Anadarko, Oklahoma -October 13, 2014

Hey!  

It is hard to believe that my time as a missionary is coming to a close.  I know I have said this before, but I still can't believe how fast these two years have gone by.  

There has been a whole lot that has been going on this past week, so I will do my best to fill you guys in on some of it.  If you have any questions after I'm done you can wait until Thursday to ask them.  So where do I even start today? There have been so many different thoughts and feelings that I have had this past week on top of all of the normal day to day missionary stuff.  

Last Wednesday was by far the highlight of my week in every way possible.  Last Wednesday Elder Tanner and I got to go back up to my old area of Woodward, Oklahoma for a baptism of a couple of people that I started teaching.  It was by far one of the best days that I have had in a long time and it was a great way to be able to finish my mission!  So right before we were leaving to go up to Woodward Elder Birch called us up to let us know that he had talked with Herman and Carolyn the night before and that they wanted to take us out to dinner when we made it up to Woodward Wednesday night.  We made it into Woodward at just the right time to meet everyone at the restaurant before they went in to sit down.  It was really nice to get to go and have dinner with Herman and Carolyn because I have really felt like I needed to contact them in some way and see how they were doing.  So between all 12 of the missionaries that were at dinner I was able to get to sit by Herman and Carolyn and actually be able to talk with them without having to yell over people.  It was great to be able to see them again and see how they have been since the last time I saw them.  Herman and Carolyn are still doing really well!

After dinner was over we all went over to the church up in Woodward.  Everything was exactly how I remembered it.  I was so excited when we got inside the church and I started to see a lot of people that I got to know when I was up in Woodward.  And what made it even better was that they remembered who I was!  I don't think there are going to be very many people that forget that Elder Woodward served up in Woodward.  Either way it was great to see so many people that I knew.  I got to go say hi to Alexa and Lilli before the baptismal service started.  The baptisms went great!  After the baptism we stayed there at the church for about an hour and I talked to the families of Lilli and Alexa.  I don't remember if I told you this before, but Lilli and Alexa's families have become some of my all time favorite people that I met while I have been out here, so I was really excited to see all of them again!  I don't even think that I can begin to describe how excited I was to be able to go back up too Woodward one more time before I came home.  Woodward is by far my favorite area that I was able to serve in!  The entire time that I was up in Woodward I felt like I was back home right where I belonged.  It was weird that I felt so at home in Woodward and I wasn't sure why I felt that way, I just knew that it felt good to be there with so many of they people that I got to know and love in the time I served in Woodward.  The next morning I realized why it was I felt like that while I was in Woodward.  I was reading in Doctrine and Covenants section 18 for part of my studies and I read verses 15-16 where it talks about the joy that we will have with those people that we help bring unto Christ, and it was like I got hit with a ton of bricks.  The Spirit told me that the reason I felt the way I did when I was back in Woodward was because I was with some of those people that I had helped bring to Christ and I was able to feel a little bit of that joy that we will have after this life with those people that we have helped.  The Lord had definitely planned for me to read those scriptures the day after the baptism so that I could recognize what had happened while I was in Woodward.  I have probably read or heard those scriptures in section 18 hundreds of times throughout my life, but it wasn't until Thursday that I finally understood what they really meant.  Since Thursday those scriptures have taken on a new light and they have become some of my favorite scriptures and the most meaningful scriptures to me!  I am so grateful for everything that happened for me last week!  

Well that is all of what I really wanted to share with you this week.  I am excited to see all of you guys this week!  Thanks again for all that you guys have done for me!  I love you all!

Love Elder Woodward

Anadarko, Oklahoma -October 6, 2014

Hey everyone!

Well there isn't a whole lot to report on for last week.  There were a couple of cool things that we got to do last week.  

Being a missionary right now does have a couple of perks.  So on the 10th there is going to be a movie coming out in theaters called Meet the Mormons.  So the perk of being a missionary this time is that we got to go and see the movie last week before it came out in theaters.  Our mission president got an early screening copy to show the missionaries here so that we could tell people about the movie and use it as a way to find new investigators.  So last Tuesday we drove down to the Lawton stake center to watch Meet the Mormons.  It was a really good movie!  I don't know if you have heard anything about it, but it is a documentary about 6 different members of the church and their families.  I gives a good view of Latter-day Saint families and the things that they have to do in life.  Anyways if you want to find out more about it you will have to go see it when it comes out in theaters.  After we finished the movie we went out to eat down in Lawton at Olive Garden.  I guess you could call that my birthday dinner.  Not much to tell about that, I just thought you would be interested to know that I did do something for my birthday.  

