Hello Woodward Family,
Well another week has flown by along with another month and almost a year since I got my mission call to Oklahoma Oklahoma City. It is kinda hard to believe how fast it is all flying by. But I am sure that none of you really care about any of that. I'm sure that you are all a lot more interested in how I am doing and how everything is going here in Woodward.
So to start out I'll tell you about my most boring day of the past week. It was defiantly Friday due to the fact that something I ate somewhere made me super sick and caused me to throw up and be miserable almost all day long. Well now that that is out of the way I can tell you about some of the exciting things that happened this week.
So last Wednesday we got to go down to Oklahoma City for Temple Conference. It was a super cool day! Right at the beginning President Walkenhorst talked to us and told us a little bit of the vision he has gained for our mission since he got here. He had been thinking a lot about it since he got here, and he felt confident that as a mission, we could have 100 convert baptisms in the month of August. It is going to take a lot of hard work and dedication. I am super excited for this though. It is going to push everyone to their limits. After that we got to go through and do a temple session. Mom, Dad, Adam, Camille, and anyone else who can go through the temple, if you haven't gone through within the past week, I would suggest that you take the time to go do a session. They have a new video for the endowment and it is amazing. Super cool. That is all I will say about that though. After the temple we had a training by the AP's and then another training from President Walkenhorst. Both of those trainings were focused on aligning our will with the Lord's and making those changes necessary so that we can get 100 baptisms this month. After Temple Conference was done we started our two hour drive back to Woodward. So that was our day.
So I have some super exciting news to tell you. I have one (hopefully two) investigators who are going to be baptized this weekend! But I guess for now I can tell you the story about the miracle that might have lead to both of the investigators getting baptized. So, I have told you about our investigator Francis. This story is going to involve her husband Don though. So Don and Francis were both being taught before I got to the area. The past couple of weeks we have really been focusing on working with Francis and helping her progress towards baptism because one time when the missionaries were teaching her she told them she wanted to be baptized and that she had already asked her son (he is a member) to baptize her. So at that point we jumped right on the bandwagon and started to work with her, but we ended up leaving Don behind. Don continued to sit in on the lessons and he kept learning, but he never really said much about anything while we were there. Then a couple of nights ago (Thursday August 1) we were there teaching Francis a lesson and Don was there again. After the lesson Elder Park and I left in a hurry because we were late for our next appointment, so we weren't able to talk to Don. But Elder and Sister Egnew stayed a little bit longer and spent some time talking with Don. I don't know what they said to him, but whatever they said it was good. So then next day (Friday August 2) we got a text from Don and Francis's daughter in law that told us the next time we went to see Don and Francis we needed to ask Don about whether he wanted to get baptized. So we went back the next day (Saturday August 3) so we could talk to them. We were able to get in and sit down with them. We started talking to Don about baptism and whether or not he would want to get baptized with his wife on August 10th. He said a couple of things, but the one that I remember was "we have been going to church together for 44 years now and I don't want you to start going to church without me." So we told him that if he wanted to get baptized with his wife in one week he would have to start living the Word of Wisdom today (Saturday August 3). Just before we left that night we offered to give Don a Priesthood blessing to help him be able to give up chewing tobacco. After the blessing you could see a huge change in his countenance. I could defiantly see that the blessing was helping immediately after the blessing. Unfortunately we couldn't tell him for sure that he would for sure be able to be baptized in a week with his wife due to the fact that he hadn't been to church three times. So we called up our Mission President on Sunday, explained the situation to him and how he works on Sunday and he has been to church twice already and that he wants to get baptized with his wife. Then President Walkenhorst told us that we could go ahead and baptize Don with his wife, Francis, because he didn't see that the fact that Don hadn't been to church three times yet was a good enough reason to keep him from being able to be baptized with his wife. So we saw them again last night and told him that if he was ready to be baptized by Saturday he could get baptized. It was super duper cool. So I will tell you how things go with their baptisms next week.
Other good news! Jeff, the man from Haiti, is probably going to be baptized on the 17th of August. As you know we have been working with him a lot and we have taught him everything he needs to know to be baptized. So we had originally scheduled his baptismal date for August 24th due to the fact that Stake Conference was on the 17th. I was a little worried about whether or not I would still be here in Woodward because transfers is on the 21st of the month. No, I don't know what is happening yet, but the reason I was worried is because if my past trends with how long I've been in an area continue, I would be leaving on the 21st. But luckily for me I don't have to worry anymore. Stake conference was moved to the 24th of the month, so we are moving Jeff's baptism forward a week, so I will be here for sure. It was great news!
I hope you have a good week and that this letter was long enough for you Mom. Love you all.
Love Elder Cameron Woodward
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