Hey!
Well it is now official. The Sisters are gone and the Elders are here. That is really all I have to say about that. The change isn't as different as I thought it would be, but it is different. As get further into this transfer I should be able to tell you about some of the other stuff that will change.
So this past week was fun. You remember me telling you about Elder Tanners rash. Well his is just about taken care of and gone, just in time for a rash of my own to show up. I don't know if I got it from him or from something else, but it is driving me crazy! It itches so bad all of the time. Luckily it hasn't spread to my entire body like Elder Tanner's rash did. It is mostly confined to my right leg, which is probably the worst place it could be cause I have slacks rubbing up against it all day long. Oh well enought about the rash. I'm sure none of you want to know about that anyways.
So recently (by recently I mean yesterday) I have had a huge desire to know more about Native American culture and how it ties into the gospel. The reason that this came up is because yesterday there was a member visiting from out of town who served his mission here in Oklahoma and served here in Anadarko for 14 month. (I will call him Brandon, because that is what his name is.) See look I can have Dad's weird sense of humor as well. I must be related to him in some way. Anyways back to what I was saying. So Brandon served here in Anadarko for 14 months and got to know a lot about Native American culture and he said that because he did that it really helped him while he was serving in this area because he was better able to relate to the people who live here. So as you probably remember there are seven distinct Native American tribes living here in the Anadarko area, all of which are literal descendants of the Lamanites. Remember it says that in the introduction to the Book of Mormon? If you don't remember that you need to read the introduction again. It was really cool to get to hear from him about all of the relations between the church and Native American Culture. Maybe if I am able to learn more about it I will share some of what I learned when I get home. I guess the main thing that I wanted to get at from this is that from the things I learned yesterday from Brandon is that a lot of what I he said "screams" at me that Christ DID come here to America and teach the people that lived here. There are so many relationships between the church and the Native American culture. The only way that they could have known these things is because Jesus Christ was here. There is no way on this earth that I could ever deny the truthfulness of the gospel. Although a lot of missionaries here look at Anadarko as the "dark hole" of the mission I am so grateful for the opportunity that I have had to serve here and the things that I have learned.
Things have been going well for Elder Tanner and I here in Anadarko. Last week was a little slower then some of the other week that we have had in the past. We still saw a lot of miracle happen though. Last Wednesday we talked to a guy named Chris and it was a planning miracle that we saw. On Tuesday evening as we were planning for the next day Elder Tanner and I felt like we needed to go try and visit the recent convert that the Sisters wanted us to start working with once they left the area since the recent convert actually lives in our area. (I will call her Lisa, because that is what her name is.) So Elder Tanner and I went to try Lisa, and she wasn't home so we walked back behind her house and got distracted by an old abandoned extra large covered garage behind Lisa's house. That wasn't where the miracle happened though. So as we were leaving the covered garage thing we found to go back to our car, an old lady across the street yelled at us and asked us where we were going. We didn't have anything happening right away so we went over an talked to her. Over at her house was her grandson Chris who recently became a Christian. So while Elder Tanner took on the old lady and the moving worker guy there at the house, I talked to Chris. Elder Tanner said it was a good thing that I was talking to Chris because the worker was saying a bunch a weird and not true stuff that he had heard about the church. While I was talking with Chris we talked a little about the church and what makes it different from other churches and so naturally I brought up the Book of Mormon. Chris was really interested in the Book of Mormon and how is was about "Gods dealings with the ancient inhabitants of the Americas." When we told him about when Christ came here to America he got a "what did you just say" look on his face. So we told him a little more about what Christ did when he was here. Chris was super excited and he wanted to read about Christ coming here, so we gave him a copy of the Book of Mormon and marked 3 Nephi 11 for him. It was cool to see how our planning the night before lead us to be able to find Chris.
Thank you all for everything that you do for me! Have a great week everyone!
Hey!
