Week 21 LaJoya, Texas

Hey Mom,

That is pretty cool that the Haeggadorn's have been out and about, South Africa must have been pretty cool.

Ward conference was amazing, we only had 95 people there, not quite the 120 we were hoping for but it was better than it could have been. Our stake president gave a super good talk about the parable of the good Samaritan, he talked about how we like to see ourselves as the good Samaritan and that we need to help others who have been "attacked". What he said was that it was more applicable if we put ourselves in the place of the man who was attacked by thieves and that it is in fact Jesus Christ who is our good Samaritan. He then talked about how through his atonement Jesus allows us to be healed just like in the parable when the Samaritan brought the man to the inn. He talked about how the church is the inn and when we go to church we are healed. He also said that there are 5 things that we can do to help ourselves and our families they are:

1.Have Family Home Evening 

2.Pray as a family every day

3.Read the scriptures as a family every day

4.Pray personally every day

5.Read the scriptures personally every day

I though it was a super good talk and the stake president is just a super cool and spiritual guy. The 2nd and 3rd hour they taught about Galatians 5:16 and about how the flesh and the spirit always work against each other and how it is up to us to choose to follow the Spirit and "Walk with God in the Spirit" It was a super good conference.

Not much happened this week. So here are the highlights:

Monday:

Eloy took us to Mambo's again for lunch, I had the salmon again, it was still good, so I can't complain.

We got haircuts and we also heard that President Salmond (the stake president) wanted 120 at ward conference.

Tuesday:

6 Months mark, yay. We were on an exchange and I was with Elder Agnello, who has been out a little over a year, he is from Brigham City Utah. We had a good time, we had lunch with a member, which was delicious. Then for the rest of the day we visited members with Bishop to try and get as many people to hear about ward conference as possible.

Wednesday:

We had interviews with President Torres so we were doing that until about 1:00. He said my Spanish was sounding really good, that was nice to hear. We had dinner with the Rivera family and had a good chat with them. Th loey always have doctrine questions for us so it is always interesting hearing what they have to ask. After dinner we went to the church for family history and a bunch of people went on visits to invite members to the ward conference. I was mainly helping the ward clerk move records out of our ward, that was entertaining.

Thursday:

We had lunch with Brother Villalpando (I call him Bilbito because he reminds me of a mexican version of Bilbo Baggins from Lord of the Rings) After that we visited another member and she also fed us food, we had some delicious flautas (taquitos) so we were super full and happy. We then went and visited a member to invite him to the ward conference, he wasn't even there. Right as we got to his house this lady called the cops on their dog because it tried to "bite" her kids. So the cops came, we told the police we didn't see anything, which we didn't, so they said we could go, it was pretty entertaining. To end the night we got shakes from whataburger, and those are some good shakes.

Friday:

We had a Mexican Burger for lunch, we went and visited some people and had dinner with the Hernandez family. We had quesadillas with mashed potato on the inside with the cheese, they were pretty good. We also did some finding late at night and met like 3 or 4 people who sounded pretty cool.

Saturday:

We did some more visiting of members, at 3 our new elders quorum president was having a bbq so he invited us over and we had some pollo asado (grilled chicken) which was delicious. We then joined him and 1 of his counselors for a mini presidency meeting, which was pretty good. We tried visiting some more people and to finish off the night we had dinner with the relief society president in our ward, we had some tasty corn, rice and enchiladas.

Sunday:

We had ward conference which I already talked about. We had dinner with the Rivera family again and talked about ward conference. After that we visited some people that didn't show up but nobody was home so that was kind of disappointing. We visited with the seminary teacher and talked with her and her daughter about the Galatians scripture that we talked about during 2nd and 3rd hour. That was about it.

That was the week, hope all is well back at home. Remember to do the basics because those are what matter the most.

Until next week

Love

Elder Goodbaudy 

 

Week 20 LaJoya. Texas

Hey Mom,

Of course I know who El Chapo is. That is why we don't wear the hats in public

Apparently we are doing something right in Newberg to have both counselors be from the Newberg Wards. That is pretty cool, it sounds like stake conference was pretty good.

