Firefighter wedding

Hey there my dearest friends and family! Sometimes I just don't really know what to write... Not too many things happened out of the ordinary this week but I will tell you the Nicolas is super golden! His baptism date for right now is the eighth (how the heck do you spell that word??) of march! WOO HOO!!!! We have awesome young single adults in our ward that always invite him to do stuff with them. When members help out it makes SO MUCH DIFFERENCE!!! love it.

Marcelo the atheist that isn't atheist anymore is also being super awesome! but him and Jessica need to get married...And Jessica has to get divorced first but her spouse doesn't want to give her the divorce or something like that... Why can't people just be married with the people they are living with? We always end up teaching people with complicated marriage situations! 

Remember Christofer? Yeah... Apparently he didn't have a good experience at church last week so they didn{t come this week. NNNOOOOOOOOOOO!!!!!!! But we aren't giving up on him not even close!!!!

There was a wedding in our church of a firefighter and we were invited! It was awesome because they like did some awesome routines and stuff outside our church and then after the wedding when the bride and groom were leaving they sprayed their car with the fire hoses all the way down the street! It was pretty fun I thought!

I keep forgetting to tell you guys something important!!!! Remember when I told you that Hermana Alvarez is from Honduras?? Well I lied. She is from Nicaragua. Okay now you know. She also doesn't pick the watermelon seed out before eating a piece of watermelon. I tried warning her that watermelons will grow out of her ears if she eats them but she didn't believe me... She just eats them still.

Well that's that! Love you guys! Hope all is well!

Love Hermana Woodenburg

El Super Trio

AH!!!!! I can't even believe all the miracles that happened this week! But I{m just going to tell you the big one. Almost all of our investigators that we have been focusing on went to church yesterday!!!!!!!!! WOOO!!! I'm just going to tell you about all of them because they are all super incredible! Some of them might even be familiar to you guys!

Cristofer- He went to church again! I am still completely obsessed with their family. Really though. I just know that he is going to get baptised and they are going to get sealed in the temple one day.

Nicolas- We have been teaching him for a long time! The whole time I have been in this area but he was almost always on vacation, ESPECIALLY weekends. But he recently told us that he prayed and he knows that its true, so when he went to church we showed him the baptismal font and he is super excited! YEAH!!!

Marcelo- I possibly might have told you about him but I'm not sure. His family is inactive and he didn't believe in God. Now he feels like he has a relationship with Him and he and his family went to church! He has a little three year old daughter named Valentina that reminds me SO MUCH of Berkley! She is so cute! But she doesn't sing songs for me and she is a lot more shy.

 

Fabian- We found him Friday. His wife Viviana is inactive but she has a lot of family that attends our ward actively. Her sister actually told us about them but said she didn't know if they would actually be receptive but we just decided pass by anyway. Holy canoli were they receptive! When we asked Fabian how he thought he could prepare himself for baptism he said, " I want to go to church Sunday. We're going to go to church." WHAT???!!!  He invited himself to Church! And they both went! Her sister was SUPER happy to see them there and super surprised. Now we just have to get them married and help him quit smoking.... BUT WE CAN DO IT!!!!!! ANYTHING IS POSSIBLE WITH THE HELP OF OUR HEAVENLY FATHER!!!!
 

Julio- We found him SATURDAY! When we invited him to church he really didn't want to commit to it so we really didn't think he would go. But when we called him in the morning he said yes! Amazing. He has a cute little daughter named Agustina and she was running around all during sacrament meeting... Oops... But here in Chile that's actually quite common to have happen...

Brauleo- Remember the story I told about giving our landlords son a Book of Mormon? Yeah this is the guy. He is SUPER catholic and still doesn't accept baptism BUT now he is saying "it will take time" instead of "No I already got baptized" AND is reading in Alma 22 now. With time, it will
definitely happen. I just know it.

This is seriously an area of miracles. I was so stunned that everyone went to church  I didn't know haw to handle it! The church was nice and full, so we felt pretty good.

This week we really learned that when you are obedient and working diligently the Lord sees it and blesses you. There were a lot a times this week that we had to go home early or leave later because of Hermana Bollets migrain problems but when we were working we just really put our trust in the Lord to bless us.

 

Well... Thats all I really have to say this week! I just love this missionary thing SO MUCH!!!! Love you guys!

Love, Hermana Woodbury

Migraines

Wow this week was seriously crazy! So many ups and downs! Okay so the first thing you should know is that one of my companions Hermana Bollet has really bad migraines. To the point that last cambio she couldn´t work for two weeks and almost went home. She has a lot of ups and downs with it and this week was kind of a down because she was out for a couple days. We were a little worried because last week we found all of the AMAZING people and we just needed all of them to go to church! We really had to learn to put our trust in the Lord and know that if we put in our effort to do all we can he will bless us. With the help of the Lord and the members both of the people we are teaching that accepted baptism went to church!!!!! WOO HOOO!!!!!!!!!!!

