Week 42 - Aruba

HELLOOOO EVERYONE!!!
I hope you all had a very merry christmas and I wish you all a happy new year!! This week has been so fun! I dont remember anything hahaha! First of all though, today I have a lot of lil shoutouts to do!:

Happy Birthday Danielle!!!!!!!!

Happy birthday little Chris!!!!!!!

Happy Birthday Cierra!!!!!!

Happy Anniversary Chris and Aly!!!!!

I love and miss you alllllll!!!!

I really dont have too much to say today but we had a really good week and a fun christmas!

David got baptized this week and that was awesome! his whole family coudnt make it but it still had pretty good attendance after about 20 minutes in thanks to the members :) That family is doing AWESOME and we just started teaching their son who is dying to get baptized. Everything is going great here and i am happier than ever!!! We got to spend christmas day with the terrones family and melissa and david all together! that was sooo fun! Those two families changed soooo much. It is AMAZING to see their change. Thank goodness for the gospel! All is well over here in aruba and we are seeing lots of success. 

Oranjestad is doing so great! We are teaching a lot of Arubians which is something I have never experienced before. Aruba is truly become elect and the Lord really is ripening the field and I am so grateful to be here harvesting it. We have some amazing investigators. 

I Just love this gospel so much. It has sincerely changed my life. Right now my personal studies are really fun because for the past 2-3 months I have been reading the Old and New testament, the Book of Mormon Doctrine and Covenants and the Pearl of Great Price all at the same time, along with preach my gospel. It I have been able to learn so much. At first it was a little bit stressful but now it is just SO fun. My testimony has sky rocketed as I have been doing this little challenge I have set for myself and I have spiritual experiences everyday because of it. 

Anywho, have a great week! I love and miss you all so much!

-Sister W

Family:

I LOVED SEEING YOU! SORRY I CRIED THE WHOLE TIME!!!! i promise i am SUPER happy even though it didnt look like it! I am not even homesick at all either. I dont really know why i cried the whole time but oh well! I love and miss you all and i hope you have a happy new year!

I love you dad, mom, britt, allen, will, chris, jack, clay, spence, chris, aly, evy, aby, millie, lizzie, chase, kim, mason, linley, carson, mimi, brooks, felicia, and buns! MUAH!

-schmal

 

 

Week 41 - Aruba

So sorry, I forgot to bring my camera today but you will be getting pictures next week!

Okay wow! To be honest this was one of the hardest and most stressful weeks of my mission and almost everything possible that could have gone wrong, did.  Buuuut guess who is still all smiles!  No reason to not smile when you have the gospel in your life!  :) And Melissa got Baptized!!!!  SHE IS SO AMAZING!!!  She is going through a LOT right now and she and David are struggling sooooooooooooooooooooooooooooo muchhhhhhhhhhhh. She is still so strong and so incredible. We had a lesson with her where we just had her explain her experience when she was baptized and confirmed and it was great!  She shared with us her life story. She kept mentioning things like "that's why I love this church" and "I am never going to leave this church, especially for my kinds." It was amazing. David should be getting baptized this Saturday and then we are going to start teaching their 11 year old son so he can be baptized!  We have a lot of really cool investigators. 

Well, as I mentioned, this week was really difficult. Luckily, our loving Heavenly Father still blessed us with tender mercies though out the week!  My favorite one was in a lesson with this lady named Christina.  We were just teaching the Restoration and she just started talking for about a minute to tell us how she had had darkness and confusion in her mind for such a long time and how we are just helping her clear everything up.  She kept thanking us and she talked about how the work we are doing is so important. We really needed to hear that and God knew that, because he knows each of us perfectly.  I know He is there and I know He loves us so much. I am so happy to be here, especially in this Christmas Season focused on Christ.

I am so happy to be here on my mission and I would just like to stay out here forever. I love it!! 

Merry Christmas everyone!  Keep your thoughts focused on Christ and be a missionary!!

I love and miss every single one of you!!!

Love,

Sister Woodbury

Week 40 - Aruba

Hola!

Well this is going to be really short because I am already almost out of time buuuuut Hello!!!! First of all... HAPPY BIRTHDAY MILLIE!!! I love you!!

