I Don't Believe in Tough Areas

Today Elder Goodale didn't write a general single update e-mail to us, but rather, sent Michelle and I separate, shorter e-mails addressing things she and I had written to him about earlier. Publicly-sharable snippets from those are as follows:
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Dear Dad:

Thanks for all the sports updates! It's good to know that everyone starts winning after I leave... (Lakers, Angels, BSU...)

Also thank you for the political update. It's good to know what's going on in the world. To an extent. Sounds like I'm glad I don't know too much right now. I'm glad I'm not part of the world right now. I especially can't believe the idiocy of giving Obama the Nobel Peace Prize for accomplishing NOTHING! Oh well, it's not like that prize means anything anyway...

That's so sweet that they dedicated the new building. Now you can walk to church! It's crazy because they hadn't even broken ground for it when I left. And now you're going to church there. Crazy. But that's weird that you were having meetings there for a month before it was dedicated. I didn't think that you could do that. How does that work?

And the e-mail to Michelle:

Dear Mom:

You had asked some questions the last couple weeks that I hadn't responded to, so I thought I'd answer those... Mainly why missionaries were pulled out of Stockton. Nothing bad had happened, per se, one of the missionaries had just had some health problems. It wasn't like the situation when I went to Ava, where the work was so dead that they had to shotgun it to get things going again. Although because of the fact that there hadn't been missionaries here for a month there wasn't a whole lot going on here either... but enough. Supposedly that's also because this is a "tough area" from what we hear (even from what President Merkley told us), but I haven't seen that. I don't believe in tough areas. :)

But as far as the other missionaries go, one of them had some health problems and had to go home (he had only been out a couple of weeks) and the other missionary was supposed to go home at the end of the transfer so they decided to just bring him to Tulsa for his last 3-4 weeks and put him in a three-some there. When they pulled out the previous missionaries they had every intention of putting missionaries back in as soon as transfers came around.

Thanks so much for giving me that update on the other missionaries from the ward. It's good to know that the others are all safe and sound, hopefully everybody heals up soon.

Our Zone Bottom: Ewert, Hancock, Corrow, Sister and Pres. Merkley, ? Top: Conrad ?? Black, Taggard, Begay, Scholle, Rittel, Raleigh, Robinson, Schofield, Moxon, Me

Autumn in Stockton

Elder Goodale's e-mail of October 19, 2009:
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Stockton Lake

Hello!!! How is everybody doing? It's exciting that Christopher got to come home this last weekend. It sounds like everyone really enjoyed his visit. Are you all getting excited for the haunted house now? Just a couple of weeks! I can't wait to see pictures, it just keeps getting bigger and better every year. That's always super fun.

So how is everything else going? Is school going well for everybody? How cold is it there? Here it started cooling down earlier that usual and it was getting down into the mid-30s every night, a couple of nights it even froze. And during the day it wasn't getting above the mid to high 40s. Usually that doesn't happen in Missouri for another month or so... But it's warmed up a little bit this weekend. I hear tomorrow it will get up to 74! But then it will start cooling down again, probably for good this time... Which is good. I love the fall. It's one of my top 4 favorite seasons... I'm really glad that I got sent somewhere that actually has all 4 seasons.

The work has been going really great here. This week we had 14 new investigators! It was a really great week. Only two of those were here in Stockton, though. Most of them were up in El Dorado, a town of 4000 about 22 miles north of here. There is so much work to be done up there. Then 5 of our new investigators were from the polygamist colony about 10 miles out on J Highway. It's cool out there in the woods, probably the prettiest part of our area... And there are alot of great people out there who would make really great members if they could just give up the extra wives. It's been really interesting though, learning all about their beliefs and everything. I've learned a ton. Believe it or not, it actually makes alot of sense... Just kidding. :) As I've studied for how to work with them, I've also learned alot about Priesthood Keys and Church organization and the importance of all of that. It's been a really neat experience. Nothing else really new to report, though. Everything is still going great, it's been awesome really getting the work going here and seeing the ward get so excited. We've been working alot with the Bishop to get a new, up to date ward mission plan into effect, and really get everything going even more. We've been super busy though. But we've been seeing so many miracles every day! It's been incredible. We know that you are praying for us, we can definitely feel it. Thank you, and keep it up! Have a great week! I love you!!!

Elder Goodale's e-mail of October 12, 2009:
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Stockton Lake

Hey everybody! We had another awesome week! Thursday was Zone Conference, and I learned so much. It really got me pumped up for the rest of the transfer. There's so many things I need to improve on, I'm really excited to make those changes too. Hopefully I don't let the excitement wear off and slack on those things that I've committed to do better. Then Friday we went on exchanges with the Zone Leaders, who are in Springfield 1st ward. I always love going on exchanges with the Zone Leaders. I learned a ton there too. The rest of the week was great too. Since we're both brand new here and the area was closed for a little bit, we're trying to get into every single home on the ward list, both active and less-active. It's been tough with such a huge, spread-out area, (the 3 major towns are Stockton, where we live, El Dorado, which is 22 miles north, and Greenfield, which is 22 miles south. There are a lot of spots in our area that are even more spread out than that) but we've been having a good amount of success with it.

