Tiffin, Ohio - August 23, 2016

Yes this week is transfer week. And yes it is correct that we don't email until Tuesday. Preparation Day gets switched to Tuesday the last week of the transfer so that all the missionaries getting transferred already know and can spend the day doing laundry and cleaning and packing. Transfer calls came in last night, and Elder Nageli and I are staying together in Tiffin for one more transfer so I know that I won't be transferred this week. Elder Nageli will be here 6 months at the end of the next transfer and I'll be done with training so we most likely won't be together after that. Crazy things do happen sometimes though.  I'm only in the newest set of missionaries for about two more hours. I'm sure it's more of a relief for mom than anyone else that I'm moving up the ladder. 

 

So the new investigator. About her. I don't even know where to start. We've had a bunch of lessons with her and all is going well. Last Monday she really opened up because she's been doing a ton of research and asked about the Word of Wisdom. I'm just gonna say she hasn't made the best choices in that part of her life. Like really bad choices. Everything we're not supposed to have, she's had or is currently having. Basically college wasn't good for her. She smokes, drinks coffee and tea, drinks alcohol, and has done just about every illegal drug. So like really bad choices. She wants to change and stop doing all of that because she knows it's bad, so that's good. We set some goals with her to work her off of the cigarettes and other things she smokes and so far she's been keeping to those goals. Still working with her and meeting again with her tonight. She read somewhere about Baptisms for the dead and has been really interested in it and we have been wondering why and we found out that she had a miscarriage a couple of years ago and wanted to be baptized for her unborn baby. We talked about how babies and children don't need to be baptized and used the Book of Mormon in Moroni 8 because it's a great book to answer questions and answered her questions. We almost got her to cry. Don't know if that's a good thing or a bad thing. But she didn't. She went out of town for the weekend and made some bad choices that she told us was going to happen before she left so now we have to continue teaching her and making sure she doesn't keep doing the bad drugs. She still hasn't told her grandparents. She comes up with insane lies as to where she's going when she meets with us. Last Monday, she told them she was going to the library to fill out job applications, had a list of applications that she was going to fill out, and knew how long she could be out because she looked up when the library closed. She had all her bases covered. She did that on Wednesday as well. 

 

We had another investigator go to jail, so that sucks. He got mad at his brother for turning off his video games and did some stupid stuff and his mom called the police. He's the one that was going to be baptized but had to wait until he was off of probation. Now it will probably be a lot longer. Still trying to find new investigators to teach. We were out walking around yesterday and some guy rode over to us on his bike from the other side of the street and we thought he was going to want to talk to us because some people actually do that. He rode over to us and didn't even stop, but asked, "Are Mormons trying to stop Donald Trump?" hence the subject line. Then he rode off. Bummer. We told him we didn't know because I honestly don't care about politics so all is good. Speaking of politics, we were driving from Fostoria back to Tiffin and some obvious Republican had a sign in their yard that said, "Hillary for Prison 2016". Best presidential sign I've ever seen and it should be made more readily available. 

 

Well I guess that's all for this week. 

Love Elder Woodward

Tiffin, Ohio - August 15, 2016

But last really was better than the other weeks. Monday night my back hurt worse than it did on Sunday night, but then Tuesday night and the rest of the week it's been good. Every once in a while I get a little pain but nothing like it used to be. Didn't ever go to the doctor so I don't know if something was wrong with me or not. But either way it got better so hopefully it wasn't that bad. The weather finally cooled down for Sunday and Monday when we weren't out riding bikes, but then got super hot again like normal when we were on bikes. I knew it was going to happen. But then Friday it cooled down quite a bit and Saturday it rained. It was coming down hard. It's been the first time this summer that is has really rained and rained hard. We had been doing some service and were in the rain for a minute when it started to rain and we got soaked. After only one minute. It was coming down. We looked like wet dogs. Once it stopped raining it felt really nice outside. It was way cooled down and felt like a Utah night after it rains. Normally it's still hot at night. And then yesterday it rained a little bit to keep it cool and it is currently raining so hopefully it stays nice outside.

 

So now to the good part. We went over to a members home and had dinner. They had some super good burgers and fries. Then Tuesday we had dinner at another members home. Well we were supposed to but we were on exchanges again so I was over in Findlay for the day but we had dinner planned. Then on Wednesday we had dinner again at another members home and ate tacos with homemade salsa and guacamole. Then on Thursday we had tacos again but at a different members home. Then on Friday we had a dinner appointment with some more members and they were going to make us ribs but she got sick and didn't want to make us sick so she had to cancel. :( Then on Saturday we had dinner with some more members and they made a super good pot roast and potatoes. Then yesterday we had dinner again with the vegan family we eat with every Sunday and we had chili. But now this week since basically everyone in the branch signed up to feed us last week we only have one meal on Friday because the lady that cancelled felt bad so she moved it to this week instead. 

