February 27, 2018

Another zone conference week down!🏼 Haha by the end of the week we were just laughing at everything because we were so exhausted. When we were finally back in our area Saturday night sister claus said to someone”we hope you have a good shower” instead of “we hope you have a good night” the lady was kinda closing the door while she was saying it and once she closed the door we both just looked at each other like what just happened hahah and then five minutes later when we were walking to the next house I saw a shadow and thought it was a person so I went to go and contact them but I ended up contacting a tree  haha luckily though those weren’t the highlights of our week. The highlights of the week were teaching  Jocelyn and putting her on date, she is super excited to read the Book of Mormon! And teaching zak, the Cole Harbour elders taught him for us while we were away and so yesterday we all taught him together with a member. He came with a list of questions, the majority’s of them were about science and evolution and ancient Egyptians, but by the end of the lesson he stared to really understand how all of his questions just came down to the one question “is god real”. We told him that signs-knowledge-belief is how mans mind works but not god’s. God’s way is faith-miracles-knowledge. Later after the lesson he called us and said that he was really ready to just lay his doubts aside and “experiment on the word” he is soo awesome! 

I remember before reading missionaries emails and them leaving challenges and me never doing them... and maybe that will be the case with my email. Is sharing the gospel a priority in your life? Be honest with yourself and if the answer is no make a goal to change. Make it small and simple but something that you will derive a feeling of accomplishment from. I feel you need help thinking of ideas ask my mom because she has become and expert haha:). It can be to make a meal for a less active in your ward. To be a more involved visiting or home teacher. To contact the missionaries in your ward and ask to go out teaching with them or ask how you can help them get their investigators to church. Be prayful, make a plan, and then do!

I love you all

Sister wood️

February 19, 2018

Hey everyone!!

It's zone conference week again so right now we are on our way to moncton and our van is full of mail and mats and...PHONES ahhh. This is the zone conference where everyone gets theit phones and the missionaries are so excited haha it's so crazy when I first came out I never thought that I would have a smart phone on my mission and now I've had one since January 1st. Because we have to set up all the phones this zone cinference is starting a lit earlier than they usually do so tonight a lot of the missionaries get to stay in a hotel in moncton so they don't have to drive from their areas in the morning, they are pretty excited about that too:)

This past week we had exchanges with the fredricton sisters and so I got to be with sister auvigne again for a little and then we also had exchanges with the gander sisters, they are working with this family right now who is going to be getting baptized in march which is HUGE for gander!!! Right now I think gander has 5 members and two of them are moving in April.  And so I am so happy and excited for this baptism!! Heavenly Father is really blessing our mission right now, so many missionaries are finding people to teach and like 90% of them are under 30! It's so awesome!!

This past week we didn't get to meet with a lit of our investigators but the ones we did meet with their lessons went really well. We met with pam and she is on date for March 24 but she will have to get married before that so that date might end up being pushed. Vicki is doing awesome, her husband gave a talk and church and mentioned how she is meeting with us and how proud he is of her:) I don't know when she'll get baptised but I hope that when they get sealed in the temple I can come back here and be here with them. Vicki just treats us like her daughters. Ugh in just live her so much! We taught her about the plan of salvation and she never know before that Adam and eve couldn't progress or have children in the garden of eden, she was like "this changes everything!" Haha and she also didn't know about Jesus Christ suffering in the garden of Gethsemane. We explained that the rough his atonement we are saved from physical death and spiritual death. It is just so cool teaching pepole and watching them soak everything in:) 

On friday and Saturday sister claus was sick and so Friday just did splits with the gander sisters and sister behike and I met this guy named zak street contacting. He is really sweet. The elders ended up teachin him for us on Saturday and put him on date for baptism! Gander left on Saturday and soSaturday was the first day of my mission so far where I never left my apartment haha it was so boring! On tangled during that first song when she's singing about all of the things she does in her tower and how it's only 7:15 that was literally me hahah and so it's my goal now to never get sick on my mission. 

Something really sad happened this week. Our recent convert colleen messaged us and said that she doesn't want to meet with us anymore and doesn't want to come to church. She has responded tO our message back to her yet but she has answered back to some of the members that have messaged her. We have no idea what happened, we were going to be going to to hehe temple with her next week:( we are hoping for the best though and we have her sign language flash cards that we have to return to her so hopefully she will let us in. New members must just feel very overwhelmed and they need a lot of love and support.

I love you all!

Live sister wood 

February 13, 2018

Happy Valentine’s Day!!

 So quick recap of the week. Last Thursday and Friday we were in new Glasgow for exchanges with Sister Nowlon and Silvennoinen and we met their investigator, now memeber, who was baptized on Saturday! Then Saturday we had 6 lessons, 3 of them fell through, but we still brought members to all of them. I always feel so bad when we have a member with us and then the investigor isn’t home or they forgot and it’s not a good time anymore haha I remember the first time that-that happened in St. John’s and I felt sooo bad, but now I am just more use to it and I know that it’s still good for the members to come. 

