Christmas/Skyping

Dear Family,

I had a wonderful Christmas week and pretty much got most stuff in while skyping. It was sure good to SEE everyone and to hear that everything is about the same, except the fact that Nanna Bear is getting older! Holy cow!! Other than Brianna, the others looked about the same.

So for Christmas Eve, we went over to a home and had Cornish gamehen? I have no clue how to spell that and I just straight sounded it out, but it's just a little chicken, I had some rice and artichokes, which were my first time having those and it was different but pretty good. We had this little candle burning at the top of our plates so it was like a fancy dinner with them. The husband had his sisters family come over and they invited one of their friends from my last ward, so it was really good seeing them again.

For Christmas we went over to another families home and spent most of our time there. They are a crazy, loud family. They had some of their kids over so there were like 15 people there. We had soup and lots of cookies and ice cream. We are going to try to teach one of their daughters who is like mid 20's. She moved back in with them for a few months so we'll try and teach her. She is pretty crazy and super funny, she's different than most of her family, she's kinda red-neck. Her and her sister do this syrup challenge every Christmas, so we joined in! We had to see who could drink the little bottle of syrup the fastest and the winner would get to go first in Candy-Land. I took 3rd, my comp lost and we sure felt that syrup after. It was fun!

S had her baptism interview and she passed!! So we should be having a baptism this coming Saturday! It's going to be so awesome! She is super solid and is ready. We found out she's only 20 years old! Kinda weird seeing someone our age married and in the military and expecting! 

We have interviews with our mission president, president Weston on Wednesday and for New Year's we will most likely be going over to our bishop's place and chill there with S and D, so that will be fun!!

It's also snowing!! Finally getting some snow after Christmas!! Well, I hope I wasn't too weird Skyping, I figured I was a bit so hopefully it wasn't too bad. Well, have a good week everyone!! 

Take Care!!

Love, Elder Searle

Elder Searle and Sister Weston at Christmas Zone Conference

Christmas Week

Dear Family,

I can't believe Christmas is only 3 days away and there is still no snow here, what the heck?! It's been raining a lot but not cold enough for snow, so looks like we won't be getting any for Christmas...oh well.  We have been enjoying our life in our new apartment, it's still really nice because we won't be buying any food for a while, still haven't made a dent in all the food the sisters left here. We've been getting a lot of food from members that went home for Christmas, so we were given 3 gallons of milk and like everything that was sitting out on a counter, like bread, chips etc. So even if we did make a dent in the food, all of this food given to us has filled it back up.

We had our Christmas Zone Conference and it went well. We all had to get a white elephant that was under $5 so I found some Spam playing cards, they had a recipe on the back of each card of something you could make with Spam and had pictures of Spam on every card, so kind of funny. The white elephant I received were some Andes mints and some pens....not really a white elephant gift but I sure did enjoy the mints! :)

We met a really interesting guy last week, he's an older guy and he has hundreds of G.I. Joes!! He's also in a Renaissance group so he make his own chain mail and has like 20 different daggers, swords, axes and mallets etc. Kinda scary and creepy, he lives in a basement that is made for short people, so I have to duck my head the whole time. He's into horror movies and scary masks but he is a cool guy. We have seen him twice, we did get him to start reading the Book of Mormon again so that's good!

We went to the temple on Friday, so makes for a great week! The temple is always the best place to go and we had a great time. After wards, a member payed for us to go somewhere to eat so we went to Time-Out Chicken and we were the only white people there. Then some other Elders showed up so we had 12 white men in suits ordering chicken, they sure have some good chicken!

We had our Christmas program at church and the choir did a pretty good job. We had a much better turn out then all of our practices so that made it a lot better!

For Christmas, I have no idea when I will Skype, we were invited to a home on Christmas Eve and hopefully by then I'll know our plans. I was also invited to a home for Christmas, so I'll Skype from there. It will probably be the craziest, funniest Christmas I've ever had....they have kids in town and are just out of control and so funny! I'm really looking for to that.

Merry Christmas Everyone!!!!

Remember the reason for the season!!

Love, Elder Searle

new home/new car

Dear Family,

So I'm going to make this email short and to the point seeing that we have to hurry. So we got a new apartment because of more missionaries going home than coming out. So we moved into the Fairview sisters apartment and our old one is getting closed. We are in the nicest and most expensive apartment in the mission. That even came from Sister Coleman who is over the housing for the mission. They have a lease with this apartment till February, so I will most likely be moving again in a few months. The nice thing is that the sisters left EVERYTHING there!! Our fridge is just so full and so much food and candy everywhere! We have so much, our new place is also 7 miles south of our area so...drum roll... we got a car full time!! Know what's better....I'M DRIVING!! and to make it even better....we got a Chevy Cruise, the funnest car to drive in the mission.

My companion, Elder Jacobson can't drive because they won't let you drive your last transfer, so he is chillin while riding shot gun. He isn't the district leader for his last transfer and we got a car full time and the nicest apartment, he says it's like his retirement home since he leaves for home in January!! We celebrated the night we moved in our new place with some sparking cider. :)

So our investigator wasn't baptized on Saturday because she said she prayed and wants to go to church a few more times, like all 3 hours. We moved her baptism back to Jan. 3rd, we aren't worried about her at all, she is super solid. We did go to the sister's baptism on Saturday and it was cool.

Also found a super solid 15 year old Hispanic kid, he keeps texting us for more things to read in the Book of Mormon so that's awesome!! We will teach him sometime this week.

My new address is-

14222 Constitution Circle #22
Bellevue, Nebraska 68123

 We also had a family sign up to feed us on Christmas, not sure what time yet, but we'll get that figured out.

