Alliance, Ohio - June 28, 2017

I don't even know where to start this letter because I can't think of what to write today. So I guess I can start with last week on preparation day. We went and played kickball with a less active family in our area and all their kids and all their kids friends. It was actually really fun having an activity like that and having some competition even though we really aren't supposed to. But it was a ton of fun and it was luckily not too hot when we were out playing. There was only two problems: 1. Since I was wearing shorts and my legs really haven't seen the sun for a year and we were out for three hours, they were really white but then they turned pretty red and I got roasted, and 2. we also haven't done much sprinting so after we were doing playing we were both super sore for a couple of days hobbling around trying to get the rest of our work done. But it was definitely worth it and a crazy ton of fun.

We ended up having 6 people at church on Sunday which is a crazy amount for us to have! Brent and Aimee and their two kids were there again, and then Silas and Juanita Dawson were there as well! The Dawsons had promised us that they would be there and they got there a little bit late so we didn't think they were there, but they sat out in the foyer and we found them after. We had taught the Dawsons about keeping the Sabbath Day Holy in our last lesson and it finally clicked with him that that's what he needed to be doing with his Sunday. It was so good to have them there again. And then of course Brent and Aimee. Always good to see them at church again and again.

Speaking of Brent and Aimee, we were at the member's house for dinner last night and they were there so we could keep teaching them, and we were able to teach them about the Plan of Salvation and we committed them both to be baptized on July 22. Cody and Justin weren't there because they were at a camp, but Brent and Aimee had both started reading the Book of Mormon. Aimee has met with missionaries before, but Brent never has and so it's all new for him, but he knows why he needs to be baptized and they have been loving church so things are great with them!

Jean is also doing well, just hasn't been to church yet. She is starting on the book of Mosiah and is just pounding through it all. Things are good with her as well though. And then there's Crystal who is also doing awesome! She started to listen to the Book of Mormon while she was at work and was able to do it two days in a row! There's this co-worker of hers that always calls her a million times a day so she can never listen to it, but one night she prayed that she would be able to listen to it the next day at work and magically that co-worker's head phones broke. The Lord works in mysterious ways. And the best part is they haven't been fixed, and Crystal recognized it as an answer to her prayers. We were planning on taking her to Kirtland this weekend, but she is going out of town and it works out better for us to get a ride up there anyways if we do it next week, so that's currently the plan. Also, we gave her 10 year old daughter a Book of Mormon stories book so she can read it and she loved it and had read to the third chapter by the time we left their house. Maybe that will help Crystal to read as well.

That's all I can think of for this week!
Love Elder Woodward

Alliance, Ohio - June 21, 2017

We had a huge miracle this last week! We had been doing a lot of finding and knocking on doors to find more people to teach which normally works for us, but last week it just wasn't working for us. Nobody was interested in anything we talked to them about, so we were getting a little bummed out when Saturday night rolled around and we had nothing to show for the week. Sunday was a completely different story though. There was a new counselor put into the Bishopric in the ward three weeks ago and the family of the new 2nd counselor invited a non member family to come that they have known forever, and they did. Since then, they have come to church the last 3 weeks in a row and have really enjoyed it every week. We had been trying to set something up with the Jarvis family (members) to teach their friends and have dinner at their house but it hadn't quite worked yet, but then on Sunday everything worked out so we were able to get dinner and we taught this family. It went really well and so we picked up the two parents and their two kids as new investigators! We were definitely rewarded for our efforts throughout the week and we will keep working with them, so all is good! Since then we've been back to our usual finding ways and have found a few through tracting. Same old same old for us, except for Brent and Aimee and Cody and Justin.

 

Besides them, we didn't have anyone else come to church, but not this upcoming Sunday but next Sunday Crystal should for sure be there and we will probably head up to Kirtland with her after church. We've already got it tentatively scheduled, now we just need a ride up there and her to come for sure and things will all go well.

 

Speaking of Crystal, we have still been seeing her quite regularly and we were there last night again. She is still just afraid of praying to know if it is true so we've been trying to get her to do that and come to church and read on her own. She is definitely slowly coming around to it and last night when we were there we committed her to be baptized and set a date of August 12th. She knows it's what she needs to do and is just scared of not being good enough for it all. (Random side note, chapter 14 of Preach My Gospel, "Flirt to Convert" is real. Apparently her two daughters are in love with Elder Amparan and I, the 10 year old with Elder Amparan and the 14 year old with me. And some 8 year old kids yesterday asked us if we came from Hollywood because we were dressed so nice hahaha. I love it. And some other random kids a long time ago asked us if we were going to prom together. Good things that happen in Alliance.)

