Sister Woodfield

Sister Woodfield

Monday, September 30, 2013

So Much Mud!!!!!!


Hello dear family and friends! I have been here in the Fort Collins, Colorado Mission for six whole weeks now! And I am excited to spend more time here! We found out about transfers on Saturday night and I have the great opportunity to stay in my area with my companion Sister Christensen. There is more of the Lord's good work for me to do here! I am excited to do more and be more! I have learned a lot these past 6 weeks. I am very grateful for the wonderful experiences I have been able to have. AND I am excited for all of the many things I still need to learn and experience. Life is great, isn't it? We pass through trials and joys, pains and happiness...we grow and are stretched and grow some more. There are a lot of good and bad things we go through and it is wonderful that our loving Heavenly Father allows us to pass through it all so that we can become better people. There are hard times! BUT the Gospel of Jesus Christ and all of the good times make up for it a million times and more!

This has been quite the week! We were able to do a lot more service! We worked some more at the shelter in Milliken and then Thursday and Saturday...HELLO MUD! My goodness! We were able to go to someone's house that had received A LOT of damage from the flooding. (And apparently his basement is not even one of the "bad" ones!!!) His basement is completely ruined. It was so sad! We walked down there with our Mormon Helping Hands shirts, boots, gloves, goggles and masks and we definitely needed it all! I sunk down in the mud a lot of times and an Elder had to help me once get my foot out! Haha, my body was good to move but my boot wasn't! There was mud everywhere and a big part of our job was just to shovel it all out. It was like a sad scavenger hunt- pulling out book after book, some stuffed animals, a PIANO, spoons, hammers...there was a lot to be found within the depths of that muddy basement.

It has been sad to witness a lot of pain people have received because of the flooding. However, it has also been so wonderful to see how the Lord works in many ways. There are so many examples within the Bible and The Book of Mormon of natural disasters happening or some other major trial that resulted in the people coming closer to the Lord. This is a similar modern-day experience! Hearts have been opened and the Savior's love and help has definitely been here. Why do bad things happen to good people? God loves us. He lets hard things happen so that we can grow and improve and be even BETTER because of it.

We were able to have some really great lessons this week too! I am so grateful that we get to interact with everyone that we do! We work a lot with less active members and I just love them so much and want the best for them! I am so grateful to be a missionary. My purpose is to invite others to come unto Christ. OTHERS- investigators, less active, members, a person in Walmart- anyone and everyone. :)

Love you all! Have a great week! Thanks for all of the love and support! I am so immensely grateful for all of the wonderful people and examples I have around me.

Hermana Lindsey Woodfield



Editor's note: This past week the health of Lindsey's Grandpa Woodfield took a turn for the worse. His long and courageous battle seems to be in its final days. Lindsey sent a separate note with these thoughts:


Thank you for telling me about Grandpa. There were a lot of tears at my computer this morning. I love Grandpa so much and am going to miss him a lot!!! I am so grateful for the time I have been able to spend with him. I am so grateful for his amazing example and everything I have learned from him. I am SO grateful to him! Please tell him that I love him immensely and am so grateful for who he is and what he has done. He means so much to me. He is in my prayers! And so are you and the rest of our family. I am really glad and happy that he will not have to endure physical pain anymore though. He is going to a much better place where his body will not have to be such a burden. I am very much looking forward to the day when I can see him again and give him a big hug. Please keep me posted with what continues to happen.


Love you!


Hermana Lindsey Woodfield

Monday, September 23, 2013

Week Five!



Service! Mormon Helping Hands shirt! I am smiling under the mask :)


The sister missionaries in my district


Playing in the rain on P-Day







Hello everyone!!! Wow! I have already been here for five weeks! I am almost done with my first transfer! WOW! This was a great week! We were able to do A LOT of service! We were doing some everyday!

Most of what we did was helping out at the shelter down in Milliken. The shelter was moved to the First Presbyterian Church nearby so that the Middle School could start school again. We sure sorted through a lot of donations! I also got to use some more Spanish! Some of the volunteers who are always at the shelter have come to me multiple times for help with the language barrier. I definitely have a long way to go with Spanish but the Lord is helping me! Saturday was a huge service day. From about 8am-3pm we were with a bunch of other members cleaning up some houses and then from 4pm-8pm we were at the shelter sorting.

The cleanup service was amazing! Everyone had on bright yellow "Mormon Helping Hands" shirts. We were a little army of happy servants of God helping out His children! I have heard many comments such as "The LDS church has been here from the beginning helping out" or "The LDS church has saved Milliken!". The Lord is definitely hastening the work and providing great opportunities for people to learn more. It has truly been amazing to be a part of!


