“Friday, was obviously Christmas…Thank you for all the stuff again y'all … And thanks to all those who sent mail”

Hello everyone! 

I'm not even sure what to think about time as of now, because I am positive it has broken and been blown to tiny bits. Also, I hope everyone had a great Christmas! 

Monday, after emailing, we didn't do much other than clean. We did receive a media referral though, so that was good!

Tuesday started our crazy week. So while we were at the Genealogical Society, Elder Norman and I got a call that Elder Higgins in Clifton Forge was loosing his companion and will be with us starting Wednesday until a new companion is available. We tried visiting some less- actives, other than Philippe, with no success unfortunately. The Tucker's (the older Tuckers) did have us over for dinner and they actually gave us a referral to Brother Tucker’s brother Eddie Tucker. 

Wednesday was neither exciting nor fun. I awoke at about 12:15ish and my body decided that throwing up at that time would be a good life decision, which was false. So after the Assistants dropped off Elder Higgins, we stayed inside all day. Mitzi did bring me soup, because she is the best. 

Thursday was good. We did some weekly planning and tried visiting lots of less-actives. We finally contacted Monday’s referral and after giving them cookies we made, they told us the referral must have been a joke or something. We did see Sister Carter, and she is really wanting to do the right things again, so we'll be working with her in the future. 

Friday, was obviously Christmas. We went to the Lockhart’s home for a great breakfast and calling our families. It was awesome to see the family and talk for a while. Thank you for all the stuff again y'all :) I love the ties. And thanks to all those who sent mail, I got lots, so it will take me some time to respond! Then we went to the Entsminger's house for the rest of the night. We ate clam chowder and played speed Uno, which is quite intense. 

Saturday we worked a lot in Clifton Forge. We went to the library and I read the last talk given by Bruce R. McConkie. I would highly recommend you all read and or watch it. It was lots of walking the rest of the day. It was humid and almost 80 degrees, so that was weird. We visited Mitzi, who unfortunately didn't quit smoking quite yet, and taught about service and how it blesses others as well as our own lives. 

Sunday was a good day. Church was awesome, like always. We were able to visit Eddie Tucker and teach him a little about the Restoration in the driveway. We set up a return appointment for Thursday night!  He is super ready. He recently had some heart bypass and a stomach problem that both should have killed him, but his brother gave him a blessing before hand and he lived. He's very attentive to God at the moment and he has a great influence from his brother. We also taught the Thompsons about the importance of the sacrament and we are striving to help them back to church! They don't have car at the moment though. D&C 84:19-20 are great scriptures about the connection between the restoration of the Priesthood authority to our church and the Atonement (power of godliness). I know that the Priesthood power to act in the name of God for the salvation of mankind on the earth resides in The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter Day Saints. But yeah, Sunday was awesome.

Really great week with all sorts of stuff, hope everyone had an awesome Christmas and is going to have a fun New Years!

Take Luck,

Elder Goold

PS: Magic the Gathering is quite fun to play. 

"Hope everyone is having a bomb Christmas season"

Hello-there everybody!

Hope everyone is having a fun Christmas week. It hasn't been too long since last email, so not too much has happened. 

Thursday: We had transfers! We didn't have to get up super early, which was nice. We drove an hour and a half in the pouring rain to Beckley West Virginia and met up with the "Transfer Train". There Elder Rasmussen got loaded up and Elder Norman came with me. Once we were home, we contacted a referral we got for a copy of the Book of Mormon, which was awesome! We'll be headed back over there soon to check on that. Then we went to Ashley, who basically dropped us until after December. Then we went up the street to Jodie's so she could meet Elder Norman. 

Friday: Elder Pulley's Birthday!!!!! Happy Birfday. We had weekly planning and did some other "fun" stuff; we got maps from the Chamber of commerce, drove to the middle of nowhere again to visit a former investigator, saw Sister Carter and had choir practice. My favorite moment was the fact that it snowed. It's been real cold here the last few days, and that was really the first time I can remember it snowing. It didn't snow a lot, but I was excited. I think it was like 36 outside when it snowed. 

