Well here we are again on a glorious Ohio winter day and freezing, just like normal. It's like ten degrees outside right now and it makes me sad. But it's going to warm up later this week so I'm always excited for that! Like the subject line says, this last week has been super crazy. We pretty much drove all over the state of Ohio for transfers last Wednesday. We left our apartment at 8:30 in the morning and didn't get home until around 6 in the evening, so just a day with a lot of driving and lots of waiting for stuff to happen. We got to drive to the mission office to drop Elder Klinglesmith's luggage off, and then after picking Elder Schwartz up and getting other missionaries off and going, we drove up to Kirtland and waited for all the new missionaries to come out of the meeting that they have. They were putting a set of senior sisters in one of the wards in our zone, but they didn't have enough room for all their luggage in their car, so since we have a very nice truck, we got to take it to them. But they were going about as far away as possible in the New Castle Ward, so after getting lunch we drove out to New Castle, Pennsylvania and waited for them to arrive so we could take their luggage into their apartment for them, and then the short drive back to our area. Okay, it was like 45 minutes, and then we finally got home. So after about 5 hours of driving and ZERO crashes, we made it home just in time for dinner.
So, onto Elder Schwartz. He is from Saratoga Springs, Utah, been out for a little over a year, has two older siblings and two younger siblings, so right smack dab in the middle of five kids. We both definitely appreciate having a truck after serving in the same freezing cold area on a bike in the winters. All has been good so far this last week, and things are going to stay good. Mission Leadership Council is next Tuesday, we got some special meeting this Thursday and interviews as well tomorrow, got another meeting this Sunday and we had stake conference last Sunday so I've been seeing President Brown like every other day since last Wednesday which is crazy, but it's good because he's awesome. Found out I'm not going to have to buy a phone for sure because I'm the last transfer going home that doesn't have to buy them, so don't worry about all that information. The important thing is that we are getting smartphones!
We've been doing pretty well since last week, keeping the work going, meeting with lots of people, doing everything we're supposed to. We had two exchanges in the last week and those are always just amazing. Lots of new missionaries, so they are always super excited and want to work hard, and I was pretty much with two superheroes, Elder Hales and Elder Phillips. Had some fun, found some new investigators, learned a lot like always, and made some good memories. We were able to watch the funeral for President Monson last week, and then also got to watch the announcement of the new Presidency yesterday. Wasn't expecting President Uchtdorf to get released, but it happened. Just to give you an idea of what kind of crazy weather Ohio gets out here, last Thursday, it was literally 64 degrees in the middle of January. Not normal at all. And then Friday, the next day, there was a freezing rain storm which turned into snow and had every closed down out here. Roads were bad, but we still went to work and had a good time, but still didn't get in a car crash. And with all the snow coming, it's given us a wonderful opportunity to serve everyone here and help them shovel their driveway. There's something new that the mission has been implementing called service finding, and so instead of just normal tracting, we just try to help people and serve them. We've done it a few times and it has worked out pretty well, and then yesterday we did it some more because it snowed Sunday and Monday nights. We were knocking on doors for about two hours, but we helped shovel five driveways and then we were able to set up return appointments with all five of those people! Service definitely opens up doors and opens people's hearts to learn more about the gospel, and they love that we don't ask for anything after we help them. Kind of like Ammon in the Book of Mormon and lobbing off some arms opened up the door to teach King Lamoni and all his people. Obviously shoveling driveways is a little bit different than defending flocks and chopping off arms, but it's the same principle, and it worked wonders for us yesterday. We are planning on seeing those people tomorrow, so hopefully there is a lot of good news coming from it for next week.
We ended up needing to move Callei's date back to February because we weren't able to meet with them for a while, but it is still going well at their house. Been doing a lot of finding this last week trying to find more people to teach, found a lot of potentials, so hopefully they turn into some fruit later on. And we were able to get back in contact with a bunch of our investigators so that has helped to have this week go by even faster. Stake Conference was on Sunday like I already said and it was sooooo good. Elder Sinclair of the Seventy was here and he was amazing to listen to, super funny but still able to teach so many great things while he was here.
I think that's about all for this last week, still trying to stay warm out here and so far haven't froze!
Love you all!
Elder Woodward
1917 Youll St #20
Niles OH, 44446
No comments:
Post a Comment