Aruba update May 22, 2017

Bon Diaaa, Con Bi?

This week was super fun, like always! I have learned that those who don't know any English CANNOT pronounce my name for their lives. Cannot!  It is usually something along the lines of Wooury or Goodbreak or something. soooo funny. I have been trying to come up with a nickname or something that they could use instead haha! Maybe Hermana Wood? Or Berry? Some people have said that I should try Wolverine or Blueberry ahaha!!

This mission is soooo crazy. Constantly changing. Constantly!  At the moment we are in a trio with this sweet Sister named Sister Montenegro! Her companion was visa waiting  (waiting for a visa to get to another country for her regular assignment) and she got her visa so she is with us now!  She also wasn't supposed to get her extension that allowed her to stay in the country but she got it and we are so happy! We are going to be in a trio for the next two weeks until President Egbert can get her a new companion haha! Sister Petersen will be leaving me tomorrow for a couple of days (sad) to go to Trinidad for Missionary Leader Conference or whatever it is called so it will just be me and Sister Montenegro! We have two areas for the rest of this transfer so this is going to be FUN haha! Ahh! 

But anyway.... HAPPY HAPPY BIRTHDAY MASON!!!! STOP GROWING UP! 
Also congratulations to whoever was able to complete my BOM challenge! I am so proud of you and So is the Lord! Haha! I hope that was a great experience for you! I would now like to extend another challenge! Read the BOM again! This time try it in 3 months. I know you can do it! I extend that challenge to everyone who reads this!!!! READ THE BOM! 3 MONTHS! I can promise you that as you do it you will become closer to the Lord and you will be able to feel his sincere love for you! I want every single person who reads this- member or not- to read the Book of Mormon in three months! You can do it and I promise it will bless your life sooo much! That's enough time to not only read it but also really study it! I promise that you will feel something different as you do so! 

So this week we had a really cool experience with this new young investigator named Daryl (sp?). He is awesome. He has been sooo prepared for the gospel! We had a really good lesson with him and his mom and asked them to read a chapter in the BOM. Later in the week we called him to ask if he was coming to church this week and to check to see if he read and prayed about the BOM and he said he did! He said he was expecting someone to tell him "yes" when he prayed to ask if it was true, but instead he said he felt this warm feeling and he said he felt at peace. He new that that was his answer! That was such an incredible experience and I am just so happy for him! 

I love this church and I am so grateful to be serving the Lord! I just ask that you pray for him and his mom because the dad hates religion and whenever they try to get involved in a church or something there is a lot of contention in their home! Soften that dad's heart through prayer! I know is will work!! :) I love and miss you all! Have a great week! 

-Hermana Woodbury

The Latest from Aruba

Bonnnnnn Tardiiiiiii!!!!!!!

Great week! Nothing too exciting or out of the ordinary, but a great week nonetheless!! On Friday we had exchanges so I was with another companion, Sister Pacheco, for 24 hours! It was such a fun experience! We had a lesson with this really awesome young woman (maybe around 24?) and her brother and his wife! It was a really cool experience just because they were all being SO prepared! It was a nice reminder that the Lord is always preparing people and we just have to find them! People are just searching and searching for this message so that is why it is so important to just keep looking so that you can find those people! As the scriptures say, the elect people! 

If you ever have the opportunity to serve a mission in your life time, please do it! I know it is sooo hard leaving, trust me, but I also know that if you turn to the Lord he will bless you more than you could ever even imagine! Please serve if you have the chance! So many people are searching for this message so it is our responsibility to help them find it! 

Other than that we had a district activity this morning and that was really fun! We hiked Hooiberg and it is just like a million stairs but it was super fun! 

We had a little testimony meeting at the top and it was just overall an incredible experience! My district is awesome! They all love serving the Lord so much and they are all really obedient and amazing. 