Anywayyyy.... This week was so good! This week we had several amazing experiences about prayers of faith being answered! The main one i want to talk about is with our investigator names Leasbeth. She is so amazing. We taught the restoration part two lesson to her and she loved it. We invited her to pray about the prophet Joseph Smith, and when we came back the next time she had prayed! She could not stop talking about her experience. She said she just had this feeling and she almost started crying and she just knew. She explained that it was something different than she had ever experienced. She told us that later that day she was already kind of beginning to doubt and then when she was thinking about it the same feeling came over her and she said "Oh nope sorry Heavenly Father. Okay! He is a prophet!" It was so amazing to see her prayer of faith be answered. My testimony sky rocketed as she was explaining her experience. I know God answers every prayer and I know Joseph Smith was a prophet. 

As well, Melissa passed her baptismal interview!!!!!! We are so excited for her!  David decided he was going to be baptized on the 23rd so that is our new goal. Everything is going great over here and we are working hard :)  David has been weeding off of his addiction and today is finally trying to completely drop it. Pray for him!  He wants to change SO badly!  All of these people are pretty much spiritual children so it is so fun to watch them grow. David has been reading the BoM like crazy! He is in 2nd Ne. 10! He is so awesome! 

Well, not too much more to add! We had a branch Christmas party which was really fun! It started at 6:30, nobody showed up until around 7:30 and that is when we started the little show.  We ate at 8:30, and they all stayed there dancing until 11. People were there cleaning up until 1 am!!!!! Latinos are CRAZY! I love them.

Well, I hope you all have a great week!! I miss and love every one of you, and so does our Heavenly Father, so pray to Him! :)

 

With love,

Sister Woodbury 

Week 39 - Aruba

Well.....I am officially halfway through my mission! SOOOO CRAZY! Fastest 9 months of my LIFE. It is so weird because the days seem long, the weeks seem longish until they are over, the months FLY by! I dont understand but that is how it works haha! I truly have never ever been happier doing anything else ever. Mission's are the best. And this week was GREAT!!! Well, the beginning of the week was actually pretty rough but the end of it was awesome, and i can only remember the end so all is well haha!  Buuuuut really this week was great.

First of all, we had zone conference yesterday and wow it was awesome! One of my favorite zone conferences. Something President Egbert does is start talking about how you are preparing to go home beginning your first day in the mission field. Whenever he has said that i have always thought, "well its not like that day will every come", but this time i got sadddd!!!  I love it here! I  dont wanna leave!  The ideal situation would be just to bring all of my family over here with me! Zone conference was amazing though. Like wow.

Also.... I believe it was my cute little nephews birthday yesterday, so HAPPY BELATED BIRTHDAY CLAYTON!!! I LOVE YOU!!!! 

Anywho... So this week I don't even remember what happened. I Do remember though that Melissa is doing AWESOME and is so excited for her baptism in two weeks! David? well... he is struggling. we don't think he will be baptized on the 16th but he will at some point. He is dealing with a challenge and he just doesn't feel prepared spiritually. We actually haven't seen him in a while, almost a week.  Buuuut we had some awesome experiences with Melissa this week! First of all, we brought this member named Brother Sandoval with us to one of our lessons with her and wow he is such an amazing teacher. We taught about keeping the sabbath day holy and he basically took over. Normally when members take over in lessons we get a little stressed because we can teach the points of doctrine and then the lessons get taken somewhere else, but it was NOT that way with him! He taught EVERY point of doctrine way better than we could have ever imagined! He is an AMAZING teacher! Wow. I learned so much from him, but i especially learned how important it is to teach with members.  So amazing. Melissa loved it!!  Thennnn yesterday night we had a Family Home Evening with Melissa, and her son, and Monchi's family at their house! Soooo cute! It was sooo good and they all just shared their cute little testimonies, even Melissa!  I loved every moment of that! David didn't come though :( but wow Melissa had a great week! This was also her fourth week in a row coming to church!  Her kids LOVE church and are sooo reverent during sacrament meeting! So amazing. they're amazing.

