4 Weeks to 4 Days

Petting Zoo!

Hey everyone!

This week was full of greatness! :)

This week I really had a cool experience with the power of prayer. So, this last Sunday a recent convert, Brother O'Keefe, asked us if one of us could sing. I immediately pointed out that Elder Wolfgramm could. (Because if any of you know me, I don't have the best singing voice. Haha I try sometimes but it's more like a dying pterodactyl) He then asked us if we would be willing to do a musical number in sacrament meeting the last week of May. Elder Wolfgramm has never performed anything musical so he was kinda nervous so I told him if he agreed then I would play the piano for him. He agreed and then we picked the song titled 'Peace in Christ' which is the new mutual theme for this year (if any of you haven't heard it, go listen to it!) I wasn't too stressed about it because I had 4 weeks to learn the song. And I felt pretty confident in my abilities to learn it in 4 weeks because I'm not the best at playing but I can figure it out if I work on it. Anyways, we were able to have a member print us the music on Wednesday night and things were lining up good. But when the member gave us the music there was some confusion because she thought we were doing it this Sunday... we explained we were doing it in May and then she said that the theme for this next sacrament meeting was Peace in Christ... we talked to Brother O'Keefe about it on Thursday and he then decided we were going to perform this week.... 4 weeks of preparation turned into 4 days... I’ve never been able to master a piano song in 4 days and I've certainly never played a song while people sang along. But, we agreed to do our best. A Laurel in our ward Josella Lane decided to sing a duet with Elder Wolfgramm so they could do the harmonized parts and sound all pretty. So we started practicing from 8 to 9 every night. I don't think I've ever prayed harder for a performance than I did for this one. I've done plenty of musical performances and competition before so I wasn't too nervous about being scared to play in front of everyone but I was more scared for my own ability to play the song. I prayed lots and lots and I did all I could to do as much preparation as possible. I knew I couldn't just pray for me to play it perfectly without me putting in as much work as I could. God delivers answers and miracles after the trial of our faith. Come Sunday I was sitting in the pews and the last speaker was speaking before our performance. I had only been able to play the piano solo in the middle without any mistakes about twice before... I was nervous and scared because I wanted the members to be able to feel the spirit and I thought messing up the piece might distract them from how they were feeling. Right before the speaker ended I said one last prayer asking for help and I told Heavenly Father it was in his hands. I was immediately washed over with peace and confidence. I barely remember performing at all and I didn't mess up in the parts I usually did. It wasn’t perfect, but it was enough. And I know there is no way my own talents could be enough for that.

On Saturday we had a conference with Elder Pearson who is our Area of the Seventy. It was super good! He talked a lot about our divine identity and fully serving the Lord.

We also were able to go to a crawfish boil on Saturday for a recently returned missionary in our ward. That was super good! I honestly LOVE crawfish and it was Elder Wolfgramm’s first time! Crawfish is definitely one of the Cajun things I’m going to miss. Right after the crawfish boil we had the stake jubilee for family history work. The stake had a goal of helping make another stake on the other side of the veil by doing all the temple work in a year. They reached their goal so they held a huge party for the whole stake down in the fairgrounds in New Caney. It was lots of fun and tons of less actives and investigators came as well! We invited our old investigator Craig to come and he did! We haven't been able to see him in weeks so that was super cool! At the party they had tons of food and lots of fun games like Ward vs Ward tug of war and stuff. They even had inflatable bounce houses and a petting zoo! (One of my favorite parts) ;) They had a llama and a deer in the petting zoo so that was pretty cool! (pics included) They also had a live band and that made me kinda trunky for my band and friends back home. (Shout-out to the real GM's. We're gonna have a dope reunion in 16 months!)

On Sunday we went and biked around trying formers and such. On the way home I saw on the map what looked like a green belt that followed a river that I hadn't been on and it looked like a short cut to where we were going. So, we decided to try it out! As we were getting onto the trail some guys on the side of the road asked us for a lighter. We said we didn't have one and went on our way. After riding the trail for a while it cut into an opening and it turned into a dirt trail that followed the little stream. We followed that all the way till where we were hoping to find a bridge. But, there wasn't one. Instead of going miles back the way we had come we decided to follow the river a little longer to see if there was a shallow part we could just carry our bikes and cross. We rode down for a few miles until we finally found a spot where we could walk across. On the way back we were riding pretty fast so we wouldn't be late to our dinner and I suddenly heard a dog and some people. As I looked down into the river, on a bank there were four guys with long hair, one had a hand drum and the others had digeridoos and they were just chilling in the middle of this forest by the river. We realized it was the same guys who had asked for a lighter. So totally just some hippies, smoking dope, just playing some good old aboriginal music like you do...haha oh man, after we passed them we looked at each other and said, 'Was that even real?' haha It’s just one of those things you’ll never forget.

