Exact Obedience

Week 4

 Exact Obedience

  "This week I have learned a lot about being exactly obedient. I know that it is important and I know that it leads to miracles. I have seen that already throughout this first transfer. However for some reason this week really emphasized that for me. We had some great things happen this week and I know it is because we were trying out hardest to be exactly obedient. I can't pinpoint any exact moments where we were exactly obedient and it lead to a miracle, but I know that it is through exact obedience that these miracles happened. The Lord has been blessing our companionship for our efforts.
We had five investigators at church yesterday! We had no idea what to even do with that many. Luckily for us we had a couple who knew the members and were able to sit with them. That is going to make it easier when they are new members and need to get used to the ward. Ernesto came again and it was a miracle. He sat down and the first thing he said was "I have a question about baptism. What do I need to do to be baptized." Wow! We talked to him about the lessons he would get to take and that we would turn him over to the YSA elders so that he could be around people his own age. I was worried that he wouldn't want to take the lessons from them, however he said that would be just fine and that we could give them his number so they could contact him. 
Lydia is now on date for December 14th now which is really exciting! We are so excited for her. We had dinner at a member's home last night and they were talking about how perfectly she was going to fit in the ward and that they could already see what a great member she was going to be. I feel so blessed to have such a great ward who is so willing to help us in our efforts to bring people closer to Christ.
This week I really started to grow my relationship with the Savior. I have always known that through the atonement we are able to repent and return back to our Heavenly Father, but this week I was asked to give a talk in district meeting on the sacrament. I am so grateful I was asked to do so. I studied the topic the whole week before and I felt like everything I had been learning was stuff that I had already known. But as I was preparing my talk and putting the final touches on it, I was a reading a quote from True to the Faith and it said, "The more we ponder the sacrament the more sacred it becomes to us." I thought about it and about my experiences during sacrament my whole life. I hadn't made it as sacred as it needed to be. The sacrament can just be another thing that we do on Sunday if we don't pay close enough attention to it. I need to ponder it more and have more appreciation for it. Part of worshipping is showing our gratitude and thanking Him. The sacrament is as sacred as me make it. I know now that to continuing growing closer to my Savior that I need to pay closer attention during the sacrament and have been trying the past couple of weeks to do so. Coming out on my mission has really made me recognize how important it is to have a relationship with our Heavenly Father AND with the Savior. Without both life gets really difficult. 
I am so grateful to my Savior and for the love that He showed in paying for my sins. I'm not perfect but I know that through the Savior I can be an instrument in His hands and that because of Him I can change. In sacrament meeting I will try to have a personal experience with my Savior each Sunday as well as in my Studies and out in the field.

Ok I have realized that I have pretty much said nothing about my area/misson so far. Let me tell you: the weather here is in the 70s and 80s. Yep, it's November and still hot. It was in the 90s last week! What the!? Hey at least I am not in rain or snow! It has yet to rain and every day is sunny. Yep, my mission is better than yours! Just kidding.

   As for my mission president. Wow, what an incredible man! He is so spiritual and his children are perfect! They have a 13 year old and an 11 year old. They are so polite and they respect their mother to the highest! If she is standing and they are sitting they are quick to offer their seat to her and make sure that she is comfortable. That WILL be how my children are. Anyway, President Castro is so incredible and makes sure that the sisters are taken care of. I have had a few moments to talk to him and you can feel the Savior's love emanating from him. He teaches up at BYUI so I will be taking one of his classes.

    Holy Cow! You guys! The people here are so prepared! We have one baptism set for December 14th. Happy late birthday to me! Her name is Lydia and she is a traveling nurse. She is the sweetest woman and LOVES coming to church! She even makes comments and talks to the members like she has been there for months! She is going to be an incredible member!

   We have a little 9 year old that we are teaching named Melissa. She is so cute! We were at their house the other day and they had a little bunny. I held it and about died from how cute it was. But here is the problem. I am SO allergic to bunnies. I am finding out that I am basically allergic to anything that is cute a fluffy. I can handle dogs but cats are killer (and nasty and annoying) too. I was dying afterward and I couldn't wait to get home. But we had the primary program this week and Melissa was in it (her family is less active) and so we sat together and sang the primary program songs with her sister Angelina who is 7 and wants to be baptized as well! They are so cute and I LOVE being able to teach little kids again! Oh and funny story about the bunny. The other bunnies in that....batch were killed by a bobcat and so they named this one lucky. The next day the girls came to church crying because it had died that night. HAHA!!! oh the irony. Sad but funny for me. Well it is time for me to get off the computer. I will update you more next week and I will probably have 2 more baptismal dates to talk about too! The work is really progressing!

