My Letter Home

Dear Mom,
This week was a little bit slower on the progressing side of investigators, but we still had lots of lessons and I hope we are still helping people.

We had lessons with Inez and Graciella (Grace) this week. We asked both of them to be baptized, but both of them are very well educated and it is obviously a big step for them to accept a fecha, but they said that they want to keep reading and praying and tell us when they are ready. Hopefully that is soon. :)

One of the new families is the Familia Avila. They are a reference of the Familia Carlotta. Hermana Carlotta's son, Albino, and their son play on the same soccer team and they are really good friends. We were talking to the mom, Liliana, about the sons and she commented on how nice and kind and loving Albino was all the time. He was always well behaved and never got into bad stuff. He was a very good friend for her son to have. Albino didn't even know what an impact he had on this entire family by just being himself. Our lesson with them was really good and we have another this week.

We found Carina again this week! We literally haven't been able to contact her for the last month. We asked her why she didn't get baptized and what was holding her back. She proceeded to tell us her entire, beautiful testimony and that she really does want to get baptized. We gave her another baptism date for November 14, and hopefully she will realize that she wants this enough to sacrifice and get married to this man! He really is great, so we are trying to figure out why they don't just get married already. That's our next goal with her.

We realized this week that we say some pretty funny things while we are walking around the streets of Argentina, so we decided to create a quote wall. Probably no one else will think our quotes are funny...but we think they are hilarious. :) Por ejemplo:

H. Thornton: ¿A donde vamos?
H. Wood: El mundo de los espíritus. (because that is always the answer when we are teaching the plan of salvation.)
(about 5 minutes later)
H. Thornton: Hermana, ¿A donde vamos?
H. Wood: Well..are you ready to die?

I don't know if any of you will understand this, but it was pretty hilarious. :)
Also...........I bought hair dye. Yup......we'll see how that goes. :)

Love,
Hermana Wood :)

Missionary Work at it's Finest

Dear Mom,
First off..Happy Birthday Chalise!!!!!!!!!!!!! I can't believe that you are 11 years old! You are so beautiful and I wish I was as cool as you. ;) I'm glad you had such a good birthday! There is also 88 days until Christmas, if anyone was wondering. :)

Missionary works changes so fast. You clap in front of a door and all your plans for the day change. Someone starts talking to you on the street and you visit them three more times that week. You are contacting and you find a menos activo that decides it is time to come back to church. It is crazy how many people are being prepared for us every day and how Heavenly Father places them in our paths. Through planning and relying on the spirit, it is okay for your plans to change and to go where Heavenly Father needs you to be.

Our investigators this week: We were able to find David again, which is awesome! He has such a crazy schedule, so we visit his house every day to try and find him. He has such a strong spirit and desire to learn. If we keep trying and trying, I know that we will be able to keep helping him. Fabricio doesn't always live with David, so we told the missionaries in the other area where his mom lives to visit Fabricio as well. He is such a stud because he is 12 years old and reading the Book of Mormon all by himself and wants to learn more.

Graciella is really progressing! She has lots of questions about Joseph Smith and the Book of Mormon. She has started reading the book for herself and I know that if she prays with real intent, she will know through the spirit, not her brain, that the book is true. It is important to know with your heart instead of your brain that this is the true church.

We also found another woman this week. Her name is Inez. She tries really hard to speak to us in English! Usually it is harder to understand her English than to just speak in Spanish, but she loves trying to use english. She is a teacher in her church, and now that we have been teaching her about the gospel, she told us she doesn't really want to teach at her church anymore because it doesn't feel the same. She definitely feels the spirit when she prays to her Heavenly Father because she has never prayed the correct way. It is has always been rehearsed prayers, but now she is actually talking to her Heavenly Father. It is so great to see her progress.

We have two sets of missionaries in our ward, us and a set of Elders. The Elders had a baptism this week of this adorable 13 year old kid named Alejandro! He has been coming to church with the Mathier family since he was 8 and he has wanted to be baptized for 5 years, but his dad kept saying no. However, he finally said yes and he was able to get baptized this week! Our ward was very happy and I am glad our ward had this opportunity. Missionary work is great!

I am very excited to watch conference this week! We are hopefully bringing all these people plus Patricia, Angelica, and Eva to the conference this weekend. I know that President Monson receives revelation for us in these days and that he will keep us all on track. I love you!

