Chuggin On

Chuggin On 

This week was pretty average, but as a missionary that means my week was great! Every week in the mission field is a great one! Not a whole lot went on, we did have zone conference and that was a lot of fun! It was the first zone conference I haven't had to set up for in 6 months since I'm not an Office Elder anymore! Of course I helped take all the tables down because I know how much that sucks lol. 

We met a way cool part member family where the husband and the son are not members. We helped them clean their house after a big smoke accident and we connected with them really well! The husband wants to play basketball with us so hopefully we can get that going with him. I have a really good feeling about them. We also have a bunch of other pretty solid people, unfortunately only one of them came to church yesterday but we just gotta be patient!

Conference last week was so amazing! And not just because church is shortened haha, I do have to say 6 hours of church every week isn't exactly the funnest experience. There were so many good talks, and watching with the perspective of also having investigators watching changes everything! It was so rooted in the doctrine of Christ and it was just awesome!! We are reading the Book of Mormon cover to cover and highlighting references to Christ just as President Nelson advised the sisters to do! It's so cool! 

Nothing else to report on really, we have interviews with President on Tuesday then Elder Whiting will be visiting the mission on Saturday so that will be way cool!

I love you all!

Elder Goldsberry

Respect my general authoriteh

The subject for this week's email is for my south park fans out there.

Hey everyone!

This week was a great one! We had interviews with President Leishman and those are always super fun and uplifting! He's a great guy. Word on the street is we Elder Rose and I will be getting another brand new missionary to train! Hopefully we get to keep Elder M, Elder W visa is here so he'll be flying to Zimbabwe here on Sunday. If not President said we would be getting 2 new ones. 

We had Elder Whiting of the 70 and the area presidency come visit the mission on Saturday! He is way cool and funny, he roasted a few people including president and it was way funny. He had a lot of great things to say and it really inspired me to push myself harder. He talked a lot about the Holy Ghost which was pretty awesome, it's sometimes hard to discern between promptings and my own thoughts and he give some pretty sick wisdom for that in specific. He's a very charismatic and funny guy. 

Also on Saturday we had an ex missionary Elder Jenks with his family and his girlfriend, also an ex missionary from this mission Sister Skinner, come and visit us for a quick second. It was way cool to see him again, he's a really good guy. He's Elder Rose's trainer so that was pretty dope. 

The work still moves forward here in Gig Harbor. We got good things going and we are really excited! 

I love you all!

Elder Goldsberry

Urgency

Hello everyone!!

First off, this week was great! We had a really good week and found some people to teach and just working with the same people. We dropped off Elder W on Saturday and he is now on his way to Zimbabwe! We are excited for him. We got our transfer calls and the 3 of us will be staying and getting another new missionary to train! We are very excited!

There's a subject that has been pressing on my mind lately and I just wanted to talk about it and that is urgency. Yesterday we had a member of one of our wards who was baptized 2 years ago telling us how lucky we are to be born into the gospel and how she could've used it 50 years ago. We ARE so lucky to have the gospel and because of that we have the responsibility to share it with our spirit brothers and sisters. I have noticed an attitude of urgency with our Prophet, President Nelson. There is NOTHING more important we can take part in than the gathering of Israel! 

Alma 13:24 says 24 For behold, ^aangels are declaring it unto many at this time in our land; and this is for the purpose of preparing the hearts of the children of men to receive his word at the time of his coming in his glory.

People all around us are constantly being prepared! Let's not be afraid to share the gospel with those around us! Let's pray for opportunities to share the gospel and for the spiritual sensitivity to recognize those opportunities! I would hate for someone to come up to me in the next life and say "You were right there, and you had what I needed. Why did you not try to share it with me?" Whether or not they know it now, EVERYONE needs the gospel! 

I love you all! 

Elder Goldsberry

That was a Year?

Hey everyone!

I hit my year mark this week and that was pretty weird. Time flies when you're having fun! It was Elder Webb's birthday this week,  and the ward found out and we came home to our front door decorated and a bunch of cupcakes and stuff on the porch. Everyone knows where we live, even random people we knock into. So that's kinda weird. But it's nothing like Tacoma here, so it doesn't worry me haha. 

