{Letter #6} Some Cute Kittens, Exchanges, and General Conference!

Hey everyone!
So this week was actually pretty uneventful. I'm very scatterbrained today so sorry if this is hard to read.

 
We did have exchanges again which was pretty fun! This time I went with my district leader and got to ride a bike all day. We had a bunch of lessons with mostly members but had a couple with some friends who are interested in learning more! Those all went pretty well. Biking around was definitely a bit of an adjustment from normally sitting in the car.

An exciting missionary moment from the week is that we were able to get in contact with a referral from a few weeks ago finally! His name is Ricky. We've been texting him a bunch and he's been good about responding to texts, but super noncommittal to setting up a lesson with us. But a small miracle actually happened this Saturday! We decided to give Ricky a call to see if we could set up a lesson with us, he said he was busy and driving to work in Boring at the moment. We just happened to be in Boring though! So we met up on the street of Boring, Oregon right outside his work and we invited him to General Conference! He said he would try to watch some of it, so that's super exciting!

We also had Stake Conference this week. It was amazing to hear from some of our local church leaders right before hearing from the prophets and other general leaders!

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My spiritual thought from this week is going to come from Stake Conference. The theme of Stake conference was the Plan of Salvation. Something that really stood out to me was the scripture Matthew 11:28-30 in which Christ says:


"Come unto me, all ye that labour and are heavy laden, and I will give you rest. Take my yoke upon you, and learn of me; for I am meek and lowly in heart: and ye shall find rest unto your souls. For my yoke is easy, and my burden is light."


This scripture was quoted 3 times by different people. We may be having trial after trial. We may be sick. We may feel imperfect. Christ has experienced all of that too. Christ knows exactly how you feel, and because of that He knows exactly how to help you too. Turn to Christ. Turn to Christ with any trial, sickness, sin, loss, imperfection, or anything and He will bless you and give you strength. He will take that burden from you and help you overcome it. We just need to turn to Him in prayer.

Some fun things from this week! My district leader Elder Strand decided that he wants to learn how to solve a rubiks cube. So I've been spending a lot of my free time teaching him how to do that.
We've come across a lot of cats in lessons this week. Here we're some that I took pictures of:

The kittens are Scottish Fold kittens that a member in my ward breeds. They have folded ears. Very cute.

We also just found a very friendly cat on the stairs that was playing with us.

We also got to go to the temple this morning! The Portland Temple is beautiful!  I love the temple!

That's all for this week! I hope y'all are doing great! I'd love to hear from you!
Love,
Elder Goold

{Letter #5} The Road to Damascus

Hey y'all!
I'm just finishing up week 2 here in my mission. Since my last email we have had zone conference, exchanges with the zone leaders, a few member meals, and now p-day again.
Zone conference was super cool actually. It was actually a whole mission conference but they just called it zone conference for whatever reason. Here in Portland they always put a theme on the zone conferences and the theme for this one was King Benjamin's tower! They built a tower out of building scaffolding and covered it in a bunch of burlap cloth. The end result was about 20 feet tall I think. They actually gave about half of the conference talks from up on top of it, so that was super cool to have that be the majority of what we were looking at all day.

The next day I went on exchanges with one of the zone leaders, Elder Silver. We were covering the YSA branch that day and had a pretty big area that covered two whole stakes. So we ended up driving around quite a bit. It was a really good day despite being in the car and a lot of unsuccessful contacts. We were able to listen to a few different conference talks and BYU devotionals.

It's crazy how many small world connections keep happening out here in Boring, Oregon. I didn't think I'd keep running into people that people told me to look out for, but here we are. It really is such a small world in the church.   Sister M. has a daughter serving in our home mission in Utah.  She literally ate dinner at our house a few weeks ago and here I meet her family in my first two weeks. 

Something fun that happened this week was while we were trying to get in contact either an inactive member Daniel. We were walking up to his house then a dog came sprinting up to us from his neighbors yard. He ran around us very excitedly then ran and got a stick for us to throw. We played either the dog for a bit then tried to knock on his door with the dog following us around. Daniel didn't answer the door, but it was still a fun time thanks to the dog.


This is a very pretty area that I'm currently serving in so here are some random pictures of some pretty things around here

 

 

We also have to take selfies with our companions every night at 9 just to make sure we're out doing missionary work still. So here are some of Elder Stone and me.

My spiritual thought from this week is prompted by 2 things:

1. The fact that we are serving in the Damascus Ward

2. Zone conference

In zone conference my mission president talked about Saul on the road to Damascus when Christ appears to him. After Saul has realized that it was Christ and gets over his initial surprise he asks Him "Lord what will thou have me do?"
I just love this question. It is a question that I feel I need to ask more in my life. Ask Heavenly Father what he would have us do. We don't need to wait around for Christ to appear to us to tell us what to do though. We just need to ask God, study, ponder, and pray even more and we will be directed. God has a plan for us. It is better than anything we have planned for ourselves.


I guess I want to end this email with an invitation for all of you to ask God what He would have you do. Ask God and then act on whatever promptings you may receive. I know that if you do that then you will be blessed!
I hope y'all are doing great!
Love,
Elder Goold 

Oregon Connections Already!

