"He's a magic wizard"

Well this last week has been considerably colder than usual, but it's not the end of the world, that's why we invented clothes! It also snowed a ton on Sunday, but now it's already all gone, sadly before I got a picture. Also, I'm emailing today because we had interviews with President Salisbury yesterday. Sorry for any confusion! Well, now for all of the adventures:

Last week we got to teach the B family!!! It was so good to actually sit down with their family and share the gospel! Sister B is awesome and even though she'd been away from the church for a while, she understands it and has a solid testimony. Brother B is really cool, he's an ex-bull rider and for a good reason! He's had a ton of broken bones and concussions throughout his life, so now he's retired from that and is on disability. But he is one of the nicest people ever and they are just a great family. The Spirit was soft but strong.

We had a missionary broadcast last week, which was exciting! We had another change, which was completely unexpected, which involves the 4 key indicators as a way to report our progress.

Since I've been here in Huntington, we've had a hard time finding members who are less-active and are open to returning to the church, but in the last week we've gotten to meet 4 who are all really receptive and have a desire to come back, so that's pretty darn awesome, definitely an answer to prayers. We got to visit with Sister K and it went really well. She doesn't have a car, which is stinky, but we've got other members nearby, so we're trying to get her to church again. 

We got to see Bro. R again! We taught him about the Plan of Salvation and he brought up that he's trying to quit smoking so tomorrow we get to do the Stop Smoking Workshop with him! I haven't done it in a while and neither has Elder Webb, so it will be pretty exciting.

Friday we had Zone Meeting and it went really well. We talked a lot about how we can better teach the people, not just the lessons. I think it helped me have a real understanding of how each of us is a child of God and everyone is really unique in their circumstances, and so the only way we can understand the needs of others is to rely on the Holy Ghost. None of us understand others perfectly, but Heavenly Father and Jesus Christ do, and it's by the Spirit we can know what they know. 

Yesterday we had interviews with President Salisbury, which was sweet. President Salisbury is awesome. I really appreciate him and the direction he gave me. It will be real sad to see him leave in a few months. He also showed us a sweet magic trick. I swear he's a magic wizard - haha. 

Anyways, nothing else happened that was terribly exciting so I'll share something before I end. I really, really, really like this video from Elder Holland called "The Savior Understands Me". We've watched it with some members recently and have gotten them to share it with others. It's an amazing video and I testify of the truthfulness of what Elder Holland says. So watch it here:) 

 https://www.lds.org/media-library/video/2016-03-0021-the-savior-understands-me?category=unity-in-diversity&lang=eng

Hope all of y'all have a great week and stay safe!

Take Luck,

Elder Goold

Sunny in Huntington after the snow and super windy!

Elder Webb and I with President Salisbury

"Warm Weather and Hollows Galore!"

Well, well, well, this last week has been something! We had 2 days of meetings but over all it was a pretty good week. I'll try to remember all the stuff!

Tuesday was MLC (Mission Leadership Council) and so we were in Charleston for the whole day basically. It was a good meeting though and we did a lot of counseling in order to prep for the Zone Conference. It was sweet! 

Wednesday was pretty slow but we had to do a lot of moving and organizing with the districts. We had a missionary head back home for health reasons and so we had to move a lot of things around, but it wasn't too bad. It's always hard to see a missionary have to go home because of the great blessing a mission is. A mission is definitely the best thing I've done, without a doubt! 

Thursday we had a meeting with all of the areas in our mission that are YSA or have colleges so that was pretty darn exciting. I got to talk with Elder Gurke and Watkins (the ones in Morgantown) about all the people up there! It sounds like they are all doing well!! Also on Thursday we were able to teach Roger again along with his wife and son Roger!! We had a really awesome lesson about the plan of salvation!! It was super powerful and really funny as well! When we asked little Roger what it meant to him to be a child of God and he said, "It makes me happy cause He's like on of the best fathers in the whole world!" It was awesome. They didn't make it to church, but they've read a lot of the Book of Mormon so far, so that's pretty awesome! 

Friday we had district meeting and then we went on exchanges with the Logan Elders! Elder Wasden and I were here in Huntington and we found a real nice family who actually came to church yesterday! They have a friend in the 2nd ward and so they went with him this last week. They are pretty set in their beliefs and church but they are willing to have us back. It was a good exchange, Elder Wasden was actually in the Buena Vista zone for a while and I went on exchanges with him a real long time ago with Elder Norman. 

