February 11, 2013

Things are going great!   I have a new companion Elder  Claridge from Arizona.  He's an awesome kid.  He's been out for 5 months so he's still pretty new but he's a hard worker and we get along great!  The work is really picking up and the members have a lot of trust in us so hopefully we'll start seeing more referrals here soon.  We got to meet with Austin again, he is still doing great and has started reading out of preach my gospel ha what an awesome kid! He is 17 and  Alyssa is 20 and she is doing great as well!   We get to meet with her this week and get her prepared for baptism.  We got another referral from the Greene family a guy named Matt we haven't been able to meet with him yet but the Greenes are excited for us to talk with him.   President Jergensen asked me to be a district leader again.  The work here is about to explode I can feel it!

Love you all!

Elder Jach-Goates

February 4, 2013

As for the mission it has been a pretty crazy week!   A lot of things have happened!  My companion has been going through a really tough time and has decided to return home.  This past week has been super slow because of it, but with my new companion coming in on Thursday the area should explode!   There is a lot of potential here all I need is someone that will work with me and help bring the Spirit in to direct every lesson.  Alyssa is still doing well the zone leaders have been meeting with her on my request and we will start back up with her come this weekend.  We received a member referral a few weeks ago from the Greene family (I was in the same room in the MTC as their son, small world). Austin their friend is doing great.  We had a lesson with him 2 weeks ago and he took notes during the lesson and even quoted BoM scriptures! Ha ha he is an awesome kid and is super prepared.  His only hold up was telling his parents that he wanted to take the lessons so he finally mustered up the courage to talk with them and they have agreed to let him so we get to meet with him on Friday.  He has had questions for a while and has asked the Greene family or looked up the answers on lds.org.  We set a date with him for baptism on our first lesson, March 16th and will work for that sadly I'll probably be gone for that but will get to see him grow for the entire time! =)  Such a great work this is!  How blessed I am to have to opportunity of being an instrument in the hands of the Lord.

Love Elder Jach-Goates

January 28, 2013

Things are going well!   Transfers are next week, it will be good to get some fresh meat to boss around! =)   Last week was a pretty good week, we lost Kenny he says he's too busy right now and doesn't want to meet with us for a little while.  I still think he'll come back so we'll see. Alyssa is doing great she returned from her parents and has a light about her now.  She has been praying everyday and studying not just reading the scriptures.  She said she doesn't have the desire to go party with her friends anymore and has turned them down a few times.  We'll set a new date with her this week and help her progress even more.  The past few weeks I've been trying really hard to get along better with my companion and help bring the spirit into the companionship and  I feel like its been helping with our investigators and the people we come into contact with.  So hopefully my new companion will be someone I  get along with a little more easily so there can be even more of the Spirit and even more success in this area.  I love you all and hope all is well.  This work and this Gospel are absolutely amazing!   This knowledge blesses peoples lives more than anything else!   Share!   Share this with everyone!

Love Elder Jach-Goates

January 14, 2013

As for the mission things are continuing to progress as usual.  We gained a new investigator last week that referred himself on mormon.org and asked for a BoM so we taught him the restoration and talked about prayer and the Spirit.  He agreed to pray and read and said if he gets an answer he will be baptized, so the first lesson was a success.  He's done a lot of research on the church and luckily they've all been from good resources not anti literature, so he has quite an interest in the church.  It will be fun to see if he progresses.  Things with the comp get better some days and worse others so we're still working on that, but President Jergensen talked to me again about leadership and the needs the mission has right now for good leaders and told me to start preparing... =S so I guess we'll see what happens.  I love you all, thanks for everything!

Love Elder Jach-Goates

January 7, 2013

Things have been pretty busy with the holiday season!  We had transfers over Christmas and interviews with President Jergensen this past week.  Me and my companion are staying together for this next transfer... joy! =P!   We got a car for Christmas, so that was awesome! It helps us out a lot even though we have a small area.  Talking to family on Christmas was of coarse great!   This area has been fun so far.  There are some awesome families here and that always helps!   W dropped 2 investigators over the break but have a few referals that we will be working with shortly, so things are still moving along.  But overall the best part about these last few weeks was Sunday December 30th in this the Iowa Des Moines Mission.  For the year of 2012 we had a mission goal of bringing 400 souls to Christ.  We worked diligently throughout the year to try and reach our goal.  We were a ways off where we needed to be in the middle of the year so we started changing a few things and working even harder to invite people to be baptized.  We started setting dates and doing everything we could to reach our goal.  In September we were on track to reaching our goal but we had a lot of work to do. Then in October we only had 16 baptisms for the entire month, seemingly making our goal almost impossible to reach.  President re-committed us and we went out with a new vigor and started relying wholly upon the Lord.  By the end of November we were at 321 people baptized.  That meant we needed to baptize 79 people in the month of December, more than doubling even our highest month of baptisms.  But we did NOT give up!   We worked and worked and by the last week we needed 23 more people to be baptized and we only had 19 people across the mission who even had dates set for the end of the year. ( for those of you who don't know, usually just under half the people with dates actually get baptized)   President sent out a text telling everyone that there were 4 people somewhere in the mission who needed to be baptized in the month of December!   So the mission went to work!   In 2 days we had 27 dates set instead of just 19 and by the night of Sunday December 30th 400 PEOPLE WERE BAPTISED!!!   I know and can testify that the Lord blesses those that strive to accomplish his will!   Miracle after miracle happened in the month of December and I know it was because we did everything we could to do what the Lord wanted us to do, and so he granted unto us the power to bring all of the 400 souls unto the Kingdom of God!   I am and will forever be eternally grateful for the blessing and miracles I witnessed in this mission this past year.  The Lord really does care for and love us each individually and will always be there to help us after we have done all we can do!  I love you all and pray for constantly!

Love Elder Jach-Goates

December 11, 2012

As for the mission this week was pretty good!  We were busy with appointments and different service things so it was a fast week.  We went on exchanges with the zone leaders on Thursday/Friday and were able to see most of our progressing investigators so that was good. On Friday we did service for one of our investigators by laying a bunch of cement.  We actually did a pretty good job, we were pleasantly surprised.  The work here is progressing but its been a while before the missionaries here did much member work so I'm really trying to focus on that.   Just like President Hinckley said there a better way to do missionary work than tracting! =)   I hate tracting so I use that statement a lot.   Well I love you and miss you all!

Love Elder Jach-Goates

December 3, 2012

It was a pretty good week! Not too many lessons and still have yet to meet some of our investigators but we did have some fun!  BYU played ISU on Saturday and we got tickets to the game! Ha it was a blast!  Ha the APs ended up being there as well.  They were embarrassed because they didn't have an investigator there and we did.  But that's the day they took their P-day which most the time they don't get, so I let it slide! ;)   Then of coarse the Christmas devotional was last night and that was great!   It's always good to hear some inspiring words from the first presidency!  What a wonderful country we live in to be able to celebrate and worship freely! What a wonderful time of year this is! The time that we have to reflect on the Savior and all that he did for us!   The Spirit of giving is all around us so let it sweep you away and feel the wonderful joy that comes from serving and giving to others!  What better gift can we give than the knowledge of eternal families and the peace that comes from the restored gospel! Give your friends the best gift possible by sharing with them the same joy that you feel!

Love Elder Jach-Goates