Week 18 Daytona Beach

 

This week was pretty normal. We picked up a lot of cool people to teach also. All of our investigators are doing well. Jim was a little sick so we didn't meet with him much but we ha had a lot of great lessons with everyone else. 

Some big news is that transfers are this week. Elder Dummer is leaving to go whitewash a Spanish area. :/ I'm pretty bummed that he is leaving. We got along pretty well. However I'm excited for ,y new companion. My new companion will be Elder Hawkins. He is actually coming from my last area so we will have a lot to talk about. I hear he is a great missionary.

Our days have been packed recently. We went on splits twice this week where Elder Dummer went with a member and I went with another because we had too many scheduled lessons. The work here is great! I hope I never leave! I would say the biggest miracle this week came Wednesday. We have been teaching a kid who is the only member in his family. He has been praying real hard that his family would listen to us. Well we finally got it worked out so we could do so. It was the coolest experience because we got to witness this kid teach his parents about the restored gospel. He bore his testimony to them and they couldn't deny it! As we explained how he Book of Mormon came from ancient American prophets the fathers eyes lit up. He said he has been searching for hat his whole life. The fathers wife only speaks Spanish so as soon as he learned this he started speaking to her in Spanish with a sense of urgency! Walking out of that house and seeing the excitement on this kids face because his family has started to accept the restored gospel witnessed to me again that there is no other place I would be than here in Daytona Beach serving our Lord and Savior Jesus Christ!

Well I love you all. Hope you have a great week this week!

Elder Goff

GRANDPA - Vic

Week 17 Daytona Beach (18 month mark)

We had a pretty good week this week. It seems like I say that every week though haha. It cooled off a bit too. I froze to be honest! It got down to 36 degrees which honestly sounds like nothing but I guess I'm turning into a softy. Someone told me that when you gain a pint of blood when you go up 7,000 feet and when you drop 7,000 feet you lose a pint. He said that it takes about 6 weeks to gain or lose it. So my blood literally has thinned out.  I'm not sure if that is all true or not though.

All of our investigators are doing great! We have 3 people on date for baptism right now. Diente has a date for February 19th. He is a 22 year old kid. We taught him about the Plan of Salvation this week. He loved it! My mom sent me a Plan of Salvation puzzle for Christmas so that's been coming in handy recently. The next is Jimbo who has a baptism date for February 5th. He is still doing super well. He just has to quit smoking. However, he is determined to make it. The 3^rd person we set a date with this week was perfect. Her name is Brandie. We have been teaching a less active family named the Spurlin's. They kept telling us of this friend they had for us to teach. Well we finally got to teach her. The very first lesson we had with Brandie she said she already knew this was true. She basically called herself a Mormon before she even started meeting with us. So to say the least she is super prepared. It's way cool because the Spurlin's bare testimony to her and teach her. In the process of helping Brandie get baptized in February 19th, we are reactivating the Spurlin's. The work here in Daytona is great! We committed Tekeam to a baptism date again this week. He is praying about it however, I am confident he will accept the invitation to be baptized.

Well other than our investigators not much else happened this week. We had a couple good exchanges and are seeing a lot of progress with all the missionaries in our zone. The Lord truly has his hand in this work. It's a privilege to be his instrument in bringing about such a marvelous work and wonder.

Hope you all have a great week and stay warm!

Elder Goff

 

 

Week 16 Daytona Beach

We had another solid week here in the Promised Land of Florida. It was super eventful. We had a lot of referrals this week too. One of which we were even able to set a date for him to be baptized! His name is James or Jim or Jimbo The 3rd. Whatever you want to call him. We found him through a Less Active member of the ward. He agreed with everything we said even though we don't think he understood everything we were talking about. He would just say, "yup" or "yes sir" in a his southern accent to anything we talked about. So when we popped the question about baptism. He responded with a "yup". So then we asked how February 5th sounded... "Yes sir." He is just a cool southern guy who is looking for more of God in his life.

