February 6, 2012, emailed pictures from Brownsville, TX

February 6, 2012, email from Brownsville, TX

First off, pictures, and then I'll see if I have the time to write down the story that goes with them.

I also have a few movies, but we'll see if it lets me send those somehow. (ed. Nope that didn't work.)

Well, I just have a little bit of time to write down this one story from the week.

So on Sunday one of the investigators, Flor Mancillas, from the other Elder's area was supposed to get baptized. She showed up late to church because her ride showed up late, and so she was feeling kind of insecure about it all. She didn't feel like she was worthy because she didn't get to church on time and had had a really bad week. So, she wasn't feeling that good about everything. I found her in the hallway on Sunday. I was talking to her and that's when this all came out. I started talking to her a bit and asked her about what in her week went bad. We started talking and she mentioned a few things. But the biggest thing that went wrong in the week was when a sick opossum (tecuache) crawled underneath her trailer and died. It had been rotting for a couple days and the smelled had forced her out of her house.

So, I talked to another missionary and we determined to go and remove it for her, but to help cheer her up, we were going to do it before her baptism.

We left church early, grabbing some plastic cleaning gloves before we left. Elder Pack and I ran over to their apartment. He changed out of his suit into some work clothes and we set off to get the tecuache. After getting underneath the cold, mudsoaked trailer, Elder Pack realized that the opossum wasn't just underneath the trailer. It had crawled through a hole in the plastic tarp that covered the bottom of the trailer after it had been raised up on cinderblocks. After feeling around the plastic he found a pretty solid heavy lump. He began to kick it with his legs and push it with his arms towards the hole in the plastic where it had worked its way in. After kicking it for a while the tail flopped out. He grabbed it and pulled the rest of it out. We put it in a trash bag and threw it in a dumpster. Overall this took about 30 minutes and the whole time the stench was HORRIBLE. All of the neighbors around her could smell it as well. It was just gross. When the tecuache flopped out of the hole all the maggots and everything came with it too, I'm surprised Elder Pack didn't barf.

Afterwards we ran back to his house. He took a shower and got ready to go back to church. Flor was excited to hear the news and she had a great baptism. Anyway, overall it was a pretty funny/gross experience that I would never want to repeat.

The week was good. Our investigator family came to church again. Frank, aka Pancho, is hilarious. He's the dad of the family and never stops making jokes. When I told him about the opposum story he said, "oh yeah, we have like 15 of those at my house. We've already named all of them. That one's Curly, that one's Carlos...."

We struggled with getting new investigators during the week, but we've been working with our members and giving them commitments to give out copies of the Book of Mormon, etc. So I think we'll see some success from that in these coming weeks. Also we should have some more success this week since we'll have more time to go finding on our own.

The week was really warm, hot even, up until Saturday. It was 80 degrees or so for a long time, sun and all. Then Saturday came in and we had a huuuuge rainstorm come in from the Gulf. It threw down a lot of rain for a good two hours with lightning and all. I'm not gonna lie, it reminded me of Virginia. I wish our apartment had a porch so we could go out and watch it, like the house in VA. We were lucky though, we had planned lunch right when the storm hit. Since the storm hit the temperature plummeted and I'm back to my sweater and rain jacket again, with my scrubs underneath my slacks.

Anyway, everything is going well and we're having a good time.

I was glad to hear that Levi's sealing was a great service. I really do love the temple, it's a wonderful place. I hope everyone has a great week!

Love,

Elder Wood

Jan. 31, email note from Brownsville, TX

(Ed. note) Roland's half hour of email time for this week was spent emailing back and forth with me trying to arrange housing for himself and six missionary/former roommate friends for Fall semester at BYU. At the end of our back and forth email exchange about housing he sent this note:

I'm out of time. Sorry for not being about to write a real letter, but just know that this week was a miracle week and we had a new family of 7, 4 of baptismal age come to church. I love you mom and I hope you had a great birthday. I brag about you to all the other missionaries. Love you! I'll write a real letter next week when I'm not dealing with crazy things.

Love,

Elder Roland Wood

Jan. 23, 2012, email note from Brownsville, TX

If you want to know what scripture Roland refers to in this quick note he sent, scroll down to see the scripture I sent to him.

