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?"