This week was awesome!! I love Easter! Also, Sister Phinney is an awesome missionary. She is super happy, and always so willing to work. She is such an awesome example to me, and I'm so grateful to be with her. Seriously, this girl from a tiny town in Canada is rocking San Clemente.

Some highlights of this week!

We got to see Sonia! I think I've talked about her, but I can't remember. She is a Brazilian LA in Marblehead. She is super friendly. It's really cool to see her progress. She reads the Book of Mormon everyday, and says she prays all day. She doesn't come to church because she goes and helps her daughters with their kids. Anyways, she's super nice, and will hopefully come to church soon, especially since we found a man in our ward who can translate for her.

We went over the entire ward list with one of the members of the Bishopric, and found out that there are over 15 part member families in our ward. When I asked about them, he said that he didn't think anyone had ever talked about them or contacted them. And I was all like, wait, what? How is that possible? So we will be working on that for the next little while. I'm super excited, cause it gave us such an amazing place to start from. :)

So one of the ways we have been teaching lessons for the past little while is through sharing our talents, namely I have been singing for people. It is simultaneously the most nerve-wracking  and awesome experience that I have ever had. Why is it so awesome? Because the spirit that I feel, and that I hope others feel when I'm singing is so amazing. I always knew that music brought the Spirit, but it is so cool to just feel it come into the room. That's actually how we first contacted Adele. We stopped to talk to her, and she said she'd been to our church before, and that she liked the music. I asked if I could sing one of our songs for her. So I sang I am a Child of God. It was a really cool experience. The one's I sing most often are ironically not in the hymnbook. I usually sing Amazing Grace or Come Thou Fount. That's been a cool thing.

We got a new investigator! I know last week I talked about the referral we got from a member of our ward. So we taught her the Restoration, and I gave her a Book of Mormon with my testimony written inside. She is only 13, but is super open, and has a lot of super great questions. She said she would pray about our message and the Book of Mormon, and start reading it. The Spirit that I feel every time I testify of the Restored gospel is so amazing. I love testifying of truth, because every time I do, I feel again that what I'm saying is true. This was such an amazing miracle that Heavenly Father gave us. I am always in awe of the trust that he puts in us as missionaries.  I am so excited to see her again.

We were able to go see the Women's Broadcast on Saturday! So good. So many amazing lessons and things that I learned from it. I'm almost out of time, so I'll share more next week.

Easter was amazing!! I loved it! The weather was perfect, and we had dinner with an awesome family! Also, everything that was shared in Church was so uplifting, and so full of hope. I love the message of Easter, because it brings us so much joy, hope and peace. How amazing is it that we have this in our lives?? I am grateful that I get to share this with others.

Thank you all! I love you lots!

Love, Sister Wood :)

1) Sister Phinney and I :D

2) We go and do service for a 91 year old woman, and she insists on driving. It's a teensy bit terrifying, but we haven't died yet... :)

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So we got transfer calls on Saturday! Ours was kind of interesting. I will be staying in Marblehead, but Sister Wolterman will be staying in Liberty Park and Cristianitos. So, we won't be companions anymore. :( But, we will be roommates, which makes everything better. Plus, our wards meet in the same building, so we will see each other all the time. 

My new companion is Sister Phinney! I have met her and talked to her a few times, but the only thing I really know about her is that she is from Canada, which is cool. :) I'm excited to get to know her and work with her. I'm also excited to stay in Marblehead. That's a huge blessing. Sister Wolterman will be training a new missionary from the Philippines! She is excited and nervous. :) 

This past week has been crazy because we've been up in Irvine a lot, or on exchanges because Sister Wolterman has had to plan a lot of things with the AP's and all that fun stuff. 

Lele came to a baptism last week, and Sister Wolterman leaned over and asked, "Have you ever thought about being baptized?" She responded with, "I want to be baptized, but I need to have time first." So that was awesome!!! It was way exciting, and the baptism was awesome. It was a huge blessing that she came. We were also able to go and teach her the Restoration. It was super cute cause when we started she stopped us and was like, "wait! I need to take notes!" So she went and grabbed a notebook.It was funny. :)  It's so amazing to watch the Spirit work on people. Also, it was amazing to be in that lesson, because we sometimes have a hard time explaining things to her, because we're kind of working from the ground up, but I know that the Spirit was helping us to be able to explain things in such a way that she understood them. She said she would read the Book of Mormon, and that when she was ready and decided who she wanted to baptize her, she would be baptized. I am so excited for her, but sad that I won't be able to teach her anymore. Sister Wolterman and Sister Corpuz will take good care of her though. 

