Missionary

Missionary

Tuesday, May 27, 2014

Week 13

Hello everyone!  I hope everyone had a nice Memorial Day. It was a prime proselyting day so that's why I'm writing today instead of yesterday. Today is p day this week.  I'm sure you've been having much better weather than we have! It's been super humid and hot outside. There are evil mosquitoes everywhere! We've been outside a lot and have gotten plenty of bites. I've only had a couple, but my companion got a ton on her feet! It feels like a rainforest or something! And it's only 72 outside. The summer will be much worse. But hey, I'm glad it's not cold anymore. And, it's been super nice to see people outside so we can talk to them. My family history chart has sure come in handy to help us talk to people. :) 

Tomorrow is my birthday! I will be so old, haha! We will be going to get some Mexican food to celebrate. Oh, how I miss it! And, as if that weren't awesome enough, Bryan is taking us to Belts tomorrow for ice cream!! Belts is the greatest. :D 

We went on exchanges this week. Sister Taylor and I taught our last lesson with Jimmy before he moves to Tennessee. I'm not going to lie, this was the most epic lesson ever. Long story short, He ended up telling us how worried he is that we are preaching the wrong Gospel and that we will be condemned, and then we were like, we can't deny what the Holy Ghost has etched into our hearts, confirming that these things are true! Tears were shed, and it was awesome. The good news is he agreed to keep reading the Book of Mormon and is still willing to meet with missionaries in the future. Sister Taylor was much more quiet than I'm used to, so I had to take the lead and do most of the talking, which was both terrifying and a good learning experience for me. :)  Missions are very challenging, you guys! 

Tim has been reading the Book of Mormon up a storm! No joke, he was in 1 Nephi on Tuesday and on Wednesday he was in 3 Nephi 14!!! He was up all night reading. It doesn't seem like he retains everything, but hey, he loves it! It's interesting because he thinks everything about our church is the same as the one he's used to. Even though it's not! We were planning on teaching Tim a different lesson this week, but then we felt like we should teach him the Word of Wisdom instead. He was planning on quitting drinking and smoking next February. But after we taught the Word of Wisdom he decided to quit right then and there. He gave us his lighters! Sweet. :) He was doing really well, but then he and Nicole were having quite a bit of stress with their living situation.  They ended up having to move somewhere else becasue things were so bad. But, now that they are in a new place, he will get back on track. Tim is awesome! He has a strong desire to change and we love teaching him. He tries to teach us about the Bible sometimes, which is fun. :P 

Unfortunately, Trish seems to have fallen off the edge of the earth or something because we haven't heard from her in ages!! 

Also, Eric's baptism date had to be pushed back to July because next Saturday won't work for his family, or Abby's. We were very much saddened by that, since we probably won't get to see it! All well. We know that he is still super willing and that the other missionaries will continue to teach him until then. He is still going to be baptized in Stevens Point. 

Transfers are next week, and I'm so not looking forward to that! I don't want a different companion. Sister Pearson is the best!

I'm running out of time today, but I heard an awesome quote at church yesterday that is so true... your future is only as bright as your faith!!! I've found that to be very true. When we have faith we are confident about the future, are willing to trust in the Lord and take whatever steps necessary to secure a brighter future. Faith means we are willing to act. So, if we want a brighter future, we need to brighten our faith!

I love you all and hope you have a great week!!!

Love, 


Sister Woods

Tuesday, May 20, 2014

Pictures


Our investigator, Eric, and his girlfriend, Abby.


Yummy taco soup that we made!  Delicious!


Frolicking in the fields . . . no more snow!!



Enjoying the "green" with Sis. Pearson

Week 12

Hello everyone!

Wow, time has flown by once again!  Well, the work is going very well over here. We are being very blessed!  My companion says she's never been so busy as we are in this area.

We MAY (or may not) have gone to Sweet Frog twice this week and this place called King Cone, which is advertised to be the best ice cream in central Wisconsin. Yep, we were scandalous and went there! Oh my goodness, there were so many flavors. It was a very, very good discovery! And by good I mean scandalous. D:

Oh, and I definitely did NOT buy any cookie butter at Wal Mart this week.  Ha! Well, it's not actually cookie butter it's called PB crave, cookie nookie. Basically, it's peanut butter with cookie dough flavoring, chocolate chips, and honey. It's the same as regular peanut butter calorie-wise, but it's soooooooooooo good!