Things out here in Oklahoma sure have been really crazy over the past week. We have had a lot of good stuff happen and a lot of not so good things as well. As you know transfers have come around again and we had a lot of surprising changes here in our District. Nothing is going to change for Elder Tanner and I. We will be here in Anadarko for at least another transfer. The surprise came Sunday morning when the Sisters told us what was happening with them. President Walkenhorst called them at 10:40pm on Saturday and told both Sister Hirschi and Sister Safley that they were going to get transfered. If it wasn't bad enough to hear that we were losing both of our Sisters it was definitely bad to hear they were being replaced by Elders. Not that having Elders is going to be an entirely bad thing, but our branch president here has had some REALLY bad experiences with Elders in the past and now we are going to have two sets of Elders. It will be interesting to see what is going to happen with the branch when we get another set of Elders. Anyways so that is the news with transfers. It is going to be a really big change not having the Sisters around anymore. Oh well this is what President felt like would be good. We had better be getting some dang good Elders here or I will be so ticked!
Besides all of the crazy dumb things happening with transfers, Elder Tanner and I had a pretty good week. We were able to have a couple more lessons with Sarah last week which both went really well. The first lesson we had with her was on Tuesday. We were able to get a Sister in the branch, Sister Blanchard, to come to that lesson with us. Sister Blanchard turned out to be a great fellowshipper for Sarah. They started talking right away and got along really well. So at our lesson with Sarah on Tuesday we read through 2 Nephi 31 and talked a lot about baptism and why it is important. I don't know exactly at which point Sarah said this, but one of her comments during the lesson was that she would probably need to be re-baptized. You could definitely tell the Spirit was there working on her in order for her to feel like she needed to be baptized again. We invited Sarah to be baptized on August 31st and she said that she would prepare for that day. So then when we set up a return appointment we planned to have it at the church building so we could have a church tour so she could be familiar with the church before she came. Then on Thursday we were able to have the Church tour with her. It was an almost perfect time to have the church tour with her. It was great to get her to the church and show her around. The Spirit was there and it was really strong! Then yesterday Sarah and some of her family came out to church. It was great to get to see them there because it shows that they are truely committed and the really are interested in learning more about the church. There were a lot of miracles with Sarah this week.
We weren't able to have another lesson with Shannon because she got sick and still isn't feeling better. She can't be sick forever though so we will be able to get to see her soon.
One of the other really good lessons that we had last week was last night. We had gone to a small town about 10 miles North of Anadarko to do some work up there. We went to try two potential investigators, Brooke and Krissy, who ended up becoming investigators. We had a lesson with them about the Restoration and Joseph Smith. It ended up being a really good lesson. They both committed to read the Book of Mormon and pray about it. We shoule be making a trip back up there on Tuesday to visit with them again.
So that is about all from me. It was a fun week! Thanks for all that you guys do for me. Be safe and don't do anything dumb.
Hey there everyone!
It sounds like everything at home is going just as it should be. It didn't sound like there has been anything that has really changed. It is probably a good thing that Dad hasn't had Gislene and Zander doing any work out at the farm. Who knows though, they could do a really good job at gathering the eggs. It is probably just a better idea to let them play DS and watch movies instead of finding out what would happen in Dad let them try to do something.
It is good to hear that everything is going well up in Canada as well. Like always there is something happening with soccer. I don't know what would happen if the family tried to go an entire week without having to do anything with soccer. That would probably be a sign that the end of the world is coming. Good luck to Darcy and Emmie at their next soccer camp later on this week.
This past week was very different from other weeks for Elder Tanner and I. I don't remember if I mentioned it last week, but when we were doing some service for a member a couple weeks ago Elder Tanner ended up getting some sort of spider bite on his arm. At first it didn't start out to bad but a couple days later his wrist around the bite got swollen and the bite area started turning black. Needless to say there was something wrong. So this week we went to the doctors they gave him some stuff for the spider bite and we left. To go along with the bite, he started to develop a rash from something. So the reason that I am telling you all of this is because of everything that happened it prevented us from being able to go out and work as much. When we were out working Elder Tanner's rash would get really itchy and start to ooze stuff so on the doctors orders we spent a whole lot of time in the house we live at out of the heat so things would get better. Things have started to get better with his rash. So the only things that we were really able to do this week was go to set appointments where we wouldn't be outside in the heat. Other then set appointments we didn't get out much. The Lord definitely blessed us yesterday though.
