"CRY" unto God!

SHOUT OUT to the Jazz baby!!! Super teams have nothing on the boys! Jazz N ation till I die!

This week absolutely flew by. It felt like I blinked and it was over. There were some pretty amazing experiences and miracles that happened this week so I will just jump right in.

Remember the guy that didn't have any food and then his friend just miraculously brought food over to his house. Well, he didn't end up going to church last Sunday which was a bummer, but he told us that this Saturday he was going to change his life. We weren't quite sure what that meant, but we went to meet him on Saturday and he was a new man. He had gotten a nice looking haircut and cleaned up his house. He really was making an effort to change his life. After some small talk and discussing what we had eaten that day, we invited him to say the opening prayer. Not long into his prayer, he started crying (also we were teaching one of his friends and he had no shame). He was balling and I just felt so touched by the spirit. As he poured out his heart to God, you could feel how strong the spirit resided in that humble abode. I had to open my eyes as he spoke directly from his heart to see if God was standing right there in the room. After he closed his prayer and wiped his streaming tears off of his face, we all just sat there without moving, but yet so spiritually moved. We all took a moment to soak up that experience. Someone who had truly just cried unto God and was heard by his Maker. Powerful. The lesson was amazing and the spirit was as evident as the humidity that hung in the air. At the close of the lesson, it was decided that Elder Tuft would offer the closing prayer. Again, when we opened our eyes we saw those same familiar tears falling down this man's face. I was so incredibly touched by that experience. I know that God answers our prayers and he is just waiting for us to pour our heart out to Him so He can help us feel that perfect love. 

I won't go into much detail, but the work here is moving along briskly. As Elder Ference always says, it is an exciting time to be a missionary in this part of the world. We should have two baptisms coming up this Sunday and then a few more in the following weeks. It seems like all the success we are having just comes as blessings from the Lord. I just feel so lucky to be along for the ride. 

I am especially grateful for the ward that we have here in Pochentong. We have amazing leaders and members, which is a huge reason that things are going well. We had ward conference and it was one of the best meetings that I have been a part of. Our bishop and stake president spoke, and it was amazing. We sang a special musical number with some members in our ward at ward conference and it may have been the worst musical number of all time. Not kidding. Just straight brutal. I know that Reece Harper and the Holladay 18th ward choir could have really bumped up our game. They are splitting our ward which is pretty exciting. I feel really blessed to be in this area at this time. Although, it kinda seems like all the referrals we get are like 20 to 30-year-old girls which are a little harder because we always have to have male member help but you do what you gotta do!

I went to Sen Sok again for an exchange with Elder Killburn and it was a fun time! In that area you don't teach English class so you just end up doing a lot of contacting. It is always fun to see other missionaries styles of teaching and how I can be better.

• Funny stories We have an unbaptized child that is an investigator because he is 10yrs old and in a member family, but never was baptized. We are teaching him and his siblings who are all pretty young children. In the lesson of the law of chastity, it was very hard to get through anything without them laughing. Things really fell apart when the youngest kid named Ryan asked if it was against the Law of Chastity to fart. Long story short not the most spiritually touching lesson, but a very funny one too. 

•  Everyone's excuse in Cambodia for not being able to walk, remember anything or just being sick is that they have high blood pressure. I may have met the funniest man in my life that was a victim of the high blood pressure disease and he was repping a huge green cowboy hat. I wish I could have gotten a picture. 

We also had zone conference with Elder Meurs. I won't go into much detail, but he is over the Asia area presidency and he did a mission tour. It was a fun time and there were some pretty great things that were said. I learned a lot and really felt the spirit. The best news about it all was the Elder Bednar is coming to the BODI to meet with everyone here and all the missionaries to next month! YUP!! SO pumped. 

Spiritual thought for the day is the importance of prayer. I have always kinda lacked at prayer throughout my life, but I am really trying to just not go through the motions anymore. One thing that really helps me is after I pray I usually just sit there for awhile and try to listen to the still small voice. I would invite you to do the same. It really makes your prayers so much more meaningful. 

Alma 37:37

37 Counsel with the Lord in all thy doings, and he will direct thee for good; yea, when thou liest down at night lie down unto the Lord, that he may watch over you in your sleep; and when thou risest in the morning let thy heart be full of thanks unto God; and if ye do these things, ye shall be lifted up at the last day

Say a prayer and make it meaningful and then act on it!!

I love you all! Thanks for the support and love. I love being a missionary. It makes me happy. The gospel makes me happy.

GO JAZZ! The beard has nothing on us.

Love,

Elder Gochnour

$10 Week!

Hello!

