Busy in St. Robert

In spite of having just talked to Justin on Friday, it was good to get his e-mail today.
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Hello! Happy New Year! It was so great to talk to you on Christmas! How did skiing go after we talked? The rest of our night was great. After we talked I went downstairs (at the members home that we were hanging out at), ate lunch, then won a game of monopoly. Then we went to another members home, the Hurds, for dinner. We had a wonderful dinner, then we watched the DVD "Joy to the World" with them. They had some other friends, a family of 3, over to eat with us, and Joy to the World was the perfect introduction to the gospel! The Spirit was very strong there, and we are going to go over to the Colbs (the family they invited over) house to teach them the gospel later this week. I love this area! St. Robert is so amazing! The next couple of days after Christmas were pretty crazy, though. Zone Conference is tomorrow (Tuesday), but this week we had to go to Tulsa for 2 days for Zone Leader Council and then we had 2 baptisms to plan for so we didn't have any time to even start planning for our instruction until at least Sunday. Well Saturday afternoon our Bishop called and asked us to speak in Sacrament Meeting (not even 24 hours notice), on the topic of setting goals, then a couple hours later the Elder Quorum President called asking us to teach Elders Quorum! So we had both of those to plan for, then when we got to Gospel Principals class the teacher was gone, so without any notice we got to teach that too! So it's been a fun couple of days. It really wasn't too bad, the talks and lessons all went well and Elder Hirshfeld and I are all prepared for an awesome Zone Conference now. Obviously the Lord provided a way, just like He always does. That's just the life of a missionary!

Zone Leader Council 12/22/09 Back: King, Palomino, Jacobsen, Enfield, Paget, Cosgrove, Otterstrom, Pres. and Sister Merkley, Fisher, Horch, Goodale, Anderson. Middle 2 sisters, Buhler, Block, Meteer, Browning, Hirshfield, Front Hancock, Johnson, Erbe, Madsen, Conrad

Lydon Saunders and family

The baptisms this week went really well, too. Jeff was on Tuesday and Lydon was on Saturday. Jeff is a 25 year old guy from upstate New York (he's here because he's in the Army and is stationed at Fort Leonard Wood) who was street contacted by Elder Johnson about 6 months ago. He tried to brush Elder Johnson off and said that he's more into science. So Elder Johnson changed his approach and started talking about all the different laws of nature and basically saying that God is the greatest scientist. That got Jeff's attention and he invited them back. It's cool because Jeff is this big tough army guy (slash ultimate fighter, he does alot of that), covered with tattoos, used to be into drugs and stuff really bad, but he made a ton of changes really fast and now he's one of the most solid converts that I've ever seen. He's SO excited about everything right now. It's so cool to see the changes that the gospel of Jesus Christ can make in peoples lives! He's awesome! We're teaching his wife now too (not to mention how hard he's working on here) and she's awesome too. She's been really accepting. She'll be baptized soon, then hopefully when he gets home from his deployment to Afghanistan (he won't leave for a few more months) they'll be ready to go to the temple together!Then Lydon, who was baptized Saturday, is a 10 year old kid who's great grandparents, Brother and Sister Eyman (who are both around 80) were both just baptized about 6 months ago. Lydon just got baptized, and we're also teaching his grandma, Rose Carter. (the Eymans daughter) She has a baptismal date for January 12. So we've got 3 of the 4 generations! Lydon's mom is a little tougher, she's got alot of stuff she's got to work through, but they are working on her. So things are going really great here, we've been really really busy, and I love it! I love you all! Have a great week!

Imitating Elder Johnson

Me, Elder Hirshfeld, Sis. Hill, Sis. Taylor (Rolla), Elder Davis, Elder Tarodi (Salem)

Me and Elder Hirshfeld

Twelve Days of Christmas

Though yesterday I posted all of Elder Goodale's pics/vids to Flickr, this one (below) didn't make it on Flickr because the video length was too long. Thus you'll find it embedded below or linked here. Justin and the rest of his district in Stockton, Missouri recorded this as a Christmas present to the Oklahoma Tulsa Mission president and his wife. Enjoy.

Rivera Family Christmas Eve

New Address / Pictures

Elder Goodale usually ships us a box of stuff each time he transfers, with things like the letters he's received, his daily planners, and so on. But most importantly, usually in those packages is a memory card from his digital camera. Today was no different, and we received 104 pictures and videos almost entirely from his last area, Stockton, Missouri. To the right here is a picture of Elder Goodale with Matt, a young man that they taught; this picture is taken at Matt's baptism. I have posted all of the photos and some of the videos (here on Facebook; here on Flickr - these aren't labeled yet, but hopefully we'll get to that soon).