Way to go Matt, I am glad that he has made it over that hurdle.(Referring to Matt getting his drivers license)

We had 77 at church, better but still not great.

The good word from La Joya is that we have Ward conference next week and the stake president wants as many people there as possible.

This ward is not the fastest at implementing new ideas so we are taking it one step at a time.

We had some nice weather yesterday, it was 75 with a nice breeze, it felt great.

Not much is new this week so here are the highlights:

Monday:

We had to go to Firestone to get our tire fixed so we just hung out there and waited for that to happen.

Tuesday:

We had a super good zone meeting about receiving revelation, it was super good and I learned a lot.

We then had an exchange so I was with Elder Vicharra who is from Peru and we visited some members and investigators.We had dinner with the Hernandez fam and it was super delicious. 

Wednesday:

We ended our exchange and Elder Barlow and I got back to work. We had ward family history and I helped Sister Hernandez and Sister Ramos find names to print so that was good.

We also discovered that Elder Barlow got pink eye so we decided we had to go to the doctor Thursday morning.

Thursday:

So we went to the doctor. We spent 3 HOURS waiting in the doctors office until they finally called Elder Barlow back. We talked to the doctor for 5 minutes and she said the following: 

"Yep you have pink eye, let me write you a prescription for that..." "Here you go have a great day."

So we went to Walgreen's and got the medicine that we needed.  

We had lunch with Brother Viillalpando and he told us about what he thinks the ward needs help with.

We then ate dinner with Bishop and had a good chat with him for a little bit.

Friday:

We had the usual coordination with Brother Guerrero, and all is well. 

We had a late lunch with the Ramos family and we had some delicious tostadas.

We met some members and talked with them and also with some investigators.

We ended the night by talking to our boy Eloy and he went on this big rant about the government, so that was good.

Saturday:

Sister Covarrubia, an older lady in the ward brought us some lunch which was delicious. 

We visited some members in the ward and we had the less active husband of a member in our ward ask us a whole bunch of questions so that was good. Nothing too crazy so it was pretty good.

At about 9:00 we were on our way home and we stopped by a hot dog stand and got a mexican hot dog because they are delicious. So that was a good way to end the night.

Sunday:

Church was good as usual. We got a new Elders Quorum president which was really nice, he is a returned missionary and he is a super good guy so I am excited to see what he does.

We had a late lunch with another Villalpando family and had a good time talking about the relation between Narnia and Christian beliefs about Jesus Christ. It is pretty interesting.

To end the night we practiced singing with some members in the ward and we are going to be singing next Sunday in Ward Conference.

That was about it for the week, no pictures or anything, it was a pretty boring week.

Tomorrow officially marks 6 months so we are going to have a little "party" tonight, should be good.

Something I learned this week  is that doing the small things makes a huge difference, so pray and read every day, go to church every week and look for the miracles.

Today we got a call from the stake President and he told us that we wants 120 people at ward conference so we have some work to do.

Send a prayer up there for the La Joya ward, we are going to need it this week.

Talk to you next week

Love,

Elder Goodbaudy

Week 19 LaJoya, Texas

Hey Mom,

Don't have a lot of time so this will be a little short.

We had 54 people at church yesterday, one of the lowest in the 6 months I have been here. Not great, but all we can do is improve (I think?)

The week has been pretty usual, it was a lot of talking with my new comp Elder Barlow about the area and what is going on right now.

Not much has happened so on to the highlights:

Monday:

Shipley and I went and got haircuts in the morning before we got transferred on Tuesday. After haircuts we went to a zone activity where we played soccer and ate burgers at a members house in Sharyland. After that we had dinner with the Brother Hernandez and he made us some nice tacos. We had a ward family home evening and had some good discussions so it was good. Shipley and I took pictures with some members and we were getting ready to leave. Eloy the boy bought us Chapo Guzman hats and Chapo Guzman shirts, so we had to take some pictures with him and the hats. That about ended off mine and Shipley's last day together, he is off to Laredo. (I did make sure Jaden knew exactly who El Chapo is, he said they wouldn't wear the hats and shirts in public. He had previously told me that he will tell me what Eloy the boy does for work when he comes home. Hmmm.....)