I also absolutely LOVE the senior couple on this island! They are office missionaries but we get to see them pretty often so it is so fun. i. love. them. The Steckers! Since they are office missionaries and there are no other senior couples on this island, sister Petersen and i are responsible for taking care off all of the things a normal senior couple would take care of. We take the bikes in to the shop about 3 times a week hahaha! We also pay rent and all that fun stuff! We are often super busy with things like that so it is sometimes a little tricky fitting in regular full time missionary stuff, but we make it work and Heavenly Father blesses us a ton! 

It was a pretty low key week but I hope you all have a fantastic week and I love and miss each and every one of you so much! 

-Hermana Woodbury

ps- LAST WEEK OF THE CHALLENGE!

Greetings from Aruba!

Wow. What. A. Week!  This week was SO awesome!!!  Buuuut first: Happy Birthday Allen and Jack!!! Happy Anniversary Brittney and Allen!!! Happy Anniversary Mom and Dad!!! (huge family props.. haha!)

Okay so this week was great but really all of the highlights happened on Saturday!  Saturday was so spiritual I was like numb the whole day. I have no idea how to describe it but it was awesome!  So first we had an awesome experience with this lady named Valezca. She was so cute! So we had gone to her house a couple of days before but no one answered so we felt like we needed to go back.. We went back a couple of days later and Valezca's mom was outside! She was just finishing up cleaning her car and we were just talking to her for a little bit. Sister Petersen felt impressed to ask if she had any family and if they were home, but right when she was about to ask, the lady's daughter (Valezca) came out! She is probably somewhere in her 40's. Anyway we had a super spiritual lesson with her! We taught the restoration and we bore testament that God loves her, and when we started doing that she just started crying. The spirit was SO strong. I could not believe it. Later she said that she had felt something tell her that she should come out and see who her mom was talking to! So crazy! I love how the Spirit works!

Then we went to go have a lesson with this sweet lady named Ursula. As we  were teaching her we realized she is super smart. Sis Petersen was teaching about how Jesus established His church and he gave the priesthood to his twelve apostles. She asked what happened to the priesthood when all of the people killed off the apostles - a GREAT question we are never really asked, and when we explained it was lost for a time, Ursula was just like "wow wait yeah!!  It was gone!!  so what happened then???"  Then we got to teach her the Restoration!  That was so awesome. She was so sweet!

Okay this last experience was incredible. Absolutely incredible. We have been trying for WEEKS to meet with this lady that the missionaries had contacted a while back. She would always just send her kids out to tell us she was sick or sleeping or something. We just kept feeling like we should go back even though they were not very welcoming. This last time we checked the home the mom finally was the one to come out! She was not happy to see us and was just not very nice!  Sister Petersen asked if we could make an appointment and the lady just said "Yeah maybe in a few months"!  Sister Petersen then asked if Friday would be okay and the Lady (Rosaline) just said "i will just call you, okay?" and sister Petersen said "people always say that and they never call, will you actually call us?" and the lady just paused for a minute and then said "no.."   I was ready to just leave but Sister Petersen remembered something one of the apostles had said: "when in doubt, testify of Christ."  So she said she had no idea what she was doing or why, but she just testified of Christ, and talked about how Christ loves her. Rosaline started bawling.  I ran up and assured her that God and Jesus Christ do love her, and she started bawling even more. She invited us in and we talked about how through the Atonement of Jesus Christ she could be relieved of the sadness she was feeling. She totally opened up about her life and we found that she really needed the love of God and the atonement of Christ. The two things that the spirit told us to talk about. That was by far the coolest lesson of my LIFE! 

So we also found 5 new investigators this week! So crazy! Being as obedient as possible is really paying off hah!  I love Aruba so much! I hope to spend most of my mission here because its literally the best, and the branch is incredible!  We HAVE to come back after my mission.  We have the bikes and a car temporarily to do senior couple stuff and to go to church and other meeting because we live pretty far from everything.  There are 8 missionaries in total in Aruba! 4 elders and 4 sisters! missionaries in my branch and then just an elder companionship in the other branch!  2 branches on the island!

