{Letter #55} Serving in the Rain!

Hi Everyone! I hope all of you are doing great! This last week has absolutely flown by. Training is a blast and makes things always pretty interesting. Some of what happened: service, service, service, and also an awesome lesson. We always had something going on this week!

As I just mentioned, we had so much service this week, which is awesome! We helped 2 people move, did a wood-chopping service in the pouring rain, cleaned the church, and also helped someone set up a pool in their back yard. Sometimes I miss teaching the Gospel when we are immersed in a service project, but then I remember that Jesus spent His days teaching AND serving. This is part of God's work too.

Elder Thatcher doesn't have a rain jacket yet, so he just got absolutely soaked while we were chopping and stacking wood. We're going to work on getting him one. He will definitely be needing it in a couple months when rainy season arrives.

We also had a couple meetings for new missionaries this week! It's been really cool to see all the ways that Elder Thatcher has grown, even in just the first half of the transfer. We currently are talking a lot about setting goals and plans and also developing Christ-like attributes. When we seek to turn outwards and love others, we will begin to become more Christ-like.

The awesome lesson we had this week was with our friends Chris, Pam, and their two kids. They have a few really close friends that are members of the ward that I'm serving in. We invited one of them to join us for the lesson and it was seriously awesome!

We read through the Introduction to The Book of Mormon with them and we got to this phrase describing what is in The Book of Mormon:

"It puts forth the doctrines of the gospel, outlines the plan of salvation, and tells men what they must do to gain peace in this life and eternal salvation in the life to come"

When we read this, the member bore testimony of the peace and the power that The Book of Mormon has had in their life. Pam just sat there for a second and said "WOW, THIS IS WHAT I NEED!"

It was amazing. The Spirit was very strong. They committed to come to church and were very excited to read from The Book of Mormon and pray about it also.

I have a testimony of this phrase from Preach My Gospel chapter 13:

"(The Lord) will magnify your efforts to the degree that you work in unity with local leaders and members"

My Spiritual thought from this week will be something I read in personal studies recently. The ancient prophet Alma taught his son Helaman about prayer. Alma taught:

"Yea, and cry unto God for all thy support; yea, let all thy doings be unto the Lord, and whithersoever thou goest let it be in the Lord; yea, let all thy thoughts be directed unto the Lord; yea, let the affections of thy heart be placed upon the Lord forever. Counsel with the Lord in all thy doings, and he will direct thee for good"

When we turn our mind and heart to the Lord regularly in prayer we will be blessed! We will be guided!

God loves you all! He will guide and direct you when you turn to Him!

I hope you all have a fantastic week! Let me know if I can do anything or all of you!

Love,
Elder Goold

Photos from this week:

Some really really tall sunflowers we saw

The ward I'm serving in is very generous and gives us so much food, we've hardly had to buy any recently. Here is one of the more interesting items we've been given.