Week 12 La Joya, Texas

Hey Mom,

We got transfer news last night, Shipley and I have 6 more weeks in La Joya!!!!!!!!

Things are good down here. It has been in the 80's and 90's which is a little hot for my liking but it has been super windy so a nice breeze makes it bearable.

Sounds like you guys are busy over there, I am glad it sounds like everything is going well.

Sunday was good it was stake conference but I will write more about that in the highlights.

Not much else for this week so on to the Highlights:

Monday:

It was about 8:45 and Shipley and I went and knocked on a door and after we talked about what we wanted to share the guy said he had a question for us and so we went outside and talked with him. He asked us why we eat meat because God created animals to and so why should they suffer. The guy said he was Catholic but only by tradition because everyone else in his family is Catholic. Apparently he didn't read in the Bible where it talks about the reason that animals were created. Ironically he didn't think that his same logic also applied to plants and other creations (he was a vegetarian) After we told him that the purpose of animals was to feed us he moved on and asked if we drank, we said we didn't, he said that was good and he didn't drink, except for when he occasionally did?!?! He then went on about all of these conspiracy theories about aliens and the medicine market and money and basically everything, I think the guy forgot we were missionaries.

Tuesday:

We went knocking early in the morning and found a dude outside skinning a pig, we talked to him and watched him skin it for a second, that was pretty interesting. At 11:30 we met a less active guy named Stephen Lara who is actually a modern day pirate. He is like that wise old man who is a little crazy but actually makes sense when you think about what he says. So that was pretty fun, he told Shipley and I that we would each have a 101 women waiting for us when we got back because we would be like war heroes. So I guess we will see. Then later that afternoon we were knocking some doors and these 3 teenagers (they were probably about 18) asked us if we knew where to get some pot. We said no and then went on our way, almost reminded me of Oregon.

Wednesday:

Happy Valentines Day! We went to seminary in the morning because sister Mendoza (the seminary teacher) invited us because they were going to be having treats and so we went and just kind of listened, there were only 7 kids there though. At around 2 we got a call from brother Hernandez (the elders quorum president and the one that we are trying to get to go to the Temple) and he asked us if we could help us cut down some tree branches around his house that he rents out to people in Sullivan City. He literally was climbing in a tree while holding a chainsaw and cutting branches as he went. (Pictures included)

Thursday:

We went to seminary again and helped a little bit by talking about Alma 32 and about Faith. Elder Shipley talked about something called the faith cycle which is really good and has to do with Alma 32:28 (picture included) Then we had to get an oil change so we sat around at Firestone for about an hour and a half, we saw the news about the shooting in Florida, really sad. Later in the day we talked to an inactive guy and he asked us why we don't worship saint Mary as a perfect woman and a saint, we told him it is because literally one of the commandments. Then in the evening we talked with the Rodriguez family about going to the Temple and they are super excited to do it.

Friday:

We went to seminary one more time because why not. Then that evening the ward had a little get together for a Valentines Day Party and we had really good food. One of our investigators even came and we had a church tour with them so that was nice. We had delicious carne asada and rice and beans and mashed potatoes.

Saturday:

We decided to stop by some people that live in Sullivan City and so at around 4 we stopped by an 88 year old guy named Isidro Lopez, he is awesome. He reminds me of a Mexican version of Grandpa Wally, just the way he is reminds me of Wally. Except the difference is that he talked and talked and talked for about 2 hours. So we sat and tried not to doze off. It was 75 degrees we were sitting down and couldn't understand a thing he was saying so Shipley and I just let our minds wandered as Isidro went on and on.  eventually we got out at around 6 and nobody was home and all of our plans cancelled, so we tried having a random Facebook video chat lesson which didn't happen. We were near the Hernandez's house and Brother Hernandez showed up so we decided to talk with him. He made us a really good snack which sounds weird I know but trust me it is good. It is cucumber that has been peeled and sliced with lime juice and salt on it. He also added a little hot sauce, it is good.