Elder Goodale's new address is as below. Please write him!!! :-)

Elder Justin Goodale
181 East Lawn Ave. Apt 124
PO Box 929
St. Robert, MO 65584

Anyway... below is the e-mail he sent from today.
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Merry Christmas!!! How is everybody doing? I can't wait to talk to you on Friday! To answer your question, Mom, that will work fine to call in the morning. I don't know the exact time I'll call, but it'll be good and early for you... :) Things here are awesome! I love St. Robert. As I said last week, it's right next door to Fort Leonard Wood, so basically everybody here is military. Over half the ward (which is huge) is in the military. It's a really great ward. Really missionary oriented. They don't really have any ward mission plan except just go baptize 'em, and it works! Everybody here is great about sharing the gospel. Elder Johnson (my trainer, who I replaced here) was nice and even had 2 baptisms set up my first week here! One, Jeff, is tomorrow night and then we have another, Lydon, on Saturday. It's going to be awesome. Elder Hirshfeld and I are shooting for 6 baptisms this transfer, and it's totally going to happen! Elder Spencer Hirshfeld, my new companion, is an awesome missionary and I'm excited to serve with him. Another cool thing about being here is that as Zone Leaders we get to go on exchanges with all the District Leaders in the Zone (just 2 districts, this is the smallest zone in the mission), one of whom is my MTC companion, Elder Phillips! I'm way excited to go on exchanges with him.

Oh and by the way, I'm about as far north as I can get in this mission, and I'll be here all winter! I'm so excited. Last winter, down in deep Arkansas, we didn't even really have winter. But it actually snows here! That's all for now, again I can't wait to talk to you on Friday. Love you all!

Additional pictures:

don't ask

dead mouse

Me with Sister Bender

Me with Tanya White's kids, Curtis and Olivia

Brother and Sister Bird

I got most of the small towns for you Dad. There were 3 other podunk towns I wanted to get pictures of (Roscoe, Jerico Springs and Dadeville) but we didn't have the miles. Those 3 are all around 200. There was another town I almost took a picture of, Humansville, but I decided population 900 was just too big. :)

Amish Country

Me and Megan Huebner

Emily Dickens, Tamberlin Pulsipher, Kelli Pulsipher, Krisi Pulsipher and me

He said smile big...

Me and Elder Moxon

Emily Dickens, Tamberlin Pulsipher, Kelli Pulsipher, Krisi Pulsipher, me and Elder Moxon

Transfer to St. Robert, MO

Both last week's e-mail and this week's were very short; he seems really busy with the work, which is good! He's transferring this week to St. Robert, Missouri (the city's official home page here; the Wikipedia entry here). 2000 census indicates population of 2,760, which would make it one of the bigger cities he's served in on his mission! :-)
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Hey! How's it going? How's everybody's week? Things are going great here. Nothing really new is going on, except that transfer calls were Saturday! I've been called as a Zone Leader (pray for me!!!), and I'll be serving in St. Robert, Missouri. It's a couple hours east of here, up in the top Northeast corner of the mission, actually just a couple hours south of St. Louis. It's about the furthest I could possibly be from the mission home... It should be alot of fun serving there. It's actually right next door to Ft. Leonard Wood, a big military base. So I may be teaching a whole lot of Army people... I'm looking forward to it. I'll be way sad to leave Stockton, though. Especially just a week before Christmas... Other than that, not too much new is happening. The whole Bradshaw family came to church again, they are doing great, and of course Emily came again, and also Curtis and Megan came for the first time. They loved it! They said they will definitely be back. So things are going great, this area is on fire right now. The Lord has really really blessed us. It'll be sad to leave. Wish me luck! Sorry I don't have any more to say... Have a great week!

Oh by the way, if you have any letters either send them to the mission home or hold off on sending them until next Monday when I can get you my new address. Thanks! Love you!

Brigance family. Top to bottom: Sister Brigance, Kylie, Rob McGowin (son in law), Molly McGowin, Tanner, Brother Brigance, Bailey

Me and the Brigance Family

Elder Moxon and I with Brother Brigance

Me and the Brigance family

E-Mail of December 7th

Willard District Schofield, Scholle, Raleigh, Moxon, Me, Robinson

Sorry I'm late in posting Elder Goodale's e-mail from LAST week, just as THIS week's came in. I'll post that separately, but here's his e-mail of last week.
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Happy December! How is everybody? Ready for Christmas Break, I'm sure... How is the weather there in Boise? It's finally started to cool down this last week, hopefully for good this time...It's even gotten down into the teens a couple of nights this week! I know that's nothing for ya'll up there, but it's been COLD for here this early. It even snowed (briefly) on Wednesday! And we should be getting more this week. I'm glad winter is finally here.

Elder Moxon and I as shepherds for the ward Christmas party 12/5/09

First snow

In front of a Methodist Church in Willard, MO

We had an awesome week this week. The Bradshaws all came to church again, and actually 3 of them got up and bore their testimonies! 6-year old Brandon, 8-year old Jason, and 15-year old Marlena all bore their testimonies in Sacrament Meeting. Emily Dickens, who's still waiting on her mom's permission to be baptized, also bore her testimony. And so did Matt, who was baptized last Saturday. And he got the Aaronic Priesthood on Sunday as well! It was an awesome Sunday. There was alot of awesome stuff that happened this week, unfortunately I'm out of time on the computer. Sorry! Love you! Have a great week!

The Broadbent's house that we helped build