Happy Memorial Day!

Service at the "Sheep Lady's" house

Mi familia!!! Hey how’s everyone doing this week?? As you are all aware today is Memorial Day aka a missionary’s worst nightmare for emailing... ha-ha. There isn’t a whole lot of time for 35 missionaries to all email in one church so I will try my best to write as much as I can :) But to start, how are things?? What are everyone’s holiday plans? Mine are to work! Whoo whoo! But we had a pretty decent week this past week it wasn’t the most successful, but we tried and still had a great time so that’s all that counts.

This past week was full of ups and downs, but we did find some more investigators to teach by contacting and doing the "nuts and bolts" of the mission or in other words, the dirty work.  On Tuesday, we had to skip out on IFC food bank since we had a lesson with a new investigator at 10 am which I was pretty sad about because I love going to that place. But the lesson was with a guy named S**. He is a pretty cool guy that just had pretty serious foot surgery and has a lot of free time to just chill and talk on his porch.  We had a pretty good lesson with him. I just got “Spanished” out of my mind by his accent.

This new member has incredible faith!

The mission is going great though and I love it more and more each week and the Spanish language is improving every day. Of course there are always hard times in a mission, but it wouldn’t be worth it honestly if there weren’t any trials or hard times. I actually can look back at some of the hardest times of my mission, especially when I was in Compton, and I can say that I have grown so much since that point of time! It’s amazing how the Lord places us in areas with certain people at the right times because he always knows how it will affect our future. Elder B** and I worked a lot with the Bishop this week in visiting all the less actives in our area and in trying to see if we could offer simple service or something to help them out in their lives. We had some really awesome and great lessons and visits where we shared some talks from the Liahona.  We compared them to their lives to help them figure out how to get back onto the right path by praying and coming to church. In my opinion, people go less active by doing two things 1) they stop praying individually and 2) they focus more on what human beings think rather than what God thinks. I know this to be true because I have seen how prayer affects people out on my mission and also from firsthand experience when I was "inactive" for a long time before my mission. I know my hard trials and biggest problems in life were because I stopped asking God for help and relied on my own wisdom and decisions. I just want everyone who is reading this email to know that prayer is the key to activity and in receive guidance from God! Don’t ever quit even if times seem bleak :)

Mis hermanos

This week was a good week for a lot of different reasons so many that I can’t tell them all due to lack of time. With the investigators we have right now we seem to be making some good, but very slow progress. A** is progressing slowly, but seems to be our most faithful for sure! We had a good lesson on the restoration last week and he says he will come to church once he doesn’t have to "work".  Who knows when that will be.  Ha-ha. C** has a date to be baptized on the 6th of June, but we are in a battle with another church. C**’s best friends attend a Born Again Christian church and have been taking her to church with them every week now... ugh so hard! We invited her and other people have asked her to come and she always agrees and gets excited, but just like this Sunday, she had a "sleep over" at her friend’s house then they went to church in the morning so she wasn’t able to come. I’m not really sure what to do to help her want to stop going with her friends other than forcing her... which clearly is not the right answer. Ha-ha  All I can do is just ask for all your prayers to help us know how to handle this situation better. Thanks :)

Major decked for the holiday!!

We do have a funny story with a new investigator we have named, A**. This guy is a total trip! He is a 45 year old stoner guy who used to be a Jehovah’s Witness. He loves the Mormons and has even said he has thought about joining our religion. But yesterday, while we were walking down the street, we heard somebody whistle at us and start yelling to get our attention. I had no clue as to where it came from and I looked everywhere until I looked across the street at a second story apartment complex to a man who was butt nude waving us down to come over to his house and it was A**! Ha-ha  When we came to talk to him and he put on some clothes, he was all,"Ahh.. Elders, nothing like a good air dry after a hot shower!” ha-ha super hilarious! I was dying. We then had a surprisingly good lesson with him and have even started to help him want to stop smoking marijuana and cigarettes and to try coming to church.

This week flew by pretty fast and I can’t believe another one has already begun! I have decided to talk to the mission nurse in getting Elder B** and myself a car for our area. My back has gotten destroyed out here on my mission and with all the walking we do with my bag.  It is making me feel like I’m 97 years old whenever we get home. That’s probably the only bad part about my week is the back problems from when I hurt it before the mission. But other than that, things are going good and we have high hopes for a better week this week and better transfer to come! I love you all and miss you all very much. You will forever stay in my prayers and I hope everything goes well this week. Thanks again for the support!! Have a great week!

Con mucho amor,
Elder Woffinden