Elder Goddard: Training Pt. 2 Week 1

Monday, November 18, 2019 8:02 AM MST

This week on Tuesday I picked up my son. He's from the Democratic Republic of Congo, and he's 24 years old. And he only speaks French like I thought. He's only been out on his mission 3 weeks so he's very much a new missionary and you can definitely tell sometimes, haha, but he is a great missionary and loves to work hard and I'm excited to help him adjust and see what we can accomplish during our time together!

This weeks been really fun in terms of lessons. It's crazy to me to already be the one taking charge and teaching most of the lesson, but I'm loving it so far. I'm surprised to look back and see how far I've already come. I can teach an entire 45 minute lesson in French when I could hardly do anything with the language even 3 months ago. It's pretty cool.

But that's the problem with this training thing! I'm the one who knows how to do stuff, and he doesn't know how to do anything. So I need to do everything, which I'm okay with, but I also need to slowly give my companion more and more responsibility so he can become a true missionary himself. It's definitely a little stressful at times to find that balance between keeping the work moving forward and also helping him grow as a missionary. But it's my calling and I know my Heavenly Father is there to help me with it as I follow the Spirit.

Saturday we had a missionary activity at our branch. We'd planned a lot for it, and everyone in the branch was inviting 2 or 3 friends to it and we were all really excited for it. And it went great! In the morning, us missionaries went out with the members and did some street contacting with them for a few hours and inviting everyone to come back to the church later in the afternoon for an activity. And the activity in the afternoon went great! We had a lot of people show up; the place was packed! Lots of family and friends of members of our branch were there. And not only that but a lot of them then came to church the next day too. We had to refill the trays during the Sacrament for the first time since I've been here. We're excited to get to work with these new people!

This week we had some cool lessons. One was with our amis Elie. We'd had a really good lesson with him last time about the Restoration and he believes it and wants to come to church. But he works Sunday at a hotel with only 2 other people manning like 45 rooms, so he can't find a way to leave to come to church. We were talking about that in our lesson this week, and I had a strong feeling to tell him that God would provide a way for him to come to church if he read the Book of Mormon every day for even just 5 minutes, and then if he kept the Sabbath day in the way that he can right now by not buying anything on Sunday. I told him if he kept these 2 commandments, God would give him a way to come to church. We haven't followed up with him yet, but I hope he keeps them. Because I have faith that if he shows his faith, God can make a miracle happen and get this man to church.

That's about it for this week. Love you all and hope you're doing well.

Elder Goddard

My companion's name is Elder Mputu, I forgot to say that :O