Replace Experience with Faith

Hey everyone, another week has come and gone, and it's been a good one. 

Like last week, we've spent lots of time knocking doors. Haha it's pretty fun when it's right around 100 degrees. You get pretty sweaty pretty fast. But it's been okay. We met a cool dude yesterday named Travis who we made a return appointment with. Unfortunately today he had to cancel that appointment, but he said he still would like to come to church with us on Sunday. He said he was a Christian, but didn't really have a church that he attended, and he was all on board when we invited him to come to church with us. Hopefully we can stay in touch this week and help him have a good experience when he comes on Sunday. 

On Saturday this week I was able to go give a baptismal interview for a kid named Gavin that the Sisters have been teaching. He's 9 years old, and is such a cool kid. From what I hear, his baptism on Sunday evening was well-attended and the ward showed lots of support for him and his family. Elder Conner and I didn't go to the baptism because we were busy knocking doors, but I'm grateful that the ward was supportive and lots of people were there. I've said this before, but I'll say it again - when there's a baptismal service in your home ward or stake, go! It's important to help new members feel loved and welcomed and wanted, and also it's an opportunity for us to observe a priesthood ordinance and feel of the spirit that accompanies it. 

We also had zone conference last week. It was my last one of the mission, as well as President and Sister Sainsbury's last of their mission. Weird to think that President and Sister Allred are flying in this week to take the Sainsbury's place. This mission is going to have some major changes in the next couple weeks, and it's going to be pretty hectic for those in the office and those in charge of other stuff. It was a great zone conference that we had, and one of the themes of it was to replace our experience with faith. That's something that we have talked about before, but it's something that I've been working on and thinking about a lot more in the past week. The idea is that our experiences create a belief for us, but sometimes when we have negative experiences our beliefs become negative and even pessimistic. It then becomes our responsibility to replace that experience with faith. For example, if you knock 40 doors and nobody lets you in, you can't go to the 41st door thinking, "Man, I've been rejected 40 times already, here comes another." You have to go to every door as if it's your very first one and say to yourself, "We are going to get in and teach a lesson here." Forget whatever negative experiences you've had previous to that time. Replace it with faith. When we do that, things work out better. And even if you do get rejected that 41st time, you're still optimistic about number 42. I know that when we replace our experience with faith, blessings are more apparent and we are happier in all that we do.

Well, my emails seem to be getting shorter. Sorry about that. Know that I'm grateful to be a missionary, that I love doing it because I love those I serve with, I love those we serve, and most importantly I love the Lord. He is the reason we do what we do. I love Him, and I love wearing his name on my chest each day. 

Love,

Elder Beach 
#RollTide

At Zone Conference - Me, Elder Buck and Elder Robins.

Me and Elder Dietz at Zone Conference.

The many faces of Elder Feltner and Elder Barfuss.

P-day from a few weeks ago at "The Club" with the district.

Me and Elder Conner and the nice line up of Malibus.

See if you can "find Elder Beach" at Zone Conference.

"God Gave the Increase"

Hey y'all, this has been a pretty decent week here in good old Tuscaloosa. We've been doing our best to find people to teach, and though our efforts seem to have yielded little, there have been some cool people whom we have been able to meet and at least leave a good impression on them. 

First of all, this week we had transfers and Elder Erickson went home. I unfortunately wasn't able to go to transfer meeting because of our vehicle situation, so Elder Robins and I stayed in Tuscaloosa while our new companions drove back down here from transfers. My new comp is Elder Conner from Lakeville, Minnesota. He's been out for about a year, and just spent the last 3 months in Scottsboro. That was cool because I had lots of people to ask about, and for the most part, he had answers. Everything seems to be going pretty good up there. He even told me that Jim Harkness is getting baptized like next week! I'm sure y'all probably don't remember him, but he is the husband of a member, and has really had almost nothing to do with the Church for most of his life. During my last couple of weeks in Scottsboro, we went to dinner at their house and kind of started teaching him. He wasn't super open, but I guess his heart has softened over time. He also had a granddaughter on a mission who was kind of teaching him over email at the time that I was there. Things must have picked up, his testimony must have grown, and now he's made the decision to get baptized. How about that! Pretty awesome stuff. 

