Hello Utah! (And any other states that people might be reading my blog from haha)
This week has been a pretty good week! So first off, as I told you guys last letter, there were transfers this past Wednesday and I have the awesome opportunity to be a trainer! Wednesday started off very early. We got up extra early so we could get to the visitor center on time because I had a Trainer meeting that I was supposed to go to. Well that didn't work out as planned. Although we got up on time we ended up leaving a little late. Then on the drive up to D.C. we hit crazy traffic! What usually is about an hour and a half drive ended up taking us probably 2 1/2 hours. We tried to take a detour to the temple, but that just added on a ton of time. So we got back onto the 495, which is the main highway that loops around DC, and endured the traffic until we got to the Visitor's Center.
We got there about five minutes late. As it turns out the new missionaries and the Assistants also got caught in the traffic, so they got there just a little bit before I did. The trainer meeting wasn't what I thought it was going to be. I thought we were going to be trained on how to do the 12 week program and other things we were supposed to teach the new missionaries. For those of you that don't know, the church has come out with a 12 week program that is a new way of training new missionaries on how to teach and become good missionaries.
Anyway! Back to that Wednesday. The actual meeting itself just turned out to be introductions to our new missionaries. President Cooke went over pretty much the intro to the 12 week program which basically told the missionary that this program will help them to learn how to become an awesome missionary. But, we didn't actually learn the 12 week program yet, so basically I'm just going off of what I remember my trainer taught me and the things that we did.
Then I met my new companion, Elder Fisher! He's a really awesome guy! He's tons fun, full of energy and really has a great love for the gospel. As you might imagine he is from Utah! Bountiful, to be exact. It was really awesome to take him into the temple after the transfer meeting. I guess he wasn't able to go to the Provo Temple while he was at the MTC, so this was the first time in about three weeks that he was able to go to the temple. It was a really awesome experience. I loved sharing the experience with him and spending time in the Celestial Room.
We didn't get home until about… I think it was about 5:30 or 6:00 pm that night. We spent the rest of the time until dinner getting him all unpacked and settled. Then we took him shopping so he could have groceries for the week. That night we took him to his first member lesson. We went over to the Darrows to talk about their family mission plan. It was a really awesome experience for him to meet some of the members and also get a teaching experience in on the first day.
I don't know if I told you guys this story, so I'm going to tell it to you anyway! So this past week (maybe the week before) we had received a text referral from the mission office. The text referral was for a woman named Sandra Aragon and that she requested the sister missionaries to visit her. Well the problem with that is that there aren't sister missionaries down here so we just decided to call her anyways. The first time we called her she didn't answer, so we just left a message. We figured if she calls us, then great! If not, then, oh well! Later that day, Elder Manning had been driving to an appointment and she called us! She told us in that phone call that she been an inactive member for about 13 years, but really wanted to come back to church. She also told us that her husband was not a member, but that he wanted to start taking lessons and that it wouldn't hurt if she sat in on them either. It was really such a blessing and a miracle to have that happen! We set up an appointment with him for later that week. Unfortunately we are not able to go to that appointment because she got a cold and her son had strep throat. So we rescheduled for February 25 and now Elder Fisher and I will go. I really hope we're able to teach them not only as an opportunity to bring them the Gospel, but it'll be a great teaching and learning experience for Elder Fisher.
On a more crazy note, last, Friday, at about 10 o'clock in the morning we got a voicemail, from the Assistants telling us that there was a tornado watch happening and that we were to go to the church as soon as we could and to stay there until about 5 o'clock. We were to keep away from the windows and not to go outside. While we were there, we received a text message that told us there was an actual tornado happening and to take cover. Don't worry, it didn't get anywhere near us :) It was about 20 minutes away and they said it was extremely small and only a tiny bit of damage was done. I kind a wish I'd seen it! Ha! I've never seen a tornado in real life before. It was really cool to see the crazy weather as well! It was raining super hard and the wind was blowing pretty good too. All in all we were safe and sound in a church and protected by the Lord :).
Then Saturday night we had a really cool experience. It was about 8 o'clock and we had just gone to check on a former investigator, which didn't go too well. We knocked on his door, and when he came to the door he saw us and just put his hand up and shook it like "go away I don't want anything to do with you" and walked away. So we told him to have a nice night and left. On the way to visit another former investigator, we were driving past some houses and Elder Fisher said "I have a feeling we need to go back and talk to some one in the house that is back there". So I turned the car around and headed back to the direction of where he said the house was. When we got to the house we knocked on the door and a woman came to the door. Elder Fisher told her that we were missionaries from the church and that we had a message of Christ that we wanted to share with her. We asked if we could come in and talk to her. Surprisingly she let us in!
As we were talking to her she told us that we were lucky that she happened to be downstairs to cook some food for her and her husband and that if she had been upstairs she definitely would not have come down to answer the door. So we found out that she goes to a Methodist Church, but she likes to visit other churches and believes that all churches are good if they preach and talk about Christ and God. We told her that the message that we had to share was that Christ and God in their love for us, brought another book of scripture that has come through a prophet of God. We began to tell her of the Book of Mormon and what it was about and how she could come to know for herself the divinity and truthfulness of the book. She seemed very open minded and somewhat interested in the book. She then asked us what time our church service was, so we told her the time and she said that she would be interested in coming to church to see what our church was like. We invited her to come to church and to read and pray about the book of Mormon.
She's pretty busy this week so we are unable to meet with her, but she said to call her next weekend and set up an appointment for that following week. It really was a blessing that we are able to follow the promptings of the spirit that were given to Elder Fisher to find this woman that was prepared by God to receive us and to listen to the message that we had. What a great Miracle!
Well that was our awesome week! And we're hoping to have another awesome one this week. I hope that you all have a wonderful week and feel the many small and large Tender Mercies of the Lord! I love you all!
Love,
Elder Gold
Elder Gold
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| New Companion Elder Fisher |
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