Soup Kitchen

Dear Family,

So this week has been fun, on Tuesday, I went out to Gretna with one of the zone leaders and spent the day out there, it went well and was packed with lessons. Gretna is a branch so their area is huge, we had to drive to one town that was 30 min. away...twice.

On Thursday, our ward goes to the soup kitchen once a month, so we went to North Omaha and helped serve food. It was pretty cool and I met some really cool people. It was very different to see people just live out of their cars. They had blankets and things covering their cars and they just chill in there. One lady was taking a shower in her car while the passenger was brushing her hair. One of the bishop's kid came and helped and everyone there just loved him! He did a really good job and he's only 9 years old. At the end the kitchen people gave him a big pirate cookie. I was teasing him about it and was like "how come you get something and I don't?" He said "That's because you're a missionary, but there is one thing you can have that is the best".... and he gave me a big ol' hug! He said that was the best thing...a hug from him. :)

We also went a saw some less actives this week, we go over to this one guys house, and read the Book of Mormon to him. He is very chill and lets us eat and drink whatever food we want. :)

We also took a recent convert to the Trail Center, but we never went inside...we just drove all the way there with him and another member and just sat in the parking lot and talked. The convert goes really deep with questions. After, they wanted to stop by the hospital and see a kid they know, he was having some tests done so we went and talked to him. He has gone through so much in his life and there's no way I could do what he has gone through, but we taught him some card tricks he could do when he gets bored, since he'll be in the hospital for a week or two.

We also went to the mall, I bought new sunglasses that look good on me. :P  I gotta run!!

Love, Elder Searle

Better/Busy Week

Dear Family,

So this week has been better and pretty dang busy. Monday and Tuesday I was with Elder Tauesi, who is  in the Cold Springs YSA Ward, it was their FHE so I was able to go to that with him. It was at the UNO (University of Nebraska Omaha) institute building. Then that night, we went to pick some stuff up at another Elders apartment and Tauesi almost ran into someone! The girl was running across the street, in the dark, with dark clothing on. Tauesi locked his tires up and left a tire mark, it was scary.

On Wednesday, it was Zone Conference so that was pretty cool. I got to see a few people that I haven't seen for a while. Elder Schofield was suppose to be there and I was really looking forward to seeing him. I guess his comp was pretty sick so he didn't come, I was bummed.

On Thursday, I got my first taste of the projects. We went up there to try a referral, who wasn't home. I want to go up there and street contact and just talk to everyone sometime, I think that would be pretty fun.

Friday we had our temple trip, so you know that's going to be a good day, it went well. I got a picture that was pretty funny. It was SUPER humid that day so that's why my camera has a white glowing outline. The dude that photo bombed my picture is actually my companion. He walked really slow in front of the camera and it just happened to be when mine was taken. It was pretty funny.

On Saturday, we did a good amount of service! We helped a kid with his Eagle Project, we sanded and re-painted all the park tables and moved mulch. Then after that, we were going to go help a member in the ward, who had knee surgery, mow her lawn. Instead, they had us wash rocks.I guess she has a rock garden that needed some work and she put all the rocks into a kids pool and filled it with water. It had been sitting in the water for a week so it was all nasty and smelled really bad. We took all the crap off of the rocks, like leaves and little branches. That that night, we went and saw our investigator, he just bought a 2014- 3500 Diesel Dodge Ram and he wanted to show it to us, so he took us for a spin in it. That was fun! :)

We are fed just about every night and I haven't been on my bike yet....not going to unless I actually have to. :P The picture/letter I posted, is from a 7 year old boy. I laughed when I read it because it is spot on to missionary work. I really liked the last part about dinner. :)

Love you guys!!
Love, Elder Searle

Brendan's apartment, he has the big comfy chair 

Monkey from his little sister

Bellevue 2nd Baby!!

Dear Family,

So yep, after almost 9 months in the same area...I finally got transferred. I really didn't move that far, just across the river. Bellevue 1st was in our district and zone so I went on exchanges there, but never here in Bellevue 2nd, which is in another zone. It's a military place here, they are all Air Force and the Offut Air Force Base is in our area.

Let me first start off by talking about my last few days in Greenview. The website went down that the church uses, so getting all the transfer info took longer than usual. It took a while before I heard that I was leaving.

I pretty much spent all Thursday packing, I had no clue that I had collected so much "stuff" while I was there. It was also really strange because I haven't had to move anywhere and seeing my area in the room all empty was really strange. Even Elder Martinez commented how strange it was.

We spent Thursday night going around and saying goodbye to people. Our dinner was cancelled so we went to our Bishop's house and had dinner with the Keller's and had a good time with them.