Tuesday:

Tuesday morning we went to seminary so Shipley could say goodbye to Brother Guerrero and a few other people. We then drove to the mission office and had transfers. I met Elder Barlow, said hi and bye to some people and then I was off with Elder Barlow back to La Joya. We met with Guerrero right away to talk with him about the ward and stuff like that. Then we went and saw a less active in the ward and talked to her about needing to come to church. To finish off the night we visited Bishop and talked with him about a plan for the ward and for the next 6 weeks while I am still here, because I will probably leave after this transfer.

Wednesday:

We had a stake meeting with the stake President to talk about what we need to do as a stake to help the wards out and get things moving. We had lunch at Wendy's with some other missionaries and then came back to La Joya. We did some planning and then had dinner with the Buentello family, it was pork, beans and some noodles, pretty delicious. After that we had ward council and for 2 hours talked with the ward council about what to do, it was decently productive but some people just don't know what they are doing so sometimes it is difficult.

Thursday:

We had MLC which is like a training for all the leaders and since Barlow is a district leader he went to that. So me and Elder Porter who is up the road from us in Rio Grande City and Elder Matthews who is in Hidalgo were in a trio for the day. It was pretty fun, I had been to Hidalgo once before on an exchange during an MLC so I kind of new the area a little bit. What is funny is that we had a dinner appointment with the same family that I ate with last time I was in an exchange in Hidalgo, but last time only the dad was there and this time he wasn't there so nobody remembered me. I also got to drive during that exchange so it was pretty fun.

Friday:

We had MLC until like 1 so we were still in a trio until then. We just drove around and tried to find some less active members. That was really it for Friday, the rest of the day we were back in La Joya trying to figure out who to visit so we tried by some people.

Saturday:

We had a district leader video chat in the morning so Barlow did that and I tried updating some information we have on less active members. We did some planning for the ward and for our area. We had dinner with sister Covarrubia who is literally just an awesome Mexican grandma, she made us a delicious chicken with some beans and noodles. After that we met with some less actives and then visited Eloy the boy. We saw what he was up to and read some of the Book of Mormon with him and then visited his sister who is less active and read with her. Eloy gave us a ride back to our apartment and Elder Barlow lost his keys, I had a house key so we could still get in but he lost the car keys and the keys to the chapel. We called Eloy and luckily they were in his truck so he brought them back over to our apartment.

Sunday:

We had church and like I said only 54 people. It was fast and testimony meeting so it was good. 2nd and 3rd hour were the usual. After church we were talking with bishop and he was telling us about how he has to submit a name to the stake president for the new elders quorum president. So we talked with him about that and he asked us about some members and what we thought of them and how they were when we visited them. We did that and then had dinner with the Rivera family, it was chicken again and some salad, pretty delicious. We went and visited the Nieto family with the Hernandez's really quick and then went back to the church to practice singing for the ward conference that we are having on the 22. That was pretty good, there are only like 7 people singing but is should be okay.

That was the week, I know it was rushed but not much time, but there are plenty of pictures so here we go...

Love,

Elder Goodbaudy

Elder Shipley and Elder Goodbaudy with Brother Hernandez.

Elder shipley and Elder Goodbaudy with the Riveras family.

 Zone picture.

 Brother Hernandez's tacos.

Elder Shipley and Elder Goodbaudy with Eloy the boy.

Elder Shipley and Elder Goodbaudy wearing their El Chapo hats.

Week 18 LaJoya, Texas

Hey Mom,

Conference was super good but I will talk about that in the highlights.

We got transfer calls last night. I am staying in La Joya for one more transfer and Elder Shipley is going to Laredo. My new companion will be Elder Barlow, I will meet him tomorrow so it should be fun.

Not much else is going on so on to the highlights:

Monday:

Someone who Shipley recently baptized came to visit us, she brought her son, her mom (who is a witch) and her straight out of Mexico Aunt. So we talked with them for a little bit and that was about it. Her mom apparently thinks that I am of Native American descent because of my last name. That is why she is a witch. She also thinks Elder Shipley will be a prophet. She is not a member.

Eloy took us out to eat at a seafood restaurant. So I figured I may as well try some seafood. I ended up having some salmon which was super good and I really enjoyed it. It tasted like chicken. That was pretty much it for Monday.