I'll share a small but significant discovery I had in the Book of Mormon this week. You may not, but I thought it was cool. We can see in Mosiah 10:19 that Zeniff "did stimulate them (his army of Nephites to go to battle with their might, putting their trust in the Lord; therefore, we did contend with them (their enemies) face to face." So, when we are putting our trust in the Lord, that means that we are going to face our challenges and fears head-on! That's how we act in faith. We go forward, not holding back, with nothing wavering. I've definitely had some opportunities to apply it this week. Teaching is becoming easier for me in a lot of ways.

Things are going so well with Eric. We have finished teaching him all the lessons he needs to be baptized. In fact, he is still most likely going to be baptized on June 7th, here in Stevens Point! :) You see, he went back home to Milwaukee on Friday now that finals are over. He just goes to school here, but he wanted to be baptized here, where he knows people. He is seriously the most golden investigator ever, it was much, much too easy. Teaching the law of chastity is always awkward for me or anyone, but it wasn't so bad teaching him.

Sister Wilson is doing great at not smoking! We are excited for her. She now only has 1 cup of coffee a day. But not even that, for she's been sick. 

Oh, we have officially stated teaching this awesome guy named Tim. I haven't ever watched the show Duck Dynasty, but Tim loves that show and he looks just like one of those guys. There is a poster in his apartment. He is the boyfriend, actually, of a less-active named Nicole Friday. Most of the people we teach are her friends. We always meet some VERY interesting people at her place. Anyway, Tim loves camouflage. He's very nice, awesome, spiritual, loves the Bible, wants to come to church, and says he already knows the Book of Mormon is true. Ok then, haha.  He has some really good potential, if he can stop smoking, of course. And live the law of chastity. We'll see!

We have companion exchanges tomorrow. This means I'll be in charge again while Sister Pearson is away. Uh oh! The reason it's uh oh is because we are teaching Jimmy tomorrow, who has many, many tricky and challenging questions (about the Fall, agency, etc.)! So that should be interesting. :)

Oh, I met a guy who plays a cello yesterday. He happens to be my age. I not-so-subtly hinted that he should join us at FHE tonight (held at the rest home, where he also lives) and bring his cello (so I can play it, haha).

As you can see from some pictures we frolicked in a field when we went to Waupaca this week. Time is flying by and I don't want my companion to get transferred! Not fair. :(

OH NO. I had my first Wisconsin sausage experience this week. I ate just a little bit, just to get by. Cause I had to... such is life! :/

That's basically it for this week. We visited this really sad situation over in Waupaca. This lady is in her 70s and lives out on her own in a trailer, with no running water and no money. Her house burned down recently. She said we were down to earth, beautiful (her words) and nice so she was willing to listen to us. Poor lady!

That's all, I hope you all have a fabulous week!

Love,


Sister Woods

Wednesday, May 14, 2014

Pictures



MTC "District" at Reunion



Sis. Woods has now tasted her first Wisconsin cheese curd
Delicious!!





Week 11

Hello everyone!

I hope you all had a wonderful week this week and had a chance to get some Mexican food on cinco de mayo!! There is only one Mexican restaurant in Steven's Point and you can bet we went there! ;D 

I had to wonderful privilege of speaking to certain members of my family on Skype yesterday, including my wonderful mother!! I apologize, you've probably already heard most of this. 

Our investigator, Eric, is doing really well!  He has zero problem living the Word of Wisdom, which doesn't happen too often. We only have 1 more week to teach him. It's finals week this week then he goes back to Milwaukee. We still haven't been able to meet with Trish, for she has been super busy. We have been stopping by to visit her at work. We may just have to start teaching her there, haha. We also had another lesson with Jimmy! We shared the Blueprint of Christ's Church talk with him and he LOVED it and read it like 3 times. He wanted to dissect every single point with us, haha. He's a difficult one. :P Sister Wilson is down to only 1 cup of coffee a day! 

