Woo Christmas is this week!! I got your packages and holy cow! So much food. Our pantry literally can't hold it all. It's nice to have some food though so thank you! I saw the new car and it looks pretty cool. Like a classic Colorado camping car. I'm glad your job is going well! That's cool that you'll have Mondays off. I sent you guys something and it sounds like that lady texted you about it. So hopefully it gets there before before Sunday, but I don't know if that'll happen.. I'm pretty excited for Sunday, though! We have Church at 11 to 12 but we aren't going over to the Curtis's until 3. So that's like 4 for you right? Does that work? 

The new companion is good! We have been getting along pretty well. He's one of them Utah Mormons. Obsessed with Utah; going to go to BYU Provo but doesn't know what for; LOVES Disney movies. He's pretty much the exact opposite of Elder Mangus. But he's a good guy so we've been having fun. I do miss Elder Mangus though. I'll get over it though. And yes I bought a pressure cooker. We are definitely still figuring it out. Our soup turned out really tasteless. I don't know what to do to make it taste better. Maybe cook it for less time? Interestingly enough I have not given a single talk on my mission. Apparently just after I left Lake Skinner they started having the missionaries give talks there. Oh did I mention that Elder Talbot is the one who replaced me in Lake Skinner? So that's interesting. The work's going good. We have not been able to teach Robert (the Scott). He hasn't been answering his phone recently. I'm not sure what it means. We are giving his phone a rest for a bit. We just set up an appointment with Johnie Cropp though who is pretty much converted and ready to get baptized. Bishop just wants her to come to Church twice and get to know some people. It's been hard though because she has had to work two jobs and on Sunday. She has this Sunday off though and we can meet with her finally on Tuesday.So things are looking up! The week in general was pretty slow because I got sick and we had to stay in. But me and Elder Talbot got to get to know each other pretty well so it was good.

Well i have run out of things to say.

I am super excited for Sunday!

Merry Christmas!

Love you!

Elder Sherwood

December 12, 2016

Buenos ding dong didly dias!

The dog is pretty cute. That sucks it's getting sick though. Speaking of sick me and Elder Mangus have come down with some bug. I'm feeling a little better today and Mangus woke up saying he felt like he caught it. So I'll probably be better by tomorrow and he'll go to his new area sick. Hehehe. So yeah it is transfers. He is going to San Marcos. I am getting Elder Talbot who is from Utah and is coming from Lake Skinner which is the area I served in before this area. So that's pretty neat. I've met him before and he seems pretty cool so I think it'll work out well. You should send me a picture of your new car. How is Bandit able to run loose all the time? Do you leave him out when you go to work? The cravings went away but I've also been eating all the stuff in the Christmas box. So maybe it was just sugar junk food withdrawals. Kind of scary to think that I'm addicted to it. Those chocolate covered Lays were so good tho... You wouldn't think they'd be that good, but they're reeeeeaaaly good.

Christmas sounds like it's going to be pretty fun! The Curtis's, the same people who invited us for Thanksgiving, invited us for Christmas. They say we're going to have a big Christmas Nerf war fight and that they usually have the missionaries over every year for it. Luke, the guy we shared the first discussion with, might be there as well. So it sounds pretty epic. Plus I'll get to talk to you guys! 

We had a pretty good week! We went to Taco Bell with Robert (The big Scotish genius who speaks like 30+ languages or something) and we talked to him about the Christmas Concert and he really liked it. He said when they started singing it felt like he was getting lifted into heaven. He also says he feels this strong aura every time he goes into a Mormon Chapel. So we taught him that he was feeling the Holy Ghost and what it's job is. A little while later we invited him to hear the discussions and he agreed, So that was definitely the best part of our week. Bishop's wife gave us kind of an advent calendar. It was a 12 days of Christmas bag. It said we could open one a day until Christmas and there was one for each of us on each day, or horde them all until Christmas. But since Elder Mangus is leaving we decided to open them all yesterday night and call it our parting celebration. We were going to get all you can eat Sushi but Elder Mangus is broke so it's probably not going to happen. We got some Chick Fil'A gift cards from the Christmas bag so that'll be our substitute. Don't worry i didn't cheat on your bags. It's pretty fun opening one of those bags every day actually. So thank you for putting that together. I am going to At LEAST send you guys a card. It's been hard for me to get somewhere to find something. I haven't gotten any cool souvenirs in this area yet like my last 2 areas. We stalked one of our investigators (Johnie Cropp) at Home Depot. She has crazy hours so we decided to try and find her at work. We found her and were able to talk to her and it sounds like she should be able to get Sundays off soon. When she starts coming to church she'll be ready to be baptized. So hopefully nothing happens between now and then. The Brazilian guy Adam dropped us, which was unfortunate but I think he'll come back eventually. He really liked the church.