We've spent a good bit of time this week knocking doors. Like I said at the beginning of this email, it seems as if not much has come from it. But if nothing else, we have at least given people a good image of ourselves, missionaries, and the Church in general. We've shown them that we are sincere people who just want to help people in any way that we can - specifically by helping them come unto Christ. People are usually grateful for what we do, they just tell us they're already set as far as religion goes, and ask us to move on. Seeds are being planted, and things take time to grow - case in point, Jim Harkness. It's good to know and understand these verses from Paul, "I have planted, Apollos watered; but God gave the increase. So then neither is he that planteth any thing, neither he that watereth; but God that giveth the increase. Now he that planteth and he that watereth are one: and every man shall receive his own reward according to his own labour." I guess my job right now is to plant, and that's fine. It's not really even my work that I'm doing, it's the Lord's. And He's the one who knows when it's time to plant, when it's time to water, when the plant's time to grow is, and when it's time to harvest. The reward is the same for the labor, no matter which phase of the work you're engaged in. That's a good promise to hang onto. 

I do know that this is the Lord's work. I know that He is the one in charge. I'm grateful for my opportunity to serve, and I'm grateful for every part of it that I have been involved in. I'm thankful for y'all and for the prayers and support. Love y'all. Have a great week!

Elder Beach

#RollTide

Playing pool at "the club" with Elder Conner.

Scanning documents at the courthouse for this week's service hours.

Mow to the End

Hey y'all, another week has come and gone, as well as another transfer. Elder Erickson is headed home this week, and I'll be receiving a new companion tomorrow. Not sure who that is going to be yet, but I'm staying in Tuscaloosa for my last transfer, which I am happy about.

I said last week that we had several appointments with people that we had met tracting. We had a bit of unfortunate luck with that. Most of our appointments (four of them) were scheduled for Saturday afternoon. On Thursday evening we got a call from President asking us to come up to Hoover for Elder Erickson's exit interview on Saturday, so all four of our appointments on Saturday were missed because of that. On Sunday we stopped by all of them again, and only had a little bit of luck there. Two of them weren't home, so nothing happened there. One of them was home, and we were able to reschedule for Monday. His name is Greg, and he seemed pretty excited to meet with us so we were happy about that and hopeful for our Monday appointment. We went by on Monday and nobody was home. As we were leaving to head back to our bikes, we saw a car pull up in the driveway at his house that we had just left. So we went back and tried knocking again, but still nobody answered. We really wanted to meet with Greg, but it never happened this week. At our fourth house that we followed up at, we didn't see the guy who we had met before because his dad answered. He said that his son (who had asked us to come back) didn't actually live there. When we asked if we could share our message about the Savior with him anyway, he told us that he "had already heard the message" and that he was a Pastor at a church in town. I said something like, "So you have already heard about how the heavens are not closed, and that God has restored His gospel through a living prophet?" I don't remember exactly what he said, but he basically made it clear that he had already heard everything that we had to share and he wasn't interested in hearing it again. Bummer. So basically we kinda got wrecked on all of our appointments on Saturday. We are still hopeful that we'll see Greg in the future, and he seems like he has potential to be solid. 

Well, it's been a little weird getting ready for Elder Erickson to go home this week knowing that that's going to be me in six weeks. There are definitely things that I love about the mission that I'm not looking forward to leaving because of. I love being able to spend all of my time focused on one thing with minimal distractions. And that one thing is the most important thing I could be doing - bringing others unto Christ. I look forward to spending these last six weeks doing all I can to make the Lord proud. In Dad's words, I'm going to "mow to the end of the lawn." I know that one of the greatest phrases we could ever hear is the one that the Lord will say to us when we have done all we can: "Well done, thou good and faithful servant. Thou hast been faithful over a few things, I will make thee ruler over many things. Enter thou into the joy of the Lord." Those are words that I want to hear someday. Those are words that we can all hear someday. It's up to us to make it happen. 

I told my Mom this week that the trunkiest thing about me is that I'm kind of sick of writing emails haha, so sorry if this one was a little shorter or less informative than usual. Just know that I love y'all, pray for y'all, that I love and have a testimony of our Savior and His restored gospel, and that I love representing Him here in Alabama. There's no greater thing I could be doing. 

Have a great week!

Elder Beach 
#RollTide 

My district.

I had to go to the doctor this week for my A1c check.  Not my favorite place...

Me on the band practice field.

I am happy that I "get to die" in Tuscaloosa, home of 15 national titles!

Inoculate Against Anti

Hey everybody, probably going to be a quick email today, but here are our week's highlights.....

