Mustang, Oklahoma -March 31, 2014

Hello everyone!

Well like usual life continues to move forward for me out here.  It sounds like things have been going pretty well at home.  Mom is probably already aware of this, but tornado season is just around the corner for us.  We are supposed to be getting a pretty big storm come through this week, but it won't get bad until Wednesday.  Don't worry though Mom, after seeing how much damage a tornado causes I don't plan on going outside to see a tornado anytime soon.  And yes we do have a storm shelter that we can go to in case of an emergency.  Enough of that though.

So this past week was an ok one for Elder Faulkner and I.  It wasn't the best week that I have ever had, but we were able to see a couple of miracles happen.  Miracles always make things so much better for us.  Last night we were out with one of our members and we decided to stop by Sister Jackson's house.  I don't know if I have told you anything about Sister Jackson before, but her husband recently passed away.  Sister Jackson was sitting out in her garage when we got there so we sat outside and talked to her for a couple of minutes.  She mentioned that she was going to be remodeling her house, so being missionaries we offered to come over and help her with anything.  She told us that she had a lot of painting that she was going to be doing in a couple of weeks and asked if we could come help her with that.  Of course we jumped at the opportunity to give service.  The miracle that happened though was that the member who was with us, Brother Hooser, offer to get a sprayer from his work and come over to spray all of the paint on the walls, which would save hours and hours of work.  That got a really good reaction from Sister Jackson and she really started to open up.  It was really cool to see the involvement of the ward members in trying to help her right now.  I really feel like if we can get a lot of members involved in helping Sister Jackson right now that there is a good chance she will start coming back to church. 

One of the other great things that happened this past week was that we were able to go and see our investigator Jeff again.  We saw him last Thursday evening and we had Brother Bynum there with us.  We had a really good lesson about the priesthood.  He had questions about why we believed that you needed to be baptized in the Mormon church.  Pretty much he had questions about priesthood authority.  So we were able to teach him all about the priesthood and how Christ gave it to his apostles, then the priesthood was lost during the great apostasy.  We then got into the restoration and how the priesthood was restored through Joseph Smith.  I felt like we answered a lot of his questions and helped him to understand the importance of having the priesthood.  We left him with one of the restoration pamphlets and asked him to read about the restoration of the priesthood.  We are going to be seeing him on Wednesday evening so wee will see how all of his reading went.  We are defiantly going to be inviting him to come and watch general conference though. 

So speaking of General Conference, I am so excited for this weekend!  Conference on the mission is defiantly a different experience for me.  Now that I have been on a mission for as long as I have, I have defiantly learned to love Conference time.  It is one of the things that I look forward to every April and October.  It is fantastic to be able to hear from the Prophet and Apostles!  It is going to be an exciting weekend for sure!

Well I think that is all for this week.  We are doing really well and don't have much to worry about.  I am slowly learning to love it here in Mustang.  There are a lot of really good members here.  Thank you for all that you guys do!  I love all of you so much.  

Love Elder Woodward

Mustang, Oklahoma -March 24, 2014

Hey there!

Well this past week turned out to be a pretty good one.  So far this transfer I have realized that there is a lot more work then I remembered when it comes time to take over an area.  It has been interesting adjusting to a new companion.  I don't know if I told you last week, but his name is Elder Faulkner.  He is from West Jordan, Utah and has been out for 10 months.  It is different working with him because he is different then all of my other companions have been.  It isn't a bad different, it is just different.  Elder Faulkner comes from an extremely small family.  Well his family is small compared to ours, but then again most families are small compared to ours.  He is the oldest of 4 kids.  So if you include his parents there are six people in his family.  I'm not entirely sure how well we are going to get along because we have none of the same hobbies.  He has never played ultimate frisbee before and he hasn't spent too much money on R/C cars and stuff.  He did do a little bit of stuff when it came to theatre, but not a whole lot.  Honestly, sometimes I wonder if President Walkenhorst ever expected for us to get along.  Nah, I'm just kidding.  So far we are getting along pretty well.  We haven't had any problems yet, and hopefully we won't have any problems.  He is a really quite guy when you first get to know him, but we are all working on getting him to come out of his shell.  I am pretty excited for this upcoming transfer!  It should be a pretty good one.  