Hm, there's not too much to report this week, honestly. 

We had to do a hard-core, nightmare-inducing cleaning project at a less-active lady's house. Her daughter was in the hospital (she is bipolar) and she needed some help cleaning up her room before she arrived home.  I won't go into much detail here for it was very, very gross to say the least!! There were some scandalous things in that room (unspeakable horrors), that are not good for missionaries to see! :P But, we were glad we were able to help out and make lots of progress. I'm not kidding, we filled 20 garbage bags full of stuff (food and icky things) and filled a huge bucket of nasty soda brew from soda bottles. Well, once again it put things in perspective for me and I grew to appreciate my swiffer mother even more. :) 

It has been so HUMID here lately! It's like a rainforest or something. But, on Saturday the weather was very sunny and nice! It even got to be in the 70s. My face got a little sunburnt because we were out contacting people for hours at this ginormous Cultural Festival held at the highschool across the street from our apartment. There were sooooo many people! It was awesome. We talked to lots of people, taught lots of lessons, and gave away Books of Mormon like candy. It was like a whole week of missionary work compacted into a few hours! It was a record-breaking day for us. I don't know that I've ever mentioned this, but in order for it to count as a lesson, at least in our mission, we have to pray with people outside. :P  That used to be strange for me, but not anymore! 

On Saturday I had the wonderful privilege of trying pickled egg and, if that wasn't bad enough, pickled herring!!! Blegh!!! :P I almost escaped having to try any, but of course, my companion insisted that I try it, since she had to. Hahaha. These people also like to make missionaries eat pigs feet. And, they told us all about how they like to make head cheese. Hopefully we won't have to eat that! 

We got to go to institute this week, which is always a rare treat. We talked about Abinadi, mainly. We discussed how we learn new things as we APPLY the scriptures to ourselves and as we LIVE them! Being a missionary is truly such a wonderful opportunity because we get live and apply the Gospel like never before (that's where our focus is, 24-7)! It's true, we pray ALL THE TIME, I can't even keep track. We pray before we eat, get out of the car, before and after we study, teach, or plan. Plus morning and night prayers. Anyway, it's awesome, and I really enjoy missionary life!! 

Well, this is random, but I also had the privilege of eating what appeared to be some nice vanilla pudding at the Hibachi Japanese buffet. Or so I thought... turns out it was Colgate toothpaste flavored!!! D: 

That's all for now. I hope you all have a great week!!! 

Love,


Sister Woods

Week 10


Thanks for all the mail, everyone!! It's always nice to hear from you. Sorry there isn't much to report on this week.  I hope all of you have had a nice week. 

Well, it has been rainy pretty much all week, except it started getting really sunny and nice this weekend. We also had stake conference, which was great. Our stake president compared the Gospel to a cake.... that gets cut with a sickle, like playing fruit ninja!! It was pretty funny, but  I guess you had to be there. :P  We had all the missionaries sing with the youth in both sessions, plus Sister Pearson had to play the piano for it, so we had to get there super early.  President and SIster Cutler were there and spoke, which was really amazing! And... someone awesome made a Costa Vida type dinner at Stake Conference! 

We got to teach Eric, our new investigator, 3 times this week!!!! He has a girlfriend who is a member of the church, actually. At this speed he could be baptized really soon, but he's going back home to Milwaukee in 2 weeks. We won't get to see his baptism here since we will refer him to the missionaries over there. But it is definitely going to happen!! And we will get to teach him pretty much all of the lessons, so that is great. :) 

Unfortunately, our appointments with Trish fell through this week since she had to work late. Lots of them fell through, actually. Darn! But the good news is that Sister Davis, an awesome lady who served a mission in Madagascar, took us to Perkins (a cute diner) for some pie.  Now, I'm not normally a pie person, but this pie was amazing (carmel apple!). 

I read an awesome article this week: The Blueprint to Christ's Church by Tad Callister.  Read it! It's super good. :) 

I think that's all for now.  I hope you all have a great week!

Love,


Sister Woods