July 9, 2012, Email post from Corpus Christi, TX

Dear Family,

 

   I've been thinking a lot about how to articulate my feelings towards these past two years, and I still haven't come up with a good way, but I'll try.

 

   I still remember the MTC, I still remember my first day in Donna, our first baptism, all of it, and it seems so recent.  It's hard for me to believe that all of this has gone by.  The two years I've had to dedicate myself to the Lord have passed by faster than I ever could have imagined.  I look back to who I was at the beginning of my mission, or even before the mission, compared to who I am today and I feel like I've become so much better.  There have been a lot of conversions that have taken place in the last two years, but I think the greatest has been in me.  I give thanks to God for the man I've come to be.

 

   What mom said about the value of hard work is absolutely right.  I hope I can continue with the work ethic that I've learned here in McAllen.  I'm sad to leave this place, but I'm excited to bring all the things I've learned back to my life back home.  I just pray that I can hold onto the changes I've made and the lessons I've learned.  These two years have been the happiest years of my life.  Sure I've had ups and downs, frustrating companions and good ones, but overall I've never had such a feeling of peace and satisfaction like I've had in the mission field.

 

   Thanks for supporting me along the way, and all the time beforehand.  I'm certain I never would have made it here without your help and prayers.  I'll be seeing you Wednesday, and I'm excited for those real hugs =).  Love you, see you soon!

 

 

Elder Wood

 

p.s.  Church was great!  All of our investigators came except for one, and Row got interviewed for baptism.  He should be getting baptized just shortly after I leave, sometime within the next week and a half, whenever it is that his mom has a day off.  The other companionship also had an investigator get interviewed, all of the investigators come and a recent convert passed the sacrament for the first time.  It was an awesome Sunday!

July 2, 2012, quick email post from Corpus Christi

Dear family,

   First off, just for business stuff, my bike has remained in such good condition over these two years that I'm going to ship it off to Utah to use over there.  I'll be shipping it to Christian's house today.  I'm not sure exactly when it'll get there, but he can just throw it in the garage until I get there.

   I'm sorry Mom, we showed up late to emails, and there is a zone activity in 30 mins. on the other side of town.... I promise we'll have a thought provoking conversation in two weeks!  forgive me! I feel so bad!

Love,

Roland

June 25, 2012, email post from Corpus Christi

Dear Family,

 

   Wow!  This week has been a week of miracles that's for sure!  From the beginning of the week, everything just seemed like it came flying towards us.  We had more investigator referrals and less active referrals than I think I've gotten in the past few months.  They kept coming in so fast that we had to keep a running list just to keep them all straight.  We had less active members that we had never met before call us because they wanted us to go by and visit them, and then when we get there they brought us a friend they wanted us to teach.  And even better, the friend accepted a baptismal date!  That happened twice this last week!

 

  One of the referrals that we got was for a young man named John.  We found out that the member had taken him to church the past two weeks in Robstown and had really enjoyed it.  We met with him, taught him the Doctrine of Christ and invited him to be baptized, which he readily accepted.  The dad of his friend who had referred him was there at the lesson as well.  His name is Brother Flores.  He was baptized as a youth into the church as well and was testifying during the whole lesson about how much it had helped him.  When John accepted the baptismal date, Brother Flores stood up from his chair and bore him his testimony on the restoration.  It was pretty intense seeing him stand up and say, "I know that this is the only true church on the face of the earth, and I'm so excited for you and the decision you've made to prepare yourself to become a part of it.  When I was baptized it was the best decision of my life, I don't know where I'd be without it, and I know it'll be the best decision of your life as well.  I'll be praying for you."  That's probably the best member support/member testimony I've heard in my whole mission.  Too bad he lives in Robstown, haha.  We've taught John three times this past week.  Then he came to a baptismal service on Saturday and then church on Sunday. And he's up to chapter five of First Nephi in the Book of Mormon as he's been reading with his member friends.

 

   We've been working really hard here in this area, and you can see the results of it.  The other elders had their miracle baptism on Saturday, which turned out to be a really good experience.  Two investigators came as well as a number of less actives.  The girl is pretty young, but has a really strong testimony.  Her parents come to church with her, but have to get a divorce before they can get baptized.  The girl wanted to go to the temple to do baptisms with the youth this weekend, so she decided to do the baptism on her own.

