Work Amongst the Marshallese

Dear Family,

      Hey everyone! We had a pretty good week, a lot of disappointments but a lot of great things happened too. Our main emphasis this week was on getting people to church, we really expended a lot of effort there. That was the theme of several of our lessons with investigators, we had members present at almost every lesson, we did a couple of chapel tours, and we got really solid commitments out of everyone to be there. Yet out of 10 investigators that committed to be at sacrament meeting, only 3 came. It was a little disappointing, but hopefully we'll have several more next week. One couple that didn't make it are a Marshallese couple named Charles and Sabina, and tonight we are having a family home evening with them at the home of the Elders Quorum President and his wife. I'm really looking forward to that, I'm sure it will go really well. Another couple, Chris and Jessica (the ones that got married 2 weeks ago), also missed church but tomorrow night we are going to teach them in the home of one of their fellowshipper families and either later in the week or early next week we also hope to have them in another fellowshipper's home. So we're doing everything we can to help our investigators attend church and at the same time get integrated into the ward, and I'm sure we'll see the fruits of that very soon. On a positive note, Chris Jacob came for the second week in a row, and even said that at one point he started to get a little emotional. He felt the Spirit very strongly. We hope to set a baptismal date with him this week. His level of understanding isn't very high, but I think mainly because of the language barrier (he's also from the Marshall Islands, he is Charles; brother) because he is a very intelligent man and a very dedicated man. I'm really excited for the progress he is making. Jonathon is all set for his baptism this weekend, we have no concerns there, and then this week hopefully we'll be setting a baptismal date with a boy named Portes (I don't know if that is spelled right...) Hadley, who is from the island of Pompeii. It's really neat because Elder Bustamante served in the Marshallese Ward down in Springdale about a year ago, and his understanding of the culture and a tiny bit of the language has been instrumental as we are now teaching so many islanders. That's no coincidence, the Lord definitely has His master plan all worked out. Things have been slow in the singles branch that we cover for a while now, but recently we started teaching someone really great there. His name is Chris, he is in the Army and just recently returned from a deployment. Before getting deployed he was engaged to an LDS girl (out in North Carolina), but it didn't work out. He had come close to joining the church but never actually did, but is very interested in getting back on the path towards that goal, and ultimately to the temple. We just taught him for the first time a few days ago, and I'm very excited to start really working with him this week. Things are looking up here, right now Elder Bustamante and I are really trying to get the members more involved with the work we are doing, that's really one of our main goals right now, and we're finding that in order to accomplish all that we hope to on that front it's been taking a lot of effort and coordination. We are working on ways to be more organized and efficient, and already seeing great things happening with that as well. So we've been very, very busy, but I'll never complain about that! I love you all! Have a great week!

Love,

Elder Goodale