I wanted to write much more becuase I had a lot to talk about, buuuut I don't have time!  I sent a lot of pictures and that took a long time. But it was an amazing week and everyone is doing really well! We had 5 investigators at church and it was just amazing! I loveeeee being a missionary so much! And I LOVE MY COMPANION! Sister Davidson is sooo cute and she can already speak spanish and papiamentu better than i can. Also she can already teach way better than me. she has been out for 4 months. She is awesome and i love her.  Anywayyyy!!!!! Have a wonderful week!!! Share the gospel!

Hermana Woodbury

Week 38 - Aruba (again)

Currently in week 39 of my mission, writing about the last week, week 38. almost at week 40. weird.

Big: HELLO!!!!!!

IT IS SOOOO GOOD TO BE BACK IN ARUBA!!!! WOW. I am so happy. It is happy and sad though because I found out that I already have one recent convert who was offended by someone and doesn't want anything to do with the church, one who's mom wont let him come, and one who has to work on sundays :( so sad. 

BUT!!! Marlien is doing great, and so is Dario!

So Monchi...! like WOW!  They are doing AMAZING! It is so crazy.  That family has COMPLETELY changed since the last time i was here. after Monchi was baptized, his parents got back together, they are all active in church and everything is going great. the complete opposite of the last time I was here. Amazing!  The gospel is soooo powerful.

We are also still teaching this one couple, Roshen and Nilson, who i taught the last time i was here. They were so happy to see me and I was SO happy to see them. It has just been a ton of little reunions and i have been LOVING it!  Wow!  It feels like I'm "home" right now, it is so weird!  I love this place.  We have 5 with a baptismal date!!!  Also, we had TWO very young families at church yesterday!  Life is soooo gooooood!!!!

So, Roshen and Nilson are Arubian and they just started being taught when I was here 4 months ago. They are awesome!  They came to church for the first time since they started being taught. That was amazing. they have a baptismal date for the 16th but there is still a lot we have to teach them so we might have to move it...but that's okay!

Melissa and David are an AMAZING sweet young couple who will be baptized on the 16th. They are so believing and have been to church three times already. they have 3 kids and they are wonderful.  Melissa is Arubian and David is Colombian and covered in tattoos. Apparently for the past 2 years he has been going through an emotional crisis but ever since the missionaries started teaching him he has completely changed. Amazing. for that reason, Melissa is soooo grateful for us. basically they are amazing. David is working on quitting smoking and received a BEAUTIFUL blessing yesterday. It was amazing. wow. 

 

Then we have this really sweet old man named Jesus Antonio. He is just so sweet and so old. Precious. Hahaha! He is from Colombia but has lived here for yearssssssss. The only things with him is that he only has Sundays off once every seven weeks. And he wants to read the Book of Mormon all the way through before he asks God anything about the book or joseph smith or anything! he is a sweetheart though. 

We also were able to have a little thanksgiving here and it was so fun! The Lindleys hosted and we made the stuffing! It was great. 

LIFE IS SO GOOD!!! I am SO happy to be back here in Aruba! I love and miss you all sooooo much! Have a great week!

-Sister Woodbury

 

                                          Dario...

                                                   Cow liver...   (and Sis. Davidson)

Week 37 - Bonaire

Well first of all.... THANK YOU SO MUCH FOR ALL OF THE KIND BIRTHDAY WISHES! I had a FULL inbox with LOTS of love! Thank you!!!!

As well: Happy Thanksgiving from Bonaire!!! 

Okay, so to be completely honest, I hardly remember anything from this week. The biggest thing that happened was the early transfer call i received.....I will be headed to Aruba tomorrow! I am honestly SO excited to see all of my sweet little recent converts over there! I will be companions with a semi-greenine (new missionary), Sister Davidson! I am sooooo excited!!!!!!

I am so sorry I dont have too much to say this week...... But i will tell about a really cool lesson that we had yesterday with Jose and Amada (which literally just means "loved")!  So anyway, we were explaining the end of the restoration lesson after reviewing the first part of it, and wow this couple is amazing. So after we talked about the priesthood, she turned to her husband and said she would NEVER let him baptize her because he doesnt have the power! this lady is SASSY! i LOVE her hahaha! Thennnn we were talking about Joseph Smith and they just said "well he needs the priesthood to be a prophet". SO COOL. they understood SO well!!! 

