October 7, 2013
Dear Family:
Hey! I had another good week! It seemed a little long, but
it was really good.
P-day was a long time ago, I don't really know what we did
in the middle of the day. That night we had set up to go visit the Mannis
family. We took their home teacher with us. We knocked on the door but they
didn't answer. I could see their daughter in the house though. Their home
teacher knocked a bunch of times. They didn't answer. We went back to their
home teachers house for a minute and ate some ice-cream and then came back and
knocked. This time they answered! They were super friendly. We gave them a harvest
blessing and were then on our way. We are headed back there tonight to start
the lessons with them. Hopefully we can get in. Oh I forgot to mention, they
are a part-member family. We have been trying to visit them for a while now.
Tuesday we had an awesome harvest blessing with somebody I
just talked to in her front yard a day or two before. Her name is Tracy. She
has a really nice house. The blessing went really well. We were headed back to
teach her Friday morning but we found out we had a meeting. I forgot to get her
number the last time so we couldn't call her. We went by on Thursday to let her
know. She wasn't home, but we did catch her son smoking in the back yard
with his friends. They were going to be smart alecs until I asked for his mom
by name haha. Then they ran inside. I went to the front door and the kids
wouldn't talk to us. I wrote on a note and stuck it in the door but I doubt it
ever got to her. We went by Friday morning to try and see her on the way to our
meeting for a second but with no luck. We will try back again sometime
this week. That night we had dinner with a younger couple. They just brought
pizza to their apartment. They live in the same complex as us. After they
wanted ice-cream but forgot to buy some. We met them over at a closed Rite-Aid.
We got some ice-cream and then went and sat down on some benches. He is a
return missionary and was asking about the area. He wanted us to be dead honest
and tell him how this area compared to other ones. We told him it was a super
hard one, everybody here has a lot of money and is content with their religion
or lack thereof. As we were in the middle of saying this some little kid walks
up to us and says "can one of you come over here? My mom wants to talk to
you about church." So Elders Cook and Braithweight walk over and talk to
us while the couple teases us about how it didn't seem very hard to us. A few
minutes later the other Elders walk back and say that the people they talked to
live in mine and Elder Hawkins area. They actually live right in our complex.
Anyways, the kids mom is a member from Las Vegas and just moved here and wanted
us to come teach her 9 year old son and baptize him. Bro and Sister Gueno
thought that was pretty funny, and will probably tease us as long as we are in
this area ha.
Wednesday we had exchanges with Arlington Ward. I went into their area with Elder Henrie. I found out that Elder Henries dad actually owns the haunted house on 13th in Salt Lake which I didn't know before, he told us we all needed to come next year. That morning we had service. We were pulling some weeds and stuff for a older couple who couldn't do it themselves. As I was digging I struck gold! There were what looked like gold flakes all through the dirt and stuck in some of the rocks! I gathered a few rocks and washed them and showed the old lady who lived there. She said when they built the house they thought the same thing. They had it checked out and it was a huge cash of pyrite (fool's gold). It was kinda nice to be able to do some service like that. I haven't gotten a chance to do much service for a while because everybody in my area just pay for people to do stuff for them or do it themselves. She surprised us with lunch which was really nice of her. I ate two lunches that day because after service Elder Henrie had promised another family we would come to their sons homecoming party from his mission in Illinois. I was super full. It was hard to ride a bike. The newly returned Elder hung out with us quite a bit. He didn't know us, but he still seemed more comfortable around us. We had to exchange back earlier than we normally do because they had some meeting they had to go to.
Thursday we saw Sandy for a short amount of time. We
couldn't find a team up so we were just going to do the lesson in her front
yard. As we were starting her gardner showed up so we moved the lesson to Friday.
Then she had to leave town so we didn't get to teach her this week. Other than
that not a whole lot happened other than what I told you happened at Tracy's
house.
Friday we had zone meeting. It was good, but it went long.
We had a zone lunch after and didn't get back to our place until like 2:30 or
3. We didn't have much happen the rest of the day. We went and saw the Silvas
after dinner and asked them to watch general conference. It was a good thing we
did. Bro Silva thought that it was going to be stake conference. I hope they
watched there was one amazing talk in the Saturday morning session that they
needed to hear and applies to them well.
Saturday was pretty much taken up by conference all day.
Saturday morning session Elder Richards, the one who was just at our mission,
said the opening prayer. It was weird to think about that you guys were in that
session. Conference was awesome! I learned a ton! The choir that had the
families in it had somebody who just left our mission. The senior couple, the
Davis that live across from the Browns were in it. They were the ones who it
zoomed in on. he was shaking pretty visibly. He always does that.
Sunday once again was taken up by conference. Just not the
whole day this time. Conference was super good, I really enjoyed it. Other than
that I can't think of anything to tell you about! Oh wait, during the Saturday
session I noticed the prophet was looking good in a nice grey suit. Elder Cook
and I liked that. We have the exact same grey suit. I think it is my favorite
now for suit or pants. Well now that is all I can think of! Love ya!
Elder Wood
