We're Hosting!

We are very excited to announce that we are hosting a beautiful seven year old girl from Ukraine this summer.
She is expected to arrive the last weekend in June...about one month from now.
She gets to spend four weeks at our house with us and the boys.
It is our privilege to give her a real family experience and shower her with lots of love and attention. She is an orphan, but we don't intend to keep her that way.
We are already very involved in lining things up to adopt her this Fall.
We are very busy in our preparations for her arrival, and are leaning heavily on the Lord to make our hearts and home just what she needs when she is here!

We are raising funds and selling t-shirts to help make this adoption possible. We need all the help we can get. Please get involved!

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Goodell Update 2011

Wow, so much has been happening this year, it's been tough to keep up!! Here's a quick update and some cool pics to add some interesting visuals ; )

Spring 2011

Tyler had an opportunity to visit Moscow and St Petersburg Russia for 3 weeks from the end of April to mid May.

He was feed by fellowship with international disciples and missionary families at the Pastors Conference in St. Pete.

He was able to visit Pastor Dean, encouraging the body of Christ at Calvary Chapel Sokol


He was able to reconnect with Mrs Smith and her class of english students.







This is a video of Tyler's visit to the Spiritual Freedom Headquarters in Moscow.

Tyler has been actively raising funds to support this awesome prison ministry!

http://www.sfmrussia.blogspot.com/

Summer 2011

We had an awesome oppotunity to host 2 men from China. Andrew, 27 and Lionel, 19. They stayed for 2 weeks at our home. This was their first time out of their home country. It was such a privelge for us to get to know them and serve them.

Elijah turned ONE!!!! What a great reason to celebrate. We are so thankful to have this little boy in our lives. Raising him has taught us so much. It is pretty cool to experience that parent-to-child bond. It has been such a tool for opening our eyes and hearts to how God is in a parental relationship with us! Amazing!

We just bought a home in Victorville, CA! Such a blessing : )

The process was so quick and smooth-it had to be from the hand of God.
The time it took to put in an offer and actually close escrow was approximately 3 weeks!

We have to do some cleaning and preparing the home a little before moving in, so it may be another couple months before we're ready, but the house projects should be pretty fun. Can't wait to get started!


We made it to our 2nd year WEDDING ANNIVERSARY

Because September 5th landed on Labor Day this year, we decided to celebrate yesterday (09-04-11.) We had a great time in Los Angeles. Picked up a beautiful replica (vegan version) of the top tear of our wedding cake, we had a lovely dinner at PlanetRaw in Santa Monica, and ended the evening at Long Beach with a romantic moon lit Gondala cruise through the canals of Naples Islands.

Finally an update!!!

To all of you who have been waiting for an update,

We are so sorry. We have both been talking about using our blog more often. However, talking and doing are two different things. So, lets go into just a few updates before looking at some more precious pics. Melissa gave birth to a little baby boy. We named him Elijah Dean Goodell. He weighed 7 pounds and 4 ounces. He was 20 and a half inches. He has been so much fun and I have to say that Melissa did a wonderful job in delivery not using anything but her will to do the whole thing naturally. She has been such an inspiration in her faith that God is really in control. Elijah was born on August 26, which was accurate according to our sonogram but early by a little more than a week according to Melissa's midwife.



Melissa just recently returned to work. She is working a few days at two different dental offices. I am working weekends at Victor Vally Christian School and it's supporting church First Assembly of God as a custodian. I was blessed with this job after helping with the football team and the new gym at Victor Valley Christin. I am still attending Calvary Chapel Bible College and just loving it. I have been wanting to use this blog spot as a format to bless you and share with you homework and things that I have learned. So, I have added a link at the top of the blog to a page called "Tyler Talk", where I share some things on my mind. My hope is that it may be an encouragement.



We have people ask us if we plan on returning to Russia. We would love to return to Russia as soon as we can. However, we have to wait on God's timing. Financially right now we wouldn't be able to pay our student loans if we returned to Russia without work or support. When we lived there for three months before Melissa's student loans kicked in, we did pretty good with my part time teaching, Melissa's babysitting, and some financial support from friends and family. With loans and a new baby we pray that we can return to Russia more financially stable. God has put it on our hearts to teach the gospel in a specific area outside of Moscow. Whether or not this is His plan, we continue to seek His will for our lives. There isn't a better place than being in God's specific plan for your life. Below I added a few pictures of our little guy. Thank you for staying in contact with us and stay tuned for more pics and videos.

This is one of our favorite pictures.

Below:
Elijah is wearing a St. Patrick's day shirt even though it's not St. Patrick's day. The shirt came from his Aunt Christina and given to his Aunt Michelle for his cousin Klhoe. Now he gets to wear it!

Hello Everyone!

Yes, it has been way too long since I put a post on this blog. Shameful : / So, now, since five months have passed, there is soooo much to update all of you on.

Tyler and I flew back to California in mid December when our visas for Russia expired. It was a good time to return home. We had the opportunity to spend Christmas with our families.