The rest of our investigators are doing well! Jed came to church again this week. He is super solid! We met with him and he was studying the discourses of Brigham Young. He obviously knows a lot about the church. The only thing holding him back is that he thinks he has to know everything about it before he is baptized into it. When truthfully you don't have to know hardly anything at all about the doctrine just as long as you know the Book of Mormon is true and have received an answer from God. We have a few scriptures in mind that will hopefully help him.

We are starting to see a lot of miracles with all the investigators we are teaching. Tekeam is starting to get back on track. He was suppose to be baptized the first of December but then looked up some anti videos. Bret is still waiting for the court to get back to him about the date for his probation to end. He will be baptized after that. We also found Errol this week! Not sure if you remember him or not but we were teaching him a lot about 2 months ago. He didn't have a solid address and he lost his phone so there was no way to get in contact with him. Well we were driving down the road yesterday and just happened to be at the right place at the right time and found him walking down the road! He was so excited to see us! It was a miracle that we happened to find him!

With the New Year here I hope we all take the prophets counsel when he says, "Choices determine our destiny." We must choose the path to eternal life. Although there are many things attempting to sway us from the path, "I would that ye should be steadfast and immovable, always abounding in good works, that Christ, the Lord God Omnipotent, may seal you his" - Mosiah 5:15

Hope you have a great week! Happy New Year!

Elder Goff

Exchanges with Elder Hale. We have a cool Less active we teach named Brother Ryan who has some crazy pets.

 

Week 15 Daytona Beach

Christmas is always one of the best times of the year. We saw a lot of Christmas miracles this week. It was just a good all around week.

Of course the highlight of the week was getting to talk to my family. The more I look around the more I am reminded of how blessed I am to have a family who cares so much for each other. 

We had a super sweet miracle happen this week. We were doing some finding on Friday and just didn't feel like we were seeing any success. Everyone was shutting the doors in our face. After saying a prayer, we went to a former investigators house to see if they still lived there. It was an apartment. As we were walking over to find the door we saw this lady standing outside so we started talking to her. She said she was Buddhist and wasn't interested but that her son right around the corner was a member of our church. So of course we went over and talked to him. Right as he saw us his face lit up! Apparently he had just moved here from Washington State for the winter, and he said he had been investigating the church for 6 months now! He thought the missionaries in Washington had talked to us and sent us over to see him but we just happened to be in the right place at the right time. It was a complete miracle! He came to church with us yesterday and we are meeting with him again tomorrow. His name is Jed if you want to keep him in your prayers.

Christmas was super fun! We got up and played Santa clause for someone! It was super cool. There was a member from out of state that donated a suit and some other stuff to him. It was super fun! The rest of the day we went to church and ate. And ate. And ate. We had 3 1/2 meals between 1:00 and 7:00. I felt so Sick! We had some phillipian food, then regular southern food, then a little more southern food from another family, then some Spanish food. I felt so fat!

Elder Goff

Richard - A Member in the Ward

 

Week 14 Daytona Beach

This week was a pretty good one.  Nothing super exciting or new happened. Well I take that back, everything about a mission is new and exciting but it's just the same new and exciting stuff as normal haha. The weather here has been like paradise. It stays between 65-75 degrees all the time.

I guess that one exciting thing that happened this week was that we had A Zone meeting. I gave a training on how to find people to teach. It's pretty cool because a lot of that is simply just faith. There is an eternal law about faith: Desire -> Action/obedience -> blessings/ miracles. The way to change your desire to receive blessings to receiving blessings is through hard work and obedience just as it says in Ether 12:6 as well as D&C 130:20-21.

I had an exchange with an elder on Saturday that was super cool. We went to a place called Bunnell which is about the same size as Beaver and the people act a lot the same so I felt right at home. They are teaching a guy who loves to hunt (especially alligators). I got to meet him. His house is literally filled with animal mounts. The best part about it all is that he is getting baptized on Jan 7th. 

Our investigators are all in a decision stage I guess you could say. They are all on the verge of either progressing towards baptism or being dropped. It's super frustrating. We do however have one investigator who is super solid. His name is Brett. He hopefully gets off probation this month so he will be able to be baptized the first of next month! Darren Mitchell is doing well also. He says he wants to become a Mormon but he is just super busy this time of year. He works at the racetrack here in Daytona so it's hard to meet with him. He was trying to set something up for us to go teach him during his lunch break at the Speedway so that would be cool. He also said that anytime I want to go to a race, he will get me free tickets for the fancy booth up at the top where they serve you food and all. If you could keep him in your prayers that would be great!