 

Still working with Luke, still working with the Dawsons, and still being called the pizza guys when we go to meet with Denia (learned how to spell Deena's name the right way now.) She was so close to coming to church on Sunday and it was all planned for her to be there with her three kids, but then she slept in on Sunday and missed her ride to church so that was a little bit of a bummer. But when we met with her on Saturday and were called the pizza guys again, she had read to the end of 1 Nephi 4 and told us that she has never been able to understand the Bible but she fully understands and follows what she is reading in the Book of Mormon. Since the first time we met her we taught her a brief version of the Restoration, we decided to reteach it more in depth and really focus on the Priesthood and Baptism and then committed her to be baptized on August 19th. She will hopefully be at church this coming Sunday as well!

 

Little update on Jean: She is finished with 2 Nephi and starting into Jacob and said that she is starting to believe that the Book of Mormon is true and she said that she would highly consider being baptized as well. Still working with her. All is well.

 

Love,

Elder Woodward

 

Pictures: Stopped by a train again. The days of Tiffin and Fostoria aren't over.

 

A raccoon that Brother Fisher caught and we had to let out because they were on vacation

 

Me and Elder Amparan waiting for the train to pass

 

 

Alliance, Ohio - June 13, 2017

Well summer decided to come out of nowhere and give us a nice blast of heat! A couple of days last week I had to break out a jacket again because it was a little colder, but these last days have been upper 80's/low 90's and humid! Gotta love the humidity out here because it makes it still 85 degrees when it's 9 at night, but then you don't have to worry about getting cold!

 

So transfer news since it is transfer week. I will be staying here in Alliance for at least another 6 weeks so that's some great news. But what makes it even better news is that Elder Amparan and I are both staying together, so that means lots of good stuff is going to be happening this upcoming transfer! I'm excited for it. Also, I'm gonna be the district leader.

 

So we found a couple new investigators last week, one of which came when we were meeting with Deena on Saturday. She had a friend of hers there that was listening and wanted to learn more, so now we are teaching him! His name is John White, and he is super cool! He had a ton of good questions that we were able to answer and really wants to read the Book of Mormon and meet with us again this coming Saturday when we meet with Deena again. Also, her kids are just as cool as they were last time. The one kid that thought we were the pizza guys thought we were the pizza guys again this week, and instead of just hugging us like last week decided to jump up on us and wrap his arms around our necks. Then he decided to steal Elder Amparan's name tag and put it on his shirt and was wearing it around and showing people while we were still there. Such a stud of a 5 year old.

 

I don't really remember what else we did last week, so I'm looking through my planner to try and find stuff to talk about. We did some service last week helping one of our member's moms move out of her house, so there were a few trips back and forth to a storage unit with us unloading a lot of stuff and stacking it up in there. It was fun and definitely worth the manual labor.

 

I just found a couple other new people, one of which was super crazy. But she told us to come back and she loved what we were talking about so that's good.

 

There's a picture for everyone to see now.

Love, Elder Woodward

 

 

Alliance, Ohio - June 7, 2017

Well, we had a little bit of a sad week, but there was also a lot of good that came out of it. Gonna give you a day by day run down.

 

Thursday we had a packed day. We normally do our weekly planning on Thursdays, but we had no time for it because we had so many appointments and things scheduled. We saw a less active family first thing in the morning and taught them and all their kids, and they are working on coming back to church. They were having a baseball tournament on Saturday and Sunday so if they made it to the second day, they wouldn't be able to make it to church on Sunday. They weren't at church, but when we saw them again they said for sure they were going to be there this week. It will be good if they do come back because they have eight kids all under 15 that could help the primary and the youth programs out a little bit. We were able to go over and see Crystal and help her paint a little bit of her house that hadn't been done yet, and it's always fun to do some service and switch up the day a little bit. We had a couple more appointments that we went to, then we had a member of the stake presidency in our ward that came out teaching with us and it was AMAZING! He was able to help a few of our investigators that we took him to realize that they needed to come to church (even though we've told them the exact same thing multiple times!) but coming from a normal person instead of a missionary made them understand it better. Who would've thought? We were meeting with the Dawsons with him and during the middle of the lesson, Brother Dawson said, "I've been praying about this for a year now, and I think I just got my answer that it's true. I think I need to start reading the Book of Mormon more now." It was just a great day and a great night having him come out with us.

 

Friday we had zone conference and it was pretty good. Took up most of the day, but when we got back we were still able to see a few people that night. It was good though, but a little bit different. Just more of a review of other things we've talked about in the past.

 

Because our week was a lot messed up with exchanges on Tuesday and preparation day and zone conference, we had to smash 6 days of work into 4 days, so Saturday was super busy as well, and it made it so we didn't have a ton of time to go finding. We were able to see Deena again and she has some awesome kids! She was out of town to pick them up last week, and then they were at the house that she was babysitting at with her. One of her kids answered the door and asked if we were the pizza guys, and then came out and hugged us because he thought we had pizza. Such awesome kids. She's going to start reading the Book of Mormon more and we found out that she is only at the house we found her at on the weekends, which makes the fact that we found her at that house on a Tuesday even better! We also saw Luke and he told us for sure he was going to be at church!