That's about my week, lots of packing and cleaning out our old apartment and moving in. Also, sorry to the people that have emailed me and I haven't gotten back, emails are starting to pile up and I don't have time to email everyone. Grrr!!

Love you all!!
Elder Searle

Christmas Party

Dear Family,


We had our ward party Christmas party on Saturday and it went pretty well. My comp Elder Jacobson played the guitar and sang and all of us missionaries sang and we did meh. I had a 16 yr old come up and ask me "singing isn't your strong point is it?" Well.....NO IT ISN'T!! But I'm trying, so tell the choir back home that I still can't sing. We had our investigator there that should be getting baptized this Saturday!!! So that will be awesome!!We also went around with our ward mission leader and he was talking about the expensive old school razors and about expensive shaving kits. He sold Elder Jacobson on it, but I'm like nope! Not spending all that money even if it will last me my whole life.


On Wednesday we went on exchanges with the Papillion Elders and they changed the rule so both of them came to our area, so we blitzed our area. It worked out well for us because we got to both go looking for new people, but it also took 2 days of work so later that week we didn't have anyone else to try because we tried them already! So I was with Elder Jenkins and we had a good time, we taught our soon to be baptized investigator the word of wisdom and keeping the Sabbath day holy and we did a pretty good job.


On Thursday, on our way to take the other elders home, we used some of our lunch hour and went to the Cheese Haus and looked at expensive cheeses and got to sample some things. It's a tiny cottage log house building, we tried some cheeses, sausages and also some frog balls and they were all pretty good.


So this week will be a little different, one of the Papillion Elders got his Visa and it going to Brazil, so Elder Jenkins will be spending the next 3 1/2 days with us until transfers on Friday. Elder Jacobson and I will most likely be staying together, but we are getting a new apartment. So we might be moving into our new one on Friday, so don't send anything this week or else I might not get it! :O


That's about it, nothing too crazy. It has been warmish here to and it is so weird for December! I even mowed a yard the other day, mostly for the leaves, but still. I thought only grandpa would mow in December, but I guess others do to! :P


Love you all!
Elder Searle

Thanksgiving Day pics

Food Coma

Dear Family,

Thanksgiving...oh man...did I wobble after that! So we had 4 Thanksgiving meals that we went to. Our first meal was with a Grandma and her two friends. We had lunch with them and we went early to help with the food. We had a good time and we tried really hard not eat too much, we had small servings and when we went back for seconds, we tried to be good and then the pies came out! I ate way too much! Then we went to another home and had a crazy time there, they have 5 young sons with 2 of them being twins. Their dad was hilarious trying to discipline them.

Then we went to the guy that offered us the ride in the snow like a couple three weeks ago and we had a blast there. They had neighbors over and they know about the Mormons and everything we believe in and were super nice. After we ate we talked to them and we shared the "His is the Gift" video with them. Then the wife started to pack us up some food from her pantry. She was pulling out all sorts of food. We won't have to go shopping for quite a while now with all the food we got.

We finished up our night at a part member family's house and we got there a little late so they had already eaten, which was fine by us. We then had more pie!! So that was my Thanksgiving, got plenty of food and ate WAY too much, but it was worth it.

Sunday....man was it cold!! We were out trying to finish off our night and it was SOOOO cold! The wind was just a killer. I had more stuff on then my companion but we ended up running home so we could warm up faster and sooner. It was the first time that I was actually so cold that I ran home.

We also met a guy with the coolest name ever....John James Peoples III, every time we say his name we have to say ALL of it, coolest name ever!! :)

On Monday when visiting a family, they had a banana and gorilla costume, so that explains those pictures! :)

Since it's Thanksgiving Week I just want to say a few things that I am thankful for. I'm thankful for my awesome mom who makes sure that I know that she loves me and will do anything for me and for an awesome Papi who has taught me how to "make things work" and has helped me with life lessons. I'm thankful for my awesome brothers and sisters, even if T-Rav is cooler than me. I'm thankful for all their letters, especially Maya's awesome letters and all her emoticons. I'm thankful for my grandparents who have helped me out with buying new clothing and for teaching me to work hard and "not run with the weed-eater! I'm thankful for the love and kindness that everyone shows me and for all the emails and letters that I get. I'm thankful for this gospel and everything that it can bring to us and for the chance I have to be on a mission.

I hope you all had an awesome Thanksgiving!!

Love you all!!

Elder Searle

Thanksgiving Week

What's up family and friends!! We had zone training this week and Elder Jacobson had a musical number at it, so we spent a few hours for a few days at the church so he could practice singing and playing the piano. So I just walked around the whole church, they were re-doing the gym floors so I couldn't shoot around or anything. I also went on exchanges with the zone leaders and I went up to Gretna with Elder Clark who is our new ZL and we had a pretty fun time.

We saw some awesome people up in an area called Ashland and we saw some people that I knew from seeing them before. We had a good talk with both.

Yesterday (Sunday) was by far the busiest Sunday I have had. We just had one thing after another. We had church and then we helped a member go to Plattsmouth and pick up a snow blower that someone just gave him, so we drove with him, then had to hurry back for ward correlation, then went to choir practice, then had to hurry over for a dinner appointment (which was super good, we ate like Kings!) and then our night was over. It sure made the day go by super fast.

So for Thanksgiving so far, we have a lunch and 2 dinners set up with a possible 3rd dinner, we are going to be plump for sure!! :) One of our dinners is with a part member house so that's going to be super cool.

Love you all!!

Elder Searle