September 24, 2012

Things are really picking up!   Last week we found 2 new investigators.  Lexie is 11 and was a referral from a family in the ward.  We have taught her 4 lessons already and invited her to be baptized, she accepted!   Her parents are willing to let her learn and want us to start having some of the lessons at their house.  We have been having her lessons at the members house for convenience.  Her parents are Christian and don't have a particular church right now so its quite possible that we will start teaching them as well.  That would be even better especially for  Lexie so she has her family in the church and not just friends.  Our other investigator is a funny story!   We were walking to the members house to give Lexie a lesson and we walked passed a lady mowing her lawn, we waved and said hi and kept walking.  We got a ways down the road when a car stopped in the middle of the road and said "hey that lady is chasing you!" ha-ha .  We turned around to see the lady that was mowing her lawn running down the street after us.  So we turned and started walking back toward her.   She had been yelling "MORMONS!" down the road but we couldn't hear her because it was windy.  We got to her and she started telling us how she had Mormons like us over for thanksgiving dinner last year. We asked if she had been taking the lessons to which she replied that they hadn't even talked about the church they just didn't have anywhere to go for thanksgiving.  She then asked if we had some time we could talk.  Of coarse we said yes!   We then taught her the restoration and invited her to read and pray and she was so excited and told us she knew that the spirit had guided us to her that day and that she was so excited to learn more.  It was such an amazing experience especially because when we had started walking to the lesson with Lexie I said a silent prayer asking Heavenly Father if he would guide us to someone willing to listen. We ended up walking a completely different way to the members house than I had ever walked before and because we did we were able to walk past Tamara! I am so blessed to have this opportunity to be able to have the spirit with me and be able to see the light and excitement come into peoples lives as they find out about the restored gospel of Jesus Christ.  I encourage all of you to look for people you know that may be in search of something more in their lives and as a representative of our Savior I can promise you that you will be lead to those people just as me and my companion were lead to Tamara.

Love Elder Jach-Goates

September 17, 2012

It was a fairly good week still a bit slow but overall it was good.  My district is doing amazing we have 5 baptismal dates set right now and they are doing amazing at finding people to teach Burlington is still lacking on investigators but as long as we work hard we will be blessed with more people to reach our goal.  Kenna and Bill keep pushing back the appointments and seem to be busy all the time but they still seem interested and  I'm sure if Bill wasn't he would let us know!   We had a green dinner at the bucks last night for Elder Bagshaw.  Green Spagetti noodles with green beans, green jello, green garlic bread, green cottage cheese salad, green koolaid, and green gooseberry pie with green whip cream ha-ha it was actually my first green dinner as well so it was a fun experience!   We had interviews on Wednesday with President Jergensen those are of coarse always great.  The interviews usually go for about 15 minutes but mine went for about 25 ha-ha whoops! =)  I guess President just loves me a little more... ha or I just need more help! ha-ha either way I got some extra time with president which was good! =)   We then went to lunch as a district and went to a little diner and had a "wally" burger ha-ha kind of an ironic name!   It was a 1 pound burger it was huge!  Imagine 4 quarter pounders from McDonalds and that's how big it was plus grilled onions and mushrooms with 4 slices of cheese! ha-ha it was pretty good though.  I hope things are going well back home it has now been 10 months as of yesterday! =)

Love Elder Jach-Goates

September 10, 2012

This week was extremely slow!   We had a total of 3 lessons for the whole week.  We are really trying to find some investigators and more potentials so that we can have an actual teaching pool.  Luckily we have 3 scheduled lessons with some really good potentials we have a guy tonight who is in a part member family his wife is a member and he is always full of questions.  He came to church last week and had a really good time.  We are going over for dinner and a lesson tonight.  He loves having us over and is such an awesome guy.  We have a young couple on Tuesday that we have taught before and seem interested and we have a family on Saturday the ones who were really excited about the BoM.  So things are moving just not as quickly or as much as we would like but sometimes that's just how it is.  It's weird being a trainer sometimes I forget that what I teach him will be the standard for the rest of his mission.  That's crazy!   I hope I'm doing a good job.  Luckily we get along great and have fun together so that is good.  Well wish me luck!

Love Elder Jach -Goates

September 5, 2012

Things have been pretty slow this last week we haven't had many appointments and our promising potentials,  Kennabell and Bill were sleeping on Saturday and told us to come back Sunday but they weren't home.  Maybe they forgot, but she seemed to still want us to come back so we'll keep trying.  We have a lot of potentials from when the Nauvoo temple sisters came tracting in our area so we're going to try and hit some of those this week and hopefully deepen our teaching pool.  I had my first full district meeting on Thursday and of coarse mixed up a few things again but that's ok! =)   It turned out to be a great meeting!   I'm kinda starting to like giving trainings.  I trained on the plan of salvation and used the whole time going over scriptures on each topic.   The zone leaders trained on the atonement and did an awesome job!  I love talking about the atonement!   Elder Bagshaw is doing great!   We are a lot alike so it makes it pretty easy.   Seems the Lord is blessing me with good companions now! =)   We went on exchanges last week with the ZLs in Burlington and than with Keokuk elders in Keokuk they were fun.  The one with the ZLs was definitely more productive than the one in Keokuk but they were both a good time.  It's great to be a missionary even though not everyday is fun.  The days that things go well and you see progress makes all the those hard days worth it!

Love Elder Jach-Goates