Rural Church / Bible Belt

Sorry I'm a little late in posting Elder Goodale's letter from August 24th - just a little bit crazy with travel (greetings from Japan). I had previously asked him how it was attending church in such a rural area, and if they had to travel far to the church building. Though Justin and his companion live just 3 miles from their local church building, there are some people who have to drive 2 hours for certain church meetings - crazy.

I had also asked him if people there in the "Bible Belt" really knew the Bible. Apparently not, though I like Justin's enthusiasm in setting out to change that. :-)
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It's really good to hear that Brianna's testing all went so well. Hopefully they got everything figured out this time and she really is ok. And hopefully it lasts, especially with school starting up again. It must be good to have everyone back in school again, I can't believe Andrew is in high school now! Everyone is getting so old! It's crazy to think that when I get back Steven will be starting his last year of elementary school and Brianna will be getting ready to graduate. That's insane.

The work here is going pretty well, though Jamie has had a few challenges. We'll get Jamie back on track, though. As I said, she definitely felt the Spirit last time and knows that this is Christ's church. She was very excited about the idea of a living prophet on the earth today, and she knows that with all of the trials that she is going through, Jesus Christ's restored church is the only place that she will be able to find all of the answers she needs. The Spirit bore witness of that to her, and she told us exactly that. Please just pray that as we work on trying to see her again that she'll remember what she felt before and that she'll have a desire to feel it again.

There are a lot of other great things going on as well. A lot of people that have a lot of potential, our biggest problem is just getting everyone to commit to sitting down with us regularly. But that's a problem everywhere, not just here. So please pray for us that we'll be able to get into a regular teaching schedule with all of our investigators. It's starting to get better, but we've still got a ways to go. That's really cool to hear about Elder Davis's mom writing you. It's good to hear that he at least kind of likes me... just kidding. We actually get along really really well. I've loved these last few weeks. He's an amazing missionary too. Already better than me. He didn't even need to be trained. One thing that's kind of fun about being an "older" missionary (since 10 months is so old...) is that it's really incredible to see how the quality of missionaries that they are sending out just keeps getting better and better. Each group that comes is stronger than the last. The Lord has definitely saved his most elect spirits to do his most important work in these last days. It's very exciting to be a part of.

Now to answer your other questions: We only live about 3 miles from the church, but there are people in our ward who drive 45 minutes to church every Sunday. There was a priesthood meeting in Branson on Sunday night (that's the most central building in our stake), and Branson is an hour and a half from Ava. There are people who live on the eastern side of the ward who had to drive 2 hours to that. But that reminds me: On Friday I went on exchanges in Branson! I figured mom would be jealous about that. It was crazy because there were a ton of students from other countries that were there for the summer working. In the one day I was there we talked to 3 people from Russia, 3 from Turkey, one from Afghanistan, several from Jamaica, several from Mexico (I'm pretty sure those last two groups weren't students, though), and 2 girls from France that became new investigators that night. One of the people from Russia was actually a member who had a pretty amazing story. She grew up in Siberia in an atheist household. Missionaries began teaching her and she joined the church when she was 18, but she had to do it in secret. Her mom wouldn't allow her to go to church or have any sort of scriptures in the house at all. She came to Branson for the summer and has been attending church actively here, has attended the temple up in St. Louis a couple of times, and has been soaking up as much knowledge as possible. It was time for her to go back to Russia, though, and she was NOT excited. She wanted to stay here so badly. She was really scared to go back. One good thing (though she may not have seen it that way) was that her mom had recently found an album in the house with all the pictures from her baptism. She wasn't very happy. But at least Angel doesn't have to keep it a secret anymore. We had a really good lesson with her on the atonement and how she can rely on Christ through all of the trials that she goes through back there. It was pretty cool. She has a way solid testimony, she'll be fine. It was a lot of fun being in Branson though. It would definitely be hard to be serving there all the time though. At least during the summer. The winter probably isn't bad because there aren't any tourists there, but in the summer that's all it is. It's an interesting place. But back to the questions. Surprisingly, people here don't know the Bible at all. They didn't in Oklahoma or Arkansas either. Nobody in the Bible Belt knows their scriptures any better than anywhere else, they just think they do. If you want to find people that actually know the Bible, you'll have to go to Idaho or Utah or Arizona... It's not that bad. A lot of people do know their stuff very well, which is always refreshing, it's just not nearly as much as you would think for this part of the country. We're working on fixing that though. :) I love you all! Have a great week!

