#Mormies

Dear Family,

It's getting cold!! Everything is dead and being cut down (corn) and everything is flat again...Speaking of cutting down corn, we went harvesting on Wednesday! Lori Johnson set it up for us to go with her dad while he was harvesting. I forgot to take some pictures because I was having too much fun in the combine, but holy cow those things are pretty fancy! The one that we were in wasn't one of the new ones, not the ones that drive themselves by GPS but it was pretty sweet. He did a couple three rows with us and was showing us everything, so now I can say I harvested some corn while I was here!

Thursday night we had dinner with the Johnson's and they invited Brandy to join and holy cow, it was a roasting fest! The Johnson's daughter and Brandy roasted us, mostly to Elder Pacheco though. 

Saturday was kinda a strange day, I got my super trunks in the mail...that would be my flight plans and everything and it's weird to think it's coming to an end, I know you guys have had them for quite a while but now I have it....IT'S SO WEIRD!! Just knowing that I'm holding my flight plans in my hands and all the questions that President Gardner wants me to answer...it's just crazy. BUT..to make my Saturday better, we carved pumpkins!!! We went over to the Bakers and ate dinner, had Mummy Dogs (pigs in a blanket) and we carved the pumpkins. They also made Puppy Chow and asked if we have ever had it and we said no, then they brought it out and it was Muddy Buddies!! I ate the whole bowl!! I guess it was supposed to be for both Elder Pacheco and I but I didn't know that. 

I guess Elder Pacheco has some skills when it comes to carving pumpkins and that I'm terrible at making cut out block letters. So I carved Book of Mormon into mine and Elder Pacheco did a CTR and #Mormies because that's what the Bakers call us. Then he carved Angel Moroni and he also later carved Jesus into it. So my little Book of Mormon pumpkin looks crappy compared to his. :)

Friday was kind of a sad day, we helped 2 families move. The Bjournbergs moved from Friend to Idaho and then we helped P Hensley's dad move. The Bjournbergs will sure be missed, they were so funny and they are awesome!! Then since we helped move all day we missed the Foodnet, but luckily Brandy got us a box from it. We showed up right when they were done cleaning and everything so we were just chillin outside and Elder Pacheco heard the high school football game that was going on and he wanted to go watch it. So we went and watched the Milford game, they got destroyed and it was their last game, so kind of sad for that but it sure made Elder Pacheco's day. That is where the picture at the game came from, Brandy took it and sent them to us.

Sunday we spoke in sacrament meeting, we just had to talk for 5-7 min. about something that stuck out to us during General Conference so I did President Uchtdorfs Saturday morning session. I talked about keeping things simple and Am I Truly Happy. I also printed off Elder Hales talk since that is the one that stuck out the most to me, but that is just because it talked about enduring to the end and things that I can do/work on for when I go home so I will be studying those in a day or two.

The baptism has been moved up to Halloween!! It is going to be sweet!! We taught her everything last night and will be having the baptism interview Wednesday and I'm sure everything will work out! So that will be exciting!!

Hopefully we will have some more awesome experiences and things this week. Hopefully you guys have a good week!

Love, Elder Searle

Milford football game

                               Elder Searle and a bubble

#NewKicks #Lutheran Church #Title of Liberty

Dear Family,

I sent all the Nebraska Football Memorial Stadium pictures last week but that picture of the waterfall if the biggest one that that company has ever done and it sure looked pretty cool. We pretty much saw the whole place, we couldn't go into the locker rooms or the weight room but oh well. They had a sweet three screen video that they showed all the Heisman Trophies that Nebraska has gotten on the highlight films and that was dope! They have a really awesome get up. I'm not sure if everyone was able to see the video of us getting pumped up and running out of the tunnel on to the field but that was a sweet feeling. I'm not even that into football and there were like 4 leaf blowers in the stands but it was super awesome! We met two of their players, Gangwish and some other dude I that I can't remember...if you look at their lineup, the one who's name I can't remember has the BEST mustache picture known to mankind!

We had zone training last week and Elder Pacheco and I were asked to give a 10 min. training on how can we increase our faith to change? We wanted to make this the most spiritual/awesome training we could make up so we were going to do the full Captain Moroni making the Title of Liberty, like wearing armor and ripping a shirt in front of everyone, but we figured we didn't have enough time. We were able to borrow some armor from our neighbor Mark who Larps and makes his own armor and stuff. We made the Title of Liberty and made it look all worn and it looked pretty legit. Then after training, we got some pictures of people wearing the armor. 

Seward has been kind of a slow area lately...we have just been doing a lot of street contacting but really nothing is coming from it and we are getting low on miles, but good thing this Friday we will get new miles. Anyway, we were at the church playing a little bit of basketball to finish off our lunch break when we noticed two dudes were watching us through a window, well they came out and challenged us to a 2v2, there were about 10 of them and they were all seniors skipping class but it was still fun, we lost 12-10. After we played I soooo regretted playing, my throat was just on fire from the cold and also from still being a little sick but it was a fun game and they were pretty funny. At one point in the game one of the seniors was running around with a corn stalk trying to tickle us while we played and tried swatting the ball with it. Too bad we can't have Go-Pro's or something on us at all times recording cause it would have been super funny to watch!

