, we left her house while the Spirit was still strong like we are supposed to, and Elder Marshall and I just talked in the car for a bit while we were driving to our next place.  We both agreed on one thing: "Visits like that are what make a mission worth it."  We love those kind of visits. :)

All in all, this has been a good week.  We have had some fun, worked hard, learned lots, and enjoyed all of it.  I love being a missionary.  I love all of you, and appreciate all of your thoughts and prayers.  I hope y'all have a great Christmas season and remember to Light the World!  Love you!

Elder Beach

#RollTide

#LightTheWorld

At the Birmingham temple.

On exchanges.

Fort Payne is the birthplace of the musical group "Alabama". 

Border hopping.