So this past Sunday we continued our 13 week streak of having ZERO investigators at sacrament meeting.  We have now made it at least 14 weeks without an investigator at sacrament.  It think that has got to be a new mission record or something.  Not that any of that is good though.  It has been really frustrating not having had any investigators come to church the entire time I've been here.  I'm not really sure what we have been doing wrong here to not have been able to see at least one investigator come to church.  Hopefully things will start to change here pretty soon or I think I might start to go crazy.  It has been a rather trying week for us.  I won't go into all the details though because I know that you would all prefer to hear the good things that happened.  

The work in the area is also starting to improve.  There wasn't a big change, but it has gotten better!  We even found a new investigator this past week.  We were also able to go see Brother Oakley and have a lesson with him.  We saw the Oakley's on Wednesday and Sunday evening.  On Wednesday we invited them to the youth fundraiser on Saturday, then when Saturday came they both showed up to the fundraiser.  We were really hoping that Brother Oakley would be at church, but unfortunately he didn't make it.  It was a real bummer not to be able to see him at church, but there is always next week.  We are defiantly keeping out heads held high and not letting anything slow us down.  We are defiantly excited for this upcoming week and to see what is going to happen.  

Thank you all for everything that you guys do for me!  I am so grateful for everything!  I love you all!

Love Elder Cameron Woodward 

Mustang, Oklahoma -March 17, 2014

Hey!

Well another week has come and gone here in Oklahoma.  Not to mention that another month has gone by as well.  It seems like it was just yesterday that I was talking about being at 16 months, and now here I am talking about how I have been out for 17 months now.  Mom and Dad you were defiantly right that the time does start to go faster.  Then on top of another month, we have arrived at another transfer.  This past transfer just flew by!  It does not seem like it has been 6 weeks.  

So I guess I will start out this week by telling you all about what is happening this transfer.  Elder Garner and Elder Bolan are going to be staying together in Mustang 1st West.  Elder Davis is going to be transfered all the way down to Seymour, Texas so my new companion is going to be Elder Faulkner.  I am now up to companion number 9.  I have no idea who my new companion is so it will be interesting to see what kind of a person he is.  It should be fun though.  I am still going to be the District Leader here in Mustang.  I thought about asking if our Zone Leaders if they were sure that I was going to stay District Leader, because I defiantly think that someone else should be given the chance to experience being a District Leader.  Oh well I guess that I will continue to do what the Lord has asked me to do.

I can't really complain about how our week went.  We saw some pretty cool things happen and we learned a lot of new interesting "facts."  All of these so called "facts" came from a guy we visited last Thursday.  His name is Ty and he just happens to be an Atheist.  It was an interesting experience getting to talk to him.  There was really nothing more then interesting that came out of it.  So Ty used to be a Christian until he was about 18 years old, then he started to question whether or not God actually existed.  From there the visit we had with him went downhill.  Throughout the lesson his life story reminded me about part of the Book of Mormon where it talks about how those who once knew the truth and then turned away from it were more hard hearted then those who had never know the truth.  Ty was very contentious with us and he didn't have a whole lot of real intent behind wanting to meet with us.  We started to talk about Moroni 10:3-5 about how we need to have a sincere heart and real intent if we want to find out the truth.  Ty told us that he would pray like we asked him to, which was fine with me, but it wasn't good enough for Heavenly Father.  After he said he would pray I felt like I needed to invite him to be baptized which before that though, was the last thing I had thought of inviting him to do.  I went ahead and invited him to be baptized though, and when he replied to the invitation I could see why I felt I needed to ask him to be baptized.  It was Heavenly Father's way of letting us know that Ty wasn't going to do any of the things we asked him to do and to not spend more time then we needed to trying to teach him.  So we will probably stop by one more time and unless there is a significant change in his attitude we probably won't go back.  

