Monday Message: June 29, 2015

  Well first off i just want to thank you all for the Love and Birthday wishes. It always feels good to know that i am loved and that you still remember that i exist haha! I dont know if i have gotten so many emails in about a year that i did todayy and it sure feels good! 

 

 Well this week has been full of new things as well as interesting experiences for me. I didnt get a companion as of yet so i have been in a trio with the vreed-en-hoop missionaries for a week. All i can say is a trio is hard and then plus we have been trying to cover two of the biggest areas and it is difficult. But we have got a long and it is more of a stretch and its making us grow and work hard. 

  A cool experience this week happened as we were working in tuchen in their area and we were contacting houses when we came to a house and the only reason we stoopped is that they had a car to drive so they would be able to come to church. when the girl came out she was dressed in indian clothes and the first thought came to my mind was oh great hindu. but she actually had a belief in Jesus Christ and was really interested with what we had to say. She jumped for the Book of Mormon and was so ready to read it she said she would finish it that night. Then we asked who we could go see and she took us straight to her sister who then stole her Book of Mormon and said she would read it better. so we gave her one as well and her boyfriend had met the missionaries a few years back and was so happy to see us and wanted us to come back. It was really a miracle in the making because the area is starting to grow and they are so happy to learn i hope to hear how they do. im just sad that they arent in my area!

  Other than that i had a good week and should get a comp tomorrow so that will be good i should have a good week full of work and hopefully i will be able to find some new people and work closer with the branch and the members so that they will finally trust the missionaries again. all is well here in Guyana and even though it still rains it is good. You should have seen the storm we had yesterday it rained and blew so hard that our neighbors roof blew off the top of there house and it was a freak storm. 

  Well i hope that you have a great week. I love you and will talk to you again next week. 

Love

Elder Woodruff

Monday Message: June 22, 2015

Well it was a false alarm about getting transferred i am actually going to stay here in La Grange and I will be serving with a Temporary Companion! That means that it is usually just a Guyanese priesthood holder who takes the time to work with the missionaries. I will have him for the next 7 weeks and we will just have to see what happens. I have heard that it is a lot like training a new missionary and we just have to see!

  Well this week has been full of meetings and getting prepared for a new transfer. Other than that i have just been following elder pollard to the people that he has and wants to say goodbyes too. He is leaving and going to Barbados! We will see what happens to this area. Pres Mehr talked to me a lot about working with the members and seeing if we can resolve all the rumors. 

  I had a great time at Zone Conference this Week and i learned so much. President Mehr is such an amazing teacher as well as Sister Mehr. They teach by the spirit and it brings the spirit into the room. He taught some things that just blew my mind and then in my interview he simplified it into my understanding. He also taught me how i can better improve my studies and i am working to really better my studies and he promised that it would be a huge help for rest of my life! i cant wait to come home and study so much more because of the resources that will be available to me. 

 This coming week is going to be a lot of finding and searching for new people and then trying to work with our members. also we are looking for a new apartment that is easier to travel to and from because right now we are a 20 minute walk to the main road and that takes up so much of our time at night and in the morning to get appointments on time!

  Well i am getting closer and closer to coming home haha. I just want to say that i still look forward to pictures every week and they are the things that help me through! i know that it is easier to send e mails and photos attached that way but i still havent got a whole lot lately and to those that think others will fill in for them i have one thing to say!! but you know how they say "a picture is worth a thousand words so i will let this picture do the talking!!!!

I love you and hope that you have a great week. Next week tuesday i will no longer be a child haha finally! out of the teens and into the enties ha! be safe and i cant wait to talk to you next week. I love you!!

Love 
Elder Nathanial Woodruff

Monday Message: June 15, 2015

Well I just got some crazy news that i will probably be getting transferred out of the country next week. I guess it caught me off guard cause i dont know what to think about it. I am happy and sad if it comes true because i love Guyana but i have had a real struggle in this area that i am in right now. So we will see what is going to happen at the up coming zone conference on wednesday! This will be the last zone conference for president and sister mehr and then they will be home! 

 I cant believe how fast things are going. it is down to the last 2 transfers and yes i am trunky But i am still trying my best to work hard and finish strong. Other than that this week was a bumm week. Thursday Elder Pollard was sick and we didnt go out at all. that was the hardest day for me because all i did was sit and stare at the wall most of the day. then when i tried to sleep it just felt like i wasnt doing what i am suppose to and i felt like i needed to do more but i couldnt because i cant go by myself. 

Well sorry that things seem to get shorter and shorter but you can just say that this area has drained me and not much really happens. I will talk to you next week and have more to say i hope! have a great week and i love you!! be safe and pray always!