Sunday:

We had Stake conference at 10:00 at the stake center, we were going to lead another guy there so we decided to meet at the La Joya chapel and I got a picture our chapel (picture included) We had stake conference where they reorganized the stake presidency. The 1st counselor in the old stake Presidency became the new stake President so not really a huge change. We got to hear the testimonies of the old and new stake presidencies, which was cool. We also had 3 guys from our ward receive the Melchizedek priesthood (more on that later) we heard a talk from Elder Frost who is an area 70 which was a really good talk about faith and he talked about the story of the Brother of Jared, he said that sometimes the Lord wants us to first come up with an answer and then bring the idea to the Lord for his input. Then we heard from Elder Pearson of the actual quorum of the 70. He gave a really good talk, first he talked about keeping the Sabbath day holy. After that he talked about the process of calling and ordaining President Nelson which was really good, he talked about how the Lord prepares the people that he will prepare and that just because we receive revelation about getting a calling or we feel like we are the ones who will get a calling sometimes that means the Lord is telling us that he loves us and that we are perfectly qualified for that calling but he has another plan for us. All in all it was really good. Elder Pearson also said that this upcoming general conference will be really good and there will be a lot of announcements made so stay tuned... Anyway after Stake conference we went to the ordination of the 3 guys from our ward. The first was David Mendoza. Next was brother Rodriguez which means that now the Rodriguez family can go to the Temple basically whenever they get the chance, we have talked to them a lot about the Temple and they are super excited. Then it was Eloy Toscano, we had no clue he would be receiving the Melchizedek priesthood so it was a huge shock, it is really cool because he has been through a lot and is super strong in the gospel. It was even cooler because he asked Elder Shipley to ordain him. After stake conference at around 5 we talked with the Rodriguez family about how close they are to the Temple and they are super excited. We then talked with Alfredo (one of our investigators) and we had a lesson with him. To end off the the night we saw the Hernandez's again and talked to them about how they are doing. 

Pictures:

1. - 4. Brother Hernandez in a tree.

5. The La Joya chapel on Sunday morning.

6.Shipley and I wore sister ties to Stake Conference.

7. The Faith Cycle.

All in all great week!   

Love you Mom,

Elder Goodbaudy

Week 11 LaJoya, Texas

Hey Mom,

That is cool, I like the pictures, and yeah I heard about Dame making the All-Star team, things just come up on Facebook and you can't really hide them so.....

I am a fan of our new black jerseys too, they look nice. I see what you mean about the Jazz jerseys, yes I got the Bob Ross reference.

Yeah Braden said it was another slow week, we kind of had one too but he is keeping on keeping on from what he has told me.

We didn't crash anymore birthday parties sadly, we almost crashed a wedding, or a Catholic baptism, we aren't sure which, but we didn't end up crashing it.

We had 90 in Sacrament meeting, sadly none were investigators but it is always nice to see less actives coming to church.

Yeah the ferry is checked, behind the camera there is a huge checkpoint that people have to go through, it is only open until like 3 in the afternoon and after that it is locked up, which is why nobody was there.

One thing that Shipley and I are trying to do is visit less actives and help them to start doing the basics again, reading praying and going to church. That has started to work alright. We are also talking to more and more people about the Temple and about how they need to be ready for when we get one here. That has been kind of cool, to hear how eager everyone down here is for a chance to go to the Temple.

Time for this weeks highlightsthere are some gems this week:

Tuesday:

We had a Zone meeting until about 4:00 which we just talked about some ways to use our phones and some people had to set them up so we spent basically all day doing that.

Wednesday:

Just the usual, we had 2 meal appointments back to back today. First was with the Ramos family and we had mole (which we had quite a bit this past week) Then we ate with the Rivera family and had a really good chicken and vegetable meal with rice. Then we had family history at the church and one of the power cords caught on fire, so that was fun.

Thursday:

We decided to bike the military highway across to Penitas, along the way we found a huge snakeskin (picture included with me for size comparison) and then we went and knocked some doors. At 11:45 we decided to knock one more door before we went back for lunch.  So we knocked on a door and an old dude just yells for us to come in. His name was Manuel Samuel Samora Ozuna, he is 82 years old. We talked for a little bit and then we tried to have a prayer before sharing a message with him and right before Elder Shipley goes to say the prayer, Manuel starts to go off about his life story, and no we didn't end up saying a prayer or teaching a lesson. We listened to his life story for about and hour and a half (even worse it was 11:45 when we knocked on his door) Then he asks us to drive to an office in McAllen (about 30 minutes away and out of our area) to go to some office and find some 81 year old lady whose name he can't remember so that he can marry her. Yes you read all of that right and I am typing it exactly how it happened. He then gave us a $20 bill for gas money and food to go to McAllen and then we also found out that Manuel Samuel wears adult diapers, I was sitting next to a pack of them the whole time and we also could see him wearing one whenever he went to adjust the blanket he had covering himself. The best part was that at about 1:45 we finally left and then Manuel checked his watch (he wears 2 watches) and said that his watch said it was 6:00 but it was an hour ahead so it was actually 5:00. It was 1:45. We finally left and Shipley put the $20 bill under a pot by his door after we left, we will not be going to McAllen to find some 81 year old lady. We hope that Manuel Samuel's caretaker lady finds the $20, I feel sorry for her. The rest of the day we just went around and visited with people.

