You may notice a change. My spunky email that I've used since I was like 14, the name that I always held dear was changed by the change of the myldsmail site. The LDS church made an agreement with gmail to use their super advance internet mumbo jumbo technology. So now you can reach me at brandon.caywood@myldsmail.net The old email will still work for a few weeks but please start or get used to writing to this one. On that note my week is as followed.
Today I will go play Wallyball and buy food for the week. Teach 4 lessons tonight, 8 on Wednesday, Weekly plan and teach on Thursday, Be interviewed and teach again Friday, Then our normal dull weekend. Kind of exciting if you ask me. Last week we had a baptism for Chandler Kriter on Saturday. It was enjoyable experience and very spiritual. He was a lot of fun to teach and was very bright so not incredibly hard. We'll meet with him a little bit longer. We set another date with a 17 year old kid who got interested in the church through friends. He is native American and had gotten ahold of a Book of Mormon he prayed about it and found out it was true and he prayed again asking God to have someone invite him to learn more about the church. His best friend asked him to meet with the missionaries within a day. A-mazing. All I have to say. We're hoping to set one more date tonight and two more on Thursday bringing our total to 6. That'd be something. I'm praying we can keep moving the missionary work forward.
Its been so much fun teaching this much but the weather last week was in my opinion miserable. Thursday it rained from when we woke up to when we went to bed. Its so dry here that the ground doesn't soak it in very well. So mud mud mud mud mud mud mud... mud. Mud in my hair, mud on my pants, mud on my shoes, mud in my shoes, mud on my coat. MUD ON MY FACE+ MUD IN MY SOUL= me grumpy. No one was outside and we didn't teach like anyone that day they all cancelled. LAAAAMMMEEE. This week will be better though I hope.
Our area is doing well. I went on an exchange with the district leader who's only council to me was to keep it up. That's neat. This past Sunday I faced my fear. In the 3rd ward I got to teach the Primary which is the two hour little kid like 4-11 age group kids. The ward I got to teach(cause Elder Robertson taught somewhere else) has the largest primary in the area at about 110 kids. Oh my gosh... The most crazy thing I've ever seen in my life. I don't think I could do Elementary school. I don't have any patience. Next week will be cool because in one ward Elder Robertson will be presenting a presentation to the adults while in another ward I will be doing a presentation to the youth. Since I was 17 when I was baptized I'm asked to work with the youth a lot.
Yesterday we played a game called Jungle Speed. Its like Spoons. You have to match cards and once not and be the first not have any cards left. If your card matches anyone else's cards you have to fight over a wooden spindle in the middle and literally fight its awesome. If you grab the spindle and you're not supposed to you get a strike and if you get 3 strikes you have to eat a spoonful of cinnamon. You can probably tell where this is going. I got 3 strikes. Yup. Cinnamon is way dry and hard to swallow.
That is all from me this week. Peace out.
Love, Elder K-Wood
Sooooo, in every mission there is that one Elder that bad stuff always happened to. For a long time in the Arizona Mesa mission that was Elder Keir. It seemed like that guy was always sick. And when I saw him a few weeks ago he had been diagnosed hypoglycemic which is like reverse diabetes. Elder Keir went home in August and as the Lord always does he prepares someone toooooo "fill in" that position left by his departure. Que a spunky young(way young) convert to the church who arrives in the mission in mid-April. It has been decided that I'm that Elder that tons of stuff happens to. Let me explain further. We've laughed, we've cried, and have cringed as they have read about the high fever that comes with an upper respiratory infection, a hideous rash that covered me from head to foot which resembled leprosy, a staph infection that caused me to losed a patch of hair on my head, and ultimately a dramatic battle like the last boss in the end of a video game with the swine flu. Many of these examples have already proven my point but as the title states I have once again supported my own resume. Last week Elder Robertson and I had mexican chili and we were throwing up all night. Goody. Man I think after the mission is done I will probably be able to endure almost anything. It makes me shiver though when I think what could be around the corner. Whatever can't kill me will make me stronger. And whatever does... Well I commend it. I may be weak and scrawny but its hard to finish me off! This week went well. We had a pretty good amount of lessons. We set another baptismal date with a girl named Fabiola. She is to be baptized on the 27th of February. She's is so excited. We're just waiting for her mom to come back from Mexico to see it which is why it pushed out so far. We have 2 more set and 2 more on the way. So by the end of next week I'm hoping to have 5 dates for baptism. That should be very very exciting. Got to love it! Despite being sick all weekend we still managed to be effective. We taught quite a bit. Some of the wards are really getting excited about missionary work. I'm pumped this place is on the verge of being something great. I truly hope it is. I've been working really hard. I thinking we're starting to see the blessings of that. I went on a brief exchange with one of the assistants this morning. He said that our area and the zone leader's area is awesome. If we work hard enough we may be able to bring another companionship up here. But we gotta work our butts off for that to even be a possibilty. I heard football has sucked, so I'm glad I'm not missing anything cool. It doesn't seem that long ago but about a year ago I got my call. That was a pretty miserable existence during those times. Two jobs and no one to hang out with LAME. Oh well it really worked out in the end. We're half way through the transfer now which is hard to believe. Everyday just goes faster and faster. We are seeing miracles in this mission and I'm definitely seeing them as well. We just have to look for them and we can see the Lord work in our lives and the lives of those around us. Well I better go. Peace out. Love, Elder K-Wood