It was our intention to stay in California until February or March, get refreshed, get our finances situated, and then head back to Russia with new visas. As it turns out, the Lord had a different plan for us.

After Christmas, Tyler and I found out that the Lord was blessing our family with a precious little one. I am a little more than six months pregnant, and expecting our son to arrive September 4th. We are both ecstatic about having a new member added to our family and can hardly wait for his arrival.

With this new adventure before us, we are planning on remaining in California for the length of my pregnancy and sometime beyond. Tyler and I still have a strong desire to serve the Lord in Russia, but will have to leave the timing of return up to God's direction.

In the meantime, we both know that it is our responsibility as christians to use our gifts and abilities to serve God and His church whereever He has us. So, we have been keeping ourselves open for ministry opportunities in the High Desert and allowing the Lord to grow us and prepare us for our future ministries in Russia.

Shortly after we returned home, Tyler was asked to share his testimony and give a brief sermon at a local church we attend with our Slavic brothers and sisters. This was exciting and such an honor for him to share with the congregation what the Lord had done in our lives and particularly in our ministry in Russia.

At the turn of the new year, we both got regularly involved at the Victorville Rescue Mission. We gave our time in the kitchen to serve dinner meals to homeless and needy members of our community during the week.

Recently, the two of us have been involved in an organization called Christians In Action (CIA). We were invited to participate in this group by a good christian brother of ours, Anthony Bravo. The purpose of CIA is to find out the needs of our local community and come together as a group of Christians and meet those needs. Once a month, a group of about 15-20 people get together, eat breakfast, fellowship, and work hard from morning to afternoon doing whatever is needed from us. The last few events involved moving a shed from one location to another, landscaping, painting, putting in ramps for an elderly gentleman, and patching holes in walls. Of course, the best part of all of this is the time we get to spend talking with those we are serving and ministering to them in a social and spiritual level. I am blessed with the opportunities to do that the most, since most of the work being done, isn't exactly cut out for a pregnant woman.

A couple months back, Tyler got to help out with some of our friends and leaders of Christ Muscle Ministries. A new project they took on was helping out the sports teams at Victor Valley Christian School. They converted an old storage room into a beautiful and fully functioning gym for the high school students. It was a great work and was all done out of love for the kids there. Tyler was pleased to be asked to help out.

Another ministry we have been involved in lately involves a young woman suffering from liver cancer and her 19 month old daughter. Since the mother is on chemotherapy and just exhausted from the treatments, she has needed some help taking care of her toddler. Tyler and I got involved to help pick up her daughter from her house at 8am, take her to HeadStart, pick her up from the program and return her home to her mom at 4pm. This gives the little girl some time to interact with other children, play during the day, and it also gives her mother a chance to rest. Thankfully, at this time, the mom is responding to treatment and her faith in the Lord is keeping her strong. Working with them has been a huge blessing for Tyler and I and we are grateful to be involved with the work the Lord is doing in their lives.

Tyler has had a desire to attend the seminary program at Calvary Chapel Bible College for some time now. Our church, Calvary Chapel Victorville, offered a satellite course teaching 1 Corinthians 1 night a week during the Spring semester. Tyler jumped on the opportunity to get started with his bible college education and just finished his last class about a week ago. He intends on continuing courses through our church program as well as attending online courses offered through the Calvary Chapel Merrieta Bible College. God has really provided a great way for Tyler to earn his degree in Theology. It is our hope that the Lord will bless his endevors and use this education to better prepare him to minister to those in Russia when we return.

I myself, have been working on a new avenue in furthering my education. Through careful prayer and consideration I have come to a decision to obtain my teaching credentials before we return to Russia. With the limited availability of work for dental hygienists in Moscow, Tyler and I have concluded that it may be beneficial for me to have options to teach at an English school when we return to the foreign mission field. So far, I have only taken the C-Best to help get me into a credentialling program, but am slowly working on piecing together everything else to get me started in the right direction.

The Lord has been keeping us very busy and is always seeming to put opportunities to serve at our feet. We are thankful that He is keeping us close to Him and dependent on Him as we face each day we are blessed to live out.

Prayer Requests:

1. For the Lord to continue to bless us with a healthy pregnancy and keep our baby safe.

2. That we would be filled with passion to serve people around us and always willing to put others needs before our own.

3. For a complete healing of the mother with cancer.

4. For blessing and direction regarding our endevors to further our education.

5. For CIA and Christ Muscle Ministries to flourish and grow in their service to our community's spiritual needs.

6. For our Russian church in Sokol and particularly Pastor Dean, that the church would feel God's presence and blessings upon their efforts there.

Thank you and God bless!
Melissa & Tyler Goodell

Home for the Holidays

Tyler and I made our return to California on December 11th. We are grateful to be back home for some time. The Lord has blessed us with the gift of being around family for the holidays. Tyler hasn't had a Christmas or birthday (01-09) celebration here in three years. So, it really is nice to have some time in the States to renew our visas and get recharged for our next trip to Russia.