Even though the work is going slowly right now, I love every moment of it! I've completely changed my life on my mission and I'm so grateful for every small miracle Heavenly Father blesses me with. He is there. And He is just waiting to give us everything we are ready for!

Again, I invite all of you to read the Book of Mormon in 65 days with me, specifically look for the characteristics of Christ. If you do this, I promise it will change your life and your focus in whatever way God needs it too. Be willing to become who you are meant to be.

Have a wonderful week everyone! I love you all!
Love,
Elder Jonah Wood

Cool rainbow I found on a leaf so I had to take advantage
of our good cameras on our new phones!

Deep sea fishing and 8 months!

Hey y'all!

This week seemed to fly by! I guess they mostly all do though :p

The beginning of this week was pretty normal. Just working all day, little success unfortunately. But as the week went on, things just kept getting better and better.

It all started early on a Thursday morning. 6:30, the alarm goes off as usual. It's my turn for comp prayer so I roll off bed to my knees and start conversing with the Lord. Half way through the prayer I hear heavy breathing from the other bed indicating Elder Wolfgramm has fallen asleep yet again while I was praying. I finished and then said my personal prayer. After working out with the Kingwood 3rd Ward Elders it was off to the shower. Now, our shower head is a little loose and will sometimes fall to the facing down position. This happened and thinking nothing of it, I reached up to fix it. As my hand approached it, the shower head started shaking and rumbling. Getting louder and louder. It was at this moment I knew, this wasn't going to be a normal day. The head blew off and immediately water with the pressure of all of Niagara Falls comes blasting out the side of the pipe. I half way protect myself from the shrapnel and also try and divert the water blast from soaking the entire bathroom. My one hand is covering the water and my other has half a shower head in it so I have to carefully try and turn the water off with my foot. Once the water is finally off, I stood there, with about a quarter inch of water covering half the bathroom floor... it was one of those moments you just have to go back and watch in the next life to see your own reaction. After I got it cleaned up and after personal study, we headed out. We had interviews with President so we had to bike to the church. On the way over we took a short cut through some green belts that pass by a middle school. On the path there was a middle school gym class running down it. They all moved to the side and we biked on the other side so we wouldn't hit any of them. As I was passing a larger group of girls there was a girl in the back of the pack who was running with her head down. Out of her peripheral vision she must of thought she saw an opening she could take and didn't see us because she suddenly side stepped right into the path of me and my bike... in the split second I had to react I pulled my handle bars to the right and skidded out trying anything to not hit the girl. But as I spun, my backpack clipped her side and then I spun out into the trees. I got pretty banged up by ragdoll-ing into multiple trees but I got up as fast as I could and ran over to make sure she was okay. She hadn't fallen over but she was holding her side. I asked her over and over if she was okay and she said she was and kept running. I felt so so bad though... I mean it wasn't my fault but still, it could have been much worse. Interviews went well then we did hour of power. We found a pretty solid potential and we will see how that goes! On the way home we stopped at the Kingwood 2nd Elders apartment to get a drink and smooch off some of their homemade strawberry cinnamon rolls. While we were there, there was a small knock on the door. We answered it and it was three little girls that had come by a few days ago asking for change for cancer. This time they told us they found a paper about God someone had thrown on the street. The then gave us a crumpled up JW pamphlet because they said they knew we cared about God. They then asked us "How come you don't come teach our families?" So, we are going to go teach their families! Haha we will see if the parents are as accepting as their kids!

On Friday we biked out to Porter to contact a referral and we realized the only way to get there was to bike along the freeway... and we aren't too fond on the whole dying thing so we decided to knock the street we were on instead. As we were knocking I saw some movement from the corner of my eye and a peacock comes walking around the house. So, I did the only sensible thing and I decided to see how close I could get to it. As I slowly followed it around the house it led me to an entire free petting zoo... in the middle of Porter... Greatest. Day. Ever. That night was the K3 baptism from our area. It went well and we were able to have a few investigators attend which was super nice.