Love you all!

Sister Skeeter"

The Church is True!

Week 3

 The church is true!!

 

So why is it that I have only received one letter form someone in my family. I thought I had 4 siblings and two parents at home....ok I'm really not that worried about it. Especially since mom just told me that she sent off letters finally. So this week has been....well there are no words to properly describe it. Just read. If you don't believe in miracles you might after this.
       This week has been incredible! We have had so many miracles! The first one was Lydia. She is one of our investigators who was at church last fast Sunday. We had an appointment with her on Friday and while we were on exchanges she called Sister Arndt and Sister Bennett and said she had to cancel. So they asked if they could go see her that day. She said yes and they went and taught her the Gospel of Jesus Christ. Before she had not wanted to set a baptismal date because she wanted to be 100% positive this was the right thing to do. Later that night when they were doing exchange reviews Sister Arndt asked to see the phone. Lydia had sent them a text saying that she had received her answer and wanted to talk baptism!! We will be setting the date this Thursday when we go teach her again. Needless to say, we are very excited.
    Next miracle. We had an incredible lesson with Andy. He is another one of our investigators who keeps all of our commitments but still struggles a little. The past couple of weeks he had a lot of trouble with 1 Nephi 14:10. We had tried to explain it the week earlier but did not do a very good job at it. So this week we brought our ward mission leader and we discussed how chapter 13 was talking about the church in Europe, Christopher Columbus, and the Restoration. There was a huge change in his countenance and toward the end he began to tear up. He is always telling us that the Book of Mormon isn't a part of him like it is for us and that he doesn't know if he has the faith to gain the answer that it is true. I could tell with this lesson something changed and I believe that the Book of Mormon is becoming a part of him. He also would not pray with us but he did this week!! He didn't love the idea but he has never been willing to pray in front of us, until this week he finally did! We also explained faith to him a little bit more and helped him to understand that it isn't having a perfect knowledge but it is hoping for that we don't see. I think that is the part of the lesson where he began to tear up. We told him that just by reading and praying on his own he had shown great faith already, even if he didn't think he had. We committed him to continue reading and without any hesitation he said he would! Andy is incredible!
    Alright on to the next. Sister Hegstrom and Sister Arndt had met this boy on a bike, named Ernesto, a couple of weeks before I came and at first he did not believe in God at all and would not really listen to them. He did set up a return appointment and tell the Sisters that they had gotten him thinking again.  One of the first weeks I was here we went to the return appointment, which was at the park, and he was not there. We left a sticky note on a bench and left our number for him to contact us. So this week, we got a text from him and he said he wanted to talk to Sister Hegstrom. We didn't know why but we answered by telling him that it was the missionaries and we asked how we could help him. He told us that he wanted to meet with us at the same park. We met him there and the first thing he says is that he wanted to change and that he knew we could help him. He wanted to have better friends and that he wanted to come to church. We had no way to get ahold of him so after the lesson we could only pray that he would come to church. Sunday came and we went to meet our ward mission leader  for correlation. We were there at 8:15 and went to go make a copy of our progress records. On the way to the library we heard someone call for us to come into the chapel. There an older gentleman told us that someone had come for us. Sitting in the back was Ernesto! This older man told us that he had forgotten to set his clocks back and thought that he was showing up to church at nine. We know that Heavenly Father sent this man to keep Ernesto company before we were able to meet with him. Ernesto went to two sacrament meetings that day. One with us and one with the third ward sisters. He told us that he was going to come back next week as well! We are so excited for Ernesto! We might be giving him to the assistants so that he can go to the singles ward but we need to continue talking to him about that as well.
    Ok this other miracle is my favorite one so far! Sister Arndt and I were knocking in the Del Norte apartments yesterday and we walked past this apartment and onto one of our potential investigators. After he didn't answer Sister Arndt looked at me and said we need to go back. I asked her who we were going to go see and she told me that she had no idea who it was. After we knocked a lady answered the door and told us that she was on the phone with her son. Both Sister Arndt and I thought that she was going to say she was too busy to talk and that we should go away. We quickly told her who we were before she could and she said "Oh! I am on the phone with my son talking about baptism!"  He lives in Virginia and had gone to a church of Christ out there and felt really rejected because they wouldn't offer him the sacrament because he wasn't a member. So Sister Arndt has a 20 minute conversation with him and declared the restoration (basically she taught him about the restoration.) Crazy! While Sister Arndt did that I talked to his mom. I talked to her about how we had a prophet here on the earth and that he received direct revelation from Heavenly Father. I told her about how we received our mission calls and we talked about how the church was the same all throughout the world. She was so excited and she told us that she would for sure be at church on Sunday with us. She told us that she felt like this was a new beginning for her and that she needed something for her spirit. I promised her that through the savior and his church she would be able to have all that her spirit needed. We walked out of their apartment so excited. We could not stop smiling and a guy across the street looked at us and said "Wow you guys are happy!" Happy was an understatement. Seeing the Lord work though us is an incredible thing and we were so privileged to have that experience. We are going to continue teaching Her and we are referring her son to missionaries back where he lives.
     This week has just been incredible for miracles and there were plenty of little ones as well. These were just the major ones that happened. I know this church is true and I know that my Savior stands at the head of it. There is no way the things that happened this week were coincidence. I am so thankful to my Heavenly Father for letting me come out here and serve him. Sorry this is so long but I had to tell you because I am so excited about it!
    Wow. People! How can you not think this is true!? Anyway this week has been a struggle for me. Even with all this amazing stuff happening. Satan has been working on my really hard. Thank goodness for the power of prayer. I would not survive without it. Anyway, I am doing great out here and the work is really progressing! The Lord loves his children! Hope things are going well for all of you guys!