We had a Family History activity in one of the wards, and a lady came and taught us how to do Family Search. I had just kind of assumed that most, if not all of my families work had been done, but within about fifteen minutes of looking, we were able to find names! That was a super cool experience, and it made me excited to do family history when I can. She said something while she was teaching us that stood out to me. She said, "We are laying the foundation of the Millenium." That really struck me. It was a really cool way to think of Family History, cause I had never thought of it that way. I was really impressed. 

We had a few miracles happen this week. 

Miracle one: We got a headquarters referral from the Elders, and we tried calling her a few times, with no luck. We decided to try one more time. She answered, and said we could come and visit her next Sunday! She was really open to hearing our message, and I am excited to see where it goes. 

Miracle two: We had a note given to us by the Elders from a member of the Marblehead ward. It was a referral for this man's daughter, who is 13 years old, and not a member. His ex-wife is anti-mormon, but he wants us to teach her when she is with him. So we will be seeing her on Thursday. The other part of this miracle is that he tried to do this once before, but the Sisters who were teaching messed up big time. I don't know why he has decided to trust Sisters again, but I'm grateful for the opportunity. I hope and pray that we won't let him down. 

That's all I have time for, but I hope you all have a stupendous week. Thank you for your love, prayers, and support! You're amazing!

Love, Sister Wood :) 

Picture 1) Lele and us after our lesson :) 

Picture 2) My mom sent me my violin! It came in this enormous box, and the zone leaders were like, "What is your family sending you? Cause it took up our entire backseat." 

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his week was kind of slow. But that's okay, sometimes that just happens. 

We had some rough days, but we also had some awesome experiences! Adele canceled her appointment, and didn't come to church, so we have to postpone her baptism, but we still have hope for her! We were able to see her and talk to her, and she explained that she had had some problems in her house, and so we will hopefully be able to teach her again this week. :) Her fellowshippers are the recent converts in our ward of almost four months, so that's awesome. 

We got a new investigator this week! Her name is Lele, and she's from Hong Kong. She recently lost her husband. (Like 3 months ago.) She has been coming to the Liberty Park ward for almost two months, but there haven't been Sisters in the ward until now, so we were able to share a lesson with her. She was most interested in the Plan of Salvation and being able to see her husband again. It was very tender, and a very sweet experience. The Spirit was so strong as we were able to testify to her that families can be together forever. 

We walked in the Mormon Battalion! Well kind of. There was a parade in San Juan Capistrano, and we were able to dress like pioneers! It was super fun, and now I'm sunburned from it. :) But it was so worth it. I love parades! 

We go tracting quite a bit, and we accidentally tracted into two less active families. One of them happened to be the one woman on the entire relief society list that the president told us not to visit. But it turned out well, cause she was really nice to us, and let us in. We didn't even realize she was less-active until we got back to the car and looked at our ward list... So that was an exciting conversation with the RS President. "Hey, remember the ONE lady you told us not to go see? Yeah, so we stopped by her house!" She took it well though, and the LA lady let us share a message, so it all worked out. I think Heavenly Father was guiding us there though, because usually before we tract, we see what members live near there. This was the only time that we didn't do that. 

Also, funny story! We went to dinner the other night, and after getting into the car after I backed Sister Wolterman, we were driving down the road, when I realized that I only had one shoe in the car. (I did notice that my shoe had fallen off before this time, but I thought it had come off and fallen into the car. We were about two minutes out when I realized it wasn't in the car.) So I said, "Sister Wolterman, I only have one shoe..." And she was like, "What?" So we had to go back, and lo and behold, there was my shoe, sitting in the middle of the parking lot. This adventure made us late to Ward Correlation, so now Sister Wolterman and the Elders have taken to calling me Cinderella... :) It was pretty funny after the fact.

