Mother's Day Call

Missionaries get to call home twice per year, on Mother's Day and on Christmas. So a little more than a week ago, we got to speak to Justin for more than an hour, and he really sounded great! We got the full run down on what he's up to, heard him say "really" (ie. "it was 'really' sweet!!!" about a bazillion times, and of course heard "y'all" quite a bit. We asked him if he could speak with a southern accent, but he said he had mostly lost it since transferring from Arkansas to Oklahoma earlier this year. So... he "yoostakood" speak southern, but no longer.

For the fun of it, to the right here is another picture from the set that Justin sent us last month. It's of he and his current companion, Elder Conrad (from Washington state). Anyway... for those whom were not in the call with him, following is the e-mail he sent on Monday, May 11th:

Hey everybody! It was so great talking to you yesterday! It was so nice to hear from you all and to know that all is well at home. I don't really have too much else to say though, other than that nothing has happened since we talked last night... I'm still alive... but for those that are getting this email that I didn't get to talk to, life is good.

With Brother Wooldridge

With her Mom

On Saturday we baptized Karlee Hood, who is the 13 year old daughter of a woman that just got baptized 4 months ago. Heather (her mom) got baptized, but Karlee and her 2 brothers (9 and 7 years old) kept going to their other church and had no desire to go to church with their mom. Their church was just more exciting. But Elder Conrad and I were able to get through to her and now she's way solid. She's a SMART girl, so once we were able to sit down with her and teach her she really understood, and then she couldn't wait to get baptized by the proper authority. She's really going to go places in the church, we can feel it. (yesterday we convinced her to go on a mission when she's 21, and she can't wait) And now because of her example, her 9 year old brother is getting baptized. He's a super smart kid too. So that's all going well. Otherwise it was just a normal week. Friday we had a major storm come through (80 mph winds where we are, and we just caught the bottom edge of it) and even some tornadoes touch down, but none nearby us. There were thousands of people without power. And according to Brother Wooldridge this was a small storm compared to what we'll probably get the rest of this season... but there was tons of damage for it. So that was pretty exciting. Otherwise life is good. The church is still true. I love you! Talk to you soon!

Elder Conrad and I just before he left

May 4th E-Mail / Pictures

Here is Justin's e-mail from May 4th - I'm finally getting caught up. Today he gets to call home for Mother's Day, and we're really looking forward to that!!! We also received from more pictures from Justin, which I have posted. The picture below is of Justin near the Arkansas River, right outside Clarksville, AR, taken on April 6, 2009. To see all 38 photos that I've posted, please click here for Flickr, and here for Facebook.

Hey everybody! How's your week going? Ours has been very wet. It rained non stop Friday, Saturday, and Sunday and some of Thursday too. It finally stopped last night, but there's some major flooding. Half the roads into town are closed, and a bunch of the city is under water too. It's pretty cool, but it also kind of sucks because one of our investigators (Karlee Hood, who is getting baptized on Saturday) wasn't able to make it to church because of the flood. It's also been tough to get ahold of alot of people, and there's been no one outside to talk to the last 3 days. It definitely led to some fun experiences, though. Saturday we were up in Baxter Springs and our car got stuck in the mud, and Friday while I was on exchanges in Neosho (over in Missouri) I got one real fun experience that I'll probably never try again: tracting in a hail storm. 

All the flooding from the storm.

Ouch. But otherwise things have been good. We really should be thankful because last year at this time the floods got even higher than this year. Though we may have that chance because another storm is supposed to be coming in tomorrow. I'm still praying for a tornado, too, so maybe this will be the one... Speaking of tornados, that's way cool that you got to see video of the one here back on April 9. I was kinda bummed I missed that, it was the day before I got here. We got pretty good storms that night, too, though. It was a huge nasty storm system, and pretty much the entire mission was under tornado watch that night. As far as I know there were only two that actually hit that night. There was that little one here in Miami, and then a huge tornado hit Mena, Arkansas. You should look that one up, Mena was just demolished. The next day I actually talked to the missionaries who serve in Mena, their house got pretty trashed too. Luckily they were safe in the closet, but I bet that would be scary. Also look up the Picher tornado in May of last year. Picher is a little town just north of Miami that used to be in our area. I guess it still is but there's not much left of the town after that tornado. This is just about the best area to be in if I want to see a tornado! Not to scare you or anything...