 

   I just finished the Book of Mormon again as well!  This time was special though because I read every chapter at least twice (although most ended up like 3 or 4 times) before I moved onto the next one.  So, it's taken me a while because of that.  I feel like everything I've learned is very much worth the time and effort.  We were given time to speak in the Spanish branch on Sunday and I gave a talk on treasuring up the teachings of the Book of Mormon.  It's such an amazing book, and more importantly, it's true!  In my talk I read a number of verses from the Book of Mormon where the book describes it's own purpose.  I think my favorite one is probably Ether 8:26.  It sounds more intense in Spanish than it does in English, but it's still good.  In English it says, "So that evil may be done away..." but in Spanish it says, more or less, "So that evil may be destroyed..." which just sounds a little more intense to me.   It's the foundation of the testimony of the restoration and I know it's true.  (That's the first time I've underlined anything in a email in a long time, so that means it's big.)  I hope we can all appreciate the sacrifices of the prophets, ancient and modern, by undertaking a more serious study of the book.

 

   Hopefully, Mom, your friend can be ready soon to act, and not be acted upon.  At some point she does have to be ready to support herself.  Others can always do more, but when we fall short, ultimately it always comes down to us and it's our personal accountability.

 

  I hope everyone has a great week, but I'm out of time to write.  Keep looking for the miracles!  They come!

 

Love you!   <---you remember what the underline means....

 

Elder Wood

June 18, email post from Corpus Christi

Dear Family,

Hmm, where do I begin?  My agenda has basically become my journal.  I'm flipping through to try and remember what happened this week.  Things went well, overall.  Row came to church again, yesterday, and received a couple of lessons during the week.  He should be getting baptized on the first of July.

We taught some good lessons and dug a trench for somebody to lay new plumbing.  Overall, it was a great week.

Here's a story that I shared with the mission president. 

 

     We had an awesome miracle in the district this last week. There was a family of investigators in another district here in Corpus that was doing well, but had kind of teetered off in their progression.  It's a mother, father and a daughter.  They had gone to church a number of times in the stake center and had enjoyed it.  They need to get married and the daughter was having a hard time integrating into the young women's program.  This weekend they moved into Bel Air's area and now live just two or three blocks from the Horne Rd. chapel.  They came to church on Sunday and loved it!  The daughter found out that one of her friends from school goes there and is really active in young women's.  The young women's president invited her to the activity on Wednesday and she said she wanted to come really bad.  Even more, the youth have a temple trip on the 30th.  She wants to go so much that she said she wants to get baptized before that so she can go with the youth.  So, she'll be getting baptized within the next week or so, a miracle that we definitely weren't expecting.  It's amazing how the Lord can work great miracles through such small and simple things isn't it?

  Sorry, I promise I'll have a better letter next week!  Remember, those that forgive get forgiven :)

Love,

Roland

June 11, email post from Corpus Christi, TX

Dear Family,

 

    What a great week!  I know it sounds cheesy, but I love the mission.  I don't think I've ever gone through so many trials, but as I look back on every one I can see how they were heaven sent to help me grow, learn and do better.  I'm going to miss this. But, I try not to think about that as much as I can cause it just gets me depressed.

 

   We didn't see as much success this Sunday as the last one, but we still had some cool things happen.  When I get home, remind me to tell you the story about Lyle Evans.  He's an African American man we found and set a baptismal date with in this last week.  The lesson with him was one of the coolest/funniest lessons I've had in a long time.  Typing it over email won't do it justice, so just remind me to tell it to you when I get there.

 

   Rose-Ellen went to the Virgin Islands??  When did that happen?  That sounds like a pretty intense vacation.  I hope she had a good time.  I guess it just surprised me because I think she's the first person in our family to go on a vacation like that.  But hey, more power to ya.  That's pretty cool.  Too bad the stingray spooked her.  Those things took down Steve Irwin, so nobody's safe, pretty much.  Just kidding =)

 

   We had zone conferences this last week.  Our mission president gave us training on the Restoration which was really cool.  He went into depth about the apostasy, covering details on the deaths of the apostles, the loss of priesthood keys, the changing of doctrine and the efforts to reform.  It was more than we'd really ever teach to an investigator, but it was really interesting to learn about and see the depth of the need for a Restoration.  I think I'm going to ask him for a copy of his Powerpoint, it's pretty informative. 

 

   In the zone conference I gave my last testimony.  It was an experience I wasn't really expecting, and I don't think I really realize yet that the best two years are drawing to a close.  I shared a couple scriptures from Mormon chapter 9 that I really like--pretty much all the ones about miracles.  My favorite I think is verse 16.  The miracles of God truly are marvelous in my eyes.  When I see everything that he's done for me and the people that I've loved in these past two years, I marvel at His goodness, His grace, His power and mercy.  And just like Mormon says, I think I scarcely comprehend his miracles.  