The work here is picking up! We had an investigator that we knocked come to the Gig Harbor ward and the ward mission leader was blown away, especially since it was our first normal Sunday in the ward. They haven't had a lot of work done here lately so I can definitely feel the ward getting excited! We have a lot of potential and we are hyped!

We are having a ton of fun together! My companions are all awesome and we are just working hard! Not much else to report on, General Conference is this week and that is gonna be so great!! I got a feeling it's gonna be pretty crazy so buckle up everyone hahah! This week is gonna be fun! We are going on exchanges with the APs and then we have MLC! I'll let y'all know how it all goes!

I love you all!!

Elder Goldsberry

Gig is Good!

Hey everyone! 

This week has been a ton of fun. Elder Rose and I got our brand trainees one will be staying here in the WA-TAC and the other one is a visa waiter going to Zimbabwe. They are both awesome, I love them!

Our new area is way cool! Our Ward Mission Leader lives on his own island and we take a private boat to his house! Its nuts!! The work here has moved slow for a while but we are already picking it up! We are very excited! We had stake conference yesterday so we still know hardly anyone in the ward haha. 

I love you all!!

Elder Goldsberry

The boat to the private island. Our sleepy sons

Come Listen!

Hey everyone!

This week was absolutely AMAZING!! On Saturday we went to Safeco Field in Seattle and listened to our Prophet President Nelson speak! There were 49,089 people there, it was so cool! We as the missionaries took a bus and got VIP seating in the suites (my favorite part was the padded seats). I could talk forever about what I felt and learned from him and President Eyring who was also there. I will just share that I felt so strongly that he is the Prophet of the Lord Jesus Christ. I felt his love for each and every one of us. He is such a wise man and has a lot of cool stories! During his talk he said there were 45,000 in attendance and afterwards we were starting to sing the closing hymn, then he stood at the pulpit and cut off the music and said "I'm sorry, I believe in repentance. There are actually 49,089 in attendance tonight!' It was so funny! President Leishman got to sit on the stand and have dinner with him before. It was so cool to hear his experience with that. I should President Leishman's hand at the end of the night, so I basically shook the Prophet's hand too haha. 

I got my transfer call!! I will be becoming a zone leader with my old companion Elder Rose! We are going to Gig Harbor! We will also be training two new missionaries! We are white washing the area so its gonna be way crazy! We are super excited, it's gonna be so fun! Pray for us it will be a little scary since this is both of our first times being zone leaders and in Gig Harbor! It will be a growing experience to say the least.

I love you all!

Elder Goldsberry

On their way to the stadium to hear President Nelson speak

49,089 peopel in the stadium

At the stadium

At the Zoo, he's on top of the world (literally) 

Temple Trip

Hey everyone!

This week was awesome! We got to go to the Seattle Temple and it was just the best. Since I'm still an office elder we got to go twice and we didn't have to ride the bus, we just drove with the APs. We spent the nights of with them and the other elders in the mansion so that was way fun! On the way back one of the days, we took a quick detour to Cafe Rio. We wanted to be fast so we could get back to work so we ordered over the phone. When we pulled up we saw President Leishman there and we all got kinda scared because he didn't exactly know we would go there so we contemplated just leaving. But we faced our fear and went in, and he saw us and just laughed and even paid for our food! He's the best!!

I urge you all to attend the Temple as soon and as often as you can! It is the house of the Lord and a place we can all receive revelation and feel the Spirit very strongly. Plus, we get work done for those on the other side of the veil!

It was so cool to see all of my mission friends in the celestial room, I love them all and it was so peaceful. I can't wait to see them in the celestial kingdom!! :)

We had a way cool experience where we saw a lady on the street and called out to her, she said "Don't talk to me I'm mad at everyone, even God" I continued to bear testimony of times I've felt that way and how I got out of it, then we showed her the video "The Will of God" by D Todd Christopherson. She felt the spirit and cried and asked for our number. It was way powerful. All of you need to go watch that video, it's so good!

I love you all!!

Our wonderful Tacoma North zone at the Temple

Safeco field (Where we will be seeing President Russell M Nelson next month!)

Smiley faces, even though their bikes got stolen that day 

https://www.lds.org/media-library/video/2012-01-014-the-will-of-god?lang=eng

Elder Christopherson's Talk

Great Week & Bucketmobile

Hey everyone!

