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