Elder Gold's Weekly Update - 7 Dec 2009‏

Dear Family:
The ending of the Texas vs. Nebraska game this past weekend sounded crazy! Jeremy was ranting in his e-mail about how upset he was at the Nebraska's inability to stay consistent and finish a game. The Alabama victory over Florida was a big surprise. I can't believe they're going to have Cincinnati try to compete with Florida in their bowl game. That's going to be a route - Florida winning by 20 points in my opinion.

This past week was filled with three zone training meetings that Elder Hopoate and I participated in and we still have two more zones to go. We do the same training at each of the zone meetings and we have seven zones, so on the 4th-7th time the training gets pretty routine. We train for 1 hour and 15 minutes with each zone, then Sister Blackburn, the District Leaders in the zone, and the Zone Leaders for the zone do some training. During this time period, Pres. Blackburn interviews each companionship in the zone and gets a feel for how they're doing.

We are teaching a new part-member family in our area now. We received their information and address from the referral center after they put their name in a database at one of the temples in Hawaii requesting missionaries to come and visit them. The wife of the family, Lindsay, is a member, but she's been less-active/inactive since she was in her mid-teens. She's 28 now and has a husband who's not a member and three kids (2 are not members). They're a good family. We taught them last week and the husband said some somewhat immature remarks while we were teaching. He's nearly 40, but he can act like a teenager sometimes. They didn't come to church yesterday, but they did come to the First Presidency Christmas Devotional that was shown at the church building we attend for our wards.

We spent 9.5 hours knocking doors last week in an effort to find new investigators who have a legitimate interest in progressing in their learning with the gospel. We've been very blessed finding new people to teach on one street in particular (National Blvd.) where we've found eight people who are interested in the gospel. One of the Spanish investigators that we have lives on that street, but he "flaked out" on us yesterday and didn't come to church after saying that he would. That seems to be a common trend with a lot of investigators, especially in this area. I'm not sure if there's a collective group that people "flake out" on more than the missionaries, unfortunately.

I went on splits with a Zone Leader serving near my old "stomping grounds" in the South Bay Zone on Saturday (Elder Jenne). It was a good time. I enjoyed working with an Elder who has a similar personality as me, and who has a similar teaching style as me. Elder Jenne loves sports, and actually played football at Snow College prior to his mission. He and his companion opened up a new area this transfer, so we spent a good amount of time finding people to teach.

We will start transfer meetings tomorrow with Pres. Blackburn, Elder Hopoate and I. Pres. Blackburn has said that he doesn't know what he's going to do with me yet for my last transfer, and the two main options look like they're going to be: 1.) Stay up at the mission home as an AP for a fifth transfer, or 2.) Be released from being an AP and go train a new missionary in the field. I'm trying to remain quiet with my comments or suggestions because I don't want to influence this decision too much. I'll just go where I'm supposed to go.

My mission is going well and I'm looking forward to entering into the home stretch. I'm starting to get some of the, "Hey, you're going home soon" from the members and I try to change the conversation to another topic. I don't want to cause Elder Welling to feel "trunky" since he's been out for 7 months and hearing talks of home can become distracting.

Thanks for the prayers and uplifting remarks. You are all appreciated. You are in my prayers as well. Have a great week!

Elder Brycen Gold