Hope, faith and relying on the Spirit!

I’ve been learning a lot from training. I’ve also learned a lot about the principles of hope and faith the last couple weeks. I had an interview with President Bize this week, and we talked a lot about this. Training has really pushed me to try and be the best possible example I can be. It has really pushed me to rely on the Spirit and be obedient so that I can have the Spirit with me. I have learned lately that just being positive helps you so much… if you are convinced nothing is going to work, nothing will work. It has just really pushed me to learn more, and be able to always have the Spirit with me. 

This week ended with a rather interesting phone call from the AP's (Assistant's to President). Normally there is a transfer going on right now, but we knew already that none of us were going to move, so we were not expecting a call. But we got a call, and I answered with a rather confused tone. He explained to me that my comp and I will not be moving, but we will be getting a third companion. We are going to be in a trio. I am not quite sure what to think yet as I’ve never experienced what it is like to be in a trio before… not sure how this is going to work. Don’t know the Elder yet. He has been on a mission about four months now and is from the island of Rangiroa. We will see how this all plays out. Oh and my current comps English is improving a lot. No word on his U.S. visa.

Other than that, my Tahitian studying has tripled, and it has been improving so much. The members of the Ward are helping me a lot. They gave me a bunch of books in Tahitian and a super good Tahitian dictionary. We did a lesson with a old Tahitian Mamie and I managed to teach a fair bit of the first lesson in Tahitian. I was teaching very simply, but that is super cool to me. I understand most of what people say now. The goal of helping the Mamies and Papies (older folks) in the Ward is so that I can speak it fluently by the end of my time here in Papehue.

I have started a list of "things that are difficult but not impossible.” 

Well, thats my email this week, love you guys. i didnt really take many pictures this week, so enjoy Minouche (the cat).

Nana

La maitai oe tei mahana. 

Have a nice day. 

Elder Goodwin

Elder Porter "porting" moi

Me trying to "port" Elder Porter

Enjoy Minouche!

I've still got a little bit of Canada behind my watch

Another day in Papehue paradise

Bike is doing really well. I feel like I am going to stay here in Papehue for at least five more months, so there will be plenty of biking pictures.

Cool Tahitian thing that we realized the other day. “Pape" means water or liquide in Tahitian and "hu" means fart. So if you misspell Papehue just slightly it means liquide fart.

Other than that, this week was one of the hardest weeks on my mission. I mean it didn’t get to me too bad... but this week we had a lot planned. Honestly our first couple days this week we had something effective to do every hour during the day. I was so pumped to just go and do, but it just so happened that everything on Tuesday and Wednesday was cancelled--even one of our faatamaaraas was cancelled. So when something is cancelled we have plan B's and plan C's to activate. We worked to hard, we didn’t return to the house at all basically, and we still finished the week with six lessons. flip. What ever, there is always next week. 

Other than that nothing interesting happened, my tan has improved, thats for sure.(head and arms only)  Vaughn Leavitt sent me a letter, and it was so inspirational I ended up printing it off, and I have it on me at all times. Thanks Vaughn. 

I have nothing really interesting to write, so I’m just going to share a funny scripture.  Hosea 4:5. luv ya

Elder Goodwin

We teach a lady who has a cute cat... this is what all the lessons with her are like.

Elder Thebaud

Training a new Elder...

Hey fam jam! a bunch of news this week.

I did in fact buy a new camera.  It is a Sony camera, it is pretty nice. It is not water proof however. (the options here for cameras are very limited) but it takes nice photos. It was about 38000 francs. If I wanted one of similar or equal quality as my last one it would be about 63000 francs... but it'll have to do. 

This week started off with a split with the zone leaders, that was really fun, because Elder Porter is just absolutely hilarious. He ended up getting transfered during this week to Papeete, so he is no longer our zone leader. We ended up getting a bunch of work done, even if we had to cover two secteurs for a day or two. Then I got a call Monday night that I will be training... That scared me a little bit. My companion is Elder Thebaud who is a Tahitian from Punaauia who is waiting for his visa for the U.S. (Arizona, Scotsdale, Mission), but since it takes so long to get visas now, he will be doing his training here. He has not yet gone to the MTC, which is kinda tough, because he hasn’t had any training at all on how to teach and he doesnt know all the missionary rules yet. But it'll come I have no major concerns. He seems to be a really focused guy. 

