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