"In the middle of the 3rd verse, we all heard a splash"

Hello everyone!!! These last few days have been awesome! I'll try and recap as much as I can.

Thursday, Friday and Saturday was the Jenny Willey Festival where our ward had a family history booth, so lots of people, very busy and very fun.

Wednesday night we went to McDowell and talked with some potential people we have in this huge apartment sub-division.

Thursday wasn't too exciting: Weekly planning session for our awesome week this week. We got to read from the Book of Mormon with Thomas, which was really good. He's doing pretty well, and the Bentleys are doing a good job of befriending him more. Then we had some appointments and we got to have dinner with the Carroway family. Then we walked around and talked with some people at the festival.

Friday was a good day! We had a meeting with our new Bishop as of two weeks, which was really effective, so we are excited for good things with the ward. Then we were at the Jenny Willey festival the rest of the day. We worked at the family history booth and talked with a lot of awesome families and individuals. We've got a few awesome people to go and see this next week now, which is really exciting. I also bought a giant turkey leg for dinner:)

Saturday we went and met with our investigator Brother Church in Auxier. It is kind of sad, his pizza place he works at is closing so he is losing his job and may be moving to WV. Hopefully not, of course, but if he does he'd move to where Elder Vai is serving in WV, so he's be in good hands. We taught him about prayer and it went really well. He's a super awesome man, he really is. Then we went back to the booth and worked at the festival. Then once the festival was turning into the parade, we dipped and went to set up the church for the baptism. The baptismal font takes 3 hours to fill up... and the drain easily comes out so we have to sit guard for the whole time and make sure it is all good. But it was all worth it:)

So we had Jonathan’s baptism that night!!!! It was so awesome:) Brother K (his older brother) got to baptize him! It went really well except one part…I was leading the music and right in the middle of the 3rd verse, we all heard a splash right behind the doors to the font.... There was a little 7-year old boy there and he was wandering around and decided he wanted to test his luck by balancing on the steps of the font. Well, he clearly isn't the best at balancing, because he totally fell in, but it's all okay, he was fine and we didn't loose any of the water:) It was quite an exciting event all around. But in the end, all worked out!

Sunday was great too, lots of people at. Jonathan was confirmed a member of the church by Elder Baggett!! It was awesome. Sadly we didn't have too many visitors at church, we were really hoping Sean and April made it, but they didn't. We had a good lesson after church with Tina with Bishop Spurlock there. She's doing well and a lot of her questions from conference are being answered for her and she's definitely growing her testimony. We are excited for her! Then after our adventure around to different people with the Bishop, we realized we lost our phone somewhere and had to scramble to find it, which we did at Tina’s house. Then we got to go and teach Sean and April, which went really well. April is very committed to coming to church and even wanted to come Saturday night to the baptism, but Sean works a lot and so he says he is too tired whenever those things actually come. We read 2 Nephi 32 with them and it was really good. When we read verse 8 and talked about it, April asked us "So, if there is some excuse to not do what God wants, like being too tired to come to church, that is just Satan tempting us?" And then she looked intensely at Sean. It was really funny and so we are hoping we can get them out to church next week! They are really awesome though, so once they get to church, it will be an awesome step for them.

Oh, and for all of you who have put up with reading all of my emails, you'll remember Cody, our investigator up in Morgantown. Well, he was just baptized this last weekend!!!!! I am so pumped for him. I'll include a picture of Elder Roberts, Elder Gurke and Cody at the baptism.

I want to tell you what I am studying during our unified mission reading of the Book of Mormon ~  I decided I wanted to work hard to increase my faith in the Lord. To "believe him" more like Elder Bednar spoke about. So when I was reading Faith in the Bible dictionary it lists a bunch of attributes the Lord has in their "fullness". I decided I was going to annotate anything in the Book of Mormon that directly upholds the Lord having these characteristics and let me tell you...there is sooooo much more than I thought!! The Book of Mormon truly does testify of Christ as the Son of God and the perfect Savior of us all.

Anyways, for a spiritual thought this week I want to talk about how we can make the best of every opportunity God gives us. The most key things we can look at are our attitude and our effort. If you make a little punnet square of the two, you want to have a good attitude and a good effort about everything you do. This goes for anything, whether it is a church calling, a hobby or a job. As we look at the positive of everything and put forth our best efforts, we can see blessing everywhere, I know it. So look at the things you do and see whether an attitude change or a behavioral change would benefit you and then do it!

I hope all is well for you all. Stay safe out chair!!! *("chair" is how people here pronounce the word "there", quite funny)

Take Luck

Elder Goold