Watching General Conference this past week was great!  I loved being able to hear from the all of the speakers.  There was so much that I learned from conference this past weekend.  General Conference on the mission is the best.  There are so many different ways that you can apply what you learn.  I really liked Elder Bednars talk and how it was directed toward people who aren't members of the church.  I loved how he talked about exactly why we want to share to gospel with other people.  Heavenly Father really is preparing the hearts and the minds of His children to receive the restored gospel.  What a blessing it is to be a missionary.  

Things have been going really well for me these past couple of weeks.  Elder tanner and I have been able to get a lot of really good work done.  As I have mentioned in the past everything just blends together at this point so I can't really tell you much about the details of what happened.  maybe it will all come back to me before I get home.  Thanks for everything that you guys do for me!  i love all of you and will see you guys soon!  Make it a great week.

Love Elder Woodward

Anadarko, Oklahoma -September 29, 2014

Hey!

It sounds like things have been just as crazy as ever in the Woodward home.  Like always there has been soccer, soccer, and more soccer.  I sounds like Zander is having fun with soccer this year.  I'm not really surprised that all he wants to do is dribble to ball and score.  He is pretty independent.  Hopefully the girls don't start to get an attitude like that.  

I am so excited to be able to listen to conference this weekend.  I have always been to excited to watch General Conference as a missionary.  It is one of my favorite times of the year!  Last April Lois (she is the lady who got baptized in Mustang) watched a session of conference and the only question that she had about conference was about how many pipes there were in the organ at the conference center.  It was pretty cool.  There are always a lot of miracles that happen around conference time, so I am excited to see what will happen this time.  Elder Tanner and I have been inviting a lot of people to watch conference this weekend.  It is going to be a really fun weekend.  

One of the things that I am really excited for next week is that I get to go back up to Woodward for a baptism next week.  There is an investigator that I worked with while I was up there that is getting baptized and they invited me to come back for the baptism.  It is really exciting to know that this investigator is getting baptized after all this time.  I will be sure to take pictures so that you can all see.  

Last week we got to go see our investigators, Jose and Angelica.  Jose is in the process of recovering from an open heart surgery that he had last week.  Jose is doing really well for just having had surgery.  I am always amazed with that man.  Jose is such a great example of a faithful person.  Even with everything that he has gone through recently he is still laughing and joking with us when we go over.  I was hoping that he could get baptized before I go home, but since he just had heart surgery, it probably isn't very likely to happen.  We had a couple of really good lessons with Jose and Angelica last week.  One of the things we taught them was about the 10 commandments.  Normally when we teach the 10 commandments we teach them using hand signs.  For the sixth commandment which is thou shalt not kill, the hand sign we use is finger guns.  Jose decided to crack a joke when we reviewed all the commandments and instead of saying thou shalt not kill he said "no boom boom."  The way Jose said it was really funny and so we all started laughing.

Another really cool thing that happened was when we were out in Hinton this past week.  There is a part member family that we are teaching up there.  The are the Finney family.  When we were talking with Sister Finney she told us that she had been talking to her husband and asked him if he was ever going to join the church and Brother Finney had told her that he was going to join the church he just wasn't sure when.  That was super cool to hear about.  We have been working with the Finney's for a long time now so it was cool to hear that he has been making some progress and his heart is starting to be softened.  That was a really cool day for us.  

We had the primary program here in the branch yesterday.  Like always the Primary program was great!  We heard that when they were practicing for their program it was super crazy and the teachers had no idea how it was all going to come together.  Actuall the way it was described to us was that is was like trying to heard a flock of cats.  It all came together though.  What the leaders did in order to motivate the kids to learn the songs was that the kids were promised an eight layer cake if they learned all the songs.  It was a pretty impressive cake.   

Well thank you all for everything that you do!  I love and appreciate all that you guys do for me everyday.  I will see you guys in a couple of weeks!  

Love Elder Woodward

Anadarko, Oklahoma -September 23, 2014

Hey!