Miracles in Missouri

We just got the following e-mail from Justin. I see a bunch of miracles in this:

1. Justin ate pizza!!!
2. They found 12 new investigators in a small town where they've knocked on every door at least twice.
3. On a first lesson, a family they are teaching accepted a baptismal challenge.
4. Did I mention that Justin at pizza??? (though the frog legs experience sounds cool, too)

Anyway, enjoy.
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Hey family! How's it going? It sounds like summer is unwinding pretty nicely there. I hope all of Brianna's tests went well. I'm sure you'll let me know the results as soon as you get them. Thank you so much for the package! Thanks for taking care of all those things for me. I would also love to have, at some point, (it's not urgent) the pictures that I sent home of my first two transfers. Remember after my card got destroyed I printed off several of Elder Johnson's pictures and mailed those to you. I would love to have all of those in an album as well. Also, are you sure those were all the pictures from my transfer with Elder Simakov? I don't think I got all of them. There was another card that you didn't include. Thank you for sending the rest of the pictures though, as well as the other things I asked for.

Things here are going great! We had 12 new investigators this week! We also taught 38 lessons. So we got really close to our goal of 40, but didn't quite make it. We had 3 appointments on Sunday fall through, (basically from the end of church all the way up until dinner fell apart) otherwise we would've taught 40 lessons this week. But other than Sunday, this week went really, really well. On Friday night we went and taught a potential investigator named Jamie West. We found her tracting our first full day here in Ava, but because of some health things haven't been able to teach her at all over the last 6 weeks. But Friday night we finally got in and taught her, and had the most amazing lesson! The Spirit was SO strong. She's a single mom with two daughters: Tiffany, who's 15, and Shelly, who's 9. The daughters were both there for the lesson as well, and were really involved, especially Tiffany. It was a very powerful lesson. They all understood everything and Tiffany told us that it "makes so much more sense than anything else I've ever heard in any other church." Jamie felt the same way. Jamie had actually told us that she's had this hole in her heart that she hasn't been able to fill, and nothing seems to be able to fill it. Well towards the end of the lesson we asked her to read Moroni 10:4-5 and by the time she finished verse 4, she knew the Book of Mormon was true and that everything else we were telling her is true. She said that she knows that this is exactly what she's been needing to fill that hole. Then they agreed to be baptized (Editor's Note: That link, if you click it, describes baptism, or this one talks about the covenants one makes when baptized.) on September 12! The whole family! It was such an incredible lesson, I can't wait to go back tonight. Brother Bruce was with us too, and he bore really powerful testimony to her. Brother Bruce is awesome. He's a little Italian guy from Philadelphia (everybody calls him Luigi) and he's a convert to the church. He's a really cool guy. He actually fed us dinner that night as well, and cooked us some real pizza, Italian style. Actually he made us the first pizza that was ever made, Pizza Margarita. (apparently named after the Queen of Naples, who it was cooked for) It was delicious. So that was the highlight of the week. (the lesson with Jamie, not the pizza. Though that was good too) Also on Thursday afternoon, right as we were finishing up weekly planning, Bishop Kjar poked his head in the door (remember we live with the Bishop) and asked us to speak in church on Sunday. As in 3 days from then. So of course we agreed, then he gave us our topic: Philippians. That's all he gave us. Then when we got to church we found out it was just 2 really young youth speakers, a rest hymn, then Elder Davis then me. It was my first time being the last speaker of the meeting... It went well, though. Elder Davis decided to focus his talk on Philippians 4:13, which says that we can do all things through Christ. As I read through it, the scripture that really stuck out to me was Philippians 2:15, about how in this "crooked and perverse nation" we must "shine as lights in the world." So my talk was about the importance of being an example and the power of that example, mainly focusing on that scripture along with Matthew 5:14-16 (which goes perfectly with that verse) and 1 Timothy 4:12. That was the first half of my talk...actually probably more like two-thirds. The rest of my talk was on sacrifice, which also stuck out to me (actually it kind of sticks out in all of Paul's epistles...) Those two subjects go really well together though. The talk went really well, possibly the best talk I've ever given. Actually I'm pretty certain it was. Not that that had anything to do with me, the talk basically wrote itself. I could definitely feel the Spirit guiding the entire thing. I don't think anything else exciting happened this week... Oh I had frog legs for the first time on Wednesday. Good stuff. Well that's it for this week. Keep praying for us, and everybody be safe! Have fun with school starting! Love you!