This week we have been knocking lots of doors. Not a whole lot of success as far as teaching lessons goes, but we have met some cool people who have seemed willing to let us back and share our message with them at a future date. That bodes well for this upcoming week, though it was a little bit unfortunate for this last one. We are hoping and praying that some of these people will be around for our return appointments. Oftentimes that is not the case, but we are optimistic about a few of them. I did learn from one guy whose door we knocked on that the Warriors lost game one of the NBA finals. I was pretty shocked by that. He told us that he just wants Toronto to win because he's sick of the Warriors. Honestly, I feel the same way. When a team has been in the finals for like 5 straight years, it's time for a change. 

We have had no contact with William this week. Not on the phone, not from stopping by, nothing. Not exactly sure what the deal is, except probably work. It's pretty frustrating when someone you know and love and has so much potential and desire to accept and live the gospel just disappears like that due to circumstances beyond our control. I know that if we are able to keep in regular contact with William, he will be baptized. It's just a matter of being able to stay in touch. 

This week our old friend Mason wanted to talk to us again. She is the lady that the Sisters were teaching who had a lot of deeper questions that we were able to visit with her about and answer. Mason has been out of town for a couple weeks, but had texted the Sisters a few days ago asking for our number so that she could ask us a question. She sent us a passage of scripture from the New Testament about marriage. From the initial, out-of-context reading, she had come to the conclusion that marriage is not an eternal principle, that it is not for everyone, and that it's not really even desirable at all. Eternal marriage seems to be one of Mason's huge issues with the Church (though she has a pretty long list haha). We sent her what James E. Talmage wrote about that specific passage that she sent us in "Jesus the Christ." Elder Talmage came in pretty clutch by giving a perfect explanation to that exact passage that Mason was confused about. She didn't want to hear it. We were pretty blunt and straight up with Mason, and we basically called her out for asking questions that she didn't really want answers to, she just wanted to argue. Really, if she wants to understand truth (which is her claim) she's going about it the wrong way. She has very specifically told us that she is approaching her investigation of the Church with a "this is all false, prove me wrong" type of attitude. When it comes to spiritual truth (or really truth in general) that type of attitude just isn't going to cut it. God is never going to just prove you wrong. He isn't going to give you truth unless you really desire it. When you want to know, when you have "a sincere heart and real intent" as the scriptures say, then the Lord will give us the truth we seek and the truth we need. Anyway, we told Mason that if she really wants to understand truth, the Book of Mormon is probably the best place to start. We invited her to read it and pray to know of the truth with real intent. We also gave her some books and websites to check out that would be helpful in her search of truth. Of course, she took us referring her to other sources as us avoiding discussion with her. The real reason is that over text is a terrible way to communicate answers to complex questions like hers, and also there are much smarter people than us who have given much better answers than we ever could. I love talking to people about deep and complex questions like many of the questions that Mason has, but when their intent is to argue rather than understand, it's not fun anymore. 

We actually had a training in district council this week about how to respond to objections to the Church. We did it mostly because a lot of our district is really young and likely hasn't come across a whole lot if it, but likely will soon. We discussed polygamy, race and the priesthood, adding to the Bible, grace vs. works, and the Trinity/Godhead. We helped the members in the district learn how to help those they teach understand the basics behind these principles when they are brought up. Another reason we did it is because there are a LOT of former missionaries that are less-active. It's crazy. It's sad. I don't ever want any of my awesome missionary friends to follow that path. I'm not sure exactly what the main reasons are for all the less-active former missionaries, but I'm sure that part of it is that they come home and then come across a whole bunch of anti that they had never seen before, they start to question things, they spend more time looking at anti than in the scriptures, and they start to lose their testimony. We have been counseled by President to "inoculate our friends against the anti." But I think it's equally as important to inoculate ourselves. There are lots of people who hate the Church, and who spend a lot of time trying to make it look as bad as possible. I know that there are answers to every objection that is thrown at the Church. They are at least adequate in every case, and much more than adequate in most cases. I know the Church is true. I know that God lives. I know that Jesus is the Christ. I know that Joseph Smith was a true prophet of God. I know that the Book of Mormon came forth the way that Joseph said it did, and that it is evidence that the Church and gospel of Jesus Christ have been restored. Nothing that our critics may say can ever take that knowledge from me. I hope that y'all will follow the counsel of President Nelson and do the spiritual work to also gain that knowledge for yourselves. The Lord will bless you in your efforts to seek truth from Him. 

I love being a missionary. I love the truth that I have come to understand as I have spent hours and hours and hours over the last couple of years studying the gospel and sharing it with others. I love learning about the gospel. I love sharing what I learn with those around me. I love y'all, and appreciate all the thoughts and prayers being continually sent my way. You've each got many from me every week!

Love, 
Elder Beach
#RollTide