We picked up this really cool investigator, Vicki, on Saturday. She’s married to a memeber and she’s known about the church for a long time and she looooves sister missionaries. After our first lesson she invited us to her back table and she had all these snacks laid out for us, fruit and biscuits and her special homade jam haha it was awesome!! The yesterday we picked up 2 more new investigators!  Jocelyn and Brett. We are just being so blessed right now, in the last ten days we’ve picked up 7 investigators, that’s never happened to me before on my mission. Sister claus met Jocelyn on exchanges and I met Brett on exchanges with Sister Nowlon. We were street contacting downtown. We were crossing the sidewalk when we talked to him, we just thought it would be a quick contact because people usually thing we’re crazy when we stop them in the middle of the road haha but he surprised us. He walked back to the sidewalk with us and told us how he was raised catholic and then when when he was 16 he went atheist and just had zero belief but then he became a father and when his first son was born he felt something and he just feels like there has to be something more. We met with him in Tim Hortons for our first lesson and we read about faith from the Book of Mormon and after we read a verse he was like where can I get one of those books Haha he was so happy when we said he could just have the one we were reading from. He is really excited to learn and willing to try things to be able to find an answer for himself. Today we taught Pam again and put her on date for March 24th. Her son Malcolm is seriously soooo cute he has the curliest hair and every time we go over he just pulls everything’s out of my bag but I love it. I can’t wait to finally hold kids again when I get home!!

I am just loving my personal study every morning. As a missionary you just have so much purpose behind your studies and that’s something that I don’t want to take for granted. Something that I read lately that stuck out to me was from Preach my gospel, it said, 

“Because God rewards everyone according to deeds done in the body, there are different kingdoms of glory to which we may be assigned after the Judgment.” the word that stuck out to me was reward. Each kingdom that we can be assigned to is a reward. Even those people who choose not to repent and disregard god will still receive a reward. God is just so merciful, I love Him so much.

I hope you all have a great week. Enjoy the snow haha we have none here right now. I think god is sending all of Dartmouth’s snow over to Alberta so that I don’t get frostbite anymore haha.

Love sister wood 

February 6, 2018

Hey everyone!

I told you to expect to hear about some miracles and they definitely came!!

So the entire last transfer we didn't find anyone to teach and it was hard to not think that I was doing something wrong. So week 6 comes along and we were basically out of our area all week until Saturday. We did the usual morning routine and we had a few Potencials that we really felt good about and so we set a goal of picking up 4 new investigators. The morning started and we went to the first house that we had set up an appointment with and. .. it fell through haha and so we stayed in the area and stopped by this other Potencial that we had tried to contact a few times before bUT could never catch her at home bUT this time she was home. She told us sorry girls I looked at your website and I'm just not interested. Sister claus kept talking to her and started asking if there was anyone in the area that would be interested and in my head I was just thinking "no, she looked at the website, barely anyone actually looks at the website" and so I forget what I said or asked exactly but it lead to other questions and then pretty soon she was inviting us in. Her name is pam and she has a 1 year old son named malcom and he is so so cute. We taught her the plan of salvation and it was so cool to  see the spirit touch and soften her heart. She explained to us that she had just recently had a lot  of deaths in her family, her grandma being one of them and that was especially hard on her. One of my favourite scriptures right now is alma 40:11. We left her house with a return appointment and just like that, we picked up our first investigator of the transfer on the Saturday of week 6:) we reached our goal of 4 investigators that day. The contacts were all a lot like pam's. We would go to an area with a person in mind that we would pick up and then they wouldn't be home and we would end up finding someone else. The other investigators are sadaf and rizwan they are a Muslim couple with two kids and the last on is Lisa who we taught at 7:30. It was so cool to reach our goal. This experience has taught me so much and I am just so grateful to me heavenly Father for it. I learned that I want to give everyone even possible chance of accepting the gospel. With pam it wouldn've been so easy to just say ok and move on, but I am so grateful for the spirit encouragement to be a little more persistent then what I'm usually comfortable with, it really just set the tone for the day, we were out knocking on doors to teach!:)

Listen to the spirit, he invites us to do good. 

Love sister wood

...I didn't mean for that to rhyme haha

February 1, 2018

Transfer week

I know that in the past I’ve said that weeks have been crazy but this week was actually CRAZY! This email is just going to be all over the place haha so be prepared.

So Monday night president Pratt showed us the transfer table, sister claus and I are still serving together in Dartmouth :) Tuesday from 10am to 8pm we were in the basement of the mission home p, it was a long but fun day haha. We made travel plans for everyone, booked flights, did Skype calls with the new district leaders, then the new ZLs and STLs, and then the missionaries who will be training. On Wednesday... I went to the temple!!! I don’t know if you remember Ederson or not but he is a ysa from St. John’s. He was baptized in Utah a year, he’s originally from Venezuela and he’s going to school at the university in St. John’s right now. And so on Wednesday he came to Halifax to go through the temple for his endowment it was so awesome, President Pratt let so many missionaries who had served in St. John’s come to the temple to be there with him. 

The new missionaries had a fun time getting here haha. They were suppose to get here Tuesday night but their flight to Halifax got cancelled because of the snow and so instead they flew to Montreal and spent the night in a hotel. So they got here at noon on Wednesday but that’s when we were going to the temple so we didn’t go to pick them up. With all the flight changes they lost their luggage as well haha poor them. They have there luggage now though and are all set with their companions in their areas. 

Ok so next topic... PEI! So there is a sister (sister Kilmer) and she is the only missionary going home this transfer. So for her last day President Pratt let her choose to do anything she wanted to and that ended up being a road trip to pei! So of course like any good road trip we ran out of gas🏼Hahaha 6km outside of Amherst so the elders from Amherst came and rescued us. The car was completely shut off so to stay warm we did the 7 min workout in the snow. Goooood mission memory. 

Ugh this week was just so funny, the best part is right now we are playing ping pong with Sister Pratt because we are sleeping over at the mission home with sister Kilmer.

Tomorrow we have a bunch of potential lessons that we are so excited for and they are all with moms! So next pday I will let you know how those wentalso I will tell you more about shania, Shen is the Elders investigator but we are working with her too.

Love sister wood