{Letter #47} Love One Another

Hi Everyone! I hope all of you had a fantastic week! This felt like a bit of a slower week here, but it was still very good! Here's some of the events of note: zone conference, painting, ward barbecue, and a great lesson with our friend Alma!!
 

We also went to the temple today! It is an amazing place of learning and peace! If you haven't been, or haven't been recently, you should go! You will learn something new if you go with a desire to learn!

Next, zone conference! It was amazing! We no longer have themes, but I still learned a lot from it. It was President and Sister Botchway's first zone conference in the mission! We got together with half of our mission and got to hear from them, and also some trainings from the new Preach My Gospel. One of the things that stuck out to me was Sister Botchway talking about Christlike attributes demonstrated in the scriptures! It was really cool to see how every prophet in the scriptures testifies and emulates Jess Christ! And now we are doing a mission wide study of the Book of Mormon to search out these attributes and how we can develop them ourselves! (If anyone wants to participate I'll put the schedule here)

Next, we had a service where we got to paint a less active member's house and also help hang their gutters up. Nothing too crazy there. The funniest part was how they greeted us. When we first pulled up and got out of the car they said "do you want a four leaf clover? I'm really good at finding them" *proceeds to hand me and my companion a four leaf clover*

so now I have a four leaf clover.

We also had a ward barbecue that our friend Michael came to! He is continuing to progress really well towards baptism and is making lots of friends in the ward. It is going very well! He's also getting married soon!

Just yesterday we had some very good trainings/discussions in district council about teaching for understanding. immediately after district council we got to teach our friend Alma! She has a lot of concerns with feeling inadequate and people judging her. We were able to help her understand how the scriptures can help her even with that! Our friend from the ward was also very good in helping Alma understand the importance of reading. We invited Alma to read from the Book of Mormon, pray about it, pray to receive strength, and to come to church. She seemed very excited!


My spiritual thought from this week is going to come from Nephi's experience in retrieving the plates (or scriptures) from Jerusalem. Nephi said:

"And I was led by the Spirit, not knowing beforehand the things which I should do. Nevertheless I went forth"

We often face challenges in life that we don't know what the next step to take is. The Spirit can guide us though! It is essential for us to take the first step despite not knowing where it will take us. When we put our trust in the Lord, follow the Spirit, and take the first step into the unknown, that is when we will truly be guided like Nephi!

Take that first step! trust God! He loves you! He cares about you!

I hope y'all have a great week! Love you all! Let me know if there's anything I can do for you!

Love,

Elder Goold


The pictures:

-some Ghanian food made by President Botchway


-The animals I interacted with throughout the week

-Zone temple trip