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