Elder Goddard: 15

Monday, October 21, 2019 7:00 AM MST

This week was good!

Yesterday was stake conference! Our branch rented a bus to drive us over to the stake center. They told everyone to be there before 8 am so we could be to the stake center by 9. So like always, with help from the rain, everyone showed up at 9:30 am. 30 minutes after stake conference started. Buuut it turned out the branch presidency lied to us and stake conference started at 10, so we were on time for once! Pretty funny how they have to plan for everyone being an hour and a half late. The bus was fun though, just reminded me of riding the bus with the soccer guys. I got off and started looking for gatorade to carry to the field, and then I remembered I'm in Africa.

We went to our recent convert Salim's house this week, and he's 14 and was hanging out with his friends. We were just talking with all of them, and after a while they went inside and just brought out this huge bucket of rice. They gave us spoons and we all just started diggin in. It was kinda like how we'd order a pizza at home, but instead they just cooked a bunch of rice and then threw it all in a bucket. I can't wait to start doing that with my friends back home. Pizza's overrated.

We didn't have any baptisms this week, and we didn't schedule any either, but I thought it was a good week. With my language being better lately, it's been fun to just talk with our amis. I feel like I can connect with them better and just consider them true friends. So it's pretty cool. It's important to teach them the gospel, but it's also very important to just be a good friend, especially if they don't accept the lessons very well. We need to show them that we love them no matter what, and I think we did a good job of that this week.

A question that I get asked a lot on the mission is like why is there suffering? And they think suffering means God doesn't answer our prayers. My grandpa sent me a scripture last week about this, Mosiah 24:15. It's about how God strengthened Alma and his brothers through their trials, so they were easier and they could be patient with them. People think that God doesn't answer our prayers because he doesn't remove our trials when we pray. I pulled out this scripture like 3 times this week and was happy to explain that God does answer our prayers, but maybe not in the way we want. Sometimes he'll remove the trial, but sometimes we need it to grow. That's why we're here anyways. But he'll strengthen us through our trials if we ask Him. He will help us, but sometimes we just need to grow. I've learned that on my mission.

Hope all is well back home and that it's a lot colder than it is out here. Love you all.

Elder Goddard