This week was awesome!! Yesterday we got to see our investigator S enter the waters of baptism and boy, was it a miracle!! She was the one who came to church when she was intoxicated, and look at her now! She is completely sober and ready for this huge step! She had to be interviewed by our mission president and we couldn't find her until 20 minutes before her interview, so that was scary. The same thing happened with her baptism! We had our whole zone praying we could find her and get her baptized. Our ward mission leader doubted us the whole way, and even laughed when I said I was filling the font when we still hadn't found her. We ended up finding her about an hour and a half before the baptism. Our ward mission leader told the ward the baptism wasn't happening so there wasn't a huge turnout. Our mission president, his wife, and 2 senior couples from the office came though! It was a tender baptism!

Other than that we had zone conferences this week and had to get up early most of the days. We got Krispy Kreme one of the days and that was sooo good!

Baptisms just make me love my mission so much more!!! I love my mission so much!!

I love you all! 

Elder Goldsberry

So this week was pretty crazy. We went over to S's house (the lady we baptized last Sunday) and she wasn't there. But our good buddy was! He makes all sorts of weird contraptions and we didn't have anything else to do, so I asked what contraption he had to show us today and he pulled out "the bucketmobile." It's essentially a wheel barrel nailed on to one of those little green machine bikes. Needless to say he's a genius. He has a friends who also lives there and he's someone we are teaching. He's very interested in the Spirit World as that's something that came up in his bible study and he didn't find answers. But when we told him he was way interested and told us we are the only people that could ever answer his question. 

His friend told us the other day he was just kinda outside chillin and then he heard some cop cars and saw a naked dude running. Just one of the wonders of Tacoma. A few days later we were talking to him and this African American fellow came up looking kinda mad so we were a little worried, because he was a BIG dude. He said "Don't you remember me? Remember the black guy running nude from the cops?" And our friends just said "Oh yeah! I didn't recognize you." and the dude talked to us for a bit and gave us one of those handshakes where you come in for a half hug, and told us to keep doin what we're doin. So we may have shaken hands with a dude who ran naked from the cops, but I'm not jumping to any conclusions. 

We had a ward dinner Saturday and S came. She brought a friend and introduced herself to everyone. She even helped clean! It was way cool! We already see a huge change in her and so does T. He couldn't make it to the dinner so we wrapped up some plates and walked them to him, they live right by the church. His friend was there and it was perfect because we brought two plates! 

We went on exchanges with our ZLs and the next day with our DL. It was a lot of fun, it always changes things up. We get transfer calls this Saturday, transfers just keep getting faster I don't like it one bit. 

I love you all!!

Elder Goldsberry

1. The Jesus bus 

2. The bucketmobile

3. The pipes for the organ in our chapel 

Transfers and 4th Of July (Two e-mails in One)

Hey everyone!

We got our transfer calls and I'm staying a 3rd transfer as OE and Elder Rose is staying too. I'm glad to be staying, a lot of good stuff is starting to happen in our area. 

Last night we lost 2 zones and all the missionaries in them to the Vancouver mission. It was way sad, I'm gonna miss them. My second area, Morton, now belongs to that mission. Elder Jensen, who was also trained by Elder Miller is there too and it was way sad saying bye to him. Hes a great missionary and cool guy. 

Tomorrow we get to have a zone conference with just the new missionaries coming from the old federal way mission. So us and the APs get the first look at the newbies. We also get Cafe Rio catered so that's gonna be SWEET! 

I love you all! 

Elder Goldsberry

1. Elder Jensen and I

2. Red Robin for Rose's birthday

3. A football field in our area

4th Of July

Hey everyone!

Short email this time, sorry! 

It was a good week, we had the 4th of July which was way fun! We played in a basketball tournament at our stake presidents house which was fun. We play a game here in Tacoma around the 4th: fireworks or gunshots? You often cant tell hahaha. 

I love you all!

Elder Goldsberry

1. Elder Mose and I on a bike ride last Monday 

2. My old comp Elder Jackson and I split knocking

His cut out made it to his trainer's wedding reception!! Congrats to the new Mr. and Mrs. Miller!