On Sunday we were tracting around and we tried a former named Ryan and he is literally the most solid investigator I've met my whole mission. As we taught the restoration he completely understood and all of his questions fit right along. He was so prepared and completely believed that Joseph Smith was a prophet, that we have prophets today and that the true church of God and the priesthood and been restored. It was truly a miracle. He made sure we had his number so we could contact him again. I've been out for 8 months today and I've had lots of rejection and little success. I definitely needed that. I'm so grateful for this opportunity I have to help him to the right path. I hope and pray things will continue to go well with him. I thought of how our mission president the last zone conference told us his parable of deep sea fishing. How sometimes, to catch the big fish, we need to leave our comfort zone, put weights on the lines and go deeper. After the trial of our faith is when the miracles come.

Well, that's about it this week. I am so grateful for your prayers and support. We are all reading the Book of Mormon as a mission in 65 days. So that's equivalent to 8 pages a day. It took Joseph Smith 65 days roughly to translate the Book of Mormon. I invite all of you to do this challenge with us as we all try to come closer to Christ and to find the elect of God.

I miss and love you all!

Love,

Elder Wood

Bicycle Kite

Hey family and friends! 😊

Not too much exciting things happened this week so this might be a little short but I'll try and include as much as I can! 😊

On last p-day some of the departing Sisters came down to Kingwood and we all played volleyball in the gym. That was pretty fun because I love playing volleyball and it was nice to have more missionaries than the usual 6 we have here.

This week we stopped by a new investigator of ours named Gary. But he wasn't home and when we were going to our bikes to leave there were some kids playing in the streets and one of the little girls had gotten her kite string caught in her bike pedals. Another little boy was helping her with it and he was saying they had to cut the string. The girl was sad her beautiful kite was going to have to be cut so I walked over to see if I could help. I asked if I could look at it and then continued to take off her pedals so I could get the string out from the bearings and helped untangle her string. While I was working the kids mom walked over and introduced herself to us and thanked us for our help. I fixed her bike and then started talking to her mom. They were busy and had to leave but it was a cool experience because about two weeks ago We were biking by that same area and I saw a little girl flying a kite. The spirit then told me I needed to go talk to that girls parents, but by the time we got down there the girl was nowhere to be seen. But weeks later, we just happened to come across the same girl and she needed our help. And because we helped her we got to meet her parents. I don't believe in coincidences so we will be going back soon to knock on their door to share a message. 😊

Most of this week was slow and pretty hard. Lots of rejection and such. But, we keep busy and keep trying our best to shine our lights and bring others closer to Christ. That's all we can do and ultimately it's up to each persons agency.

Also, this week my tablet randomly crashed and I lost all the pictures and videos I've taken. So hopefully they saved correctly on my SanDisk drive thing I have...

I want you all to know I miss and love you! I'm so thankful for everything you have done for me and the support you give to me. I hope this week goes well for you and you all strive to see the light in the world.

Love,
Elder Wood

Disco Inferno

House in Kingwood

Hey y'all!

So first, thank you all SO much for all the birthday wishes! It really made a huge difference and it was good to hear from all of you! :) I might not be able to personally write back to all of you but I just want you to know, I appreciate it all so much! Thanks!

Me and Elder Mills

So Tuesday was my exchange with Elder Mills. That was pretty fun! Elder Mills is the same mission age as me and he's such a good missionary. Probably future AP but it's no big deal ;) Kingwood 3rd ward's area is full of the richest people. But they have lots of pretty green belts that go by Lake Houston. We did service for a guy in the morning who hadn’t touched his huge backyard for years... it was a jungle. During service he came over to us and informed us he was dying of AIDS... all of a sudden the mosquitoes on my legs were a lot more noticeable... :p we stopped by the Hewlett’s house to ask Sister Hewlett if she had followed up with her neighbor that they are trying to teach so that was pretty funny to kinda catch our mission president’s wife slacking on missionary work :p I also found out K3 is poaching an investigator from our area and is going to baptize her. But I guess the only really important thing is she's getting baptized.

On Wednesday they asked us to go to mutual for the Young Women's. They said they needed judges. They were playing a game called Chopped which is like a cooking game. So, they had Beehives vs Mia Maids vs Laurels. But they all had to use ramen in every meal. Haha it was super fun and they all got a kick out of me and Wolfgramm eating their creations :p

On Thursday we were able to go give a blessing to one of our member’s daughters. She came from Utah where she lives to get a surgery done so we gave her a blessing. It was a pretty cool experience and their whole family is converts so it makes it that much cooler.

Saturday was pretty rough. It was like the classic sad missionary day. It was raining and dark and cold and everyone yelled at us and kicked us out all day :p and then on top of that our investigator, Craig, kicked us out in the middle of a lesson and said "I'm done"... so... he might have dropped us... But then he told me happy birthday on Facebook soooo... haha we don't know what to think.