Don't forget me!

Love,

Sister Skeeter"

   

Miracles

"Miracles!"

     This week has been so incredible! I have learned so much! One of my favorite parts of the week was when all of our appointments cancelled. I was really bummed when our first one with Kathy cancelled. Shortly after our dinner appointment cancelled another one of our "gators" called and cancelled. We had four that day and ended up with one. After the second one I knew there was someone we needed to find; I could feel it. We went down to a street where we had planned to talk to a potential investigator. We ended up knocking and as we were doing this we saw a girl across the street come home and walk into her home. Sister Arndt and I felt a little awkward going to her house because she had seen us as well. We decided to do it anyway and she ended up becoming a new investigator! She thanked us for bringing her a Book of Mormon and after we committed her to read the intro she told us that she would end up reading more of it. I was so excited! Later that day we went to the back up of our second investigator and we were knocking in Nevada street. We came to this home and a young mother answered the door. She told us that she was Lutheran and I thought she was going to close the door in our face. We talked to her for a while and she committed to read the Book of Mormon and pray about it! We set up a return appointment and again thanked us for stopping by. I am so excited to teach her! She is incredible.
    One of the things I learned this week was recognizing how as missionaries we can see people's potential. I had heard that before but when I was set apart I didn't see the difference. This week I realized that when we see people's potential we see how much the Lord loves these people and how they can influence the church for good. 
When I first got out here I was worried about loving the people but this week the Lord has shown me how to do that and how much he loves each one of us.
Sister Arndt and I also had an amazing experience in companionship study. Jamie will appreciate this. I had read in Alma 44:10. The last sentence in the verse was highlighted and I remember talking about it with him and it was really powerful then. I read that sentence that morning and I liked it and wrote it down but I wasn't sure really why I had liked it anymore. As I was telling Sister Arndt about it I decided I wasn't going to read her the words exactly but for some reason I changed my mind and read her those words. The second they came out of my mouth the room was flooded with the spirit. It was so powerful! I was not expecting that at all! So we discussed it and talked about how we as missionaries can help end the conflict with Satan. When we have sins we must use the healing power and mercy of the atonement to finally end the problem and forsake our sins. The spirit was so strong during that study. What a way to start the day!

    Halloween was just like any other day. We totally forgot that is was a holiday. We called people and asked members to come to some appointments with us not realizing that they would be busy with family stuff. Oops! Who hangs out with family these days? Not the missionaries! We had to be out of our apartment at 9 am that day and in by 7pm. That was weird but nice at the same time. It gets dark here around 6:00 which makes knocking hard because people think that it is a lot later than it really is, so they get mad at us for knocking in their door so late. Oh well this is their salvation that is on the line. I think they can handle talking to us for five minutes.

    Things out here are great! I miss you and and love you all! Sorry this is so short! I will send a better update next week!

Sister Skeeter"

     

1 Week Down, Lot's more to go!

Madi's first week in the field.

"1 week down, lots more to go!"