Friday:

 We had weekly planning and coordination with Guerrero, he brought us tacos which is what we had been craving for the past week.Then we did some finding in Pueblo De Palmas and ate a really good egg, bean and, rice dinner with just flour tortillas, delicious. Then we visited some people out in the middle of nowhere who are members and talked to them about the Temple and being active in the church.

Saturday: 

Pretty much nothing happened, we just visited people and tried to make sure all of our investigators would be at church tomorrow. We did eat dinner with the Hernandez's and they fed us Spaghetti, which was really good.

Sunday:

We had church and none of our investigators were there (slightly disappointing) but we had a really good lesson in elders quorum where we read the talk "the needs before us" from the Saturday morning session and the High-councilman who is over our ward talked a lot about how we need to make sure that our family relationships are solid so that we can then go out and help others. We went and visited some people out in Sullivan city and saw and Emu, yes we saw an Emu in South Texas (picture included) ​​The rest of the day we just went and tried to visit some less actives but none of them were home. Eventually we stopped by the Hernandez's house and just talked with them to see how they were doing and what they need to do to figure everything out.

Other than all of that the week has been pretty good.

Talk to you guys next week, next week on Tuesday is transfers, Shipley and I both think we will stay here for at least one more but we will see!

Love you guys

Elder Goodbaudy

 snakeskin.jpg

Week 10 LaJoya, Texas

Hey Mom,

Let's go Blazers!

Yep we are still eating well and to my knowledge I am still losing weight so, I have no complaints.

A lot of news for this week so the highlights will be fairly long, but here we go:

Tuesday:

We had to watch a bunch of training videos for smartphones so we spent a bit of time doing that, and that was about it.

Wednesday:

Once again not a lot happened. Shipley and I were near the Rio and we had to do Spanish study so we decided to sit on a log near the river and have Spanish study while looking across at Mexico. We also explored a little abandoned house near the Rio because we had some time, it was pretty creepy. We had family history and I tried tracing our family tree back as far as I could, the farthest I got was 200 B.C., I was pretty impressed.

Thursday:

Since Elder Shipley is a District Leader he had to go to an MLC (Mission Leader Conference) so I was on an exchange down in Hidalgo, Texas with Elder Grannis for the day, not much happened, I just met some people down there, but then that night we had 6 Elders stay in 1 apartment, that was pretty fun.

Friday:

Elder Shipley had MLC again for the first half of the day so Elder Grannis and I went to the mall so I could buy my phone, that was pretty interesting, it had been a while since I had been to a mall, it felt weird. Then at about 4 MLC finished so Shipley and I drove back to La Joya. We set up my phone which was pretty cool. I feel so technological now. We went and talked to some people but not much happened. Until about 8:00 pm we were knocking doors and we see   a house with a whole bunch of guys outside barbecuing. I jokingly said to Elder Shipley that maybe if we talk to them they will feed us, so we go up to the gate and a guy kind of waves and then ignores us. Another guy comes up and Elder Shipley says "we understand you guys are busy but is there another time we could come by and share a message". The dude says that there are more people inside and we can go in, so we go into the house and there is a living room full of women (there was a guy in the house) and we start talking with them and start talking about prophets with them, they bring up Joseph Smith and the gold plates, turns out about half of the family were less actives and the other half knew a lot about the church. So we talked for a bit and they invited us to eat with them so we ate dinner with about 30 people. Turns out it was the grandmas birthday and they had like all of their family over. So after we eat they bring out cake and sing happy birthday, then all the family starts taking pictures with their grandma and Shipley and I start joking that we should get our picture taken with their grandma. Of course after a few minutes someone asks if we want our picture with their grandma, we say of course and so a bunch of people in that family have pictures of me, Elder Shipley and their grandma on their phones. What a night. We did end the night with Shipley offering a prayer for the whole family so we did do something.

Saturday:

In case you think Shipley and I both had a the same weird dream about  what happened Friday Night, we made sure. We went back to the same house at about 4 in the afternoon and they invited us in again, we talked about the party last night and we taught the full restoration lesson. After that we just rode around on our bikes looking for people having parties to see if we could get lucky again. We didn't but we did talk to a blind guy at a cookout that some people were having and he was a little weird because he was talking about how one day the Earth is going to stop moving and then there will be no more gravity so everyone will float away. Sure..... Anyway then we biked around some more to finish off the night.