Occupations and Diversity (or lack thereof)

Here is Justin's e-mail from this past Monday, August 10th. It's great to hear of Justin's investigators whom are progressing, and we feel sad along with him when they aren't.

Hey everybody! How's your week going? Things here were pretty good, especially the last couple of days. It's finally warmed up a little bit, but it's still not bad. Actually there's another storm that's moving in that will be bringing the temperatures down again. Towards the end of the week it almost warmed up to what I've heard August in Missouri is usually like, but now it's dropping right back down again. It seems like all we've gotten this summer is rain, which I'm not complaining about after how hot June was. We've had a pretty good week though. Donald came to church, and he loved it! He's still set to be baptized here in a couple of weeks. Angela, on the other hand, dropped us this week. So she won't be getting baptized on the 22nd. It's sad because she knows she needs it (for her and for her 2 year old daughter) but she just likes partying too much and doesn't want to stop. She knows exactly what changes she needs to make and says she'll make them someday but isn't going to right now. Hopefully someday soon she realizes the importance of it and is able to make that change. Everyone else is doing really well, though, especially Donald. He's pretty solid.

In answer to your question about what people do down here, yes, it's mostly agriculture, especially in the really small towns. Or they drive all the way in to Springfield or Branson to work. There are also a ton of truck drivers out here.

In answer to your question about diversity, there is none in Ava. Zero. In Clarksville about half the town was hispanic, and there were a small handful of black people. Not as many as I would have expected, but a good amount, I guess. Miami was really diverse, mostly Indians, but there were quite a few hispanics as well. There were also alot of people from the Micronesian Islands. But nothing but white people in Ava. It's kind of weird, really. But as far as that old north/south division you were talking about, the only place I really saw it was down in Clarksville. Oklahoma and Missouri you don't see it at all, but it's a whole different world down in Arkansas. I think I told you this before, but Clarksville is just a little over an hour south of the headquarters of the KKK (Harrison, AR). So you see alot of racism there. Not as bad as it used to be, though. Just about every street has at least one confederate flag hanging on it, but to most people it doesn't even mean the same thing anymore. It's just the cool thing to do... But we met people down there who are still pro-slavery and who still firmly believe that the South will rise again... But there are also more crazy people in Arkansas than either of the other two states I've served in. And more conspiracy theorists. As far as animosity towards the church goes, you'll see alot of that everywhere here in the "Bible Belt." But that's also gradually going away as more and more members move out here and as more and more members are beginning to play prominent roles in the community. Those two factors help out a ton. It's mostly the older generation that's still harboring all of those negative ideas, so that is slowly but surely changing as well. It's amazing how fast the church is growing out here. It's doing really well. It's very exciting.

Well, I think that's it for this week. Sorry I didn't have a whole lot to report on. Things here are still going great! I love you!

