"I found a $100 dollar bill"

Well hello everyone! As you may assume from my email heading, yes, I found a $100 dollar bill #Benjamin. I will explain in more detail further on in my email.

Last week we went for a bike ride on a very long bike path here in Morgantown and biked quite a long ways away (we don't have an area which is nice for this).

Tuesday we saw lots of people, which was sweet. We taught Wenji in the morning. He is literally the most awesome guy! Like I have mentioned before, he speaks very little English, but this time he asked us what was different about our church from other Christian churches. So we used lots of very simple words and stellar diagrams to teach him about prophets and how we are the only church today with a living Prophet. So that was an adventure. Then we got to teach Hawa, the lady from Liberia and her husband and cousin, so that was pretty sweet!

Thursday was our next exciting day: We had Zone Conference in the morning and it took up a large chunk of the day. It was super great, a lot was taught and much was learned by all. President Salisbury is really awesome and he talked a lot about his recent 2 day meeting with Elder Oaks (the Apostle), so it is cool to see how close we are to his teachings! I think my favorite thing that I learned came from a question President asked, saying "Do your actions reflect desire?" I have thought about this a lot recently and it is such a good introspective tool for improvement. It really applies to every aspect of life too, not just missionary work, which is why I wanted to share it with everyone. Not only does it help us look at the things we do and how they relate to our goals, but it also relates very well to the scriptural teaching of "Seek and ye shall find."  Basically, if we put effort into something, we can accomplish or find what we want, and without any action on our part, we can't expect the same results. 

After Zone Conference, we had exchanges with the Southpark Elders. Elder Christensen came to University with me and he loved it, mostly because we have bikes and he does mountain biking back home, so it was good. We were able to teach a new guy named Sam. He is also from China, but he speaks much better English than Wenji, so we could teach him much easier. In fact, our lesson with him went super well, he is such an open person! He really wants to read the Book of Mormon and even prayed about it at the end of our lesson!  We also taught Luther at the institute about tithing. It was something Elder Vai and I felt would be good for him, even though he had grown up in the church and was just returning to activity. As it would turn out, Luther actually never had paid tithing growing up and now that he is returning to activity, doesn't know how to do tithing! So it was really a perfect lesson for him and he is committed to now pay his tithing in full, which I know will bless him more than anything.

Saturday Elder Vai and I were back together and we decided to go to Brunno's apartment and tract the other doors (even though their complex was locked with a code, I may have seen the code Brunno put in J ). Turns out, there were so many awesome people to talk to and we taught one girl, Bethany about the Restoration! So that was pretty sweet! Later was probably one of the best parts of the week. We taught Wenji again and this time we taught him about who God is and the nature of God and us as all of His Sons and Daughters. He told us how in China, there are many different gods people worship and how if someone wants to, they can "transfer gods". So then he said, "If I believe in your God, can I transfer gods?" It was so dang funny! Then, I proceeded to draw a very convoluted diagram to display how only on God was the true and living God and how others are not true gods. We both thought we would have to try a different approach, but he understood it! We were both very excited and then he used his translator app to ask, "Do you feel accomplishment?"  We were laughing so dang hard, it was great.

So, Sunday was a kind of lack-luster day. Mostly. We were tracting on Beechurst Ave as usual and I had been finding a pretty good amount of coins, more than usual. Shortly after, we saw this really sketchy spray-painted trailer in the bushes, so naturally we wanted a picture. We walked over and while Elder Vai pulled out his camera, I am still searching for coins. Then, out of the corner of my eye, I spot a green, new Benjamin lying on the ground!!!!!!! I freaked out. It was pretty awesome, but I decided to split it with him because I am me. We concluded it was probably drug money.

Anyways, later that day, we were on the bus, still in shock. We were chatting it up with the bus driver, Jim, and I decided I wanted to look at the nice bill one more time, since I had quickly put it in my bag to keep it dry. Lo and behold - it was fake. It looked so real!!!!!!!!!!!!! It had the tiniest print saying it was for movies only! Also, Benjamin was making a strange face. But now we plan to prank people with it. Sad, but kind of funny.

It was overall a pretty good week, I hope it was for all of you as well!

Take Luck,

Elder Goold