Saturday...well Saturday wasn't the best, but it makes for a good story. So we drove down to Chapmanville to exchange back since we had a good amount of miles left on the car and the plan after that was to drive north west to Wayne, which is in our area, but far away so we usually don't visit it. So we head out and follow my GPS on "shortest miles"... yeah, bad idea. So we got about 20 mins up this hollow and then it got real crazy real fast. Waaaayyy too steep and off-roady for a Chevy Malibu so we turned back. Well, now we are good to go and we get headed up the main road more before we head west. So the next road we go down seems like a much more manageable road to drive on and so we probably drove a solid 35 mins up this road, which eventually turned into a power service road. Still manageable, until 2 miles from where we were trying to actually get to and then a huge pool of water in the middle of the road. Way too big and deep to drive through in our car, that's for sure. So now we turn around and repeat the process. Finally we get on an adequate road that takes us all the way to Wayne. We actually ended up teaching  Larry, a referral, and he is awesome! Super open and receptive and went really really well. Then, right after we finish, we get a call on our phone, or so we thought. It was actually the Logan Elders’ phone.... Elder Webb had left it in his pocket and now we were another 70 mins away! Well, we ended up driving all the way back to flippin' Chapmanville and dropping off their phone and then driving all the way back to Huntington. So we were sitting and driving a whole lot. Pretty funny but really lame at the same time.😂

Sunday was a good day! We had Dantes (whom we met last week) bike all the way to church! He is awesome but church was hard for him because he really doesn't speak English, so we'll work with him on English before anything. We've got a lot of planning and such to do this next week for Zone Meeting, so it will be a fun week! 

My thought for the week is found in Ether 12:27. I decided to break it down into the different sentences. I really liked the phrase "I give unto men weakness that they may be humble". God gives us weakness and trials as a way for us to use our agency to come closer to Him. Every weakness we have is a plea from God asking us to rely on Him. But we may be humble, it's not a guarantee, it's a choice. Let us each be those who decided to humble ourselves and rely on God. 

I hope all of you are having a good January and are staying safe!! We've been pretty warm here the last week, but I fear it is going to get cold soon again. Oh well!! Peace out y'all!

Take Luck,

Elder Goold🙃

From Saturday's Backwoods Drive -  Oooops!

"Easy" doesn't get the important things done!

Dear Family, Friends, people who probably don't read these emails, and people who don't get the emails but read the blog:

Bad email titles strike again. Mostly because the week wasn't the most exciting, but that's okay. Some highlights:

Booths at Marshall! We did 2 booths, one Wednesday and one Thursday. Similar to what we did in December, but different topics. We did one about the New Year and one about "Questions you would ask God". It was pretty fun and we talked to a lot of awesome people!! Pictures below

We got to teach one of the people from the booth yesterday actually and it went really well. He's named Dantes (American names) and he's from (wait for it).... CHINA! Haha it made me so happy to teach someone from China again, I love Chinese people. But unlike Wenji Ma from Mo-town, he's younger, not married with a kid and he believes in God! So we taught him about our Heavenly Father and Jesus Christ and how to pray. He was so shocked when we told him church was free as well as the Book of Mormon and that we work as missionaries for free!! So he's going to bike to church next week! 

The Huntington Zone overall had a super awesome week. Everything's been getting better since Christmas, so that's pretty sweet. We did have one exchange with the Assistants on Tuesday and we did a different kind of exchange where we both went to Charleston and worked there all day. It was cool to go on exchanges with Elder Curtis! We did all the driving and teaching while Elder Webb and Kidd did all the walking and knocking doors in the rain... haha, poor Elders. It was really fun though!! 

So we had our appointment with the "B" family on Thursday...but they all got the flu and strep throat and were unable to meet with us because they were all so sick :( Oh well, at least they are still trying to meet with us!! Keep them in your prayers!!!!

Alicia also fell through because she was called into work last minute. And then yesterday she called and had an interesting phone call that went something like this: "Thank you so much, I absolutely love what you taught me! I've read the pamphlet and I've started reading the Book of Mormon and I love it all! I was just in a really bad time when you knocked on my door that day and ever since you came and I've been reading, everything has been getting better and it’s awesome!!! I really believe God sent you to me to help me! (Awesome right?!?!) So now that everything is good, I'm not really interested in talking too much more. But if things start to get hard again, I believe God will just send you back to help me out again! Bye!" 😐😶😑😥 Yeah, so that was pretty rough. And all of our other people have just been disappearing. Oh well, can only get better I guess! 

There is a quote I really like that President Salisbury sent us this week about "becoming":  

        ◦   "Men are anxious to improve their circumstances, but are unwilling to improve themselves; they therefore remain bound."