Small Town Proselyting

We received two e-mails from Elder Goodale today, and in these, he mostly talks about what it's like to do missionary work in such small towns. In the first one, below, he makes reference to a letter that we received from headquarters of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter Day Saints, regarding Christopher's military service. Just for the fun of it, I've done some Google searching on each of the small towns he mentions. Most of these links you see below go to a local Chamber of Commerce page or a Wikipedia entry. It looks like Dora has some pretty interesting history and a decent high school basketball team, and... uh... well... Tecumseh has some pretty interesting activities (see link).

Justin keeps hoping for a gun to be pulled on him, and while we might expect that in Christopher's experiences, we're kind of hoping Justin avoids them! :-)

That was a cool letter that the Office of the Seventy sent you. I enjoyed reading that. Did you send Christopher a copy as well? His letter was cool too. It was neat to hear about everything going on over there. It's also really good to hear that he's still been going to church on base. Hopefully he's able to keep that up.

To answer your question, Mom, we don't completely ignore the smaller towns. The city of Seymour is the next biggest town in our area, with 1800 people. It's about 20 miles north, and we spend at least one day a week there, sometimes two. But that's the only other town we really visit. In spite of how huge our area is, the only other "city" is Gainesville. It's 30-40 minutes south, and has about 600 people. We'd like to get down there sometime, but it's tough because we're given so few miles. I know those people down there are important too, but it's almost not worth the miles and the travel time to go see so few people. We'll go down there at least once, though. We may just take a Saturday or something and go knock on every door in town. But that's really the only other town besides Seymour and Ava (which again is only 3000 people). There technically are other townships, but there's nothing there. For instance the other day we were driving to see someone about 10 miles south of town amd we drove through the town of Squires. We saw a sign that said Squires, but there was nothing there! Then we came up over the hill and saw a post office on one side and a volunteer fire department on the other...and that was it. All the other towns (Rome, Tecumseh, McClurg, Brown Branch, Thornfield, Isabella, Theodosia, Dora, among others) are the same way. There is no town. Basically just a sign so you can gauge whether you're really in the middle of nowhere or more out on the edge of nowhere, or somewhere in between. Every once in a while you'll see random little clusters of houses out in the middle of nowhere as you drive (often times it's all the same family that all live together in their own little commune. Yes, that sort of thing happens in this area. Not as much as in Arkansas, but it still happens... it's just more out of the way and tougher to find in Missouri) and every once in a while if we have time we'll stop and knock on all those doors (the more rural the area the better, because I still haven't had someone pull a gun on me yet. That's an experience I think I need to have, and out in the country is where it's most likely to happen...) but we don't do that too often. Basically now we just have to start over and knock on all the doors again. We'll just use a different approach then last time... Amazingly, though, we're still finding more and more people to teach, even though we're having to start over now and tract out the whole town a second time. The Lord has really blessed us. We also set a baptismal date with Angela this week, hopefully it's able to go through. She wants to change, for her and her daughter, and she knows how badly she needs to change, she just enjoys partying too much and has trouble telling her friends no. Hopefully she'll be able to overcome it. Please pray that she'll have an even stronger desire to change.

That's so amazing that you've been having so many baptisms in Boise lately! It sounds like the work there is going so well! It's amazing hearing about the church growth there in Boise and being able to see how well it's doing over here as well, not to mention all the other parts of the world as I read the emails of all the other missionaries. As the prophet Joseph Smith prophesied: "the Standard of Truth has been erected; no unhallowed hand can stop the work from progressing; persecutions may rage, mobs may combine, armies may assemble, calumny may defame, but the truth of God will go forth boldly, nobly, and independent, till it has penetrated every continent, visited every clime, swept every country, and sounded in every ear, till the purposes of God shall be accomplished, and the Great Jehovah shall say the work is done." You can really see that being fulfilled. The truth really is continuing to go forth and filling the whole earth. I'm so grateful for the opportunity I have right now to be a small part of that! I love being a part of this great work! I love you all!

Following is the second e-mail we received from him. I love this humble farmer's prayer that he talks about!