Today, we went to the donkey sanctuary and it was SOOOO FUN WOW! I LOVED IT! it was amazing. i am literally not joking at all when i say i had goosebumps the ENTIRE time. just ask my companion. like wow. Love life!

Steven and Nuris are doing great.

Life is amazing!

I love and i miss you all!

Have a great week! Sorry for the lame email, time flew today!

-Sister Woodbury

 

 

Week 36 - Bonaire

First of all......HAPPY BIRTHDAY WILLIAM (allie's nephew)! I LOVE YOU!!!!!! 

But so, anyway, this week is honestly really hard to remember because we have been SO tired, but we had a really good week full of spiritual experiences. This week, we had a family home evening with the Solarin family and our investigator Nuris. It was about the Book of Mormon, and we started off the lesson by asking everyone what President Monson said to us the last time he spoke. The only person who knew was our investigator Nuris! that was amazing. We went around the room and everyone talked about how they feel about the Book of Mormon and how it has changed their lives. Nuris said something very sweet, but very simple. She just said, "I have read the Bible, but the bible doesn't give me the feeling this book (the BoM) gives me." Her testimony is so strong and she always helps mine grow! 

Also a little update to our baptismal dates:

Nuris: November 25: Wow she is doing amazing. Basically the whole paragraph above is her update, but as well, her ex-boyfriend of serveral months now is finally actually looking for an apartment! Pray that he will find one, because she will be able to get baptized right after he moves out!  She wants to get baptized SO badly. The guy doesn't even sleep there, he sleeps at this other woman's house. Ugh. get outta here. but she is awesome :)

Ronald: He cant get baptized on the 25th now :( we haven't really been able to see him because he has been so busy :(   We still have a lot of lessons to teach him before his baptism and it won't be possible by that date. He also has some word of wisdom stuff to work on. Kinda sad, but we will get there. He is awesome though. So many good intentions and desires. 

STEVEN!!!! DECEMBER 9TH: New one on the list!!!!!  Steven is doing sooooo awesome! He knows Joseph Smith was a prophet, but he said he hasn't received an answer about the Book of Mormon yet. He doesn't know if he will be ready by that date but he is so cool and he is making the necessary steps and changes in his life to be ready. He is sooooo amazing. He came to church yesterday and LOVED it!!! Nuris bore her testimony about the Book of Mormon in the Gospel Principles class and he was listening verrrryyyy intently. Love it. He is awesome. 

Also, at church yesterday, the members mentioned something really sweet. They said that Bonaire needed sisters, and that we bring a different spirit, and that we are working really hard and are bringing more people into the church. that was awesome. they love sisters :) hehehehe!

Oh, also some sad news - Julius dropped us hard core. I don't know how much I have written home about him, but yeah. kinda sad, but he wasn't ready. He said right now his mission is to "make money". bleh. 

All is well over here in Bonaire, and I am sending much love to all of you! Miss you all!

Love,

Sister Woodbury

 

 

Week 35 - Bonaire AND Trinidad

8 MONTHAVERSARY!

Craziness! Almost half way! super weird!

Well this week was so fun! I really dont have too much to say because we were in Trinidad most of the week, but it was so fun!  I seriously love Trinidad soooooooo much. Words cannot describe.  Like wow!  I want to serve there so badly.  I actually had a dream that i received my permit to work there. then i woke up.  Darn it.  Haha!

Well, zone conference there was AMAZING!!!!  A member from the Seventy (area leadership) , Elder Alonso came. Wow. So basically he said this mission is the best. At lunch he came and sat at our table :)  He told us his conversion story and it was really awesome.  After lunch, the elders did a role play of a lesson about the BoM being taught to an "Investigator". After the role play, Elder Alanso got up and said, and I quote: "I have been a 70 for 11 years. This is the first time I have seen missionaries teach people, not just a lesson".  After he said that i looked around the room and everyone was tearing up. It was just so powerful and such a wonderful manifestation that our hard work is paying off! It also reassured me about how insanely inspired President Egbert is. So awesome. He told us he can only see blessing in the future for this mission. He was really impressed by us and told Pres. that he is doing a great job. An amazing experience to say the least!