So like I said we only went to set appointments and so we had a couple of appointments yesterday that we went to and saw a lot of miracle with them. The first one was with our investigator Sarah. We ended up finding Sarah and her family while we were out visiting a different potential and Elder Tanner and I saw her and the family sitting on the porch looking at us, so we decided to go over and talk to them. They told us that when they saw us on the other man's porch they thought we were the FBI. We have been going back to visit them pretty regularly, but we have mostly only been able to talk with Sarah. Anyways, so yesterday when we went over to see Sarah she invited us inside and she had all of her family there the sit in on the lesson. Then she had also sent her significant other to get one of their elderly friends who asked if she could come over for the lesson as well. So I think total we had 9 or 10 people at the lesson not including us. It was really cool. Elder Tanner and I taught them about the Plan of Salvation. Almost all of Sarah's family was involved and paying attention. Out of however many people were there we counted three of them as new investigators mainly because they were the ones we had seen the most often. We are definitely planning on working with the entire family because the Branch out here could really use a new family in the branch. Elder Tanner and I both feel like they are so prepared to hear the gospel.
The other miracle that we saw yesterday was with another investigator named Shannon. Shannon is someone that we met on the 4th of July because of the booth that we had set up. Shannon is another person that we feel is really prepared to hear the gospel. Yesterday was the second time that we had gone to see Shannon. She wasn't a new investigator yet because the first time we went over we spent some time getting to know her. Anyways, so we saw her yesterday and taught her about the Restoration and Joseph Smith. The reason we feel she is really prepared is because shortly after she came and talked to us at the booth her sister started to share a whole bunch of anti Mormon literature and normally when something like that happens is when people tell us they don't want us to come over. With Shannon though pretty much the exact oppostie of that happened. Shannon told us that after her sister read her all of the anti mormon stuff she told her sister that she didn't want to hear that stuff because she wanted to go straight to the source (us) to find out what we believe. So that was a miracle in and of itself but ontop of that she has a really sincere desire to know if this is true. She kept reiterating how much she wanted to know if this was true throughout the lesson. We have another appointment with Shannon on Thursday and I definitely feel like if she reads and prays between now and then she can have an answer about if this is Christ's restored church.
So just yesterday we were able to get four new investigators and two member present lessons. That was a miracle for sure because of the slow week we had had due to what happened with Elder Tanner. Heavenly Father was blessing us for having done everything we could throughout the week to do missionary work despite having had to stay inside for most of it.
Things have been going really well for us! We are enjoying our time here in Anadarko. Thanks for everything that you guys do for me! I will let you know what happens next week with transfers. Thanks again.
Love Elder Woodward
Hey!
Things sure sound like they have been a lot of fun for everyone over the past week. Darcy and Emmie get to go play soccer all week. Ian and Mom get to go watch the girls play soccer and not worry about anything else. Rolando, Gislene, and Zander will want to sit and watch TV for a week straight. Braeden will sit and play xbox. So I guess that leaves Dad to do everything else at home. I think that Dad got the short end of the stick this time around. You might want to at least flip a coin to see who takes the girls to the soccer camp next time Dad.
So now to give you an update on my week. We had a really good week out here in Anadarko. We had a lot of fun things happen. Friday July 4th was probably the most exciting day of the week. Obviously the 4th of July is always a fun day, but I thought this year was a really fun day. We were able to talk to the lady who was in charge of everything for the 4th of July here in Anadarko and got a booth set up at the park where everything was going to be taking place. We spent most of our day down there and got to talk to a lot of people. We had a really good day doing that. We got a couple of potential investigators from it, but more important then that was that we got to talk with a lot of people. At one point during the day Elder Tanner and I even got to help sign people in for the annual turtle race. Then to end the day we got to stay out until 11 that night so that we could watch some fireworks. It was nice to be able to get to do that.
One of the other things that we were able to do last week was go see an investigator named Alfredo. He is a really good kid that we have been able to work with over the last couple of weeks. We were able to teach him a lesson about the restoration of the gospel. We had a really good lesson with him and he seemed to be able to understand all of what we taught him. I feel like he does have a sincere desire to do what is right. At the end of the lesson we invited him to pray and ask if the Book of Mormon is true, and when he prayed with us there he actually asked right there if it was true. That was really cool to have happen, because as far as I can remember, that is the first time I have had an investigator pray and ask if something was true while we were there with them. That was nice to have happen. So we are really excited to get to keep working with him.
So this past week we were able to get out to a couple of the outlying towns in our area and do some work out there. We didn't get to spend too much time out and away from Anadarko, but the time we did get out was good. We saw a lot of good things happen.
Well I think that that is about all for us this week. Thank you for everything that you guys do for me! Have a great week everyone and be safe!
Love Elder Woodward