 

Ummmmm I can't think of anything else right now.

Happy Holidays! Can't wait to talk to you all in a couple of weeks!

Love you!

Elder Sherwood

Happy December!

The problems never seem to end huh? Do you like the new job so far?  I still can't decide what I'm going to do when I get home. Going to Montana seems like a really good idea honestly. But I also can't decide if I should just get my EMT and hop on an ambulance. I guess I'll just figure it out when I get home.

The pressure cooker is legit. We can make a big batch of soup that lasts us a week+ in less than an hour. What I've found though is that the end of the day I've been having super intense cravings. Like it's almost scary how much I'm craving something and I have no clue what it is. I went through two big boxes of Ritz crackers this week just because of the cravings I've been having. I bought a big bag of apples so I can hopefully appease myself with something healthy. I've been feeling pretty good lately besides that thought. I think I'm losing weight too which is a nice change. You'd think biking everywhere all day every day would make me pretty skinny but I gained weight in Temecula. Right now I eat a protein shake (with spinach, bananas, peanut butter, and milk) or an omelet and a banana for breakfast, and soup for lunch and dinner (if we don't have a dinner which is rare). We put black beans, lentils, cabbage, carrots, leaks, onions, potatoes, celery, and chicken in our last batch of soup. We need to make another batch and it'll probably pretty close to the same mix up but we might add sweet potatoes, because we have two of them in the fridge. So Elder Mangus bought the pressure cooker so I'll have to buy another one but they only cost 30 dollars at Wal Mart, and ever since we've been making soup I have had a pretty good amount of money. So I'll probably just go buy one when he leaves. He'll probably leave on the 13th.

The most Interesting thing that happened this week was the Christmas concert. It was pretty good. Definitely not as good the third time. But they had their best performance on the third try for sure. They had some technical difficulties on the first try and everyone kept botching their lines and playing the wrong music on the second try. The third one (which had the biggest crowd too) went pretty smoothly. We went on exchanges this week and on exchanges we ran into this guy who wanted to talk to us. He told us about all this stuff he had learned and found on his journey to find God. It was interesting because everything he said lined up with the Churches teachings. It was just a testimony builder that the church is true and is built off revelation. I tried to show him that we believe the same thing and he should check out our Church and he seemed like he might at least read the Book of Mormon, but we didn't pick him up as an investigator.  Maybe I could have been more bold but who knows.

Love you!!!Elder Sherwood

November 28, 2016

HI!

Thanksgiving was fun! The Curtis's fed us pretty well and there was a good amount of people there. Some cousins and what not and Sister Curtis's parents. Something funny that happened; the grandparents are Democrats and everyone else in the family is epublican. So they made a little game that if anyone brought up politics they would have to wear this turkey hat. They also have a daughter, Jessica, that is about to go to Thailand on a mission, which happens to be the same mission that their son Jake just got back from (same mission president and everything). So every year the Curtis's do a round robin of "I'm thankful for ___". So Jake says "in Thailand the way you say, I'm grateful for, is maga, so we should all say maga since Jessica is going to Thailand." So everyone's like uh ok and we did a bunch of " I maga family" "I maga this country" etc. The grandma takes her turn and she says how much she maga's her family and even starts to tear up a little. So then it gets to Jake (who said he wants to go last) and he says "I maga that I got grandma to say maga which actually means Make America Great Again!" So he tricked everyone and the grandma was all mad and it was pretty clever. So Jake ended up wearing  the big turkey hat. It was a good time. They had a non-member high school kid there that we're going to try and get him to come play basketball with us.