Love

Elder Woodruff

Monday Message: June 8, 2015

Well this week was another one full of the same old same old. Trying to get the lessons and see all the investigators, but it seems like all the people we see are just slowly fading away and we haven't had much success at finding new ones. The pool get shallower and shallower ever time!

  

  Also there has been some joys and i hope that i don't seem like i am having a horrible time because i am loving my mission. I think of it sometimes and how i will be sad when i have to leave the Caribbean culture. If i could have my way i would live here all the time but i know that i want to be with my family. And have the option to get things easily that we do in the states. I hope that i can come back here and do the things that we just don't have the time for on the mission!

  I talked to Pres Mehr this week and I may be seeing a new area one last time before i come home but im not to sure yet. I get to see him at the last zone conference for him next week Wednesday and we will then say good bye and i will have a new president for the last 3 months. I really try not to get trunky and think about home but every time that i don't think about it one of the other missionaries brings it up. It is coming to an end though and i am stuck with emotions ha!

  I do have to say that this last fast sunday has been one of the hardest of my whole life. I guess probably because i didnt prepare very well. i drank a lot of water but all i had to start it was a tuna fish sandwich and that was a mistake. I woke up sunday morning and thought i was just going to wither away and die! i was so week all day long but i am happy to say that i made it the whole time and it was a success. I have really felt a lot different since then and i have an added strength on my side.

 I hope that you have a great week and i am taking the challenge to work even harder than before. I hope that i hear from you again. I love you!! be safe and happy!

Love 

Elder Nathanial Woodruff!

Monday Message: June 1, 2015

Wow is all i can say!! I didnt mean to scare you this week momma i guess i forgot that you see the emails ha. ooops. Well the threat wasnt as bad as you really think. The Guy just said that if his Girlfriend didnt come home he wouldnt be afraid to have to go to prison for what happened to us as missionaries. He thought that because we had been teaching her and getting her back to church that liked us and we were telling her to leave. In reality we just wanted her to be safe and that she would be able to get out of the danger as well. We had safety though and we even spent a couple of nights with knives haha no worries though we good now! 

   

  Other than that the week was super long ha. not much people were able to meet with us because it has been raining so much here. If you think that the weather there has been crazy it rained so much that the trenches over filled and some of the houses flooded out in the bottoms. so yes we got wet and it doesnt help that my shoes have holes in the bottoms so i have to be careful where i step but usually by the end of the day my feet are soaked because we are in guyana and everywhere you go there is puddles and trenches haha. Even up to this morning i fell off my bike into a flooded yard and my feet got so wet!!

  This next week we are hoping for a better week. We really need to find new people to teach but the stresses are hard to overcome some times. I am working to get back the drive and the desire to work hard and i think that the new transfer will also help Sometimes i think that me Comp is to relaxed in the area and so he gets slow and not happyt to find people. I am going to change that this week though and we we see how it goes. 

  I hope that you have a great week and that you pay attention on the road because you have a new driver on the road this week. Also many more dates coming up so pay attention haha. I love you!!! Be safe and i will do my best as well! 

Love 

Elder Woodruff

Monday Message: May 25, 2015

Wow it is here!! I dont think that it feels like it should be this late in my mission already! i have been talking to some of the other missionaries and they all ask how it feels i just told them that i hit 18 months so fast but to be honest the last 2 months have been so long and i am exhausted! The area here is good but it is slow and we have been you could say banished from seeing 2 of our member families because the husbands/ boyfriends dont like us and think that we are trying to get their families to leave them! I dont want that to happen and they even have threatened to beat them and us if we go back! I stay far away now but it is just sad that they are like that! 

I have been studying alot in the Scriptures about our hearts and we see a lot of the time that People harden their hearts against the gospel and it causes them to be contentious and angry but All i have been doing is praying for them and hoping that they will have a change of heart and have it softened. What more can we do? The Scriptures have really become my favorite thing to read and to think about. I use to just think that it talked about the old days and that it was good stories to be reading but i have come to see how much it really talks about our day today and the same way people use to act then is how they act now!

 I am now half way about through the bible and hope to have it completed in the coming weeks and it is really interesting to see the stories of paul and how his missionary work was. I hope that we all can learn from him and his diligent efforts!

 

we had a great day on saturday with the baptism of Christopher Takeman. We had a really good turn out with the youth there to support him and he is beginning to gain more and more friends we are working to get him the priesthood this coming sunday and then to help him to learn to pass the sacrament. I am really happy for him and know that he can become a great priesthood holder in the branch! 

Other than that it has been a normal week. We have 4 left in this transfer already and then we will see what happens for the big split coming up! I will probably stay here but who knows i could leave and go somewhere else for my last two we will see haha!  I hope you are safe and happy! I love you so much!

Love

Elder Woodruff