This week may have quite possibly been the most interesting of the mission. Here are some bullet points to things that happened:

• I didn't budget very well this month and enjoyed myself a little too much at Domino's and other American restaurants. The result of that was being a little behind on mission funds for the rest of the month. In order to combat this issue Elder Tuft and I decided that we would take the challenge to live a whole week off of ten dollars. Let me tell you, it was a very interesting week. I had some of the worst food of all time haha including ground beef that had been in the freezer for around 6 months and mystery soup that a member gave to us... BUT WE DID IT. We accomplished the amazing feat of a whole week only costing us $10. There honestly were some miracles to help us out on the way. Although I faced some of my lowest lows, I am now in the green! Shooters gonna shoot baby!

• We gave 6 assisted investigators to other sisters and elders in our area and officially decided that we are going to be John Stockton this transfer. One of those assisted investigators was an old man that was very interested in the church but could also be quite creepy. He took us to dinner, but he also told me that I have very strong legs and he even winked at me a few times. He also found out our first names and kept calling me Jacob. We will leave it at that.

• I was able to go on an exchange to SenSok with my trainer Elder Herrera! It was fun to spend a day with him and remember all the good times we had together. I got drenched by some girls on the street who celebrated Khmer New Year two days after it had ended. (During the New Years celebration people squirt water at people passing by)

• Srey Touch (spelling?) it got baptized this week! It was a blast and she is one of the strongest people spiritually I have ever met in my life. She invites everyone she knows to learn about the gospel and always bears her testimony of the importance of the Book of Mormon. She also is just happy. She laughs at everything. It was amazing to see her enter the waters of baptism and know how much it meant to her. It was so rewarding to see that she understood the covenant she was making with God and is willing and prepared for her part. She is amazing. It was also fun because I and Elder Tuft went to a Japanese thrift store and bought matching suit jackets so we could be styling out for the occasion! YUP! We also had to clean out the font and just got soaked haha because all we had was a hose but it was a fun time.

• We yelled America the Beautiful as loud as we could to open our comp study one day. I sure do miss the USA. No place like the land of the free 

• We have an idioms book that we started to use at every hour of the day in our house. Not the most productive thing, but what can I say? A spade is a spade. 

• There is a pig slaughterhouse in our area that is devastating to hear the cries as you ride by. I also saw a guy with a dead pig just chilling on the back of the moto. 

• Our area is doing amazing! We had five at church and the members here are so amazing and so helpful! I love it here. 

•  I had another bike crash and rallied my bike! I am a clutz

• I finished The Doctrine & Covenants! FIRE!

There were many more things that happened, but I will just cut it short for the sake of time (idiom). 

The coolest miracle that happened this week was with a guy named Seta. We found him contacting one day and I felt the spirit strongly that we needed to talk to him. He was born as a Christian which is very rare, but he told us that he had lost his faith. However, he also said that he wanted to believe in God again and come back. We went back and shared the story of the Prodigal Son with him, and it was one of the most powerful spiritual experiences I have ever had in my life. The spirit in the small shack on the railroad was almost tangible. He understood that he was the lost son that needed to come back and find God again in his life. Before we left he said an amazingly powerful prayer. The next day he called us and soberly said that he had nothing to eat and no money to buy food. 
We encouraged him to pray and trust in the Lord because that was relatively all we could do. That night we went and visited him. He said that a friend that he hadn't seen in forever had gone to his house and brought him a meal of food and left him with some rice. I know that because he prayed and trusted in God, through his faith, a miracle occurred. 

There are too many times in my life where I have realized experiences like that just can't be coincidences. They are miracles. God is a God of miracles. He works through our faith. If we trust him and do according to his will then we will be able to work marvelous wonders. I am so grateful for the chance that I have to be a missionary. There are hard days, but I still feel happy even when everything goes wrong. I am grateful that God loves all of us and manifests miracles in all of our lives. We simply must look for them and have adequate faith. 2 Nephi 26:13 And that he manifesteth himself unto all those who believe in him, by the power of the Holy Ghost; yea, unto every nation, kindred, tongue, and people, working mighty miracles, signs, and wonders, among the children of men according to their faith.

CONGRATS TO WILL AND OLIVIA ON PENNY!!!! I CAN'T WAIT TO MEET HER AND GIVE HER THE BIGGEST HUG IN THE WORLD!!! 

ALSO, GO JAZZ! Don't sleep on Rubio!

Love,

Elder Gochnour

HOTTER THAN BACKPACKING ON THE SUN!

The title of my email is a reference from football when my coach said that last time that he was this hot he was backpacking on the sun. Although a slight exaggeration, I would say that it kinda felt like I was backpacking on the sun this week.  So yeah it was HOT!!!!! I literally have never sweat so much in my life. Hot, hot, hot. But things are good and I am loving it out here! 

