Elder Jackson Beach: Super Bowl and Old Dogs

Hello to all of my fam and friends around the globe. I hope this finds y'all well.

Unfortunately, there's not a whole lot to report this week. I'll give you the highlights, and hopefully they are enjoyable. This is about how our week went down:

Last Wednesday we went to the Montgomery Zoo to do service. Apparently that is a regular Wednesday thing here, so I will be going back in the future. It sure wasn't busy that day, and we probably only saw 3 or 4 families during our 2 hours there. Elder Furgeson said that they have us do all kinds of weird things to help out there, but on Wednesday we just raked leaves for a couple hours. We also got to ride on the train that goes around the zoo. It wasn't too exciting, due to the fact that it only went like 4 miles per hour.

Wednesday was also Elder Furgeson's birthday, so we went over to the Villalobos' house for dinner to celebrate. They have two kids, Lydianna, who is like 6 and Angelina, who is like 18 months. Haha they are crazy, but also so funny. Lydianna was writing all of these stories the whole time, and then she wanted to share them with us. Pretty much every story went something like this: "Once upon a time there was a girl and she lost her parents. But then she prayed and found them and she was so happy that she cried. The end." Haha, they were great, and it was also just cool to see how awesome Primary is because little children can understand the basic doctrines of the Gospel like the power of prayer. Well, we ate way too much food and cake, and then we were on our way. That night when we got home (still being full from dinner), we were surprised by 4 of the other Elders in our district who live like a mile away from us. They had brought cake and Martinelli's for Elder Furgeson's birthday, so we partied for a little bit and then we all went to bed.

On Thursday we had second birthday dinner at the Wright's house. They are a great family in the ward who have like 6 crazy kids who were just tearing around the whole time we were there. We had some bomb tacos though, and they made like 2 gallons worth of banana pudding. I also at way too much while we were there. I'm literally the fattest I've ever been right now. It's not too good haha, I need to lose like 30 lbs. I guess it's time to break out the bikes a little more. Anyway, since it was Elder Furgeson's 21st birthday, the Wright's made some margaritas, (non alcoholic of course). They were pretty good, but I'm not a fan of salting the rim of the glass. That was kind of gross. Thursday morning we had had weekly planning, and one of our companionship goals was to make a daily video when we got home each night. So Thursday night was our first installment of our daily videos. I'll try to upload them, but they are like 5-6 minutes each, so they take forever to upload. If I have enough time on P-day I will upload them. Some of them are kind of funny. We sure run into some weird people here.

Speaking of weird people, we went over to Tuskegee on Saturday to meet with a few less-actives and a few of our Bible referrals. We get SO many Bible referrals. I probably got like six total in my 6 months in Scottsboro, and we already have received like 12 here in 2 weeks. Most of the time they are a super long ways away, like in Tuskegee or Union Springs or somewhere way at the edge of our huge area. Anyway, we talked to several of them on Saturday. The first one was named Vernell or Vernal or something. One of the first things that she said to us when we came into her house was, "You hear so many gunshots out here, this place is worse than Vietnam." Haha I laughed at that one. There is a lot of violence here, but I haven't really been an eye- or an ear-witness to any of it yet, which is good. Anyway, we gave her her Bible, and we also gave her a Book of Mormon. She was one of several people this week who really just had no idea what we were talking about. When we explained the Book of Mormon to her, we basically just paraphrased the introduction. At the end of the introduction is something that pretty much says, "Here's what to do to find out this book is true. When you know this book is true, you know that the Church of Jesus Christ is the only true church on the earth." And that's exactly what we told her. She (as well as a couple of others this week) just said, "Oh yeah, I totally believe that." My thought was just, "You really don't understand what we just said, do you?" We did our best to explain it again, but most people just really don't get it. It's a weird thing. I don't know what to do about that, but we will probably see them all again to see how their reading is going and see if we can help them really understand. Whether people really get it completely or not (or if they ever will or not) I still love to just bear my testimony of what I know to be true, and try my best to help people know it for themselves.