I'm out of time, so I'll stop there, but I love you all and hope you have a great week! 

Love, Sister Wood :) 

1) You're favorite Modern-day pioneer. :) 

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I think I might just put Miracles as my subject line for all of my emails, because every week is so full of miracles. I cannot tell you. This week was so amazing.

So this was our first week covering three wards! Super fun! Kind of hard, but we're getting used to it. :) On Tuesday, we had an amazing district meeting. Seriously so good. We talked a lot about Christlike attributes. Mine for this transfer has been Hope, and I know that it was inspired, because of everything that has happened. After district meeting, we went and had a window and were able to talk to a lot of people. We saw this one older gentleman talking on the phone, and Sister Wolterman looked at me and said, "We NEED to talk to him" and I was like "okay" so we started walking towards him, but he started walking away!! But did we let that deter us? No! We started walking faster, trying to catch up with him, up this hill. I think he might have seen us or something, because it seemed like he was walking faster too. So, we start running, literally running in our skirts and flats, to catch up to this man, but we are doing it as quietly as possible so as not to attract his attention, so we can nonchalantly walk up and start talking to him. I think we probably looked ridiculous, but we needed to talk up to him! So, we finally caught up to him, trying not to breathe super heavy, and introduced ourselves. We had just barely started talking to him, when he goes, "I can't talk, I'm not interested, and please leave me alone." I was shocked! We had just expended so much effort trying to talk to him! And he couldn't even listen to us! As we were walking away, Sister Wolterman said, "Well, I guess Heavenly Father just needed to see if he could trust us." I hope I showed him that I was. We laughed about it for a while after that. I also would have liked to have been one of the people who saw us. Imagine, two Sister missionaries, quietly talking, then walking determinedly toward an unsuspecting gentleman. Seeing that the gentleman was slowly drifting further and further from their reach, they begin to run, skirts and hair, flowing in the wind, racing to spread the gospel. When they reach him, they beam in anticipation of helping another Child of God. See their faces fall in discouragement as he ruthlessly rejects them. One comforts the other, and they go on their merry way, seeking for their next victim... I mean opportunity.  :) I think I'm really funny.

Sorry this email is going to be so long!

After all that went down, we went and met with some people in our new wards. Then we stopped by this lady who we talked to right before our three hour tracting spree last week. She had been really nice, and I had sung "I am a Child of God" for her. She said she would come to church, but she didn't show last week. We went and we had been trying to stop by her house a few times, but she had never been home. When we stopped by this time, she answered the door!! We were able to teach her the Plan of Salvation, and she accepted to be baptized on March 19th!!!! WHAT???? It was crazy awesome, and the Spirit was so strong! To add to that, she had been to church before, and she came yesterday!!!!!!!! It was so amazing!! We have a return appointment for Tuesday, and we are so excited to keep teaching her. She also has a nine-year-old son. Her name is Adele.

Later that day, as if we hadn't already experienced enough miracles, we went and visited a less-active in Marblehead. We had been seeing her pretty consistently, but this time we brought a brother in our ward who speaks Portuguese. (She's from Brazil, and doesn't speak English very well. I can get by talking to her in Spanish, but it's hard.) She was given a blessing in Portuguese, and we were able to find out so much about her, because we suddenly didn't have a language barrier! She came to a dessert night at our Bishop's house yesterday! We couldn't believe that she was willing to come with us. It was so amazing.

On Wednesday, we went and we were able to help the Young Women in the Liberty Park ward get certified for girls camp! I love and miss the Young Women. It was so fun to be able to talk and work with them. They are such a cute group of girls. We spent a lot of time doing stop-bys and getting to know people in our new wards. It was lots of fun.