Um other than that all that really happened was a lesson with Marc, and that went ok, maybe bad. His smoking problem got brought up and our ward mission leader kind of pushed him a little hard to commit to quitting. We aren't sure how he took it and he didn't show up to church which is actually a surprise. So we hope we didn't push him away but at the same time it may have been good for him to get pushed a little bit. He seems like the kind of guy who needs it. We have a big Christmas Concert going on for our stake that bus loads of non-members come to every year. They play it on the 2nd 3rd and 4th and the Stake wants all the missionaries there all three days.

We bought a pressure cooker and have been making soup from scratch. It's super cheap and pretty good. It's probably a lot better for us than what we have been eating as well. We even made our own broth and everything out of chicken wings.

Uh I think that's it?

Love you!

Elder Sherwood

November 21, 2016

I'm excited for your new job I think it's going to be a good thing. The Elder Oaks training was cool. We all got to shake his hand and introduce ourselves. It was more of a devotional than a training . First our mission President Thomas and his wife spoke, then the area 70 and then Carl B Cook the General authority 70 and then Dallin H Oaks. President and Sister Thomas talked about how our motivation and desire to serve comes from learning about, loving, and following the Savior. The area 70 bore his Testimony of the Church and Jesus Christ. Carl B cook talked about lining ourselves up with Church (aka the leaders/general authorities). Then Elder Oaks talked to us and he said that he never prepares anything for when he goes and talks to missionaries. He listens to the program and jots down notes and impressions he gets and then talks on those. He talked about switching our teaching focus from baptism to repentance, and that true conversion comes from living the gospel (repenting) and as they repent they'll seek out baptism because they come to learn that it's true through experience. So he challenged us to understand repentance more. One of the things he said was that most people associate repentance with the bishop's office, when it really has nothing to do with the bishop's office and everything to do with the Sacrament. So he said to make sure we repent every time we take the sacrament. That's the main thing I remember him saying. I took some notes but I didn't bring them. It was cool experience. He was the one who spoke at the MTC devotional when I was there as well. I fell asleep through that one though haha. He looks a lot different in person. He looks almost buff for a what, 90 something year old? And he's full of energy. It was pretty neat to see. 

We are having Thanksgiving dinner with the Curtis family. Their daughter also has her boyfriend with her. We ate dinner there last night and taught him the Restoration. It went well. We gave him a Book of Mormon and we're waiting for a call from brother Curtis to see how it went and what he thought and if we'll teach him again. We're definitely going over for Thanksgiving no matter what though. Adam wasn't at Church yesterday so nothing much has happened recently. The gave us a training on contacting which basically was telling the missionaries to not be awkward and try to have good experiences with people even if they aren't interested. So that was interesting because we have a lot of missionaries who will like chase people down and cross busy roads and scare people just to contact them .So they said stop doing that, use your head, try and leave good impressions on people. stuff like that. It was interesting. 

Well, this is my last Thanksgiving till I come home. I have 2 more skype calls, 1 more Christmas, 1 more General Conference, and then I'm home. Weird to think about! I'm in the single digits in months left. But I'm not counting of course! ;) 

Love you! Happy Thanksgiving!

Elder Sherwood

November 14, 2016

Hi Mom!

You know you think it would be bad but we're in one of the more conservative pockets of California. We've overheard a couple complaints in like the grocery store but that's it. No riots. I think most people we talked to voted for Trump. 

Kind of a slow week. We had lessons with Marc and Adam. They're both kind of in a non-committal just here to learn mode. We're in the process of brain storming how to help them feel the Spirit more, and get that desire to act and progress. Other than that we've just been passing out invites to this huge community Christmas Concert on the 2nd 3rd and 4th of December. We have been having pretty good success actually with passing them out to less actives and non-member contacts. We are praying that some good stuff will come from it. It's weird that this is the longest I've been with a companion yet it feels like it just started. They say the last half of your mission flies by and in the moment it doesn't really seem like it but looking back it's totally true. 

That's all I got!

JK that's all I got. 

Oh I did forget something. We learned that Dalin H Oaks is the one coming this Saturday to train us. So that'll be fun.

Love you! 

Elder Sherwood

November 7, 2016

Halo.

Congrats on your job! Sounds like it's going to be pretty good! Thank you for sharing the prayer experience with me; that's super awesome! What are you going to be doing again? You probably told me earlier but I forget.  Umm.. Anyway people are saying Hillary's going to win but I also heard that there will be a Republican congress so there'll be gridlock and nothing will happen anyway. Our bishop had to tell everyone yesterday to keep politics out of their testimonies. That was pretty funny to me. There's a couple people that are REEEALLLY taking this serious. Which doesn't sound bad but you can tell that it's a little unnatural. What's Jenna's husband's name?  What temple was it at?