Something else that was kind of funny this week was the closing prayer in sacrament meeting yesterday. This older guy (in jeans instead of slacks, which is kind of common out here) went up there to say the prayer and he had the strongest, most redneck Southern accent. (I've found there actually is a difference between a sophisticated southern accent and a redneck southern accent) The only thing I really remember him saying in the prayer was "thank you for this nice weather so us farmers can get all our hay up." At the end of the prayer Elder Davis and I just looked at each other and almost started cracking up. It wasn't a bad thing to be thankful for, actually it was a good prayer, it was just very Missouri. That's the only way I can put it. You just had to be there. We both just wished that we'd been able to record the prayer so we could send it home and let you hear a little taste of this area.

Speaking of the weather, though, it's been amazing! We heard that this was actually the coolest July on record in Southern Missouri. It only broke 90 four days the whole month! That's the lowest it's ever been. We've had no complaints, especially after that miserable June... But summer is finally back though. This week it's starting to warm up again. I think Wednesday the high is supposed to be 98. With lots of humidity, of course. I guess we couldn't expect to get a reprieve for July AND August... hopefully it doesn't get too bad. Hopefully Boise cools down too. From what I've heard, the northwest hasn't had it quite as good as us this summer... Have a great week! Love you!

37 Lessons in One Week

I'm still catching up on Elder Goodale's blog entries, from my last two weeks of business travels. Below is the e-mail he sent on Monday, July 27th.

Hey everybody! Sounds like you all have had a really great week. It sounds like Mom and Brianna had alot of fun at girls camp, and meanwhile the house is still standing after Dad being in charge for a week, so all in all things have been going pretty well! I was just thinking about how Dad staying home with "everybody else" would actually just consist of Andrew, Mark, and Steven. That's crazy. The group just keeps shrinking and shrinking... How's it feel being so old? :)

Kjar Family with Elder Goodale (Paxton, Kaysha, Bishop, Josie, Sis. Kjar, Taylee, Camille, Me

Kjar Family with Elder Davis

Elders Goodale and Davis with the Kjar family

Life here is good too. The work continues to roll forward. We taught 37 lessons this week, which is the most we've had in the 4 weeks we've been here. It keeps climbing every week, and our teaching pool is finally big enough now that we should be able to reach our goal of 40 next week. Let me rephrase that, we WILL reach our goal of 40 next week. We also set one baptismal date this week! Donald has agreed to be baptized on August 15. It's pretty tentative, he understands and has a testimony and everything, he's just a little crazy. (only very slightly) The biggest problem, really, is just getting him to church. He wants to be there, but most Saturdays he works until 3 or 4 am, which makes things tough. He's a great guy, though. Already doesn't drink or smoke or anything like that (which is pretty rare out here) and he's very honest and sincere. Angela has kinda dropped off the map a little bit, it's been really hard to meet with her. Even when we do, she's changed. This last week her 2 best friends (who even she will admit are horrible influences) got out of jail this last week, and ever since then she's done nothing but party every night. It's sad because she was really starting to progress, and now she doesn't even want to change anymore. The saddest part, really, is how her lifestyle choices affect her parenting. I feel really bad for her 2 year old daughter. I really hope she'll come around. We're finding alot of great people, though, just pray that we'll be able to get all of them to start progressing. There was one couple, James and Melissa, who were going to come to church this week but something came up. They will be there next week, though. They are awesome. James has read the Book of Mormon before, though he didn't understand much of what he was reading or where it came from. He thought it was just some good pearls of wisdom written by Joseph Smith, he didn't know that it was actually written thousands of years ago by God's prophets here in the Americas, and that Joseph Smith only translated. Once he realized that, he was really excited to read it again in that new light. Melissa, on the other hand, knew nothing about us. All she knew is what her preacher had told her, which of course was nothing but truth... Needless to say, she was blown away when she found out that we believed in God, and we had her attention from then on out. This couple is totally prepared. I'm excited for them. We've got alot of other real good stuff going on too, so be excited for us! I know that this truly is the Lord's work, which is why it's still thriving against all odds. There's nothing I love more than being in His service. Have a great week! I love you!