Tiffin, Ohio - November 28, 2016

Well there are some changes that are coming to the good old Ohio Cleveland Mission. Don't ask me why this is happening because I don't know, but it is. First off, we are going to be having zone conferences and interviews both once a transfer and we won't have zone training meetings anymore. But the zone conferences are going to be more like stake conferences for all the missionaries instead of just one zone. We used to switch off between interviews and zone conferences every other transfer, so now they will both be in one transfer every transfer. I think it's just so President Brown can interact more with all the missionaries. Also, the real humdinger (I think that's a word. I just don't know what it means) is that preparation days are going to be moved to Wednesday instead of Monday. That's the part I really don't understand. I don't know if transfer week will be the same with preparation day on Tuesday still or if the day of transfers will be preparation day. We will find out soon enough. But these changes don't take place until the new year, so we only have a couple of Monday preparation days left. That's all the big news with different things coming up. So no more staying up until midnight on Sunday nights to get an email written, unless you still want to. I can't tell you how to live your life. Agency. 

 

Also, in the middle of January we are having a mission conference and Elder Gay of the Seventy is going to be coming. I don't know who he is, all I know is his name and his picture from the trusted old Ensign. 

 

Well Christmas Conference is tomorrow, once again IN THE KIRTLAND TEMPLE. We luckily get to wake up at 5 tomorrow morning to have time to get ready and drive there and pick up some other elders to be there by 9:30. We probably won't wake up at 5 though because mornings are hard. That's just the goal so when we sleep in anyway we can still make it on time. Gotta plan ahead for what you know will happen anyways :)

 

So I keep forgetting to tell you this, but (sadly) the branch found out that I can play the piano so now they have started to have me play in Priesthood. I accidentally slipped one week and asked if there was an opening song, and then they figured it out and asked if I could, and at that point I couldn't lie, right? So now they like to torture me because I didn't tell them so they pick the hymn and I just have to sight read it. Just think if I did that all the time at piano with Carol and Mary... But the best part of them knowing is that I can use it to my advantage. In the branch you normally have to speak about every three months and I knew it was coming up to me speaking again, mainly because Elder Knickerbocker had to speak, so I knew I had to act quick. I made a deal with the Branch President that as long as I didn't have to speak for the rest of the time I'm here in the branch that on Christmas Day I will play the organ. Can you believe I volunteered to play the organ? But hey, it got me out of speaking. Gotta use what you have to get out of what you don't want to do, right? I love the branch here. It's so much fun to bug certain people because they all like to bug me back. The second counselor in the branch presidency is a HUGE Michigan fan and they played Ohio State on Saturday so leading up to the game I made it a big deal and then when Ohio State won in double over time we went over to his house and took a dead weed to use as a flower and told him we were sorry for his loss and asked if there was anything we could do for him. He wasn't the happiest of people with me, but it's all done in joking. I love it. And every time I saw him at church I just looked at him and smiled and he glared back at me. But then they invited us over for dinner on Christmas Eve so he must not hate me that much. I'm sure that on Christmas Day since it'll be my last Sunday in the branch that they will make me get up and say something anyways because that's what they do. It's great here. 

 

Thanksgiving was good here. It was preparation day so we got to go shopping at WalMart and Black Friday is crazy! They had everything already set up and shrink wrapped so people wouldn't get into the stuff. They should just wait until Friday to do Black Friday. And then we went to a family in the Branch's house for dinner and had a super good smoked turkey with all the normal Thanksgiving food. They tried to call you mom to see about getting a recipe for the Yam and Apple Casserole because that's strangely what I wanted. Don't know why because I don't like yams that much, but that's what I wanted. We played Settlers of Catan and some Book of Mormon games there and then played a nice game of mom's favorite, Monopoly. We still made it home on time, we didn't stay there all night. Don't worry. But smoked turkeys are super good. 

 

It wasn't a good week for meeting with our investigators last week. With the holidays and the changing weather people are getting sick and had stuff going on with family so it was hard to meet with them. We did pick up that new investigator last week that seemed sincerely interested that we will meet with again soon and also the super duper awesome family. We're meeting with them on Saturday and they are going to feed us lunch and we will move forward with preaching the gospel and all that cool stuff. We tore out some plaster from the less active's house that we do service at and got super dusty, but it's all good because demolition is the best, just not for the lungs. 

