Twelve Days of Christmas

Though yesterday I posted all of Elder Goodale's pics/vids to Flickr, this one (below) didn't make it on Flickr because the video length was too long. Thus you'll find it embedded below or linked here. Justin and the rest of his district in Stockton, Missouri recorded this as a Christmas present to the Oklahoma Tulsa Mission president and his wife. Enjoy.

Rivera Family Christmas Eve

New Address / Pictures

Elder Goodale usually ships us a box of stuff each time he transfers, with things like the letters he's received, his daily planners, and so on. But most importantly, usually in those packages is a memory card from his digital camera. Today was no different, and we received 104 pictures and videos almost entirely from his last area, Stockton, Missouri. To the right here is a picture of Elder Goodale with Matt, a young man that they taught; this picture is taken at Matt's baptism. I have posted all of the photos and some of the videos (here on Facebook; here on Flickr - these aren't labeled yet, but hopefully we'll get to that soon).

Elder Goodale's new address is as below. Please write him!!! :-)

Elder Justin Goodale
181 East Lawn Ave. Apt 124
PO Box 929
St. Robert, MO 65584

Anyway... below is the e-mail he sent from today.
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Merry Christmas!!! How is everybody doing? I can't wait to talk to you on Friday! To answer your question, Mom, that will work fine to call in the morning. I don't know the exact time I'll call, but it'll be good and early for you... :) Things here are awesome! I love St. Robert. As I said last week, it's right next door to Fort Leonard Wood, so basically everybody here is military. Over half the ward (which is huge) is in the military. It's a really great ward. Really missionary oriented. They don't really have any ward mission plan except just go baptize 'em, and it works! Everybody here is great about sharing the gospel. Elder Johnson (my trainer, who I replaced here) was nice and even had 2 baptisms set up my first week here! One, Jeff, is tomorrow night and then we have another, Lydon, on Saturday. It's going to be awesome. Elder Hirshfeld and I are shooting for 6 baptisms this transfer, and it's totally going to happen! Elder Spencer Hirshfeld, my new companion, is an awesome missionary and I'm excited to serve with him. Another cool thing about being here is that as Zone Leaders we get to go on exchanges with all the District Leaders in the Zone (just 2 districts, this is the smallest zone in the mission), one of whom is my MTC companion, Elder Phillips! I'm way excited to go on exchanges with him.

Oh and by the way, I'm about as far north as I can get in this mission, and I'll be here all winter! I'm so excited. Last winter, down in deep Arkansas, we didn't even really have winter. But it actually snows here! That's all for now, again I can't wait to talk to you on Friday. Love you all!

Additional pictures:

don't ask

dead mouse

Me with Sister Bender

Me with Tanya White's kids, Curtis and Olivia

Brother and Sister Bird

I got most of the small towns for you Dad. There were 3 other podunk towns I wanted to get pictures of (Roscoe, Jerico Springs and Dadeville) but we didn't have the miles. Those 3 are all around 200. There was another town I almost took a picture of, Humansville, but I decided population 900 was just too big. :)

Amish Country

Me and Megan Huebner

Emily Dickens, Tamberlin Pulsipher, Kelli Pulsipher, Krisi Pulsipher and me

He said smile big...

Me and Elder Moxon

Emily Dickens, Tamberlin Pulsipher, Kelli Pulsipher, Krisi Pulsipher, me and Elder Moxon

Transfer to St. Robert, MO

Both last week's e-mail and this week's were very short; he seems really busy with the work, which is good! He's transferring this week to St. Robert, Missouri (the city's official home page here; the Wikipedia entry here). 2000 census indicates population of 2,760, which would make it one of the bigger cities he's served in on his mission! :-)
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Hey! How's it going? How's everybody's week? Things are going great here. Nothing really new is going on, except that transfer calls were Saturday! I've been called as a Zone Leader (pray for me!!!), and I'll be serving in St. Robert, Missouri. It's a couple hours east of here, up in the top Northeast corner of the mission, actually just a couple hours south of St. Louis. It's about the furthest I could possibly be from the mission home... It should be alot of fun serving there. It's actually right next door to Ft. Leonard Wood, a big military base. So I may be teaching a whole lot of Army people... I'm looking forward to it. I'll be way sad to leave Stockton, though. Especially just a week before Christmas... Other than that, not too much new is happening. The whole Bradshaw family came to church again, they are doing great, and of course Emily came again, and also Curtis and Megan came for the first time. They loved it! They said they will definitely be back. So things are going great, this area is on fire right now. The Lord has really really blessed us. It'll be sad to leave. Wish me luck! Sorry I don't have any more to say... Have a great week!

Oh by the way, if you have any letters either send them to the mission home or hold off on sending them until next Monday when I can get you my new address. Thanks! Love you!

