Weekly Mission Report – Aug 29th

Hey Ya’ll,

This week has been a bit of a slow one. We did a lot of service. First, on Monday we almost got in a bad accident. Some stupid guy just swerved into our lane and didn’t even look to see if we were there. I swear he should have hit us but somehow he didn’t. It was a miracle. My companion slammed on the brakes and swerved sorta out of the way, but he didn’t really have anywhere to go. They guy swerved in front of us because someone in his lane was making a left turn and he didn’t want to slow down and wait.

The next day was service day. We helped the sister missionaries here move into a new apartment. That took awhile because we got rained on. After that, we had to go help someone else. I cant remember who though. My mind just went blank.

We had a couple more good talks with some of our investigators this week about baptism. It sounds like they are not as ready as we thought though. It will take some time but I’m positive they will get baptized eventually. They come to church a lot which is awesome.

We had the awesome opportunity to go to one of our investigators baptist churches. It was in Midway, GA. Apparently, it is where Martin Luther King wrote his I have a dream speech. The service is pretty different then ours. It is always cool though to see how other churches do things. They sang to us because we were visitors and it was so awkward. We had to sit down and they all stood up and sang to us.

This week my comp and I made buffalo wings. They actually turned out just like Buffalo Wild Wings. We used some copy cat recipes and they were really good. The key is to deep fry the wings and not bake them. The senior missionary couple here thinks we are crazy because of all the stuff (food) we make. Its pretty funny.

We went up to Reidsville this last week trying to find a referral and we ran into this crazy dude. We knocked on this door and the girl inside said what the **** do you want. We told her we were looking for this guy and she swore at someone in the back and this crazy looking guy knelt down and starred at us through the screen door. It looked like he was holding a gun but I couldn’t see. He thought we were the police and he was drunk out of his mind. We told him what was up and he opened up a little when he realized we were not the police. We actually had a great lesson with him about the book of Mormon and he took a copy but I don’t know how much he understood. He came outside to pray with us and he almost fell off the stairs. I almost laughed. I bit my tongue super hard though. It was pretty cool. Those are always fun experiences.

That was about the extent of our week. This is the last week of the transfers. This transfer has flown by. We are going to make it a good one. Hope ya’ll all have a great week.

Elder Goodsell

Our home made buffalo wings

Weekly Mission Report – Aug. 22nd

Hello Everybody,

This has been a super busy week. We drove over 500 miles in two days. First, we had to do an exchange with the AP’s. Next, we had to drive to Vidalia twice. We also had to go to Savannah. I honestly felt like we lived in the car for those two days. It was nuts! I almost went insane I’m pretty sure. The exchange with the AP’s was great though. I went to Macon and we taught some bomb lessons. We were contacting referrals and had super spiritual lessons with two of them. The Elder I was with and myself taught really well together. It was awesome! I was able to do a baptismal interview this last week for the Vidalia Elders. Those are always cool experiences. Also, this week we were able to have two really good talks with our investigators about baptism. We have a couple who could be baptized really soon. We want to try to get them going. They were pretty receptive when we talked to them. We are going to talk to them about it again this week. Hopefully things will progress. They are awesome people!

One of the best parts about this week was seeing and visiting with so many…….um……..interesting people!?!?  We talked to one of our investigators who told us he has been having dreams and visions. These were his dreams. He first said that Hitler is alive and well in Antarctica. He is with a super army he has created of blonde hair and blue eye people. They are suppose to be angels. They are going to take over the world soon. Second, the U. N. is going to come against us and destroy us. There will be a lot of death. This coming election will play a huge part in that. All this will be happening in the next year. Also Jesus is black and the true Jews are the African Americans in the south. Just thought I’d let all ya’ll know this so you can be prepared…..haha!  I promise, I am not even joking.  This is what the guy said. He totally believes it! Of course, we brought up a million reasons why that can not be correct and he kept contradicting himself every time he defended his vision. It was so funny though! That’s kinda what we have dealt with this week.

We did meet a new lady this week that really wants to know more about the church and seems very interested. That was awesome! The other best thing of the week was we got a deep fryer from a family and made fried chicken, onion rings, and a bloomin onion. They were amazing, but we felt super sick after. That has been the week. Oh, we also had to teach gospel principle on the fly again. Love that! I hope ya’ll have had a great week. Thanks for the support and have a good one.

Elder Goodsell

Me and a recent convert

Our kitchen and new deep fryer.  We share this kitchen with the senior couple who also live in the house.