Love,
Hermana Wood :)

Such a Crazy Week

Dear Mom,
This has been the craziest week so far. I'll start back with last Monday. I was able to play soccer!!! I love soccer!!! I have missed it so much! We can't play with the elders in our mission, and girls literally don't play sports down here, so we haven't been able to do anything like that. However, we had a special pday where our whole zone got together and the sisters played soccer. I did score every goal...but it was still so much fun. I have missed it. Don't worry, I can still juggle the ball at least 50 times in a row. :)

We had a little bit more success this week in refinding our investigators. We found David and Grace again this week. They are both learning really well. David's son is very sick, so hopefully he can get better so that we can teach them both more about the plan of salvation. Grace is a little bit harder to teach because she knows the bible inside and out. She always has questions because everything she knows about the gospel is from Youtube. She really just wants to know the truth, and we told her to look on mormon.org and lds.org so that she learn what we really believe. The most powerful answers always come from the BOM, so we are trying to help her find her answers there. We found Carina again! She isn't living with her boyfriend at this moment, but she needs to be a little more stable before we up and baptize her. So we are working with her more this week.

This was super funny this week. I don't know why, but when we walk down the street, some guys hit on us sometimes. Like whistle, or say things that I, gratefully, don't understand. Anyway, Hermana Thornton and I were walking down a street, and we heard a cat call whistle. We have learned to ignore these and keep walking. But we heard the whistle again and again and again. So we turned around and it was a parrot whistling at us! It was hilarious!

It was really hard this week to find out my grandpa passed away. I am grateful that you were able to call me and tell me instead of finding out by an email. I am so grateful the the plan of salvation. I know without a shadow of a doubt that I will see my grandpa again. I know that he with me and watching over me. I know that love can be eternal and that he will always love me and I will always love him. I hope that my whole family is doing good and that the funeral will be good tomorrow. I wish that I could be there, but I know that everything will be okay. Thank you so much for your love and support!!!!!

I love you!!
Love,
Hermana Wood :)

The Lord's Hand

Dear Mommy,
This week has been a little bit harder than the others, but we have still had miracles. If you see them as miracles, then they are miracles. Look for the Lord's hand in your life because I know it is there. Look for the little things. :)

We have amazing success while we go contacting from door to door. The first man we found this week was Leondro. During our companion study that morning, we were reading in Alma 22 about the father of King Lamoni and Aaron the missionary. In the story, Aaron starts teaching and the King believes everything Aaron is saying. They talk about God, the plan of salvation, and our Savior and the King believes every word. We wanted to find a King Lamoni. We prayed for it, and then we went out contacting. We knocked on this door and Leondro came to the door. We told him we wanted to share a message about Jesus Christ, and he said, "I'll open my door for Jesus." (obviously he said it in Spanish, but I translated it just for you. ;)) We started talking about God and that he is our Heavenly Father. He asked us who God was to us and we bore our testimonies about our Heavenly Father and that we are children of God. He loves every single one of us individually. He told us we could come back and we were so excited! He is our Rey Lamoni.

Another time we were contacting we found this woman named Grace. In Argentina, lots of people have speakers on the outsides of their houses. It was raining pretty hard outside and it was late, so we didn't think many people would walk through the rain to open their doors for us. But we rang the doorbell and Grace came on the speaker. We introduced ourselves, and she told us to hold on for a minute. She walked through the rain, came to the door, and let us into her house! That never happens here. We sat down and tried to teach her the first lesson. For some reason, she wasn't really understanding what Hermana Thornton was teaching about Jesus and the Great Apostasy, so then Grace turned to me and asked me to teach her. I got super nervous because if she couldn't understand Hermana Thornton, I don't know why she would be able to undertand me. But I started teaching about Joseph Smith. I told her the whole story and then I recited the First Vision to her. Her eyes filled with tears and she said, "Oh, good. Now I understand." I know we found her because I needed to have this experience. I can testify that Joseph Smith is a profet of God in two languages and I know that he saw what he said he saw. Heavenly Father and Jesus Christ appeared to Joseph Smith and restored the gospel to this earth once again. I am beyond grateful for this experience.

This week has been hard because our baptism for this Saturday dropped. She started living with her boyfriend again and she has stopped talking to us. We don't know what do for her, but we are praying for her and hoping she will start talking to us again. We love her and want to help her be happy!

The other thing is that we find all of these incredible people that want to learn about the gospel, but we have a hard time finding them again. We make citas with them, but they aren't home or they don't have time. We have people to teach, but we can't ever find them to teach them. We trying to figure out what to do, so if anyone has suggestions, let me know. :)

I love you so much!
Love,
Hermana Wood :)