Tuesday:

We visited David Mendoza and helped him draw stuff for Easter Baskets for his nephews. After that we had dinner with the Hernandez's. It was good. That was about it for Tuesday.

Wednesday:

Wednesday we ate lunch with Eloy, he bought a full goat from Mexico and cooked it. We ate just bits and pieces of goat, it wasn't my favorite because some of it just looks nasty. I did however try goat brain. It has the texture and taste of cream cheese. It was a little weird thinking that I was eating the brain of a goat though. 

Nobody was at family history so we decided to leave early and go knock some doors. It had just stopped raining and there was thunder and lightning so that was pretty cool, just walking down the streets at 8:30 with lightning bolts in the sky.

Thursday:

We had lunch with one of the Villalpando families we had homemade tacos, they were super good. We then ate dinner with another Villalpando family and had chicken. He is the second counselor in the bishopric and so he just started going off about how everyone needs to be doing better and showing up and wearing white shirts and all that. It was pretty interesting. We went to the church and we were teaching a less active there, Bishop joined us for the lesson because a meeting he was going to go to fell through.

Friday:

We had coordination with Guerrero and then he brought us tacos. They were super greasy and kind of nasty though. While we were at the chapel some guys just came and asked for a tour so we showed them around, it was weird but kind of cool. We visited Eloy and he bought us elotes so that was really good. We had dinner with the Nieto family. It was super good, beans and potatoes and meat with tortillas.

Saturday:

We watched conference and it was super awesome. It was kind of cool because during the solemn assembly there were only 4 of us in the room in the church where they were broadcasting in English there were only about 10 in the room where they broadcasted Spanish. However the solemn assembly was still really cool because even though there were very few of us it was still significant for us to sustain President Nelson. In between sessions we went to McDonald's with the Rivera family and had lunch with them, we talked about an upcoming FHE tonight that the young women were in charge of. It should be interesting. Afternoon session was good and I really enjoyed it. We helped brother Hernandez move some stuff into his Taqueria. We were supposed to go to the stake center to watch conference but because we were helping brother Hernandez we were running late so us 3 just watched it together at the La Joya chapel in the clerks office. The Priesthood session was so amazing. It was probably one of my favorite sessions of conference ever. Especially at the end when President Nelson asked the men to stand when he called their priesthood office. He said "Elders" and us 3 stood up as we watched almost half of the audience in the conference center do the same. It was so powerful and really made me think of the scripture that says something along the lines of "where 2 or 3 are gathered, there I will be also"  it was very true for us 3 in that moment as we stood, nobody but God and us 3 knew that we were uniting with everyone from around the world to be better and who God needs us to be. Afterwards we told Brother Hernandez that the tradition is to go get food or ice cream or something after conference so he called sister Hernandez and his family met us at McDonald's and we ate there to finish off the night.

 Sunday:

Conference was amazing again. We had a little lunch with everyone in the building in between the sessions of conference. That was pretty nice, we just got to talk with the 15 people that watched conference at the chapel. The afternoon session was good but for real how many Temples are there in Utah now? All I know is there will be one in Russia and that is pretty awesome. After conference we visited some less actives and talked with them. At about 9:55 we got the call for transfers and Shipley and I were both completely shocked by the fact that he was leaving, we both thought for sure that I was the one leaving. 

Those are the highlights for the week. Not a whole lot of time left but conference was awesome, if you haven't watched it, go watch it. If you did watch it, go watch it again.

Talk to you guys next week

Love

Elder Goodbaudy

 Jaden with a girl and her family that his companion baptized awhile back. He isn't quite sure why he is having his picture taken with them.

A selfie because, "Why not?"

Week 17 LaJoya, Texas

Hey Mom,

Don't have a lot of time so this will be pretty short sweet and to the point.

License crack down hasn't been too bad, there were 74 at church so it is pretty normal.

Yes I got the package. I don't think you sent enough Hershey's kisses (I am kidding, that was a lot)

Matt is crazy, he shaved his legs, unbelievable! (Matt shaved his legs for his role as Pugsley in the musical The Addams Family.) 

The tortillas are really good, just make sure you roll them out thin enough or they will be more like flatbread.