Sister Christensen breaking a chair with an axe during cleanup efforts!!





Lots of toys to sort through!!






This Friday we were finally able to meet with Blanca again! This is the Spanish woman who we tracted into a few weeks ago. The past two weeks she has called and cancelled (at least she remembered and called!). This week Sister Christensen and I were very excited to not receive one of those phone calls! We made it to her house and had a lesson! YAY! :) And HELLO Spanish! Haha, even if she didn't understand everything I was trying to say in Spanish, the Spirit was there! We basically just went over the Book of Mormon again and recommitted her to read and pray about it. We are seeing her again this week. :)

We were also able to have a lesson that day with a part member family we have been seeing. The mom is an active member and the dad is very supportive of her. We are really trying to help him realize why he needs the gospel for himself and what blessings will come from it. It was a good lesson on the Holy Ghost and the mom told us later she definitely felt the Spirit and she thinks progress was made. Yay! We then helped them paint their garage. :) Lesson and service! Woohoo! It was great! I just love people! I want everyone to experience the joy of the Gospel of Jesus Christ!

Yesterday we did exchanges with some Spanish speaking sisters again! This happened so that I could have the opportunity to go to the Spanish branch for church. It was great! I didn't catch everything but it was a great experience! :) Then Hermana Soto and I had a lesson with a woman named Lucy and her kids. Another great experience with Gospel and Spanish! I am so grateful for these wonderful opportunities the Lord is giving me. :)

Sooooo, this week was great. Missions are hard but awesome. I am learning a lot!

I love you all MUCHO! Thanks for all of the love and support! I am praying for you all! The Lord lives and He loves you! I am so grateful for the Atonement! We can repent and be forgiven and change! WHAT AN AMAZING GIFT! :D

Have a great week!

Love,

Hermana Lindsey Woodfield



Sorting toys at the shelter



With the Harris family and their pet bird!



Sister Christensen and me with the Carlson Ward Sisters

Monday, September 16, 2013

Raiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiin!!!!



In my cool rain jacket! but in front of a sad spot- somebody's house flooded :(






Redhead Court...maybe I should live on this street! :)









Hello from the extremely wet state of Colorado! Haha, what a crazy amount of rain we have received this week. My goodness, my rain jacket and umbrellas have been put to VERY good use. :) Last Monday it started raining while a bunch of missionaries were hanging out at the Stake Center for Pday (after we went ice skating which was super fun!). When it started raining we were all so happy and many of us went out and played in the rain for a while. :) We had no idea what was in store for us. It rained Monday, and Tuesday, and Wednesday. And Thursday. And Friday. And Saturday. And Sunday. ANDDDDDD I think it is finally done today!

We have received so much rain that on Friday we were basically an island and couldn't go anywhere because all of the roads were closed! Church was even canceled yesterday! Crazy! Five minutes before Sacrament meeting was supposed to start Bishop Padilla announced for everyone to go home and be safe. Our ward covers a large area so many people have to go over a lot of dirt roads and such. One area in our ward that has been really impacted by all of this is Milliken. There is a trailer park within that area that has been evacuated. It was all flooded by sewage water. Anything the water has touched is now contaminated and is no good. A LOT of people have recently lost basically everything.

Sister Christensen and I have had the amazing opportunity to serve in the Milliken Middle School the past few days. It had been turned into a shelter. Lots of people have been sleeping in the gym and living off of the many donations we have received. It has really touched my heart! So many good GOOD people!!! What a hard time they are going through! It really puts everything into perspective- the physical and temporal things can really be gone in an instant! The spiritual things really are what matter most and are what will stay with you!

The Lord has also given me another amazing opportunity with Spanish! Many of the people we have been with speak mostly Spanish or only Spanish. I have been able to have a lot of amazing conversations with people and help them with their needs. I think it surprises them and makes them happy to have me speak some Spanish with them. I have received multiple compliments! Hahahaha, I know they are all being super nice and speaking very slowly and simply for me. But what an amazing thing to be able to overcome the language barrier even a little bit!!! I know the Lord has put me here for a reason and that the Gift of Tongues is real!

I have become pretty close with some of these good people over the past few days and I have been called their "amiga". :D So many of them have such great faith and attitudes! I have heard from multiple people that God is watching over them and is helping them! One woman talked to me about Job from the Bible and how he lost everything and God blessed him. Another is a preacher in another church and we talked about doing God's will.