Birthday stuff

Sunday was my birthday! It was so so good!! :) In the morning Elder Mills made us all German pancakes which is what I usually have at home for my birthday breakfast! Then we had stake conference and that went super good! We got a new investigator while we were tracting and we visited a member family. While we were there, one of their kids yells "Let's talk about the Titanic!" And then another goes, "If I can't talk about the Holocaust, then you can't talk about the Titanic!" Haha so that's about how that went ;) Then that night, Elder Wolfgramm took me to a surprise dinner at the Lanes. They are some of my favorite members here! It was so much fun. They made Hawaiian haystacks (my favorite!) And had 19 chocolate strawberries and cupcakes! They sang to me and even got me a present! They got me a super nice Rockets polo, Old Spice body wash, and Josella printed me some piano music for a song I was working on back home :) Then to end it off, we took shots of Apple cider ;) haha it was so much fun. To end off the day, we hung out at K3's apartment and we played music with their new disco ball they found! Then we made those mug cakes you put in the microwave :) It was a good day :)

Cuts on my hand after my fall

Monday was transfers so that's why p-day is today. All of Kingwood district is staying. The Kinghood of Kingwood is staying lit ;) haha I love it. Monday night on the way to give a blessing I finally had my first fall though... it was pretty bad but I rolled out of it after I hit my hands. No broken bones though so I'm all good! :)

Well, I'm doing good and having tons of fun! I hope you all are doing well as well! Love and miss you!

Love,
Elder Wood

The tenor drum that I made

Turtles swim. Tortoises don't.

Box Turtle

Howdy everyone! This week has been so amazing! :) I've learned so much and had lots of good experiences:) I hope you all are doing good!

Anyways, let's get right into the week! :)

Liz Califa, the anole of this week that I armed with a push pin

So at the beginning we did service for garage guy again... it was so gross... if I ever end up living like that, someone please please just put me in a rest home or something. It's not worth it.... He sat and ate pizza with us after and I literally almost threw up because of how he ate but it's fine. We probably aren't going to go back there :p

Wednesday we did service for Sister Gibson. The wife of our ward mission leader. We had to carry all the desks and furniture that we unloaded last week. We had to carry them up 2 or 3 flights of stairs. And it was probably one of the hardest physical things I've done ever :p some of them were still full of stuff but wrapped in package wrapping stuff so we had to carry them up full. And they were SOLID... I almost broke my ankle a few times on the stairs but it's fine ;p

It rained super hard this week and we biked all day :) We got completely soaked but the work must go on! About mid-day people we saw started telling us there were tornado warnings and stuff, but no matter ;) haha it kinda sucked but it felt good to stay busy and work hard.

As some of you know, I love Easter time. Spring is my favorite season with the rain, flowers, everything is warming up and it's just a grand time :) but this Easter season has been super special. If you didn't get the chance or didn't watch conference this year, it would benefit you greatly if you took the time to watch it. There is much revelation given and lots of things of great spiritual and temporal worth.

I loved President Nelson's request for us to study out the talks given for the next six months. We need to continue to strive to get personal revelation and keep on the covenant path.

Easter eggs we dyed

For Easter we got with the Kingwood Third Elders and dyed eggs and made resurrection rolls :) (thanks mom!) I also hid Elder Wolfgramm's Easter basket and did the jelly bean trails tradition my family does :) he enjoyed it. We also were invited to a member's house in between sessions for a lunch snack and they own a bunch of turtles and tortoises. So we fed and held them and it was pretty cool :)

Tortoises

Us feeding the big boys

We also had dinner at our bishop's house and he's a huge Star Wars fan so we get along pretty well ;) he has tons of Star Wars Lego sets and he and his brother talked to me about Star Wars for about half of dinner :p

Also, I tried wasabi this week for the first time at an Asian restaurant. It was literally the worst food I've ever had. I don't know why people eat that for fun. I don't think I'll ever be having that again :p

We were able to go give the sister I talked about last week that we were helping daughter a blessing. She got mono so she asked for a blessing. The daughter hadn't had a blessing since she was a little girl so it was a cool experience. We are really working hard with their family. Please pray for them!

Well, that's about it for the week! Haha except Elder Wolfgramm was trying to cut Elder Peterson's hair and Peterson wanted it 1 inch but Wolfgramm thought he meant a 1 cutter... oh man it looks so bad and apostate... haha oh the mission life... :p

I love and miss you all! Keep on being amazing! :)

Love,
Elder Wood:)

A cute puppy that fell asleep on me during a lesson