We were also able to have another lesson with Brother Oakley again this past week.  We saw him and his wife on Wednesday evening and we taught them about the 10 Commandments.  The lesson went really well and he understood everything we talked about.  He even told us that he would come to church yesterday, but Sunday morning he got sick.  I'm not sure, but I think there might be a new flu going around called the Sunday Flu.  It seems like it only lasts for 5-6 hours and the only time it starts to act up is on Sunday morning on weeks that you have told the missionaries that you are going to come to church.  After church is over it doesn't bother you again until next Sunday.  It has been really frustrating trying to get Brother Oakley to church.  It seems like there is always and excuse.  Hopefully we will be able to help him overcome his concerns with coming to church.  We will see how that goes.

Don't worry Mom there was some good things that happened last week!  I would say the best thing that happened was that on Friday I got to go on an exchange with Elder Schofield down in Mustang 2nd South.  We had a really cool day full of awesome stuff!  We had a really good church tour with one of their investigators.  Funny story though, the investigator we had a church tour with, Leann, was someone that we had started teaching the last time I went on exchanges down to the Mustang 2nd South area.  So I have now taught Leann more then the two Elders who actually serve in the area.  Maybe I will be able to have another lesson with her the next time I do exchanges with them.  Oh and P.S. Leann has only been taught two lessons total.  So that was pretty cool!  But after the church tour we stayed at the church because we got to be the judges for the Pinewood Derby that evening.  We got to judge all of the cars and decide who got what awards.  My favorite award that we gave was the "Best Fuel Economy."  Do you have any guesses at what the award was for?  The Best Fuel Economy award was given to the overall slowest car.  Elder Schofield and I left the church before the awards were given so that we could avoid the mob of angry dad's if their son didn't get the right award.  So that turned out to be a pretty fun evening for me.  It was a lot of fun to go to another pack meeting and see all of the cub scouts running around like chicken with their heads cut off.  

Well I think that about covers all of the bases for this past week.  I really enjoyed it!  There was a lot to learn and a lot for us to do.  

Thank you for everything that you do for me!  I couldn't be doing this without you guys!  I love you all!  

Love Elder Cameron Woodward

Mustang, Oklahoma -March 10, 2014

Hey!

So there wasn't a whole lot that happened this past week here in Mustang.  There wasn't a whole lot of progress made here over the past week.  We have to reschedule the one baptismal date that we had because our investigator didn't come to church yesterday.  We also weren't able to visit very many of our investigators.  We are working through all of this and we are trying to move forward and doing our best to find new people to teach every day.

So switching over to the good news for the week, we were able to see one of our investigators twice this past week.  We had two lessons with Brother Oakley this past week and they both went pretty well.  The first time we saw him we were on exchanges so I wasn't actually there, but from what I heard the lesson went pretty well.  Elder Davis and Elder Bolan talked about the Word of Wisdom with them.  It turns out that Brother Oakley has been living the Word of Wisdom for a couple of years now.  That came as quite a shock to Elder Davis and I.  The other time we saw hims this week was yesterday evening.  We had planned on teaching him about following the prophet then inviting them to watch General Conference, but Brother Oakley had questions about the Law of Tithing so we taught them about that instead.  At the end of the lesson Sister Oakley asked us what you should do if you weren't sure about whether or not to pay your tithing.  Brother Oakley jumped in and said that you should just pay your tithing and not even question whether or not your going to pay it.  So that turned out to be a really good lesson and Brother Oakley understood why it was important to pay tithing.  So Elder Davis and I were both really excited about that.

So last Wednesday I got to go on an exchange with Elder Garner.  It was a pretty fun exchange and I got to know him quite a bit better.  We did so much walking that by the end of the day I don't think that I could have walked anymore even if I had wanted to.  Ok that isn't necessarily true, but we did do a lot of walking.  We had a pretty good day while we were out on exchanges.  We were able to go and visit one of their recent converts.

