August 8, 2017

AHHH I just love you all and everyone so much!!! haha I've just been crying the whole time I've been reading these emails and not because they're super sad or anything, or because I'm home sick, it's just because I just love you all so stinkin much! I am just blessed with such an amazing family and friends and ward and little village, ugh it's just too much to keep in haha sister nowlon probably thinks I have a problem. In my last email to president pratt I just said thankyou thankyou thankyou for making me companionship with  sister nowlon. We have so much fun together. We are getting so much better at talking to everyone. haha sometimes i wish there was just a camera guy following us around because there are so many funny, awkward situations happening all of the time. The new missionary conference was so awesome. sister orr gave this training at the end about finding and she said that she has a motto that goes "It's ok, because our message is true" It's ok if people are mean, or if we look dumb, or if we're knocking in the pouring rain, because our message is true. Jesus Christ is our Savior. It is only through Him that we can gain eternal life. We can never pay Him back, but we can be obedient and live His gospel and I can definitely give 18months of my life to Him to teach people this. Sister Nowlon and I came up with our own motto yesterday, "It doesn't matter, casue IT MATTERS!" Our message matters more than anything and so it doesn't matter what it takes to share it with people.

The new missionary conference was awesome!!! we got to halifax around 3 on wednesday and then got back to our apartment in st.john's at 2am saturday morning haha it was rough waking up 6:30... we may have slept in haha but elder odde (our district leader) said it was ok. Why did I go to bed at 2:30 before my mission! haha it's awful! Seeing Elder weston at the conference at the conference was awesome!! It's just so funny that we are both missionaries here right now. IT was so great seeing sister soucie, barlow and rodrigues! Sister rodrigues' companion, sister kesler is so awsome haha she's hilarious! We all stayed at the STLT's house and we may have have missed curfew haha it was so fun. I learned so much at the conference. It was great because now that we've had some experience in the field we knew what question we had. We are truly out here with our brothers and sisters and so we should be treating them and teaching them as such. If we saw one of our siblings drowning we would not think twice about diving in after them. And so when we see people out here spiritually drowning we should be putting in every effort to save them. Everyday we should be praying for charity, and for help to develop other christlike characteristics. And when we pray for help to develop these attributes we shouldn't be surprised when Heavenly Father presents us with opportunities to grow in these areas. So if we need more patience, pray for it, and then don't be shocked if you have a lot of things popping up that require you to exercise patience. This is not HEavenly Father setting you up to fail, it is Him letting you learn and grow and become humble so that we turn to Him for help to change. This is something that I realized yesterday in our lesson with margaret, we brough sister dillan with us and she brought up this point. 

Right now we have Robbie and margaret scheduled to be baptized on august 19th!!! and Amber lily and jaz were baptized on saturday!!! AHHH i love them so much, they are such good examples and now dakota who lives in their area is taking lessons from us too:))) It was definitely the loudest baptism I've been to haha but that was a given with these girls, they are so full of life! I can't believe tranfers are next week!! I can't imagine leaving these people. 

Every night we've been listening to hank smith's talks and they are SO GOOD. Something that he said that has stuck with me is that there is a difference between being publicly obedient and privately obedient. We have commandments that we are meant to follow, we are commanded to not kill, and for most people this is a pretty easy thing to follow, killing someone is a pretty public thing, but what the Lord really wants to teach us is that we shouldn't even get angry, and that is something private. Only we know the thoughts that are going through our mind about other people. We are commanded to not commit adultery, but really we should not even be lustful. I don't have time to go over all the commandments but you should, and find out what it is you should or should not be doing privately in your life to be obedient to the Lord. 

I love you all soo soo so much! tell grandma I got her letter!! I cried when I got that too haha it was awesome! 

Love sister wood!

 

"my present I made for our investigator keegan, she turns 10 on the tenths and this is her favourite saying. We're having a bday party with her and michael who turns ten today!! He is lori's son who is a less active"