Nathan Call is a deacon? That is crazy.

Alright Highlights time, this week was a good one:

Monday:

We went shopping and we decided to go to Burlington in McAllen and do a little bit of shopping. Burlington is my new best friend, I got a nice pair of shoes that were on clearance $20.

We went to HEB to shop for groceries because I had never been there. It is pretty interesting, we ended up buying a whole bunch of different kinds of chocolate cereal because as Eloy says "the flesh is weak"

We visited Eloy later that evening and we went and explored his monte (wilderness) with him to go get his horses, it was pretty cool.

After that he took us out to get tacos because we hadn't eaten so that was nice.

Tuesday:

We met Julian (Eloy's brother, he has like 5 brothers and a sister) he is a lot like one of Eloy's other brothers Valdo, Valdo used to be a professional singer in a Mexican band. Valdo is just drunk all of the time and he shares some weird stories. So Julian was a lot like that, he was drunk. 

We had dinner with the Hernandez family and it was like a chicken and rice thing, it was really good.

The highlight of my life however happened Tuesday night. We were teaching these 5 kids and it is a weird situation because their mom was baptized but then decided to go to a different church because she was confused, so she started going to another church and that is the church she raised her kids in. However she always lets us come in and have lessons with her kids and sometimes she joins us and participates, however she won't let her kids read the Book of Mormon and she doesn't let them come to our church. Also their dad who was in prison and then was out of their lives recently decided to come back for a while downright hates us and I have only seen him once but suffice it to say he doesn't like us at all. So Tuesday night we were teaching the 5 kids, 2 girls who are 15 and then another girl who is 12 another who is like 9 and a boy who is 12. They were the only ones home and their parents were gone selling chips and stuff. So we taught them a really good plan of salvation lesson. The problem is that the 2 15 year olds just talk and talk and talk. So it was like 9:10 and we were trying to decide who would say the closing prayer before we left and while we were deciding we saw the parents pull up in their car and we were actually freaking out. By some miracle (yes it was a miracle) the parents decided to pull around to the back side of the house to park and one of the 15 year olds said a 2 sentence prayer and we snuck out the front door without the parents knowing we were there. We literally snuck out of the house through the front door because the parents went around back. The Lord works in crazy ways.(I asked Jaden how they got in to teach the kids and he said he and his companion were walking by and their door was open  and the kid's invited them in to teach them.) 

Wednesday:

We knocked some apartments for most of the day and that was about it. We had dinner with the Rivera's, it was rice and meat, which is pretty usual down here, it was really good. We did visits Wednesday night So I went with Brother Hernandez and we visited some people and talked about how everything was going.

Thursday:

We had interviews with President Torres, he said my Spanish is really good so that was nice. After that we explored a super small settlement called Cuevitas at the edge of our area because apparently some members lived there. It was like maybe 10 houses, not very huge, we say some goats and a donkey. We knocked in Havana later on in day and we met some guy who was Pentecostal and had studied the Bible for like 30 years and he asked us some questions about the Holy Ghost, long story short we pointed out a scripture in the Bible and he basically ignored it but it basically proved him to be incorrect in his theories about the Holy Ghost, however he just ignored it.

Friday:

We had the usual coordination with Brother Guerrero and lunch. We went and finished knocking the apartments we knocked on Wednesday, we met a Messianic Jew, someone who believes that Jesus Christ was the son of God and so they are waiting for the second coming just like we are but they still believe in all of the traditions and rules from the Old Testament. Doesn't really make sense but okay. We went to PDP and we hadn't eaten all day so we stopped and got an elote (that Mexican street corn) After that we had a handoff lesson with some sister missionaries who were passing off an investigator to us, it was kind of weird because there were 2 boys that were about 6 and 7 and they just wouldn't be quiet, they just ran around and were pointing flashlights in our eyes, I just ignored them.