Transfer week! Aaannnnd we're both staying! Me and Elder Mangus for round 3. We picked up Marc Dowd this week and we taught Adam about the Sabbath day and tithing.  He pretty much knew it all already and neither of them were problems. Because he lives so far away we have decided to only teach him on Sundays. Marc's lesson was interesting. He has been learning about the church for a long time and the concerns he had were "How is the new Jerusalem going to be in Missouri?" And other stuff like that. We answered his questions and he seemed appeased. He says he knows the Book of Mormon is the word of God already. Sooo we aren't really sure what's holding him back. We're going to try and figure that out this week. The mission leadership missionaries had a conference with the headquarters missionary department and they apparently gave them some training on how to work better with members. So we'll be getting trained on that this week so it might be interesting. We also have the apostle coming in 12 days. This family named the Curtis's have a daughter in college. She has a boyfriend from high school who's not a member. He says he wants to go to General Conference with her, and the parents said that he can go if he hears all the missionary discussions when he's here for Thanksgiving. So we'll be teaching that guy in a couple weeks. We also have our second lesson with Ann on Tuesday. So we're getting pretty busy right now. 

Anyway I think that's all I got.

Love you!

Elder Sherwood

October 31, 2016
Work wise it was pretty good. We picked up Ann Gonzales and it went pretty well but she can't meet again till the 8th. So hopefully after this week we can start meeting with her more often. We're still teaching Adam but he wasn't able to come to church this week so I don't think we'll be able to meet again until Sunday. He seems to be progressing pretty well though. He loves the Book of Mormon so far and he really enjoys coming to church. We are going to teach Marc Daud on Tuesday and probably pick him up as an investigator. He seems to be really liking the church right now so I think things will go pretty smoothly. Oh so we had Elder Maynes of the Presidency of the 70 speak at our sacrament meeting yesterday. That was pretty cool but he mainly just talked about the program Just Serve. It was good but I was had gotten my hopes up I think when I heard he was speaking that he'd give some awesome talk that would blow all of our investigators' minds. But only Marc was there yesterday anyway and he seemed to really like the talk anyway so I guess it's all good! Still not sure when we're going to the Temple with April. It sounds like she's really busy but she's finished her prep class so any day now.

Things are good! Except we have no dinners this week for some reason :( Good thing you sent those cards haha! The Lord will provide! There have been multiple times when I thought we weren't going to have food but somehow we always end up being taken care of. 

That's all I got I think! 

Love you!

Elder Sherwood

October 24, 2016

Things are going pretty well! We have had two lessons with Adam that have went pretty well! We kind of soft invited him to baptism (If you come to know these things are true will you be baptized) and he said yeah so we committed him to pray and ask if it was true and we'll follow up with him on Tuesday and see if he's had any experiences. We also have an appointment with a lady named Ann Gonzalez tomorrow so we're super busy tomorrow which is cool. We are also hoping to have a lesson with Marc Daud this week and the dream is to have 3 solid progressing investigators by the end of the week. We also have a temple trip this week so we're literally swamped. But time goes by way faster when you're doing actual work and stuff instead of just driving around knocking on doors so it's definitely a good thing. I should also be going to the temple with April soon as well. Things are pretty good right now. I think is probably favorite ward by far. Me and elder Mangus are hoping we stay together for 3 transfers. It's very possible too with our new President. He's been keeping missionaries in their areas a lot longer than President Kendrick did. Which could be good and bad. Driving all day is getting annoying. I'm pretty good at parallel parking now though.

Well I think that's all!

Love you!

Elder Sherwood

October 17, 2016 

 

So we finally have a pretty firm appointment with someone. Our appointment with Adam last week fell through due to drama and confusion (he has a crush on Dora, our Brazilian ward missionary, and she shut him down pretty hard it sounds like haha) but he scheduled an appointment with us tomorrow, so we'll teach him the Restoration with 2 Portuguese translators. So that'll be interesting. He went to Church yesterday and an RM who went to Brazil gave his homecoming talk and he bore his testimony in Portuguese and I didn't see it but I guess Adam lit up when he did that. So I think he's really loving the Church right now so I think he'll be a pretty solid investigator. We're pretty excited to start teaching him even if the language barrier might make it awkward.

