February 29, 2016

It's pretty warm here but it's super flat. It apparently gets a lot hotter in other times of the year so hopefully I'm not around for that. But yeah Carlsbad was super hilly. Here we pretty much coast all day. We have a pretty good sized teaching pool. We weren't really able to see that many people this week though. Hopefully we have a busier week this week. My companion is elder Sharp. He's cool, just a chilax guy who likes to work hard. Nothing to complain about so far. The zone I'm in is full of Jakes. Like really disobedient people. It doesn't really make sense to me why you'd spend so much time and money to come out and all you do is mess around and be dumb. Oh well. Hopefully I can just avoid it.  We have to email from a library. It's really skletchy right now. There's a guy right next to me begging for library cards. Don't know why he doesn't just go get one. All in all the first week was ok. I hope things pick up. This place looks A LOT like Colorado. It's dry, there's a bunch of mountains, and a lot of suburbs. Looks pretty much just like the area where we moved to. Don't know if that's good or bad.

Well I really don't want to sit here any longer so I'm going to leave. Sorry it was short. Hopefully I can get a laptop to rent and we can all go into a study room.

Well see ya

Love you guys

Elder Sherwood

February 22, 2016

I'm leaving!!!! 6 months have come and gone and I'm finally switching areas haha. I'm really going to miss this ward though. Lots of great people. The bishop here is so awesome, he fits the role perfectly. He's an older guy who served as a mission president in Austria and he's super spiritual and loves everyone and is the best story teller ever. I'm going to miss April a lot too. I hope she continues to stay strong in the Gospel. I'm being transferred to the Lake Skinner Ward in Temecula. What I've heard about it so far is that it's super flat, no trees, and ridiculously hot. But Temecula apparently has a huge Mormon community. 1 out of every 20 people. That's really big. My new companion's name is Elder Sharp and I'm leaving tomorrow at 2pm. Oh so I know this because they changed the transfer procedures. When I first came we did transfer meetings. Everyone getting transferred went to the mission office in Vista (the place you mail stuff to) and President Kendrick assigns new companions from the pulpit.  We also sang some hymns, heard the people leaving bear their testimony, stuff like that. They did away with that after my second transfer, though. Now we just go straight to our new area. Kind of interesting. I think they didn't want the members to have to wait around at transfer meeting. But, yep, oing to go die of heat exhaustion in Temecula! Sounds great! Just kidding.  I really am excited. 

I'll go take a picture of the outside of the apartment for you. Might not get a chance to send it to you. We did get the door fixed. So we all have our laundry. Anything else? I can't think of anything .Not much happened this week besides transfers. April bought me a notebook that was nice. She bought me a tie awhile ago too. I'll take a picture of that for you. I'm trying to set goals to improve myself physically and spiritually. Well it's more of an activity for self improvement I found in a talk Elder Peterson gave to me. It said to write down 1 thing you shouldn't be doing but are, and 1 thing you should be doing but aren't. I did it twice though, so my two things I wrote for shouldn't be doing are talking bad about others and not keeping the schedule (wake up 6:30, studies at 8 out by 10 etc.) The things I should be doing but aren't I put eating better and thinking positive. So I'm going to put those things somewhere I can see them and then pray for it every day and try my best to overcome those things. I also need to focus more on others and the work. We had a goal of 101 baptisms as a mission and I realized that I was really good at praying for that goal at the start of the quarter but I've stopped somewhere along the way. So I need to get better at sustaining my prayers. I need to work on a lot of stuff geeze... 

Oh yeah so on Saturday the zone leaders called and actually said I was going to Escondito (which is pretty much the ghetto area) and then a couple hours later an AP calls and tells me I got switched to Temecula. It's been getting up to the 90s in Carlsbad haha. I'm going to die. T__T

Anyway that's all I got for realsies

Love you guys!

Elder Sherwood

Feburary 16, 2016

Happy Singles Awareness Day! I should have sent you some chocolates, sorry :( 

 

I'm doing pretty good. We are not really having much luck right now haha. We have to push Aiyana's baptism back because we haven't met her parents yet and she hasn't been able to come to church in awhile. Steven, the guy who was introduced to us by one of the youth, was not really interested in getting baptized or joining a church until after he moves out of his parents' house. David came to church this week so that was good! We told him about the Priesthood and worthiness and how it would be him that baptizes his kids and that seemed to strike home with him. SOooo this week: we want to meet Aiyana's mother at least, even if it's just a phone call; we want everyone at church this week (especially Aiyana and David); we want to talk to Aiyana's Mom and get both of them to this Young Women's initiation thing; and we want to meet all the potential investigators we have found. This is probably the last week I'll be here. So I really want to just be bold, take chances and do all I can to leave Elder Peterson with some work to do when I leave. 