Saturday:

We had a service project at 9:00 am to help brother Lopez again clear down mesquite trees and I found out that every Mexican knows how to use a machete. They are super cool and I will definitely own a machete when I am older, they are super sick. We also had lunch there and ate a cow head, yes a literal cow head, picture included. You just grab a  tortilla and rip off some meat and eat it, it was actually really good. I also tried lingua, cow tongue, that was super delicious too. After the service project we went to the park to see the primary kids because they were having an Easter egg hunt party thing so we stopped by and said hi. After that we went to PDP again and we went back to the house we snuck out of on Tuesday. The Mom was there this times and she let us come in and have a lesson with them. Twice it was almost revealed that we snuck out Tuesday night and that we were over there but somehow she didn't find out, so we are still nice. After the lesson we had another service project to help some other missionaries paint another members house so we did that for the rest of the night.

Sunday:

We had 74 people at church, the Buentello's spoke in Sacrament meeting and gave really good talks about testimonies. 3rd hour our ward high counselor Bishop Vargas (he used to be bishop in another ward) gave a really good lesson about keeping the Sabbath day holy. After church we visited some less actives and then we were in the area of the Rivera's so we went by them and they asked us if we had eaten. We hadn't so they fed us some baby back ribs that they had had earlier, they were super good. We talked with them for a little bit and then it was time for us to head home.

That was our week. Rumor is that I might be leaving next Tuesday April 3rd so we will see what happens. You will all find out next Monday. Also we will be going to the church to watch General Conference.

Elote!

                                                                             Cow head!


Love you guys!

Elder Goodbaudy

Week 16 LaJoya, Texas

Hey Mom,

Church was good, we had 74 there. Apparently they just passed a new law here in Texas that when a cop pulls you over they have to ask for some form of I.D. like a license or something to prove that you are here legally. Here in Texas you have to be a citizen to get your license so there are a lot of people that drive without licenses but now because of this new law people here without papers are afraid to drive more than necessary. So far we are still having people at church but we will see how things change as the law starts to be applied more and more.

Eloy is doing good, we haven't seen him for a few days. He is usually pretty busy, he is gone a lot for work. 

Food is still good and I think I am still losing a little bit of weight. We will be going to the mission office I think later this week so I will get it then.

Not much is new but on to this weeks highlights:

Monday:

Sister Nieto gave us Tacos and while we were driving we saw a whole bunch of cops on the road, apparently an accident had happened. So we parked a ways down the road and ate tacos while we watched everything happen. We saw a helicopter land, we weren't sure if it was life-lite or not. 

Tuesday:

We went on exchanges with the zone leaders so I stayed in La Joya with elder Keck (one of our zone leaders) while Shipley went to Hidalgo with elder Krommenhoek (the other zone leader) We had dinner with the Hernandez family and Sister Hernandez made super good flautas (what us gringos call taquitos) I took a picture because they looked super good and were super delicious too. Apparently Elder Keck has a tradition that whenever he is on an exchange he gets ice cream so we stopped at McDonalds at like 8:55 and got mcflurries.

Wednesday:

Wednesday morning Elder Shipley came back with Elder Krommenhoek so we swapped back and then went about our usual business. We had Whataburger with Eloy because he offered to feed us as he usually does, and people down here don't like it when you say no to food. Then we had family history night and nobody was there so I went on to family search and tried tracing our ancestry all the way back to Adam and Eve and I did it. So that was pretty cool.

Thursday:

We didn't do a whole lot on Thursday, we met a pretty cool guy named Francisco. He told us that he read the Bible almost every day because he wanted to learn more and more so we taught him the restoration and left him with a Book of Mormon. We ate spaghetti with the Villalpando family and it was delicious. Then since all of our plans cancelled on us we went out to McCook again to try and contact that member, turns out the member doesn't live there but we did have some nice conversation with the guy who did live there. We also stopped by the Catholic church they have in McCook, apparently they have a patron of farmers and he has a statue there. (picture included)

Friday:

We had weekly planning followed by coordination and lunch. Brother Guerrero brought us tortas which were delicious. We saw Francisco again, he didn't have the chance to read so we read with him a little bit. After that we were just visiting people and we were out near where our Bishop lives because we were going to eat with them that night and we saw a group of people carrying a cross and putting white crosses on gates and fences for Easter. We visited a family in our ward, the Cruz family, it was actually the first time we had visited them, they were really nice. Sister Cruz talked for almost an hour though, she told us basically her entire life story. We ate dinner with Bishop and it was good as usual. Our bishop here is a really good guy, he is really funny and likes Shipley and I a lot so it is always nice to have a chat with him over dinner.

