{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