Elder Gold Goes To DC North: President Eyring Comes To Visit (1/12/2015)

Hey Everyone!

So this past week has been great! Had some great lessons with investigators, we did a lot of service and got a lot of food, and we had an amazing conference with someone quite special!

To start out, we met with Robsan (10 years old) who's mother is a member, but the father, Tashombe, is not. For the longest time we were trying to see if Tashombe would be ok with with us teaching Robson because he had expressed an interest in getting baptized. Elder Rayback (one half of a Sr. Couple missionary), said he talked to Tashombe and he said Robsan could meet with us. Well we get there and it seemed to me we were completely catching him off guard! At first he was extremely uncomfortable and then Sister R. talked to him and he agreed to us let us teach Robsan but that no decision would be made on him getting baptized until they talked about it as a family. So that was a little frustrating. The lesson however went well! We taught him the Restoration! He did get off track a lot and asked a lot of questions that had nothing to do with the lesson (I can relate :P), but it was all good in the end. Tashombe, however, didn't really listen at all. In fact he fell asleep during the lesson. I wasn't too happy about that either because he was so against Robsan meeting with us. He finally agrees and says that he wants to listen to what we believe so they can make a decision on if Robsan can be baptized, and then he falls asleep! So hopefully we'll see some progress with that soon.

We also meet with Anatole this past week! We actually had some problems about teaching Anatole though. It wasn't anything Anatole did or said, it was with other missionaries. The French Elders to be exact. I don't know if I told you all this or not, but Anatole is from Cameroon and he speaks French. He speaks and understands English really well though. I mean yeah, there is (rarely), a bit of understanding problems when we teach him, but after explaining a word, sentence or concept he understands it and we move on. Well we called the French Elders last week because we were wondering if a certain person from the French group in our ward spoke English well enough that he could come with us to teach Anatole. After I asked them, right away, they were suspicious. "Why are you asking?". So I explained that it would help out that he would be a good fellow-shipper. Also he could help translate in the rare times that Anatole didn't understand. They went off on us about how they should be teaching him if he needs translation and that we need to send the referral over to them. I explained to them that while yes he speaks French and rarely needs translation, he speaks good enough English and he understands it well enough that we can teach him. On top of that he told us specifically that he didn't want to be taught in French, that he didn't want to be a part of the French group and that he didn't want to read the Book of Mormon in French.

So we argued back and forth for a while until I just told them "Your calling is to teach and contact in the French language, is it not? Thus there is no reason that you should be teaching him, if he doesn't want to be taught in French". I don't know if that wasn't the right thing to say, but it's true. That ended the conversation and we hung up. Well I wanted to make sure we didn't overstep our bounds and so we called the ZL's about it. That was a giant mistake because one of the Zl's is biased towards the situation because he was in the French group here a while ago and he had the same issue with Anatole. After talking to them they said that we need to pass him to the French Elders because the French Elders don't have anyone to teach right now and it would motivate them to work harder in their area. Also they could relate to Anatole better because they teach people from his culture all the time. We felt that those were totally unacceptable reasons. Just because you don't have anyone to teach in your area doesn't mean you can just take someone from from someone else's area. That's not how it works. On top of that, we can relate to him just fine!! I have shared MANY personal stories that applied to him. Well I told that to the ZL's. In the end I told them that if they decided that we still needed to pass him over to the French Elders, then we would because they are in leadership position and we would respect their decision, but that we really wouldn't be happy about it. So they said they would pray about it and get back to us. That's what we are waiting on now.

We did however, have a great lesson about the law of tithing, fasting and fast offerings. He had awesome questions, understood it and loved all of it! At the end of the lesson, he just asked us a ton of questions, such as, "Does it talk about Joseph Smith in the Bible? Is there a prophet today and who is it?" It was an amazing teaching experience to help him get the answers to his questions.

