Transfer 2 Week 3 (or something like that)

SOOOOOOOO we spent all week in quarantine... very exciting I know. Also to all the people who were hanging onto the edges of their seats, I'm sorry to disappoint but I did not win the ping pong tournament. That's right I took second and choked in the finals. Even if I had played my best I don't know if it was in the cards that day haha.

Big news though, I slept a lot and fought off that rona. I think my record was 16 hours of sleep one day, and there were three other days where I slept for 13 hours. Pretty sure it was about that many haha. But also because we were in quarantine we had a lot of time to do some really good studying. Especially our language study which really took off this week and it's been great. We try to speak Spanish more often but it's hard to not speak English when it's so easy. My one companion Elder Gray grabbed one of our Spanish books and made a flash card for every single verb on this 5 page list. Took him a while but we've been grinding trying to memorize and use those throughout our days.

We also have been teaching as often as we can, all over zoom and WhatsApp (Latinos really love WhatsApp for some reason, couldn't tell you why) but that has been really good. And I feel like my Spanish really has gotten better. I understand 99% (not even exaggerating) of what is said in Spanish. And I can almost say half of the stuff I think of. Well I can loosely translate into Spanish what I think in English. And one time I even had a dream and I was dreaming in Spanish. Well I have no idea what they were saying but this person in my dream was indeed speaking Spanish which was funny.

Elder Jorgensen and Elder Gray are pretty darn good cooks which was a big time lifesaver during la cuarentena (quarantine). So we had some good "family dinners". ALSO I decided I'm going to be eating really healthy these next few weeks cause why not you know? Well maybe not really healthy but pretty much anything can be considered relatively healthy compared to how we used to be eating out like 5 times a week. So wish me luck on that. Hey you know what? I love y'all. Go out and do something nice for someone else this week. You won't regret it.

Funny thought: man we had so many funny times throughout this week I had a hard time deciding what to choose. But today Elder Gray and I went for another run (he ran, I biked) at a cool little 30 something degrees while it was snowing. We went 5 miles and my fingers just about came off. But anyways we started from a chapel. We drove to this chapel from our house. We do not have a bike rack. However, we do have a window and these dandy little arms (or quite large and muscular in my case; that was a joke) that God blessed us with. So yes I did hold my bike out the car window while we drove. I thought that was kind of funny.

Spiritual thought: so we've been teaching this really cool lady. She grew up Catholic and loves hearing about Christ. She called us and told us that she didn't really wanna meet with us anymore. Her reasons you ask? We talked too much about good old José Smith (Joseph but it Spanish) and the book of Mormon. And we didn't talk enough about Christ or the Bible. Well we definitely spent the majority of our time talking about Christ, and Joseph Smith was the prophet who restored Christ's gospel so it's a little hard to talk about Christ's restored gospel without talking about the guy who helped do it. But we talked with her, worked with her, then she hits us with the, "I feel the spirit reading the Bible, I don't feel the spirit reading the book of Mormon." Well she doesn't even know where her Bible is in her house, and she has maybe three copies of the Book of Mormon but we sure know she hasn't been reading any of them. Well we tell her that if she loves Christ, she would be delighted to find out that the Book of Mormon testifies of Christ on every page. We teach her how the Book of Mormon is the word of God. We keep teaching her about Christ and she agrees to keep meeting with us. We teach her about God's plan for us, how he wants us to spend our lives and eternity with our families. This one hit her hard, and we all really felt the spirit. We asked her to read a chapter we gave her in the Book of Mormon that night. The next day she calls us and tell us about the experience she had and how she felt when reading it and asking God if it was true. She told us she felt joy and peace and believed that it was true. She also said she now believes good old José Smith was a prophet who translated the Book of Mormon through the power of God. Well her Husband is actually a member of the church, an amazing man who was born and raised here in Utah and they met and got married when she moved here from Mexico. We told her to talk to him and tell him the experience she had. Well guess what, she drove out to California to visit him while he's working out there, and I think he will be quite pleased to know that she now wants to be baptized by him once he returns home to Utah. Wow, yeah, really powerful story.

Go ahead and dry your tears now. But I want to let you all know, if you want more joy in your life, get a copy of the Book of Mormon. Read it with real intent. Ponder it in your heart. And then ask God if it is true. He will give you an answer and you will feel so much joy.

That's all for this week, some pictures for ya, another run/ride, me napping (I did a lot of that this week), the boys in the car, and the video of me holding the bike out the window.

Oh yeah also we spent 160 dollars on this weeks groceries between four guys so we’re gonna be eating some beautiful home cooked meals.

Love you all and see you next week    -Elder Golden

Run/Ride with Elder Gray

Boys in the car