Woodward, Oklahoma -July 15, 2013

Dear Woodward Family,

Greetings from Woodward, Oklahoma.  I guess that it wasn't a ZL prank because here I am in Woodward.  I haven't had time to take a picture yet because we have been so busy here.  There is a lot of work happening here.  We have quite a few super solid investigators that Elder Park and I both feel could get baptized this transfer.  The first two are Jeff and Shaquinta.  They are both super awesome!  The first lesson I taught here was with them.  The missionaries had been meeting with Jeff for a little while now, but this was the first lesson Shaquinta had been there for.  So we ended up teaching them the Restoration.  The lesson went really well.  After the lesson was done I found out some pretty exciting news about Jeff.  Jeff is from Haiti.  I was really excited when I found this out for obvious reasons.  You are probably all pretty excited about that as well.  Then yesterday both Jeff and Shaquinta were at church. 

So Wednesday was transfers.  It was a really long day full of driving.  2 hours from Wichita Fall to Moore, then another 2 1/2 hours from Moore to Woodward.  Then we got right to work.  Normally after you get to your area after transfers you take a little bit of time to go to Walmart to get some stuff to last you until Monday.  We had so much happening on Wednesday that we didn't have time to go to Walmart.  It was a very crazy day but we made it through.

Friday was District Meeting so we drove all the way down to Clinton for that.  We were able to ride down with the Senior couple who is here in Woodward.  So that saved us a lot of miles.  We got back from District Meeting about 3:30 and got straight to work.  Both of the appointments we wad set up that day fell through so we went to visit a less active member named Jed.  Jed it a super cool guy.  Most of the time we were there we just sat and listened to him talk.  It was a really spiritual experience though.  He has been through some rough patches in life, but he is pushing through that and turning his life around.  He even came to church yesterday.  From what I have heard he has made a lot of progress over the last couple of months.

Sorry this is kinda a scatter brained letter.  There is just so much that has happened that since I got here that I am just writing it down as it comes to my mind.  I think that is just about all for this week though.  Next week will be a little more organized.  Well I love you all.

Love Elder Woodward

Wichita Falls South, Texas -July 8, 2013

Dear Woodwards,

Wow there has been a lot that has happened this past week!  I have said it before, but the work is really starting to pick up just in time for transfers.  I'll talk about what is happening with transfers a little bit later on. 

So were should I start today....  Monday sounds like as good of a day to start as any.  So last Monday for P-day my district decided to be a little adventurous, so we went mini-golfing at a place ing the mall here.  Originally we decided to go to the place in the mall because it was a blacklight mini golf course.  It wasn't nearly as fun as we all thought it would be.  It was definantly made for little kids.  The thing that made it worth the money was the fact that we got to play through the 18 holes three times.

Moving to Tuesday.  Tuesday was the one day this week that we had a member present lesson.  We went to see the investigator that the Sisters passed off to us.  When we went in for the lesson we started out by asking him about his problems with the Word of Wisdom.  Since the Sisters passed him off to us he had relapsed into drinking along with smoking, so it has been pretty tough for him.  He also decided that the way he was going to try and meet a nice girl to start dating was by going to the bars and clubs around town to chase a woman down.  Great idea right?  I didn't think so either.  Then when we talked to him about his desire to get baptized he told us that he wasn't sure what he wanted to do, because if he were to get baptized he would "miss the fun life."  Don't worry there was something good that came out of this.  After Joey said he would miss the fun life it reminded me of the part in the Book of Mormon where Alma the Younger was talking to one of his son, Helaman, and was telling him about his life before and after he saw the angel.  The part I really tried to focus on with Joey was how Alma told his son about the joys that he experienced from keeping the comandments.  I then promised Joey that as he kept the comandments of God and kept the Word of Wisdom, that he would experience the happiness and joy that would come from the gospel, instead of just the temporary "fun."  At the end of the lesson we were able to recommit him to live the Word of Wisdom and the other comandment, and we reset a baptismal date with him for the 20th of July.

