This last week has been a blur! With Mother's Day on Sunday and skyping, I don't even remember what I have told you and what I haven't, so if there are some repeats, it's not my fault.
We have this super awesome investigator who's name is Crystal, and she is one of the best people I've taught! She was atheist until about five years ago and then came to know that God is real and since that point in time, she has been one of the best people around! Missionaries knocked on her door soon after she first came to know and they would have Bible studies with her, but after a while they stopped going over to see her until March, when the missionaries here decided to go back and "tract" into her, and she said they could come back. She still wasn't super interested, and there was one day when I first got here that we went over to meet with her on a Saturday night and then went back on Monday to help her do some service in her house and teach her the Plan of Salvation. Since then, whenever we go over, she has been wanting to meet again later every week and we have been able to see her and teach her probably 5 times since I've been here, and it use to be just once a month. We were really focusing on the importance of reading the Book of Mormon to know if it is true, and after one lesson she said to us, "Where do you want me to start reading?" So we told her the beginning and she said she would start. The only thing is that she hasn't started yet for some reason or another, but we downloaded the Gospel Library app on her phone so she could listen to the Book of Mormon as she is doing her mail route because she works for the post office. We are going back tonight to see her again and we are hoping she has read, and if not then we are going to do everything to help her read. We had a little bit of a scare when we were talking about baptism and Priesthood authority. If you have ever seen The District videos where some elders are teaching someone about that same thing and he asks if they are saying his baptism wasn't valid, just about that same thing happened to us. Nightmares of that video from the district were going through our minds and we thought we might lose her as an investigator, but she now understands why she needs to be baptized and why she really needs to read the Book of Mormon. We also have had a member there for our last couple of lessons and they LOVE each other, and Crystal might be coming to church this Sunday. There's a linger longer, so free food gets a lot of people there, but also her kids want to go to church, so it could be a motivator for her to come if they are coming to church every week.
We met with Monique on Monday night and she is amazing! She came to church on Sunday and loves it every time she comes, and her baptismal date is good to go for June 3rd. We really wanted to get a feel for her testimony so we decided to go over the baptismal interview questions with her when we met, along with teaching follow the prophet and tithing. She is soooooo good to go. Still working on the Word of Wisdom and smoking, but she is doing so well with it. Just going over the baptismal interview questions with her, it wasn't just for us, but also for her to see that she is ready and that she has a testimony of this gospel. It wasn't until she was taught about ordinances for the dead that she really started to shoot forward in progression because she really wants to do the work for her great-grandfather and her other ancestors. We obviously knew that that is something that she wants to do for her family, so we also set a date to go to the Columbus temple with her to do all of that, and we set if for June 17th, two weeks after she is baptized. She is so cool and we love going over there to meet with her. It was also great way to end a rougher day of tracting for 3 hours and having nobody be interested. But it was a great end of the day!
We met with Jean again on Monday and she had started to read from the Book of Mormon and didn't make it as far as she wanted to, but had made it to 1 Nephi 11 which is pretty good if you ask me. We are going back again tomorrow to hopefully teach her the Plan of Salvation, but she is doing really well. We also met with Deena Middleton who we met last week (tree worship lady) and she had started to read the Book of Mormon but was confused by the testimonies at the beginning of it, but we talked more about it and got her to commit to keep reading. She's going out of town for a couple weeks so it might take a while before you get an update on her.
If anyone tells you that tracting doesn't work and nothing comes from it, they lie! Every new investigator that we find comes from tracting and more tracting and more tracting! Monique was found through tracting and she is going to be getting baptized soon, and everyone else that we have found is because of tracting. We found another couple of people this last week and one guy yesterday who was super cool! Had bad experiences with pastors of other churches but let us teach him and said he would read the Book of Mormon. He was just a cool guy.
There was also no hiding that I could play the piano in this ward because there was a baptism for an 8 year old boy that we were asked to be at to play the piano, and then the Bishop was there so he knew right off the bat. And then on Sunday the lady in the ward that is the organist was a little bit late so I was up there playing prelude music so the entire ward knew at that point. No more keeping secrets here! Not like my other two areas.
I'm all outta stuff to write, so I'll be back next week, maybe with some pictures!
Love Elder Woodward
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