Alright, so some big news from the Ohio Cleveland Mission. Instead of zone conferences for this transfer, we are instead having a mission conference up in Kirtland. We don't have too many of these, but it's because we are having a very special guest speaker coming to the best mission in the world. He wasn't originally planning on speaking to the missionaries so we wouldn't have even had a mission conference, but a couple months ago he changed his mind and decided he would take some time off from his family vacation out to Kirtland to speak to the missionaries. It was supposed to be just an under the radar vacation because his grandson is going on his mission soon so they were coming out, but now we get to hear from the President Uchtdorf because he decided to come speak to us. PRESIDENT UCHTDORF! You can't get much better than that in my opinion. I mean, all the general authorities are good, but the President Uchtdorf is coming tomorrow. Only a little pumped if you can't tell. It's going to be sooooo good. I'll have to update you on it next week because it obviously hasn't happened yet.
Now on to the rest of the week that we already had. A family in our ward had a huge tree in their yard that was leaning pretty bad, and then we had a huge rainstorm where it rained for a good long while which softened up the ground enough to make the tree take a tumble. We went over the first day it fell to cut off all the side branches and the ones with leaves, and then Brother Fisher chainsawed the trunk into smaller pieces and then him and his daughter were axing them to make fire wood. We decided that we were going to go help them one day, so after moving a family out of the ward we snuck over to their house (because they could go to where the family was moving to but it was out of our ward so we couldn't) and started chopping wood. When they got back two hours later, we had been going crazy on it and had only finished about half of what was there, but had doubled the wood that had already been cut. On Monday, we went back to finish it up and got all the wood chopped and actually had a ton of fun doing it. Now the stack of wood is about as tall as I am and there was another stack as well. There was so much wood!
We met this really cool guy last Saturday when we were out tracting. We knocked on his door and the first thing he asked us was where we were from and then let us right in because we were coming around in the name of Jesus. He knew who we were and what we were doing, but we got talking with him and he said that he had a copy of the Book of Mormon and that he had read it all the way through. The only thing he didn't do was pray about it, so we committed him to read it again and pray about it as he is reading it. Elder Amparan asked him what it would mean to him if it was true, and Matt said, "Well that's a stupid question, I don't do hypotheticals. The only thing I could do is join your church." Couldn't have asked for a better answer myself. He also said it would only take him three weeks to read it, so we are going back over on Saturday to meet with him again.
Jean almost dropped us the last time we were over there, but we saved it and we are still teaching her, just trying to get her to come to church. We went to meet with Denia again last week, but she wasn't there because she had a recent death in the family and was out of town. Good reason if you ask me. When we were meeting with the Dawsons, they pretty much told us they know it's true and so we committed them to be baptized in August because they have some Word of Wisdom issues that we will have to work through. It's going to be good with everyone though and all will work out.
So the Fisher family is my favorite family ever! Brother and Sister Fisher are members, but neither of their daughters, Hannah and Cassidy, are. Elder Amparan and I had both been feeling for a long time that Cassidy is ready to join the church, so we met with her alone and talked with her to figure out what her concerns are. She really opened up to us about everything that had happened when their family was first introduced to the church, and it gave us a lot to think about how to help her. So we waited a few days and really thought about her situation and prayed about it and then on Monday we went back over to have a real lesson with her. We taught her about the Gospel of Jesus Christ with a huge emphasis on baptism and pretty much told her now is the time and invited her to be baptized. She said that it was scary because for the last three years it has been terrifying and this is the first time that it has felt right for her. She didn't give us a for sure yes or no when we were there but told us that before Sunday she would give us her answer, and probably earlier than that. It was the best lesson and most spiritual lesson I have even been a part of on my mission, and I have never felt better about a lesson before. Then this morning we were at their house doing our laundry in the basement and she waited for and told us that her answer is yes! She pretty much already knew her answer when we asked her on Monday, but just needed a little bit more time to think about it all, and now she said yes! She was thinking about doing it next weekend and we told her that that can definitely happen, because she has been taught all the lessons multiple times and been to church every week for the last three years and is living all the commandments of the gospel. It was a very good way to start off the day hearing that from her. We were super pumped when she told us.
That was about the most exciting thing that has happened and the highlight of this last week, so there's not much more to write about. Have a good week!
Love, Elder Woodward
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