Youngstown, Ohio - March 8, 2018

This last week flew by and I don't even know what happened for us. But it was still a good week! Our Thursday was gone before it even started because we had a specialized training meeting with our zone and President and Sister Brown that started in the afternoon, but with our weekly planning and that meeting and then interviews afterwards, we weren't even leaving the church until 7 pm. So it was a long day and most of it was spent at the church. While others were being interviewed, we had our district meeting and that's always good. We had another interesting lesson with Victor after because he got to the part in 1 Nephi where Nephi kills Laban and he didn't like that at all. He ended up throwing the Book of Mormon towards us when we were there, but we were still able to talk to him and we tried explaining everything to him but he really didn't want to listen. But we kind of helped him and he is back to normal now. He didn't make it out to church because he wasn't feeling super well, but we are planning on seeing him tonight. The members here are really helping him out and he has loved it all.

Really the rest of the week just blended all together because we had some time and we had some names to go try and see, so that's what we did and had some other things come up that diverted us from that course, but it was good. We've been trying to find people that are a little more likely to come to church so we've been going to the nicer neighborhoods frequently but haven't had much success. Lots of people just aren't answering the door so it makes it hard to find more people to teach. On Saturday, we probably talked to only 10 people in two hours of knocking on doors, so that's always a good time. Lots of fun here in Youngstown and not much else really happened. We have a few appointments for later this week with some people so hopefully those go well, and we're just having a ton of fun. 

Yesterday was really good though. We drove up to the mission office for MLC and the zone leaders and sister training leaders were the first of the missionaries to get the smartphones in this mission. Such a blessing and I forgot what they were like to have one. So, it was just a super good day yesterday and we spent a long time trying to figure out how to use them and use the new Area Book Planner app (so that means no more paper planners or area book), set up a Facebook account (yes, I am on Facebook), and then got to drive home through rush hour traffic and a nice old car crash not by me though, didn't get home until 7:30 and tried a few people, and that just about brings us to this moment here and now. Not much else really happened, but man the phones are super nice to have, and it makes it easier to take pictures now, so there should be some coming in the future. So, ya. That's about it.

Love,

Elder Woodward