 

But.........Luke didn't come to church, Crystal accidentally slept in so she didn't come to church, but Silas and Juanita Dawson came to church! They got there right at the end of Sacrament Meeting, but they stayed for the other two hours and loved it. They've been to church in the past, just needed a little boost to come again. One of the saddest things that happened this last week though was that Monique texted us after church got done and said that "the Mormon life isn't for her". We kind of suspected it was coming since she had been avoiding us for a couple of weeks, but it was still super sad. We went over to see her the next day and talk with her, and she said she doesn't want to rush into baptism and wants to be more spiritually ready, but she will still read the Book of Mormon and she may pop into church every so often, and in the future she will reach back out to the missionaries after she moves down to Columbus.

 

So far this week we've been able to do some more finding than we had time for last week, and we found some potentials but not anything to amazing yet. There was a lady that has a radio ministry and said that if we had some time we could come and preach on tv. Don't know if it's allowed, but we are always told to get creative, so maybe. Yesterday was pretty good as well and we were able to meet with another investigator and read some of the Book of Mormon with her. Just trying to get them all progressing now that we have a lot to work with which can be the hardest part sometimes. But we're still working on finding new investigators too!

 

Transfer are next week and this one has gone by way too fast. Hopefully Elder Amparan and I are staying together because it's just a blast here together. We will see what happens, but get your guesses in on what's happening and I'll update you next week. If I leave I'm gonna be super sad because there's so much happening now. But ya. It's good.

 

Love Elder Woodward

Alliance, Ohio - May 31, 2017

This last week was a little bit of a slower week, but every week is good on a mission! It seemed to be the week of flames, so we had a ton of appointments fall through, but it was good because it made it so we could do some more tracting and try and find even more people to teach! We knocked on doors for probably 5 hours on Saturday along, but with Memorial Day weekend, not a lot of people were home so not many people were answering. We did find some super cool potential investigators that said to come back in a month because they are completely remodeling their house and didn't have time then. We had a couple people be a little bit mean, but it's good so you don't get too comfortable with everything. Gotta stay on your toes! In all reality it was a good week and we made a lot of progress with some of our investigators.

 

We've still been meeting with Crystal and she is one of my favorite people that I have been able to teach! She hadn't been reading the Book of Mormon, so we changed up what we were going to do every time we went over and we've just been reading the Book of Mormon with her. The best part is, she's loving the Book of Mormon now! Even if it is with us there, she has been able to start to read it and when she has questions she asks us because we are right there. We were supposed to go over on Monday to help her paint some of her living room, but when we got there she told us that she didn't have work on Thursday and wanted us to come back and paint then and that she just wanted to read the Book of Mormon with us when we were there. So that's what we did. Each time we are there, she's the one that asks us if we can read it instead of us asking her. Now the only thing we need is for her to be reading it when we aren't there, and then everything will really take off for her. She did say that she will be coming to visit the church in the next couple of weeks, and maybe she'll keep visiting it forever.

 

We've also been doing well with Jean, and she is still reading the Book of Mormon. Didn't read as much as she wanted to, but she is still going, and we are pretty sure she is starting to know that it is true. Everything that we teach her she says that it all makes sense and is really loving it all. The same with another favorite, Luke. We taught him the Plan of Salvation when we saw him on Thursday and he said it all made sense because we had talked about it before with him when he asked questions, just never officially taught it to him. He's also been praying about it and said that when he prays about Joseph Smith, everything in his life just calms down and he feels peaceful when he's praying about it. I wonder what that could be... ;) He is progressing really well as well, now we are working on getting him to come to church. None of our investigators were at church on Sunday, but they are going to start coming! Jean just needs a ride and we haven't been able to find one yet, but we have our member already picked out to come meet her with us one day and potentially pick her up for church. Monique and her brother were out of town so they weren't at church either, and the time we went over to meet with them, Monique was sick so we just met with David and talked with him some more.

 

Transfers are coming up in a couple of weeks and Elder Amparan could be leaving, but he could be staying. This is his third here and we are both hoping that he stays because there's so much happening here and we love it here! If he leaves, I'll be sad and if I leave I'll be sad. Hopefully we stay together another transfer. We're still working hard and having a good time here!

 

On Sunday, the lady who plays the organ for church didn't come to church and the back up pianist also wasn't there at church, so just in case they weren't going to be there they told me in PEC at 8:30 in the morning that I might be playing and then gave me the hymns that were picked for the day. Didn't know a single one of them and had never played any of them before, so I was hoping that I didn't have to play. But no one else was there so I got the wonderful opportunity to play the piano in Sacrament meeting. I didn't want to try the organ because I haven't played that thing in forever, unless they wanted some Christmas hymns in May. So I did play but I changed the hymns so I actually knew them and it sounded good.

 

No pictures this week :( but there might be some next week. I just forgot my camera. We also have a crazy packed day already for tomorrow that is going to be fantastic and then zone conference on Friday which is always good. We're getting a lot more members out teaching with us, so maybe that will help get people to church as well.

 

Talk to you next week,

Love Elder Woodward