I texted some people and told them thank you for being legit and everything. I texted the family who has the little girl that calls me "Big Teddy Bear" and told her I was going to miss her. 

I also spent time with Keowa, he was the last person that I went and said goodbye too. We met him at Big Lake and just talked with him and he drove us around for one last time. I'm sure going to miss that kid, but he is pretty dang solid in the gospel so I don't need to worry about him. We talked about the good times we had together...it was hard saying goodbye to him.

So now about Bellevue 2nd, everyone here is either in the Air Force, retired or has family in it. We have this whole military apartment complex in our area that his huge!! We can't knock or talk to anyone, but we can wave to people. It's really strange walking around and not being able to talk to people. But I like it here, it's pretty legit, although I haven't seen much of it yet.

On Saturday, my first full day in the area, we went with an Air Force dude and went and played ultimate frisbee at the Air Force Base. They have an entire hanger that is just for working out. I soooo wish I could get a picture of it, I've never seen more exercise equipment in my life! They have a few basketball courts, tennis courts, a play ground, soccer fields and a smoothie bar! They have a smoothie bar in the place!!!! The moment I walked in and saw everyone...I felt fat and way out of shape! LOL  We played on the huge soccer field and I sure got my workout for the day.

Most of the people aren't Mormons so swear words were flying like crazy and they are all super buff!! They also don't keep the place very cool, it's kept warm so you sweat everything off. 

I live in an apartment, it's actually really nice. They have an office area which is where I'm at right now emailing you guys. They have a weight room and really nice computers. 

I'm also going to ride a bike here....fat man on a bike!! LOL My companion has 2 so I will use one of them. It will take a few days to get used to riding a bike around, I haven't done that in years!! :) We are in a car share, but will be riding bikes most of the time. 

My new ward is pretty cook, smaller than my other ward and older. Elder Quayle is my new companion, he's from Idaho and has been out 18 months. He is pretty chill and is a funny dude.

I'm not sure what we are doing for p-day, I think we're going to play basketball and we need to do some shopping, but that's all I know. :)

Love you all!!

Love Elder Searle

 Telling Keowa bye

 Brendan's 1st baptism and great friend

 Elder Martinez & Elder Searle in their "Jett Powered" shirts for a little boy in their ward

Bishop Kellers family, they took such good care of Brendan and we are so appreciative of them and the love they gave to him. Thank you for taking such great care of him for 9 months, he's going to miss you guys!

Possibly My Last Week in Greenview

So as my header says, I am 97.3% sure that I will be transferred this Friday. President Weston likes us to stay in our first area for 8+ months, and I'll hit that. But I guess there have been people that have stayed another transfer so I guess we'll see what happens. I will find out on Thursday morning, it would be nice to see some place new, but it will be hard to leave some of the people behind....but it's all good.

So I have been asked if we have caught that mouse yet and the answer is....no! We gave up on it because my companion has spent enough money on it. We told the guy that lives here that he has a mouse in the house and he said he'd do something about it, but he was back in the hospital, once again for health problems. Did he tell us that?? Nope, we found out from other members in the ward...this is like his third trip to the hospital, so hopefully he won't have to go back again.

I don't really have any cool stories this week, we did go on exchanges with the Bellevue Elders and Elder Jenkins came here with me, we had a good time.

We had Mike show up to church again! He is a less active and he showed up the last 20 min. of church. Go Mike!!

We had intense lightening and thunder storm Saturday night. It was SOOO loud that it woke both of us up and it scared the crap out of Elder Martinez! It lit up everything!

I had s super good workout today, played a killer game of volleyball and 2 basketball games. My poor companion and I were just swimming in sweat! I'm pretty sure I lost like 4 lbs. just playing! I weighed myself and I keep losing weight. :)

We also got some cool t-shirts from a family in our ward, they have a 2 year old boy with a lot of health problems and isn't going to live much longer. They have set up a foundation and stuff for him. Since he won't be able to travel the world, they give out these free t-shirts that say "Jett Powered" and it has a guy flying a plane on it. All they ask is that you wear the shirt and somewhere in the world take a picture and email it to them. My companion and I took some selfies of us in our shirts....and I forgot to bring in my camera, so I'll have to post them next week.

Love,
Elder Searle

Best/Worst/Strangest Week

Dear Family,

So we stopped by the other day at the library and they were having a 75th anniversary party for Batman! We got a goodie bag with a Batman mask, tattoos, bookmark, poster and buttons! lol

It has been a really good week for us, we taught 13 lessons, which is the most Elder Martinez and I have had together, we found 3 new investigators and set two people for baptism. It has also been the hottest week ever. It got up to 115* one day and another day was 120*. It was sooooo hot that we were swimming in our sweat.

