Monday September 15, 2014

September 15, 2014 First Email from Elder Goff

Wow this week has been awesome! Stressful but awesome! Haha I can't remember everything that happened because our days are so jam packed, so I'm just going to write exactly what I wrote in my journal:

Wednesday: Today's the first day! My MTC companion is Elder Walker from Jordan, Utah. He's pretty chill, we get along really well!! I really like it here. I want to be able to know which questions to ask, and exactly when to ask them when teaching an investigator. The other Elders in my District are Elder Bennett and Elder Eisenstat. All of us get along well, and I feel like we will get really close over these next 12 days! I saw Jordan Hurd and Adam Saurey at dinner today and it was the best!! Oh yeah Mom, I found out I leave for Detroit on the 22nd! Our flight is at 7:30am which means we have to be at the Travel Center at the MTC at 3:30am... Yeah, it's gonna suck. But I'll live!

Thursday: Today we had TONS of class time. We are definitely growing closer to each other as a district. 2 sisters in our District aren't doing so well , so us Elders are going to be as nice as we can be and make sure everyone is included in all that we do. I got called as District Leader today by our Branch President! Elder Eisenstat and Elder Bennet were called as Zone Leaders, which covers 3 Districts, and my companion Elder Walker got called as the Sacrament Coordinator! I got a letter from Katie Hall today! That was cool. It's weird because I kept having this distinct impression that I was going to get called as the District Leader, but I was saying to myself "you've gotta be humble, sometimes you aren't gonna be in a leadership position," but I got called anyway haha. The food here is SUPER GOOD! I never go hungry. In class, our teacher has time set aside so companionships can go one by one and role play with the teacher. Our teacher Brother Mullen took the role of a kid named Tyler, and that's who we're calling our first investigator. We're teaching him tomorrow! It seems kinda weird at first to pray, listen to the Spirit, and pretend it's a real situation but if you just go with it you really learn a lot. I saw Trevan Reese today! That was awesome.

Friday: We got like 6 hours of sleep last night because we had a service project early in the morning! We just collected the trash out of a whole 3 story building on campus and there was a tonnnn. I saw Adam Saurey and Trevan Reese again today and talked to each of them for a while. They are both heading out on Monday!!! It's so crazy. My companion and I taught Tyler today! It went pretty well, he said maybe to baptism, and we'll continue to meet with him each day at the MTC as long as our teacher is there. We also taught an Aethiest (another teacher was role playing an aethiest) today as a whole class. Everyone was stumped and the discussion wasn't going anywhere but then I pulled through with Ether 12:6 saying how "your witness will not come until after the trial of your faith," and his heart softened! Got props from my district for that. We had our first gym time today and the Elders of my district played Basketball! I'm looking forward to Sunday and Monday because I want to write my family and friends! We're supposed to teach Tyler The Restoration tomorrow and my companion and I need to prepare our lesson, it's gotta be good!

Saturday: Today went by super fast!! In the morning we gave 1 minuts lessons on the Plan of Salvation and that was way tough. Then we had Brother Martin's class (another teacher of ours), and my companion and I wrote our whole lesson on the REstoration for Tyler and we got super pumped about it. Then we came back for our afternoon classes and Brother Mullen wasn't there so we couldn't teach Tyler :/ We had a sub named Brother Metcalf. He role played as a guy named William that just got out of jail, disn't have a job, and was looking to start his life over again. My comp and I had about 15-20 minutes to prepare to teach him and we came up with 3 scriptures:
2 Nephi 9:23 about Baptism

Moroni 8:25, 26 about the role of the Holy Ghost

Alma 38:8 about the peace prayer and the Holy Ghost can bring into our lives

In our lesson, a PERFECT opportunity presented itself for us to share each of those scriptures, and it was powerful. We invited him to be baptized and he said he really wants to work towards it! Even though it is role playing, prayer and inspired preparation really does work. In the role playing scene you say opening and closing prayers just like you would in a real situation. I believe God makes it so powerful in the MTC so we can have a real idea of what teaching is like before we go out. We had gym time again today and we played 4 Square and Frisbee! This one sister in our district named Sister Woodruff (her great great great Grandpa is Wilford, way cool huh!?) is a pro 4 Square player... She kicked out butts! Anyways, today was a great day, I felt the Spirit a lot.

Sunday: Wow. Today was incredible. My life has been changed forever, I will never be the same. Tad R. Callister came and gave us our Sunday Evening Devotional. He gave us an extremely detailed walkthrough of the Plan of Salvation. I learned things that I never knew before, even though I thought I knew most everthing about it. But even MORE amazing, was film time. Every Sunday night from 8:15-9:15pm we have the option to watch 1 of 4 films; The Character of Christ talk by Elder Bednar, a Joseph Smith movie, and 2 others. We were told by some other Elders in our zone that The Character of Christ would change our life, and they weren't lying. They couldn't have said anything more perfectly descriptive about it. It was absolutely phenomenal. Mom, Dad, and anyone else who wants to understand more fully, or just BEGIN to understand the Character of Christ should get this talk and watch as soon as you can. I'm telling you now, it will change your life. Here's one thing that stuck out to me in the talk: In Matthew 4:2-12, Satan tries to tempt the Savior by first, turning the rocks into bread, second, he tries to get Jesus to throw Himself off the pinnacle of a temple and get Angels to catch Him since He is the Son of God. Third, he tempts Christ with the kingdoms of the world. Elder Bednar explains that all of these temptations were just Secondary to the Primary temptation. The Devil was trying to get Christ to look inward, and take interest in Himself, as the natural man would. But Christ did not give in. We all know the story right? After He withstood those temptations, Angels came and strengthened Him. But no. In verse 11, on the word "and" there is a footnote, that informs us that this verse was not translated correctly, and that in the midst of Christ's own distress and exhaustion, He prayed that his friend John, who was in prison, would be ministered unto by Angels. This is the Character of Christ. To look outward. To turn out from ourselves, even in times of distress where the natural man would instantly turn inward to selfish desires and actions. Elder Bednar then explains that this type of character is not possible to achieve, except it be "through the Atonement of Christ" Mosiah 3:19 Which not only covers sins, infirmities, sickness, and anything that is unfair in life, but also strengthens us beyond our own capacities to learn and perform. Bringing the Character of Christ into our lives and having it become a part of us is not a quick, easy process. It will take a whole lifetim of study and prayer. And it is ONLY available through Christ's Atonement, which is also the only way by which we can gain true happiness in this life. May we strive to adopt the long-term goal of applying the Character of Christ into our own lives.

I love you guys and I miss you a lot! But I'm focused on the work!