All the fried stuff we made in our new deep fryer

Weekly Mission Report – Aug 15th

Hey Everybody,

This has been a very busy week. We had to do a couple Family Home Evenings this week. We had to run ZTM and give training’s at it. We also taught gospel principles and I had to give a talk in church. Oh, and we also had to do an exchange with other missionaries. So we have been super busy. This morning though, we got to relax and play golf on the Hunter Army Airfield. We only had time for 12 holes but I shot a triple bogie or less on every hole except two. I’ve improved a little bit. Our group probably lost 30 balls in the woods though. It was pretty embarrassing. I also got to wrestle with my favorite dog this week. We had dinner at the Wrays house and they have a boxer (dog). She (dog) and I wrestle every time I go over there. It gets super intense. She left me with a scare this week. I’ll get her back next week.

We taught a lesson to a guy this week and he asked the most random and pointless questions I have ever heard in my life. They were hard to answer because I was so dumbfounded that he would ask these questions in the middle of the lesson.

My talk this week was on the importance of testimonies. I talked about the different steps to gain a testimony and also what things our testimony should include. I talked about the Anti-Nephi-Lehi’s in the Book of Mormon and how they stayed true to there testimony by burying their weapons in the earth and not using them when the Lamanites started to kill them. It was good and went well. My voice sounded all weird though like I was sick. I can’t figure out why. It was bizarre! Anyway, that was my week. I hope ya’ll have had a great week and that things are going well. Have fun and thanks for the support!

Elder Goodsell

Weekly Mission Report – Aug. 8th

Hello Everybody,

This week was great! We had a solid and busy week. We went on exchanges with some missionaries in the zone. The place I went to was straight ghetto. It was really bad! I met a lady with a full beard. That was weird! We taught a ton of lessons this week. We worked with a lot of part member families in the ward. We met one guy this week who loved us and couldn’t believe we were out doing what we were doing. We talked to him a lot about prophets and the importance of prophets. He didn’t get why we needed them at first but he understands it now!

We got to go to MLC (mission leadership training) this week. It was awesome! Some awesome training was given and I got to see a lot of old friends in the mission.

We burned my companions shirt this week because he hit his year mark. We also played golf this morning. I did so bad and it took us forever. I almost hit the darn ball into oncoming traffic. It scared the crud out of me! I really didn’t want to have to deal with that. Since we went so long though, I don’t have a ton of time on the computer today. This next week will be packed though. I have to prepare 2 family nights, give a training at Zone Training Meeting, and give a talk next Sunday. We also have to do exchanges. It will be a crazy week. I just remembered that we might also have to teach the gospel principles class. We will see. Anyway, Sorry for the short email this week. I gotta run to dinner and then to family night that we still need to prepare for. Ha ha. Ya’ll have a fantastic week!

Elder Goodsell

Weekly Mission Report – Aug. 1st

Hey Everybody,

I have be transferred to Hinesville, Georgia. The best part about it is my companion is Elder Gillins. He is one of the missionaries I served around in my last area that I used to talk about a lot. We were really good friends and now we are companions! It is going to be awesome! I am so stoked to be here. The work is also a lot better here then it was in my other area. I am going to miss my last area. The members there are amazing! I will have to go shopping today for the first time in forever. We live with a senior missionary couple. They have one side of the house and we have the other. We both share a kitchen though. They are really nice and are going home at the end of September. They love having me here because when I got to the house it was a mess and I cleaned it all up. I filled the trash cans up multiple times. This place had so much trash in it. Now it looks amazing and its so clean. It feels so good. I cant stand to live in a mess and a place where everything is disorganized.

We met some really cool people here. One of the part member families are the Wrays. They are awesome! We hit it off really fast. They gave use black tip shark to take home and cook. He caught it last week in the ocean. I cooked it yesterday and it was so good! Better than most fish I have had. We also saw a family called the Richardsons. They took us to Kobe, the place that cooks food in front of you. They are super sweet and we made pretty good friends with them as well.

Our investigators are pretty cool as well. Most of them love us and love to talk to us. We have a few people who are close to baptism. Some of them can’t get baptized though because of things that are out of there control. I met one investigator named Mark. He loves the missionaries and will do anything for us. He tried to convert me on his political beliefs though. It was really funny. He is a great guy though.

I spent a lot of time this week getting to know people and meeting them. They asked me to bear my testimony in sacrament meeting so I shared the scripture in Ether 6:6-7, I think. It talks about the Jaredites traveling across the ocean and the struggles they had. I related it to us and our families and at the end they called on the Lord to help them and he did. We can do the same thing and if we build ourselves up in the gospel then we can withstand trials just like their boats did.

Today we went hiking. It was weird not hiking in mountains and for the trail to be flat. It was also weird not ever being able to get cool because the humidity will get you even in the shade.

That was about all for this week. It has been great! Thank you all for your support and everything you do for me. Have a great week.

Elder Goodsell

Black Tip Shark