-----Original Message-----
From: Roland Wood <roland.wood@myldsmail.net>
To: Nathan44@aol.com <nathan44@aol.com>
Sent: Mon, Jan 23, 2012 7:42 am
Subject: Re: ARL1> Scripture of the Week

Funny story. I read that scripture to someone the night before they hopped the checkpoints. Promised her that if she kept the commandments and would be active in the church in Houston the Lord would guide her through the checkpoints. She ended up getting caught at the checkpoints, but rather than sending her back to Mexico, they decided to pardon her and start arrangements for her to receive papers. It really is by the Lord that we are led huh?

On Mon, Jan 23, 2012 at 7:52 AM, Nathan44@aol.com <nathan44@aol.com> wrote:

And I will also be your light in the wilderness; and I will prepare the way before you, if it so be that ye shall keep my commandments; wherefore, inasmuch as ye shall keep my commandments ye shall be led towards the promised land; and ye shall know that it is by me that ye are led.

1 Nephi 17:13

more pictures from Brownsville, Jan. 8, 2012

Pictures from Brownsville, January 8, 2012

January 2, 2012, email post from Brownsville, TX

Dear Family,

Well, another week has come and gone away here in the mission field, and we had some good things happen, as well as some surprises. Elder Sanchez is no long with us. He was midtransferred this morning to McAllen and is now safely over there with his new companion. He was only here for three short weeks. I did learn a lot from him and he helped me to progress and become a better missionary. Elder Marble and I are back to a companionship of just two again. I'm not gonna lie, I loved being in a trio. Four missionaries in an apartment sometimes leads to too much goofing around, and two is sometimes pretty quiet. Three seemed about just perfect. Like I said, he was only here for three weeks, but it seemed like longer. I'm thinking it may have been because we got along so well that we got to know each other like we were together for a long time. Bah, I don't know how to explain it, but hopefully you all can understand.

Oh wow, New Years was this week and I completely forgot! We went to bed like normal at 10:30, but got awakened at midnight by our neighbor's fireworks. Something interesting to know is that Cameron Park is sectioned off from the city of Brownsville. All the areas around it are city of Brownsville, but they cut out Cameron Park. It's interesting because that means that none of the city laws apply to Cameron Park. For example, in the city of Brownsville you can't buy/sell fireworks, but Cameron Park isn't the city of Brownsville. So basically the whole place is filled with firework stands because everyone from the city goes there to buy their stuff. We've heard that Cameron Park also gets pretty crazy on New Years from people shooting off guns to celebrate. W didn't hear any since we were in our house and Cameron Park is a couple miles away from where we live. Before the missionaries did live in Cameron Park though, I imagine that New Year's eve must have been a pretty intense experience back then.

I had some meetings at the church with the ZLs earlier on in the day and then we had a party for the missionaries from the afternoon until the night. So basically I spent the whole day in the church, but it was pretty fun. We had a pinata of the Book of Mormon that a recent convert gave to the missionary that I replaced. We filled it up with candy and smashed it at the party. I got some pretty good pictures of it and a video of my (former) companion Elder Sanchez smashing it open. We were running low on time so we put him in and took off the blindfold. He's a pretty big guy and without the blindfold he got some pretty good hits on it. Afterwards we played a scripture chase game and then we watched the movie 17 Miracles. I don't know if you've seen the movie. It's about the pioneers, specifically about the Martin Willie handcart company if I remember correctly. It's a really sad film, since you see some of the extremely hard things they had to go through. It also gives you an appreciation for their dedication and shows some of the tender mercies of the Lord to them during their trek. I don't think I have nearly the commitment to the gospel that the pioneers had. Don't get me wrong, I'm very committed, but what they did was just amazing. I hope if I ever had a chance to make a decision like that and test my faith that I would follow through with it.

Anyways, thank you to everyone who sent me card and letters for Christmas. I especially enjoyed the drawings from Nathan's family and Christian. I hope we can all commit ourselves to doing better in this new year and I know that it is going to be filled with some great things for all of us. I pray I can grow as much in this year that comes as I have in this year past. It really is amazing to me when I think about it. Happy new year everyone! Talk to you next week!

Love,

Elder Wood