Sunday was fast Sunday, which was really good. I'm really impressed with the Ward here. You know how sometimes you have testimony meetings where it turns into story time, or when people just get up and rant or just bawl for like 15 minutes? Those are really weird, I don't like them, but at least they don't happen very often. Anyway, this week was the exact opposite of that. Almost everyone that got up to bear their testimony just kept it really brief, simple, powerful, and to the point. Nearly everyone just shared their feelings and their testimony about the Savior, about the Book of Mormon, and about missionary work. It seems like there are many in the ward who spend a lot of time talking to their friends about the Gospel and inviting them to church and handing out copies of the Book of Mormon. That is awesome! Unfortunately, an invite to a friend doesn't mean a conversion, but it's a great start. Now it's our job as missionaries to make sure the members trust us enough to invite us into their lives and let us help teach their friends. I hope to see that happening in the future. It seems to be likely. On Sunday afternoon we had lunch with Brother Chiu and his family. Since he's the Ward Mission Leader, he has recently decided to have the missionaries, and any investigators or recent converts over for lunch every fast Sunday. Pretty cool. Unfortunately, we didn't have any investigators there, but there were 2 ladies who were baptized somewhat recently, and we had a good time. Again, I ate too much food. To add to that, we had dinner at the Slater's house (ate too much yet again) on Sunday night after our Mighty Hour of Prayer. They are a senior couple (they may be part-time missionaries, I'm not really sure) but they are in charge of military relations in the ward, because the members in Maxwell Air force Base come to our ward. Anyway, they are a great couple, and their daughter and son-in-law were there also. The Slater's daughter pretty much loves to do missionary work, and she gave us like 6 referrals. What she said when she gave us their names and addresses was this: "I've talked to these people about the Church and the Gospel, and I've given a couple of them copies of the Book of Mormon, and pretty much none of them want to have anything to do with any of it, but you should try them anyway!" I guess we'll see how it goes....

Sunday night after dinner we went out to try and visit a list of less-actives that we had put together last week. At the first door, the guy just looks out the window and says, "Who is it?" After we respond, "The missionaries," he just says, "I already had that," and then he just walks away back into his house. The next door, nobody answered. At the third door, a guy answers and immediately he's like, "Hey, come on in guys." We sit down and talk for a bit, and he's like, "Did Elder [so-and-so] leave y'all a note to come watch the Super Bowl with me? He was here like 3 years ago." Uhhh...no. Well, he said his wife (who is actually a member) was at church, and she would be home shortly. When his wife got home, she told us that she "was a Mormon for a while," but then she stopped for a while, and now she has found a Baptist church that she likes. That was a bummer. Anyway, we talked to them for a while, and apparently the missionaries used to come by all the time. I think we will have to go by at least one more time and see if they have any interest in getting back on the strait and narrow, as opposed to their Baptist church. We'll see how that goes too. While we were there, we also saw a good bit of the Super Bowl. It was quite the finish, and is definitely one for the classics. I didn't really care who won, but it was a great game. One really weird thing about this couple (they are the Freys, by the way), was that they had this chihuahua at their house that looked like it was dead. But then every once in a while it would get up and hobble around and wheeze a bit and just about fall over. We asked them about it, and it is 18 years old, and definitely on its last legs. I can't believe it's not dead. Sister Frey spent like the entire time we were there just getting it to eat, and it just laid down on its food plate and slept. It was a pretty sad looking dog, but Sister Frey loved it a lot. I was afraid she was going to ask us to give it a blessing or something, but she didn't. She did ask us to keep it in our prayers though. I kind of felt bad for it and for her, because it would be much happier if it just passed on. It could hardly walk or move or breathe, or even see from what it looked like. I thought Hallie looked like an old dog, until I saw this one. It was ancient haha.

Anyway, this was a good week, though it sure wasn't the most full schedule I've had. I look forward to visiting our referrals, seeking more referrals, and finding new investigators. I'm just glad that I have the chance to be here doing the Lord's work, and doing what I can to find the elect. I know they're out there. Thanks for all of your prayers. Keep 'em coming! I love y'all!

Love,

Elder Beach

#Roll Tide