 I feel like I should start putting spiritual thoughts in these letters so I'll share with you a thought we've started sharing with a couple families at dinner. Alma 37: 38-45 The Liahona is compared to the Words of Christ. As we exercise faith in the scriptures (read with the purpose of getting help with something or answering a question) we will be lead through our trials and afflictions to the promised land A.K.A happiness and fulfillment. We have been kind of doing poorly at our studies recently and we are trying to do better. We have found that when we have better studies our whole day goes better and we're more motivated. The scriptures are a powerful tool that God has given us and as we learn to exercise our faith God blesses us with prosperity.

Things are looking up! Thanks for everything!

Love you!

Elder Sherwood

Crazy week holy cow! Where do I start? Our washer is broken. We have been calling the emergency maintenance guys for the past week and we only got them in here once to diagnose the problem. So we've had to give our laundry to a member to wash. While we were walking back from the leasing office trying to get someone to come look at our washer, Elder Mangus decides to climb up the side of the stairs, jumps off the railing on to the platform, and then falls over saying quietly but pretty forcefully "Ow, ow Fetch that hurts, ow!" It turns out he broke his foot from jumping off that 3 foot railing so he has a boot and a cane for 6 weeks. We now have a full time car as well. We have decided that we would definitely rather have bikes than a car because the car just adds levels of stress to your day for some reason. Oh and we got towed the same night we got the car. So yeah.... Things were pretty rough last week. But they're looking up! We are probably going to pick up a very solid Brazilian investigator on Thursday, who has been coming to church regularly the past month or 2 and has been loving it. His name is Adam I might have mentioned him I can't remember. The main problem there is going to be the language barrier. I guess I'll start praying for the gift of tongues this week haha. We are also going to hopefully start teaching Marc Daud any day now. It sounds like he wants to take things really slow though. The struggling family we've been working with is having really big  problems. The dad left and all we can really do now is comfort and share messages with the mom. It's really frustrating to see that, But it strengthens my testimony of how living the Gospel brings families closer together and helps them over come the challenges and roadblocks that come. (Helaman 5:12)

Thank you for the protein; hopefully I get it today! I need to make sure I get up and work out in the morning now that we aren't biking all day, or I'm going to get faaaat. All in all I'm doing fine, It's been hard but I'll make it. I think if I just really buckle down and discipline myself our days will go better and won't feel so long. Thanks for all you do for us Mom!  Hope you aren't too stressed!

Love you!

Elder Sherwood

Hi!

This week was kind of frustrating. Isaac doesn't pick up his phone so we don't even know if we are going to teach him anymore or not. The La Costa Ward elders have a priest in their ward that knows him so they're going to try and set something up. Marc Daud is going to get invited to take the lessons next week. We are meeting with Maddie this Sunday as well. We thought we were going to be teaching a lot but it hasn't really happened yet. Hopefully we can start picking things up. Me and Elder Mangus are staying together for another transfer (big surprise.. I've only had 2 transfer companions), but i'm excited. We get along really well. 

Sorry this letter is so short. Nothing really happened this week. We've been biking like crazy so I'm pretty sore, but other than that noooot much.

That;s all I got 

Love you!

Elder Sherwood

We had a good week.  We picked up 2 new investigators. I think I told you about them last week. One is Isaac and the other is Maddie. Isaac is a 16-year-old football player who has a lot of faith in Christ and is open minded about our religion and if we can get a hold of him a little more often will progress pretty fast, I think. We are teaching him tonight at a park with one of the priests in our ward. Maddie is Abby Rowen's (a laurel in our ward) friend. We taught her the Restoration and she agreed to hear all of the discussions. She says she is only doing it for educational purposes at this time but is keeping an open mind about it. She is reading the Bible all the way through for the first time and is then going to read the Book of Mormon. So she may or may not have potential. You never know though. The Spirit is a powerful influence. We still have a couple potentials we want to follow up with, so we may be picking up a few more soon.

I got the box. The brownies were fine, probably because they're super manufactured. I let Elder Mangus eat some Oreos so then he took it upon himself to eat 7 of the 10 packs of Oreos this week. So those are gone. I think the candy's gone too. So the box lasted about 2 weeks. Pretty good right? Thanks for all the stuff I really appreciate it! I can't think of anything else right now 

Love you!

