Only 18 Lessons

"Only" 18 lessons in Elder Goodale's slow week. Man... I remember entire MONTHS on my mission where I had "only 18 lessons" - and felt it was a good month! We are continually amazed at how well the work is going out there! Enjoy Justin's e-mail from today, and pray for his safety as he travels to Tulsa and back this week - a lot of driving!
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Dear Family,

     Sorry this letter will have to be a little short, our preparation day is going to be cut short again because we have to travel to Tulsa (5 hours away) tonight, but we had a good week. The highlight, of course, was Devontae's baptism! It went really well. It was a pretty small service, but it was very good. The Spirit was very strong. Then I got to confirm him in Sacrament Meeting on Sunday, which went very well. Otherwise, this week honestly has been pretty slow.  It's been kind of tough. Mainly, though, it's just because all of our investigators are all out of town. Literally everyone. We only taught 18 lessons this week, which while still higher then most of the other areas in our zone is the lowest we've had in the 7 months I've been here. Usually it's up around 30. But that's alright. It just gave us an opportunity to do a lot of finding! Everyone is going to be out of town most of this week too, though we are also going to be gone. Like I said we leave tonight to go to Tulsa for Zone Leader Council, we'll stay the night and then ZLC will be Tuesday. We'll get back and have a couple of hours to work in our area Tuesday night, then on Wednesday we have Mission Tour with Elder Lynn G. Robbins from the First Quorum of the 70, so we'll be in Joplin all day Wednesday. It's going to be hectic. But then hopefully everything will be back to normal for awhile. We did have a couple of cool miracles this week. I'll mention one in particular. Last Thursday we were walking out of the Post Office and a woman pulled up next to us in her car and asked us "hey do you guys want to come over some time?" Seeing the surprised look on our faces, she asked "you are missionaries, right? Isn't that what you do?" So we talked to her a little bit more and got her information and everything, her name is Alissa Goble and it turns out that she just moved here about a month ago from San Antonio, Texas. She had several friends down there that were LDS who had talked to her about the church and she actually attended church with them 3 or 4 times. She met with missionaries, but not very many times before they moved. She's solid! She loves everything about the church. We talked to her about baptism the first time we taught her and she said it won't be any time soon because she wants to take things slow and make sure she's ready, but at the same time she's been thinking about it a lot and has already picked out who she wants to baptize her. She's really cool. I'm really excited for her. So we've got alot of great things going right now, it's just going to be slow until after the 4th of July weekend. I've got to get going though so we can get everything done, but I love you all! Have a great week!

Love,
Elder Goodale

A Semi-Normal Week

Dear Family,

     Hey everyone! We finally had a semi normal week, and it was really good. We've continued to go through the Part-Member list and try to contact everyone there, as well as most of the names on the ward roster as well. There are a lot of names that no one knows anything about, that have lived here for 3-4 years, sometimes even longer, that have never been contacted by anyone, and we've been able to get ahold of quite a few and actually found several more part member families in the process. So we've been having a lot of success with that, but at the same time it's slow work trying to find all of them and get things going that way. We've got about 10 kids right now that we've found (from 4 different families) between the ages of 10 and 17 who want to be baptized, the only hold back is that they all have parents that are less active and are just lazy and not being nearly as supportive as we'd like. So progress has been slower than anticipated with them... But we do have a baptism this Saturday with Devontae! He's really cool, he's totally set. We also were finally able to set a date with Shon this week, for July 31. It's kind of far off in the future, but he needs it. He's been actively coming to church for several months now, he sings in the ward choir, he helps out at every service project, he's awesome and super involved. He is just having a really hard time feeling ready to be baptized. We're never really able to teach him because his work schedule is so nuts, he works about 80 hour weeks, but he's one of the most active members of the ward. He is going through a lot of difficult things right now that he wants to get past before his baptism, but he's awesome. Just pray for him. Also please keep praying for the Taylors. They are leaving to go on vacation to Germany for a couple weeks, then as soon as they get back the dad of the family will be getting home from Iraq, and he's the only thing that will potentially hold the family back. We've been teaching the rest of the family and they are really progressing, hopefully he won't stop them. Saturday night we had a really good lesson, Sister Taylor had heard some things about the Word of Wisdom and had some questions about it, so we taught them the Word of Wisdom. Once she understood that it had come from God through his prophet, she had no problem at all. We invited her to live it and she said "of course! If that's what we need to do for our family to be together forever, than absolutely! Take it all!" So we took home with us everything that they had there that was keeping them from living the Word of Wisdom (and threw it away of course) and they've been doing awesome. This family is so golden! Even if it took some work to get them there... So please pray that her husbands heart will be softened when he comes home. We had interviews with President on Thursday, and that went really well. The whole Zone is doing really well, we've got a whole bunch of people that are close to progressing, please pray for us to continue to find the elect and for those that we are teaching to progress. I love you!

