Elder Gold Goes To DC North: Transfer to DC 3rd Ward! Bike Area! (12/15/2014)

Hey everyone!!

As you know we had transfers this week!! Just as I thought that I would, I went to a bike area! I am now serving in the DC 3rd ward in the NE part of DC. My new Companion is Elder Humphrey from Sandy, UT. I was actually in his first district when he first came out and it's interesting to see the changes that he has experienced since he first came out. He's much more relaxed and not so.... stiff I guess would be a good word. :)

I was super happy when they announced that I would be with Elder Humphrey because I love that guy a lot! He's an awesome guy! Not going to lie though, I was pretty paranoid when I first got here that things would get stolen all the time. For example, we leave our helmets out on our bikes when we go in for appointments. I was so worried that they would get stolen that I had a hard time paying attention to the lessons. I was always trying to make sure that I could see our bikes so no one would take stuff! Now that I have been here for a while I'm not as worried because I know no one out here wants to steal a helmet. It's not worth anything. It's the tires, bike seats or just the entire bike that they want.

Yeah the bad part is that we have a roach problem. When we came home last night from the visitor center I went to go get a drink of water and when I turn at the light I saw at least six baby cockroaches and one adult cockroach. So I smashed them all! Were going to let our apartment complex know though, so that they can come and get rid of them.

Luckily I'm in the nicer part of the city. It's still a little ghetto (and the further you go south the more ghetto it gets), but even then it's still nicer than say, Anacostia. I would say the only other negative part is that there are hills everywhere! We are always going up or down a hill. I guess the plus side to that is that we're getting tons and tons of exercise.

This past week we had a good couple of lessons. We taught one family that's Ethiopian and one guy that's from Africa. The Ethiopian family seems super solid, but there is a language barrier that we have to try to overcome. I can't remember their name because it's super long and in Amharic. I also believe they've been taught all of the lessons before but, again, because of the language barrier, they didn't really understand the importance of being baptized. They also had the question of how is our church so much different from other churches. We really talked a lot about the restoration. We focused on the priesthood and the apostasy, and how it was restored through Joseph Smith. In the end we reiterated the fact that the way that were different is because we believe that we are the only church that has God's true authority and no other church has it. We explained that while all churches have some part of the truth in them, none of them have the full truth like we do. We explained it by giving an analogy of a mirror. When you have a mirror and you look into the mirror you can see all of you. Not just parts and pieces, but all of you. That's likened unto the church being fully there and having complete truth and authority. Now when the apostasy happened, it was like someone took that mirror and smashed it and little pieces of that mirror went everywhere. Good people tried to pick up those pieces and restore the mirror, but they couldn't do it because they didn't have the right authority or the proper know how to do so. Then when Christ appeared to Joseph Smith to restore the church and the priesthood, it was like Christ came back to fix the mirror and restored it to its original wholeness. They seemed understand it. We committed them to continue to read the Book of Mormon. They however did not come to church this past Sunday which was a bummer. There's always next time though! The next time we visit them we will try to see what happened.

Then as I mentioned we were also able to teach a guy from Africa. I can't remember his name either because it's in African. (haha). He is also super super solid, but he can never come to church because of his work schedule. This past lesson that we had with him was pretty much telling him, by the scriptures, that it's important to go to church. We tried to get him to overcome his fears of asking his boss and/or supervisor for Sundays off. He is absolutely terrified to talk to anybody about having days off because he thinks that no one will say yes. So we talked to him about praying to soften his coworker's hearts, that they might be open and willing to work with him to change his schedule. From there we started into a discussion about prayer because he told us that he didn't know how to receive answer for his prayers. He also said that he was stressed because he didn't know his purpose in life. So we invited him to simply pray for two things every night. We told him to pray to Heavenly Father to soften the hearts of his coworkers and supervisors, that they will be open and willing to work with him. The other thing was for him to pray to Heavenly Father to gain a better understanding of the direction that his life is supposed to go. Then we also invited him/encouraged him to continue reading the Book of Mormon. We have been praying every night that he will receive his answers soon, that he will gain testimony of what we have shared and that he might be baptized soon :).

So the last thing that I wanted to mention is how great it's been just talking to people. Being in a car you don't ever get to talk to people because you're always driving. You get the occasional person who walks by after we have knocked on a door, but you don't get to talk to that many people. Being on bike you pass by hundreds and hundreds of people every day. We like to stop and talk to as many as we can. I think this past week Elder Humphrey and I talked to at least 60 people, and that was only half the week. Elder Humphrey and his last comp talked to a ton of people as well, so I think our contacts were up in the low 100's. I'm actually really glad that I got transferred here for what is most likely to be my last area. I'm going to be able to work hard and really see some fruits of our labors.

Well I love you all and I hope you've had a wonderful week! I hope you all are following through on the invitation I gave you to pass out those "He is the gift" pass along cards! Remember good things come to those in the service of the Lord!

Love,

Elder Gold