Elder Goddard: Quatorzieme Semaine (fourteenth week)

Monday, October 14, 2019 10:49 AM

Week 14:

We started off with Zone Conference on Tuesday. And it was great! It's so fun to see all the missionaries again and hang out with them all day, especially my friends from the MTC. Because we actually have mission experiences to talk about now! Also, I remember thinking at the end of the last zone conference, when I didn't understand much, how much more I'd be able to understand this next time. And I was actually able to understand a lot more! It's cool to see how far I've come. I was able to understand almost everything! Me and Elder Drogowski also had to do a role play lesson in front of everyone there. I was nervous, but it went really well! People said a lot of good things about what we did, and everyone was impressed by my French! So that was a good confidence boost for me.

Wednesday I went on a split with one of the zone leaders. His name is Elder Mueller, from Virginia. He hasn't even been on the mission for a year yet, but this is already his 3rd transfer as a zone leader. He's a cool guy and it was fun to be with him for the day. It was also motivating to see him work for a day. He's got big love for the people and for the work, and is such a great teacher. He really knows his scriptures, and how to teach to touch people's hearts. It's got me motivated that if I keep working hard, maybe one day I can arrive at that point.

This week we had some really good lessons. Me and Elder Drogowski have just been so focused on letting these people know that we're not here to convince them that our church is true, but we're here to help people have their own experiences to know the truth for themselves. And we've really focused on hearing the people's needs, and teaching that, even when we've planned to teach something different. We were teaching Souer Florence, and she had the question of why she would have to be baptized again. So we spent like an hour explaining it to her. But even then she didn't seem convinced, which is okay, because we're not here for that. So we invited her to go pray about it, because it's the Holy Ghost that's going to tell her the truth. It just felt like a good lesson and we were teaching how we're supposed to be teaching.

But despite all the good lessons we felt like we had this week, we didn't get anyone to show up to church this Sunday. The whole week kind of builds up to Sunday and how many people are going to come to church. So it's a little frustrating and challenging to work hard and think we've touched the hearts of our amis, just to have no one come. We had a big emphasis to invite people to church at zone conference, so we invited a lot of people, not even people we're teaching. So we were a little down about that, not seeing any results this week.

But we keep moving on. We're excited with how we've been teaching and we're praying to find some better success this week. Hopefully schedule some baptisms! On verra. (we'll see) We trust that we have the Lord on our side, and if we continue to teach with the Spirit how the Savior would that we'll find some success. Just have to keep pushing through.

Thanks for everything like always. I love you all and pray that you have a great week this week.

Elder Goddard