I'm excited for Grandma and Grandpa I think they're going to have a great time. I'm also glad Bandit is feeling better, I was worried. Oh so our porch door that has our washer and drier in it has for some reason stopped being able to open. So we can't do laundry. I don't have any clean pants, Elder Peterson has no clean garments or bed sheets ( they're stuck in the washer and drier LOL). Oh I took pictures of our apartment I'll put them on dropbox.

 

February 8, 2016

I knew they'd win. I'm gone and can't watch, of course they'd win. I'm cursed.

The work seems to be picking up here right before I leave. Which I probably will. 6 months seems to be the max people stay in this area. I'm going to miss this area but I kind of feel ready to leave.

I'm a little stressed. David hasn't come to church in 2 weeks and we are worried that we pushed him too hard. We are going to go over this week and see if we can figure out how we can help him. Maybe slow everything down a bit. Did I tell you about Aiyana? April's daughter's friend? She has been taking the lessons and really wants to be baptized but we can't seem to get her to Church, which is a problem because church is a requirement for baptism. We also haven't been able to meet her mom yet which we really need to do as well. I'm going to miss the crap out of this family. I hope April continues to grow stronger in the Gospel when I leave. And I really hope David doesn't go less active...

So yeah. stressed. 

We're  meeting with a senior in high school on Wednesday who came to church with some girls from our ward on Wednesday, so that's some good news. But it's complicated because he lives in C3's ward boundaries (we're C4). He's going over to the Holdaway's house and we're probably going to teach him the first discussion. But if he's legitimately interested it will get complicated, because he lives in C3 but all of his friends are in C4 and he might not want people going over to his house it sounds like. So yeah.. complicated. We told the sister missionaries and they are like desperate for people to teach, so we don't really want to take away from their teaching opportunities and all we really want is what's best for him. It doesn't really matter to me which ward he's in as long as he's happy and can get the support he needs. So that also adds to my stress sort of.

I'll let you know next week how stuff starts turning out.

Love you guys!

Elder Sherwood

February 1, 2016

So is that the new temple that they've been building in Provo? And is it an actual temple? What does City Center Temple mean? I've actually been feeling the want to go to the temple for the past couple weeks. The San Diego Temple is very nice, inside and out. The Celestial room is huge and really white. I felt this rush of energy when I stepped into it the first time. (only time I guess).  Hopefully we can go next transfer.

The Superbowl day is going to be hard haha. I still can't believe that as soon as I can't watch football anymore, that's when they go to the Superbowl. The same thing happened with Coronado. The year after I leave they go and win the state championships. I must be cursed. Nate looks like he's grown. Or maybe that's just his hair.

I hope Grandma and Grandpa are safe and I hope they have success on their mission. I know the Lord will protect them and will bless them and their family for their desire to serve. I hope Great Grandma Kidman stays cheerful and hopefully recovers. 

This week we had a long term less active family (minus the dad) come to church. It felt good because our teaching pool has been pretty dry for awhile and it was nice to see something happen. We've visited them a couple times and it's awesome just how much happier the mother looked this week. I hope their light can help the Dad come back as well. 

 

One thing about missionary work is that it's hard. Some areas are just busting at the seams with new people that want to hear the message of the Restored Gospel, but some areas just don't. Some missionaries will spend their mission in both types of areas, some might teach and baptize tons of people their whole mission, some might only baptize 1 or 2 or none at all. Is this what determines the missionary's success? I don't think it is. I think the point of a mission is not a quest of numbers or statistics, but rather a spiritual journey where you learn how to work hard, but also learn how much help the Lord can give you as you put your trust in him to make up the rest. So I think the key to a successful mission is to not base it off of the results you are having, but on the Testimony you are gaining. And you gain testimony as you turn outward and strive to be more Christlike, because that's when you feel the Spirit. So being a missionary is really all about forgetting yourself and seeing how you can leave the area you are in better than when you found it. Sometimes it's when you share the Gospel with someone who is ready to hear it. Sometimes it's when you give service to someone who needs it. That's what I've kind of learned while we have been lacking investigators. Teaching is awesome though I love teaching people. 

Uhhh that's all I got.

Love you guys!

Elder Sherwood