Stockton Lake

Our purpose is kind of 3-fold: helping us get to know the members (and re-activating the less-actives), helping the members get to know us, and helping the ward get excited about missionary work again. One thing we're trying to do with each active family is to help them create their own family mission plans, with specific goals for how many people they're going to talk to each week, how many copies of the Book of Mormon they can give out as a family, picking a date that they will have a referral for us by, and other goals like that. Then also making action plans for those goals. Generally we just start the mission plan with them, then commit them to finish it as a family during family home evening or some other time during the week. We just started doing that this week, so we haven't seen any fruits from it yet, but I have confidence that we will. Otherwise the Spirit wouldn't have prompted us to do it... This coming week we're also going to be sitting down with the Bishop and Ward Mission Leader and laying the groundwork for a ward mission plan as well, since they don't really have one. I'm pretty excited about that, I know we're going to have tons of success from this. Please pray for us that we'll be able to accomplish all of these goals. Thanks! I love you!

Our District plus the ZLs and APs (Robinson (Willard), Me, Moxon, Schofield (Aurora), Jensen (AP), Raleigh (Aurora), Meteer (ZL), Hancock (ZL Springfield)

Building Up the Work in Stockton

We received the following e-mail from Justin today, and it sounds like he and his companion are having fun building up the work in the area. On my mission, I had one convert that needed to be interviewed by the Mission President, but imagine... a baptismal interview by an apostle. I bet that would be an amazing interview!

Last week we also received another SD card from Justin, with some three-dozen-or-so pictures from his last area, Ava, Missouri. To the right here is a picture of Elder Goodale with his companion, Elder Davis, taken in Ava on July 12, 2009. For all of the pictures and their descriptions in my Facebook album, please click here.
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Hey everybody! What an amazing week we had! Nothing really exciting to report, mostly we've just been knocking on alot of doors trying to get this area going again. We did get 6 new investigators this week, which is encouraging. We have a couple investigators that are really progressing right now. Emily Dickens is a 17 year old girl who has been meeting with the missionaries for several months now. She has been attending church regularly since about May and at the beginning of this school year she started going to seminary. She's really solid, she knows without a doubt that the church is true. The only reason that she hasn't been baptized yet is that her mom won't let her. But her mom has come a long way and I think is pretty close to allowing it.

Bradshaw Family: Brandon (6), Me, Jason (8), Marlana (15), Luella (9), Aaron (6), Bro. Bradshaw, Nathan (12), Sis Bradshaw, Mosiah (10), Sam (13), Patrick (8), Zach (10), Sam (13), Patrick (8), Zach (10). Not pictured Matthew (15), Enoch (14)

Silly picture with the Bradshaws. The girl in green is a friend.

Me and Luena

Me and Mosiah

Me and Nathan

Me and Marlana

Me and Jason

Me and Sam

Me and Aaron

Me and Brandon

Me and Bro and Sis Bradshaw

Then we have the Bradshaw family. They are a former polygamist family that comes to church actively as well. There are 19 total children (between the 2 moms) with 13 still living at home. I think 3 or 4 of the older kids have been baptized since moving out. There are at least 6 of the kids still at home, and possibly as many as 10, that are wanting to get baptized as well, they just need First Presidency approval (because of the polygamist background) before being baptized. That means that their baptismal interview needs to be done by an Apostle. The kids are just about ready, though from the time that we and the Bishop decide that they're ready the approval process may take a couple more months. The kids need to completely repudiate the polygamist actions their parents did, too, so we need to make sure that they are ready to do that. The parents also have a desire to get baptized, but that may take a long time. Because they also have to renounce that decision to do that and right now they aren't ready to do that. He still feels that God instructed him to marry a second wife, and so before he can join the church he needs to recognize that that didn't come from God... That's a tough situation. But they are an awesome family.

The Willard District

The Willard District (Me, Argyle, Robinson, Raleigh, Schofield, Moxon)

Me and E. Argyle (isn't that the most awesome pink tie?)

Then there is June Walker, who we just recently started teaching. She came to conference on Saturday and loved it, so there's alot of promise with her.

But how about General Conference this weekend?!?! What an amazing conference! Probably the best one I can remember... There were so many incredible talks in every single session. I wish I had time to talk about every one, but I wouldn't know where to start since they were all so amazing. I know now more than ever that those who spoke truly are God's servants, and that Thomas S. Monson is truly God's prophet on the earth today. What an incredible blessing to be led by a living prophet and 12 living apostles! We are so abundantly blessed. Never before have I been more grateful or more excited to be a part of Christ's church. I hope you all enjoyed it as much as I did. I know Dad will be excited with the announcement of a 3rd temple in Japan. It's amazing that with the economy the way it is they are still building temples like crazy. It's awesome.

Well we're doing great here, just please keep praying for us! I love you!

The booming metropolis of Arcola