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