 

The new Christmas Initiative is out on mormon.org and you should all check it out. It's all about service and lighting the world. Hopefully some people see the video and refer themselves so we can meet new people! 

Love, 

Elder Woodward

Tiffin, Ohio - November 22, 2016

Well first off, IT SNOWED! Last Saturday it was the perfect weather and it finally started to snow! I don't actually know how good the pictures are but you might be able to see the snow coming down. That also means that it's getting pretty cold outside, which is has been. Like 33 degrees some days. Gotta love it, right? 

 

So if you remember how when I first got to Tiffin there was an investigator who went to jail for doing nothing pretty much, right? Well it's been a while since anyone else has been to jail and we were trying to stay in contact with that investigator's brother to find out when he would get out of jail, but now his brother has joined him in jail. Tiffin is the area where people just get sent to jail apparently. So now we can't figure anything out with him or his brother now. Tough luck. They should just open up the jail to us so we can meet with everyone that has ever talked with missionaries before cuz chances are that's where they are! Just kidding. Not everyone is there. Speaking of going to jail, there was an investigator in Findlay that I met when I was on exchanges there that had just got out of jail after being there a couple of days. They're in the Tiffin district, so it still counts as Tiffin, right? And I met with them so I'm gonna count it. I can't even remember how many people have been to jail anymore. Probably like 8 by now. Just got to rack that number up. 

 

Melissa and Leah are still doing well (they are the friend of Khaliah and her mom if I haven't given them a name yet). She's been reading the Book of Mormon but hasn't prayed yet because she wants to know what she is reading before she prays about it. They had to cancel last night because Leah had cheer practice and couldn't be there, so instead we met with a less active family.

 

We met with some super duper awesome former investigators on Saturday that are super duper awesome and we had a super duper awesome time over there and they made hot chocolate and cookies because it was snowing which was super duper awesome! And the snow was super duper awesome too. Saturday was just a super duper awesome day in case you can't tell. We taught them the Restoration and they said that they would be baptized, they just didn't want to set a date until they know for sure. He likes to look at the science and logic behind things, but neither of them believe in the Trinity and they don't smoke and they most likely aren't going to jail anytime soon! Good people in the world. And they literally just walked behind us in the library. What are the chances?

 

We were out tracting this morning and the very last door we knocked on there was a lady who opened the door and let us teach her and she took a Book of Mormon and said she would read it! Good things happen even when it's 30 degrees and you are outside teaching a lesson because you can't go in. So now we're teaching her and hopefully will keep teaching her!

 

I also had to whip out the electric blanket cuz it's been getting pretty cold the last couple of nights. It still keeps me nice and warm.

 

And I decided to try to set up the Christmas tree in our apartment even though it's before Thanksgiving. The only problem with it is that there aren't any lights and the ornaments don't have any hooks. And there isn't a tree stand so I had to improvise. Don't look too closely at the knives holding the tree up...

 

Thanksgiving is this week so expect some food talk in my email next week! Love you all,

Elder Woodward

 

 

Tiffin, Ohio - November 15, 2016

Well this week is transfer week, also why I'm emailing on Tuesday instead of Monday. The moment everyone has been waiting for? I will be staying here in Tiffin for at least one more transfer with Elder Knickerbocker. By the time I'm peacing out from here it'll be after Christmas and there might be snow here on the ground. And the first fourth of my mission will be here in this area. Time has been flying by here so far and it will probably continue to do so! Good things are going to be happening in this upcoming transfer as well that I'm looking forward to. 1. Thanksgiving because food obviously, 2. Christmas because Christmas, 3. Christmas Conference on the 29th IN THE KIRTLAND TEMPLE (be jealous everyone else), and 4. We will be having a recent convert and a re-baptized member hopefully going to the temple in the middle of December! The recent convert is the man in the picture I think I sent last week and his wife passed away about a month ago and he is the best man in the world! He is looking forward to going and being sealed to his wife for all eternity. The Gospel is so good. 

