{Letter #61} Shine On!

 Hi everyone! I hope this past week has been good! This last week was really good-- between President Bragg (our area President for all of Oregon, Washington, California, Hawaii, and Alaska) visiting our mission and my birthday (as I'm sure you're all aware thanks to my mom)!

Thank you for all who sent birthday wishes! It is greatly appreciated!  I had cheesecake leftover from MLC and some other good food. 

With Elder Bragg visiting we had a special mission leadership conference and zone conference (which was actually the entire mission). Those were seriously so awesome!

I'm pretty short on time today so I'll just say a couple things that really stood out to me.

-my call as a missionary is of God and from a living prophet!
-is true of any calling in the church that we are called of God
-spiritual power will come as we are obedient to covenants, commandments, and mission standards
-once again applies to all people!
-love God and love people

My spiritual thought from this week is going to be a couple verses that Elder Bragg shared with us. It is a promise from the Lord to us! He said:

"Let thy bowels also be full of charity towards all men, and to the household of faith, and let virtue garnish thy thoughts unceasingly; then shall thy confidence wax strong in the presence of God; and the doctrine of the priesthood shall distill upon thy soul as the dews from heaven. The Holy Ghost shall be thy constant companion, and thy scepter an unchanging scepter of righteousness and truth; and thy dominion shall be an everlasting dominion, and without compulsory means it shall flow unto thee forever and ever."

The Lord asks three things of us and promises these amazing blessings in return! When we have faith in Jesus Christ, charity for others,and live virtuously, we are promised that we will be more confident, have the Holy Ghost as a constant companion, and we will understand the doctrine the God has given us!

These are pretty remarkable blessings! They will come as you diligently look to Christ!

Love you all! have a great week! let me know if I can do anything for you!

Love,
Elder Goold

Here are some pics: 

Some good food

A glimpse of the annular solar eclipse from Portland.  We didn't have any glasses, but the sky looked cool anyway.

Pumpkins created by the youth that each represented a scripture story...

A  beaver statue and a random frog

A glimpse at our family phone call today... (me in Tualatin, Mom at home, Ellie in Rexburg, Spence at home, Emma in Provo, Cami at work with her camera turned off, and Garrett and Lucie at home in Birmingham.)  Dad had something going on and couldn't get on.