 

Now to the really good part that you probably thought I was going to talk about in the last paragraph but was loving the food we got. So the lady who walked into church last week is named Marissa. We went over the burger family's house last Monday for dinner and to teach her. We taught her the restoration and had a really good lesson. Like, a bomb lesson. It really helped having the members there. She really liked the lesson. We gave her a Book of Mormon and committed her to read it. And we asked if she'd be baptized. And she said yes. She didn't have any concerns with it, she just said yes. No questions, just yes. So we set the date for August 26 because the branch temple trip was supposed to be the next weekend so then there would be enough time to get her membership record number so she could go to the temple that next week to do baptisms. She stayed up really late reading the Book of Mormon and found a study guide online that she was using. We met again with her on Wednesday with the Branch President and she had some questions that we answered for her. She came to church yesterday but had to leave early to work because one of her coworkers quit. But she came to sacrament meeting and then we taught her the Plan of Salvation during the second hour because no one else was there for gospel principles. She said that she has read into Mosiah in the past week and she's praying about it. We are meeting with her again tonight, and probably Wednesday, and maybe again later in the week. We always have to find a place to meet because she lives with her grandparents and they wouldn't be happy if she was meeting with us. She leaves her house in gym clothes with her gym bag and then changes in the car to meet with us so her grandparents don't know. We're going to talk to her soon about that and the fact that she needs to tell them. But so far it's going amazing. The temple trip is getting moved to another week so after learning a little bit more about her and her past we decided to move the date to September 10, but then after we realized that that weekend is stake conference so it probably won't work and the area general authority wants the priesthood meeting to be a full two hours so he moved it to Saturday, so a lot of members will be gone all day for that. So now we either have to move it to the 17th of September of back to the original date of August 26. We don't want to have to wait another month for it but we might have to. 

 

Other than Marissa, we have been doing other missionary work. There's another investigator that we have slowly been working with but he goes out of town just about every weekend so he never comes to church. And that's about it. We're still trying to find more investigators but it's the same old stuff. People not interested or Catholic. That's about it. 

 

That's all for this week,

Elder Woodward

Tiffin, Ohio - August 8, 2016

This last week went by a lot faster than the week before, and it was good except for the part where we have only slept ten hours the last two nights. The first of the two nights we could not fall asleep. We were in bed at 1030 like we're supposed to be but laid there until after 1:00 in the morning because we couldn't sleep. I checked the clock like every five minutes so it's the real time we went to bed. And then on Sunday when I woke up my back hurt. Whenever I moved a lot it hurt and then throughout the day it got worse and worse to the point where if I sniffed or coughed or sneezed or yawned or hiccuped or talk even breathed in too deeply it hurt. I don't even know what was happening but it felt like I had been stabbed and whenever I moved or breathed it felt like a knife was being twisted where I had been stabbed. I've never been stabbed in the back before but I assume that's what it would feel like. Anyways, somehow I managed to fall asleep sometime after 11 and then woke up at 12:33 in the morning 1) because I really had to pee and 2) because my back hurt real bad. I tried to go back to sleep after I went pee but no matter how I laid down in bed it was uncomfortable and hurt. After 30 minutes of moving around in bed trying to get comfy, I resorted to the good old Ibuprofen and popped 4 pills. It may have been too much but I was in the worst pain of my life. I was in so much pain that I was shaking because of it and had a hard time taking the pills, but whenever I moved from the shaking it hurt more. It was a rough night. I seriously thought that we might have had to go to the hospital in the middle of the night because it hurt so bad. I was trying to think of all the cool things that could happen to me at the hospital like getting a kidney removed and having a sweet scar because that's where all the pain has been. That's what I was thinking about as I was writhing around in pain at 2 in the morning. After about an hour the magic of medicine started to work and it felt a little bit better. I didn't even get back into bed, I just pulled my blanket and pillow onto the ground. Maybe that's what helped. My bed is really soft, but it might be too soft for any good health. My back still hurts a little bit but not like it did last night. But after I woke up it wasn't until about 2:30 that I finally fell asleep again. Elder Nageli was up the entire time so it's not like I was keeping him up. So we've just been super tired the last couple of days. Good thing today is preparation day though.

 

Splits with the Zone Leaders was good. Almost as cool as the Zone Leaders from the MTC, but not quite. And not many people are quite as cool as them. The branch is quite small. Anywhere from about 40 to 50 members come every week but the records have 187 people in the branch so there are a TON of less actives but they still don't want to come to church. We're the only missionaries in the branch. The area is quite big. There's two big cities for the area, Tiffin and Fostoria, and then just a bunch of small towns that go all over the area that some of them have like ten houses in. There's a lot of people that live in Tiffin and Fostoria, but none of the other cities. 