Saturday:

Saturday morning we had a service project up at brother Lopez's house. he has a whole bunch of mesquite trees in his back yard where he is trying to build a house for his daughter so we went and helped him clear some of the trees in the front and side of the house. And if you didn't know mesquite trees have giant thorns all over them so it was pretty interesting. We were there until about 11:30 and we cleared quite a bit. The chainsaws that people had weren't really working so we went at it with machetes and it went pretty well. Also it turns out that blunt sticks work pretty good and removing some decent sized branches off of mesquite trees. During the day basically everybody cancelled on us and so we didn't do a whole lot. It started getting a little late and we decided to get something to eat, so we went to a taqueria that Eloy had taken Elder Shipley to before. It was really good, I had a torta and Shipley had a huge synchronizada it was gigantic (picture included)

Sunday:

Church was the usual, we had 74 so it was decently full. So we have had this guy coming to church for the past few weeks and he is the husband of a sister in our ward named Sister Marroquin. He doesn't believe in our church and he kind of is Catholic but he doesn't really believe in anything at all. He reads the Bible and says he believes in it but he also says he doesn't so we honestly don't know. He also drinks quite a bit so that could be part of this, anyway he makes gospel principles such an entertaining place to be. So this week his big fit was about Sodom and Gomorrah and why it was destroyed. He also in the past has asked why we read from the gospel principles book which was written by men and not by God, however, when you ask him who wrote the Bible he says that he thinks very smart MEN wrote it, so he doesn't make any sense. We also have explainedover and over again that we don't worship the gospel principles book or treat it as scripture which is why it doesn't matter that it was written by men but he doesn't get it. Anyway after church we had dinner and an FHE with the Lopez family, the other Lopez family, the Nieto family, sister Cavazos and the Buentello family. So that was pretty good. We had some really good food, one was like pasta with some mayo I think and cheese with bits of ham. the other one was like shredded chicken with carrots and mayo, they were surprisingly really good. After that we just tried visiting people. We ended up visiting the Rivera family and talking with them about various gospel topics so that was pretty cool. 

That is about all for this week

Love

Elder Goodbaudy

  Flautas made by Sister Hernandez

A dove that we saw in a cage outside someone's home.

 Me and some statues that we saw while proselyting.

 dragonfly that flew into our apartment

Parakeets that we also saw outside the same person's home

The name of the Patron of Farmers

The other statue of the Patron of Farmers

 Me next to the Patron of Farmers

Shipley's synchronizada from that taqueri

Week 15 LaJoya, Texas

Hey Mom,

This week was pretty good. I am not surprised that Matt forgot he had a talk, however I am also not surprised that he pulled it off very well. 

Good old work, something I don't have to worry about, yet.

Yeah I have seen that we have won 9 straight, I am liking what the Blazers are doing.

Yes time is flying, I have almost been out for 6 months. April 17th is my 6 month mark, time is flying like crazy.

Alright well, I guess on to the highlights:

Monday:

Monday night we had a ward family home evening, Elder Shipley and I were in charge of doing the lesson part so we decided to talk about the talk called overcoming the world and we talked about how we can overcome the world by making choices everyday to be better than we were the day before.

Tuesday:

Tuesday we had zone conference for 7 hours in McAllen. It was super good and president Torres had a really good training about needing to just keep working hard and waiting for results to come. Afterwards we had a mini family home evening with the Hernandez family, Sister Hernandez had us all read a little bit out of the Gordon B. Hinckley teachings of the Presidents book and we talked about missionary work. Afterwards we had sandwiches which were really good.

Wednesday:

We spent most of Wednesday morning and early afternoon knocking doors because we need to find some more people to teach. Eloy the boy called us and asked if we wanted to visit some people with him so we went and visited his brother and sister, the sister is less active and the brother isn't a member. The brother, Valdo, shared a story about how one time he was saved by the archangel Raphael who was in the form of a bird, Raphael flew down and gave life to him when he was almost on the verge of death. He drinks all the time so I took this one with a grain of salt. After that Eloy took us out to Whataburger to eat. To finish off the night we had ward council and we mainly just sat and listened as usual.

