Anadarko, Oklahoma -July 28, 2014

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!

Love,  Elder Woodward

Anadarko, Oklahoma -July 21, 2014

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.  

Love, Elder Woodward

Anadarko, Oklahoma -July 14, 2014

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

Anadarko, Oklahoma -July 7, 2014

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

Anadarko, Oklahoma -June 30, 2014

Hey there everyone!

Today I am going to be emailing you from Lawton instead of Anadarko since it is Zone P-day.  It just ended up being easier for us to come down here and email since we were going to have to be here in a couple of hours anyways.  

Anyways... So like I said today is our Zone P-day and then this evening we have a Specialized Training Meeting (STM) for the Zone.  Pretty much what an STM is is a meeting for the Zone that the Zone Leaders organize on what they feel like we can work on as a Zone.  I'm pretty sure that they just call it an STM to give it a special name to make it sound fancy.  They are usually really good and I have actually learned a lot from most of them.  

So I guess you are all a lot more interested in what happened last week then what is going to happen later today.  Last week was another pretty good one for Elder Tanner and I in Anadarko.  We were able to contact quite a few of our investigators, but for as many as we were able to contact, we had just as many as we weren't able to get a hold of.  Some of our investigators are doing really well and making a lot of progress.  

So as you may recall last Sunday Zoey got baptized, so yesterday in sacrament meeting she got confirmed.  It was a really exciting day.  Her brother Gerald, who got baptized about a month ago, got back and was able to be there when Zoey was confirmed.  I am sure that Zoey was really excited that Gerald was back when she got confirmed because I know that she really wanted him there when she got baptized.  So it was exciting to get to be here to see Zoey get baptized.  The other exciting thing that happened yesterday was that the Sisters who are also serving in the Anadarko Branch had one of their investigators, Lisa, get baptized after church.  Satan must have been working really hard to try and stop Lisa from getting baptized, because as Lisa was standing in the church parking lot waiting for her family to get to the church someone pulled up in their car and gave her a bunch of anti-Mormon stuff and tried to convince her not to get baptized.  She didn't listen to them though.  

So one of the other cool things that happened this past week was that we had another lesson with Cody and Debbie.  Debbie is part of a part member family, and Cody is Debbie's friend.  Debbie was born into the church, but hasn't been in a really long time.  So this past week we were able to have a lesson with both of them about the restoration.  Most of the lesson we were just with Cody cause Debbie was busy, but it still went really well.  Cody and Debbie have both committed to be baptized on July 20th, so we are working with them to help them prepare for that day.  So after the lesson we invited them to come to church and told them that we would find a ride for them.  Cody ended up going out to Chickasha Saturday evening so he wasn't able to make it to church, but Debbie did get up and come to church yesterday which says a lot about her because the rest of her family has no desire to do anything.  So I have been pretty excited to get to work with both of them.  Another cool thing is that we are finding out a lot of things that we didn't know before we starting teaching Cody.  Probably the coolest thing though would be that Cody is the nephew of Thomas, and Thomas is Gerald and Zoey's step dad.  So that has helped us to be able to keep in contact with Cody and I would say it has also really helped Debbie.  

So that is part of what we did last week.  We did a whole lot more, but it is hard to remember everything that we did, and even if I did remember everything it would take me forever to type it all because I am super slow at typing.  Thank you all for everything that you do for me!  I appreciate all of it! 

Love Elder Woodward

Anadarko, Oklahoma -June 23, 2014

Hey!

Things have been going pretty well for me out here in Anadarko.  We have had a pretty good week and seen a lot of good things come from hard work.  I think that I probably forgot to tell you about this last week mostly because it slipped my mind, but we ended up having an investigator get baptized after church on Sunday.  Her name is Zavondra, but we will call her Zoey for short.  The Sister missionaries were supposed to have an investigator get baptized yesterday as well, but they moved it back to next week so that their investigators family could be there to see her get baptized.  So it just ended up being Zoey that got baptized yesterday.  Since I have only been here a little over a week I can't really tell you a whole lot about Zoey, cause I didn't get to do a lot of the teaching or really anything.  I did get to have to worry about making sure everything was ready for her baptism after church though.  That was really stressful.  I have already decided that I am not a big fan of preparing for a baptism during church on Sunday, but that is what the Branch Presidency likes so that is what we get to do.  

Last Friday was a pretty cool day as well.  We were out on exchanges with the Zone leaders for the day and saw a couple of miracles happen.  The one that I thought was probably the coolest was with a man named Ross.  Elder Holman and I went out to try a couple of investigators and potential investigators on the south side of town.  The first person that we went to try out there was a couple named Mike and Carol.  Well as it turns out some missionary in the past wrote down the wrong house address for Mike and Carol, and I had never met them before, so Elder Holman and I ended up going to the wrong house.  It turned out to be a good thing though.  There was a guy standing in the driveway of the house we had gone to and we asked if he was Mike.  Elder Holman and I both thought that he said he was Mike so we went up to talk to him.  It turns out that this was actually Ross not Mike.  Before we knew that this wasn't Mike we asked him about having talked with some other missionaries and asked how he liked it and so on.  I can't remember at which point we found out who he really was, but as it turns out Ross actually had talked with missionaries up in Edmond about a year ago. So it was really cool that even though we ended up going and talking to the wrong person it turned out to be a good experience and we were able to get a new potential investigator from it.  