Alright, I don't know where to... umm. Truly begin. Still trying to figure out how to start it but we'll see. But lets try anyways woot. This week has been pretty good. We had quite a few lessons fall through(too many actually thats so annoying). But on the better side of everything we had 71 street contacts. WOOT. Most ever since I've been here in Snowflake. It isn't an easy task. So I'm happy. Here we go, so first off I found out earlier this week that Elder Hadley and Elder Edmonds were finally able to meet with one of my converts. I bought her a new set of scriptures which they have had trouble getting to her. i was getting worried but Elder hadley told me that they got it to her. She said and I quote "I'm going to kill him for doing this". Hahaha no worries she was so excited to get them. The next thing I'll talk about next was something that shocked me. Thursday I saw in the morning that we had missed a call from Montana. I didn't think a whole lot of it. I couldn't think of anyone we were teaching from Montana and I didn't get the chance to call the number back. So I thought oh well. Later that evening it called again and the person on the phone asked to talk to me. I answered and the voice said is this Scurvy Greg? I said is this who I think it is!? Yup its First mate Yates. And I got the Pirate Keir with me. We chatted briefly and then I gave him directions to our place. We saw them after the night was over. Elder Yates thinks I'm really fat. "Elder Keir look at husky Elder Caywood". "Dang Elder Caywood look at these love handles". Its true as much as I try I'm fat. Nothing I can do about it. But Elder Yates on the other hand is thin as a rail. I weigh a few lbs more than him now. Striking diffrence if you look at the old pictures of us. He's doing well. He had lunch with Elder Moa on Friday and Elder Moa called me and said Elder Yates says your fat. Gosh Dangit! Oh well. We were trying to find a way to get into a less active house. Sister Yazzie said that they needed a rooster killed and we could do that for them. So we went over and said "Hey we'll kill your rooster". And we murdered those things. We had to use the dullest of dull knives though. I think I would have been more successful with a butter knife. There was so much blood bhahahahaha. Sunday night was the mission president's fireside. They didn't have enough recent converts to speak so they asked me to. I thought I gave a very good testimony and President Bassett said after "That was the way that needed to start". That was cool. Yesterday was zone conference. We discovered our total baptisms for last year was 1200 and our goal for this year is 1500. Woah. We're having another one next week. We'll see if we can do this. Well thats all I got. Fare thee well and peace the freak out. Love, Elder K-Wood Next: Such "foul" language, but such good pictures.....
Man it was a tough first week of the transfer. I was pretty tired during most of it. We were told on Tuesday that we should move into our new place ASAP. That made things a little bit harder than usual. If you ever tried to clean out and move a missionary apartment that has been a missionary apartment for a number of years the things you find are quite shocking. There was so much junk in that place and a lot of it got tossed. So my New Year's Eve was probably the lamest one I've ever had. We spent the entire night packing up the place. And then we had some sparkling cider and I went to bed around 11 I think. Then spent all of New Years moving and organizing and what not. We did that until about 5 when we had to go out again. Which made me uber exhausted. We didn't teach as much this week. We still doing pretty good but I'm hoping that this week is better. Last week was crazy and I'm looking forward. We didn't have like anybody at church on Sunday. The church times changing because of the New Year confused several of our investigators. So we went from 10 at church last week to about 2 this week. We set another baptism date but we also lost one and we lost that investigator all together. She was doing way awesome and then something happened at home and she ended up in Pinetop. Sunday when I found out the family said they couldn't get ahold of her. I called her after church and she said that she wasn't sure of what her decisions were going to be but that everything was on hold for now. Sad day. Our baptism for the 9th got pushed back to the 16th. She smoked and you have to be clean for 2 weeks before baptism. She's really really close and she didn't seem worried either. She said "Elder Caywood I messed up but I can do it don't worry." So I'm taking heed to her words. The new apartment is spacier but because of the way the building is built the ceiling is low in parts. I whacked my head really hard on the ceiling when we were first moving in and it about knocked me over. For the first time since I've been on my mission I am sleeping on a bed where my feet only barely hang off the bed instead of completely. Oh haaaaappy day. Sunday is the Mission President's fireside. I asked our recent convert who grew up in Colorado to speak and she is super excited. Then I'm going to sing a song. Need to figure out which one though. Should be fun. It seems like every transfer when a major change happens I grow a little bit more. I know this past week has been a growing week. Missionary work definitely can give you some gray hairs. Luckily if i haven't any its hard to see because I'm a blond(plus they're usually just staring that patch of hair thats missing anyways). Well alas I must take care of other things. Happy decade. Love, Elder K-Wood
