Mustang, Oklahoma -April 28, 2014

Hey!

For the most part life has been treating me pretty well.  I have been managing to deal with life and all of the good things that come with it.  I have also been having to deal with all of the crap that comes with life as well.  We found out last night all about transfers and what will be happening for the next six weeks of my life.  There really isn't much to tell you about since nothing is changing at all.  Yep that means that I will be here in Mustang for another six weeks with Elder Faulkner, Elder Bolan, and Elder Garner.  In case you couldn't tell I was really hoping something would be changing with this transfer.  

So now onto something that is actually good news.  Lois got baptized on Saturday!  Everything fell into place just like the pieces of a puzzle.  We finished teaching her all of the commandments last Thursday.  We finished all of the lessons just in time for her to be interviewed for her baptism on Friday evening, then she was baptized on Saturday and confirmed on Sunday.  We had already known for a while that she wanted Brother Ridley to baptize her, and that she wanted the four missionaries in our ward to stand in the circle when she was confirmed.  I wasn't really sure who would be doing the confirmation, but I thought it would just be Brother Ridley as well since he was baptizing her.  So on Tuesday evening we had a lesson with her and we were starting to figure out everything for the baptism.  I don't know exactly at which point it came up, but Sister Ridley asked me if I knew Lois wanted me to be the one who confirmed her.  I was so shocked that she wanted me to be the one who confirmed her.  It was a really humbling experience for her to have asked me to do this.  So yesterday I got to confirm Lois a member of the church.  It was a really cool experience.  The baptism on Saturday went really well.  We had 12 missionaries there to support her, which I thought was really cool because I got to see how many missionaries she had touched over the past couple of years.  She was so ready to be baptized though.  I don't think there was anything that would have stopped her from showing up to her baptism.  

So this past week I got to go on exchanges with a couple of exchanges with other missionaries.  Last Wednesday I went with Elder Hightower to Mustang 2nd ward and got to spend the day on my bike.  I was really glad that I had started to use my bike again before I went on that exchange or I think I probably would have died.  We had a pretty good day biking all over Mustang talking with people.  On Wednesday evening we went to help with their mutual activity which was a highway cleanup, so for the rest of the night we got to walk down the highway and pick up garbage.  It was actually pretty fun.  You would be surprised at all the random stuff you find that isn't trash.  I ended up being a good night and we got a lot of trash picked up.  The other exchange that I got to go on was with one of the Zone leaders.  Since I am the DL and I taught Lois I couldn't do her baptismal interview, so Elder Peterson came out here with me for the day.  We spent the day out on bikes since it wasn't our day to use the car.  The worst part about biking in Oklahoma is the wind.  There may not be hills to bike up, but there is wind to bike against which in some cases is worse then a hill.  But we ended up having a good day and getting a lot done.  We found a new potential investigator who we are going to go and see this evening.  So there are a lot of exciting things happening right now.  That is one reason that I am excited to get to stay for another transfer.  

Well that is all for this week.  I guess I will get to call home in a couple of weeks for Mothers Day.  Actually this time we are allowed to Skype home, so that is probably what I will end up doing.  So in a sense I will see you in a couple of weeks as well.  Thank you all for everything that you do for me!  I love you all! 

Love Elder Woodward

Mustang, Oklahoma -April 21, 2014

Hey!

Well things sure have been going well for us this past week.  We had seven long days to get out and work and we managed to get a lot done in that time.  It sounds like everything has been going a lot better at home over the past couple of weeks.  It must be really nice to have some peace and quiet.  Of course there is always something to say and do with soccer.  The is the basis and one of the fundamental units of living in the Woodward family.  Everything else revolves around soccer.  Maybe what Dad can start to do is take the power cord to the tv and not give it back until everyone practices soccer for and hour a day.  That would probably help Zander improve his soccer skills.  And if any of the kids come and tell you that is a bad idea to take the cord away, you can blame it on me.  There isn't a whole lot that they could do to me right now.  

This past week turned out to be a pretty good one for Elder Faulkner and me.  We were really excited about last week and how everything went.  Lois is still doing really well.  She was at church yesterday and we were able to have three lessons with her last week to help her get ready for her baptism.  We talked about the Gospel of Jesus Christ, the word of wisdom. the law of chastity, and tithing and fast offerings.  It sounds like we gave her a lot of new stuff to learn and think about, but it wasn't as bad as it sounds because Lois had already taken all of those pamphlets from work and read through all of them, so we really just went through and reviewed them to make sure she didn't have any questions.  She didn't have any questions or concerns with any of these things so it was really easy for her to commit to do all of these commandments.  She came to church yesterday as well and enjoyed the Easter Sunday.  Things are starting to get into full swing as we continue to prepare for her baptism this coming weekend.  Lois is still really excited for this weekend and can't wait for Saturday.  It is really weird to think that it has been over three weeks since we first started to teach her, and now we are almost to her baptism.  Today while we were at the laundromat we talked to Lois about the baptismal program and about who she would like to do everything.  So next week we will have a lot of exciting news to tell you about.  And yes Mom, I will be sure to send you a picture of everyone at the baptism since you have been eagerly awaiting more pictures.

