16 April 2012

Time fly’s when you’re having fun!!

We’ve come to the end of another change, this week we have changes and I we’re thinking that I’m gonna be leaving. I can’t believe this change is already over it seems like it just barely started! We get the call tonight to see what does gonna happen! This has been a super fun change though and I’ve learned so much from my comp. it’s been a good change!

Yesterday, I got to talk in sacrament meeting. The bishop passed us in the street earlier this week and asked if we would talk in sacrament meeting for about 10 minutes each. At first I was a little nervous that I wouldn’t be able to take up the full 10 minutes because I remember at home that was always a problem. Well yesterday I started my talk and before I knew it I had the 1st counselor in the bishopric handing me the little note that said to start wrapping things up. It didn’t seem like I had been up there for 5 minutes and when I returned to my seat my comp said I was up there for 15 minutes. It was kinda funny but it was cool ha I guess that’s one of the many things that the mission has helped me with.

This week we went to visit a lady and her kids who we had contacted last week. When we got there the lady told us a story about how a couple of days earlier her 8 year old son went up to her and asked her why people had to die with tears running down his face. We had actually planned to teach them about the Plan of Salvation this time as well. So we taught them and made sure that her son was there and understood everything so that he knew that death wasn’t the end.  It was super cool to see how things all fell into place. 

Sorry I don’t have much to report this week but I hope all is well at home!

Thank you all for everything!

Elder Westwood

9 April 2012

Well I hope everyone up there had a good week this past week, it was another great one down here in Panama!

I think Chase’s run ins with dogs lately started rubbing off on me, but don’t worry ha no blood. We went to one of our Investigators house’s on Tuesday and as she was walking out the door her dog bolted out running right towards me. There was a little wall that I figured tied just stop right there and start barking like the dogs usually do but this one jumped the wall and went right for my left ankle. At first it didn’t really hit me what was happening but then I felt its teeth around my ankle and that got me goin a little bit. I was about to kick it but I didn’t want to because our investigator was standing right there and I didn’t feel like that would have turned out to well. She felt so bad though she was there screaming at the dog to get back in the house. But anyways I felt the dog’s teeth start to put pressure on my ankle but then all of the sudden the pressure left, the dog still had it’s mouth around my ankle but it was like it couldn’t bite. I know that the Lord helped me out on that one, and it was because of all of your prayers so thank you!! 

After the whole dog incident we started teaching the lady and it was so sweet! Last time we taught her about the Restoration and Joseph Smith and asked her to pray about it to know if it was true. She told us that as she was praying she had this overwhelming feeling of peace come over her and she knew in that moment that it was true. It was so awesome!! We invited her to be baptized but her family is a super strong catholic family and she’s afraid of what they’ll do if she gets baptized. So we’re going to keep working with her on that and see if we can help her overcome her fears.

This week we also found a lady who has been inactive for the past couple of years. While we were talking and getting to know her a little more she told us that the reason she went inactive is because she had some questions about certain doctrines which were actually quite easy questions but before she asked the missionaries and they never answered the questions for her. Because the missionaries didn’t take the time to answer her questions she went inactive for about 4 years and missed out on the blessings that she could have had. After we answered her questions she told us that she wanted us to come back and start teaching her husband about the gospel and that she was going to start coming back to church. It was and interesting experience and helped motivate me to become a better missionary and expand my knowledge of the gospel more so that if this happens again ill know how to answer the questions and keep people active in the church!

Thank you all for the prayers, love and support! I hope you all had a great Easter Sunday!

Love, Elder Westwood 

4 April 2012

Wow, what a great week this was! Not just for us down here in Panamá but for everyone in the world! I LOVE GENERAL CONFERENCE!!

We started out the week this week with Zone Conference which was awesome! The main focus was on the Book of Mormon and how important it is. We all learned a lot from it and Elder Oliva and I have made it a goal to start teaching more by the Book of Mormon and teach the investigators why it is so important that they receive their own testimony of the great book.

We’re still working with our families that we found a couple of weeks ago. They’ve been progressing really well ha my comp and I were talking about the mom of one of the families and how much she’s been reading the Book of Mormon. Neither of us have had an investigator before who has read so much of the book. I think she’s about to 2 Nephi which is great but the part that is more awesome is that she understands the gospel principles which are being taught. It’s so awesome!!