This Saturday, Sunday, and Monday are Khmer New Year! In the past, they have just let missionaries watch movies and take off proselyting because there isn't much work to be done, but they always see a lack of productivity following the break, so this year we just worked through the pain! Today to celebrate Khmer New Year we got together with our zone and had a huge water fight which was very fun!

In celebrations of the New Year, everyone and their dog (literally) goes back to the place where they were born which is usually outside the city. There were just empty streets and nothing going on haha. We had 0 students in our English class. Long story short it was pretty rough to try to keep ourselves busy and entertained. We found a guy with a monkey that had only one leg in the middle of the city which was pretty interesting. We also did a lot of contacting and found some pretty cool people! The Lord is truly a God of Miracles. AND our landlords are the BEST!!! They aren't members but they own the house downstairs and they always invite us over for dinner. They make literally the best (most expensive food) and it is amazing. They also love to sing karaoke which is pretty funny. 

One of our contacting experiences this week was of us handing out Word of Wisdom pamphlets to all the drunk people on the street haha. Good times! Also had an interview with President and Sister C and they are awesome. I love them and really am gonna miss their leadership in the mission.

Our way good investigator is one of the best people I have ever met. She diligent reads the scriptures and she has such a good heart! Hopefully, everything will go as planned and she will get baptized this week!  

I want to end by just bearing my testimony about the Book of Mormon. I really do love the Book of Mormon and in fact all scriptures for that matter. I hate when personally study ends every day because I just want to keep reading. I can feel the power as I flip through those pages. Honestly every day I flip through the pages and just regret that I didn't indulge in them more before my mission. THE BOOK OF MORMON IS THE WORD OF GOD! Don't miss out on the chance that you have to read it every day! If someone told you that God sent them a message with the ways to find happiness in this life and in eternity would you read it?? DUH! So we must get reading it because that message is called the Book of Mormon. 

That's all for now! Till next week! I love you all! Shout out to all the young guns getting their calls: Henry, Harry, Spencer, Cole B, and everyone else! Prepare now before it is too late, and go kill it.

Elder Gochnour

City Life

Elder Tuft 

Pochentong Chapel!

I have 0 time because we are going to play basketball for the fourth time in my whole mission and ball is life so sorry for this terrible email.

MY NEW AREA IS DOPE! I love Pochentong already. For starters, we only have one ward in our building and our building is quite a church. It is an old mansion that they changed into a church which is actually way sweet. Our Bishop has a shower in his office that has more settings than my phone did back at home. Also, the font is outside which is way fun! I will send some pictures of it and hopefully, we can be filling that font real soon! 

We have some awesome investigators. Because there are no sisters in our area we can teach girls if there is another male there. We have this investigator named Srey Toic (it works better in ភាសាខ្មែរ but I am too lazy to figure out how to type). She is an absolute BALLER! She has already read to Enos in the Book of Mormon and has one of the strongest testimonies. She told us a pretty amazing experience about how she read in Jacob 5 (the olive tree) and she wasn't able to understand it at all, but she put her trust in God. She prayed with faith and read the chapter again and understood it perfectly! She also highlights and marks her scriptures better than me and went to a few sessions of general conference. Other than that we have some good things going on. We are teaching the guard at the church who is close to being baptized too and things are definitely looking good missionary work wise. I feel so grateful for the Lord's hand in our work. 

This week has been pretty crazy. I said my goodbyes in KC which was sad, but I am grateful for all the amazing people and the great impact they have had on my life. I also said goodbye to Elder Cunningham which was super sad. I love that man! We then went down for transfers and made it to our new area and then on Saturday and Sunday we were just booked with General Conference (not mad at all). The city is a pretty fun experience. There is traffic and it usually smells pretty bad. There are a ton more people here and they even had gator-aide at the superstore!! Too bad it was too expensive.... I already love being in the city though.

General Conference was so sweet!!! I won't go into too much depth, but it was pretty amazing to be apart of the solemn assembly and sustain our new prophet. I loved the focus on recognizing the Holy Ghost and receiving personal revelation. My favorite talks were:

Elder Dieter F. Uchtdorf- Our perfect savior. WE MUST BEHOLD HIM

Elder David A. Bednar- BE MEEK

President Dallin H. Oaks- BY SMALL AND SIMPLE THINGS ARE GREAT THINGS BROUGHT TO PASS

In closing, I really have already come to love my new companion, Elder Tuft. he is an amazing missionary and an even better guy. He is so easy to talk to and yet he pushes me to be my best self as a missionary. 