Friday I was on exchanges again.  This time it was with our Zone Leaders though.  Elder Edmunds came down here to Mustang with me for the day.  In case you were wondering, yes Elder Edmunds did serve up in Edmond for part of his mission.  We had a pretty good day here.  We found a couple of potential investigators that we are going to start to work with.  We tried to visit one of the new potentials on Saturday evening and all she did was talk our ear off.  We were there for and hour and a half and I think I only said a total of 10 words.  She would not let us talk.  It was kinda funny though.  It made for a funny story.  On the drive back to our apartment the member who was out with us just sat there and laughed at what happened.  He got a kick out of our visit.

Well that is about all for this week.  I hope that you all have a great week!  I love you all!

Love Elder Cameron Woodward

Mustang, Oklahoma -March 3, 2014

Hey everyone!

It sure sounds like things have been kinda crazy this past week.  Like always there is always something to do with soccer.  I would just like to time to tell you that you are all crazy for going out and sitting in freezing cold weather to watch Emmie and Darcy play soccer.  I would have tried to find a place to park where I could see the field and I would have sat in the car the entire game.  You have to remember though that I am not as committed to soccer as the rest of the family.

As for this past week for me...  It was a crazy one to say the least.  To sum it up into a nutshell:  2 exchanges with the district, a 6 hour long meeting on Thursday with some of the members from the Missionary Department in Salt Lake, crazy bad weather that caused at least one Jeep to get flipped upside down off the side of the roadway, and a church tour with one of our investigator who we set a baptismal date with.  

So first, starting Saturday and going into Sunday we had a really really bad (well bad for Oklahoma) storm come through.  It was one of the strangest storms I have ever seen though.  Saturday it was lightly raining most of the day, then we had a cold front move in so everything that was wet froze, then it started to snow, then it stopped snowing, then it started to hail, then some more snow, more hail, thunder and lightning in the middle of the snowstorm, then it stopped snowing and everything froze over.  It was a very strange storm.  I can now say with assurance that if you don't like the weather in Oklahoma, wait 5 minutes and it will change.  But the silver lining to the storm is that we got grounded so we couldn't go out and work so I spent 3+ hours in the kitchen cleaning everything and de-junking.  Our kitchen finally looks somewhat inhabitable and we didn't have a single dirty dish in the apartment.  It was fantastic, but I'm not expecting it to last very long.  I'm guessing that by tomorrow evening our sink will be full of dirty dishes again even though the dishwasher is empty right now.  It seems like everyone I live with is anti fill up the dishwasher.  

So last Thursday was a pretty cool day for me.  Two guys from the Missionary Department came out here to visit the mission and they wanted to have a meeting with all of the District Leaders, Zone Leaders,  Sister Training Leaders, and the Assistants.  It was a really good meeting and there was a lot of really good stuff that they talked about.  Brother Jarmin who is in charge of ALL of the training at the MTC was one of the two men that came out to visit, and he gave some really good training's to us.  The first one was all about our purpose as missionaries to Invite others to come unto Christ.  One of the other training that we received was about how giving church tours can help us get investgators at Sacrament meeting.  It was a really good meeting.  So the next day we gave one of our investigators a church tour to see how it would go.  Things went pretty well for us during the tour. Afterwards we were able to have a lesson with him and we talked about keeping the Sabbath day holy. He understood everything really well and didn't seem to have any questions about it. He committed to start keeping the Sabbath day holy and coming to church. We shared with him that we would like to set a goal for when he would like to be baptized and he said March 29th was a reasonable date for him. We then asked what he thought he would need to start doing to prepare to be baptized and he told us that he felt like he needed to come to church. So we were expecting to see him at church yesterday, but we had church cancelled due to the weather. So I can now see why church tours are so effective. I feel like the church tour really helped Brother Oakley increase his faith. 

So it turned out to be a pretty good week for us.  Thank you for all that you are doing for me each day.  I love you all!

Love Elder Cameron Woodward

Mustang, Oklahoma -February 24, 2014

Hey Family!