Thursday was a really fun day for us.  We started out the day by going to the ward breakfast for the 4th of July.  We had Robin show up to the breakfast with her two kids.  Little sidenote.  Robin has been doing pretty well with not smoking.  She still smokes every once in a while, but not very much.  Which is a big improvement because a week before she was still chain smoking.  Anywho... so the breakfast went pretty well.  There was a big turnout for it and it was lots of fun.  After it was over we stayed to help clean up and since there was a lot of extra food, we ended up taking a lot of it home with us.  Our fridge is still full of biscuits and gravy.  I think I am going to be done eating biscuits and gravy for a little while.  After the breakfast we went back to our apartment and did our weekly planning.  Not much to tell there.  After weekly planning Bishop Perez and his wife came and picked us up so we could go out to their house and help them set up for dinner that evening since they were having all seven of the missionaries down here over for dinner.  One of the things I got to do was make the guacamole.  Yep I made some homemade guacamole.  It was pretty good too.  Not to long later the other missionaries down here showed up and finished helping get things ready.  I would tell you what we had, but I don't know what it was.  I just know it was good.  Then to finish out the day (and since it was the 4th of July) we got to stay out until 11:00.  We stayed out at the Bishops house and had a little firework show.  Nothing to big due to the fact that we are almost in a stage 4 drought now.  But it was still a pretty fun night.

Saturday we got to go up to Lawton, OK to meet President and Sister Walkenhorst.  I had no idea how tall 7ft really was until I saw President Walkenhorst.  Holy crap he is tall.  The Zone conference was only about an hour long.  Just long enough to get to hear them talk and introduce ourselves.  Then we came back down to Wicita Falls.  Not much more happened on Saturday.

Now we finally get to Sunday.  Transfer calls day.  I'm just going to skip to the end of the day.  Mostly because there wasn't anything super exciting that happened.  Well nothing exciting until about 9:00 pm when we got transfer doctrine.  So we called up the Zone Leaders since Elder Kahawaii is the District Leader and found out what is happening.  So here is what is going to be happening here in Wichita Falls South.  Elder Kahawaii is going to be leaving here to go up to Pauls Valley, OK.  So typically that would mean that I would stay here for another transfer.  But I'm not staying here either.  Wichita Falls South is going to get shotgunned again.  The Elder coming down here is named Elder Jenkins and he is going to be training a new missionary.  So now I guess it is time to tell you where I will be going to.  Do you have any last guesses?  Ok, so I, Elder Woodward, will be going to finish a new missionay's training, all the way up in Woodward, Oklahoma!!!  Not I'm not kidding right now.  That is really where I will be for the next transfer.  Unless of course my Zone Leaders are playing some sort of sick prank on me.  I would be so very ticked at them if they are.  So yeah that is it.  When I found that out last night I was literally jumping up and down because I was so happy!  My new companions name is Elder Parks.  Like I said he has only been out for one transfer so far, so I will get to finish training him.  Its gonna be fun!

Elder Woodward working on a car

So if you are wondering why this email is coming in so late it is because this morning as we were on our way to come email, our bishops wife asked us to go and help them change a tire on their car.  So we put off emailing for a couple of hours to go help.  Then that took longer then we expected it to.  But we got it all taken care of.  I even got a picture of me underneath their car.  So here it is.  I hope you all have a great week.  Love you all tons and tons!

Love Elder Cameron Woodward

Wichita Falls South, Texas -July 1, 2013

Dear Family,

Well Dad didn't really enjoy my little joke earlier, and he said Mom didn't enjoy it either.  I was just doing what they wanted me to do.  Obviously they forgot that they had said they were expecting a short email. 

Well this has been an interesting week here in my mission.  President and Sister Taylor finished up their mission last Friday, so my new Mission President, President Walkenhorst,  is here now and getting into the life of a mission president.  It is still weird to think that President Taylor has already gone home.  I'm still not used to telling people that our mission president is President Walkenhorst. 

So now onto news for the week.  Last week we had a lesson with Megan and Tanner and I felt like it went really well.  We didn't teach anything new, we just answered a bunch of their questions.  I felt like it really helped Tanner out because in every other lesson we have had he mostly just sat back and bit his finger nails.  This lesson he was sitting forward and paying attention the entire time.  It was so cool!  They are both doing super well.  They are going to be leaving on a trip this week so my companion and I are going to send them on a detour to a temple.  Its going to be good. 

