Elder Anderson Visits Poland!

Bryton didn't write an email to share with everyone today, but I wanted to share a couple of pictures and a post that were on the "Poland Missionary Moms (and Dads)" Facebook page. I spotted Bryton in the pictures right away, can you? :)  He looks so happy!

Elder Anderson visits the Poland Warsaw Mission! "Today is going to be a historical day for Poland!" "It is one of the hardest missions in the whole world - the twelve only send the strongest and the best missionaries to Poland...I know because I assigned you!" Apolostic blessing was given! Elder Anderson asked that the missionaries stay for the members meeting - "Cancel your train rides home I want you to stay for the members meeting!" - the office elders and missionaries had to scramble to figure out how to house 60 missionaries - they ended up staying in the apartments of elders, sisters and senior couples as well as the mission home! "Regardless of where you are it is never going to be easy - it is always hard. We aren't here to talk about what is hard but to talk about what we do and what we are going to do now!"

I will also share a bit of what Bryton wrote in his short email to me today:

"Mom, The existence and activity of our dead in our lives is something that is so real as the oxygen you just breathed! I will need the helped of mine and their relatives for them to be prepared and ready to receive this gospel, so will you all please do all that you can to get to the temple to perform the ordinances that I will send back to you. I have my companion in on the project and I believe that great purpose for which I have been prepared from the foundation of the World is about to start. I need your help and I need the help of them on the other side.

Sorry for being so deep into the work and focused only on the mission and this great work. There will be eternity and many other opportunities for us to talk and catch up. like for example next week ;)"

The Spirit of Truth

I had another cool experience with one of our investigators we were teaching this week. He was a little skeptical of the living prophets who communiate with God idea and had asked if I had ever been in the presence of the prophet and i had kinda forgotten about the cultural celebration of the boise temple when President Monson and Elder Bednar came. But as my memory was sparked it was if the spirit had completely ignited within me and I felt the spirit sooooo strong  just as I had from that moment in the past when I was in his presence and it stayed with me strongly for most of the night! He was speechless and felt a change in atmosphere and said he really wanted to feel what I had just felt. It was really neat to be able to be a vessel of the spirit and have that experience from my youth to back me up and share the beautiful news of the Restoration of God's church in full. It is seriously such a giant blessing that the meridian temple will be dedicated soon! The spirit will be so strong there.

Make sure you guys are getting in contact with that spirit and try to remember those moments even write them down, because then when you're doubting later or are in a hostile venue, or are losing your focus, you will remember those moments that you FELT for yourself the truth of this Gospel. Those feelings are from the Light of the World. They were and are real. Christ is truly the prince of peace and will always engulf us with his spirit if we take his name upon us, always remember him, and keep the commandments. He lives and I so testify in the name of Jesus Christ amen.

Elder Wood

The Family

This week we had the opportunity to meet with multiple families and teach them how the restored truths of the gospel bless, strengthen, and bind families together in love and unity. Last night was really great because we met with a couple and discussed the Restoration while their 17-year-old daughter was on a trip out of country. They expressed concern for her safety and development as well as their desire to find God and his real truth. And it was amazing to see how simply testifying to them that God has blessed us with living prophets and apostles of God today on the Earth and that they together can come to find out the truthfulness of this Restoration of all things by reading the history and interaction with God of 1 family and their posterity from The Book of Mormon. They said they would start reading together that night. :)

I can't really explain how much I have truly learned about the family we came from, why we are here with a family on Earth and what we are supposed to do and the family we all have a chance to live with after this life. God truly is perfect and created a perfect plan for his children, He spoke to all of us and revealed a giant part of that plan and it's purpose in A proclamation given by his Prophet on Earth at the time, Gordon B. Hinckley in 1995. It is called The Family: A Proclamation to the World. I encourage you all to read it tonight in your free time with the whole family or family Home evenings and discuss the importance and divinity of it. I testify that those words and that Statement of Truth is directly from the mouth of our Loving Heavenly Father. Ask him about it and he will confirm it to you personally. You will feel it from feelings of  "love, joy, peace, longsuffering, gentleness, goodness, faith,  meekness, temperance" (Galatians 5:22,23) for by this spirit and "by the power of the Holy Ghost ye may know the truth of all things."(moroni 10:5)  I promise that is true :)
Elder Wood

Pictures compliments of the Pawlik family in Mielec, Poland :)
Starszy Wood's new companion, Starszy Hansen
My 11 year old daughter Brooklynn said that one of her friends is a cousin of Starszy Hansen!