Well this past week It finally snowed!! So much that everything was covered in it. The day it snowed we had a ton of service planned, got lot of food and someone even tried to pay us money! Haha!. We began the day by going over to Sister M's. house to shovel her front and back walk ways. After doing that, she asked that we do her neighbors walkway (who I guess Elder Humphrey had tried to talk to and they were super rude to him) and then the sidewalk as well so we could show her neighborhood "What good people the Mormons are!". We worked for about half an hour getting everything shoveled, and then we started leaving. Well the neighbor who was rude to Humphrey came out and was shocked to find her walkways were done. Sister M happened to be out still and she asked her if she had done. Sister M told her we did it!! The neighbor called us back and thanked us over and over again and told us to hold on while she got money for us. I told her "No, it's OK! it was all for free." She said, "No, it's all for the Lord". I didn't quite understand. So we waited until she came back out and gave us $20. We told her we would make sure it was donated to the church. She thanked us again and we left.

Then we went over to Sister S's house and shoveled her walkway and her daughter's walkways!! The cool part about this was that her daughter and husband have been less active for years. She has said that wants nothing to do with the church and hates missionaries. Well we went over there and we shoveled all their walkways. Sister S lives in her daughter's basement. After we were done, Sister S fed us Hawaiian haystacks!! Super good ones too!! She's a great cook! When we arrived I had noticed a dog at the house. It was a mix between a poodle and something else, but it was about a medium size dog. As I understand it, I guess this dog doesn't like very many people. So at first when we came in, she was barking, growling and was keeping her distance. By the time we were leaving, however, she was letting me pet her, licking me and putting her front paws up on my lap. She was completely fine with us! Then the awesome part happened!! The daughter called while we were eating! I was super worried that Sister S would get yelled at by her daughter for letting us shovel the the walkways, but it was quite the opposite!! She was super happy and grateful for what we had done. She thanked us for it many times. Then on top of that she was really impressed that her dog had taken a liking to us! So all in all, it was a really awesome experience!!

Then we went to Sister K's home to help move stuff because they are moving to the Congo where her husband is working to build chapels. In preparations for that, they decided they wanted to rent out their home here while they are living in the Congo. We went over and helped move stuff out to the trash and move a piano. I was a lot of hard work and we had to be super careful because they had just gotten the floors re-finished. Well that was a failure! We were carrying something and Elder Humphrey had to set down on his end so we could swing the object to get it down the stairs. I told him he needed to pick his end up a tiny bit and push towards me. Well he skipped the first part and went straight to pushing. Needless to say, we put a few good scrapes in the floor. Then on top of that, when we moved the piano, Brother K thought it would be a good idea to put a styrofoam slab under it so we could just slide it into place. Well that didn't work. It just shredded the styrofoam to pieces and we ended up just pushing it across the floor, on it's wheels. Even though it was on wheels. it still put scratches in the floor. After everything was said and done, they took us out to a Chinese buffet!! A super awesome way to end the night :).

Now, last but CERTAINLY not least, the amazing conference that we had with someone special!!! This past Saturday we had the amazing opportunity and honor to be addressed by President Henry B. Eyring, First Counselor in the First Presidency!! I was so excited!! In that conference he said soooooooooo many things that I personally needed to hear!! We were all lovingly rebuked but at the same time he let us know that what we're doing right now as missionaries is exactly what the Lord has asked us to do. It was the best conference I have ever been to and ten times better than General Conference. Just to have him there speaking face to face with us and to feel the Spirit of God radiating from him was amazing. He spoke on how to receive revelation and how to love the people you are serving. He spoke about how you can't receive revelation for the people if you don't love them. I also really liked how he was so straight forward about how hard it is to receive revelation for someone else. A lot of church leaders have told us if you aren't receiving revelation for the people you are serving, then you need to change yourself because you most likely you are being disobedient. President Eyring said quite the opposite. You can be really obedient and not get revelation about someone just because it's really really hard to do so. It really was an amazing conference :).

Well that was our great week!! It was one of the greatest weeks I have had on my mission! I hope you guys have one just as good this week!! I love you all!

Love,

Elder Gold