 

   The part that I remember the most from my testimony is when I said, "I love Him.  He's changed me into the person I've always wanted to be."  I don't know why, but I broke down when I said that.  I know that in these last two years I've seen the Lord help a lot of people, but I think the person he's helped the most is me.  It's funny how when we leave to rescue the lost, we come back with two people, both closer to the true path of righteousness.  Bringing the lost sheep back we realize that we weren't as close to the Shepherd as we thought we were. I truly am grateful for everything He's done for me.  I don't think I'll fully comprehend all of it, but the small part that I do helps me to realize just how great He is.

 

   I hope everyone keeps on growing and keep working on their conversion and self-mastery.  Know I love you.  You're always in at least one person's prayers.  Take care, God bless.

 

Love,

Elder Wood

June 4, 2012, email post from Corpus Christi, TX

(Editorial note:  I couldn't get the spacing to work right when I 

copied this over from AOL.  I should just retype the whole thing, 

but I am short on time right now.  Please just fix it all mentally.)

Dear Family,

   Wow, Warren and Mel look like they're going to be moving into quite
a house. I'm a fan if you ask me, and after spending two summers this
far down south I'm definitely a fan of the pool.  If the Arizona
summers are anything like Laredo, you'll love having the pool.

   I'm also glad to hear that James is doing better.  I hope he
continues to improve.  Not to be trunky, but I'm looking forward to
seeing him when I get back.  He's a good friend to me and I did a
horrible job at keeping in contact with him when he was on his
mission, so I need to see what's been up with him for this past while.

   I'll be praying for Aunt Sherlene.  As they caught it early I'm sure 

they'll handle it and everything will turn out all right.   I might be 

mistaken, but isn't radiation therapy different than chemo? I think I heard 

that radiation treatments are a lot easier than chemo is, but I might be
mistaken. If that's true, it's good that she just has to go through
the radiation after the surgery. Hopefully they can get it all taken
care of and done away with.

   That's kind of a freaky story about Spencer. I'm glad it turned out
all right in the end and that now he can sleep and rest all right.  I
hope that's the end of that story and that no more issues come
out of that.  I'm pretty sure I wouldn't want my skull to get its cap
popped more than once ={.

   Who knows what'll happen at Christmas.  I'll talk to Christian about
that when I get back. For right now I'm content with just knowing that
I'm coming home to VA and then headed off to Utah for the family
reunion.

    We had a great week here in Corpus!  Both of the investigators
that we have came to church and enjoyed the services.  One of them is
a 10 year old boy who's from a less active family.  Speaking of all
these health issues going on, it seems like he's got a pretty crazy
one.  He was the smartest kid in his class, reading super fast, really
good at math and everything, and then one day he just regressed really
bad.  What happened is that the left and right sides of his brain
started separating, which interferes with his processing information.  

Basically, it took away everything he had learned.  He's still a
smart kid, but now he really struggles with things like reading for
example.  We've been teaching him and so far he's been understanding 

everything really well.  We taught him an object lesson
on the gospel of Christ (faith, repentance, baptism, HG, endurance) and
then had him teach it to his grandma with him running the object
lesson.  He did it really well. He has a baptismal date for July
1st.

     We had four less active members come to church this last week which 

was awesome as well.  We had to send one member off to pick one of them up
about ten minutes before sacrament meeting started, because the ride the less
active had set up before fell through.  But it turned out that the
member knew the less active lady really well, and made it back in time
for the passing of the sacrament.  During the testimony meeting she
got up and bore her testimony on how she was grateful that I had asked
her to go pick up the less active lady because they had a pretty
heartfelt talk on the ride over that helped her a lot.  It was awesome
because right before I asked her I asked our ward mission leader if he
knew anyone that would be willing to go pick her up.   He said that I should 

just give up on it because none of the members would want to do it. So, it was
pretty cool because the less active came and then the member bore her
testimony on how it helped her to go get her.  O ye of little faith!

   Another miracle we had this week is that all of the investigators with 

baptismal dates in the district came to church!  Every single one!  That's 

practically unheard of.  The Lord is seeing fit to bless us a lot as we've been
striving to improve and help others come unto Him.

   We have my last zone conference in the mission this week on
Thursday.... *sob*

It's time to sprint out the race!

Love you family!!

Elder Wood

May 28, 2012, email post from Corpus Christi, TX

Well, I feel like my last letter was kind of in the dumps.  It probably sounded pretty depressing, so I'll forward you my letter to President Trayner this week.