Other than that though, not too much happened this week! Our branch president here in Bonaire is awesome! He reminds me SO much of Brother Worthen though!  Haha! Just the Bonaire version. It's kinda freaky hahaha!  He is awesome though. He has a really young family and so often in Branch council or other church meetings he us just over there holding his baby.  Last night he was literally holding his baby and writing on the white board about branch business. Literally so awesome. I love the Albus family!

So some fun little experiences for you this week:

We were teaching this lady who was at one point investigating the church for 13 years, but could never get baptized because she is living with her boyfriend. Well, during our lesson a bus from a church from very, very different religion pulled up to pick her up from church. Oh. My. Heck. We were dying. It was so awkward. literally a bus came in the middle of our lesson to pick her up for church. Man!  Also, we taught Nuris this week and wow! She was telling us about how she was reading the BoM, and then she read about Nephi dying. She said she was uncontrollably sobbing. she was SO sad. I love her so much. she loves the Book of Mormon more than anything!  Also, we were teaching this lady named Fania. We had a really good lesson about prayer and how to know if our message was true, and at the end of the lesson she gave one of the most sincere prayers i have ever heard. she sounded like Joseph Smith as he prayed for guidance about which church to join! She asked which church was true, if Joseph smith was indeed a prophet, and if the book of mormon was true. She was crying and it was just a very spiritually powerful lesson. We love her and everyone we are teaching! 

Well that is it from me this week, but I hope you all have a great week!

-Sister Woodbury

Week 34 - Bonaire

HAPPY HALLOWEEN EVERYONE!!!

They kind of celebrate Halloween in Bonaire (the best a small country can hahaha)! Lucky for me though, I am in Trinidad, where they don't celebrate it! Really good timing, but oh well haha! We are here for Zone Conference because Curacao doesn't like Peruvians, and my current companion (Sister Montenegro) is from Peru. Lame! I did just get my first warm shower since the last time i was here though! IT WAS SO AMAZING! Hehehehe!

But man this week was crazy! Unfortunately i don't have too much time so i will only be able to include some parts... First of all. We have two people with baptismal dates! Ronald and Nuris! they are both so amazing. They both know that these things are true. They both went to church yesterday! WOOHOOO!! 

We had some really cool experiences while teaching the restoration of the gospel this past week that have really grown my testimony.  Especially with this amazingly elect person from the Dominican Republic named Steven. Wow he is cool. Basically while we were teaching him about the first vision, his world changed.  After we taught the first vision, he took the pamphlet with the picture that we were holding up, stared at at, shook his head and just kept saying "wow." so amazing.  We had to teach the second part of the restoration in two lessons because he has a lot of really good questions. He is amazing. Then, the next lesson we had with him we asked if he had prayed about Joseph Smith again since our lesson (he prayed and asked if he was a prophet during our lesson the last time) and he told us that he did!  He said he believes that he was a prophet because when he prayed about it he felt good, something different, and took that as his answer.  We went back and taught him about the rest of the restoration, and WOW!  We hadn't talked about the restoration of the priesthood with him yet, so when we got there we asked him what Joseph Smith needed to be a true prophet, and he just immediately said, "the Priesthood!" we were blown away because our last lesson with him was about a week before that lesson. We explained the Priesthood to him and how Joseph received it, and he just kept on saying, "WOW." He asked us "wait, but did Joseph pass it on?" :-)  SO COOL. Steven is awesome and is really strengthening my testimony of the Church. Amazing.

Okay, so sister Montenegro's bike had SOOOOOOO MANY PROBLEMS THIS WEEK! SO many. we have been walking a lotttt. we had to walk alllll the way to an appointment that is a good distance away this last week, and when we got there the lady wouldn't even let us teach her.  She just had us clean her bar.  Swept. Mopped. All that. Go team. We were exhausted. We decided to eat out that day and man was that food yummy :) 

The next day, after fixing her bike, we were biking in an area reallyyyyy far from home. It was time to head home, when she got a flat. We walked to a members house and (with permission from the assistants), we road home in his trunk. Fun. honestly it was so nice. we have been soooo tired from how much we have been biking so that was a nice li'l tender mercy. 

