Elder Gold Goes To DC North: A Birthday Wish Come True...Dominic Accepted his Baptismal Invitation (3/17/2014)

Hey everyone!

Thank you to all who have wished me Happy Birthday! It's so very much appreciated. I don't feel like it has been forgotten :-) Today is going to be a fun one!

So first of all, let me tell you about the previous week. This past week we had two wonderful lessons. One of them was with Dominic & Saundra and the other was with Lauren.

So the first one was with Lauren. We had a really wonderful lesson because the Relief Society president and her newly returned missionary daughter came with us. They were such a great help! There were a couple of times where I spaced some scriptures were and her daughter was able to jump in and help me out :-) It was awesome! We began by teaching her about baptism and the gift of the Holy Ghost. She doesn't really like answering questions face-to-face because she says that she doesn't know really how to answer them. So the lesson was a lot of us talking, but we got her to talk a little bit more than usual which was good :-)

At the end of the lesson we invited her to be baptized on June 22nd. The reason that we set it so far out was so that it could be a goal for her to progress towards. She's only been to church once so far. We were hoping that this goal of baptism might motivate her to come to church more. At first she was like "I'll think about it", but then we explained to her that it was a goal for her to work towards and in the end said "sure" which kind of makes me wonder if she really is even interested in joining the church. I mean we have it on good authority that she might possibly be doing all of this just to join a group.

Then the next lesson we had was with the Aragon's! It was such a fantastically spiritual lesson, it was truly amazing! We taught them the gospel of Jesus Christ, which is that through Jesus Christ we can become cleansed from sin. We need to have faith in Jesus Christ, we need to repent, we to be baptized, receive the gift of the Holy Ghost, and endure to the end. On quite a few of the points we ended up taking too long, you know kind of beating a dead horse type of the thing. The lesson though was still very spiritual and we are able to, at the very beginning, let Dominic know that first off we would be teaching the gospel of Jesus Christ, and then at the end of the lesson or sometime during, as directed by the Spirit, it would invite him to be baptized. When we said that his eyes kind of lit up like "oh great", but we were able to explain that as we taught the gospel of Jesus Christ we wanted him to pay attention to the things that would point out to him why it would be important for him to receive the saving ordinance of baptism.

It was also really cool because Brother Watson, one of the members, was able to come with us. We had him talk about the symbolism of baptism and also the gift of the Holy Ghost and what the difference is between that and the feeling the power of the Holy Ghost. He did a wonderful job of explaining both! At the end of the lesson I kind of… Connected all the lesson together, basically a quick run through, and asked him, "Now knowing the gospel of Jesus Christ and the importance of baptism and how it can help you in your life come closer to our Heavenly Father and Jesus Christ, will you follow the example of Jesus Christ by being baptized by someone holding the priesthood authority of God?". He sat there for a while. You tell he was actually thinking about it pondering, deciding what good could come from it. After a little while Elder Fisher shared a scripture in Mosiah that basically stated, "The fact is, that you have come to know these things are true, so what is it stopping you from being baptized?"

After he shared the scripture, Dominic sat there again for a little while, still pondering, still thinking what his decision would be. After little while longer he looked up at us and said with a smile on his face "yeah I will.". The spirit in the room was so strong and it was so amazing to watch the spirit work in Dominic teaching him.

Sandra also shared a spiritual experience about what it was that made her realize that what she was missing in her life most was the church. Her story really lit up the room even more with the spirit! I mean, this was probably the most, if not the second most spiritual lesson I've been in on my mission. It really was truly amazing. So we let Dominic know that we were going to have a baptismal service on April 6,(which we totally forgot was general conference haha). So we're going to let him know that and then tell him we can do it either the week before or the week after.

I also can't thank Brother Watson enough for being there for the lesson. He really was such a great addition to the discussion and he really helped the spirit to more strongly testify to Dominic, the truthfulness of the message that we shared. So thank you Brother Watson!

This past week really was awesome! :-)

So then for my birthday, the wonderful McComb family is having us over so we can play some pool and have, what Sister McComb called, a "unofficial birthday party" haha. It's going to be a lot of fun! I love that family so much! And it's going to be fun dominating them at pool! ha ha just kidding. I'm not very good but it will still be fun :-).

Well that has been our wonderful amazing past week and again I just want to thank you all for the Birthday wishes that you given to me! I hope you all have a wonderful week full of blessings and miracles!