The mission life went pretty great this week. Found three new investigators, and they seem to be interested. I love finding new people to teach because I LOVE teaching. It is my favorite part of the mission is helping people understand the gospel. 

This week has been great. Love you guys.

Elder Goodwin

Email from Russell’s mission president this week.

Dear Parents,

We are pleased to inform you that your son, Elder Russell James Goodwin , has just been called as a Trainer in our Mission. You can be proud of him for this important calling. We congratulate him for his dignity and dedication in the service of our Lord Jesus Christ by teaching the Polynesian people. We encourage him in this direction so that he can always communicate with the power of the Holy Ghost to witness the Restored Gospel and that his testimony will be received with understanding by those he will have to instruct.

Thank you for having largely contributed to his spiritual growth and may our Heavenly Father bless you for your support.

Warm regards,President Pierre F. BIZE

Tahiti Papeete Mission

I had splits with Elder Porter (Arizona) and Elder Swartz (Washington) this week

No one came to English class this week so Elder Porter gave a lesson on Star Wars deep doctrine to us!

One of my investigators from Taapuna who just got married and baptized

My Tahitian ukelele.

My new companion Elder Thebaud

Our zone

No pictures this week. Camera stolen :(

This week was very interesting to say the least. To start it off on not so bad news. My companion, Elder Tapuhiro, who was waiting for his visa to Australia got his visa on Friday and left this morning. I’m happy for him but I will miss him and do not have a companion for at least a couple days. I will just be on splits with the zone leaders and some of the other Elders to fill the void. 

Bad news. Last P-day about 20 minutes after I finished emailing you guys, a horrible incident happened without anyone noticing for at least an hour. 

Chapels hear are very open, so the door to the clerks office just leads to the outside, and after I finished emailing I placed my bag just outside the door to the office. We where 4 missionaries using two rooms right next to each other and I assumed the bag is in view from both rooms and that we have 4 missionaries, and that there is no one at all at the chapel, "how could anyone possibly steal something out of my bag... I was wrong! Someone managed to steal my camera without any of us hearing or seeing anyone. We saw nothing and heard no one. We ended up drawing out the situation and the timing of the event and realized there was a 5-minute window where he could have stolen the camera, but he would still have to manage sneaking around us without us seeing him. 

I would take a picture of the diagram, but ya know... I think this is a test of my patience. sooooooooo, all the important pictures, I have sent home, but all the random fun/cool/missionary life pictures are gone... keep in mind I had 800 photos on that SD card. If we have faith, he will return at least the card, because people here are sometimes superstitions about messing with missionaries. In the past they have realized they stole a camera from a missionary and found a way of returning it. I’m not holding m breath. I will have to buy a camera here, there is a camera that takes good quality pictures that other missionaries have bought.

In other news, the Secteur is doing alright. I feel as though I have been very negative and very judgemental about the whole situation. I am really convinsed that a Bishop is called of God for a reason, and if we support our Bishop, we can accomplish great things. But if we don’t support him, we are destined to fail. Sure it is true the work is harder here at the moment... but it is not by any means impossible. It is very possible--you just have to go and find it. You have to look in different places with different techniques and eventually you get something you can work with. I feel as though a big down fall in myself is negativity, It has become a pattern. 

English class is doing super awesome! I’ve really started to get the hang of it. And my students have started to really apply what we have learned. wW have started doing role plays in class so that they are forced to use the English that they know... it is super funny. 

Thats all for me this week, sorry for being dumb and getting my camera stolen. 

love ya. faaitoito.

Elder Goodwin 

Parades, baptisms and English classes

I just imagined seeing Crimson Lake again. (Mom and Dad emailed me from the Cabin) It is true that Tahiti and its islands are very beautiful, but sometimes I miss the good old cold misty lakes from my home country. 