Well where do I even start...  This past week was a pretty tough one for me.  We weren't able to have any lessons with any of our investigators, and we were barely able to see any of the less active members we have been working with.  We had good visits with the few people that we were able to go and visit, but those were far and few this past week.  The other thing that frustrates me the most though is what I discovered last night looking through the District Leader binder.  I found out the reason that the Mustang 1st ward got a second set of missionaries, but it wasn't for the right reasons.  The missionaries that were serving here before they split the area were reporting numbers to President Walkenhorst WAY wrong.  So with the way the old missionaries reported numbers it looked like they were getting 5+ new investigators a week,  10 member present lessons and so on.  Pretty much it was just good looking numbers.  So President Walkenhorst decided it was time to split the area and when new missionaries came into the area and reported accurate numbers of what was happening, everything pretty much dropped to zero.  So it has been really frustrating because there isn't enough work here for two sets of missionaries.  Other then that nothing to big or exciting happened.

So last Thursday I got to go into Moore because there was a meeting for all the missionaries in leadership positions.  The reason we had it was to review the purpose of leadership responsibilities and to train us on how to better fulfill of responsibilities.  It was a good meeting and I learned a lot, but it was a super long meeting.  And there is going to be another meeting this Thursday because some people from the missionary department in Salt Lake are going to come evaluate our mission.  So that should be kinda fun.  It will be interesting to see how it goes.

Well that pretty much sums up my week.  Like I said there wasn't much that happened and it was really frustrating.  Hopefully we will see some improvement this upcoming week.  I hope that you all have a fantastic week!  Love you all!

Love Elder Cameron Woodward

Mustang, Oklahoma -February 18, 2014

Hey!

Well mom probably made the announcement that yesterday was my 16 month mark.  It is hard to believe how fast the months go by.  It would be nice if they could slow down a little bit, but I don't think that is ever going to happen so I am doing the best I can to make the most of every day.  It is great to get to be a missionary at this time.  One thing I have really enjoyed getting to see while I have been out is all of the changes that were/ are being made in the mission because of lowering the age missionaries can leave on their mission.  There has been a lot of things change just while I have been out, so I'm excited to see what other changes will happen over the next 8 months.  

Wednesday was a great day for me.  Recently President Walkenhorst changed the policy on how often we can go attend the temple so this past week my zone got to go up to the temple.  It was a really great experience!  I loved having to opportunity to go up to the temple.  It is really nice being so close to the temple right now.  It is defiantly a change from being 2 1/2 hours away from the temple.  Even though we are so close to the temple that still took up the majority of our day.  There wasn't a whole lot of time left to go out and work.

We had a hard week getting in to see some of our investigators.  There were only a couple of people that we were able to see throughout the week.  We were able to see a part member family, the Oakley's, that we have been working with. We were able to have two lessons with them last week.  The first time we saw them we talked about the Plan of Salvation, then when we saw them again on Sunday we taught the Gospel of Jesus Christ.  I thought that both of those lessons went really well.  We have invited Brother Oakley (he is the investigator) to be baptized a couple of times now and he said that he would be, but elder Davis and I have held off on setting a date until they understand the importance of coming to church weekly.  That has been one of the only holdups with their progression.  Sister Oakley did come to church this past week so we are making some steps in the right direction.  Elder Davis and I are both really excited to get to keep working with them.  

The only other investigator of ours that we were able to see this past week was Darrel.  In case I haven't told you about him before, he has been a member of the Roman Catholic church his entire life.  He is a really nice man who loves us going over to see him.  It has been tough trying to teach him though because he is so indoctrinated in his church that whenever we tell him something that we believe happened he replies and tells us that everything we talked about is in direct contradiction to everything that he believes.  So it has been really hard working with him because as we talk with him he gets very contentious, but he doesn't realize the contention that is there, and because of the contention is it hard to feel the Spirit.  So that is Darrel for you.  

So that was pretty much my week.  I am still doing really well.  Thank you for everything that you do for me everyday!  I love you all!

Love Elder Cameron Woodward