General Conference was amazing! I hope everyone back home had the opportunity to watch it. I learned so much from all of the talks, ways that I can improve myself as a person and as a missionary. Some of the other Elders and I were talking about how Conference went by way to fast. But before we know it the next one will be here! It was also awesome to see how many people came that weren’t members and after listening to the conference would find the missionaries and tell them that they wanted to learn more about the church. We had a few investigators that were able to come and afterwards told us how much they loved it! 

This week we have a busy week which hopefully will go as well as last week! Thank you all for your love, support and prayers!

Elder Westwood 

26 Mar 2012

It rained this week! Ha I never thought I’d actually be excited to say that it rained here in Panama but this time I was. It’s been super hot lately ha it was nice because it cooled things down a little bit. But it also made the air even more humid so idk which is better haha.

This week was another good week down here. We worked a lot with the families that we found last Sunday. We were teaching one of the families on Thursday night and the mom started talking about the Book of Mormon. The time before we left them one so they could start reading it, we asked them if they would read 3 Nephi 11. Well they had all read the chapter and the mom actually read the chapter and then started reading from the beginning, including the introduction and all of the testimonies and was a couple of chapters in to 1 Nephi. She told us that she feels like Book of Mormon is true and she even started talking about the doctrines she learned while reading such as baptism, faith, and obedience. It was so awesome! They all are super positive and we’re hoping they’ll commit to being baptized here soon but first the parents have to get married so that might take a little time. But that’s alright as long as they get baptized!

This week we were riding our bikes to one of our appointments and one of the tires on my bike went flat. It was kind of frustrating because after that appointment we had to go all the way to the other end of our area which would have been like a 30-40 minute walk and a good chance that we would have missed our next appointment. So we went and taught our first appointment and the guy is way cool! we’ve only taught him a couple of times but he always has a ton of questions, he’d been taking the discussions about 10 years ago but then he stopped so there’s a lot of things that he’s forgotten and allot of things that he needs to have cleared up for him. Well we got done and he saw that my tire was flat so he told us to wait for a couple minutes and he walked in his house and came back out with a patch kit and fixed my tire! It was so cool and such a blessing!

I’m so excited for General Conference this weekend! It’s always awesome when you get to hear from the leaders of the church, especially the prophet and apostles! We’ve been inviting all of our investigators to come and check it out so hopefully they do!

Thank you all for everything! All your support and love!

Elder Westwood

19 Mar 2012

Well this was another great week in Panamá just doing the Lord’s work!

This week we worked super hard again and had a lot of success come from it. I learned a ton this week from Elder Oliva which was great ha he’s an awesome elder and works hard which is awesome! Ha I think the thing that he’s helped me the most on is my Spanish, my last two changes I was with American companions and as a result my Spanish kind of dropped a little because we always talked in English ha I kinda regret that. But Elder Oliva doesn’t know very much English so it’s been fun helping him with that and him helping me with Spanish.

We found a ton of way positive people to teach this week too which was awesome. We found a lady who lived in another area of Panamá and was taking the lessons from the missionaries and even had a baptismal date but then she moved here and didn’t follow up with the missionaries here. But we found her and hopefully she’ll get baptized here soon! We just have to teach here a little more and see how things go. We also found a couple of families and while we were teaching them they had a ton of questions which they said that nobody could answer before with answers that seemed right to them but as we answered their questions it was like things fell right in to place. I love when that happens haha!

Yesterday we had stake conference which was sweet. Well actually, I think all stakes in Central America had stake conference yesterday. The church did a broadcast from Salt Lake City to all of the Central America countries. It was so sweet! President Packer presided and also other members of the quorum of the 70 spoke to us. They talked a lot about how fast the church is growing in Central America and how the members need to work on helping keep each other active. There are actually a ton of members here but unfortunately there are a lot that are inactive which is sad. But hopefully we’ll see a change in that here in the upcoming months!

Yesterday for my birthday one of the sister missionaries that’s in our ward made me a cake it was so good haha! It was kinda weird being away from home for my birthday but it was worth it because of the work I’m in right now! I love it!

Thank you all for everything!

Elder Westwood

12 Mar 2012

This week was another great week in the work down here in the sun haha. It’s been super hot lately ha the people say that this has been the hottest summer here they’ve ever seen. Ha it’s kinda weird to think that its summer here and winter there well pretty much spring I guess.