Saturday: Unfortunately, not much happened. We organized where a lot of the less-actives in Covington live so that we could try visiting them all. We went over to William’s and Jodie’s, neither of which went very well. Jodie is just not doing very well after her surgery and William likes to talk way too much, haha. He's cool though, he made Elder Rasmussen a really cool Japanese style painting and I actually bought a turtle statue from him, cause turtles are legit. We actually did see Jackie, but she is having surgery soon and won't be in town until January. But when we stopped by she had family over and her family member (mom or grandma) actually meets with missionaries too, up in Ohio, the part of Ohio that's actually in our mission! That was fun. Elder Norman was sick so we retired early that night. I also appreciate all of the letters and cards from people!

Sunday: We had our Branch Christmas program! We sang 2 songs as a choir. They alternated between speaking and singing sections. Sister Tucker and her friend (not a member, teaches at the nearby high school) sang a duet and Sister Lockhart and her Daughter also sang a duet. Our songs went pretty well! Unfortunately we didn't have anyone at church that week, which was a bummer. We went to the Lockhart’s for lunch and were able to see Philippe. We also taught Mitzi about fasting, which she already does, so that was pretty easy. She's really close to being done with smoking, please keep her in your thoughts and prayers!   Also, remember how Brandon Pony told us about how people say " I can't sing, but I can carry a tune in a bucket?" Well, Mitzi said that the other day, it was pretty great. 

Elder Norman: He's from Green River, Utah. That's pretty south near Moab. He doesn't like Northern Utah. He's pretty quiet, even at the house. He loves football, guns, hunting, trucks, America and country music. He and I get along well, I get along with most people, but we don't have a whole lot in common, other then the fact that we both like Smash Bros and Pokémon, which I wouldn't have thought he'd like, but hey, it's cool. He played football in high school and did track and wrestling.

Spiritual Thought: Today I had a good study. I pondered a lot about pride as I read Alma 4. Pride really isn't just thinking you're the best, or loving worldly goods, but in a simple way, it's exalting your desires and needs far above that of other people, and therefore caring about yourself more. And so by that understanding I realized that the real opposite of pride is charity. The last 4 or 5 verses in Moroni 7 talk about charity and how those with charity "seeketh not her own". I think that piece is interesting, because considering that charity is the pure love of Christ, it makes sense that charity is really loving others and putting their needs before your own. That's why Christ is the perfect example of charity because everything he did, especially the Atonement, put the well being of all of US before anything that was afflicting Him. I thought that was pretty darn cool. 

Hope everyone is having a bomb Christmas season, and is thinking about Christ! 

Take Luck, 

Elder Goold

"THEY'RE BOTH GOING TO EXPLODE RIGHT IN MY SHIRT!!!"

How is everyone doing? It's been a little while since I've gotten to email! Fun stuff happened this week!

Monday: We had lots of time to clean the house. A lot. It was really needed though, haha. Then we had a great lesson with Mitzi on true repentance. I honestly think there are two parts to repentance. First, we have took recognize repentance as a gift, not a punishment. Second, the Savior NEEDS to be involved in the process. I feel like too many people will try to stop some bad habit or fix something they did on their own, but that is too prideful and will never completely work. So we taught her about that and she has a goal to quit smoking by Christmas! And she's doing well. 

Tuesday: We had Genealogical Society again, just like every other Tuesday. We had good things set up, but that fell through. We were able to visit with Philippe and the Thompson family though! Philippe has been doing really well for quite a while now, which is awesome. The Thompsons are doing well. Brother Thompson fell off of his truck a few weeks ago, but he's doing very well now. They are still ridiculously funny. We were also able to see Jackie in person and set up a time to go over the next day!