Thursday we tried to stop by a lot of people in the Cristianitos ward. Literally no one was home. We stopped by this one house, and we knocked, and we heard a window open, and a little girl saying hello. So I stepped of the porch to talk to her, when I saw the window slam. I had the impression that she didn't want to talk to us. So we got in our car which was parked across the street, and were trying to figure out where to go. I also had to contact some people, so we were sitting there for about 5 minutes. After we were ready to go, I looked back up at the house, and the little girl was holding up a sign that said, "GO AWAY! My dad isn't home, and I don't want to talk to you!" So we left. We probably won't stop by that house in the near future... It was pretty funny after the fact. I was feeling a little bit discouraged, but we kept stopping by people's houses. Finally, at our very last house that we had on the list, a man opened the door. He looked at us, and said, "Sisters!!!" He was so excited to see us, and it just made my day so much better. He comforted me, even though he didn't know he was. He told us what a great job we were doing, and how grateful he was for us. I know that we saw him for a reason. I really needed that boost.

Friday was amazing!! We were able to go and do initiatory and a session at the temple. It was so wonderful to be able to go. I love the temple. We stopped by and saw some Less-actives, and we felt impressed to stop by one more before we had to go home. As we were walking up to her apartment, Sister Wolterman started talking to a woman who was sitting on the curb smoking a cigarette. We had a good conversation with her, and we found out that she was looking for a church to join! One of her friends had suggested that she look into the Mormon church. What are the odds that we randomly show up right then? She accepted to come to church, (She didn't end up coming, but we have hope that she will.) We also found out that she was living with the less-active who we had been going to see. It was amazing!

In Proverbs, there is a scripture that says,

5 ¶Trust in the Lord with all thine heart; and lean not unto thine own understanding.

 6 In all thy ways acknowledge him, and he shall direct thy paths.

I have never felt the truth of this scripture as I have this week. I know it to be true. We would not have been where we were, or met the people we did without the guiding hand of the Lord. I know that he is watching over us, and is willing to guide us and help us if only we ask for it. I know that I can't be a missionary without looking to him and asking for his help. He is always there, waiting. I love this gospel, and I love being able to share it every day. I look forward to and am grateful for every single day that I have.

I love you all!! Thank you for your love and support! I hope you have a wonderful week!

Love, Sister Wood :) 

Hello! 

This week has been INSANE. Just so everyone knows. It started off pretty uneventful with P-day and the normal stuff. We had some people cancel appointments, but it wasn't anything we couldn't handle.

Tuesday was super normal too. We had district meeting, and I gave a training on making every single person you talk to feel the love of God. Whether they accept an invitation or not, we need to help them feel the light of Christ and the love of Heavenly Father. I also talked about making contacts meaningful and personalized, cause sometimes it's easy to fall into the rote things that you say. I thought it went well, and Sister Wolterman assured me that the Spirit was strong, which is all I could ask for. :) Also, we went tracting for 3 hours. It was awesome, and also hard. We met a lot of people and had some funny experiences. We gave out 13 copies of the Book of Mormon. :) It was great! Then we had dinner with this super funny old couple and did some service. 

Wednesday was pretty normal. We were able to see an investigator who we hadn't been able to see for about four weeks! Also, she came to church yesterday! It was super exciting to see her there. We went on exchanges that night, and at about 9:45, I get a text from Sister Wolterman, saying that President Orgill now wanted us to cover the Liberty Park and Cristianitos wards as well as the Marblehead ward.... What??? So now we are covering the three Talega wards. Woah. It's been a little bit crazy. 

The rest of the week has been kind of a blur, with meetings with Bishops and Ward Mission Leaders, while still trying to do everything we need to do... It's been crazy, but fun. People keep sending us texts like. "We're praying for  you" or "Philippians 4:13" (Which is "I can do all things through Christ, which strengtheneth me." We just kind of laugh, and say thank you. We appreciate the prayers and support. So we are really busy, and we will never have an excuse to be bored or not busy. 

We spent 8 hours in church yesterday, which was... an interesting experience. 

Despite all the difficulties and the trials that we know will come with covering three wards, I am so excited to serve these people. They haven't had sisters in their wards for two and a half transfers. I know that Heavenly Father needs us there, and he would never give us more than we can handle. I am excited to see the miracles that will come. 

I'm out of time! But I love you all, and pray for you often. If there is anything I can do for you, please let me know. Thank you for your love and support!

Love, Sister Wood :) 

Pictures! 

1) We were watering a members flowers, and we found a frog! We named him Benny.

2) Sister Wolterman and I on our 3 hour tracting adventure. :) 

3) Exchanges with Sister Hunter!

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