Jumping 6 Feet in OTM

It sounds like Elder Goodale had an awesome-but-roller-coaster week. Such is Missionary life!

Hey everybody! We had an awesome week! We finally jumped 6 feet this week! Haha I guess I better explain what that is... To start off with, President Seal is very numbers oriented. He puts a big emphasis on all the key indicators, that's how he keeps us accountable and working hard. Of course he also makes sure that we aren't just going for high indicators just for the sake of getting high numbers, he makes sure we can attach a name to every single one and that we realize that individuals are far more important than numbers. But he does put alot of emphasis on the key indicators. As part of that, he has us record our "OTM's", or street contacts. OTM stands for Open Thy Mouth, and they invented that and started calling them that because we are serving in the OTM (Oklahoma Tulsa Mission, also known as the Only True Mission) and so OTM is a very popular acronym here. So anyway, we call street contacts OTM's. We are expected to get 140 OTM's a week (so 20/day). In big cities where you spend alot of time finding I'm sure that isn't very difficult, but here it's mostly small towns and with the amount of time we spend teaching (remember the goal is 40 lessons/week) it's pretty hard work to get 140 OTM's/week. Jumping 6 feet, which is what we call it when you get both 40 lessons and 140 OTM's in a week, is significantly harder and pretty rare. We always shatter the OTM's (one time we had 97 in one day, though this week we didn't do quite as well and only had 151), but the 40 lessons is tough. But we did it this week for the first time! So, short story long, it was an awesome week. We worked our butts off, and we saw so many miracles as a result! We were really really blessed this week. We also had 11 new investigators. Yesterday we had a neat experience with one. We were super busy yesterday, and because we had so many people to see we didn't schedule in time for lunch or dinner. Our schedule was too packed. So around 5 we knocked on the door of this couple, Rodney and Katherine, who were some potential investigators that had said we could come back. They let us in, and she just happened to be cooking tacos that night and offered us some. They were so good! Then we taught them and it went really well. So we got dinner and two new investigators at the same time! It was amazing! We were definitely blessed for our sacrifice. Though that wasn't really even the greatest experience yesterday. The best part was this other new investigator named Erica. We had OTM'd her in the park last Wednesday and set up a return appointment for yesterday evening. As it turns out, she is actually dating Heath Sanders, who is a less active member. He hasn't been in like 10 years, since he was 13 or 14, but his dad is in the bishopric. They have been living together for 3 years and have a kid together, and she was basically the most golden investigator I've ever taught. SO ready. She's totally going to get baptized (again, probably right after I get transfered...) and her soon to be husband was present for the lesson and it sounds like he's wanting to come back to church too! It was such an amazing miracle. All of our days are filled with miracles, though.

But that's not to say that this week was all amazing. It was really an emotional roller coaster, actually, becasue Saturday was one of the most disappointing days on my mission so far. We taught the Lemons, and from the moment we walked in we could feel a lot of tension and we could tell something wasn't right. Kurt and Krista were majorly fighting. About half way through the lesson we found out why. Apparently Kurt has still been drinking Friday nights after work, and lately he started smoking and chewing again too. Krista is getting really excited for her baptism and is super ready and keeping all her commitments (and she's already read like half the Book of Mormon), but she was really upset at him because he isn't keeping his commitments and doesn't seem to care enough. So obviously Kurt isn't getting baptized this week. (and Krista actually had to move her's back to next weekend, though she has decided she still wants to go ahead and do it on her own even though he isn't ready) He really needs your prayers right now, hopefully it all gets worked out soon. So Saturday wasn't a great day. Francis is still set for his baptism on March 28, though. He's getting really excited, and he's really committed this time, too. He even biked to church each of the last two weeks because he doesn't have a car, but he still wanted to be there. So he's ready too. The only reason he didn't get baptized this last Saturday was that the man he wants to baptize him had to go out of town, so he decided to move it back. So we'll baptize him on Saturday, then the following weekend he'll be in Boise (actually Meridian) getting married! I gave him our address and he said he would stop by so he could get to meet ya'll. Hope that's alright.

Well that's it about us, how are ya'll doing? I guess you're in SanFran right now with the Grimms, that sounds way fun! I hope ya'll are having a blast. We always do with them so I'm sure you are. How are they doing? How's the rest of the family? Tell them all hi for me. In other news, I can't believe that news about Jourdan Watanabe. That's insane. I actually knew him very well, I can't believe he's gone now. You're right dad, it's so great to have that gospel in our lives and to be able to be grounded on the solid foundation of Jesus Christ. That's just unbelievable. But speaking of the gospel, how is Andrew doing? Is he getting baptized soon? Tell him he better be... Well I hope everything else is going well for everybody. I love you all so much! My thoughts and prayers are with you!