Love,
Elder Goodale

AP Splits & Mileage

Dear Family,

Oral Roberts University Tulsa, OK

     Hey! A tornado in Boise? That's crazy! I can't believe it! Was it a pretty impressive storm? Out here whenever we have tornadoes they are always part of huge storms with lots of thunder and lightning and hail and all that fun stuff. Did you get all that too? I love those big storms, that's one thing I'll really miss when I leave my mission.

How was the rest of your week? Wikipedia entry / city profile entry), about half an hour away, to see Rose Carter, who was baptized my first month here. She's been struggling lately because her boss won't let her have Sundays off, so she hasn't been to church in a while now. We had a great lesson with her, then we went to try to contact some of the part-member families in the Dixon area. Elder Ewert and I have really been working that list hard lately, that's really been our main focus. It's hard though because even though Dixon is such a small little redneck town out in the middle of nowhere, over half of our part-members live out there! And we very rarely get to work that area. Elder Anderson and I had a lot of success out there though. We found several that aren't too interested, a couple that aren't there any more, and a few that are really friendly, really great families. The most promising one was the Eshke's. Sister Eshke is in her 30s, and according to our records her husband is not a member, and they don't have any kids. They live REALLY far out in the sticks, even by Dixon standards, but we were glad we were able to find it. Sister Eshke was a little stand-offish at first, but as we talked to her and kind of built a relationship she really opened up to us a lot and ended up being really friendly and pretty cool. We also found out that she's divorced now, but she does have three kids- 17 year old son Cody, 15 year old daughter Sierra, and 12 year old son Tyrel. She let us in to talk to the kids and they are awesome! They are great kids, really smart, and they all want to be baptized. It's amazing how much success we've found using the part member list.

Oral Roberts University

At the same time that we were there, Elder Ewert was back in St. Robert and he finally got in contact with a family that ended up having a 16 year old daughter who isn't baptized but wants to be. Most of what we've found so far is just kids, actually mostly teenagers, but they need the ordinance of baptism just as much as anybody else! I've never worked with kids and teenagers and stuff on my mission, I've mostly only taught adults, so this is a new but very good experience. It's really interesting because a couple weeks ago we were praying about a goal for baptisms and Elder Ewert said he felt very strongly that he should set a goal of 19 before he goes home at the end of August. That's 2 transfers, or 3 months. I felt very good about it as well, so that's what we're working towards. Of course that's an unheard of number for our mission, a lot of Elders won't even get that their whole mission, but that's what we felt impressed to work towards and with all of these part members, it's going to happen. One prompting I did receive while I was praying about it a few days ago was that if we just stay in St. Robert and Waynesville, that goal isn't going to happen. It simply won't happen. The Spirit told me that if we want to see that kind of success that we need to branch out to the other towns, most notably Dixon and Crocker. St. Robert and Waynesville are right next to each other, St. Robert is right out the main gate of Fort Leonard Wood and Waynesville is right out the West gate. Most of our work has always been there, because of mileage constraints we've hardly touched those other towns (which are pretty far away). But we're going to start spending more time out there so pray for us that we'll be able to continue to have success in those areas.

Praying Hands

Friday morning we went and taught Amanda Magoon, who is still just waiting until her husband gets home from deployment before she can be baptized (which will be in July) and had a really good lesson with her and were able to resolve a lot of her concerns, then we went to teach the Taylor family. I'm so excited for them, they are really starting to progress. We've been teaching the mom Nicole, and their 3 kids: Philip, who's 15, Kimmy, who's 12, and Hunter, who is 7. They are really progressing well and falling in love with the church, the only real hold back is that her husband, who is deployed in Iraq, is pretty against the church. He's seen how much we've done for his family, though, and the changes they've made, and I think he's softened quite a bit. Please also pray hard for them. The biggest key is getting them converted enough and involved in the ward enough that when dad gets home from Iraq on July 10 (Andrew's birthday!!!) that he won't want to pull them away from it. Please pray that that will happen and that his heart will soften enough that he will be willing to listen when he gets home. We really need lots of prayer with this one. They are a really great family that will really make awesome members.

