Week 5 Brownsville, Texas

Hey Mom,

Don't have much time this week. I am glad the trip is going good and that all is well.

It has been really hot here too, it rained yesterday for the first time all summer, it is supposed to rain more this week, should be good. 

The week was pretty good. We don't have a whole lot of appointments because most of our time is spent biking from place to place, but we try. 

The ward here functions really well so we don't really have to help with anything. 

Sorry no pictures this week, nothing super new. 

Yeah bike tires are doing good, I got some that are a bit more heavy duty, so they should hold up better than the original ones. 

My favorite thing this week was that when we had interviews with President Torres he showed us the movie Coco. The movie is super good, it talks about family history, it also is about the Hispanic culture so it was really good. 

The hardest thing has honestly been biking, it is hot and we don't have to bike super far but there is always a lot of wind blowing against us, oh well.

Dinner appointments here don't happen as much as they did in La Joya. The members mainly just give us gift cards for restaurants and then we eat there. The people are super busy and never really have time to feed us so that is why. 

I have not tried fried ice cream and everything I have eaten has been pretty normal so far. 

On to the highlights of the week

Monday:

We played soccer and then just kind of hung out. 

Tuesday:

We had district meeting which was good, we also helped some of the youth with family history for mutual. 

Wednesday:

We had interviews with President Torres and like I said he surprised us by showing us the movie Coco. It is super good. President Torres and I talked about the relation between our agency and God's plan for us. He explained it like a game of chess. God puts things in out lives to try and influence us to have the best outcome in our lives possible, nevertheless we can still choose to do the opposite of what God has tried to help us do. 

Thursday:

We had dinner with Sister Diaz, it was good. They fed us fried chicken and rice. 

Friday:

We knocked on this lady's door and she tried to tell us about how God gave us all we need in the Bible and that prophets are no longer necessary. We showed her in the Bible where it says otherwise. She still didn't understand and finally had to go do something, her son was there and he asked us for a copy of the Book of Mormon, so you could say we won. 

Saturday:

In the morning we had coordination meeting and talked about our investigators and good stuff like that. 

Sunday:

We had church, it was pretty good. There was barely anyone there because the world cup (a big soccer event that happens every 4 years) is happening right now and Mexico played Germany Sunday morning. So nobody was there, but Mexico won so I guess people are happy. After church the sisters in out district had a baptism so we went to that and it was pretty cool. 

This morning we played soccer as a zone and we had a good time. We helped some missionaries move apartments and then we went shopping. That was about it. 

That is about it for the week. Also happy Father's day to all the dad's out there. 

Hope all continues to go well next week.

Love

Elder Goodbaudy 

Week 4 Brownsville, Texas

Hey Mom,

Don't have a lot of time this week. 

This week was good. There was just water that had spilled from a cooler so we made Griffeth mop it up.  (The "Deenosaur Hunter" posted a video of Elder Griffeth mopping the floors at the church.) 

Church was good, honestly I am still getting used to having church in a chapel with pews, in La Joya I was so used to folding chairs. 

Wow, that is crazy that all of that happened at grad night. (I told Jaden about the downpour during graduation and about a kid who had checked in for the grad night party, but was pulled aside by the police for a sobriety test, unfortunately he didn't get to attend the party.)

I asked Jaden what was his favorite lesson to teach. His response: Honestly my favorite lesson to teach is just whatever the spirit says. I love it when we don't have a lesson plan and we just go by what the people we are teaching need. 

I asked Jaden about his favorite acts of service. He said: The coolest service that we have been able to give has been when people's cars have died on the road and we have gotten to help them push their car off to the side. 

I asked Elder Goodbaudy what he wishes he would have done more to prepare for his mussion. He answered: I wish I would have just tried to learn a little bit of Spanish before I left, to at least know a little bit. 

Finally I asked him about the most difficult part of being a missionary, He said: The most difficult thing is honestly just staying busy and trying to find something to do when everything else has fallen through. 

School is almost out,  wow. Time flies.  School is already out down here,  they got out this week.  

Birthday wise I am still thinking,  I will let you know soon.

Thanks for liking the hair, I am still getting used to it. 

Sean gagged at the formaldehyde! (Shark dissection at Outdoor School). Wow, yeah (a career) in medicine is not for him I guess. 

As for what happened this week, not much, our mission is really trying to work on family history and we will see how that goes. 

All is as usual. 

Hope all goes well during the week.

Love

Elder Goodbaudy 

Week 3 Brownsville, Texas

Hey Mom,

The week was pretty, it was pretty good pretty long and pretty tiring. 

Biking in the high 90's has been about how you would expect. Although we are never super sweaty when we go and teach people, so that is nice. 

We didn't do anything for memorial day weekend, we just did the usual missionary thing. 

Looks like the week went well. That is good to hear. Glad you guys are staying busy. 

Our fast and testimony meeting was pretty good. Something that is cool that I have seen down here is that they strongly encourage, from over the pulpit, that the kids and youth should come and bear their testimonies, and they actually do go up so that is pretty cool. Testimony meetings down here are fairly good about just sharing what you believe and then being done, I hope I don't jinx it though. 

Honestly I don't really remember what has happened this week. There was a lot of biking and then some more biking. We taught some people and that was good. We talked to a guy named Moses for a little bit, that was kind of cool. We also had some super good lessons with people and they talked about wanting to be baptized so that was good. 

Today was pretty fun, this morning we played soccer which I enjoy playing a lot more than I used to. We then went to a Chinese place and had lunch. I had some really good sweet and sour chicken. We then shopped and now we are just having a lazy rest of our P-Day.

All in all that is it for this week.

Talk to you in 7 days

Love

Elder Goodbaudy 

Week 2 Brownsville, Texas

Hey Mom,

Don't have a lot of time, this one will be short.

We played basketball just earlier for P-day, we played for a good 2 hours, it was so good to ball.

Regarding my "deenosaur name" as they call it apparently there was a band in the 80's or 90's called salt and pepper (Salt N Pepa and the song is "I Am The Body Beautiful" released in 1995) , and they had a song called "body beautiful" so that is how. (A member in the Brownsville area does a spoof on the Crocodile Hunter, he gives all the missionaries Deenosaur Names and he is the Deenosaur Hunter.)

Yeah the ward is a bit bigger, attendance is around 100 every week.

Yeah it is super hot and humid here, it makes biking pretty rough. 

Nothing new here for the holiday. Also I just bought new tubes, these new ones are a bit thicker so they don't pop as easy. 

This was a good week. Honestly I don't really remember what happened this week. I gave a talk in Sacrament meeting yesterday about Charity, in Spanish, that was good. 

Today we went to the zoo here in Brownsville and that was super cool. I took a whole bunch of pictures so I won't put all of them in the email but I will share them with you over Google drive. 

Like I said I am short on time and I don't really remember what happened this week so that is pretty much it. 

Hope all continues to go well at home.

Love,

Elder Goodbaudy

 Stingrays!

 Elder Goodbaudy with Flamingos!

 Elder Goodbaudy with an Orangutang!

 Jellyfish!

Giraffes!