Semaine 16: Quelques baptelmes! (Week 16: Some Baptisms!

October 28, 2019 7:06 AM MST

Salut mes chers amis, soyez le bienvenue a ce mail (Hi my dear friends, welcome to this email)

This week was nice

At the start of the this week, I was a little frustrated!  We have a lot of amis, but a lot of them aren't progressing as we hope.  And it's been like that for this whole transfer so far.  After a day of lessons that didn't go as we had hoped, me and my companion just sat down at dinner and talked about how things were going.  He was telling me how he feels like he's working really hard this transfer, more than others, but we just can't find success, and that that's just how the mission goes sometimes.  That talk kinda helped me just relax, because I'd been kinda stressed thinking I haven't been doing enough to find success.  But at the end of the day, it's always the person's choice to accept the gospel.  No matter how hard you work, sometimes you just won't find success.

But, God blessed us this week!  Yesterday was great.  After not having anyone come to church for a few weeks, we had  show up!  They both really liked it.  One had to leave after sacrament meeting, but he said next week he's going to bring his son.  And the other stayed, and we taught him after church and fixed his baptism for the 10th!  His name is Jonas.  It was really cool, and he's so ready.  He was participating in priesthood like he was already a member, and he was asking us if it was possible for him to serve a mission.

But not only that, yesterday evening we had a lesson with another one of our amis, and we fixed her baptism too!  She's Muslim, but her 2 brothers are members.  We asked her if she had read the Book of Mormon and prayed, and she said yes.  So we asked if she got a response, and she said she had a dream about everything that she asked about in the prayer.  So that was her answer, and she was ready to be baptized!  We're so happy for her, she'll be getting baptized on the 10th too.

And at the end of the day, I was looking at our numbers for the week, and we met every goal we set for ourselves this week!  That was a nice surprise, because our numbers have been pretty bad so far this transfer.  Basically, this week started with a little frustration, but we pushed forward and just had faith that we were doing what we needed to be doing.  And then this week quickly came together, and we found a lot of success!  It was a nice little tender mercy after such a rough start.

I've got pictures for this week, but I'm not able to send them right now, hopefully I can send them a little bit later, because I've got a few.

Thanks for all your love and support, love you all!!  Happy Halloween and enjoy the snowwww

Elder Goddard

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Elder Goddard wanted me to send these photos out this week since the cyber he was at did not have great connection.  Thank you to all for being such a great support to him!  Thank you for all the prayers in his behalf and for emailing him.  It makes his week!!  Thank you for your love and support!

Love,
Jessica Goddard

This little boy stole Elder Goddard's name tag and bag and wanted to be like him.  :)

This little boy stole Elder Goddard's camera and took the following 3 pictures of him and his companion

Apparently it gets hot doing their laundry.  Haha!

15

Monday, October 21, 2019 7:00 AM MST

This week was good!

Yesterday was stake conference!  Our branch rented a bus to drive us over to the stake center.  They told everyone to be there before 8 am so we could be  to the stake center by 9.  So like always, with help from the rain, everyone showed up at 9:30 am.  30 minutes after stake conference started.  Buuut it turned out the branch presidency lied to us and stake conference started at 10, so we were on time for once!  Pretty funny how they have to plan for everyone being an hour and a half late.  The bus was fun though, just reminded me of riding the bus with the soccer guys.  I got off and started looking for gatorade to carry to the field, and then I remembered I'm in Africa.

We went to our recent convert Salim's house this week, and he's 14 and was hanging out with his friends.  We were just talking with all of them, and after a while they went inside and just brought out this huge bucket of rice.  They gave us spoons and we all just started diggin in.  It was kinda like how we'd order a pizza at home, but instead they just cooked a bunch of rice and then threw it all in a bucket.  I can't wait to start doing that with my friends back home.  Pizza's overrated.

We didn't have any baptisms this week, and we didn't schedule any either, but I thought it was a good week.  With my language being better lately, it's been fun to just talk with our amis.  I feel like I can connect with them better and just consider them true friends.  So it's pretty cool.  It's important to teach them the gospel, but it's also very important to just be a good friend, especially if they don't accept the lessons very well.  We need to show them that we love them no matter what, and I think we did a good job of that this week.

A question that I get asked a lot on the mission is like why is there suffering?  And they think suffering means God doesn't answer our prayers.  My grandpa sent me a scripture last week about this, Mosiah 24:15.  It's about how God strengthened Alma and his brothers through their trials, so they were easier and they could be patient with them.  People think that God doesn't answer our prayers because he doesn't remove our trials when we pray.  I pulled out this scripture like 3 times this week and was happy to explain that God does answer our prayers, but maybe not in the way we want.  Sometimes he'll remove the trial, but sometimes we need it to grow.  That's why we're here anyways.  But he'll strengthen us through our trials if we ask Him.  He will help us, but sometimes we just need to grow.  I've learned that on my mission.

Hope all is well back home and that it's a lot colder than it is out here.  Love you all.

Elder Goddard

Florence

Stew and Pap

Stylin'

The bus going to Stake Conference

Happy Elder!

Jordan's roommates Elder Tagoe from Ghana and Elder Zaza from Liberia

Elder Drogowski and Elder Goddard

ice cream

currency

His swollen ankle from rolling it :(

Quatorzieme Semaine (fourteenth week)

Monday, October 14, 2019 10:49 AM

Week 14:

We started off with Zone Conference on Tuesday.  And it was great!  It's so fun to see all the missionaries again and hang out with them all day, especially my friends from the MTC.  Because we actually have mission experiences to talk about now!  Also, I remember thinking at the end of the last zone conference, when I didn't understand much, how much more I'd be able to understand this next time.  And I was actually able to understand a lot more!  It's cool to see how far I've come.  I was able to understand almost everything!  Me and Elder Drogowski also had to do a role play lesson in front of everyone there.  I was nervous, but it went really well!  People said a lot of good things about what we did, and everyone was impressed by my French!  So that was a good confidence boost for me.