Elder Sherwood

September 12 letter

This week was pretty good, especially yesterday. We set a pretty solid appointment for next Sunday at a dinner appointment yesterday. A Family called the Rowen's daughter brought a friend and Elder Mangus invited her and she gave us like a pretty excited "Yeah I'd like that". It blew me away. She says she's Catholic and pretty strong in her faith so I guess we'll see how it goes. We're going to teach her and her mom in the Rowen's house next Sunday. We have an appointment with a 16-year-old who the YSA Elders are passing off to us. So we'll see how that goes as well. Hopefully we can see 2 or 3 baptisms next transfer! That would be cool.

This member gave me this pretty cool hat. That was a bonus.

 

I'm probably going to go through the Fort Collins temple when I get home. 

 

Love you!

Elder Sherwood

September 6, 2016

It's been a good week! We have a lot of potential investigators and referrals. Hopefully we will have a solid teaching pool by the end of this week. I am really enjoying this transfer. Elder Mangus is probably my favorite companion. Nothing really specifically cool happened this week. We got to go to this mansion place in the Olivenhein ward for P-day and play basketball/volleyball and eat pizza. That was cool.

Sorry this letter's so short I can't think of anything. My legs are dead.  We bike up hills like crazy and Elder Mangus is like super human fast. It's unnatural how fast he can go on his big mountain bike.

Well Happy Labor day! (whatever that means..)

Love you!

Elder Sherwood

 

August 29 letter

Hey it's going good! The ward's great, they feed us well and our ward mission leader is really involved. We've able to get a lot of work done already.Our apartment kind of sucks haha. It's really small and it gets really warm. Me and my companion are getting along really well though! We're having a lot of fun together so that's nice. His name is Elder Mangus and he's been out 6 weeks less than I have. It's pretty hard to believe I've been out a year already. I don't feel one of the old guys on the mission yet.

We've met some pretty cool people. This one guy's name is Robert. He's a really big 70 year old Scottish man with a pretty thick accent. He's cool because he literally doesn't care what anybody thinks of him. He's also a certified genius. He's in MENSA and is fluent in 11 different languages. He lives right next to our really nice ward librarian and they took us out to dinner. We ate at this really overpriced restaurant with them and he was yelling racist stuff, we talked about boiling babies and eating them in the Old Testament, all sorts of weird stuff. Probably one of the most interesting dinners I've gone to. Another interesting person is Jonesy Jones. She is a recent convert and is a complete hippy, but she's also a big computer nerd. She's obsessed with organic everything. All of her food has to be organic. She calls it God's food God's way. She has a huge garden in her backyard.  She's awesome though super nice. The missionaries who taught her though seemed to have done kind of a poor job because she doesn't really know much at all about the Gospel, or at least like the basic unique things about our church like the Priesthood and Sacrament. So we're going to start reteaching her. 

The ward's really cool. The Librarian brings a ton of baked goods and hands them out after church. Our bishop's really nice. I haven't met very many people yet, but that's ok. We get fed pretty much every day and people keep handing us money. So things are good! Hopefully we can start picking up some solid investigators. 

We had a zone conference with a member of the 70 on Friday. His name was Benjamin De Hoyos. He's a Mexican 70 who spoke a little English. Our mission president acted as his translator. It was a good conference but honestly it was hard to focus with the language barrier. 

That's all I got!

I'm going to send some pictures.  I'm forwarding a group photo of the all the kids I was in the MTC with that we took on Friday. Only 3 are missing from the group, and one of those 3 went home. 

Love you!

Elder Sherwood

August 22, 2016

Hola!

It's been kind of a rough week haha. So, to start things off, I forgot my proselyting bag, my bedding, and my alarm clock in Temecula. Well I actually didn't forget my pros bag but the missionary I was replacing was going up to Temecula. So my bag got put back into the car and taken up to Temecula. So it took me until like Thursday to get my pros bag and Friday to get my bedding. I slept in my companion's sleeping bag and used my hoody and a towel as a pillow. My companion's name is Elder Mangus. He's from Montana. He's kind of a red neck who's really good with computers. He's cool.  We get a long pretty well. Encinitas is really hilly. I've been sweating way more here than in Temecula. And because it's humid, I can't dry off. It's been getting better though. Cooling down a bit. We have 1 investigator, but she can't meet that often. We had a pretty good lesson on Wednesday on the Gospel. She's Catholic but is disappointed with her Church's community and really admires ours and has a few Mormon friends. So that's what made her open. I think she's hiding it from her kids and husband, though, so that's a little concerning. But we asked her straight up she wants to know if this is true and she said yes so we're hopeful. We meet her again hopefully on Wednesday. 

