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
