And Then There Were Three

Dear Family,

 

   Hey! How's your week going? We've had an awesome week, as usual. I told you last week about Mickey's experience at church last Sunday, right? Well Thursday we set a baptismal date with him for May 15, and today he's packing up all of his stuff and moving out of Rebecca's apartment! She's not ready to get married yet, so he's actually moving in with her parents, who are very active members. He'll be living there til she's ready to make the commitment to get married, which she says she'll do once he gets a steady job, which is understandable. (though if you don't want to marry the guy, why have you been living with him for the last year?) Then yesterday we also set a baptismal date with Timothy Canady, who I told you about last week. He's the one who's wife (who's a member) we met while we were washing our car. They are a sweet family. So that's four baptismal dates right now for May - Melanie Evans for May 8, Mickey for May 15, Tim Canady for May 15, and Chris Cruze for May 22. The two most solid dates are actually the two we set this week for the 15th. Melanie has been out of town all week and won't be back until the end of this week, May 1. So that will only give us a week before her baptism, and she's still got a long way to go before she'll be ready. I'm guessing her baptism will be moved back to either the 22 or 28. Chris should be good to go as long as he quits chewing tobacco before the 22nd, which I think he'll be able to do just fine. The only problem is the same day that Melanie gets back, Chris leaves to go to Fort Riley Kansas for a big training thing.

There are a whole bunch of people in his unit that are all going, including our ward mission leader, another one of our investigators, and recent convert Jeff Barretta. They won't be back until the 16th, which also might mean that Chris's baptism might have to be pushed back. But all 4 of them will most definitely be baptized, they are all solid. Speaking of Jeff, I don't know if you remember but when his wife was down here for 3 weeks for Christmas we were teaching her quite a bit, and though she was tough at the beginning she came a really long way. Then for the last 4 months she's been meeting with the sister missionaries up in New York. Well she'll be moving down here this week! She'll get here Thursday. Jeff's kind of upset because they've been separated for like a year because of his army stuff, and 2 days after she finally gets here for good he'll be leaving to go to Kansas for 2 weeks. But we'll be teaching her while he's gone, because from the sound of things she's just about ready to get baptized and to have Jeff baptize her. There's a chance I'll be leaving the first week of June, and I really hope she's ready before I go. Also we've been working with a man named Brandon, and he has a tentative baptismal date for May 22. We tried to set that with him, and he said he'll be praying about that date. There's a good chance he'll be baptized on that day. He came to church for the first time yesterday and he enjoyed it, but had a ton of questions too. It was very different than the Lutheran church he grew up in. I think he enjoyed it though.

Elder Ewert, Elder Richins, Elder Goodale

Sorry I didn't even mention it but my two new companions are Elder Karl Ewert from Modesto, California, and Elder Blake Richins from Tucson, Arizona. Elder Ewert has been out a long time, he goes home in August (3 months before me), and Elder Richins is brand new. They are both fantastic missionaries. We are really going to see a lot of success with the two of them here. I think that covers just about everything that happened this week. With transfers and whatnot this week was a little slower as far as the number of lessons we taught, but it was still a great week, especially because of the baptismal dates we were able to set. We've been very richly blessed. I love you! Have a great week!

Love,
Elder Goodale