Those were the highlights of the week, but it was a lot more crazy than i could even explain! funnnn!!!!!!!!! Have a great week! I love and miss all of you!

-Sister Woodbury

Week 33 - Bonaire

Hellooooo!!!! Great week over here!!!

I actually dont have too terribly much to share this week buuut i first just want to say, I LOVE BONAIRE SO MUCH. It is soooo cute. 20,000 people and about 289,045,794 donkeys and goats. its great. Also fun news, my companion and I will be in trinidad for almost a week, including next pday, for zone conference! craziness!!

Buuuuut the pictures this week are from someone named Boise in curacao. he is doing so awesome and progressing so much. I have high hopes for him :)

Soooo Bonaire. It is the cutest little place ever. Church is held in a little house. the missionaries teach gospel principles outside. There cant be more than about 40-50 members, that might be pushing it actually. The church is only about 30 years old here, super new! Most importantly: i LOVE it. Two of the main investigators that I have met: Ronald and Nuris. Ronald is more new, and he accepted a baptismal date yesterday for the 25th of november! he is really cool. Bonarian, maybe in his 50s or so? I dunno. He is really awesome though. And then there is Nuris! She has been taught for a little while now and she is DYING to be baptized. just has to figure out where to move out from her ex boyfriends house (it is actually her house but he wont leave). she is seriously dying to be baptized. shes amazing.

Also a new fun thing i am doing that i highly recommend: I now study out of the new and old testaments, Book of mormon and doctrine and covenants every single day! I have already learned so much! it is awesome. Highly recommend.

I am so sorry for the lame udpate, but just know that all is well and i am very happy here in bonaire! we are always really busy and we are biking  ALOT. life is good. I love you all and miss you all so much! Have a great week!

-Sister Woodbury

Week 32 - Curacao

Hellooooo everyone!

Not a super eventful week this week, but good none the less :) I received my transfer call! I will be headed to Bonaire on friday! I will definitely be there for at least 2-3 transfers! craziness. I only spent two months in Curacao but i absolutely LOVED it here with my entire heart. I really hope to come back! I am sure i will probably make it back here, I still have just over 10 months! But i am excited for the new adventures I will have in Bonaire.

Really not much this week, but KIM CAME TO CHURCH! That was beyond exciting! She said she wants to bring her 2 boys next time :D she is doing so well! Boise (I think that's spell check for Guido) as well is doing really well! He basically told us without using the exact words that he believes the Book of Mormon is true. SO cool! He is doing SOOOO well! Something really fun about this last week was that Sister Cole and i were able to teach the plan of salvation Part one (where we cover pre-earth life, the creation, and the fall of adam and eve) 3 times this last week, which is quite a lot in one week. It has been so amazing. Once we explained the fall in each lesson, we could pretty much SEE  a light bulb go off in their heads. I always forget most people don't understand it! The coolest response we received after explaining was: "I have always wondered about that but no one has ever been able to answer that question!" So cool! I am so grateful we have that information so none of us are just mad at Adam and Eve all the time. I am so grateful for the decision that they made with the agency that they had so that we could all be here!

Also, something amazing after we taught Kim this lesson was that she told us at the end of the lesson :"you know, I feel like a lot of things that should be in the Bible aren't there, but they're in this book (referring to the BoM). SOOO amazing!!! She has such a strong testimony of the Book of Mormon already! I love it here in Curacao! Everyone is doing really well! Pray for Denitza and Rodolfo please!

That is honestly about it this week! I hope you all have a great week and i miss you all so much!

Love,

Sis Woodbury

 

 

Week 31 - Curacao

Helloooo!

First of all HAPPY BIRTHDAY MOM AND JESSE!!!! I LOVE YOU BOTH SO MUCH! I hope you have a great one, dont party too hard without me haha!

