{Letter #53} Diligence!

Hi everyone! I hope everything is going well for all of you! This week was pretty busy, like most weeks it seems. We did a lot of missionary work, had zone conference, went on exchanges, and a bunch of other meetings.

It was a bit of a slower week in terms of the missionary work to be completely honest. It's really interesting to be training, it has required me to take things a lot slower than normal and also be really deliberate about what we are doing. It has been good to regularly be asking "does this activity help people to come closer to Christ?"

When all your thoughts and efforts are focused on Christ you are so much more able to see the Lord's hand in your life!

"And neither at any time hath any wrought miracles until after their faith; wherefore they first believed in the Son of God." (Ether 12:18)

At zone conference we talked a lot about diligence! Being a diligent disciple of Jesus Christ and diligently seeking to learn about Him. When we are diligent in our own efforts to learn, we will begin to see those miracle that are talked about by Moroni in Ether 12. We will increase our faith in the Son of God and we will be lead by it!

We also had exchanges yesterday! That was a lot of fun! I got to stay in my area and work with Elder Gurr. He is usually on bike, so it was a good break for him I think. We talked a lot about that focus on Christ and how we can be more diligent in our efforts to serve Him. We also talked about the BYU talk "Be 100 Percent Responsible". You should go listen to it sometime. It's very good and teaches a lot about taking responsibility for our life!

My spiritual thought for this week will be Doctrine & Covenants 11:20. In which, the Lord taught:

"Behold, this is your work, to keep my commandments, yea, with all your might, mind and strength"

It is our responsibility to keep the commandments of God! When we do we will be happier, and blessed in all things! The Prophet King Benjamin taught:

"And moreover, I would desire that ye should consider on the blessed and happy state of those that keep the commandments of God. For behold, they are blessed in all things, both temporal and spiritual; and if they hold out faithful to the end they are received into heaven, that thereby they may dwell with God in a state of never-ending happiness. O remember, remember that these things are true; for the Lord God hath spoken it."

Love you all! Let me know if I can pray for you or help you in any way! Have a great week!

Love,
Elder Goold

Some pics: Here I am with Elder Stone (my trainer) and Elder Thatcher (who I'm training)

 

 

 Exchanges and a Saint Bernard puppy:

Zone conference: 

 

 

The air is smoky: 

 

 

 

A glimpse at our family phone call today:  (Cami and Spence were at work)

{Letter #8} Technology is Cool

Okay y'all so this week was pretty good! Nothing too crazy has happened, but things are good here in Boring and it's still not raining.

 

So this past Wednesday we had interviews and training with President Haymond. It was seriously so cool! The training was focused on technology and how we can use it to find people to teach. Let me tell you, it is amazing the work that is starting to happen over technology. The Portland mission is one of the piloting missions for some new online tools that the church is using and it's amazing to see the work that is happening because of them. The interviews with president were really good! Its amazing how much he knows about missionary work and just life in general.

Thursday was a pretty average day. Just lots of trying to get in contact with inactive members, and formerly taught people.

Friday is where the second part of the subject line cones from. So one of the people in my apartment, Elder Partridge, was making a smoothie that needed some water in it. So he pulled out the faucet hose thing and put it above the blender. He said "Technology is cool" then turned on the water and sprayed it all over the floor. It was a lot funnier in person. But it just fit with the title this week so I decided to put it in.

Saturday was good, we had SPC and got the new message that we are sharing with the members in the stake. It was pretty uneventful after that.

On Sunday we had fast and testimony meeting which was super good! After that we we to dinner at the stake president's house and shared the message that he had just given us the day before! It was fun.
Monday was our most eventful day. So we met with a referral named Caden finally! He's a super cool guy that currently attends a non-denominational Christian church. He seemed open to continue meeting with us and took a Book of Mormon with him that he said he'd read! Super exciting stuff. Later on Monday we had a lesson with Bubba. We asked Bubba if he wants to be baptized on November 12th and he said yes! I'm very excited for him!

That's pretty much all for the week so I'll get into my spiritual thought. It's going to come from Elder Rasband's general conference talk. In general conference Elder Rasband invited us to share The Book of Mormon with our friends and he promises us the same blessings that are promised in 1 Nephi 13:37 in which the Lord says:

"And blessed are they who shall seek to bring forth my Zion at that day, for they shall have the gift and the power of the Holy Ghost; and if they endure unto the end they shall be lifted up at the last day, and shall be saved in the everlasting kingdom of the Lamb; and whoso shall publish peace, yea, tidings of great joy, how beautiful upon the mountains shall they be"

I am going to extend the same invitation to all of you. I know that if you share The Book of Mormon along with a simple testimony of it that you will have the Holy Ghost with you and that you will have greater peace and joy in your life. If you do act on this invitation I'd love to hear some of your stories of how it went!

