Transfer #16 in Seward, Nebraska

Dear Family,

So yep yep!! I'm staying another transfer in the good ol' open land of Seward. Elder Pacheco and I are still together and the only thing that changed is that I'm now a District Leader! It's still our same district, there's us, the Mahoney Elders and the zone leaders that always show up. So in Mahoney is Elder Colby, who has been there a transfer and his boy, so you have me, who's been out 21 1/2 months, Colby with his 15 months, Pacheco with his 2 months and the newbie with 4 days. The only downside to being a DL is that now I have give a training every week..oh well...it will be good. So now that I'm DL, I think that I'm going to stay in Seward till I go home, which will only be one more transfer after this one. It's like 70% of staying, which is a little better than the 50/50. I sure hope I can stay, it would kinda suck to leave behind all the friends I have made here and to go "die" pretty much in a totally new area with people that I don't know. So who knows! We will just see what the good Lord has in plan for me.

It's getting really weird thinking that I'm almost done, I'm trying hard not to dwell on it but man....11 more weeks, that's only 11 more P-days, that's less than 100 days and then the "oh man, what am I going to do when I get home etc." Just a lot more thoughts coming to me now AND MY GOSH my boy is getting so much greenie mail!!!! Just Saturday, he got 6 letters and a package. What did I get? A wedding announcement for Elder Bywater....that's not going to help me keep my mind on my mission!! Lol!!

We did a ton of driving last week, in 2 days we went about 300 miles cause we had to use up our miles. We drove to a lot of different towns, you can look them up on the map if you'd like. We went to Beaver Crossing, Utica (twice),  Ulysses (twice), Waco, Bee, Staplehurst, Gresham, Seward and Milford. Our car looks like we went through a car wash that spat out bugs, it's sooooo bad!! We washed it last week so we have to wait a little longer before we can wash it again, that and we went down a lot of country roads so it's just sprayed with dust and crap everywhere.

On Sunday our Branch President gave my companion and I the stuff to help C read. My companion and I were looking at it and both of us, yes BOTH of us were like "I don't even remember what some of this means?!" We are going to be great teachers...I mean you guys know how well I do at reading and spelling. Just ask my mom what my emails look like before she proofreads them! Lol!

We went to a party last week, Brandy invited us to her boyfriends birthday party so we went. I didn't realize but we have gone to a lot of their parties. We went to both of her parents birthday parties, 4th of July party and now this. If we didn't like them before, we sure do now! :P  I kid....they are so awesome!!! We had a good time, free food and good ol' company. It brought back some good ol' memories just chillin' up in the mountains with a bonfire and just chillin' on the tailgate. To be honest, it made me trunky...oh man I've missed the whole camping and chillin' outdoors.

Oh I forgot about the service we did!!! So we planted 5 trees and helped the Liesky's move for two days, not all day but like 6 hours of service. We helped Merlin plant trees then he was so kind to take up to the Senior Center where he eats lunch. So we got our plate of salad and I thought I was going to burst, I made it stretch to 3 pokes of my fork. Then they brought out the main course of a baked potato, carrots and some meat, we think it was turkey or a roast beef thing, couldn't tell. But Wait!! It gets better!! For our dessert we had 3 WHOLE...yes 3 whole slices of peaches. It was so funny and my companion was soooooo hungry. It was a good little story at least. My companion sat in Henry's chair and I sat in Bonnie's :)

I think that covers our week. I tried to make this one different than just throwing out what I did. Tried to throw some more thoughts and stuff into this email. So Tuesday we are going to Grand Island for Zone Conference, so that will be awesome!! They might make me do something at ZC though.

Love you all, have a great week!!

Cool quote thing I found in a bathroom..it's nothing to grand, that and I mean it was in the bathroom but it said "The happiest times in our lives do not come from personal possessions and wealth, but rather they come from our relationships with our family and friends." I can testify of that, it's been awesome seeing and helping others to become happier and just helping out and hanging with all the friends I have made out here. Money can't buy that kind of stuff.

Elder Searle

Wave

Hi Family!!!

This week we were able to talk to C twice, the first time went well. The branch bought us a reading program that we can use with him to help him learn how to read. We haven't got it yet but it's all scripture based so we'll see how it goes. The first time we saw him we talked about the gospel of Jesus Christ and just gave him the basic run through then we talked about faith and repentance with him. Then we saw him again last night and he was higher than a kite, he was so stoned it wasn't even funny. It made us upset because he said he was done with all that. So we just talked a little bit with him then we just went on our way. Hopefully he is back to normal next time we see him.

A funny little tale of how exciting our day can get, we had lunch at McDonald's and the guy helping us is a youth from the branch. My companion ordered first then I went. I was just joking around and asked him for a kids toy and I got one!! I took my food over and my companion saw my Bat-mobile Javelin Shooter and he was jealous! lol! 5 minutes later he got one so both of us were messing around with our Bat-mobiles. :)  See how exciting our days can be? 