I know the Lord has had his hand in everything this past week! I know this has been a great opportunity to serve for soooo many people! Many hearts have been softened towards the Gospel of Jesus Christ. Many. :) I wish I could write more but we have less time today! I am alive and well! And dry...for now. :) Haha, I love you all! You are in my prayers! Thanks for all of the love and support!

Love,
Hermana Lindsey Woodfield



Note from Lindsey's parents:

We are very grateful for the good people in Johnstown who are looking out for the safety and health of Lindsey. We received a well timed call last night from Sister Cooper of the Johnstown Ward informing us that Lindsey is safe and working hard among those impacted by the flooding. Today we received the following email from another ward member:


Sister Woodfield is one amazing sister! It has been an honor working with her at the shelter here at the Milliken middle school. She has such a sweetness about her that has helped lift the overall feeling here. Not to mention, being able to translate and communicate with members of our community. We are so thankful that she has been sent to our area at this time.

Love, Sister Hollie Traylor
Johnstown Ward and Milliken resident

Tuesday, September 10, 2013

Week Three in Colorado!!!!!


Oh my goodness! I have been in Colorado for three whole weeks now! My first transfer is half way over! I'm definitely going to do my best to work even harder and end out these six weeks going strong. :) Thanks so much for all of the emails I have received! It definitely warms my heart to read them.

So this week was even better than last week! I am definitely seeing a lot of blessings from the Lord. The first week had a lot of great things but also was overwhelming. It was a lesson on patience and enduring and I am seeing great results from that. I still have a LONG way to go and a lot to improve but I know the Lord sees every step I make! :) I know He is with every single one of us!

So last Tuesday I was on exchanges with a native Spanish speaker- Hermana Soto! It was an awesome experience! I was able to be with her in her Spanish speaking area and practice mi Espanol! We taught a few lessons in Spanish! I didn't understand everything but I DID get the central message. The people we were with are SO SWEET and amazing!!!! They fed us SO MUCH food! Tortillas, and rice, and meat, and corn on the cob, and lots and lots of food! Delicious mexican food! :) It was a great Spanish day!

Something else really cool is that the ward we serve in (The Johnstown Ward) is the deaf ward for our stake. So any deaf members in our stake area attend and serve within our ward. It has been really cool and fun! On Sunday during the 2nd hour Sister Christensen and I were taken out of class so that we could teach a 19 year old woman. She is deaf and isn't a member and has only been to church one other time. We met with her and an interpreter in the kitchen. We taught her about The Plan of Salvation and used awesome pictures that a member had just given to us an hour before. (Side note- the Lord's hand is definitely in the work! He knew those pictures would help out this girl and made it possible for us to receive them just in time!) It was a great experience! I think we will be teaching her more during church next week!

Another awesome thing! We contacted a referral given to us by some members in our ward. It is a really sweet and spiritual woman named Ruthie. She let us in and we talked about the Restoration of the Gospel! She accepted a Book of Mormon and said she would read and pray about it. Yesterday evening we visited her again and she had read some of it! We read through some together and she said she saw a lot of similarities to the Bible. She told us she had first thought The Book of Mormon was about Joseph Smith. Well, both of our times with her have been great! We still have a lot to go through but her faith and testimony in prayers and the Savior is amazing!

Other great thing!!! The Lord has been giving me opportunities to work on Spanish. One of them was with the woman Blanca who I mentioned in my email last week. (Update on that- she actually was not able to meet this week but we checked up on her and have an appointment for this Wednesday!) Another has been through a really sweet couple named Jose and Nydia from Cuba. Jose is a member and our Bishop (Bishop Padilla- AMAZING man and bishop!) is one of his home teachers. Bishop set it up so that Sister Christensen and I go over about once a week and I get some help from Nydia with my Spanish. They are the sweetest couple! So nice! It has been really good for my Spanish and we are also trying to follow the Spirit in sharing the gospel with Nydia too. :)

Another cool experience happened while we were volunteering and doing service at a place called ARC (similar to a Goodwill). A lady came up to me asking if I spoke Spanish (think she saw my name tag:) ) and was trying to ask me about some stuff. I didn't catch everything but I eventually was able to help her find what she wanted. Later I felt prompted to let her know about some English classes some other Hermanas (Sisters) do. I let her know about it and she was interested so I got her address and later gave it to the Hermanas in the area! I don't know what the results of this will be but I'm grateful I had the opportunity to speak with her and follow that prompting. And Dad- she is from The Dominican Republic! She has been here for about 2 months! I thought that was pretty cool! :) Sooooo, I am very grateful for the Spanish opportunities the Lord has given me. :)

I love you all! Thanks so much for your love and support! I'm praying for you! :) Have an awesome week! The Gospel is true! The Lord Jesus Christ lives! What an amazing and joyous truth! :) LOVE YOU!

