Asked Justin a bunch of questions.

1.  See above about Dad's old apartment.  Where are you living?  Apartment?  Is it nice?  

2.  Where are you doing your laundry?  Do you have to haul it somewhere on your bike?

3.  How do you get groceries?  Do you have to do that on your bike?  You said the members feed you dinner.  What are you doing for food the rest of the time? 

4.   How are you liking California?  You look a little damp in all the pictures.  They had pictures from the Emmy Awards last week with the guys' shirts all wet and stuck to them because it was so hot in LA.  Still pretty hot?

5,  You have a ton of short sleeve shirts.  How come, in all the pictures, you have your long sleeve one on with it rolled up?  Isn't that hot?

6. I know it is hot now, but it will get colder and right next to the ocean, it is going to get chilly.  Would you like me to send you some workout shirts with long sleeves or a jacket? 

7.  Are you getting along with your companion? 

8.  Are you having problems with your allergies? 

9.  The picture you sent of the sunset said that it was Bertha.  Is that the sun?  Why Bertha? 

Now, his letter: 

1. Yea that place looks pretty bad, no our place looks better than that.

2.  We have a washer and dryer at the apartment, our dryer is awful though.

3. On P- day we get picked up by elders with a car and go shopping with them.  For breakfast we either have cereal or eggs, lunch is usually sandwiches, unless we go somewhere.

4.This is apparently the hottest summer in 20 years or something like that. So yeah it's been hot and I sweat about 80% of the day.There have been a couple pretty cool days though. Other than that it's been great. It's super pretty here, Lots of super tall palm trees everywhere.  The ocean is right next to us so the view is pretty good. The people are usually pretty nice. The ward is awesome, and there's a lot of great missionaries here too.

5. I don't have enough short sleeved shirts to wear one every day, I think I'm one short, so whenever we have a meeting or church and we have to wear a suit I just roll the sleeves up when we're done. It's not too bad. Don't worry about sending another shirt

6. I have sincere doubts that I'll ever want to go run in anything but a t shirt and shorts but I'll let you know.

7. Yea things are pretty good right now.

8. no

9. Bertha is what everyone's calling the ocean

I think i told you about April last time, right? Well she's getting baptized hopefully on the 17th and she's having us teach her daughter starting on Tuesday. It's so exciting!!! It's been so amazing watching this woman grow from a very sad, angry woman, looking for meaning in life outside of drugs and partying and working all the time, to completely giving up those things and becoming full of joy and hope. She used the phrase 'hungry for more' The atonement works. This will also be my trainer's first baptism so it is a pretty special milestone for both of us. After this I' m not going to talk much about baptisms I have though because I feel like it takes away from their sacredness, We aren't here to grow the church's numbers, we're here to bring souls closer to God.

A member of the 70 is coming to talk to us on Wednesday, excited for that. Also looking forward to conference.

Love you guys!

Elder Sherwood

We took these on a hill above the beach. The pens are from a guy in a ward. He makes custom pens out of cool wood and bullet casings.I thought Chris and Dad would get a kick out of them. The small one is an oil vial. How sweet is that?

I'm feeling better now by the way. And yea I just dealt with it on most days. Ran and everything. One day I convinced him that I needed to take it easy so we didn't run or bike. But yea I'm better now. I am destroying my clothes. I've already ripped 2 pairs of socks and a pair of slacks. It got caught in my bike gears.

Did you get that photo in a text? Because I wasn't sure if you could or not. I couldn't get pictures in texts. I saw you got another one from the Hansens. We actually haven't eaten with either of them, but we visit a lot of members in a day. We don't tract, (knock on doors), we contact (talk to people on the street), and we work through members. Wards that actively work with missionaries and are missionary minded easily baptize twice as many people per year. That means they invite their friends to church, activities, etc. They also come to lessons with us. Having members present at lessons is a HUGE part in conversion. So one of our main jobs is going by member's houses and seeing what we can do to help them become more missionary minded, or basically ask them who they can invite and what they can invite them to do. We just committed one of our investigators to baptism! She's going to get baptized on the 17th of October. She is awesome because as we've been seeing her we have been successfully able to get her to stop doing drugs, quit smoking, and quit drinking. It's really cool to watch her faith grow. 

