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