We taught them the Plan of Salvation Friday morning and that went well, then we raced off to Tia and Brother Spaulding's wedding. (she's the one who was baptized two weeks ago). That went really well, then we had to go to our apartment to get picked up by Elder and Sister Maughan (the senior couple assigned to Fort Leonard Wood) to go to Tulsa. A member in the Rolla ward let us borrow her van, and the whole district (us, the Maughans, the Sisters in Rolla, and the Elders in Salem) carpooled down there together. We stayed in members homes in Owasso (a suburb of Tulsa) Friday night, then Saturday morning we got to go to a special meeting with Elder Russell M. Nelson of the Quorum of the 12 Apostles! That was really special, we all got to go meet him and shake his hand and everything, which was a really cool experience. We also met Elders Garret W. Gong and Richard J. Maynes from the first Quorum of the 70, and heard them speak. It was a really amazing experience.

Then yesterday was church, and now we're here. This will actually be a full week of missionary work, so I'm excited. I love you all! Have a great week!

Elder Davis, Elder Jamison, Sister Tailor, Sister Hill, Elder Goodale, Elder Ewert

We had an awesome week. Thursday the Assistants were here to come on exchanges with us, I was with the new Assistant Elder Anderson. He's awesome. We've served around each other before and we both became Zone Leaders at the same time so over the last 6 months that I've been here we've gotten to know each other pretty well. He's a lot of fun and a great missionary. We took advantage of the unlimited miles the Assistants have in their car and went out to Dixon.

Love,
Elder Goodale

Oral Roberts University

Oral Roberts University

Oral Roberts University

Praying Hands

Praying Hands

Tornado!!!

Dear Family,

     Hey everybody! We had an awesome week. Transfers were Thursday, so Elder Richins went off to Tulsa and now it's just Elder Ewert and I. Back to two again. I still can't believe that I'm getting to stay here 7 months, I never thought I'd have 5 transfers in one area. I'm excited though, because things are going great. I can't believe how blessed we are, with the success that just keeps coming. Right now we have 3 baptismal dates, all set for June 26. They are all children from Part-Member Families (Alyssa, age 12, Anita, age 10, and Devontae, age 10). We also have several others that are very close to baptism, we are going to have several in July. The Taylor family came to church again this week, and it went really well. They came a couple of months ago, and didn't like it, but we've been working with them and we got them to come again this week and it went well. At least the kids really loved it. They are planning on coming next week as well. That's the mom, Nicole, then 15 year old son Phillip, 12 year old daughter Kimmy, and 7 year old son Hunter. Their dad is deployed right now, but he is supposed to get home the first week of July. We're going to be focusing a lot more on them the next few weeks, hopefully we can get them really involved in the ward and really into the church by the time their dad gets home, then we can baptize the whole family. They've really started to make a lot of progress lately. The last two weeks we've found a lot of new investigators that really have a lot of promise. I'm very excited about the next couple of months. The area has already been on fire (those 3 baptisms will make 16 since I've been here), but it's right on the brink of exploding even more. As I said, we've been really, really blessed. I just wish the time would stop going so quickly! We also had a fun experience on Elder Richins last night here on Wednesday... We finally had a tornado! This spring we've gotten so much less action then last year, I though nature was going to forget us this year. But we had a really great storm that night! We were actually over at the Taylor's house teaching them, which is good because they have a basement that we all went to when the sirens started going off. The tornado just touched down out in the woods on Fort Leonard Wood, so no significant damage from that, but we also got about golf ball size hail, a lot of wind, and well over 2,000 lightning strikes over the course of about an hour, including one awesome moment when we saw 6 different strikes at one time, all around us. It was as bright as mid-day. It was a really impressive storm, and as always very fun to watch. I love the weather out here! I think we're supposed to get some more storms tomorrow. Keep your fingers crossed for us. :)

Love,
Elder Goodale