Yes we were in a parade this week, there were over 1000 Church members participating and I think almost 100 missionaries. The parade was for Fête de L’Autonomie. It was super fun, I may have winked at Miss Tahiti as we walked by. But no worries she’s probably not my type. 


The work right now is doing ok, as slow as it is--it is still moving forward, progressing a little bit each week. We had a reasonable week, ended up getting a fair amount of work in. My missionary tan is starting to get better that's for sure. I am creeping in on my ninth month mark, which is scary because time has been absolutely flying by. 


We teach an English class twice a week to members and investigators, normally we have about 5-7 people in the class. I've actually really liked teaching English.

Nothing crazy interesting really happened, we ended up doing a convert baptism this week and a primary baptism, which was so much fun, those little doobers are so funny. 
Well I love you guys! Have fun at the cabin! tell the Maupin's I say hi.


Elder Goodwin 


We helped with a primary baptism this week.


I got to baptize and confirm little primary girl this week, that was awesome!


My companion, Elder Tapuhiro got to baptize a nine-year old boy as well. 

Enjoying teaching English...

Sun, rain, sun, rain... and keeping the focus

Hey guys, this week was pretty good.

We are trying to breath some life into an area that has been very quiet. We actually managed to get 12 lessons this week which is great. Any time this area gets more than 10 lessons it is a bit of a miracle. We have been working really hard, out of the streets in the burning sun, or the pouring rain---there seems to be no grey areas when it comes to the weather here. I am really enjoying the work, because I have already experienced a challenging area before on my mission, and I feel as though I am handling it a lot better than I did the last time. 

In my spare time, I’ve taken to uncovering strange verses in the Bible. Some of which are mega inappropriate, but apparently it's in the Bible (heh heh). , So I recently ran into one that has become one of my favourites... 2 samuel 10:4.

So yeah. life is going well. The zone is pretty fun, but our district is doing very poorly. I feel bad for the zone leaders. They had the worst week in their entire history as missionaries. They got "chasser"ed from every house, including inactive members houses. They worked very very very hard and only ended up with 4 lessons this week. I talked to Elder Porter this week, who is a very good missionary and was obviously finding this difficult. We must truly focus on being diligent, working hard and being ready for those who do have questions and want to learn about the Church. The rest is in the Lord’s hands.

Well that’s my week. I love you guys! Keep it real.

Elder Goodwin

Typical rainy day on Tahiti 

Elder Tapuhiro, my companion

My new zone! the zone of Paea!

The baptism we set just before I got transfered. I drove down with one of our zone leaders to attend the baptism. The fellow who performed the baptism is one of my previous investigators!

Missionary choir after performance.

Settling in to my new secteur at Papehue

Yo guys! 

This week was a good week. T’was interesting getting used to the new secteur. So I am senior companion as well, which is strange for me, but I can dig it.

 

The zone I am in is a lot more chill compared to Puunauia, but the work is overall the same. Papehue is a secteur that, about a month ago, they were only teaching 2-4 lessons a week, and they had only had two baptisms the entire year. But this week we managed to teach 16 lessons, which is the most lessons the secteur had had for a week in the year. So life is doing alright, I’m really liking the district missionaries so far--they are super sick. 

My companion is awesome. He is Elder Tapuhiro, he comes from the island Maupiti, speaks perfect Tahitian, so my Tahitian has been improving soooooo much. 

Cool event of the week, is that I bought a hand-made Tahitian ukelele. It costs me 10000 pacific francs (with a missionary discount!), instead of  20000 to 30000 francs.  I don’t have a picture of it, but I will take one for you. It is very, very beautiful. My companion has been teaching me Tahitian songs on it, and I’m starting to get a lot better on the thing.

Other than that, life is going well. I’m enjoying the secteur, it is less city-like than Taapuna, so it is a lot more agreeable to my taste. Life is good. Don’t worry about me!

Elder Goodwin. 

I bought my ukelele from the guy, that made this one. I didn't buy a double one though...

A sign in my secteur