Saturday we went to St. John's Lutheran Church in Seward with Merlin, Merlin is the guy that took us to the zoo a couple three weeks ago. I guess he's done church swaps with missionaries before so one of these weeks he will be coming to our church but it was pretty cool to go. We talked to the pastor for a while and he was pretty chill with us. A lot of standing and sitting made it hard to go to sleep. :P

I also got some new tennis shoes!! The ones I came out with are pretty much destroyed...I was getting made fun of at Foodnet because we park in all these weeds and by the time I walk in Foodnet I have these long strands of grass stuck to my shoes because the bottoms were falling off. But good thing I have a good friend in Seward that takes care of me!! Brandy bought me some SWEET Puma's off Ebay and holy cow are they awesome!! That and they look pretty legit so that made me super happy. Brandy also hooked me up with a "Sick Basket" Friday to help me get better. :) Seward might be a place that is hard to get investigators or people that really want to learn about the gospel, but I sure have made some good, life long friends here and have sure learned/grown a lot from them. We have awesome people like Brandy that first of all keeps us in line and looks after me. The Dolzals who would do anything for us, that and she is pretty much mom to us, does our laundry, gives us meds when sick, gives us TP when we run out. :P and makes sure we aren't freezing to death when it gets cold. We have the Johnson's who's most likely going to take us to Harvest Corn on Wednesday, that will be fun!! We have the Bakers who invited us over to carve pumpkins on Saturday cause I told them I haven't carved any for 2 years and they said I could this Saturday. :)

This week should be pretty legit and full of fun adventure so hopefully next weeks email will be as good and as long as this one!! It has only taken me 23 1/2 months but I'm starting to figure out this weekly email writing. Have a good week everyone!!

Love, Elder Searle

 Branch Mission Leaders

 Elder Pacheco is always cold. :)

Nebraska Memorial Stadium Fieldtrip

A Miracle and the Sickness

Dear Family,

This week has been awesome and crappy, like literally...I'm sick.
Saturday night I thought that a wave of allergies just decided to hit me and I woke up Sunday morning and all through out the night to my throat just killing me...Yep, I have strep throat and either a cold or just allergies now. I can't tell but I'm pretty snotty. :P I just had to get sick on a Sunday where no clinics are open, so I did go to the ER. So if you guys get something from them, sorry...I LOVE YOU! :) So all of Sunday I spent sleeping and I'm still tired. You would think I would be fine by now but guess not.

On a better note!! We had the coolest miracle known to man-kind. So on Thursday, we went and had dinner with the V family, who are awesome!! They are a part member family, the husband is not a member and neither is the daughter, but the mom has been faithfully  bringing the daughter every Sunday and to every YW activity and she even goes to Seminary. The daughter is 14 and they have been doing this for years! 9 months ago the dad wrapped his truck around a telephone pole, he was driving home drunk, he has been sober since then and has been doing better. Well, we were having dinner with them and the dad just all of a sudden threw into the conversation that he would allow the daughter to be baptized. Everything just stopped, spoons mid-air with the soup falling off, everyone just stared at him. He was like "well, what are you all looking at me for?" Holy Cow it was awesome!! The daughter was soooo happy and the Spirit was soooo strong! It was a huge surprise to all of us. The dad said that she was pretty much a faithful member, just not baptized. So they are working on a date cause she wants her grandpa to baptize her and a day that her sisters could all be there, but they are going to try for Nov. 7th, which would be SWEET!! Just a few days before I go home, I told them if it doesn't work out doing it before I go home, that I would come back out. :) They are trying to do it soon though.

Something funny that happened this week, well funny to me was some big dude, like really big dude started talking to us, so what do we do? We go talk to him, he told us he was from Texas just visiting and asked what was all around here, we asked him if he has ever talked to us before and he said he sees us on bikes in Texas. We asked if ever talked to them and he said no because he would hit on them, oh crap!! Well, I left him with our card and told him to watch "Because He Lives" video, he said he wouldn't because what he's doing isn't very Christ-like, he then invited us (he was mostly talking to my companion this whole time) if we would like to come to his hotel that night, we said heck no and got out of there. He called us babes and said he'd call us. Well, he never did call us so that's a good thing. Luckily it was more towards my companion, but still. ;)

Temple Trip!!! We had interviews with the mission president before temple so I got my temple recommend but the temple trip was awesome!! We got some sweet pictures that I think you guys will love. We tried making it look like General Authority pictures and I think we did a pretty good job at it.

That sums up our week, today we are going to the Husker's Stadium so that's going to be awesome!! I'm still full of snot but my throat doesn't hurt too much anymore, but next week I'll have some sweet pics to send, I bet Grandpa will love!!

Love, Elder Searle

Dying in the Corn

Dear Family,

So everyone already knows because mom couldn't wait till today to find out if I stayed or not, but hey, I don't blame you. I had to go cheat and find out myself if I was staying or not. :) So Elder Pacheco and I are still here. So this week wasn't the best for lessons and the coolest family in Seward just moved... The Hensly's took off to over by Nebraska City and we helped load up their U-Haul yesterday and said our goodbyes. So sad to see them leave, now who is going to feed us almost every Wednesday?!?

Like for real, I have no clue what to write about this week. Elder Pacheco and I went "picture tracting" it was late and we took some pictures late at night to finish off our 2 transfers together, so that's where those pictures come from.

General Conference was awesome as always. Poor President Monson didn't look like he was 100%, hopefully everything is alright with him. Some cool quotes I got from conference are "Fear not, your future is as bright at your faith" -President Monson. "Satan uses our weakness to make us feel discouraged" -can't remember. Elder Hales talk really stuck out to me, maybe that's cause he talked a lot about things I can do when I get home. So that might be why. lol

I finished reading the New Testament today!! I have read the Book of Mormon 4 times since I've been out and now the New Testament.

So sadly, this was my week. Today we are getting haircuts and after that I will lose about 10 lbs! It's So Long!!! Then my Arizona kid is getting some winter gear cause he's cold. Then we are going to the Temple on Friday and we are having interviews with the mission president. I have to have an interview anyway cause my temple recommend expired, so I will get that done Friday. 

Love, Elder Searle