Busy in Clarksville

Below is the e-mail we got from Elder Goodale on Monday (December 15th). It sounds like he's really in a rural area, and loving it! If you get a chance, I'm sure Justin would love receiving lots of Christmas cards (see the posting last week for his address).

Hey everybody! Things are going great here in Clarksville! We are finding new investigators left and right, this new area was so ready for the gospel. We actually had 8 investigators who committed to come to church yesterday! (including a really close family of 4, which is every missionaries dream) Granted only one showed up... That will change though. We've got the Hicks family we are teaching and they are way cool and really good people who will progress very quickly once we're able to address some small concerns they have (hopefully they'll come to church on Sunday because that would really help), and this guy from the Marshall Islands (we actually had to get him a Marshallese Book of Mormon cuz he doesn't read English) named John who's also way cool. Things are moving slowly because there is a slight communication barrier but he loves meeting with us and reads everything we ask him to read, now we just need to get him to pray about it so he can get a testimony. We are also teaching this woman who is a single mother of 6 (though one died and her two older sons that are 22 and 18 are both in prison) who has had a really really tough life but she is awesome and I love her 3 younger kids. I can't wait til she starts coming to church regularly and reading from the Book of Mormon so that she can recieve the blessings that come from that. Finally we are teaching this hispanic guy named Francis who just moved here from New Jersey, though he's originally from Guatemala (I think). He has this really good friend from McCall, Idaho (he met her when she was down in Guatemala teaching English) and she was here this weekend and helped us teach him and got him to come to church again (for the 3rd time). He's way cool and I think he'll be baptized really soon. We're also teaching this 15 year old kid named Mark who is really cool and really interested in the church. The only problem is that his family is crazy (they are supportive of him learning about the church and stuff, they are just crazy and make it hard for him to do much of anything) and it makes it hard to meet with him. His uncle, however, is the 2nd counselor in the bishopric. He has a really cool conversion story himself and he's the one who referred us to Mark. That will help. So as you can see after barely a week here (as the first missionaries in 6 years here) we are already seeing lots of success, and are looking forward to even more. From what I've heard we've had TONS of success considering that this is our first week in a brand new area. We haven't really done anything, either. The Lord really prepared the people here for us to come.

Speaking of the Marshall Islands, that reminds me of something that Brother Menasco told me in the MTC that I meant to tell you all. Remember in Hawaii how we were wondering about whey there were all those wild chickens everywhere? Well apparently it's because they used to do a ton of chicken farming there, but a hurricane destroyed all the pens, letting the chickens free. Now they run wild everywhere. Anyway...

We're totally in the Ozarks here. I was kind of wondering whether we were because the town of Ozark, Arkansas is in my area (one of like half a dozen small towns we cover. It's probably the biggest besides Clarksville) and the University of the Ozarks is in Clarksville. I just wasn't sure because I hadn't actually seen any mountains... Lots of hills but no mountains. There are a couple of bigger hills, though, and I could see how people from the Midwest and South could mistake them for mountains. They need to go out to Idaho... But some of them are actually bigger than I thought though. Because of all the hills and trees everywhere it was hard to tell how big this one was until we drove up it to visit someone. We had a lot of fun on those horribly maintained dirt roads up the mountain in our little Malibu... I still wouldn't really call it a mountain though. But it was still tough. And we totally almost hit a deer on the way down! At night there are deer EVERYWHERE because so much of it is all forest and stuff, and it was dark by the time we came down the mountain. On the way we saw this deer way in front of us LAYING DOWN in the bushes (actually off the road) on the opposite side of the road. We were watching it carefully, and of course when we were within 50 feet the stupid thing freaked out and it jumped up and darted all the way across the road and in front of our car. We missed it by about 6 inches. It was so scary. Other than that there hasn't been anything too exciting though... Things are going great here. I can't wait to call you in 10 days! I love you!

Love,
Elder Goodale

Our district 2/25/2009. E. Lechausse (Greenwood), E. Osmond (ZL Ft. Smith), Me, E. Johnson, E. Patterson (ZL Ft. Smith), E. Brady (Alma), E. Goold (Alma), E. Brimhall (Greenwood)