Love, Hermana Lindsey Woodfield



With my Mission President and his Wife



Arriving in Denver!!

Tuesday, September 3, 2013

Week Two in the Field!!!! : D


Hello! I have officially been here for two weeks now! What a beautiful place to be! The area that I am in is so peaceful. There are mountains far off in the distance and a lot of corn fields...awesome. :) The people are wonderful too! I LOVE THEM SO MUCH! The ward is absolutely amazing! We get fed dinner EVERY night! What wonderful people! We also have some relief society sisters that come on splits with us every Wednesday and sometimes we have some come on tag-alongs on Thursdays. Basically there are amazing people that we get to work with who love the Lord and are doing great! Something else though, as missionaries people talk to us a lot about the hard things they are going through. We represent the Lord Jesus Christ and I am so happy to help people out in any way possible. It has just really opened my eyes even more to how everyone is going through something. A lot of people are hurting in different ways and I am so grateful for this opportunity to do what I can to help with that!

Where to begin?!? So much happens as a missionary! Well this week went a lot better then last week! I have a better feel for what is going on and understand a lot more. Something cool about my companion, Sister Christensen, - frogs love her! Haha, we sleep in the basement and there is a windowsill right next to her bed. EVERY night some frog manages to fall down there and make a bunch of noise. And every night Sister Christensen opens the window, catches the frog, shows me (haha, she said one night she might put it on me!!!), and releases it back into the wild. It is a nightly tradition. :)

Anyways, things are great! There is a family (Bates) who have been investigating the church for about 6 years now. The dad stopped chewing tobacco about a month ago so that he could be baptized. MIRACLE. He was baptized this past Friday. It was amazing! The wife is still finding out for herself what is true. Their 12 year old daughter has told us that she wants to be baptized! We are teaching her the lessons right now. She is amazing! She reads The Book of Mormon and takes notes! She said that her problem is that she doesn't want to stop reading. :) They are an amazing family.

OKAY BEFORE I GO ANY FURTHER I NEED TO TALK ABOUT MY AMAZING DAY LAST TUESDAY. Soooooooo, the Sister Training Leader (Hermana Smith) goes on exchanges for a day with everyone in our zone. Tuesday was my day. :) She is amazing and I am so grateful I had the opportunity to work with her and learn SO MUCH from her. So, Tuesday morning Hermana Smith and I were in the backyard doing language study and cute Sister Vandenburghe (who we live with) came out and told us she heard our phone going off downstairs. We showed her our phone next to us and said it must have been another phone. She left and came back a few minutes later. She told us she needed to show us something downstairs. I got worried thinking something must have been wrong with our room. We followed her downstairs and I saw a trail of kit kats....what?!?!?!?!?! Austin Lush and his dear family surprised me!! His aunt who lives in Colorado drove up (and with permission from my mission president) and kit-kat-attacked me! Hahaha, there was sooooo many kitkats there and she was there videotaping my reaction. :) The whole thing was a total blessing. I got to chat with her for a few minutes and I definitely felt the love from my dear family and friends who helped with this awesome surprise. :) And from Sister Vandanburghe who was sneakily trying to get us downstairs. :)

SO, amazing thing happened that night! Hermana Smith and I had some time before dinner so we decided to knock on some doors. Hermana Smith is also called to be Spanish speaking and I told her it would be so great if we were able to talk to someone in Spanish. THE SECOND DOOR we knock on is a lady who understands some English but speaks Spanish! We were talking to her in English and she finally said "I am learning English pero..." Hermana Smith and I got so excited! "Nosotros hablamos en espanol!" She let us come in and we taught the first lesson about the restoration of the gospel! We taught it in Spanglish! IT WAS SO AWESOME! She was very attentive and nodded a lot. She said she would read The Book of Mormon (the next day we stopped by and gave her one in Spanish)! She said the closing prayer for us! AND she said that if she found out these things were true that she would be baptized!!!!!! The Lord has definitely prepared her! We have an appointment to meet with her tomorrow. I will definitely be relying on the Spirit because Sister Christensen isn't speaking Spanish and I am still working on my Spanish. The Lord will provide a way! This dear lady's name is Blanca. I love her already! We are hoping to also talk more with her husband and kids. SO huge miracle and blessing! :D

I love you all! SO MUCH! I am praying for you! Have a great week!!!!

My mailing address is:

5285 McWhinney Boulevard, Suite 100
Loveland, Colorado 80538-8707

Love you all!!!

Love, Hermana Lindsey Woodfield