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