Everything else is going really great here as well. Jason and Savannah are still golden, we have Karlee's baptism on May 9, and hopefully Andy Arms later this month as well. Then there's always Sarah... Hopefully she'll get baptized sometime soon as well. She just needs to start living the Word of Wisdom and Law of Chastity and she'll be good to go. There's alot of other great work going on as well. The Lord was definitely testing us this week with all of the trials He threw our way, but I know it's always for our benefit. We were definitely compelled to be humble, which we needed, and we learned a ton too. We've got a lot of really promising investigators we're working with right now and this week with the nicer weather I know we will find a ton more. We have definitely seen alot of miracles and after the disappointments this week I can feel more coming. One thing I've learned is that as missionaries, and just throughout life in general, we have to expect miracles. Every time there's a major let down we know that there's a miracle right around the corner, because God loves us and wants so badly to bless us. We just need to have faith in Him, and He will shower them down. Of course, that doesn't mean we should feel entitled to blessings or get down if they don't come, but instead have that "but if not" faith, like Shadrach, Meshach, and Abed-nego had. (Daniel 2:18) If we do, we have nothing to fear and no reason to get discouraged. I actually just read a really good talk on that subject this morning. It's called "Seeing the Promises Afar Off" by Anne C. Pingree. She gave it in the October 2003 General Conference. I'm not going to say much about it cuz I feel like I'm just rambling on, but ya'll should read it. Well, that's about it for this week. Keep praying for us please. I love you! Have a great week!

Pictures from storm damage

Here are pictures from the damage done by the storm in Commerce, OK on 5/8/09

Expecting Miracles

The following is from Elder Goodale's e-mail of April 27th.

Our sexy car

Hey everybody! I'm so glad they finally figured out what's wrong with Brianna! Well, at least what's wrong with her stomach... :) Hopefully that new plan will be able to get everything fixed up. It just sucks that she'll have to sleep in til 10 or 11 every day. I bet she's way bummed about that... It sounds like everything else there is going great as well. Sounds like Dad's work is going great and every one is staying good and busy and everything is looking up. It's good to hear that Lindsey Muir is doing so much better, too. I forgot to fast on the day that they were setting up that big fast for her, but I repented and fasted the following Sunday. Keep me updated on that situation. And on anything else exciting going on, especially with school ending pretty soon. I can't believe April is already over! I swear 2009 just started a couple of days ago!!! Time is going by way too fast.

This was a storm rolling in. I thought it looked cool. I was hoping it might bring a tornado

We had a great week here! Tuesday was Zone Conference, and it was amazing! We learned SO much and the Spirit was so strong, we couldn't wait to get out and work and start applying all the stuff we learned. In the morning we got some great instruction on how to have better and more effective planning and then the rest of the conference was about the Book of Mormon and how it is Another Testament of Jesus Christ and the Keystone of our religion. It was a very powerful conference. Well I don't have too much else to report this week. We're still working hard and having alot of success, things are going great. Oh yeah I guess I will tell you about 2 of the new investigators we had this week:

Elder Conrad

We talked to this man named Jason on the street on Wednesday as he was getting ready to go fishing, and he was way sweet. Really sincere. The Jehovah Witnesses have been meeting with him a little lately and trying to get him but you could tell he didn't believe too strongly what they believed. He just loved knowledge and was really interested in getting more. So we went back Friday night to teach him the 1st lesson and it was awesome. We went over dispensations and how God has always worked through prophets and he really really loved it and you could tell he really understood the importance of prophets. Then we go over Christ's earthly ministry and how He established His church, then the great apostasy. We taught the great apostasy really powerfully, and he totally got it. We asked him what he thought it would take to get the world out of the state it's currently in and he was like "well we would need more apostles!" Then right as he said that his wife, Savannah, got home from work and walked into the room. At first she seemed a little cold, but then she said to hold on a second while she settled the kids down, cuz she wanted to join us. So when she came back we summed up the whole lesson so far in just a couple of minutes for her, luckily she really understood, especially the great apostasy. You could tell everything just clicked. When we shared with them how Christ's gospel has been restored to the earth today through Joseph Smith, and how that means that there is a living prophet and 12 apostles on the earth today, they were so excited! They recognized how necessary the restoration was, and they were overjoyed to find out that it's happened, and that there is a living prophet again. They were SOOOO prepared! Such a miracle. We've come to expect those though. You have to expect miracles to be a successful missionary. But it was still such a blessing. This is such an incredible message we share, I wish everyone realized that as much as Jason and Savannah did. I guess that's why we're here though. Not just us missionaries, but all members. That's why Joseph Smith said that after all is said in done, our most important duty is to preach the gospel. This truly is a marvelous work! I love you all!

