I Love My Mom

HELLO, HELLO, HELLO!

2 quick shout outs. First to Coulson Rich for the dope package! I love you man. Second to my sister in law Abby! Hope you had the best birthday ever!!

Well, to start I woke up this morning and felt like someone put my stomach in a blender and turned it on for the whole night. The number of times I went to the bathroom was in the double digits.... but other than that things are pretty amazing here!!

The weirdest thing that I saw this week:  A guy driving a moto with probably about 30 geese just tied on, quaking all the while. On top of the fact that this dude literally just tied geese on to his moto, there was a dog going at one of the gooses, legit just biting its face. All the other geese were trying to protect him, but they were tied up so it was to no avail. That was a very strange site. 

• This week was completely amazing and so full of miracles. The guy Seta that just kept having miracles happen left and right finally came to church. He along with nine other of our investigators and four potential investigators somehow all found a way to go to church. It was a pretty amazing sacrament meeting, and it feels like we are doing nothing to make it happen, but rather the Lord is just blessing us. 

• On top of that, we had Mongkul and David get baptized this week! It was a pretty awesome experience. I love the joy and excitement that they wear on their shoulders as they put on those special white jumpsuits. Mongkul is a 15-year-old who already is a great member help in all of our lessons, and has a strong desire to serve a mission. David is a 10-year-old that has gone to church his whole life but was never baptized because his parents aren't members. It was a very wonderful Sunday! 

• On top of all that, we had been trying to visit and encourage some less actives to come to church and all of them showed up. It was amazing! I saw some of them and couldn't believe my eyes. It really was a miracle from the Lord. 

We had two exchanges this week which made things pretty chaotic, but very fun. I was able to spend time with a guy named Elder Richards who is from Maryland and is in his training. It is so fun being around people who are new to the mission because they have so much excitement. We were contacting and huge rain storm hit us out of nowhere. We had to ask a lady for a poncho, but it was hard to put on because we were already so wet, so some random lady just helped us put on our poncho and put our arms through the holes and stuff. I love this country. I had another exchange with Elder Selman who is from Corner Canyon and very close to going home. He was called to speak Vietnamese, but he learned Khmer so well that now he can proselyte in both languages pretty impressive. 

Another funny thing that happened was that people moved into our house haha and it was not good. We own the third, fourth, and fifth floors and they moved into the second and first, but there was no barrier between the stairs so you could literally just see them as you walked by the stairwell. On top of that they have two very young kids that just yell and cry all day haha so we were a little worried, but our landlord put up a divider and a cover so things are good now. That was pretty funny though. 

We taught a lesson to a recent convert last night that was pretty powerful. They are one of the poorest families I have met, but they always sacrifice to go to church and feed the missionaries, and they won't say no. We decided that we wanted to teach them about heaven because they deserve it. When preparing, I learned that in order to achieve heaven we must do everything we can do. We must do as Nephi did in 1 Nephi 3:7 to completely and wholeheartedly follow the commandments of the Lord. If we do that then we will be able to have a shot at heaven. But like my basketball shooting, we will always miss that shot if it weren't for the Savior. We learn in 2 Nephi 25:23  "for we know that it is by grace that we are saved, after all we can do." So even after we try our hardest we will still fall short? That is disheartening. What must we hope for then? We learn in Moroni 7: 41 "And what is it that ye shall hope for? Behold I say unto you that ye shall have hope through the atonement of Christ and the power of his resurrection, to be raised unto life eternal, and this because of your faith in him according to the promise." We can have hope through JESUS CHRIST. Through Him all of our wrongs will be made right. Through Jesus Christ we can make it to heaven. The lesson was amazing and that man is one of the most humble and yet the happiest person I have ever met. If anyone deserves heaven it is him. 

This week I have been studying a lot about mothers. Man oh man am I lucky to have the best one. I love you Jeni B Gochnour! I love studying the amazing stories of mothers in the scriptures because a mother's love is one thing that can't be compared. One of the missionaries called me mama's boy and I wasn't even mad! One of my favorite quotes is "Be the type of missionary your mom thinks you are" SHOUT OUT TO MY MOTHER! I love you. 

Hope everyone had a fantastic week! I love you all. Thanks for the love and support. Joy in the Journey! And like Elder McDougal said, TAKE NOTE!!!!! YUP!

Elder Gochnour