Soooo i forgot to write about some amazing things last week. Fist of all, General Conference!  Amazing right???  My FAVORITE was Elder Owen's about repentance.  So good, but mainly what i forgot was an amazing spiritual experience with Kim, the Jamaican lady!  so she is pregnant right now and has been SUPER sick. like really bad. she hasnt been able to do anything. she has some kind of bacterial infection something in her stomach. soooo sick. we werent able to see her for a long time, like 2 weeks or something, until we were finally able to go see her! It was only like a 5 minute visit and she was not feeling well. We explained and offered to arrange for a priesthood blessing and she said yes immediately.  the next day we went back with two members from the branch and the Parrs and they gave her a blessing of health. wow. we talked to her afterwards and she said she felt a sense of relief run all through her and she was crying. it was really sweet. then, we checked up on her again a few days later and she was doing so well. SO well!  she is still doing amazingly well. she hadnt been to work in months, but now she feels well enough so she has been working. the last time we checked up on her she said the only problem she was having was a headache.  literally no nausea or anything. amazing!  Priesthood miracles. she is doing so great and has so much faith!

Dentiza and Rodolfo came to church on sunday AGAIN! they are so amazing! They want to bring their kids next time! I am so blown away. They had only been to church once before we started teaching them and they had been taught for 5 months, but now? they are coming and loving it!!! we are soooo happy and so blessed.

Also, fun fact - sister garcia and sister hardy were here from thursday to sunday night. This mission!  A lot of the missionaries had so fly out of aruba for emergency immigration stuff. craziness. it was fun to have them here and i love them so much! Also got an update on aruba. so fun. Dario was in colombia when i went to curacao but he brought me back a little bag! I forgot to take a picture of it but it is so cute and i loveee himmm!! Seriously he is amazing. apparently he is doing awesome. So is monchi, whose parents are active in the church and are back together (dont remember if i ever wrote about that), and Marlien and sebastian and eucary and everyone is just doing great! SO happy. so content!

Also Peter, a recent convert/less active. wow. craziness. soooo apparently he got beat up 4 weeks ago by this man who is actually wanted in jamaica! Anyway he has been okay, but then the past week he has just gone down hill. bad. we went by his house on thursday and he was in BAD shape. he could hardly breathe or walk or anything. we offered to arrange a priesthood blessing for him as well and he said he wanted one, so the next day the branch president here, president Browne, came to give him a blessing before he was supposed to head to work, but he saw the shape peter was in and sacrificed everything to take him straight to the hospital. peter was trying to sit up for 20 minutes before president brown got there. i have no words to describe the state he was in. just that it was really, really, bad. So president Browne took him to the hospital and sacrificed everything for peter that night. Then the next day Peter seemed SO much better. it was amazing. President Browne and President Jackson (elders quorum president here, american, REALLY REALLY good doctor.) came to give him a blessing. Pres. Jackson looked at him and he thinks he has a cracked collar bone on one side, and a dislocated shoulder on the other. so bad. he literally cant use either of his arms. they gave him a blessing and it was just really sweet. It was truly so beautiful to watch them take such good care of peter. he has never really had friends before in the church, no fellowshippers or anything. I am not sure if he has ever even felt cared about at church, and now after this experience he can see how much they care. President Browne and Jackson were so sweet to him. They were both so Christlike throughout all of this experience. it was amazing and i am so grateful for them.

That was about it this week! Great week of craziness! I hope you are all doing well and  i love you all so much!

Have a great week!

-Sister Woodbury

Week 30 - Curacao

Hallowwwwwww!!!! How are youuuu???!!!

Guess who hit her 7 monthaversary yesterday. Bleh! Time is flying!

Honestly this week wasn't super duper eventful...but it was still really good! Fun fact, i don't feel tired but i think my body is....my eye has been twitching all day everyday for the past week and a half.  its been fun.  Luckily i dont actually feel very tired!  Hollaaaa haha! 

