Weekly Mission Report – June 27th

Hello Everybody,

This week has been awesome! We have had a pretty successful week. First we did service at this lady’s house and I was walking in the woods and saw a king snake trying to go into a hole. So I ran over and grabbed him by the tail just before he went all the way in. I pulled him out and once I got him calmed down he was really nice. I could hold him close to me and he wouldn’t bite. They really are friendly snakes when they calm down. While I was getting it though it smelled horrible. I thought it was getting ready to shed its skin or something but I learned they release this musk when they feel in danger. It is one of the worse smells i have ever smelled. It is a mixture of musk, urine, and poop. The smell wont leave your hands either. I washed them 10 times and twice with hydrogen peroxide. It still didn’t leave. It made eating a little hard because every time my hand went by my nose it almost made me throw up. After that we had a little bit of time until lunch was done so we climbed bamboo.

Next we set a miracle we wanted to see happen this week. The miracle we set was to find one person who was truly interested in the gospel. Well, we went out with a youth on Friday and he said he had been thinking about this kid he helped a year ago. So we stopped at his house and he let us in. He loved our lesson and really wants to meet with us more. It was amazing. We were so excited to see that happen. He has a lot of the same interest as me and I could see us being good friends.  After that, we tried to see some Alligators but saw a bunch of turtles instead. We also saw a kid fishing there so we asked him about the turtles and one thing led to another and next thing you know we both caught a turtle.

Saturday we were able to have a great talk with a non member who is married to a member. he would make an amazing member. He seems to be really close to becoming interested. I’d love to see him be baptized. It would make his wife so happy. The good thing though is they fed us amazing southern fried chicken after.

The other highlights of the week happened this morning. First I got a hair cut. I have been waiting so long to get one. Also we went fishing and caught a bunch of catfish. I did catch the biggest one. It was awesome! I cant wait to eat these. We cleaned them this morning. They are one of my favorite fish to eat. My dads best friend BJ came and took us out to eat at Cracker Barrel a few weeks ago and he recommended the catfish and ever since then I realized how good they could be. We cooked the last two that we caught last week on Sunday and they were amazing.

Anyway it has been a great week. I hope ya’lls week has been really good. Have fun this week!

Elder Goodsell

Weekly Mission Report – June 20th

Hey Ya’ll,

This week has been great, but very hot. The humidity is killing me! They say it is suppose to be 100 degrees on Thursday. We will probably die! It has gotten to the point that I just have to stand outside for a couple minutes and I will be sweating super bad. I don’t know how people do it here. You can’t go outside unless you accept fate. Which unfortunately we must do everyday.

So I think today we are going to cook the catfish that we caught. That should be nice. I’m trying to think of what else happened this week. We haven’t had a ton of crazy cool things happen in a while. We just do a lot of contacting and usually that will bring about stories but not here. We did get to teach a really cool lesson to a 15 year old kid who is extremely smart. He was asking us deep questions that I have never even thought before. I can’t even repeat them because I don’t remember them. They were so complicated.

We got to help a lady with her yard this last week. We laid down plastic all over her flower beds. I got a bite by some spider and it left a nasty mark on my arm. That’s the other thing that’s super bad about summer. The bugs! So many bugs everywhere.

Oh, so I just remembered a pretty good story. So the night before transfers, the zone leaders came over so we could fry the catfish eggs. We didn’t want to waste them so we thought we would eat them. Well we fried em and they tasted so nasty. They were disgusting! We still all ate them though. It was so gross! The good news is that we never threw up. I did feel like at one point though that I was going to.

Our mission president toured the mission for the last time this week. We are getting a new mission president July 1st. It will be sad to see him leave but I am also excited to see what the new one will be like. He shared some very cool things while he talked to us. One thing was about how a mission is kinda like a mini life. Those of you who have gone on missions can probably see it. Just how our life before was the pre existence, and now this is our mortal life. He related a lot of mission experiences that you naturally go through, to how life is. It was really neat.

Also, I never sent the picture of our district winning district of the month so you can see it below.  We did an Oceans 11 theme with our nick names on the back of our shirts.

Thank you all for your support. Ya’ll are awesome! I hope ya’ll have a great week!

Elder Goodsell

Weekly Mission Report – June 13th

Hey Everyone

So, crazy news I’m staying in my area. This is very rare for our mission to be in an area this long. After this transfer I will have been here for 8 months. I love it in this area though. the members are amazing and help us out so much.

This morning we went fishing and caught some catfish. I cleaned them and we will be eating them soon.

This week has been pretty good except my companion got sick for a couple days so we couldn’t do anything. I went out with a ward member one of the days though. We had an awesome dinner at a members house where the whole table was full of food. They have a big family to so its really fun.

We really didn’t do much this week because of the sickness. I got on late today so I have to get off. I’m sorry I slacked on the email today.

I hope ya’ll have a great week. I promise next week will be better. Thank you for your support though.

Elder Goodsell

Cleaning Catfish

Weekly Mission Report – June 6th

Hey Everybody,

This week was awesome! At district meeting we had a funeral for one of the elders going home next week. He laid on the table while we each went up and said our remarks. Then the Elders placed their suit coats over him. Also, last P-day one of the missionaries had a birthday, so we all sprayed him with silly string. At zone conference, President kept asking him if he was on fire and it has turned into a little inside joke in our district. So because of that we bought him a fire extinguisher.

So this week we received good news. After making all our goals as a district and reaching them we found out that we are district of the month. So we are making T shirts for it and then we will be awarded for it on Thursday. It was awesome to see the district come together these last couple weeks to make things happen. Besides all of that happening not much else has happened. An old guy lost his glasses in a pond and I had to help him find them. While on exchanges we found a nasty green pond. Oh, and we had giant stuffed burgers this week that were amazing!

Since nothing really happened this week but a lot of tracting, I’ll share some things I have been studying. I just started reading Jacob Chapter 5 which talks about the olive tree. I love it because it has so many symbols in it but they all mean different things. It’s fun interrupting it. I like how it shows that the Lord keeps trying to work with his people and he moves them around and scatters them for their benefit. You can see how much the Lord loves his people through this. Also, you can see how the Lord deals with his children on earth since the whole thing is about him and his vineyard. I am only in the beginning of it but its super cool. It’s comforting to know that the lord knows everything and everything he does will be for our benefit.

Sorry this is a short email, but thank you to all. Have a great week!

Elder Goodsell