Wednesday I went on a split with one of the zone leaders.  His name is Elder Mueller, from Virginia.  He hasn't even been on the mission for a year yet, but this is already his 3rd transfer as a zone leader.  He's a cool guy and it was fun to be with him for the day.  It was also motivating to see him work for a day.  He's got big love for the people and for the work, and is such a great teacher.  He really knows his scriptures, and how to teach to touch people's hearts.  It's got me motivated that if I keep working hard, maybe one day I can arrive at that point.

This week we had some really good lessons.  Me and Elder Drogowski have just been so focused on letting these people know that we're not here to convince them that our church is true, but we're here to help people have their own experiences to know the truth for themselves.  And we've really focused on hearing the people's needs, and teaching that, even when we've planned to teach something different.  We were teaching Souer Florence, and she had the question of why she would have to be baptized again.  So we spent like an hour explaining it to her.  But even then she didn't seem convinced, which is okay, because we're not here for that.  So we invited her to go pray about it, because it's the Holy Ghost that's going to tell her the truth.  It just felt like a good lesson and we were teaching how we're supposed to be teaching.

But despite all the good lessons we felt like we had this week, we didn't get anyone to show up to church this Sunday.  The whole week kind of builds up to Sunday and how many people are going to come to church.  So it's a little frustrating and challenging to work hard and think we've touched the hearts of our amis, just to have no one come.  We had a big emphasis to invite people to church at zone conference, so we invited a lot of people, not even people we're teaching.  So we were a little down about that, not seeing any results this week.  

But we keep moving on.  We're excited with how we've been teaching and we're praying to find some better success this week.  Hopefully schedule some baptisms!  On verra.  (we'll see)  We trust that we have the Lord on our side, and if we continue to teach with the Spirit how the Savior would that we'll find some success.  Just have to keep pushing through.  

Thanks for everything like always.  I love you all and pray that you have a great week this week.

Elder Goddard

MTC buddies reunited at zone conference

Skipping rocks in the street!!

Love these pictures with the kids!

<3

Elder Elswood...he is the one that pranked Jordan right out of the MTC! :)

Elder Mueller

French toast they made!  A little burnt in parts, (haha!) but overall looks yummy!

La conference generale: Semaine Treize (The general conference: week thirteen)

Monday, October 7, 2019 6:45 AM MST

Pretty good week this week,

Our week started with having to say goodbye to my old roommates, Elder Taylor and Elder Kombo.  It was really sad to see them go, because we all became such good friends and made some great memories.  But most of all they both helped give me a blessing of comfort in like my first week here, so I'm real grateful for them and their example.  But saying goodbye also means saying hello to new roommates!  We have Elder Zaza from Liberia and Elder Tagoe from Ghana.  They're almost like exact opposites, Elder Zaza is pretty passive and really quiet, while Elder Tagoe is more assertive and laughs realllly loud haha.  They're great guys though and they work hard and I'm excited to be living with them.

I'm not sure if you heard, but conference was this week?  We went to the only building in Togo showing conference Sunday conference and watched it in French.  All the other missionaries were there, so it was fun to see all of them again.  Because we're ahead in time, Sunday conference hadn't even started yet so we only watched Saturday's conference.  And they started with showing the Women's Session, and I actually understood well!  But by the time we got around to the other sessions I was tired of trying to understand so I didn't get as much out of those.  So what I got out of conference is what I can be doing to be a better daughter of God.  (haha!)

This week has been really good for the language!  I've felt real comfortable this week speaking and listening.  There's been times when I've been teaching a lesson and I find myself just talking, and I kinda stop myself because I'm not thinking much about the words, so I feel like I might've messed up, but I think back to what I said and I realize it was right!  It's weird, because I'm not used to that, but I've really been blessed and have really made an improvement.  My listening has improved too.  I was able to understand conference well, and also other Elders who are native French speakers!  I was able to crack some jokes with one of them yesterday at conference, haha, it was fun!  This week I've just seen the fruits of my language labors this week, and I'm grateful to my Heavenly Father for blessing me with my abilities.

Lessons this week were alright.  It rained 3 or 4 times this week, which never helps.  Basically if it rains here everyone just forgets about their responsibilities and just goes to bed.  So there's not too much you can do.  So that was the first half of the week, this weekend we finished pretty strong.  We taught a young man Saturday night and it went so well.  I really felt like we were teaching by the Spirit and making an impact.  Elder Drogowski told him our lessons are like if we gave him water.  We give him water, but it's up to him to drink it.  And for him to drink, he has to read the Book of Mormon and pray about it.  That was an image that really helped him understand.  Elder Drogowski told me the Holy Ghost brought that to his mind during that lesson.  Pretty cool.

Well that's about it for this week.  It was a pretty good one, but I've been a bit homesick too at times.  Watching conference and thinking I'm going to be here for 3 more of them makes it seem long to me for some reason.  So I just won't think about it!  As always, ca va aller.  (it will be fine)

Thanks for emails, prayers, and support.  I love you all.  Have a good week.

Elder Goddard

The 2nd rat they have had to kill in their house!  Ugh!!

Cereal!

They aren't excited at all!! Haha!