So even though we were able to meet with Lois so much this past week we were still able to go and visit a lot of other people.  We had another lesson with Jeff.  We were able to talk to him a lot more about the priesthood and help him understand the importance of the priesthood.  We haven't been able to see him at church yet because he leaves town every weekend to go visit his family. So he is never here on Sunday and that makes it hard.  He is really close to knowing that the church is true.  So we are going to keep working with him to help him get ready to be baptized as soon as he starts coming to church.

Things are still going really well for me.  I am still alive and surviving out here in Oklahoma.  I got the Easter package that you had sent out for me.  I have no idea what I am supposed to do with all of that candy though.  I guess at some point I will have it all gone.  Thank you so much for the package though.  It was very much appreciated!  I will let you know if there is anything else that I need here in the future.  Thank you again for everything!  You guys are great!  

Love Elder Woodward

Mustang, Oklahoma -April 14, 2014

Hey!

So as far as things went this past week for missionary work here in Mustang, overall things went well.  About halfway through the week we found out that our investigator Louis did end up watching a some of General Conference last week so we were able to pick her baptismal date back up for April 26th.  Elder Faulkner and I were both really excited about that!  So then this past week we were able to have another lesson with Louis and teach her about the Plan of Salvation.  She was at her house ready for the lesson by the time we got there and she enjoyed the entire lesson.  She has been really prepared to get baptized.  So as you may have figured out by now, I wouldn't have told you that we were able to continue planning for her to be baptized on the 26th unless she came to church yesterday.  So yes Louis was able to make it to church for Fast and Testimony meeting.  It was really exciting to see her there and to not have to worry about rescheduling her baptismal date.  So that was our miracle for the week.

Another cool thing that happened for us this past week took place last night.  It was a really windy day and so Elder Faulkner and I weren't really in the mood to ride our bikes into 30- 40 mph winds, so we decided to walk to get over to our area.  As we were walking past a Pentecostal church I happened to see out of the corner of my eye that someone was waving at us.  So I looked over to see who it was and it was one of our potential investigators, Kristen.  We waved back and then went over to talk to her.  We found out that the church we were walking past happened to be the church she went to, so she invited us to come in and meet her Pastor.  At first I was a little worried about what would happen, but we went in and met her Pastor.  He was actually a really nice guy.  He invited us to come to church with them sometime and asked us for our number so that he could meet us sometime.  So it turned out to be a pretty cool way that we were able to contact Kristen and talk to her again.

So something new that I learned this past week.  If you happen to get sunscreen on your white dress shirt, when it comes time to wash it it will come out with an ugly yellowish-green stain.  Hopefully it won't be too hard to get the new coloring out of them.  

Thank you for everything!  I am really looking forward to this Easter package!  Thank you so much for all of your prayers!  I love you guys!

Love Elder Cameron Woodward

Mustang, Oklahoma -April 7, 2014

Hello!

For the record I would like to let everyone know that I am NOT a slacker.  I clearly remember that I told you about Elder Bolan when I called home on Christmas day.  So don't be calling me a slacker because you forgot that I already told you that I was with Elder Bolan.  I also was not even aware that we were supposed to be guessing who was writing the emails. So to re-emphasize what was said in conference yesterday by Elder Ballard and the things that he learned from his mission, and to share something I have learned, it is VERY important to be clear and simple when you are inviting someone to do something.  For example, when you are telling your son to guess who has been writing the emails.  So you need to be sure from now on that your invitations are clear and direct.  And yes I will be following up with you next week to see how you are doing.  In answer to your question, I'm going to say that it was dad. 

So now for things that have happened here in Oklahoma from the date of March 31st to April 6.  For starters Elder Faulkner and I have managed to keep our running streak of having 0 investigators at sacrament meeting.  After much review, we have now been able to more accurately convey the true running total.  It has now been more then 21 weeks since our area has had an investigator at sacrament meeting.  It is getting really frustrating that no one will come to sacrament.  Enough of that though.

This past week was a really slow one for us over here in our area.  We did have a bright spark of hope come to us this week as we were finally able to get a new investigator this week.  Her name is Louis.  So Louis works at the laundromat where we do our laundry every week.  A member of our ward also happens to own this laundromat, so Louis has had a lot of contact with missionaries for the four years she has worked there, and has also had a lot of contact with members of the church.  This past week was when she decided that she wanted to join the church and take the missionary discussions.  So on Friday after our District Meeting we went over with Sister Ridley (she owns the Laundromat) and started teaching Louis.  We had a really good lesson with her and we even committed her to be baptized.  Unfortunately though because of the excitement that we had, we wanted to commit her to be baptized before this transfer was over, so we set the date for April 26th, so she would have had to watch a session of conference and come to church every week before she could get baptized.  The unfortunate part came because as far as we are aware, she didn't watch any of conference.  So we now have to reschedule her baptismal date for another day.  It was still really good to have been able to start teaching Louis and help her prepare to get baptized.  

I really enjoyed conference this time!  There was so much that was talked about and so many good talks.  I don't know which one was my favorite.  They were all just so good!  Who would have ever thought that I would enjoy sitting and watching 10 hours of tv.  It was great though!

Well that is about all for me this week.  I hope that you all have a good week!  

Love Elder Woodward

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