This QR code will bring you to the Book of Mormon app,
which makes sharing the Book of Mormon with others as easy can be.

I hope y'all are doing great! Sorry I didn't take a ton of pictures this week! I'll take more next week. Love all of you!

Love,
Elder Goold

{Letter #7} Mirror Lake and Conference

 Hey y'all!
So this week's email is probably gonna a be pretty short because I'm running low on time. But it was a pretty good week.

A miracle we saw in missionary work this week happened last Thursday. We had just gotten out of a lesson with a less active member of our ward and we parked just down the street to figure out where we were going next. We were just kinda sitting there when someone knocked on our window and said that we were parked in front of their house. Once he figured out who we were he actually invited us in to share a message with him and his family. So we taught a lesson to Shawn, his wife Ellie, and their daughter Ryan! We are going to try to stop by tomorrow to have another lesson with them. So we'll see where that goes.

 

This p-day we were able to go on a hike to Mirror Lake which has an amazing view of Mount Hood.

It also started raining a little bit this week and was loving the clouds while they lasted.

I also made a cow friend.

Conference obviously was amazing. I loved so many of the talks and am super excited for the 18 temples they announced!  My spiritual thought from this week will be coming from Conference naturally.

In President Nelson's talk he said:  
"In coming days we will see the greatest manifestation of the Savior’s power that we have ever seen"

This is such an amazing thing to think about. Whatever form that takes whether it be through major miracles, small things, or the spreading of the Gospel throughout the earth I know that is true. My invitation for you this week is to look for ways that you see the Savior’s power being manifested in your life.

 
I hope y'all are doing great! I love hearing from you!
Love,
Elder Goold

PS:  I live in a beautiful part of the world

{Letter #6} Some Cute Kittens, Exchanges, and General Conference!

Hey everyone!
So this week was actually pretty uneventful. I'm very scatterbrained today so sorry if this is hard to read.

 
We did have exchanges again which was pretty fun! This time I went with my district leader and got to ride a bike all day. We had a bunch of lessons with mostly members but had a couple with some friends who are interested in learning more! Those all went pretty well. Biking around was definitely a bit of an adjustment from normally sitting in the car.

An exciting missionary moment from the week is that we were able to get in contact with a referral from a few weeks ago finally! His name is Ricky. We've been texting him a bunch and he's been good about responding to texts, but super noncommittal to setting up a lesson with us. But a small miracle actually happened this Saturday! We decided to give Ricky a call to see if we could set up a lesson with us, he said he was busy and driving to work in Boring at the moment. We just happened to be in Boring though! So we met up on the street of Boring, Oregon right outside his work and we invited him to General Conference! He said he would try to watch some of it, so that's super exciting!

We also had Stake Conference this week. It was amazing to hear from some of our local church leaders right before hearing from the prophets and other general leaders!

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My spiritual thought from this week is going to come from Stake Conference. The theme of Stake conference was the Plan of Salvation. Something that really stood out to me was the scripture Matthew 11:28-30 in which Christ says:


"Come unto me, all ye that labour and are heavy laden, and I will give you rest. Take my yoke upon you, and learn of me; for I am meek and lowly in heart: and ye shall find rest unto your souls. For my yoke is easy, and my burden is light."


This scripture was quoted 3 times by different people. We may be having trial after trial. We may be sick. We may feel imperfect. Christ has experienced all of that too. Christ knows exactly how you feel, and because of that He knows exactly how to help you too. Turn to Christ. Turn to Christ with any trial, sickness, sin, loss, imperfection, or anything and He will bless you and give you strength. He will take that burden from you and help you overcome it. We just need to turn to Him in prayer.

Some fun things from this week! My district leader Elder Strand decided that he wants to learn how to solve a rubiks cube. So I've been spending a lot of my free time teaching him how to do that.
We've come across a lot of cats in lessons this week. Here we're some that I took pictures of:

The kittens are Scottish Fold kittens that a member in my ward breeds. They have folded ears. Very cute.

We also just found a very friendly cat on the stairs that was playing with us.

We also got to go to the temple this morning! The Portland Temple is beautiful!  I love the temple!

That's all for this week! I hope y'all are doing great! I'd love to hear from you!
Love,
Elder Goold

{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