Oh and we also had a awesome miracle happen to us this week!  we were walking back to our apartment after checking mail when one of the residents, Robin, who lives in the building next to us called us over and asked us if smoking was a sin.  We told her yes and explained a little bit about the Word of Wisdom.  After we finished she gave us her opinion about smoking, and she agreed with us that is was a sin.  Then she told us that she has been trying to stop smoking because she knows that "is harming my temple."  That is really what she said.  I almost asked her if she was a member of the church because I have only ever heard members say their body is a temple.  So the day after we first met Robin we went back to her house with a member and taught her the Stop Smoking Workshop.  It was so cool!  We have seen her at least once a day since then encouraging her to keep working on quiting smoking.  It was super cool.  =)

I hope that you all have a great week!  It is exciting to hear about all the fun stuff that is happening at home.  It sounds like all the kids are Keeping Mom and Dad busy.  I guess that is their job though.  I love you all! 

Love Elder Cameron Woodward

Wichita Falls South, Texas -June 24, 2013

Hello Woodward Family,

Well it has been another crazy week here in Wichita Falls Texas.  I'm sure it was just as crazy on the homefront.  It is just a crazy time to be alive.  You might have heard about it by now, but last night during the Worldwide Leadership Broadcast there were some crazy changes made to the way missionary work will happen.  Probably the biggest one is the fact that missionaries will now be allowed to use Facebook for missionary work.  Yep, Facebook will now become a way for us to do missionary work every day.  I am still in shock about this change!  When I first heard that, I thought I had misheard what was said, but I heard right.  I have absolutely no idea what the rules will be with this change, but you might be seeing an Elder Woodward on Facebook in the next couple of months.

So good news about Megan.  This past week we were talking to her trying to set up an appointment to go and teach her.  Unfortunately she was busy pretty much all week and when she wasn't busy we were. :(  That wasn't the good news.  The good news is that in the midst of this she texted us and told us that she was wanting to get baptized and become a member of the church!  YAY!!!  So tomorrow night when we were finally able to set a time up with her we are going to set a baptismal date.  My companion and I are both super excited for this!

We weren't able to see David this past week, so no new updates on him.  Other way of good news.  I might have a baptism this weekend!  I'm not really sure if it will happen or not since we haven't been able to see the investigator since we started teaching him.  His name is Joey, and he is an investigator that the Sister missionaries were teaching, but they felt really awkward in lessons, and there were some issues he didn't want to talk to them about, so we got to start to teach him.  So more news on that next week.

Other then that, not much happened.  One other exciting thing that happened was that I got to meet two NFL football players last Friday.  They were Ray Dominguez from the Dallas Cowboys and Demarcus Love from the Vikings.  It was pretty cool.  I even got Ray Dominguez's autograph and pictures with them.

So that was my week.  I love you all.

Love Elder Woodward

Wichita Falls South, Texas -June 17, 2013

Dear Family,

So there isn't much to say about last week.  We had another typical week here in Wichita Falls South, meaning there was hardly anything that happened and we were lucky to get one member present lesson.  Everything is still going really slowly and there really isn't a whole lot to talk about.  We weren't able to meet with Megan and Tanner last week due to their crazy work schedules.  So hopefully we will be able to see them later on this week.  The one member present lesson that we did manage to have this week was with a new investigator of ours named David.  We met with him for the first time last night and taught him the Gospel of Jesus Christ.  Before we started the lesson with him, he was telling us about how he believed there was the great apostasy and the church was restored to the earth by Joseph Smith (he has met with missionaries before).  He was also telling us about how he wanted to be indoctrinated so he could start his conversion process and get baptized!  But back to the lesson.  We read 2nd Nephi 31 with him where it talks about why Christ was baptized.  Before we started reading with him he asked us the question why was Christ baptized.  We told him a brief answer because we would read the answer to his question.  So we kept reading and sure enough he found out the answer to his question.  I really enjoyed getting to go and teach him last night.  So more good news to come about him.