Okay I will tell you about them! The first is Cristofer. He is seriously AWESOME! His wife Valentina (and yes they are actually married and not just living together! WOW!) is a less active member that we have been visiting has been starting to go to church again recently and they have the CUTEST little one year old boy named Mateo! I am like seriously obsessed with their family! They are so great! Their whole marriage (okay they havn´t been married THAT long but still) they always say a prayer together every night before they go to bed! And now that we are visiting them they always read the pamphlets we give them together! Talk about prepared!!!! When I´m there I seriously feel like they are family because of the way we can joke around and stuff. I will admit, it was a little rough to get him to church though, we´ve been teaching him for at least a month, but now that he finally went I just know that he will keep going! He HAS to!!!! PRAY FOR THEIR FAMILY!!!!!

Okay the other one is named Eduardo. He was a pure miracle in church this Sunday! We actually found him last Sunday which is when he accepted baptism. He is like twenty something so for our next appointment we took a returned missionary with us that actually ended up knowing him really well and told him that he would pass by on Sunday. Well good thing because after that, Eduardo wasn´t at our next cita and didn´t answer our phone calls! So we passed by his house Saturday to see if he was there and his parents said he went out of town and he´d be back Monday or Tuesday. So we thought he was a goner, and that there was NO WAY he was going to church. So we were just sitting there during the sacrament and I take a look behind me, and all the way in the back of the congregation Eduardo is there sitting the that RM. I was seriously so stunned to see him. PURE MIRACLE I tell you. Pure miracle.

As for the trio it´s still going super great! Here are some great things that have happened: Hermana Bollet wears a hat that makes her seem like she could be a Jehova´s Witness and we are ALWAYS teasing her about it, so one day we were contacting a lady and the lady asks what church we´re from and Hermana Bollet goes "Jehova´s Witnesses!" NO: We were seriously mortified. Next: Hermana Alvarez was contacting an old man that was very catholic that said he did NOT want to change so her response was something like this, "Honestly, we don´t want you to change your religion, okay well, I mean we actually do but that´s why you just have to pray about it..." Oops. Well all just started to laugh. Including the old man! Next: Hermana Alvarez was writing our information ona pamphlet to give an investigator and she seriously wrote "Goodbury" ... My own companion can´t even spell my name right....

Well Out of time! Love you guys SO MUCH!!!!

Love, Hermana Goodbury

Not even a fly can get past us!

AH!!!! I just love my trio! I´m not even going to lie, I used to pray that I would never be put in a trio but now I have no idea why I ever did that! We talk with EVERYONE. With three of us it is impossible for people to get by with out one of us talking to them. Not even a fly can get past us! Or maybe said... not even a dog can get passed us!

It´s super awesome because we all knew each other pretty well from being in the same zone and having mini cambios together and we all love joking around! I think that it has helped us all a lot because we all feel like we can just be ourselves. We are always just walking down the street with all of us laughing and smiling and I think that has also help people be more receptive to us too! We are seriously seeing miracles by the minute because we all are just working hard and enjoying it!

One day we were walking down the street and we turned a corner to find a house, and and old lady ran after us yelling "WAIT WAIT!!" and I just thought, Oh great, a crazy lady... And she goes, "Are you guys Mormons?" "...Yeah..." "Do you have one of those little books for me to read?" (referring to the pamphlets we give) " I really love to read and I want to become closer to God." I seriously could not believe it! SHE contacted US!!! AND she wasn´t even crazy! Yeah, we are definitely going to pass by and teach her!

The past month has been a little rough with investigators because it has been summer vacation and everyone just leaves all of the sudden to go out of town when we have an appointment and ESPECIALLY on the weekends instead of going to church. But we just KNOW that everyone is going to go to church this next Sunday!

Random fact about my area: Since it´s fairly close to the sea, sometimes the wind brings in the smell of raw fish. It is super gross when that happens and one of my companions always looks like she is about to puke.

Our mission has really been working hard on finding and reactivating less active members and something I´ve found is that no body ever falls suddenly. It always starts with something small. It starts with not reading your scriptures. Not saying your prayers. Skipping just one Sunday. Those are the cheesy primary answers that we all grow up hearing but really it is SO important! If we skip once it makes it easier to do it again, and then all of the sudden we aren´t going to church at all and it´s easier to fall into greater sin. If we don´t fall in the little things, we won´t fall in the big ones. So do it! Don´t be too busy to read a verse from the Book of Mormon before you go to bed! PRO!! WOO HOO

I just love you guys so darn barn much! 

Love, Hermana Woody (That´s kinds weird..)