"A random guy with a bushy eskimo mustache..."

Happy New Year!

Hope everyone is doing great! It is 2016, which is super weird. I still feel like I'm 15, hopefully that lasts. This email will probably be a little different. The last week has been busy, but not at the same time. We have been planning and working increasingly effectively but not lots of stuff actually happened this week. So I'll put everything I can remember into a huge glob, since lots of days were dry of major excitement. 

Last P-day was fun, we played a board game called New Dungeon at a less- actives house. It is such a fun game. Tuesday we got a referral to someone who lives in the middle of nowhere and they had a very unhappy pit bull outside their house just chillin because people do that here. They leave their dogs outside with nothing. So haven't talked to him yet, to say the least. Eddie totally forgot we had an appointment, but he was cool about it and we should meet with him this week sometime, since now we have his phone number. Wednesday I spent forever trying to put the less-actives into my GPS, but it didn't work very well, which was a pain. Thursday, we helped Brother Moran move some cabinets and we went to Philip’s, because we were unable to make it Tuesday. Friday, we had District meeting which was awesome. We also saw Jodie for a little bit and had dinner with the Entsmingers. Saturday we did Mormon.org and worked out in Clifton.

Our parked truck got hit by some drunk guys while they were backing up, so we had 30 minutes of paper work while it was super dark and cold outside. Then we had a lesson with Brother Defibaugh (I think I had been spelling their name wrong the whole time) and he is cool. Sunday we had church and there was some excitement to the end of Sacrament meeting. A random guy with a bushy Eskimo mustache walked in the back right after Sacrament meeting was ending and then realized we were almost done and left. But I had recognized him from a good 5 or 6 weeks ago when Elder Rasmussen and I knocked on the door of a potential investigator who had moved. The Bushy mustache guy had moved there and told us where the potential moved to. I literally only recognized his mustache and so we tried his house after church and sure enough it was him! He is actually friends with Juan and Juan had invited him to Church! But Juan invited him for the 2nd hour and that's the time he showed up. So that was quite fun. We also talked to Eddie again and taught the Thompsons a lesson on the Book of Mormon. The Book of Mormon is such an amazing thing if you think about it. All of the ancient prophets, Nephi, Alma, Helaman, had to carry around these giant gold plates. They had to carve all their writings, it wasn't just paper. They only were able to write a fraction of everything that ever happened and they did all of that so that we could have the teachings of Christ and His doctrine. They literally did all of that work for our benefit in this day. I know that the Book of Mormon is true and that if you read it, even for the 50th time, as long as you have a sincere desire and real intent you can pray and feel the Holy Ghost testify of its truthfulness. I think the hardest part for people to understand is the "real intent" part. Too many people will pray about it just to know if it is true and that's the end of it. But those people will not receive a witness, because receiving a witness of the Book of Mormon's validity means that Joseph Smith was a true Prophet of God, the Priesthood has been restored, and that the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-Day saints is true, and once that knowledge has been shared through the Spirit, it requires the person who received that knowledge to change their lives. Too many people are afraid of the changes, but the restored Gospel blesses our lives so infinitely, that the blessings will overpower and outweigh any changes that someone may have to make. The Book of Mormon is true and I know that for myself, independent of any other person. Last night we also read from Mosiah 24 with Mitzi! It was good and I noticed she didn't have her ashtray for cigarettes next to the couch, so that is an improvement!! 

Yeah, that's really all the exciting stuff I can remember over the last week! It is weird to be in 2016 like I already mentioned. Stay warm everyone, it's been quite cold here the last few days! It actually was snowing this morning!

Love, Elder Goold