Elder Daniel 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*