 

This last week has been really good. Now that it is getting colder and leaves are falling we get to do a lot of raking leaves for the older single sisters that live in our area. Always a ton of fun. Election day last week was a little bit weird. (I think) Everyone was out voting, so not  a lot of people were home when we were out tracting, and it was cold so nobody was out walking around on the streets either. And it gets dark so early now because of the time change a couple of weeks ago. It'll only be 7:30 and I'm ready to crawl into bed and go to sleep but still got an hour and a half to go before going home. The 40 day fast is drawing to a close. It ends this Thursday sadly. Now we will have to start cooking some meals every once in a while. But last week was super good on meals. In fact, we had two double dinners. Not one, but two. Thursday and Saturday. It was my first double dinner so far and it wasn't as good as I thought. Way too much food to be eaten in such a short time and you just gotta stuff it in so nobody gets offended and then you feel way sick after. Especially when you get taken to a pizza buffet and an Oriental restaurant. Soo much food. I love my food in case you can't tell by my wonderful emails :)

 

Well Latonya moved down to Columbus yesterday. I don't think I will be able to get transferred to her area because it's out of the mission, but she wants us to stay in contact with her down there. If only she had stayed one more week then everything would have been amazing with her. We helped her move her stuff out on Saturday when we were going to go to Kirtland with her and Khaliah, but that didn't happen and she needed help moving stuff. We almost finished teaching her everything and was close to getting her baptized, but she had to go and move. Sad day. There's a picture of them in the email so now you can finally see them. She is so funny. If only you all knew her and understood her humor. It'll be weird not going over there anymore. But miracle: one of Khaliah's friends who I may have mentioned before who came over when we would be over teaching told her mom about meeting with us so we went over to meet her mom to make sure it was okay and she is the coolest hippy lady ever! And she got interested because of her daughter and now we are teaching them both and have committed them both to baptism for January 14th! I'll most likely be gone by then, but they are still planning on getting baptized. She is super open to learning and has been reading the Book of Mormon since we met with her last Monday and the last night as well. Even though Latonya and Khaliah are moving, we were able to meet Melissa and Leah through the referral for Latonya. God works in mysterious ways sometimes. 

 

I think that's all for this week!

Elder Woodward

 

Got a nice district picture for you before transfers.​​ And got stuck by a stopped train, once again in Fostoria.

 

 

 

 

Tiffin, Ohio - November 7, 2016

Yes, Cleveland lost in the World Series, but at least they made it to the World Series. All I know is that the last game was pretty intense. But anyways, this last week was pretty good! We are still meeting with Latonya and Khaliah, but I have some bad news. They were on date for the 19th of November and they found out on Tuesday that they are going to be moving on the 14th of November. We were trying to see if everything would work for them to be baptized a week early, but it would have been really crazy and they would have needed to come to church yesterday which they didn't. They went to Columbus for the weekend and Latonya's phone died so we weren't even able to contact her when they were down there. Now we're going to have to hope the missionaries down there are good and keep meeting with her! Last Wednesday when we met with her, we got her to let us take her last two packs of cigarettes and her ash trays with us when we left because she really does want to quit. As long as she hasn't bought any more, then things will be going good with her. Khaliah really wants her mom to quit smoking, but she just hasn't been able to kick it quite yet. Maybe us taking her cigarettes will be good for her. We were also planning on taking them to Kirtland this Saturday but that's the day she has to get the UHaul truck so we don't know if that's going to work either. We are still planning on going with her so hopefully it will all work out. 

We've been trying to find a bunch of new people to teach and we found a couple last week. We've only met with them once, but we will keep meeting with them and see where everything goes from there! Not a ton of stuff happened, still trucking along. It's all good though because good things are starting to happen here. 

This is a really short email I just realized. There will be more next week because transfers are next week so there could be some news from that to take up some space!

Love,

Elder Woodward

 

Pictures: Fostoria is the train captial of Ohio, and we were trying to go meet with someone and got stuck by two trains going opposite directions at the same time. We had to wait there for about ten minutes before we could start going again. 

 

There's a bridge that a train goes over in Tiffin that is only 11 feet high and at least once a month, semis that are taller than 11 feet try to go under it and get "Tuna canned". This week, one semi got stuck so another semi decided to try to go around it and also got stuck, blocking both lanes of traffic. Geniuses of the world...

 

Us with our only recent convert at church who's wife passed away a couple of weeks ago. He's such a good man. We are going to be trying to get him to the temple in December because that's a year after he was baptized!