Wednesday: Wednesday was a good day. We had a lesson in the morning with Jodie, which went well. Then we had a lesson at Jackie’s with Terry. Jackie is a super awesome lady with two great kids, McKaylan and Braden. McKaylan is 10 and is actually pretty mature for a 10 year old, she was super interested in hearing what we talked about! Braden is 6 and just super crazy, like 6 year olds are. But he's super funny. Jackie is a super nice lady who was a referral to some missionaries here at the beginning of the year. She lived a while in Alabama and raises her kids alone. She's been to a bunch of different churches and her whole family is super faithful. Our lesson went really well and they committed to read and pray about the Book of Mormon and they (Jackie and McKaylan) would be baptized once they received the witness that it was true! That was an awesome 30 mins in general. 

Thursday: Equally awesome, but for different reasons. Thursday was Specialized Training, which is when President and Sister Salisbury travel around and give instruction and help and lessons for pretty much a whole day to 1 zone at a time. It was super great, President Salisbury is such a great teacher and leader. One highlight was about the Iron Rod and the Tree of Life vision. He pointed out a difference between "clinging" to the Iron Rod and "holding steadfastly". To demonstrate this, he had 2 elders hold up a large iron rod about yea high (imagine me with my hand flat in front of my nose saying "yea high"). Then I was volunteered by Elder Higgins to be the test dummy. So I had to "cling" to the rod by doing the dreaded Flexed Arm Hang (not really that bad, but no one likes it). I was up there a decent amount of time, but then no matter how hard I tried, my arms slowly gave out until my feet touched. This was then compared to another, luckier, Elder who got to hold the pole like a sloth for as long as he could, which was forever. President then taught how we must be holding steadfastly to our beliefs and our standards. They must be apart of who we are so that it is easy to stick to them, especially because when we internalize what we believe, many temptations won't even bother or affect us. That was awesome. My arms may or may not have hurt the following day. 

Friday: We visited Toni Friday night, and our conversation was unusual like usual. He encouraged us to read the Koran..... We decided we'll start visiting him less frequently, haha.

Saturday: We did lots of trying to talk to people, but it didn't go as planned. We had our Branch Christmas Dinner that night, which was super fun and Brother Defbaugh who is an investigator for the Clifton Elders was there. He is super funny and his wife is a returning less-active. We also learned from our Zone Leaders Elder Rasmussen will be transferred out of Covington! Sad day..

Sunday: Not much happened, we saw Philippe and had Choir Practice again. That was the extent of what happened. Mitzi did come to church this week, which was awesome. 

Monday: We tried visiting with Shawn, who was an investigator a long while ago and his wife is less-active. He told the elders quite a while ago that he wanted some time after his sister died, but the missionaries thought he didn't want to meet with them anymore. But he is still super into the gospel and told our Branch President he'd "probably be mormon by now" so that is exciting! He is busy though, so he can be hard to catch. 

Tuesday: We did our service in the morning and then drove to see Philippe. Then after Philippe we drove the opposite direction to see the Dunihue family who are less-active and a less-active member Robert. He literally lived in the middle of the mountains. Mountain people though are actually some of the best people I've ever met. He was super friendly and was wearing a cool sweater vest, which was odd, but he was awesome. He really just doesn't have the money for gas to travel to church. Then we had an awesome dinner with the Tuckers and then went quickly to a member present lesson at Mitzi's with Brother Gibson. That went super well, they both have lots of pets (7 and 16 respectively) and they got along great. Then we learned that Elder Rasmussen is going to Princeton, West Virginia and Elder Norman is coming here to Covington with me! I am excited! 

Hope you are all having a great week and a good Christmas season! 

Take Luck,

Elder Goold

PS: I talked in my sleep again. 

Me: "There's two of them??"

E. Rasmussen: "Yes?"

Me (excitedly): "THEY’RE BOTH GOING TO EXPLODE RIGHT IN MY SHIRT!!!!"

*silence*

Where we live

Elder Rasmussen (shout out to my mom for fixing my camera)

My desk and desky things in its glory

T'was foggy this morn

"We had a small mouse that was getting into the house..."

Daniel’s Letter #13

This week seriously has been a blur, it's strange. Everything is beginning to blur together. I am now consistently using my planner to remind me of what actually happened. 

Monday: Not much else happened other than cleaning and napping. We went back to Wal-mart and browsed (today we'll probably hit up a pawn shop!) and there is some strange stuff at Wal-mart in the South. We did get a Church Headquarters Referral, that was a nice surprise.

