Hey Family,
Greetings from Tiffin. Everything is good in the hood out here. Last week was pretty good! A couple of highlights: 1. We had exchanges with the zone leaders and almost died, 2. We also had President at our district meeting and had interviews with him, and 3. WE HAD THREE INVESTIGATORS AT CHURCH YESTERDAY!!
So, obviously the big thing is that we had a bunch of investigators at church. Latonya, Khaliah (her daughter), and Leah (Khaliah's friend) all came to church. We had to find them a ride because they don't have a car, but we were still able to get them to church. We've been meeting with Latonya now for a couple of weeks and she loves everything we teach her and loves our "Bible Studies". She is super pumped for November 19th because that's her and her daughter's baptismal date. Her friend has been at all but one of the lessons we've had, but she loves to come to them too. They've started reading the Book of Mormon and praying as a family and Latonya says that she has noticed a difference in her life and doesn't have to yell at Khaliah to get her to do the things she asks her to do. Latonya absolutely loved church and wants to come back next week again and participated in every class because nobody else would haha. She already knows so much more than she thinks she does and ends up teaching us when we go over there! It's always the highlight of the week to visit her and teach her. We taught her the Word of Wisdom on Saturday because she smokes and she said that when she finishes her last pack of cigarettes she won't buy anymore and she wants us to call her everynight to see if she smoked so she will feel bad if she did. Those were her exact words. She wants us to guilt trip her into not smoking anymore. We're really working with her and getting her and her daughter to get them ready for baptism!
President Brown came to our district meeting on Tuesday for interviews and to give some of his own Words of Wisdom to the mission. He really wants us to focus on the part member families in our areas with reactivating the less active members and teach the non members. As of the end of July, there were over 2,100 part member families in the entire mission. 2,100! That's so many that are out there and now it's a goal to go and find them and teach them. And then of course President has a way of rebuking everyone but he is so good at it that you don't realize you just got rebuked until after the interview. He's such a good guy. A little intimidating though.
Thursday night, we got to drive over to Lima to meet up with the zone leaders for exchanges all of Friday. The drive out was super scary because it was raining really hard and we were driving on the freeway and passing a crazy amount of semis. The windshield wipers were on full speed and at times we still couldn't see out the windshield. There was one semi we went to pass that was spraying a ton of water on us plus all the rain that if the road wasn't straight at that time we probably would have run off the road or into the side of the semi. It was pretty scary. We had to stop in Findlay and as we were running in to get some stuff from their apartment, I went to turn a corner and the grass was way too wet to be running on and my feet slid out from under me and I tore up some grass and got mud from my hip down to my knee and on my shirt and my shoes. And we had already left Tiffin and I didn't have another shirt or pants packed for the exchange. Good thing the ZL's had a washing machine in their apartment so I could wash them there. On the exchanges, we met with a few less actives that live in Van Wert, Ohio. Like ten miles from the state and mission border. We did a lot of tracting and found a few potentials for the zone leaders to work with. The zone leaders here are so much fun to be with and just know how to have a good time. And they're really laid back. It's always good with them.
A couple of other random things: we helped a member make doors for their bedroom that look like barn doors and then we helped to hang them up. It actually looks really cool. We also keep getting fed a lot which is always a super good thing. Less cooking for me to have to do to try to feed myself. Our apartment almost caught on fire on Wednesday. Elder Knickerbocker was heating up some water on the stove and there must have been something on it that got super hot and burst into flames. It was a little bit scary because I don't think there is a fire extinguisher in the apartment, but we got the fire put out and all is good. The fire alarms went off and man those things are annoying. There's been a couple of days out here that it has been in the upper 40's. It seems like it went straight from summer to winter. One day it was 80 and the next it literally dropped to about 45 and the wind was blowing. All the leaves are changing and it's super pretty. Maybe I'll send a picture next week of it. Some sad news, we had a member pass away early on Saturday morning. She was my favorite person ever, but she's been struggling pretty bad for 3 months now. Pretty much the entire time I've been in Ohio, she hasn't been able to eat anything without throwing up and has been laying in a hospital bed all day. It was really sad to hear about, but her husband is one amazing guy. They've been married for 66 years and he was baptized last December. A month and a half and they could have been sealed in the temple. Kind of sad, but she was in a ton of pain and it was hard for the husband to see.
That's all for this week!
Love,
Elder Woodward
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