We had changes this week. Elder Goodfellow had changes and I found out that he went to an area called Colón and went up to be ZL which was sweet. Ha I was excited for him but the coolest thing about it is that he’s companions with my trainer, Elder Echeverría!! I was way excited to hear that haha I’m sure they’re doing great there and working hard.

My new companion is Elder Oliva from Honduras. I figured I’d have Latin comp after having two American comps back to back. He’s a cool guy though. He has just over a year in the mission and doesn’t know hardly any English which will be good for me because I can work on my Spanish and I’m going to help him with his English! Since we’ve been together we’ve worked really hard which is good so hopefully we’ll keep this up all change!

A couple of days ago we were teaching some investigators that we found when I was with Elder Goodfellow and we started talking about how the Gospel helps and blesses families. The mom started talking about how her sister-in-law got baptized into the church about 4 or 5 years ago and they said that she is like a completely different person now. Apparently she was a very hard person to get along with and not too many people liked her but since she’s joined the church she has changed completely and their whole family has noticed this change. It was so awesome to hear her tell this story and to see that she noticed how much joy that the church can bring to someone. I’m so grateful that I was born into the church and seen these blessings in my life and I now have the opportunity to invite others to have these same blessings and happiness in their lives.

I think this is going to be an interesting week as my first full week with Elder Oliva but it’s gonna be good. We’re gonna keep working hard and see the miracles the Lord has in store.

Thank you all for everything and all the love!
Elder Westwood

5 Mar 2012

This week was such an awesome week in the work here in Panamá!

Since it was the last full week of the change we set some high goals to really push ourselves and to get some more things going in the area for next change. Up until last week we only had a few really positive investigators and we wanted to change that so that’s what we did. It’s amazing to see just how many people the Lord has prepared to hear the message of the gospel. We had some super spiritual experiences and are experiences that neither of us will forget!

 It was kind of funny though. I’m not exactly sure how long the missionaries have been living in the house we’re in right now; if I was going to guess I’d say for a long time. The reason I say that is because most of the people that we found which were the most positive lived like on the same street as our house or just around the corner ha and almost all of them had never talked to the missionaries before. 

We found this family of where this mom knows like perfect English, ha she actually has a super good accent too, and it’s probably the best English accent I’ve heard since I’ve been in Panamá. At first we taught the son and when we went back a few days later we were talking with the mom because he wasn’t there and she told us that he told her that he wanted us to start teaching him in English. Apparently he knows English pretty well, well he can understand it but he can’t speak it very well so we’re going to start teaching him in English and try and help him learn the language a little better. 

This week we also had to go work with some of the sisters in our district since my comp is District Leader. We went up into the mountains and we came to this little village where a bunch of Indians live. One of the families we taught was a family of 9 people and they all lived in this little one room house which was probably 10´x10´. It was so crazy but they were so cool!

This week was awesome and hopefully we’ll be able to keep it up next change as well! Although we’re pretty sure my comp will have changes so hopefully my new comp and I can keep it up!

Thank you all for everything!

Elder Westwood

27 Feb, 2012

This past week was a pretty good one

we had training this week which was actually really good. I learned a TON and a lot of things I want to work on so that I can become better while teaching lessons to investigators. Ha it was really good because it reminded me of a bunch of things which I learned while in the MTC which I had forgotten. My comp and I are planning on using a lot of the things we learned in this next week and see what kind of difference it makes.

This past weekend there were a bunch of baptisms within the zone so since my comp is the District Leader we had to do a bunch of traveling so that he could do the interviews for the other missionaries in the zone. It was pretty cool to meet all the people who were getting baptized though. On Saturday there was a baptism in the ward of the kids of one of the recent converts. At first the guy was nervous about baptizing his kids and wanted other people to do it but the missionaries talked to him and encouraged him to do it and finally he decided to do it. It was so awesome to see! After the baptisms I was watching him as we were singing the closing hymn and you could just see how happy and proud he was of his kids for finally making the decision to be baptized!

This week should be a good one for us. Since it’s the last week of the change we set some pretty high goals and we’re determined to get them so we’re praying all will go as planned! We also are going to have a baptism on the 1st of March! The lady is super awesome and my comp was telling me that they’ve been teaching her for almost 2 changes. We’re all super excited for her though and know she’s going to be a strong member!

Thank you all for everything I love you all!
Elder Westwood