Things have been going really well for me and Elder Tanner this past week.  We ended up having a really good week and we saw lots of miracles happen!  Last week was also a pretty crazy week for us.  We were super busy last Monday and Tuesday with everything that was going on here in our mission for these days.  Last Monday we were down in Lawton most of the day because we had a Zone P-day.  Our entire zone met down in Lawton to do some activities and spend some time with each other.  We ended up playing football for part of the time.  You could probably expect this, but I would have much rather played Frisbee instead.  Oh well it was still a fun day.  We stayed down in Lawton for the rest of the day cause we had our specialized training for this transfer.  It was a good training and I was able to receive some good inspiration from it.  We spent the night down in Lawton as well so that we wouldn't have to drive back down on Tuesday morning for our Zone Conference.  Zone Conference was really good, just like it always is.  The end of this Zone Conference was a little bit different for me this time.  At the end of our Zone Conferences we have a testimony meeting where all of the missionaries that are going to leave the mission before the next Zone Conference are invited up to give there "departing" testimony.  So since this is my last transfer I obviously was invited to go up and bear my testimony.  Everything went well.  When I went back to my seat and sat down is when everything hit me.  I hadn't thought about it a lot before, but after I sat down it dawned on me that I really am about to go home and that I really don't have a lot of time left as a full time missionary.  It was a sad moment for me as I sat there and listened to others get up to bear their testimonies.  I'm sure Mom and Dad remember what it felt like to be in that situation realizing how close to the end of the mission they were.  I don't really know what words to use to describe it.  

The rest of the week kinda went by in a blur.  Everything happened so fast.  We were able to contact a lot of our investigators last week and have some really good lessons with them.  I got to go on exchanges with the Elders down in Elgin last Friday as well.  We have been getting a lot of good work done in the past couple of weeks and are seeing some cool miracles come from it.  

I am doing well out here and loving the work.  Thanks for all that you guys have done for me!

Love Elder Woodward

Anadarko, Oklahoma -September 15, 2014

Hey!

There is definitely a whole lot of stuff that has been happening this month, and like you guys said it is already half over.  Things have been going really well for us out here.  Last week we had some pretty cool weather that came through town.  Most of last week the temperature was down in the 60's or 70's which was a really nice change for us as missionaries.  I guess most of the people who live here thought it was too cold, but I really enjoyed driving with the windows down and not sweating all the time.  Enough about the weather though.

Last week we had a Mission Tour with Elder Foster from the Second Quorum of the Seventy.  We had a really great day up in Norman getting to hear from Elder Foster.  It was a very uplifting conference for me.  One of the things that he talked about was in the Pearl of Great Price where the Lord it talking to Moses and showing him world without number and where we find out more about the creation of the Earth.   On of the scriptures that he shared was Abraham 3:24 which says "And there stood one among them that was like unto God, and he said unto those who were with him: We will go down, for there is space there, and we will take of these materials, and we will make an earth whereon these may dwell."  The things that I loved the most about that scripture is that the Earth and everything around us was created for us so that we could come here and get a body and be tested.  All of this, the earth, the Creation, the Plan of Salvation, everything that Heavenly Father has done is for us.  This is all about us.  How cool of a thought is that?  That was a really comforting thing to hear last week and it has really helped me since then.  

We were also able to have a really good lesson with a family last week after the Mission Tour.  The family we went to see was Ryan and Cindy.  Elder Tanner and Elder Duffin found him while they were on exchanges ago, well it was more like he found them.  They went to try another investigator and when they got out of the car Ryan started talking to them and he ended up inviting us to come back and visit with them.  We saw them on Tuesday evening and had a really good lesson about the Plan of Salvation with them.  One of the reasons that I thought it went so well was because there was a whole lot of interaction with Ryan and Cindy.  They were asking a bunch of questions and asking where the scriptures talked about the Plan of Salvation.  All of the interaction is what I thought made it so great cause there are a lot of times when we teach that our investigators give one or two word responses and say ok whenevery we teach something new.  It was great to have that interaction while we were teaching cause it helped us to build a relationship with them while we were teaching.  

We saw Jose and Angelica again a couple of times last week.  Most of the time when we go visit them we have read from the Book of Mormon to help them want to read it when we aren't there.  So last week we read 1 Nephi 4 with them and when we went back last night to follow up, Jose told us that he had finished chaper 4 and that he was reading on his own.  That was really cool to have happen!  It is gonna be a while before we get to visit them again cause Jose is going to have a heart surgery today and he will be in the hospital for most of the week.

Another cool thing that happened last week was that we were able to go and visit a bunch of people that we have had a really hard time contacting for the last couple of weeks.  There were a bunch of people who dropped off the face of the earth for a while, but they are all getting back!  It was good to be able to contact those people and find out that they have been doing ok since we last saw them.  

