Remember the true meaning of Christmas!

Hey!  Great to hear from all of you!  Glad to hear things are going pretty well back at home!  That is pretty crazy that it is 70 degrees and warm!  Kinda like here!  But not quite as warm...  The Christmas season is still weird here.  About the only time it feels like Christmas is when we play Christmas music at the house or if we go to a nice mall for P Day and they have Christmas Decorations up.  But we have a small tree at the house, too, which is fun.  And the mission home is decorated nice, so that is fun, too!  

That is pretty crazy that the Sheffields are going to be here so soon!  That will will be fun that they will be at the mission home most of tomorrow, because tomorrow is mission leader conference all morning at the mission home, and so I will be there for much of the day as well!  So I probably will see them!  That will be awesome!  I am excited to get the package!  It is always fun to get stuff from home just because it is from you guys and packaged with love!

Well, this week was pretty good!  We had stake conference this Sunday, which was really fun because I got to meet a lot of the members from Tangerang again!  And the talks were all really good about how we can strengthen ourselves, but there was an expecially big focus on strengthening new members and helping them grow in strength so that they will stay active!  That was good, because that is something that our mission has been struggling with is having converts come in but quickly leave as well because of various reasons.  So that will hopefully begin to help!  Luckily I am so grateful that Sister M and her family, Mama V and V, and Brother W are all still active!  

The rest of this week we have been doing pretty well, too!  We went on splits to Bekasi, and I went with Elder Tuttle.  He is pretty new but he is awesome!  We went and taught a contact that they had.  His name is R.  He has the biggest, nappiest afro I have ever seen!  And the front of his house is like an unkempt jungle.  And he doesn't have lightbulbs inside his house.  We knocked and he came out and greeted us wearing some ratty shorts, a wife-beater, and smoking a cigarette.  To be honest, I was a bit nervous to go in at first haha!  But we went in and taught him.  And we had an amazing lesson talking about the role of the Savior and His infinite love for us and the gift of His Atonement, as well as the Restoration of the Gospel and the Book of Mormon.  Well, R used to live a pretty good life, but he got into some bad habits and lost all his money and fell away from God.  He has family in other churches, but has never really been interested, I picked up.  But as we explained the Restored Gospel and baptism, he was really interested and listening.  And by the end of the lesson, we had committed him to baptism, reading the Book of Mormon, praying, coming to church, and quitting smoking!  And then, he took us to his family's house and introduced us to them, and sat in as we taught them!  It was an awesome day!  It is so cool how when people are exposed to the truth and open to receive it, it can totally change their desires and help them find the way back to the path they want to be on!  

And our investigator, C, is still progressing well and receiving all the commitments and working to prepare himself for baptism!  So that is awesome!  He is having a hard time recognizing an answer about the truthfulness of the Book of Mormon, so we are working with him on that.  So thank you for your email on personal revelation, dad!  I think that that can really help C!  But he is still going by faith!

And we had some other good lessons and whatnot going on this week.  And we are still battling traffic haha!  Man I miss I-15 and whatnot!  

Well, I am glad that you are all doing well!  Thank you so much for the emails and love and advice!  I love hearing from you every week!  I am excited to get the packages from you and the fresh treats and love!  Haha!

Well, I hope you all have a great week!  Hope it cools down a bit so it feels like Christmas a bit, and so that you can go skiing!

Oh, and you should really check out www.mormon.org/Christmas.  And share it on FB!  The church is doing a big worldwide Christmas campaign thing, and it is even in indonesian at www.mormon.org/ind/natal.  Check it out!  They have some cool videos and stuff, and supposedly there will be new things coming out the whole month to help people remember the true meaning of Christmas!  It is good stuff!

Well, I love you all so much and can't wait to talk to you.  It sounds like we will be able to skype from the mission home on Christmas day here, so at some point on Christmas eve for you guys.  I can't wait!

Love you!

Love Elder Wood