One thing that we are really trying to work on that the Presiding Bishop Causse talked about in his talk. We need to make it about the people. Sometimes I care too much about the numbers. How good my area looks on the whiteboard. I compare myself to other missionaries based on the numerical success. This transfer all we want to do is get out of the house and help people. To try to help everyone. To brighten peoples day with a smile. To serve people whether they are going to accept the gospel or not. To actually help people and try to resolve their concerns rather than just teaching another lesson. It already has made such a bigger impact on our work. We feel happier and more accomplished. We are here to help, and hopefully, like the Savior, we can "Go about doing good." You don't have to be a missionary to do that though. I invite all of you to go about doing good as well! Make this world I better place. I love being a missionary! Read the Book of Mormon

Love,

Elder Gochnour

P.S. Got in another Bible bash with a random Khmer guy. Makes me have empathy for Elder Hoggan in North Carolina and Elder McDougal in France

ONE AND DONE!

 I had to borrow a sisters tag because I forgot mine

Well, I have A LOT to write about this week so I will just cut right to the chase. 

First things first, I got transferred. I thought for sure I would stay here in KC because it has only been 6 short weeks, however, I got the call that I am going to  ពោធ៍ចិនតុង (Pochentong) with a guy named Elder Tuft! I am finally going to the city!! I am very sad to be leaving this area after just getting here because it is very beautiful. I am especially sad to be leaving Elder Cunningham, I will miss talking sports with him all day every day and having 3 point shooting contests on our makeshift hoop at home, but I am also very excited to meet new people and live life in the city! Elder Tuft is only two transfers ahead of me, and he seems like a super good guy. Two fairly young missionaries doing the work! I can't wait.

ALSO SHOUT OUT TO JIM MCMUFFIN MCDOUGAL! I LOVE THAT MAN AND IT IS HIS BIRTHDAY THIS WEEK! GIVE HIM SOME LOVE! SHOOTERS GONNA SHOOT

Here are some things that happened this week:

• We tried to go visit a less active member in our ward. He is a way cool guy. We wanted to show him that we love him and support him, so we decided to go visit him at his work. He works at Pizza Company which is like a super nice, expensive restaurant here. We went in and sat down and ordered an appetizer haha expecting him to be working, but when we asked the waitress she said it was his one day off.... great. The appetizer was tasty though!

• We got three new investigators this week which was big time! We have been struggling finding and it was nice to finally have some success. We found this guy named Roat who is an absolute baller. He was a miracle. We talked to him and he was like yeah sure you can come back and then when we come back he just wanted to learn so badly and asked all the right questions. It felt right to teach him about the Book of Mormon and I felt the spirit so strongly in that lesson. Roat has a bright future ahead of him.

• We were visiting a less active and there were some guys playing volleyball by the riverside. We decided to join in and the two tall white guys put in work on those dudes! They weren't ready for what hit them... literally!

• Pu Lee Meng, our golden investigator, maybe one of the most elect people I have ever me, dropped off the face of the earth. When we scheduled his interview he told us he was busy this time of year and he won't meet with us. Really heartbreaking actually. We think it has something to do with a lack of support from his wife. He was already planning a trip to go to the SLC Temple, and now he is gone.

• A guy, RC Chantuu had us over to his house, even though there was a huge funeral going on right outside. As we got there we found out that we were intruding so we just chatted and then tried to leave, but he made sure we prayed first. It was a good testimony to me that we should be proud of this church that we believe in no matter where we are. He is proud to show his devotion to the Lord even if his neighbors think he is different from them. 

Lots of other stuff happened, but we will just leave it at that! 

One thing I realized this week is the difference between The Church of Jesus Christ and The Gospel of Jesus Christ. The branch that we serve in has struggled to get consistent members there and the branch president is very young and new to all of it. Many solid members have been offended in the past. There are some difficulties that must be resolved and don't really have any good solutions. I was pretty hung up on all of it. The thing that I realized is that the Gospel of Jesus Christ is perfect even if the Church sometimes isn't. The church is the means to access His perfect gospel. We must live our lives based on the foundation of His Gospel and the church is necessary to help us do that. However, we are all humans, and all humans make mistakes, therefore there will always be some issues. We must remember that the Gospel of Jesus Christ has no imperfections. It allows all of us a chance at happiness and exaltation. 

I forgot today was Easter! I know that Jesus Christ suffered for the sins of all of us here on this Earth and that he died for us. However, that isn't the end of the story, because Jesus Christ rose again. He conquered all. He suffered every pain so that we can overcome every trial. I have so much gratitude for the Atonement of Jesus Christ. We must take up our cross and follow him.

EVERYONE GO READ ALMA 34! STRAIGHT FIRE CHAPTER!

Joy in the journey! Sorry for the long email.

Love,

Elder Gochnour

VOLLEY BALL GAME!  

Our rap album cover 

This Water Buffalo almost touched me !