Tuesday: Tuesday was the best day so far I think. We did our service for Genealogical Society and instead of editing photos like normal, we were counting all sorts of random boxed stuff in a storage room. Elder Rasmussen and I turned it into a competition for who had the box with the most stuff. We were able to visit with Sister Carter and we are going to work with her to get rides to church from the Lockharts. She was apparently baptized by Brother Lockhart a few years back, so they know each other. Then we saw Philippe and cursed rest home wifi because we weren't able to load the Christmas Initiative video (which is better each time I see it) and so we read from the Book of Mormon with him. Then we went and taught Jodie about real studying and relying on the Spirit and her own spiritual experiences to help her with smoking. Then we taught Mitzi that night and Mitzi is always awesome. We're going to get her done with smoking and on date for baptism this week! We were also able to set up an appointment with a potential investigator for Wednesday!

Wednesday: So we were supposed to go over to Jackie's home today for a lesson, but she ended up having to work over time so that fell through. She's really nice though, hopefully we can teach her! We also went over to Jodie's with the youth (2 of them haha) and built a rabbit hut for her while the kids and the leaders did dishes and mopped, that was actually super fun. She's on all sorts of stuff from her surgery so she's even more interesting than usual.

Thursday: Unfortunately uneventful day. We set up some return appointments, but that's about it. Oh, and something else, to be explained later. 

Friday: District meeting and exchanges! District meeting was good, we practiced using the "how to begin teaching" points from Preach My Gospel as door approaches and that was actually really fun. I am also studying Preach My Gospel like School notes which is super helpful for learning and I feel like I'm back in school, which is nice because I actually miss learning in awesome classes (yes I'm a nerd). I went up to Clifton Forge and that was fun. We ran into some less active Korean lady who apparently had been baptized by missionaries in Korea and then had moved to America. She's quite the character. There was a Christmas Parade in Clifton so we went to that and saw a ton of less-actives and other people there. 

Saturday: We exchanged back that morning. We weren't able to see anyone today either but there was a Christmas Parade in Covington that night so I got 2 parades in a row. I must be special. 

Sunday: We had church like normal and that was good, Fast and Testimony meetings are always good. Choir practice was fun. We are singing December 20th for the Christmas program! We are singing Still, Still, Still and This is the Night both songs are good. Still Still Still is really awesome. The Christmas devotional last night was so flipping great, all the talks were awesome. I especially likes Elder Bednar’s talk, since he talked about Samuel the Lamanite and his predictions about the signs of Christ's birth. Samuel the Lamanite is my favorite. 

Things that I've learned this week worth sharing:

The "Discover Why" part of the Christmas video and cards this year have been a large part of my pondering lately. There is a reason we are invited to discover why the Savior was born. Savior literally means a person who saves or delivers. Christ was given this title by the angels because that's what He will do in His life. He will be the one to deliver us and He is the only person who will ever be able to fully do that. That is why He was born, not so that He could do stuff for Himself, but for all of us, individually. 

Another thing that is slowly becoming easier for me to accept is that a missionary’s success is measured by their commitment to find, teach, and baptize (PMG somewhere) and not by the actual results. Hopefully I can fully grasp this, because sometimes it stinks to have empty days. 

Fun Story: 

•   Tuesday, Elder Rasmussen walked straight into a tree. 

•   Wednesday, Elder Rasmussen noticed some of his sunflower seeds were missing. So naturally he asked me if I had taken some. To which I responded that I have no idea how to even eat them, so no. Then, where did they go you ask? Well we weren't sure either. Then the next day after one trip to Wal-mart and a night of sleep this is what we found (pictured below)! Yep, we had a small mouse that was getting into the house for some sunflower seed snackage. I was pumped.  

•   Before we set up the mouse-trap, Elder Rasmussen was trying to figure out how it worked. And got his finger smashed in the process. It wasn't his week, haha. 

Love you all, hope you are all having a freezing cold December!

Elder Goold