Adam Serving in Portland

 Hi everyone! I hope you all are doing great! These last couple weeks have been awesome! We had zone conference, Thanksgiving, lessons, and many services! Zone conference was awesome! I didn't get to give a training this time around, but I still learned a lot! Some missionaries gave talks in zone conference about prayer and how we can have more meaningful prayers. Something they said that has stuck with me is the importance of praying with real intent! Meaning, praying with a intent to act on what answers we receive. When Joseph Smith prayed in the Sacred Grove, he had an intent to act on what answer he received. It lead to him seeing God the Father and His Son Jesus Christ. Although we likely won't seeing Heavenly Father and Jesus Christ we can still learn from Joseph Smith's example! We need to act on what answers we receive. Whether or not it is what we expect or want. You will be blessed to see God's hand acting in your life more as you do so! Thursday was Thanksgiv...

 Elder Goold has been very busy lately and didn't have time to send a letter this week, therefore this update will be an update based on the phone calls we've had with him, along with the pictures he sent.   This week consisted of lots of meetings, including a zone conference.... a trek to the temple...    ... lots and lots of driving (since he and his companions are zone leaders with a minivan in an area with a lot of bike elders), ....and 3 Thanksgiving dinners (including one with the Botchways).  These pictures of he and his companion, Elder Shaw, were sent to me via text on the day before Thanksgiving.  Wendy's was their p-day dinner/lunch and had nothing to do with Thanksgiving... Also included in his pictures this week were this batch of hot chocolate cookies he made--apparently he's trying to bake one batch of cookies per transfer--and a picture with a random Elder I know nothing about.   On the bright side, he got two phone calls ho...

Well, my excitement of having a minivan has turned into me driving for 3-4 hours today.  So I'm a little short on time! It's been a great week though! We had Mission Leadership Council (MLC), zone council (with President and Sister Botchway!), and a bunch of lessons! At MLC there was a lot of good discussion on what we can do to improve our efforts to find, teach, and baptize as a mission. It was really good for the most part! Something interesting that happened was a lot of missionaries there were focusing a lot on the negative and everything that our mission is currently doing poorly. It ultimately ended up in a lot of discussion of HOW we can do things different. HOW we can change. But they completely skipped over the WHY and the WHAT. The things that actually influence our attitudes and behaviors. "True doctrine, understood, changes attitudes and behaviors" -I don't remember who But when we understand doctrine and the WHY behind what we are doing we are far ...

Okay, so this title has kinda a double meaning. I'll get to it in a bit. It's been a crazy week honestly. Here's a summary: bike elder, transfers, bike zone, the rest of Halloween, and just everything else that I can't remember! On Halloween we went to the half mission party at the church! That was pretty fun! Lots of basketball and we watched Tangled. (with permission from the mission president). It was a lot of fun! Next, last week my companion got made the co-bike elder over the mission. But as his companion I got to go along with him for all that. So that was fun! They were busy trying to buy new bikes in preparation for 7 (I think) new bike areas to open up at transfers. It was crazy. At transfers Elder Crum sadly got moved to a new area. My new companion is Elder Shaw! He's pretty cool! He is a worldwide champion whip cracker. I'm not entirely sure how it works. It's very impressive to watch though. Another thing that happened was half of the Tualati...