But so anyway, this week was good! A couple of Highlights (i don't remember what i have already emailed about so i am sorry if i give any repeat explanations!)  Buuuuut so last week we contacted this guy named Wylie. He's awesome. when we contacted him he was just sitting on the side of the road with two different kinds of alcohol and monster drinks, and he was with a really really bad friend.  Well we decided to contact them and we scared the friend away (who was honestly ruining the contact) and then we started talking to Wylie. it was a super average contact but i just looked into his sad little eyes and i could just SEE his searching and his desire for a change. it was really cool. Then we had a lesson with him and he said he knew God sent us to him. we asked if God has ever answered one of his prayers and he said "He has, by sending you".  it was SO cool.

As well, we went to go teach Guido and he hasn't kept up with his reading, but we showed up and he had read two chapters in the BOM and he had been praying about it! That was sooo cool!  He loves the Book and feels that God wants him to keep reading it. Fine by me! :)

Then we visited with Dentiza and Rodolfo and we had given them two verses to read every day from the Book of Mormon. Denitza did a really good job about that and so she was telling us that she shared the verses with someone at work who really needed help and guidance. that was SO awesome!!! That moment when your investigator is already being a missionary! she is so cool. I was so happy when she told us that.

We also taught Niran this week! He was a contact we made a while ago and we had an awesome lesson with him. we taught him the restoration this week and he totally got it. He understood everything. when we asked him what it would mean in his life if these things were true and he told us that that would mean that this is the correct church. We also discovered that he had been contacted once before a while ago but he told us he just didn't have time for it then, but he does now. I was soooo excited about that!!!!!

One last fun little thing that happened,... we were just contacting in our contact area and some guy passed us and we were going to go talk to him until we saw that he was literally just doing cocaine as he was walking down the street. I died. Gotta love Curacao! hahaha!  Well that is just about all that happened this week but I just love missionary work sooo much! I love and miss each and every one of you and I hope you have a great week!

-Sister Woodbury

Week 29 - Curacao

Hellooooo!

Great week over here in Curacao!!!

A couple of fun things about the area that we work in: it is by far the hardest area in all of the ABC islands, and we contact (try to introduce themselves to strangers) all day every day, which basically means that we stand out in the HOT HOT sun all day and yell into peoples houses. How we are not discouraged? I have no idea, but we have been able to have lots of amazing experiences like you all read about last week. But it has been an amazing week. biggest thing of all i think is that ALBERT FINALLY CALLED US THIS MORNING!!!! we were smiling like IDIOTS. it was so exciting. I looked at the phone and I was like, "who's Albert?" and looked at Sister Cole, and then we both realized, and Sister Cole was like, "ANSWER IT." hahahaha it was awesome. He is sooooo cool!!!!!!!!!!!! God is good, people!

Anyway so first off i just want to say a happy happy birthday to Deb V.!!! I love you!!! Thank you for being such an amazing primary teacher and an incredible member of the Woodbury clan! 

So one of the coolest things that happened this week was with an investigator named Guido. I honestly haven't been too sure about him up until our last lesson with him. We pretty much implored him to pray about Joseph Smith in the last lesson that we had with him and he did it! He knows he's a prophet! But not only that, his girlfriend doesn't really love that he is meeting with us. He told us that he explained to her that he knew Joseph Smith was a prophet!!! WOWWW! so cool. She was telling him that we use a different bible but he explained to her that we use the bible, but we also use another book called the Book of Mormon. we hadn't even taught him about the Book of Mormon yet but somehow he explained to her perfectly. that was just so cool.

As well this week, Romeo fed us! It was soooooo good. He is one of the most firm recent converts I have ever met. He received the Melchizedek Priesthood yesterday and he is just soooo happy.  just got called as a missionary work leader in the branch which is awesome because he is a great missionary and is really good with missionary work. he helps us SO much.

Last piece of huge news, Denitza and Rodolfo came to church!!!! wow they are awesome. they have been taught for suchhhh a long time and have only been to church once so that was a huge step for them. they are so awesome and they are progressing so much. I love them so much. I love all of these people so much!!!! other than that not too much has happened around here. we have been blessed with lots of spiritual experiences while contacting so that has been amazing. Major tender mercy from the Lord, because we do that  A LOT. I hope you are all doing well and i love you all soooo much!!!! Please be a missionary this week and share your testimony like Guido did!! :)

love,

Sister Woodbury