It's been a dry summer here. It didn't rain as much as it normally does and it was the hottest August in 100 years or ever, I'm not really sure. One of those two. It had the most days over 90 degrees ever, so it was probably the hottest August ever too. It was crazy hot. But now it's finally cooling down.
Exciting/typical news from Tiffin for the week: We had a less active go to jail!! So now that makes 2 investigators, one referral, one investigator that should have been, and now a less active. We're just racking in those jail sentences out here! But I'm being dead serious. This guy was behind on his child support payments from his first marriage and called the cops because a neighbor's friend tried breaking into his house so when the cops showed up and checked his ID he was arrested and put in PRISON for three months with serial killers and other bad people. He said it was the worst 3 months of his life. I can imagine. He fits right in with the rest of the area: he is CRAZY! He will just pick up a rock and think it's revelation and he's convinced that he's found the stones from the Jaredites and has them in his house and wrote a letter to President Uchtdorf that is sitting in our apartment. It's hard not to laugh when he's going over all of this stuff. I kind of feel bad for the guy. But he got a truck so he can come to church now so hopefully we can get him to come. He said he would be coming once a month now, so that's improvement over prison.
We started teaching seminary last week on Monday, Wednesday, and Friday because the seminary teacher in the branch is in Utah visiting family and the substitute had to make an emergency trip to Texas because her granddaughter was in the ICU, so we get to teach. The only problem is that it starts at 6:25 in the morning so we have to wake up at 5:30. It's surprising what one extra hour of sleep can do for you. We have been so exhausted this week because of it, but it's been good. I'm glad I never had to do early morning seminary because I would die. There are only four kids so it's kind of rough but they love us teaching because we are young and fun. Not saying that old people are boring...
Our neighbors are INSANE! They are outside smoking everynight so we can't open our window or else our room fills with smoke, the kids run up and down the stairs at midnight and wake us up. Saturday night the kids were outside screaming at 1:30 in the morning playing football, and the parent and boyfriend were out partying. When they got back (drunk) at 3:30, the mom started screaming at the kids to get inside. Needless to say, we didn't sleep much.
Anyways, last week was really good. We had exchanges again and it was the best day ever. One of the new elders is so funny and we just had a blast. I never thought tracting would be fun, but we spent just about the entire day tracting and it never got boring. There were some people that yelled "Hail Satan" from across the road at us, so that was interesting. I don't think we knocked on their door when we went up the other side of the street. They have a triple up over there and one elder is in training and the other has been out for 20 months, so it was really good for me and the other new elder to have someone that has been out for so long with us. It was different have three people walking around, but it was so much fun.
There is a less active member that we have been going over to his house to do service every week and the changes he has made are crazy! When Elder Nageli first got here, they went over but the member wasn't coming to church or even wanting to come to church, but over the last six months, he has started coming more on than off and got a suit from his brother and bought a white shirt to start coming every Sunday that he can! He doesn't have a ton of money but the first thing he did when he got his paycheck was set money aside for tithing. He hasn't paid his tithing for a long time. A couple of weeks ago he said he wants to meet with the Branch President to see what he needs to do to make the next steps in the church. It's been cool to see how much he has changed since I've been here.
On Saturday there was a big heritage festival here that is supposed to be the biggest thing of the year and everyone goes to it. Perfect for finding new people, right? Wrong. The weather wasn't that great (it was raining just about all day) and nobody was there because of the rain. There was a Baptist Pastor who just wanted to bash with us and there were a bunch of people around so we couldn't really just walk away. Some people just suck. We're still trying to find more investigators. There has been a big push for member referrals and members to come teaching with us and we've got more member referrals over the last week than we have the rest of the time I've been out. We got one last night and the member is less active but she said she would come with us to the person's house and teach with us! Everything is starting to fall into place. It's going to be a good week this week too. We're have Zone Conference on Wednesday and then we are going on exchanges with the Zone Leaders after in Lima. And then we're doing exchanges again on Thursday with the Findlay elders, so two days of exchanges. Sometimes they are good and other times they aren't, but the Zone Leaders are awesome so it's going to be a ton of fun. I'll tell you about it next week!
Love,
Elder Woodward
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