 A few weeks ago Emma invited over the missionaries serving in the YSA ward she was attending at the time.  We used to have the missionaries over all the time when we lived out East and we've missed that since moving here to Utah.   One of the missionaries that came over was Sister M, who was excited to hear that Adam would be serving his mission in her home area.   She told Adam to look out for her family and that was that.  We haven't seen Sister M since then.  

Then, on Sunday, I get this text...

Adam found Sister M's family in his very first area...

It's definitely a small world in the church!  

{Letter #4} Boring Assault Rifle Greetings

Hey everyone!

I'm in Portland now!!! 

Well technically not Portland, but in Boring.  So yeah it's a pretty exciting place. It's a bit outside the main city of Portland, so it's super pretty out here and everything is kinda spread out.

On our first day here we got to go to the Portland Temple, which is absolutely gorgeous!!!

  

 Then we met our trainers for the next few weeks! My trainer is from the Chicago area so we have two people from big cities serving out in the middle of nowhere. Fun times all around.

A couple days after we got there were some serious wildfires a ways away from us. Thankfully they were able to get them under control within about 2 days, but the smoke still turned the sky some fun colors.

The food we have been eating is mostly not great, unless it's food from the members. But we did get to go shopping today so hopefully it'll be a bit better now.

 

The members are mostly pretty nice and happy to see us but there have been a few that weren't quite as excited to see us. For example, we were visiting an inactive member's house and once we pulled into the driveway he marched out of his house with an Assault Rifle! He was actually pretty friendly, just thought we were people coming to intrude on his property. He did still tell us to leave though.

Even out here on the west coast I've been able to make connections to people from kinda all over which is super awesome! It really is such a small world.

Anyways my spiritual thought from this week is 2 Nephi 2:6-8 which reads:

"6 Wherefore, redemption cometh in and through the Holy Messiah; for he is full of grace and truth.
7 Behold, he offereth himself a sacrifice for sin, to answer the ends of the law, unto all those who have a broken heart and a contrite spirit; and unto none else can the ends of the law be answered.
8 Wherefore, how great the importance to make these things known unto the inhabitants of the earth, that they may know that there is no flesh that can dwell in the presence of God, save it be through the merits, and mercy, and grace of the Holy Messiah, who layeth down his life according to the flesh, and taketh it again by the power of the Spirit, that he may bring to pass the resurrection of the dead, being the first that should rise."

I just love the powerful testimony that Lehi gives in these verses of all the things that the Savior has done for us. He also says in verse 8 "how great the importance to make these things known unto the children of men". These verses have just been a powerful confirmation to me of the importance of sharing the message of Christ's Atonement to all the world. I know that it is only through Christ that we can return to our Heavenly Father.
Hope y'all are doing well and I'd love to hear from you!
Make it count
Love,
Elder Goold

Officially "In the Field"

We received a message on the evening of September 7th that Adam had safely arrived to Portland. 

 Yesterday we saw that his city on Facebook had been updated...

We did a little research on Boring, Oregon and it looks like a cute and quirky little suburb of Portland with great views of Mount Hood.   P-Days are still on Tuesdays.   Can't wait to hear more about it over the coming weeks!   

{Letter #3} Off to Portland

9/6/22
Hey everyone!
Today is my last day at the MTC.

It has seriously flown by so fast! Since my email last week we finished up our classes on Saturday, a bunch of my district has already left for their missions, and I have packed everything to head into the field tomorrow.

On our second to last day of class, all the elders in our district got matching ties and wore them the whole day, so that was kinda fun. On the last day we all tried to wear sandals and flip-flops of some sort or another, but we had to go back and change them because it was unfortunately against missionary standards. Oh well. It was a good last week of classes though and I'm looking forward to being in the field now!

This Sunday I got to attend branch council again; we also had church and the "Go and Do" experience again. "Go and Do" is basically just in-depth study of a certain area of the gospel for about 2-3 hours on Sunday. It was super cool to have that much time set aside just for studying one specific topic of the gospel.

 During one of our breaks during the week we were able to go through some of the newer buildings and look at a bunch of really cool murals depicting scripture stories that they have here on campus. Here are a few of my favorites:

The past few days we have been getting up at around 4:00am to bring people to the travel office and say bye to them before they head out to their mission fields. It's been good to say bye to them but it has been making for some very long days. Currently, we have 6 elders from my district that are still here at the MTC, 4 of us leave Wednesday, and the last 2 leave on Thursday.

My spiritual thought from this week is from a devotional that Elder Uchtdorf gave to the MTC today. He said that all that is required to be a good missionary is to do well what you can control. You don't have to worry about what you can't control. You don't have to be perfect. But as you strive to do your best in serving others and serving the Lord you will be strengthened in your efforts. So don't get caught up in things you can't control or things you can't do perfectly, just do your best and Heavenly Father will make your efforts touch the lives of others.

Anyways, I hope y'all are doing great! I'd love to hear from you and will reply when I can!
Love,
Elder Goold