Jumping Six Feet Again

I am afraid that as I've been on a long road show in Japan, China, Japan again and now Germany, I have not kept up with Elder Goodale's weekly e-mail postings. So it's time for me to catch up a little. The following is his e-mail to us, dated April 20, 2009.

Elder Conrad

This is on the road about every 20 feet.

Hey everybody! I can't believe another week has come and gone already! It's flying by way too fast! We had an amazing week though. We jumped 6 feet again this week! Get used to it, because we're planning on doing it every week this transfer. It'll be tough this week because we have Zone Conference tomorrow (I'm so excited!!!) but we'll do it. Things have been crazy here, though. Monday after emailing we went Spoonbill fishing, and found out that we definitely aren't fisherman... It's a different kind of fishing, too. If it was just normal bait fishing we would have been all right, but when it comes to snagging we had no idea what we were doing. So that didn't work out. But it was still fun. Nothing really exciting happened on Tuesday, but we had quite an adventure Wednesday night. At about 6 pm Wednesday, a substation at the local power plant caught fire, then it totally blew up about half an hour later. The whole town was out of power! Everyone was saying that it was going to be a few days before it was back, but they ended up getting some sort of temporary fix while they repaired it, so we got power back early the next morning. But That night was pretty crazy. We were doing everything by candle light that night, and having a lot of fun with that... It was good though because we are teaching this couple that lives behind us so we jumped the fence in our backyard (not into their yard, there's a little alleyway there) and brought them some candles cuz we knew they probably didn't have any. It turns out we were right and they did badly need them, so we were able to build a good relationship there. Thursday night we had this way sweet lesson with Andy Arms, a man who has been investigating the church off and on for a couple years now. We were finally able to break through to him more than any other missionaries have been able too, I guess now he was just finally ready, and he'll be getting baptized next month! He's just going through a little bit of depression right now so please pray for him. Also there is a woman, Heather, who was baptized here a few months ago and we're teaching her 13 year old daughter. She will also most likely be baptized this month. We've also been teaching Sarah Laforce, a 21 year old girl (I say girl because she doesn't really act 21. Or maybe she does, and that's the problem...) who has a date for May 2. It'll be tough for that to happen, though, because she is has some problems to overcome. Other than that we've just been doing a lot of finding and teaching and trying to build up the area. It's been a blast! My companion and I are getting along really well. He's only been out 3 months longer than I have, so we're learning alot together too. We've been seeing alot of success though, these are going to be some exciting weeks ahead. The work is really starting to roll forward. We have been able to see the hand of the Lord blessing us so many times every day, it's really amazing. We have seen Satan try to interfere in many ways as well, but as we have relied on the Lord we've always been able to overcome all of those trials. I know that this is the Lord's work that we're doing, and there is nothing in the world I would rather be doing than helping to bring the people of Miami to Him. I know this church is true with all my heart, that there really is a living prophet on the earth today, and that it's through him that God is directing us every day. By listening to and following his words we can overcome anything Satan throws at us, and we will be able to find peace in these difficult times. How grateful I am to be a part of Christ's restored church!

Me Christian, Bro. Hughlett, Nick, Sisster Hughlett, E. Conrad

Oh and how could I forget!? We had a baptism on Saturday! Actually 3 baptisms! Brother Hughlett is a man in our ward who married a nonmember 14 years ago and went inactive. (or he may have already been inactive, I'm not sure) Anyway, he returned to activity not too long ago and started bringing his sons (age 13 and 10) to church with him as well. Then his wife started coming too, and on Saturday he got to baptize his wife and 2 sons. It was sweet. I didn't really have anything at all to do with that one, I only taught them a couple of times before their baptism and they were already set, but it was still awesome. They're a sweet family. Well that's all for this week. I love you! Have a great week!

Our cute little house and our car