    "Wow, this week has been crazy! I really have no clue where to even start. I guess I will start with my companion. Crazy story her and I. We were both on this sister missionary facebook page and she ended up adding me about two days before she reported. I messaged her and asked her a few questions. While we were chatting back and forth I thought "watch we will be companions at one point." Little did I know. So fast forward to first day in the field. We had an interview with the mission president and he told me that my trainer was a really great missionary and that she hadn't been out for very long. My thoughts immediately went to Sister Arndt. I asked him how long she had been out and he said about two transfers. I thought it would be her but I didn't want to get my hopes up. The next day all of the trainers walked in to the meeting room and she was with them. They called out each new Elder or Sister and their trainer. I was the last one of course because I was a "W" so as each sister got assigned to someone I was more and more sure that she would be my trainer. And guess what! I was totally right! Not a big deal. I can just see the future...ok maybe not. So she has been so great! We have a lot of fun together and she is super good at encouraging me. It makes it a lot easier to have someone who has been through all of this recently.

     As for the work out here. I got so lucky! I am in the Ventura 4th ward and we cover some of Ventura city and Saticoy city. Holy cow. Saticoy is a pretty poor area and we aren't allowed to be there at night. Sketchy! It's ok though because most of those people we have to refer to the hermanas. I walked into this mission and started with 3 amazing investigators! They are so ready for the gospel and I wish they would all just commit to baptism already! Two of them had dates but they had to be pushed back due to some issues and they other one does not want to commit until she is 100% positive this is right. The cool this is that you can tell they are all really trying to find out if this is the true church. I love watching them change and seeing how much they really want to follow Jesus Christ. 

      The funny thing about this work is that all of the people you would think are nice and want to hear the gospel are the most rude and the most tatooed and rougher looking people are usually the nicest and most easy to teach. Makes sense right?...Not really. However it makes for some incredible miracle and stories!

       Also guess what. I got sick. Yep, already! So far it hasn't been keeping me from doing the work. The scale says I have gained 10 lbs but I am pretty sure that, that is all mucus in my throat and nose. I know, that is what you all wanted to hear. haha Anyway, I survive on Ibuprofen and there is a ton of pressure on my face right now so I think I might call Sister Castro (presidents wife and medical lady) and let her know what's up. Other than that I am doing really well! I love it here and can't wait until I am not brand new. ha funny story about that! 

       Our mission president told us to tell people when they ask how long we have been out to tell them that we are "in the middle" of our mission. This is true because we are all in the middle. So this is where the awkward comes in. You say that and people start asking what other areas you have been in. I usually just say that I have only served in Ventura (they don't need to know they are my first ward) and some of the time that works. However! Most of the time they get more specific and ask what other wards you have been in. At first I didn't care about people knowing I was knew, but poor Sister Arndt has been trying so hard to keep that a secret. So she is usually there trying to get people to stop asking questions and we both just end up awkwardly laughing. Saying you're "in the middle" does NOT work! oh well! 

      So some of you may be asking why it would be bad to tell people you are brand new. The other reason is so that they respect you and what you say. You don't want them thinking that you are new so you don't know anything. That is one of the things I love about our mission. Here there are no such thing as "greenies". We are all called to the same work and responsibilities. We all have that power and authority no matter how new you are. It makes it so much more enjoyable when the older missionaries treat you the same way they treat the ones that are going home.

       Oh man! The other day we ate THE most spicy salsa ever!! We have this mexican woman in the ward and she makes real mexican food with A LOT of spice. This stuff had 5 different kinds of habaneros (sp?) which included ghost peppers. It was SO yummy but I could only have tiny bits at a time because my mouth was on fire! I need to tell Elder Woods about that so he can be jealous!

       Also I have a question for you all. What is it with Mexicans and chihuahuas and pitbulls!? EVERY single person we find has one. I hate dogs. 

      Ok I think that is all for now! Oh! For those of you wanting to write me! All of our mail goes to the mission office and all packages have to bee sent first class/priority if you want it to get to me. Here is the address for you!
Sister Madison Woods  (yep you have to put my full name.)
3301 W Gonzales Rd.
Oxnard California 93036 

I love you all and miss you!

Love,

Sister Skeeter"

Also pictures to come later!

Madi with her first companion in the field Sister Arndt. Madi shares a story about her in her first letter home.

We didn't hear much from Madi while she was in the MTC but here are a few pictures of her and her companion in the MTC.

Ok, I think I am finally figuring out this blogging thing again. Madi, Sister Woods, would like me, her mom to post her weekly letters on here from her mission. I thought I would start from the beginning with her two farewells. She had a farewell in Utah and California. The first few pictures show some of the decorations Mikayla and I made for the farewells. The other pictures are with people who came to her farewells. I wish we would have taken pictures of everyone who came, especially family, but we forgot. Oh well.