On Saturday we got to go up to OKC again to help with some more tornado cleanup.  This time we were out in a wheat field picking up debris and garbage so that the farmers could harvest all of their wheat.  It was a very long day.  Luckily I don't really have allergies or else that would have not been a fun day.  We ended up going home a little early because it started to rain, and with us walking through the fields when it was wet did more harm then good.  That was a really fun 2 1/2 hour car ride soaking wet.  Not.

Well there isn't too much more to say for this week.  I love you all and hope things are going well.

Love Elder Woodward

Wichita Falls South, Texas -June 10, 2013

Dear Family,

Last week was a pretty good week.  We got quite a bit of stuff done.

To start out the week, Elder Kahawii had to do a baptismal Interview last Monday evening for one of the Sisters investigators.  I'm assuming that it went ok because their investigator was baptized on Tuesday.  We had our Investigator Megan show up to the baptism.  I noticed that Elder Kahawaii and I always have our investigators show up to baptismal services, but none of our investigators have progressed to the point of baptism yet.  Anywho, back to what I was saying.  Megan is so freakin awesome! She has talked to Elder Kahawaii and I a couple of time and asked us about baptism, converting, how she believes the Book of Mormon is true, Joseph Smith was a Prophet, etc.  Her boyfriend, Tanner, isn't progressing quite as fast as Megan is.  Tanner has a lot of really good questions that make me have to stop and think for a little while before I can answer them.  I think the thing that Tanner is having the biggest problem with is that everything we are teaching him is so new that he is just being overwhelmed by it.  After the Sisters baptism Tanner came to the church after work and we had a lesson with them.  We watched the Restoration DVD with them to help Tanner understand more about Joseph Smith.  I definitely think that it helped him, because by the end of the lesson he was more open to us and what we had to say.  That is the amazing thing about the Spirit.  We still need to invite them to be baptized, so we will be doing that later this week, so I am pretty excited for that.  I'll let you know how that goes next week.

On Friday after District Meeting Elder Kahawaii and I went on an exchange with the Zone Leaders.  I got to stay down in Wichita Falls to work for the day.  While Elder Fales and I were out working we were able to find quite a few potential investigators.  We were able to set up a couple of return appointments so we were excited. 

I love you all.

Love Elder Woodward

Wichita Falls South, Texas -June 3, 2013

Dear Family,

Another week has come and gone in the land of Texas.  Since Mom is probably dying to know about all the tornado stuff, that is where I will start.  We had a couple more tornadoes come through the mission last Friday night.  I almost got to be up in the city for all of that fun.  But our new Zone Leader wouldn't let Elder Kahawaii and I go all the way up to the City with the Sisters like we had originally planned on.  So Elder Kahawaii and I were in Lawton Friday night, safe and sound, away from all the danger.  However if we had gone up with the Sisters the entire way we would have been caught right in the middle of the storm.  On Saturday morning we went the rest of the way to the city to meet with Elder Rasban to hear about some of the stuff that has been happening.  It was kinda funny when he first started talking to us.  He was telling us about how the day before he was at President Eyrings birthday party eating cake.  After we had our meeting with Elder Rasban we all got to go out and do some service for the rest of the day.  We got to go help a man clean up his back yard by getting all of the trees that had fallen over moved around to the front.  It was a really fun day.  I had a lot of fun getting to help clean up in the city.

I don't have very many stories to tell from last week.  Not very much happened.  We had another transfer, and with the transfer came the car that we have needed in our area for 6 weeks now.  I am the designated driver since Elder Kahawaii doesn't have a license.  It is so weird driving again.  I'm getting used to it though. 

So it is time for a random question.  Do any of you happen to remember the name of the new missionary that came out to the field just before Gislene got baptized?  I am asking this because the other day Elder Kahawaii and I were talking and I think that the Elder that came to the field just in time for Gislene's baptism was in Elder Kahawaii's MTC district.  That would be really weird if it was the same Elder. 

It is exciting to get to hear about everything happening at home.  I'm glad to hear that things are going well for everyone.  There is lots more to come next week. 

Love Elder Woodward

Missionaries cleaning up after tornadoes in Oklahoma