It's true, so we just need to be willing to do hard things and improve the world in which we live! "Easy" doesn't get the important things done! Everything in life of any real value is hard to obtain, both temporally and spiritually. 

Hope y'all stay safe and warm! 

Take Luck!

Elder Goold

Our District, Elder Tunell (in the chair), Elder Wasden (left), Elder Webb and I
(I thought we were doing an awkward Olan Mills pose, but I guess not)

Our booth at Marshall University

"It's too cold."

I have no comment for how cold it is. All I can say is that it is too much. Oh well, my ears will fall off eventually and then they won't hurt, right? Haha - anyways, it was a good week overall, but yes, lots of cold. 

Last Tuesday we had a Zone Conference again! It was awesome. We got the news: An official change to the missionary schedule worldwide! So not much has changed, but the main differences are 1. We plan in the morning (rather than the previous night) 2. Companionship study is moved to anytime between 10 am and 9 pm. 3. Preparation day starts at 8 am now instead of 10! So yeah, that was pretty exciting news and we are supposed to get more details at the world-wide missionary broadcast on the 25th of this month. President Salisbury requested that we just started to implement the schedule asap and it's been wonderful so far! We also got to go on exchanges with the Gallipolis Elders, so I got to work with Elder Christensen again!! That was awesome, Elder Christensen is one of my favorite missionaries and we're going to be good friends at BYU once we get back. Anyways, we had a bunch of plans for working Tuesday night, but then I realized that we had 2 meetings we had to go to (after a 9 hour zone conference) so it was a pretty uneventful day, but great at the same time!

Wednesday, Elder Christensen and I worked on finding new people to teach and we did just that! We have a good group of people who want us to come back and one in particular stood out. Her name is Alicia and we are going to get to see her tomorrow with one of the members in the ward. She was having a hard day when we knocked on her door and she said that she thought it was a sign from God!! She felt the Spirit so strongly and we are really excited to see her! 

Thursday was pretty unexciting except for all of the snow! We got to walk a lot in the snow and Elder Webb stepped on a cracked sidewalk chunk, which then sprayed mud-water-snow-slush all over his leg. It was hilarious to be honest! Then there was an older lady named Donna (we talked to a month ago) who let us in to teach her and her husband! That was fantastic because it was a great lesson and it was very cold. 

Friday we went on another exchange with the Elders in Ashland! I had Elder Wilson with me here in Huntington. He's from Herrimon, Utah and he is really into baseball. He came out with Elder Webb actually and he was just made district leader in Ashland, so we got to do some training on being a district leader. We got a referral from someone we talked to and so we went to go and meet this referral, named Adam. But then Adam's "address" didn't exist... So we went back and the guy gave us a completely different street...And then that one didn't exist either. So we were just really confused and laughing about it the whole time.

Saturday was loaded so I'll give some highlights: We taught some lady who gave us hot chocolate (best day ever), we talked to someone else not interested who gave us fresh chocolate chip cookies (told you), set up an appointment with the B Family for next Thursday (hurray!!!) and we had a special-needs girl come up to us on the street and give us a note for her friend Chris and then she watched us hand deliver it to him. Haha, it was pretty fun:) 

Sunday we had our 10 am church and then we did a lot of finding (it's been a theme here lately) and taught this guy who was at his client’s house taking care of him, but was really interested himself. Sadly he lives in the Sisters’ area and is moving to Colorado soon (Elder Nathan Goold?), but maybe something will come of it. 

People we are teaching: Nathan and Randy kind of dropped off, they said they would call us when they wanted to talk next. Keelon has just been out of town, but Marshall starts again today, so we'll try and catch him here soon! Kayla is MIA. Something happened at home Thursday and she left... So we are still trying to figure out what happened to her and where she is. It's lame too because she just quit smoking cigarettes!!!!!!!! But Elder Curtis said a similar thing happened while he was here a few months ago, so we have hopes that things go back to normal! Anyways, it's been good here and it's just been really cold.  OH WELL!! The work continues! 

Something that I really just want to share are some lyrics to one of my new-found favorite hymns, Jesus, the Very Thought of Thee:

No voice can sing, nor heart can frame,

Nor can the mem'ry find

A sweeter sound than thy blest name,

O Savior of mankind!

O hope of ev'ry contrite heart,

O joy of all the meek,

To those who fall, how kind thou art!

How good to those who seek!

I really like this song because it simply testifies of the spirit that Christ can give us, just at the thought of Him. He truly is our Savior and He is kind to those who fall, for He loves us and has laid down His life for us. 

I hope all of you are warmer than I am! Stay safe and try and eat something fun this week! 

Take Luck,

Elder Goold

Elder Christensen and I