Thursday:

Thursday we did some more knocking, Eloy called us again and asked if we wanted to get lunch at a Taqueria (basically a Mexican restaurant) so we met him there and I had some delicious tacos. Afterwards we visited his other brother Hipolito who is less active. We read a little bit from the scriptures and then Hipolito's wife made us more tacos (so much food) afterwards Eloy and Hipolito were going off about politics because apparently city politics here is super corrupt so they charge way extra for just about everything. We visited David Mendoza who is less active. Then we had nothing else to do and everything had cancelled so we stopped by the Hernandez's for a few minutes to see how they were.

Friday:

We had coordination with Brother Guerrero at Wing-stop so we also ate some chicken wings. After that we stopped by the Ramos family to see how they were doing. After them we stopped by Brother Guerrero because it had been a while since we actually visited him. At about 8:30 we tried stopping by some people who live a ways away from La Joya, they weren't home so we knocked a door and ended up teaching the restoration to a guy and he said we could come back. We got back to the apartment and still had like 10 minutes so we visited a guy who we had talked to before and we said a prayer with him.

Saturday:

Saturday morning we helped a lady that Brother Guerrero knew by taking some bags of trash from her yard to the dump. I was able to see a little bit of an actual border wall that had been built by president Bush in Penitas, so that was cool. After that we helped Brother Hernandez at his Taqueria, we painted for a few hours and then he invited us over for an early dinner with them. While we were painting a guy who has a barbershop on the other side of the road came over and talked to us, he told us that the schools here are super good. They are privately funded so kids always get free lunch and breakfast, if kids play sports they get all the gear for free and they get to keep it, they also can graduate with an associates degree by the time they leave high school after 4 years. This guy who was telling us all of this used to be a teacher at one of the schools. So we ate dinner with Hernandez's and I learned the secret to how Mexicans eat super hot chili's and peppers and stuff in their food. First off they cut it into super small pieces and just have a tiny piece of pepper or chili mixed in with a big bite of food. Second most of the time they pick out the seeds which are the hottest part. After dinner we went and visited some less actives in Havana.

Sunday:

Sunday at the start of church there were about 37 people there total (probably because of the time change) however there were still only 37 people there. The guy who usually plays the piano during sacrament wasn't there so they asked me to play the piano, so I did. I secretly know how to play really well so I played the piano during all of sacrament meeting. Just kidding, it is an electric piano so all I had to do was push the button of what song to play and it played. Luckily right after the sacrament everybody showed up and we ended up having 64 people at sacrament meeting. There were supposed to be 2 speakers but since one of them wasn't there the second speaker went first. He is an older guy in probably his 60's his name is Brother Quiroz and he is super awesome, he has so much respect for the church and everything about it. So he gave a talk about needing to follow the commandments and pay our tithing and be worthy to go to the Temple. He talked for 35 minutes, the bishopric had to tell him twice to start wrapping it up. So he finally did and then we had to end. During second hour Shipley and I taught the 8-11 year old primary kids because their teacher wasn't there (she had asked us to teach on Wednesday) so we taught them about Abraham and the covenant that God and Abraham made. After church we decided to go visit people who weren't there at church. So first we had hot dogs at the church and then we left, I went with brother Hernandez and we visited 3 people. After visits Shipley and I did some studying and then at 7 we left to go visit someone who we had an appointment with. They cancelled so we decided to drive all the way out to the middle of "Narnia" to a small settlement of like 5 houses and a gas station called McCook. It was 20 miles 1 way and on either side of the road was just fields for all 20 miles. It was like 8:30 at night and it was really creepy but people wanted us to confirm if the member lives there or not so we went. It was super scary though so we didn't even knock on the door, we left a card with our number and the got out of there. We went back another 20 miles and got home still a little freaked out from McCook.

That was the week. Pretty entertaining and pretty interesting.

Also did you send a journal yet? I haven't actually checked yet I am just curious if you have or not? I am almost out of room, but I can make it about another month.

I hope all is well there in the North West.

Talk to you guys next week

Love

Elder Goodbaudy