So overall we had a good week.  We had a lot of fun and got a lot of work done.  

Thank you for everything that you do for me!  Love you all!

Love Elder Woodward

Anadarko, Oklahoma -June 16, 2014

Hey there everyone!

So lots of exciting things have been happening here in Oklahoma!  Transfers, new area, new companion, new district, new missionaries.  How many new things are there going to be each transfer?  It is ok though because I really needed to have some things change. 

It really sounds like things have been going well since the wedding got over.  I am still waiting for that tie that Kelsey said she was going to send to me to wear so I could at least somewhat feel like she thought about me during all the wedding excitement.  I did get the pictures that you sent through email. They all looked very nice.  Braeden could have used a haircut before the wedding though.  It is really exciting to have another sister married.  Luckily at this point I won't have to worry about missing and nephews or neices being born without me.

Things sound like they are going well with soccer.  I didn't know that Darcy and Emmie were going to be playing on two teams.  That is really exciting though.  They are definitely good enough to be playing at that level though.  I will just let you know right now that you won't have to update me on the France Honduras match that happened yesterday.  We went to visit a family we have been working with and we got there just before the end of the game.  TV can be such a big distraction as a missionary.  I don't know if I have ever said that before, but it really can be a distraction.

Ok now to answer all of your questions about everything.  So my new companion's name is Elder David Tanner.  He came out to the mission the same time that Elder Birch did so he has been out for a little over 10 months now.  He lives in Centerville and went to Viewmont with Elder Birch.  I was just showing him pictures of Kelsey's wedding and he knows Uncle Gary.  So that was pretty cool.  He has only been here in Anadarko for one transfer so he is still pretty new to the area.  Elder Tanner is a great missionary!  I have really enjoyed getting to work with him so far.  We are going to have a really good transfer. 

Anadarko  is a really great area!  It is definitely different then the other areas I have served in.  There are a lot of Native Americans that live in this area.  One of the members here said that there are seven different distinct Native American tribes living here in the Anadarko area.  It has been really cool.  There are a lot of other reasons that this is a special area to be in.  Satan is really working hard in Anadarko to stop the work from progressing and a good amount of it comes from the perspective that is spread around the mission about Anadarko.  At transfers I heard so many negative things about Anadarko from other missionaries, but I have yet to see any of those things.  Anadarko is a great area though!  There are so many good things that are going on here.  There are so many things I want to tell you about the area, but they are all so special that it would be hard to do over and email.  I can tell you though that the Lord has an amazing plan for this area and that is why Satan is working so hard here to stop that work from progressing.  I really can tell that there are great things that are going to happen.  

So last night I had a pretty cool experience at the end of the evening that I thought you might like to hear about.  So since I am District Leader every Sunday evening I call the other companionships in the District and get their numbers for the key indicators from the past week.  In our case here there is only one other companionship that is in our district so I called the Sisters and got their numbers.  So after I had all of the district's numbers I called to Zone Leaders to report numbers to them.  I started out by telling them the goals that our district had set for the upcoming transfer and when I gave them the Sister's transfer goals they asked me what I thought about their goal for how many members presents the Sisters had thought the could get.  I told them I thought the Sisters goal could have been higher so on and so forth with the conversation until the Zone Leaders suggested that I should think about calling the Sisters and tell them that as their District Leader I thought that they could do better then the goal they had set and to maybe rethink their goal and possibly set a new one, or I could do what I had thought of doing and just encourage them throughout the transfer and try to help them exceed their goal.  It seemed kinda like the Zone Leaders wanted me to go with the first option to try and get them to reset their goal, but I didn't really feel good about that and it wasn't what I wanted to do, so I told the ZL's that I was just going to engourage the Sister to exceed that.  I really felt like that was the best solution and that is what would get the best results.  After I told the Zone Leaders this Elder White spoke up and told me that they both had felt the Spirit testify to them that that was the right desision to make.  I thought it was quite amazing how it all worked out and to have been able to see that the Spirit was there to help me decide what to do.  I am so grateful that I had the Spirit to help guide me to make the right choice.  

Things went well for Elder Tanner and I this week.  We were able to see quite a few of our invesitgators and some of the other people we have been working with.  We had several experiences where we saw that being in the right place at the right time was an answer to prayer.  We had a lot of good lessons and good visits.  I am really enjoying this area! Like I have already said there are a lot of good things happening!

Thank you for all that you guys do for me!  I hope you all have a great week with soccer, work and everything else you are going to do!  Be safe.

Love Elder Cameron Woodward