I'm out of time. Love you guys!

Elder Sherwood

Awesome missionary!  We sure are enjoying having your son in our ward! He is so awesome!!!! We will take good care of him.

💗 Sis. Hansen

Map of Carlsbad, CA, Mission

President and Sister Kendrick

Letter - September 13, 2015
Hey! Finally done with week 1. I got put inside Carlsbad, Woohoo! It's a biking area so I need to buy a bike. It's so hot and humid. I've been damp ever since I got off the plane. But I guess we came in the middle of a heatwave. It feels pretty good today so maybe it's leaving. Something I should of told you when I was in the MTC is that I got sick. So I've actually been sick for like 2 or 3 weeks and it got worse when I dropped all that altitude. I'm on an antibiotic right now.

You can't mail directly to me. Mail everything to 

Elder Justin Sherwood
Carlsbad California Mission

451 W Bobier Dr.

Vista, California 92083-1906

My companion's name is Elder Anderson. He's got a super low voice and he doesn't talk loud at all. He's not that fun either. He's ok though; he's teaching me a lot. The ward seems to really like him, though. Oh and we get fed almost every night. So the ward's great. The 2 new restaurants I've been to haven't been impressive.We went to In and Out Burger, was a pretty mediocre burger as well as super stale fries, and it's funny because people were telling me that I HAAD to try it because its SOoooo good but I think every burger joint we had back home was better than In and Out. Then we went to some Mexican place, I don't remember the name. Got this bowl full of rice and chicken and beans and pico digio or whatever, but it was really plain and tasteless so eh. These members gave us these homemade enchiladas, however, and they were amazing. 

We can go to Lego Land!!!!!!!!! We were going to go today for a district activity but we couldn't find passes in time so we have to put it off until we can find some. Just gotta do it before they transfer me to Oceanside or something haha.

We have taught 3 lessons so far. 1 was with this couple named Taylor and Jake, who are super friendly and open minded. Jake talks a lot so we didn't really teach them a lot but we got to share a video, and it went pretty well. We see them again tonight. The other 2 were with April who is a single mother with 2 kids. She's really nice and just kind of wants to know that God is there and cares about her. We also see her again tonight. We have a couple other investigators that I haven't met yet. We don't tract in this area. We contact, which is just talking to people on the streets. So no door knocking but I don't know contacting is pretty rough too. I hate feeling like a nuisance, but I'll get over it I guess

Well that's all I got.

Love you guys!

Miss you!

Elder Sherwood

September 13, 2015 - Collins family - Justin and Elder Anderson - Carlsbad, CA

Letter August 31, 2015

Hey mom, It's P day. I miss you guys! But I'm also having an awesome time. My district is great.  We're growing pretty close which is good because 5 of us are all going to Carlsbad, including my companion. The district by the way is 4 girls and 6 guys. so 2 sister companionships and 3 elder companionships. My companion is a total nerd. He gets kind of anoying too but we're learning to get along. We also tend to butt heads when it comes to preparing lessons. In fact it gets extremely frustrating sometimes. But the other day we managed to pull it together and actually did a really good lesson together. We just have to find the balance between us and i think it'll work out.He is a lot better at doctrine knowledge than i am, but i feel like i am able to relate and connect to people better so we decided that he leads the lessons, and i slow it down and relate the lessons to the investigator. I'm studying hard too because I want to fix that weakness of mine. We get pamphlets of every lesson and I'm trying master them so I read them a lot. I also read my scriptures at least once a day. I also am getting a lot more interested in talks now. Well at least one. We watched a talk given by Elder Bednar, and it hit me hard. I think you guys should watch it, its called the Character of Christ. He gave it on a Christmas morning at the MTC. Super powerful. I don't know if I'll be able to write another letter, I don't have much time so make sure John and Rachael know that I'm really grateful for the rolls and tell everyone I miss them! Love you guys!

 MTC - August 26 - September 6, 2015