Alright, well this week was probably one of the fastest weeks on my mission so far. Between last Wednesday and today, we had two exchanges, some service, some good teaching opportunities, church, more good teaching opportunities, Halloween, lots of good food, and mission leadership council. The only bad news from this last week is the fact that it went from the 60's/70's to the 40's overnight, and it has been raining just about every single day, but I guess that's pretty normal for when winter comes. It has made it an interesting week, but it's always good.
The service that we were doing over this last week was mostly just raking leaves, but there were a lot of them. We talked with a less active member that neither of us had met before and we asked him if there was anything we could help him with, and he said he needed help raking up his yard which was pretty big, and it's just him and his wife and their almost 2 year old daughter and 6 dogs. So we went back last week to help him out and one day we did the front yard, and then on exchanges Elder Klinglesmith and who he was with went back and helped in the back yard. After they finished on Friday, the member really opened up to the elders about things in his life and why he hasn't been at church and his family. He is a really cool guy and the service we were able to offer really helped him to open up. But as for me on exchanges, we were able to see a few people and then ended the night helping a family move out of their apartment. Since I've been here, we've helped two families move out, but luckily one was just moving from our area to the sisters area, so they are staying in the ward. The other family moved down to Alabama.
The other exchange I went on was on Monday, and that day made me appreciate having the opportunity to stay in the states on my mission. Every so often, there is a missionary that is supposed to go to another country but is not able to get their visa before they leave, so they have to be reassigned temporarily until the visa comes. On Monday, I was with one of these elders that is waiting to go to the small country of Suriname in South America. He was telling me all about the country, and there is so much crazy stuff down there. They have the worlds largest spider, the worlds most poisonous spider, ten of the most poisonous tree frogs, anacondas, piranhas, and alligators all over the place down there, they have to sleep in mosquito nets, they're always wet from the rain, humidity, or sweat, get woken up in the mornings by howler monkeys, there's a bunch of rare species of birds, and I'm sure there's a lot more than I was told. It would definitely be the experience of a lifetime, but I would not survive down there, especially with how big those spiders are. Freaks me out just looking at the pictures of them. I am so glad that I got the special blessing of staying in the states for these two years instead of fearing for my life every day, but it would be fun down there. We were able to do quite a bit of work on exchanges, mowed a lawn, taught quite a few lessons, had the best home made fried chicken I have ever had before, and just had a blast all day long. Exchanges with so many different missionaries is also part of the reason that every week is going by so fast, just because you get to work with so many different elders and get to learn and grow from each one.
Yesterday was Halloween, but if it weren't for the idiots dressed up as idiots than I would have completely forgotten. Holidays on missions are strange just because they feel like any normal day, but to the rest of the world everything gets put on hold. Just not for missionaries. It's kind of hard to do missionary work on Halloween because President Brown doesn't want us out tracting when people are trick or treating for obvious reasons, so during the time when people are doing that we kind of have to figure out something else to do. Luckily for us, we had Mission Leadership Council and it just happened to fall on yesterday, so we were up at the Mission office for most of the day. For MLC, all the zone leaders and sister training leaders meet with the mission presidency to talk about the needs of the mission and what we will be teaching at zone conference, and then continue to learn how we can be better leaders. It was amazing to be in a meeting with so many amazing missionaries and learning from each other. One crazy thing about the mission is that 47% of the missionaries in this mission have been out for less that 3 full transfers, so we just have an extremely new mission. Puts a lot of pressure on us as the leaders because if we don't do something the correct way, then all these new missionaries aren't going to learn correctly. It's also a great thing with so many new missionaries because of the greenie fire that they bring. They all want to get to work and work hard, so it's been great for the mission. But we left at 9 in the morning yesterday and didn't get back into our area until 6:30, so most of the day was gone which was nice.
The Campbell's are doing awesome! We've still been meeting with them and they are so excited for their baptism this weekend. We've just been going over a few things with them to review and getting everything worked out for the baptism, but it is still going to take place this weekend. We had a cottage meeting/fireside at a member from the Stake Presidency's house who is actually in the Alliance ward, and everyone from Youngstown was invited because they live closer to the church in Youngstown than they do the one in Alliance. The Campbell's were at it and it was all about the temple which is their goal to make it there one day. They were also talking with other members and said that they would love to have us over there every day to be able to talk with them and teach them more and more. It's so amazing that they know of the importance of the Gospel and are loving it all!
We've also found a few people to teach, but no real updates on them yet. I'll let you know more about them if we keep meeting with them. Pray that it warms up a little bit and the snow holds off. And remember to send me stuff in the mail so I don't forget that I have friends at home...
Love Elder Woodward
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