October 7, 2013

The Elder Poe Report

Good morning my wonderful Brothers and Sisters, Elder Poe is now emailing you from the New Castle West Area, in the Youngstown zone, of the Ohio Cleveland Mission. I am serving with the wonderful Elder Conner Tollefsen from the good town of Mesa Arizonia as well as living with my amazing zone leaders Elder Curtis of Idaho and Elder Barnes of St. George Utah.

I am laboring alongside the Lord in the New Castle ward of His vineyard and I will definitly tell you it is much diffrenet than Strongsville. In Strongsville much of the population is rich, cahtolic and white, out here in New Castle much of the population is poor, non practicing, and black. Much of the area we cover is in a city called Youngstown which is appearantly the 3^rdhighest city in the United States for murders. I am definintly not in Kansas anymore.

The ward here in New Castle is deinfintly differnet, whereas in Strongsville the ward was run a lot more like a business, here in New Castle the much smaller ward is more like one extended family. Both have advantages and disadvantages, and both require a unique style to bringing to pass the work of salvation.

                Also this week I finally got the chance to feel like is was really in the Ohio CLEVELAND Mission.  We stopped by a less active member on Thursday and as we approached her porch we realized that there were about half a dozen rather not so nice looking people on her porch several of which were wielding brown paper bags. We approached the door and asked for Natasha, which in response to our query one of the men on the porch said she had just left for the store and asked us what we were doing. Elder Tolleffsen and I explained we were missionaries and a little bit about the purpose we shared, as we continued to discuss the Gospel we gained courage and confidence in the Lord and were more able to address the individuals on the porch we had a wonderful conversation with them and tuaght almost the entire first lesson. We did however decide to get out of dodge when one of the more inedbriated individuals started screaming at us about how he was pentecostal and several other things that I wouldn’t feel comfortable repeating as a missionary. On the plus side several of them requested new bibles so we will be visiting them again to deliever some Bibles and some Book of Mormons. Maybe one of them will end up getting baptized it will be wonderful.

                I am very glad to be a missionary in Ohio and I know this is the Lord’s work and He is hastening but it requires the work and effort of all of the Lords people. I know that Jesus Christ is the Son of God the Saviour and Redeemer of the world and through His Atonement all man kind can become free from sin death and hell. I know that Joseph Smith is God’s prophet chosen to restore Christ’s church on the earth.  I also know that if we will take the intiative to share the things we learned in Conference with those not of our faith we will find remarkable results and we will be able to bring to pass much good in our world.

The Report of Elder Hunter D. Poe