5 Months Down!

Hello! So on the 28th I will have been out on my mission for 5 months! The time has really flown by! It is so crazy to think about!

This week was really cold and pretty wet, and to make it even better, the car repair place is short staffed so the car still hasn't been fixed! We walked a lot this week, which isn't so bad except now we are both pretty sick.

This week was a bummer week for our numbers. We were both kinda sad yesterday when we had to call our district leader to report. It felt like everything kept falling through! We had members ahead of time to come to lessons with us and they would cancel right before. We were both sick and had to stay inside more than we would have liked. But, we are ready for the week ahead! We had a great weekly planning session and made some great goals for ourselves so we are pretty excited to get out and achieve them!

This week to spice things up a bit Sister Pulsipher and I decided it would be a great idea to push our beds together and build the coolest fort ever!!!!!!!!!! It didn't end up being as cool as we hoped, it's kinda messy, and it's only being held together by some clothes pins, a garden rake, and some rusty broom handles. But, we have slept in it for a few nights now and it hasn't collapsed on us yet!!!

Yesterday at church Sam joined 2 other guys at the sacrament table and broke the bread with them! He is pretty shy, so I was really happy to see him up there! Hopefully soon he will be ready to say the sacrament prayers! He also texted us last night and said he is planning on trying to get his temple recommend so he can go to Hamilton in October with the rest of the stake for their temple week and do baptisms and confirmations! I am just so happy! Whenever I think of him my heart just overflows with joy! He was so ready for the gospel and he is so personally motivated to keep pressing forward and staying strong! I am so grateful for him!

Last night was a stake meeting when the Ward boundary changes were announced! There were some pretty big changes made! A new unit was created called the Parklands ward. Our ward, the Riccarton ward had some big changes made! We lost a lot of ward members, including our bishop, but gained some other members from another ward! A new bishop and bishopric were called for our ward and most of the other wards last night! Luckily, although our ward changed a bit Sister Pulsipher and my proselyting area wasn't affected! We are very grateful for that! There will be a lot of work to do to really get our ward back to running, we lost a lot of our auxiliary presidents last night so it'll be fun for a few weeks ;)

Today, as I logged onto lds.org there was a new message made based off of Jeffrey R. Holland's talk, Like a Broken Vessel. I watched it and was so touched by it! Although I don't personally suffer from mental issues or depression it was so good to be reminded that at anytime we feel low or lonely we can turn to the Lord who loves us perfectly, that all these trials will not matter in the next life, and for me to continue to be positive and hopeful about the future. Everyone should take the time to watch the video! It was truly wonderful!

I love you all! Thank you for the continued support and prayers!

Love, Sister Golden