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