Sunday:

We had church, there were 87 people at sacrament meeting so we are getting somewhere. We had a lot of less actives show up which was really nice and we had a really good fast and testimony meeting. The rest of church went as usual, we didn't have English class afterwards because a lot of people were busy after church so they couldn't. After church we went to Havana to knock some doors but nobody answered, then we saw Eloy Toscano, he is a member in the ward and is super awesome. He talked with us for a bit and then we went to his house and we helped him make tacos, they were delicious. We finished off the night by talking to the Herndandez's but not about the Temple, so no progress so far. Also apparently tomorrow (Monday, the day I am writing this) we are having a ward Family Home Evening (Noche De Hogar in Spanish) about missionary work so Elder Shipley and I are each giving little talks about missionary work, it should be interesting.

Love You guys

Love Elder Goodbaudy

 The International Ferry to Mexico.

 Elder Goodbaudy on the banks of the Rio Grande.

 Elder Shipley and Elder Goodbaudy with "Grandma" on her birthday.

 Elder Shipley and some dogs.

The fences of South Texas.

Week 9 LaJoya, Texas

Hey Mom,

Haven't heard anything from the Catholic house, haven't stopped by there in a while.

This weeks news is pretty good, the first half of the week was really good and the second half was kind of a let down but the highlights are as follows:

Tuesday:

Nothing much happened, we had dinner with the Ramos family and had enchiladas, a little different than the way us white folk make them but they were delicious (I will definitely teach you how to make some good Mexican food when I get back) other than that we just tried visiting people that we hadn't seen in a while so that was about it.

Wednesday:

We went to McAllen to see President Torres, he said my Spanish was coming along really well which was nice to hear. We got back at around 1 and then went out and visited some more people and that was about it.

Thursday:

We had a really good day today, we biked the military highway to Havana and knocked a few doors there. After that we drove out to Pueblo de Palmas and knocked some houses out there in the ghetto and we also tried to find some addresses of people that were in our records that lived out there and we had a little success.

Friday:

We had coordination with the ward mission leader Brother Guerrero and then had lunch. We drove out to Pueblo de Palmas (PDP) for a return appointment and they weren't home (classic PDP) then we visited some people in Havana and once again had a return appointment with some people we had met and once again none of them were home. We saw an abandoned house up in Havana and we looked around in it. A door started opening so we bolted out of there. (We are pretty sure it was the wind but we didn't want to stay and find out). Then to end the day more people cancelled on us so it was pretty boring.

Saturday:

The stake is really pushing for each ward to have 50 people print a name from family history so they can take it to the temple so they had a big activity Saturday morning to have people in the ward come print names, about 15 people showed up so it was a little disappointing but it's okay. Afterwards we went to the Hernandez's house (he is the elders quorum president) and we were going to start a fast with them because long story short they haven't been to the Temple and they aren't illegal but they have visas so they have to ask for permission to get past the checkpoint to get up to temple so we were going to fast with them so they could get permission sooner. They are a really nice family of 4 they have 2 little girls and so we really want them to get sealed because that is the next step for them. However when we went over to start the fast sister Hernandez was saying she was angry at Brother Hernandez (her husband) because he had offended her. We left and went out to Sullivan City to have an appointment and they weren't there. So then we went down to the Rio because there is a little ferry 3 miles away from Sullivan City in a little town called Los Ebanos, so we went down to the Rio and had Spanish study while we looked over across the water to Mexico, that was a little weird. We also saw an abandoned house so we went and looked around and that got real creepy real quick so we bolted out of there in a hurry. Then we went to continue with our plans but they all cancelled so we called Brother Hernandez to see how he was doing. We went to his Taqueria (taco shop) that he is working on opening and talked with him for a bit and kind of listened to him complain which was annoying but we did end up starting a fast with him. It was nice but we hadn't eaten since 5 and it was 9, we also hadn't had any water since 5 so we were a little annoyed. But we made progress.

Sunday:

Today was once again a little disappointing, only 76 people came to church (slightly less than average for this ward) and none of our investigators showed up. Then we had English class afterwards and everyone was talking about previous English classes they had taken and how what they did to teach English in the class had worked really well, except they were telling us this in..... Spanish. Elder Shipley and I were the only 2 people in that room that could Speak English. So nice try, then we asked how many of them had spoken English during the past week and they all said no. So then we told them the hard truth and said that if they wanted to learn English it didn't matter what we did in the class it mattered what they did during the week. After that all of our appointments fell through. So finally at 7 we went to the Hernandez's house and had dinner with them and us and Brother Hernandez broke our fasts. That was kind of nice and then we had a mini family home evening with them and that was really fun.

That was the week. How is life back in Oregon?

Love you guys and talk to you next week

Love,

Elder Goodbaudy