Well thank you guys for everything that you are doing for me!  I am having a great time out here with Elder Tanner and I love this work!

Love Elder Woodward

Anadarko, Oklahoma -September 8, 2014

Hey there!

I would agree with you that it seems like it was yesterday that it was P-day and we were emailing home.  It is crazy how time flies.  There isn't a whole lot that I can do to slow things down, so I figure that it is best to make the best of the time I have left.  It is crazy that it has almost been two years since I left.  I wouldn't mind staying out here a little longer, but I am sure that all of you guys are ready for me to come home.  Well too bad the Lord still has me for another 6 weeks!  

Last week contained a little bit of everything for me and Elder Tanner.  I guess that is what I should have come to expect by now.  I am starting to get really bad at remembering all of what we did the week before, but I will do my best to remember.  

Recently the Anadarko branch has been doing a 40 day fast.  If you have never heard of that before here is what it is.  So each day a member here signs up to fast for one day and fasts specifically for missionary work here in the Anadarko branch.  The goal of this is to have a different member fasting every day for 40 days straight.  It has been a really good way to get the members involved in missionary work and to help get them excited to help us with missionary work.  There have been a lot of really cool things happen because of this 40 day fast and we are only halfway through.  There have been a whole lot of miracles happen so far.  

Yesterday we had a really cool miracle happen.  Church had just gotten over for the day and Elder tanner and I were talking to some of the members, when our Branch Mission Leader, Brother Bateman, came up to us with a couple who had just walked into the church a couple of minutes earlier.  He introduced us to the couple and told us what they had told him.  This couple was Cheyenne and Cody.  We had met Cheyenne a couple of weeks earlier at the Indian Expo that was going on here.  She was working at the gate and so we saw her and talked to her every time that we went over there.  We found out that she lived in Arizona, so I really didn't think about talking to her about the church or asking if we could have missionaries come visit her.  Who would have ever thought though that Cheyenne and her husband, Cody, would have moved here to Anadarko recently.  They had just moved here and were looking for a church to go to and of all of the churches here in Anadarko, they chose to walk into our building.  It was a definitely a miracle that they walked into church at the exact time so that we could talk to them.  There are so many other ways that meeting Cheyenne and Cody at church was a miracle, but my favorite part about it was that out of everyone that Elder Philbrick gave a Book of Mormon to, (334 of them if you remember)  the only thing that we have seen come out of those 4 days at the expo was a lady that we didn't "force" the church or the Book of Mormon on.   

Like I said earlier by the time P-day come I have a whole lot of trouble remembering what happened at the beginning of last week.  So that is really all for my email this week.  I will probably write you a letter later today with some of the other things that we did last week.  I really am sorry that my memory is turning into mush and I can't remember anything.  

I hope that you all have a great week!  I love you guys!

Love Elder Woodward

Anadarko, Oklahoma -September 1, 2014

Hey!

Well things have been going pretty well for Elder Tanner and I out here in Anadarko.  Last week was a slower week for us and we weren't able to get as much done as we would have liked to.  Elder Tanner and I both got sick last week which caused us to be stuck inside way more then we would have liked to.  There was a lot more that we would have like to do, but there is only so much you can do when your sick.

So since we were sick most of last week there isn't a whole lot to tell you about, but I will do my best to let you know what has been happening.  Last week I told you a little about our lesson with Dayton and Veeda.  So we weren't able to set up another appointment with them until September 12, but we stopped by last week to follow up and see how there reading from the Book of Mormon was going and if they had been praying.  Dayton was at work so we didn't see him, but we Talked with Veeda for a couple of minutes and she had read all of 1 Nephi and she said she had been praying about the Book of Mormon.  It was really cool to hear that she had been doing that.  

You guys are getting pretty good at keeping track of when transfers happen.  It probably makes it really easy that transfers here are a week after Shannon's transfers.  Either way transfers are gonna happen here this week.  We found out last night what will happen next transfer and my entire District is going to be staying together.  So I am going to finish my mission here in Anadarko, and Elder Tanner is going to be my last mission companion.  It is kinda hard to think that this is going to be my last transfer as a missionary.  It seems like it was a week ago that I was sitting in the mission van thinking that two years seemed like forever.  I thought that I was going to spend the rest of my life as a missionary, but it has all gone by too quickly.

Well I think that is everything for this week.  Thanks for all that you guys are doing for me.  I love all of you!

Love Elder Woodward