That;s all I can think of!

Love you!

Elder Sherwood

August 15, 2016

Hi

Staying for another transfer........

 

Just kidding I'm going to the beach!!!! I'm getting transferred to Encinitas 1st Ward in the Del Mar Zone. it's like a half really rich town, and half super ghetto town. I'm not sure what my area consists of. But I'm pretty sure my apartment's really nice! I took some pictures with some families and individuals in my ward yesterday. But we were in a hurry this morning and I forgot my camera so I'll send them next week. 

We have been finding like crazy for some reason right before I leave. Catherine Meeker (lady who was pretty much ready to be baptized but then dropped off the face of the earth) started talking to us again. We found a highschooler who said his family's been looking for a church yesterday, and we also have Aaron and Becky as well. As soon as I leave this ward's going to blow up haha.. I've been praying and I feel like God just w ants to make sure that I'm loving people and not basing my success off numbers. As well as patience. Oh well i'm ready to move on. I'm going to miss the elders in our district but it turns out there's some cool people going to Del Mar with me. So that'll be fun.

Anything else? I can't think of anything

I hit my year mark this month. That's a crazy thought. I still feel like I just came out. 

Love you!

Elder Sherwood

 

August 7, 2016

Hola, como estas?

What happened this week.... We picked up a new investigator. That was cool. We just contacted him outside our apartments and he said yeah come on by tomorrow. He seems pretty solid. He says he can make to church this weekend so that'll be cool. We hope that we can teach him at least twice this week. Transfer day is a week from tomorrow. We get transfer calls on Saturday. If I stay I'd be really surprised. It happens though. So who knows? We helped TJ get a refrigerator from this guy, move it into her barn and install it. She has people coming from all over the world to volunteer on her ranch somehow. So she had this pretty attractive German girl helping her train horses and this girl from Utah, who is obsessed with essential oils. It was an interesting day. It's going to be hard to move away from the farm to be honest. It's a nice alternative to the regular day to day missionary work we do.

That's all I got I think.

Love you! Hope you get all your stuff fixed!

Elder Sherwood

August 1, 2016, letter

We picked up 2 new investigators. A really cool mom of a family of 5 named Lauralei, and a really cool deaf lady named Becky. We had talked to Lauralei a couple times already and I love their family. I was really hoping we would pick them up as investigators. Becky also seems pretty nice. Becky seems to have had a rough time with her husbands, and I'm not sure if she's full deaf or not because she answers the door when we ring the door bell. Lauralei we might see tonight and Becky tomorrow. We are still trying to get the members to get excited about missionary work. We have 2 families that are trying to invite people to an FHE at their house so hopefully we can follow through with them.

2 weeks left in the transfer and that will make 6 months in Temecula. It's been nice here but I'd be lying if I said I wasn't ready to leave. I love missionary work but the 4th transfer in an area just seems to be my point of exhaustion. That might be bad to say. I don't know. Send me back to the beach where it's cool!!!!

Love you guys!

Elder Sherwood

 

 

July 25, 2016

This week was good. It was literally just a bunch of service. I've told you about the farm we work on right? We spent most of the week working there because TJ's land lord surprise screwed her over right before she went out of town for a family reunion and told her she had to move all of her horse pens/corals to the back of the farm. So we spent 3 full days taking apart her pens and fences and moving them to the back of the farm. Did she contact you? she said she wanted to get your facebook so she could tag photos of me on the farm for you. Work wise not much happened. We had some good member visits and are starting to gain a little momentum (as in people inviting their friends to their FHE or activities, not necessarily anything to do with us), so hopefully that can turn into solid referrals.

I forwarded you some pictures of the mansion we went to a couple weeks ago. 

Ha everyone's jamming out to 21 pilots? That's kind of funny. I miss music....

That's all I can think of right now

Love you! 

Elder Sherwood