Monday, August 26, 2013

Tracting in the Canyon Crest Ward


August 26, 2013

Dear Family:

Things are still going good here in the Canyon Crest Ward!

Last P-day we were on the way to the mall to pick up Elder Spencer's pants he ordered in and Elder Cook got sick. So Elder Spencer and I ran in really fast and tried to get them. They weren't there though. Besides that we didn't do much for P-day except play ultimate Frisbee at the park with the zone.

Tuesday wasn't too exciting either.

Wednesday we had exchanges with Elder Henry and Elder Allen. They are in our district. Elder  Henry came into our area with me. He is an American Sign Language Elder. He is from Centerville Utah. He is hard of hearing but didn't know ASL before the mission. He isn't serving as an ASL Elder right now because we can only have two in the mission right now to keep them busy and I think we have 4. Language study was cool. We played an ASL game where we made something with signs and then passed it on to the other person for them to make into something else. We visited a lot of people. I feel bad for the guys that go on exchanges with us. They all hate our area. Elder Henry is a bike missionary but he still had to walk most of the day. We tried to visit a lot of different people, but not really much success. That night we had dinner with President Plocher. He is in the mission presidency and in our ward. They are a really cool couple and their last son is on a mission right now. They have one of the nicest houses I have been in. Like one that blows the doctors in Roosevelt out of the water. He was really big in real estate a while back and made a lot of money. Enough money to buy an Audi R8 ha. I think those are just over 300,000 dollars. We had pretty much visited everybody I wanted to so we did some tracting to kill time and then we went back home to make the exchange back.

Thursday we tried chasing down more names the ward gave us. We ate dinner at a part member families house. Misti Poter is the member and her husband isn't. He is a really cool guy. He is a federal air marshal, so I got to learn all about that. He started out in the boarder patrol so I told him about my family members who have also been in the border patrol. He misses being outside and having a less boring job, but this one pays more. Plus he gets to go to lots of cool places. I would love to try and teach him but he is in the other Elders' area, so hopefully they will try.

Friday we had exchanges again with the zone leaders. They are in our district so we had to go twice with them. This time Elder Lapara came into our ward with me. I wanted to go to their area, but that is what the zone leaders wanted to do. Again we tried to visit a lot of different people. Elder Lapara hated biking. He has only done it a few times. He almost threw up haha. He is a little bit out of shape. I did a front flip on my bike. I haven't really wrecked before. On Lockmore street the curbs are really high. I was going like 5 miles an hour riding with no hands. I wasn't really paying attention just talking to Elder Lapara when my bike turned towards the road. That isn't a bike deal I normally just grab the bars and ride it out. This time when I grabbed the bars my hands just kept going down because how high the curb was. I crashed super slow. My head just kinda kissed the ground as I rolled to my back and held my bike upside down. It really was kinda graceful now I think about it. It was like a really slow summer-salt with my bike off of the curb. I just didn't make it all the way back to the starting position. I couldn't do it again if I tried. It didn't hurt at all. In fact the most pain I felt was from how hard we were laughing. That night we taught some recent converts who are trying to get to the temple. 

Saturday before lunch we had a really cool experience. All that morning sucked pretty bad. I was in a bad mood and didn't really know what to do with the day. We didn't really have anybody to go visit. Elder Hawkins was being super slow and dragging things out as long as he could. He walked to get his shoes, then back for his socks, took 5 minutes to put them on, forgot his tie, just everything he could think of to not leave the apartment. When I finally got him out we visited a few people I have been trying to get a hold of with no success. It was like 11:40 and I was super hungry. I didn't really know what to do to keep busy, and Elder Hawkins just wanted to go back to the apartment for lunch. I said a prayer in my heart for strength and help with what to do next and decided we would tract for a little while and hold out until noon. We went to where Elder Lapara and I left off the day before. We walked up to a door and stood there for a second, and decided not to knock because we knew nobody lived there. It was obviously under construction so we walked to the next house. The first door we knocked on a lady answered the door. While we were introducing ourselves she just burst into tears. We didn't really know why but she invited us to come in and leave her with a blessing on her and her home. We came to find out that about a minute before we knocked on the door she just finished a prayer asking God to send her someone to help her. She told us about how many missionaries she has shut the door on, and I believed her. Even though she knew God sent us, I could still tell she was being hesitant. She told us about some problems she had been having and we left her a blessing accordingly. We are headed back Tuesday to meet with her again. We couldn't meet before then because right after we left her sister came and took her to her house, so we had a small time frame to catch this lady. By the way her name is Sandy. She is a 7th day Adventist. So we left her house pretty excited. Something like that doesn't happen everyday. That night we got a call from Maryann who had cancelled her lesson for Sunday because of a busy schedule. She asked us to come over and eat with her and then teach her. We had already eaten, but we ate again. We had a really good lesson and she is seeing the blessings from learning about the restored gospel. The only bad part is she is gone for 2 weeks at a time, so it is hard to always meet with her. She pretty much gets like 4 days a month off. She is a nanny.

Sunday we met with a kid who is leaving on a mission soon. we will help him prepare. His mom is a member but doesn't want to be involved with the church so I am going to try and warm her back up to the church at the same time. I don't think the rest of the families are members so hopefully we can send him on his mission with some real teaching experience.  Well we were supposed to leave for dinner like 15 minutes ago, so I better get off. 

Love Elder Wood