Thou Art the Christ

Hey everyone, this was a good week down in Bama. It flew by and I don't seem to have a whole lot of memorable experiences to share, so I'll do my best to pull together a few and then just share my testimony. That's more important than stories anyway. 

This week we were able to get back in contact with a guy named Willie. I'm not sure if I told y'all about him before or not. We were teaching him a while back, but things weren't really clicking and he didn't seem to be ready to accept the gospel. He lives fairly close to our apartment and we would often see him out on his porch, and would sometimes stop and just have a quick chat. We were hoping to eventually teach him again when he was more ready. Well, we hadn't seen him out on his porch for like a month, and we had also stopped by a couple of times to try and begin teaching him again. He never answered. Finally we stopped by one more time the other day, and he happened to be out on his porch - with a big brace on his leg. He told us that he had been in a biking accident (he doesn't have a car and rides his bike everywhere), and that he had surgery on his leg. He had been in the hospital and rehab for several weeks and had only been home for a couple days. We were able to have a good chat with him, and we asked him if we could come by on Tuesday this week and talk about the gospel and the Book of Mormon which we had given him a couple months ago. He said that would be great! We also discovered that he didn't have a bike helmet, and so we offered to give him a spare one we have in the apartment. He was super grateful and it felt good to be of service to our old friend Willie, and also have another opportunity to give him a chance to accept the gospel. Prayers up for Willie!

Also this week I had the opportunity to interview for baptism a kid named Jayveon that the Northport Elders have been teaching. I won't bore you with the details, but we almost had a slight problem on our hands with the interview because they weren't sure if Jayveon was eight or nine years old. If he's eight, then his interview is the responsibility of the Bishop in the ward, but if he's nine then it's the responsibility of the missionaries. We were able to get things figured out (though we had a bit of a loophole to jump though) and I was able to do his interview. Jayveon is a stud. He's such a cool kid, and has an awesome testimony. I've done four baptismal interviews on my mission, and three of them have been for children age 10 and under. It amazes me how a kid that young can have such great understanding of the gospel. As members of the Church, and due to the Restoration of the Gospel, even little children know more about God and their Savior than so many of the world's theological leaders. They know that they are children of God and that is one of the most precious bits of knowledge we could ever have. We're looking forward to Jayveon's baptism. 

This week in the YSA, Elder Conner and I were asked to speak. We weren't given topics, and so I decided to just give a similar talk to one that I had written and given before when I was in Hamilton. I was to share a couple of verses and just my testimony about them, which I shared as part of my talk. I may have shared them with y'all before, but they're good verses, so hear me out. John 6:66-69 says, "From that time many of his disciples went back, and walked no more with him. Then said Jesus unto the twelve, Will ye also go away? Then Simon Peter answered him, Lord, to whom shall we go? thou hast the words of eternal life. And we believe and are sure that thou art that Christ, the Son of the living God." I know that at some point in our lives, a similar question will be asked of each of us - will you also go away? I hope that we can stand firm as Peter did, and testify boldly that we know Jesus is the Christ. That we know there is nowhere else to go except to follow Him. That we know that we are going to live our lives in defense of that testimony. I know God lives. I know Jesus is the Christ. I know that the most important decision we can make in our lives is to accept His invitation to "come, follow me." More joy awaits us in following the Savior than in anything else. I know that. 

I love you, I pray for you, I hope you have a wonderful week, and that you will always make the decision to follow Christ, no matter the cost. 

Love, 
Elder Beach 
#RollTide

Our district.

My district is dope!  We had a great time touring Bryant Denny Stadium for P-day!

On the practice field.

The field is actually just sand right now.  They replant it every year.