 

We went on exchanges again last week because Elder Nageli is the district leader so I have that to look forward to all the time. I guess it makes the week go by faster because one day every week I'm not even going to be in my area and I'll be with someone different. The rest of last week was about the same as the week before, which was about the same as the week before, up until yesterday at church which I'll get to eventually. But we just did a lot of street contacting and tracting and trying to get a hold of less actives or potential investigators. That dude we met last week that was the almost miracle we still haven't met with. We stopped by five of the days last week and his car was outside but he never answered. Maybe he doesn't have as much potential as we thought he did. And one of two investigators we do have will just randomly go out of town for half the week so we can never get in contact with him. And our other investigator is just waiting to get of of probation so he can get baptized so we just keep going over to teach him what he's already been taught. Hopefully he gets off of it soon. He was supposed to be baptized my second Saturday here but then the elders found out he was still on probation so now we just have to wait for that. But at church yesterday, a girl brought her friend that is a non member and we were able to go into primary because they were the only two kids there and we talked about prophets and the nonmember wants to learn more so we might be able to teach her. Her mom and the members mom have been talking about young womens and the non members mom wants her daughter to get involved so maybe we can get her baptized and then work on her parents. And then after church we were talking with a lady and walking with her as she was going out to her car and there was this random girl that passed us and walked in the church that we had never seen before. We tried to wrap up the conversation with the older woman so we could find out who the random girl was. We basically ran back into the church and then all around the church asking if anyone saw the girl and where she went and who she was. Nobody else knew who she was but they said they one of the counselors in the branch presidency had taken her into the branch presidents office. When they came out, he called us over and said that she was interested in learning about the church because she had a good experience with a mormon family when she was 8 years old. We set up an appointment for tonight to teach her at the counselors house with dinner at the same time. I'll let you now how it goes next week. Maybe she'll be baptized by then. You never know. She's 19 and just walked right into the church because she wanted to learn more. Pretty cool if you ask me. Praying that she'll be the one investigator we need. 

 

We're trying to get a branch trip to Kirtland set up so we can take the few investigators that we do have and some members of the branch that want to go. There's a lot of members that said that they would want to go because they haven't been there in a long time so now we just need to get investigators to come. It'll be cool if it works out. 

 

Love, 

Elder Woodward

Tiffin, Ohio - August 1, 2016

This week was about the same as last week. Still not a lot of stuff happening. Still really hot. I kind of know the area, but not super well. We went on exchanges with the Zone Leaders on Thursday and they both came here so it seemed like we got a lot done that day but only because we had extra help. Elder Nageli and Elder Edmond found and 11 year old boy and his mom and the cousin of the boy that lives in the same area that were super interested so they set up an appointment to go back on Friday so Friday was going to be a super good day. We got there on Friday and the mom was "sick" so we tried teaching her boyfriend/husband, I'm not really sure which it is, and there is a slight chance that he was high on some drugs. So that was a bummer that we didn't get to teach them. We left them with a Book of Mormon and the 11 year old boy was running around with it talking to his friends about it so hopefully something good comes from it. Then we went to the cousins house and she's nine years old and her dad answered the door and didn't let us really say much before shutting the door. So both those appointments and potentials were shot down pretty quickly. We were on our bikes and there was a storm coming in with lightning and rain so we decided to wait out under a tree for the rain to stop. It has never rained during the day since I've been here, so it was a little bit abnormal for it to be raining. As we were sitting there, this man got out of his truck and started walking towards us. He didn't look like the best citizen, but he came over and started talking to us. He just talked and talked and talked. He told us his whole life story and how he's been to jail 40 times and he's only 23 years old and how he's done basically every drug and hates the drugs but he's addicted to them so he can't get off of them. His entire life story he just gave to us. He said that as he was sitting in his truck he saw us and just had the feeling that he needed to come and talk to us, so that's what he did. He said that at night he thinks about God and just gets this warm, fuzzy feeling when he does. We set up an appointment the next day to go and meet with him to start teaching him. It was a way cool experience to see how Heavenly Father works. We couldn't teach the people we were supposed to be teaching, it started to rain in the middle of the day, we decided to stay at the apartments and wait for the rain, and he showed up and decided to come talk to us. Everything worked out so perfectly like it normally does when Heavenly Father helps out. Sounds like a perfect experience, right? Well Saturday we stopped by for our appointment and he wasn't home. His car was outside, but he didn't answer. So we tracted around his house and went back an hour later. There was music inside and we could hear him on the phone. Perfect timing, right? Well we knocked on the door and we heard him turn down the music and continue talking on the phone. So we knocked again. And he just didn't answer the phone. It was definitely annoying and frustrating. One hopefully good day turned bad and then turned amazing which led into the next day which turned back to bad. 

 

There's still not a lot of investigators, and nobody wants to come to church. We had to talk in church and it was awful. Both of us and the branch mission leader were all given the same talk from conference to talk about, so it was probably really repetitive and boring for everyone.

 

Love, 

Elder Woodward