So this week is transfers, I'm pretty sure Elder Pacheco and I will stay together for at least one more transfer. They normally train for 2 transfers. Elder Martinez is going home on Wednesday so I wrote in my planner to call him on Sunday. Well, he called me Friday night and we talked for about 45 min. Some cool advice he gave me was "God didn't call you on a 21, 22, 23 month mission, but 24, keep enduring, keep trying and finish strong!" I thought that was pretty awesome. We brought up some good ol' memories and talked about what he is going to do when he gets home. He lives in Kaysville so pretty close to us and one day we will see each other again, but it was really awesome to talk with him.

Friday and Saturday were the Milford Fun Days and we went to the Pancake Feed and went to the car show...twice..It's pretty small but it was pretty fun. We missed the parade because Lieskys came back into town and they needed some help so we helped tear down some wallpaper (good thing we had practice with that a week or two ago) tore some part of the ceiling down cause of water damage and helped paint a wall.

The other day I was like "I wonder how much of the New Testament I have read?" So I looked and I'm almost done with it!! I'm in Acts right now. Hopefully I can finish reading the Book of Mormon and the New Testament before I go home. I just finished Alma today. :)

Here's a cool quote Dallin just sent me,

"What are your eccentricities, if any? I think nearly all people have some. If so, then go to work. Classify them, weigh them, corral them and eliminate one at a time until you are a very normal person. "The Teachings of Spencer W. Kimball)

Anyway, hope you all have a good week, love you all!!! :D

Love, Elder Searle

 Zone Photo

Elder Linford and I, he goes home Wednesday

Milford Fun Days Car Show

Awesome Week!!!

Hey hey everyone!!! So I'm going to quickly recap what went down this week. So our neighbor Mark has been joining us in the mornings for our workouts, seeing how we now have a weight bench outside our apartment. Mostly Elder Pacheco and him use it because I'm inside doing stuff but we have been able to share some lessons with him while working out so that's been pretty legit. We also helped a less active tear down wallpaper in a room and we were there for about 8 hours. They fed us lunch and dinner so that was fun. He also gave us some jerky and some Slim Jims so I can't complain. The Dolzals, the family that let me Skype home for Christmas, came back from their trip to England and they brought us back some English Chocolate!!! We got 2 bags and they were gone in not even 2 days...THEY WERE SOOO GOOD!!! We got to listen how their trip went and they showed us all the pictures they took and oh man, I would love to take a trip to England one of these days.

So a cool story, we have been meeting a kid named C in Milford. We have only seen him twice but he really wants to change, we set him for baptism on Sept. 12th so hopefully we can help him reach that goal. He is 20 years old and has to do 59 hours of community service and he moved to Milford to hopefully stay out of trouble. But we found out that he doesn't know how to read, like at all, so we are going to order a thing for him through the branch and we are going to start helping him learn how to read! We'll see how it goes!!

We had the Seward Fair going on so we decided to see what all was going on. Well, we walked into this big ol' tent and the Peterson Farm Bros were there. Look them up on youtube, I have seen some of their videos before so it was really neat to see them live, they make funny parody videos, one of them is called "Farmer Style" It's pretty funny so look them up. Other than that, that was our week. Some great things are happening here in Seward and it's going to get even better!!!

Love, Elder Searle 

Visit to the ER

Dear Family,

Hello everyone!! So yep...we had to go to the ER last week. We were helping the Liesky's move and Elder Pacheco and I were tying everything down in the back of the truck when the bungie cords we were using broke and it came back and smacked my companion right in the forehead and it came back and smacked me on the shoulder. So we went to get his head checked out. We went and they just glued it, the dr. said it was borderline needing stitches but they just glued it. In Nebraska you have to be 19 and since he was 18 they had to call his parents before they could do anything to him. It was kinda funny because he couldn't remember their numbers and the office had the wrong numbers because his parents changed their numbers so it took a little bit before we got it all worked out.

Another cool thing that happened last week was that we went to Branch Oak Lake with Brandy and her family. She invited us while we were at Foodnet and said we should come to her mom's 46th birthday so we went on up. We went in our "normal" stuff and they teased us they didn't recognize us. This drunk dude came up and started talking to us and just kept on talking and there were other people that I wanted to talk to so Brandy came and saved me but my comp stayed and talked to him...the whole time...no joke. I think he has a new BFF now.  :)  Something neat that happened was the next day I texted Brandy to thank her for inviting us and one of the guys at the party told Brandy's mom that God does some interesting stuff and he thinks these 2 missionaries were sent for a reason. Brandy told us she shared a scripture that we left with her a while ago in Ether about weak things becoming strong so that was really neat that she was able to share that with her mom.

Another cool experience was that we went and saw Margo, we haven't seen her for a month or two but we decided to stop by her little store she works at and talked to her for a bit. She is still reading her Book of Mormon and is almost done with it, she just said it would be a hard change for her. She did ask for the rest of our pamphlets we had and she said she would read them. We will be going back to see her but just really cool that the Spirit is still working on her and everything and hopefully we can keep helping her out.

We also went to the St. John Lutheran Church here in Seward. We were invited from some people to go and watch their daughter sing in the choir so we were like, sure, we can listen. The choir was awesome!! So that was my week and this week looks like a normal week so far so we better change that up and do something interesting. Oh, some Elders gave us their bench press, so we use that now...my arms turn to jello when I use it, my comp can bench press 375!! 

Love you all!!
Elder Searle

The Liesky's

love Nebraska sunsets