How are you all doing? I'm glad Dad has some temporary work again now. So how's life there? Can you believe it's March already? Time just keeps flying by faster and faster. I'm coming up on 16 months next week! But there's no need to dwell on that. We've had the craziest week. Well really most of the week was pretty normal and low-key, up until Saturday. Well and Wednesday. Wednesday was hectic too. But Saturday was nuts. I was in West Plains on exchanges Friday, and we got a ride back to St. Robert Saturday morning. So the day started with that 2 hour car ride, which is always fun... Actually it was alot of fun because we were with Bro. Stribling, who is awesome. I love him. So we got back to St. Robert, then we went and taught a man named Mark, who was a new investigator last week. He tried to drop us, but we were able to have a really amazing lesson with him (not at all what we were planning either, it was totally spirit led. It was a really cool experience because we were able to let the Spirit take over and teach him. It definitely wasn't our own words coming out of our mouths) and by the end of the lesson he was really gung-ho again and was even talking about baptism. It was really cool, then we had to go to the church to prep for the Riveras baptism. So Marcos, Michael, and Tino were all baptized on Saturday! It went really really well. It was really cool because Marcos friend Shawn Botti, a priest who was just baptized about a year and a half ago, was able to baptize him. That was really neat. Then they were confirmed Sunday, and their grandma actually came to church for the first time in who knows how many years! It was way cool, and she intimated that this might be a regular thing now too. I really hope she keeps coming. So then after the baptism we went and had an awesome lesson with Gloria Miller. As you'll remember Gloria has a really solid testimony and wants to be baptized (she has a date for April 10) the problem is her boss keeps refusing to let her have Sunday's off. So she's been trying to do everything else she can to live the commandments and to show the Lord her desire. She's been off smoking for 9-10 days now, off coffee and tea for about 4 days now, and Friday she even payed for a cab to take her to the church so she could pay her tithing, then she didn't have enough money for the cab ride home so she walked all the way home! (about 5 miles) It's amazing how much she's been sacrificing. So here's the really cool part. Saturday morning she went in to work, and her boss told her she could have that Sunday off!!! So when we went Saturday afternoon that was the news she had for us. We were SO excited! So as you can tell up to this point (after that lesson it was about 4 pm) it's been a really great day. We were about on the highest spiritual (and emotional) level we could be. That's when it started to go downhill... We spent the next 2 hours or so tracting, which was very unsuccessful. Nothing but slammed door after slammed door after slammed door. That didn't really bother us because that's nothing too unusual, but we obviously weren't still quite on that same sky-high level that we had been on before. So we went and grabbed some dinner really quick, then our 7:00 appointment canceled...
So we decided to go try by Dave. Dave is a man we met tracting a couple of weeks ago, we've tried stopping by a couple times and they've always been busy, he told us Saturday nights are the best time to catch them. So we went over. Sure enough they were home, they actually had 3 other friends over because it was their little sons birthday party (he was probably 5-6 years old) And they were all totally drunk. Well his wife, who we hadn't met before, invited us right in and shut the door. As soon as she did the Spirit told both of us that we needed to leave the house. So our thought was just to set up a return appointment real quick and then get out. Well just then she said that basically if you want to teach me do it now or don't come back. That wasn't quite what she said but it was along those lines. Well immediately as missionaries our mindset was that we wanted to teach her and her husband, especially if this was possibly our only chance, so unfortunately to say we ignored the Spirit and sat down. We were definitely going to learn from that mistake... At first she was very nice. She gave each of us some pizza and a glass of water (she offered rum, but we politely declined...) and sat down and started to talk. At first she was more funny than anything else. She was just going on about this random stuff (again, this woman is totally wasted) and not making any sense at all and not giving us any opportunity to talk. At this point the only bad thing was her horrible language, she was swearing up a storm. As she went on, though, she quickly got very abrasive. She started berating us about our beliefs, still not letting us talk, and of course the swearing is getting worse and worse. Soon she was screaming at the top of her lungs and full on cussing us out. At one point she was right in Elder Hirshfeld's face yelling at him in Spanish, then she got really mad when he wouldn't answer his question (because he had no idea what she was saying). She's getting worse and worse but things were still manageable, finally when she gave us a brief opportunity to speak Elder Hirshfeld said, "Ma'am, I actually dont think we're going to be talking tonight." When she angrily asked why not, he responded that she wasn't sober enough. Well that's when it really started getting ugly. She flipped out and kicked us out of her house (which was fine, we were more than ready to go). At this point every other word is an f-bomb, and she started to get really physical, she was actually physically pushing Elder Hirshfeld out the door. Apparently she was only upset at him, though, (because he was the one that made the comment) because when I tried to stand up to leave she shoved me (hard) back down into my seat and yelled in my face "I'm not done talking to you yet!" (with a few other expletives thrown in there) Then they proceeded to even more physically kick Elder Hirshfeld out of the house. As he was pushed out of the door, he had the strongest impression to turn around and stick his foot in the door because they were going to try to close it behind him. Slam it she did, and it messed up his toe pretty good but at least the door was still open, because I was still inside. I'm really glad that door didn't get closed! But now he was outside the house holding the door open and I was in the living room trying to leave. We were only 10 feet apart but there were 3 angry drunks between me and the door and they didn't want me to leave. That was a scary feeling, I've never appreciated having a companion more than in that moment when we were physically forced apart. I don't remember much of what happened after that but I know that we got out and we're both safe and sound and we're definitely not going back there again! And we definitely learned a valuable lesson - when the Spirit prompts you, listen to it! The whole ordeal only lasted about 10 minutes (from the time we entered the house til the time we left) but it was probably the scariest thing that's happened on my mission. One part that is kind of funny though is that early on in the conversation, when she was still just being funny and not attacking us, Elder Hirshfeld opened the phone in his pocket and began recording, so we have a voice recording of the whole thing! We've re-listened to it a couple of times.
So anyway...that was our night. Except it wasn't over yet! We obviously needed to wind down now, so we went over to the Stribling's home, who lived just a couple blocks away. We relaxed a little there then did some role plays with the whole family for how to share the gospel. (Bro. and Sis. Stribling, btw, are recently reactivated, and the kids were just baptized back in September. The whole family is on fire right now) We committed everyone (mom, dad, and all 5 kids) to share the gospel with at least one friend that week. It went well, and we were feeling a lot better after that. So then we went home and waited for President to call! Saturday night was transfer calls, and we knew that we would be separated since we've already been together 3 months. Nobody's together longer than that... Well President eventually did call, and we're staying together for third transfer! That means 4 and a half months together! We've had 9 baptisms in the 12 weeks we've been together, so I guess President decided to just leave us together. We're pretty excited. So on the phone he told us about all the other changes that are happening in the zone, then said good night. We were pretty happy, but then less then a minute later he called us back saying he forgot one important detail... Elder Hirshfeld and I are going to be training a new missionary together!!! I can't believe it! 2 Zone Leaders training a new Elder together. That NEVER happens! But it is! We are both SO excited. You should have seen us Saturday night after that call. So Thursday we're going to be getting our new Elder, I can't wait. It'll be different with 3 of us together, but it's going to be good.
Then Sunday went really well too, Gloria loved church, she was bawling basically the whole 3 hours. And now it's Monday again! Already! I'm so grateful to be here in St. Robert, we see so many miracles here daily. We've been so blessed, in spite of how little we deserve it... In spite of that story though, don't worry about us. We're healthy and happy and safe, and I love being a missionary! I love you all! Have a great week!
Love,
Elder Goodale
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