"I fully split my pants almost all the way open"

Hello everyone!! This week has been absolutely nuts. I'll try to remember some stuff that happened.

This week we got to see Cody who moved back in to town. We met with him and Jescha his girlfriend on Wednesday night. It's really awesome to know that he has a desire to keep learning and especially for coming to church now! He got a job at Chick-Fil-A so he has all Sundays off and is coming to church every week. Elder Roberts and I are really going to focus on him these next few weeks and help him get the gospel more into his heart!

We also saw the Mankoto family last week and it went well. We asked them the baptismal interview questions just to get a better bearing on how they were doing. Brother Mankoto is doing great and continues to read. Their son is doing well too but we are going to focus on his reading the Book of Mormon. Sister Mankoto (the one who doesn't speak English) was a little bit behind the others and rightfully so. We gave her the French restoration pamphlet to read and review for this next visit. She has a good understanding and I hope we will be able to help her along the path.

Friday was a fun experience. We had Zone Meeting in the morning first, which was cool. Recently President Salisbury has been encouraging us to memorize all of Joseph Smith History verses 16-17. Lots of missionaries have parts of them down but President has asked us to fully memorize both. It's really awesome to do it now because of the fullness of Joseph Smith’s experience.

Then Elder Ballard and I went on exchanges. We had a great lesson with an investigator the Sisters passed over to the Elders, we were able to help a lot of her concerns. Then after talking to someone for a short visit, Elder Ballard and I saw some kids moving in for school and we offered to help. This was the beginning of our adventure. They easily accepted our invitation, so for the next 45 mins we helped them move stuff up and down their tiny stairs to their stuffy apartment. Near the end of moving boxes in, I happen to squat down to set down my box and out of nowhere, I fully split my pants almost all the way open (pictures included-luckily they weren’t suit pants).  Luckily, it was hardly noticeable when I stood up, so for the rest of the time, I tried staying upright. So in their apartment, they had no air conditioning yet, since most places the East, or at least WV, don't have the big house units, only window units. So for the rest of the night we worked trying to install this 129 pound window AC unit. Needless to say, it didn't work and they went to Wal-mart that night to get something else. Then Saturday morning we returned to help them one last bit. It was quite fun to just randomly help someone so much and now they are totally cool with missionaries and maybe we will see them around campus someday!

Something that I really liked pondering this last week was something shared in Priesthood that related to visualization from our Zone Conference yesterday.  We were talking about the sacrament and its history/symbolism and one of the brothers mentioned something I had never even imagined! After reading the last supper account in the Bible he paused and said to us "Can you imagine the words Christ Himself would use as He blessed the sacrament that night?" As I imagined that I just felt the Spirit very strong as I imagined listening to the Savior Himself blessing the emblems that would represent the Atonement He was soon going to perform. It just seemed so much more personal after I thought about it that way and so I wanted to share that with all of you. 

Saturday was move in day here and lets just say even before school got out, I had never seen so many people in Morgantown. It was absolute madness. Lots of people were partying like crazy still and we were offered drinks basically anywhere we went. Interesting day - that is for sure. I also hit 11 months last week and I just could not believe that. It doesn’t seem like almost a year ago I was entering the MTC, but it has been. It's been a great experience out here so far and I love every minute.

I hope all of you have a great week this week and stay safe. Praying for you!

Take Luck,

Elder Goold