At this time, we are looking at February as our goal month to return to Moscow. We are praying and leaving ourselves open to God's direction regarding this.

While we are in California, we want to keep our focus on ministry. The Lord has already provided great opportunities for us.

Last week, Tyler and I were introduced to the Rescue Mission in Victorville, located at the First Southern Baptist Church. This is a ministry that provides daily meals to the homeless and needy Monday through Friday. They also distribute clothes once a week, on Wednesdays. The Wednesday before Christmas, they held a huge festival, which I was priviledged to partake in. They had live Worship and Christmas music, a place for kids to see Santa, great snacks, prize giveaways, and tons of toys for the kids too. At least a couple thousand people showed up. It was an amazing day.

We want to become more involved in this ministry. From our experiences with the Rescue Mission food services, there are always at least 20-30 people who show up for a meal. They stay for about 30-45 minutes. It is a wonderful service that satisfies the physical hunger of these wanting people. However, they are not being given the "Bread of Life". Tyler and I have discussed the need for these people to have the Word served them during their meals also. We spoke with the director of the Mission and he was excited about the idea to have Christians give a brief message during the meals. He said they have wanted to do this for some time, but do to short staff it has been too difficult. Tyler is willing to step in and give messages throughout the week. However, we are hoping to share this opportunity to be a blessing and a strong witness for Christ with others. We know there are many good, strong believers who could offer so much to these people who don't know the Lord. If you are interested in helping us organize this please call or email us about it. 760-955-2400 tylergoodell@yahoo.com



Pray Requests:

• That Calvary Chapel Sokol will be blessed and continue to grow in Moscow.


• That Pastor Dean will be encouraged and edified in the work he is doing for the Lord and for the Russian people.


• That Tyler and I will use our time in the States to serve God and draw closer to Him.


• That the Lord provides people to help give messages to the homeless at the Rescue Mission.

Our Place

Well, Tyler and I have been living in our first apartment here in Moscow. It is a one room, tiny flat on the seventh floor in a building made in 1970. It is not bad, a little small, but it works for us. It is keeping us close to say the least : )

However, the place was in a pretty sad shape when we moved in. So, we made it our project to do some fixing up. We wanted to leave it looking better than it was when we got it.

Anyways, here are some cool pics that can help you understand the changes we made to our home.

Tyler unlocking our door for the first time.

We thought it would be wise to make changing the lock the first thing we did when we arrived.

This is our room. We are so thankful our friend Jimmy from chruch provided a clean rug and a new sofa.

Our bathroom started off this way, but thanks to Tyler's talent with a paintbrush and a great deal of help from our friend Dale this bathroom has had a nice facelift. It is no longer blue, but a nice clean white.

The water stains on the wall were the hardest to deal with. No matter how many coats of paint went over it, the stain kept coming through. Fortunately, we found out about this great stuff that keeps stain from showing, that fixed our problem pretty quickly.

Here is a good shot of how the kitchen looked when we got there. We got rid of that cabinet sitting on the floor. I was happy to see it in the dumpster. Doing this provided some walking room.

We started our kitchen project by cleaning the floor. It was especially a good thing we moved the fridge, 'cause there was a family of cockroaches living here.

We started to clean the dirt off of wallpaper and thought it just might be easier to tear it all down and paint. We never thought that we would find newspaper underneath. Crazy! Apparently, newspaper is commonly used in Russia to even out the wall before laying down the wall paper.

Here Tyler is just scraping away at the wall paper. It didn't come off as easily as expected.

We were not happy to see what kind of ads were in the paper. It is a sad thing, but this page in the paper was all for abortion advertisements. Russia has the highest number of abortions per woman of child-bearing age in the world according to UN data. Please pray for Russia!

Our awesome friend, Dale. He was really helpful in remodeling the kitchen. He mudded all the walls and gave the kitchen its new foundation. Thanks Dale!!

This is a look at the final product. Pastor Dean put in a new faucet and a "tumba" or sink cabinet. Dale and Tyler moved the cabinet to hang over the sink and painted the walls a pristine white. Looks so good now!

Oh, and we put down a fresh new carpet from IKEA-a great finishing touch : )

We want to thank God for our friends Jimmy & Svyeta who rented this apartment to us. We also are so thankful to the Lord for His graciousness in providing financially for us through Tyler's work which has allowed us to make all the changes here.

God really blessed us with the warm autumn weather. Everyone here said it was an unusual thing to have such warmth still in October. We counted it amongst our blessings : )
We were able to help Natasha, our good friend from church, with hosting a group of guys and girls from the Bible college in Germany. They stayed in Moscow for two days. We had the honor of hosting the four guys at Dean's apartment while he was away and Natasha hosted the two ladies. They came to Russia to serve for a few days in St. Petersburg and in Vladimir. Moscow was their recovery stop between the two. It was a real joy to fellowship with them all.

Here is a better group shot of some of them. This was a dinner the night before they all left Moscow. Natasha was gracious enough to host it at her place.

Tyler and the guys in the center of Moscow.