Most of our teaching is in Spanish because the illegal Columbians and Venezuelans here are the only ones who care! They are the best!  Arubians really couldn't care less about the gospel.  Papiamento is maybe a little easier to learn than Spanish, but most of our teaching is in Spanish. 

Well that is all from me this week but I love and miss you all!!  Have a fantastic week and try to have a missionary moment!

Hermana Woodbury

P.S. 2 weeks left of the challenge!

 

 

Officially Two Months OUT!

Hellooooo!!!!

Life is sooooo great as a missionary. Just sayin... Okay so here is a better address to send mail to!!! This is the last time for a while I swear haha!

Karin Scott

Hermana Woodbury

Kaya Terpsichore 11-28

Willemstad, Curacao

(Sister Scott comes to Aruba frequently, so she'll deliver :-D)

So that member who got deported got confirmed this last Sunday!!! HOORAY!!!!!!  I am going to go day by day so that my emails are slightly less jumpy...

Monday:

We bought a TON of food at pricemart which is pretty much exactly like Costco... I think its owned by them! Favorite place ever. We also locked our keys in our apartment that day which was super fun! We locked our selves out of the apartment but we were also locked in the property because we didn't have the key to the gate that lets us out. We were stuck there for a while until our landlord/President Gonzalez could let us out.. So embarassinggg! Hahaha!
Tuesday:

It was a pretty average day! We flew to Curacao that night for zone conference and the Elders almost made us miss our flight but we made it!
Wednesday:

We had zone conference in Curacao which was so fun and I got to see Hermana Burrup! I missed that girl SO much! Love her. we flew home that night!
Thursday:

Woke up to stolen bikes and a cut up bike lock. They didn't take our spare bike for some reason.. So rude haha! So because there's no senior couple on Aruba right now, we are kind of the senior couple for Aruba so we had to do a lot of senior couple stuff this week, mostly because of the bike fiasco. We also had a lesson with Christian that day and when we sat down he told us he needed to be baptized!! I was so excited and I was smiling like a doofus haha!
Friday:

We did more senior couple stuff all day and that's about it honestly!

Saturday:

We had another lesson with Christian and he told us he was having some contradicting feelings which was a bummer :/   He isn't giving up on us though! He came to sweet little Maria's baptism! (See picture

)  Her baptism was sooo sweet and amazing! We love her so much.

Sunday:

Maria got confirmed and she was just crying because she was so touched by the spirit. Soooo sweet. Christian didn't come because he didn't have a ride but he tried walking! He has only been in Aruba for two months and had no idea where the church was (he lives pretty far) so he got super lost. He was lost for EIGHT hours. Bless his heart! We felt so bad, so we are walking with him next week. We love him! I'm sure he scored some major Brownie Points in heaven right there haha!

Monday:

Pretty much all of our lessons fell through, we biked a ton and we had to do a lot of senior couple stuff- yet we were both in the best mood ever. I love missionary work no matter what happens!

So sorry I haven't been able to reply to everyone recently! Email time is sooo crazy! I read all of your emails every week though and I appreciate them SOOOOO MUCH!!! I absolutely love every single email I receive and I cherish them with all my heart! I am so sorry I cant reply but just know that I read every single email! I am so grateful to all of you who have taken time out of your day to write me! Thank you so much!

HAPPY BIRTHDAY TATA ("dad" in Papiamento) I LOVE YOU AND MISS YOU SOOOO MUCH!

I hit my two month mark yesterday which is so nuts! It is already flying by and I am loving every minute! The branch here in Aruba is soooo incredible! You would not believeeeee!!!! I love every single person here so much. We couldn't email yesterday because it was a holiday- sorry! I love you all and miss you all so much! Have a great week!

P.S. 3 weeks left for the BOM challenge!