I hope you all have a Merry Christmas! I can't believe it's already that time of year again. Love you all!

Elder Goff

This is the Murray Family! They are super cool and are going to get baptized. Unfortunately they just moved up to North Carolina so it's not going to be us baptizing them.

Exchanges with Elder Haderlie

 

Week 13 Daytona Beach

I love this time of year. The weather is perfect. It has been about 75 degrees here as the high for the past 2 weeks. I would consider moving here after my mission if it would stay like this all year round! I also love it because Christmas is coming up. Everyone seems to be so much happier this time of year.

We had a pretty busy week this week. We had MLC (mission Leadership Conference) almost all day Thursday, Friday we had a meeting with all the District Leaders in the zone, Saturday we took a couple hours to discuss our plans for our Zone meeting which is coming up this week. So to say the least. Oh also we had transfers on Tuesday which is always a busy day. Besides all the business stuff p, we have been seeing a lot of miracles!

We are teaching an investigator named Darren Mitchell. We meet with him this coming week to set a baptism date. It was a miracle that we found him! He said he was scrolling through his phone one day when a Book of Mormon add popped up. He had met with missionaries in the past and loved the Book of Mormon so he ordered it. Of course when you order a Book of Mormon you get a free set of missionaries along with it. So we showed up a few weeks back but he was too busy to talk. Well, we returned this week and we're able to sit down and meet with him. He testified of how this book is the only book he trusts and that he knows it is from God. We asked him how he knew that and his answer was this, "Because no Book that can change a person so much and make such an impact in one's life if it is not from God." What a spiritual experience. That is so true too! Never before have I seen a Book make such a difference in a persons life as this. He committed to baptism and now is praying about a date. A cool fact about Darren, he works at the speedway and said he could get us free tickets to any race we wanted. Also he said we would get some of the best seats in the speedway where they serve us free food. We would also get to meet the drivers. So I guess that is a benefit of baptizing this guy. Haha

We had our ward Christmas party this week. 7 of our investigators came to it and got to meet a lot of people from the ward! It was great! Unfortunately none of her came to church though :/

I spoke in sacrament yesterday. What I spoke on was the birth of Jesus Christ from the perspective of Heavenly Father, Jesus Christ, the people in America, and us at the time of his birth. Can you imagine what it would have been like the day before Jesus Christ came to the earth? I wonder how the Savior felt? Or how Heavenly Father felt sending His son? Or even how we felt up there in the premortal life watching him prepare to save the world? 

I hope you all have a great week!  Elder Goff

Quote of the week: (talking about long distance swimming)
Phil: I would swim 5 miles as a warm up.
Elder Dummer: I couldn't swim 5 miles if my life depended on it.
Me: I can't even run 5 miles!
Paul: I can't even swim!

Week 12 Daytona Beach

There was a lot that happened this week. Transfers happened! Elder Reeves goes home Wednesday and Elder Dummer is coming back to Daytona!!! It's going to be good to reunite with my old comp. It's going to make things a lot easier too because now I'll finally have a zone leader as a companion again rather than trying to both be Zone leaders from 2 different areas. Haha it was a complicated situation.

This week was race week for Ferrari's here in Daytona. You can here all the cars racing at the speedway from our apartment so during personal studies you can hear them in the background. In total this week we counted 34 Ferrari's. It was pretty sweet!  I'll send some pictures.

Today was a pretty sweet Pday. We got the zone together for the day and went ice skating with the approval of President Clark. It was so cool! I haven't ever done it before but I caught on pretty week. I'll send a bunch of pictures.

So I'm super short on time today so sorry if I don't get anyone emailed back that emailed me. We have just been running all day. Our investigators are doing good. We started to teach the Murray family which is a part member family. The wife just got out of a coma and is in recovery. Something must have happened because they are all super down for baptism and everything!

Love you all!!!