Brigance family. Top to bottom: Sister Brigance, Kylie, Rob McGowin (son in law), Molly McGowin, Tanner, Brother Brigance, Bailey

Me and the Brigance Family

Elder Moxon and I with Brother Brigance

Me and the Brigance family

E-Mail of December 7th

Willard District Schofield, Scholle, Raleigh, Moxon, Me, Robinson

Sorry I'm late in posting Elder Goodale's e-mail from LAST week, just as THIS week's came in. I'll post that separately, but here's his e-mail of last week.
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Happy December! How is everybody? Ready for Christmas Break, I'm sure... How is the weather there in Boise? It's finally started to cool down this last week, hopefully for good this time...It's even gotten down into the teens a couple of nights this week! I know that's nothing for ya'll up there, but it's been COLD for here this early. It even snowed (briefly) on Wednesday! And we should be getting more this week. I'm glad winter is finally here.

Elder Moxon and I as shepherds for the ward Christmas party 12/5/09

First snow

In front of a Methodist Church in Willard, MO

We had an awesome week this week. The Bradshaws all came to church again, and actually 3 of them got up and bore their testimonies! 6-year old Brandon, 8-year old Jason, and 15-year old Marlena all bore their testimonies in Sacrament Meeting. Emily Dickens, who's still waiting on her mom's permission to be baptized, also bore her testimony. And so did Matt, who was baptized last Saturday. And he got the Aaronic Priesthood on Sunday as well! It was an awesome Sunday. There was alot of awesome stuff that happened this week, unfortunately I'm out of time on the computer. Sorry! Love you! Have a great week!

The Broadbent's house that we helped build

Thanksgiving

Matt's baptism 11/28/09 (Curtis Baker, Matt's brother Josh, Matt's Mom, Matt, Matt's sister Megan

I'm actually three weeks behind in posting Elder Goodale's letters - sorry!!! But here is the e-mail we received from him on Monday of this week (11/30). You see here that he mention's Matt's baptism at 6am on Saturday. He had told us the previous week (still to be posted), "He wanted to do it at 6 because he thought it would be cool to go into the church when it's dark outside and when he comes out after being baptized the sun will be coming up."
--> Pretty cool, eh?!-------------------

Elder Moxon, Matt, me

Matt and his Mom

Elder Moxon and Matt

Happy Monday! How's everybody doing? How was your Thanksgiving? We had a great Thanksgiving here. We didn't go out and work on Thanksgiving (Thanksgiving and Christmas are the only days of the year we don't proselyte) but we had a great day nonetheless. For lunch we went out to the Goodman's and had our main Thanksgiving meal down there. They have a 750 acre ranch down by Dadeville (one of the bigger towns we cover - population 224!), about a half hour south of where we live. We had alot of fun there. I'm pretty sure that was the first Thanksgiving I've had where the main meat was venison, which I was happy about. Of course they had plenty of turkey and ham too, so I just had small amounts of all 3 meats. I really didn't eat all that much that day.

Me and Matt

Matt with girlfriend Leslie

Curtis and Matt

Matt and Leslie

Then in the evening we went out to the Pulsiphers, one of my favorite families in the ward, and had some more dessert (don't worry, I only had 4 pieces of pie that day. Or maybe 5. I don't remember) over there and played games for awhile. It was alot of fun. Then on Saturday morning we had a baptism! Matt was baptized at 6am. It was really awesome. In fact, for every baptism I have a part in from now on, I'm going to try to convince them to do it real early like that... It was really neat. And surprisingly, we had a ton of people there, even at that early time! I would say at least 40 or so. We had everything set up, then right before it started we had to put out another row of chairs. Then that filled up! It was great. Even Elder Moxon and I's musical number went very well, for that time. The Spirit was so strong the entire time, it was probably the best baptismal service I've seen so far. The only other time I've felt the Spirit that strongly at a baptism was over 2 years ago, at Bailey's baptism. We had a couple of investigators there too (Emily and Curtis) so that made it even better. Actually a bunch of Matt's family came too, and hopefully we'll be able to start teaching them soon. He has an 18 year old sister named Megan that we've taught a couple of times, but she hasn't really progressed at all, but ever since Matt's baptism she's been talking about getting baptized, too! She has alot she needs to work on, but she can do it. We could set a baptismal date with her this week.

We also had another miracle Sunday at church. Leslie, who grew up as part of that polygamist group but was baptized this last May, has a 13 year old brother named Derek. A few months ago he was getting into alot of trouble, so his mom wanted him to start going to church. He had the option of going to the plig church with his dad or going to our church with his sister. Luckily he decided to go with Leslie. So starting back in August, he started coming to church. He complained about it alot at first, but only for a couple of weeks because pretty soon he started to really enjoy church. In fact, when Elder Moxon and I got here we had no idea that he's not even a member. We just assumed that he had been baptized. Well the more we associated with that family (we're over there alot, plus Derek comes and helps us every Saturday morning when we're out helping the Broadbents build their house) I realized that he probably wasn't. Saturday I asked Leslie about it, and she told me the whole story. Derek and I are pretty close now, so then yesterday at church, I just asked him "So Derek, when are you going to get baptized?" And he told us that he's been thinking about it alot lately! Even though he doesn't live with his dad (his parents are divorced) since his dad practices polygamy Derek will still need First Presidency approval to be baptized, so we're working on setting up that general authority interview now. Hopefully it'll all get set up soon!

That's the most exciting stuff that happened this week. Thank you so much for your continued prayers, I know it's had a part in how incredibly blessed we've been here. Have a great week! Love you!