 

Dear President,

 

    We worked this week with a part member family where the mom is the only member.  We saw a miracle because she really wants to come back to church!  We had been trying to meet with her for a week or two and we were finally able to sit down with her.  She really feels the need to come back to church.  Unfortunately, she was out of town this weekend, but seems really excited to come to church with her husband and children soon.  It was great to see someone so ready to come back to church who has recognized how much it helped her in her youth.

    We also met with another less active member, who called us to give a blessing to an older lady that she works for as a provider.  The older lady had been sick for a while and had some real health problems.  She recently had a surgery that was supposed to help her out.  I vividly remember the blessing.  When I put my hands on her head after the anointing,  I remember that I started off by saying, "We bless you that you can..." and then where I would say be healed or recover, the thought came into my head and the words came out, "pass without suffering or pain."  It's the first time that I've blessed someone that the Spirit has indicated to me that it was time for them to move on rather than to stay and recover.  It was a weird experience for me, but I knew that was what the Spirit had told me, so it's what was communicated in the blessing.  She passed away yesterday.  After blessing the older woman we gave a blessing to the less active sister as well.  She had become attached to the older lady and had been struggling as she had seen her in her frail condition.  I think it helped her a lot.  She came to church yesterday with one of her friends who is also an inactive member, paid her tithing and seems pretty intent on continuing in the church.

   This week was a good week for the district. We continue to work hard and I can see great changes happening in the missionaries here.  They're striving to change and become better and do everything the Lord requires of them so that they can have the full measure of the Spirit.

   I'm near the end of the Book of Mormon in my reading, and I've come to find great treasures in the writings of Mormon and Moroni at the end.  (This is the end of the Book of Mormon that's before the Book of Ether, not the whole thing.)   I think Moroni must be one of my favorite prophets.  It's either him or Jacob.  It's amazing to me how he can have such a strong testimony and trust in the Lord, even when those around him reject Christ and his Gospel, and everything seems hopeless.  If I could have as burning a testimony of the Restoration as Moroni does in Mormon 8 and 9, I don't think I'd let anything get in my way.  I'm sure Moroni didn't. So I've been praying this whole week for the Lord to help me open my eyes more to the reality of the Restoration and it's significance in our day.

   I'm excited for zone conference, I always love being able to receive training and then repent and improve.  Take care President, exito!

 

Love,

Elder Wood

On Mon, May 28, 2012 at 11:41 AM, Roland Wood <roland.wood@myldsmail.net> wrote:

Dear Family,

 

   Well, this wee was another interesting week.  We spent the week searching for new investigators but didn't seem to have too much luck finding any.   Man we worked hard, but we weren't able to see much of an immediate result from our efforts.  We spent a good chunk of our time going by former investigators in the hopes of finding someone, but we weren't met with much results that way.  This week we've decided to focus on working with the less active part member families in our area.  There are a lot of them.  

 

   We've tried working with a number of them in the past, but due to the lack of progress out on the streets we're going to try to work with the places where we can at least get in to teach.   It's kind of a stressful week after working so hard without seeing much result, but I'm grateful for the chance that I have to at least participate in the work.  Working in the field with the Lord is a great blessing and joy, even when it feels like things might not be going your way.  The Lord has the work all planned out and He's up there directing it.  When we've given it our all and the Lord sees it fit, we'll see people come into the church.  Until then, we just have to keep on repenting and improving, making sure we're doing absolutely everything in our power to make the work progress.

 

   I'm glad to hear that Elder Johnson has extended his mission.  I'm sad I won't be seeing him at BYU for Fall semester, but he'll be engaged in a much more important work.  I'm sure his extension time will be a very fruitful period of his mission.

 

   Thanks to Sarah for sending me the update pictures on Dot, I haven't seen her in a while.  She's getting big and from the stories that Sarah tells me it's kind of scary because she already sounds like a little girl and not like the tyke I was expecting.

 

   Transfers are happening tomorrow in the mission.  A lot of the Corpus Christi zone will be changing, but our district will be staying the same for the next 6 weeks.  We have a great district here, so I'm happy that everybody is staying.  We'll be seeing a lot of miracles over coming weeks and I'm excited to see the district explode.  All of the missionaries here are working hard and trying the best to improve, so the Lord will bless us and we'll be seeing some great success.

 

   I hope everybody has a great Memorial Day weekend! Take care and make some barbeque!

 

   Oh, and in response to Mom's question, it seems like the weather here in Corpus is pretty similar to that of Virginia-- super humid and it's been in the mid 90s this past week.  Only difference is that here it never changes haha.

 

Love,

 

Elder Wood