To start off our week, we were teaching one of our new investigators the Plan of Salvation, it went really well, then afterwards, my companion and I decided to go up to the top floor of his apartment to look out and see the view. So we took the elevator up and found an exit, we walked out and we were on the fire escape looking out, Martinez followed me out and he closed the door behind us. Well....we looked and there wasn't a door handle on the outside, so we locked ourselves out on a little, tiny fire escape on the 8th floor of this apartment building. We were TOTALLY noticeable and these people at the park, which was right there, were looking and pointing at us. So we slowly made our way down these rusty stairs that seemed to be floating. We finally made it down to the ground and the people at the park started clapping for us....we just jumped in our car and got out of there! It was a good little story to tell at least! :)

Then, we came back another day to to talk to this same investigator the next lesson. He has some water damage in his apartment, so his roof has this big hole in it and little pieces have been falling in. So we were teaching him and we were in the middle of asking him if he would like to be baptized and this huge chunk fell out of that hole and scared the shark out of both of us! Elder Martinez jumped out of his chair it scared him so bad! The guy did somewhat commit, so that's good!

Then on Friday, it was SOOO HOT!! I have never had sweat come from just about everywhere on my body. Our ties were even dripping sweat. We were drinking so much water that it was just crazy. We had people drive by and give us drinks. One dude stopped and gave us Monsters, one guy stopped and gave us these tall cans of Coke and he couldn't believe that we come out and walk on days like these. We also had two other people stop and give us water bottles, so that was good.

One more thing....remember that mouse that we have been trying to catch for like a week now? Yep.....we still can't get that darn thing and we finally gave up. Hopefully it will hurt himself on that sticky glue trap that he somehow got off of and hopefully we killed him with all the food we gave him, but who knows!!

I gotta run!

Love you all!!

Elder Searle

Mouse in the house

Dear Family,

So this week we had something pretty much every day, so that made the week fly by.

Monday was P-day and that always goes by way too fast!

Tuesday we took Artis and Bud to the Trail Center, Artis just turned 86 and Bud is 83, Bud is SOOO funny! The sister that was giving us the tour was trying so hard not to laugh, but my companion and I were. We then watched the hour long Joseph Smith Restoration video with them and then they took us out to eat at the taco house.

Wednesday we had a district meeting and the zone leaders wanted me to go there but we were finally having dinner with this cool family that just moved into our ward and I didn't want to miss it, so I got to stay here, so that was fun.

We got a text that day from a recent convert who was baptized back in October, she wanted to know if we could come to the Omaha Court House at 4pm and be the witnesses for her wedding. I was here on exchanges and we had to ask the AP's if we could go....they wouldn't let us go. I was bummed because that would have been awesome to be a witness at a wedding while on my mission.

That night we were upstairs in our house and I was eating my super expensive, over priced grapes and this mouse comes running out and ran under our fridge! We still have the little guy running around! We put out all of these traps and that mouse has eaten all the peanut butter off every one of the traps for THREE NIGHTS NOW!! That little  guy is getting fat off of everything we are feeding him, my comp is sick of it so we are going to go buy a mouse trap that actually goes off when the mouse eats the food off of it!

Thursday we had interviews with President Weston, it went well

Friday we had dinner with this super cool family that has been feeding us a lot lately. They are pretty funny and have 2 kids, the little girl is 4 and the little boy is 3. The little girl has started calling me her "Big Teddy Bear", which is pretty cool. At the end of dinner the little girl said "I love Big Teddy Bear!" They sat behind us at church yesterday and both kids kept poking me and wanted me to play with their toys. :)

Saturday we were outside literally all day, we tilled a garden and weed eated. We then just walked around trying to talk to people. We went and talked to this one dude that we talked to once before. We attempted to teach him the first lesson, but he kept showing us how well he knew the Bible. He also kept asking us if we could see and if the lighting was ok.....it's wasn't...it was pretty dark, but he brought up the lighting like 68412 times.

We had dinner with an older lady this night and we catch a ride with an older guy who comes and eats with us. He used to be a truck driver, but now he's just older and shouldn't be driving anymore...but he does. If we weren't missionaries, we would have died at least 12 times now. We at dinner but there was hardly any food, so on the way home the guy asked if we were still hungry, because he was! We stopped and he bought us dinner at Village Inn, so we had 2 meals that night...pretty awesome! :)

The temp is starting to get up there, it's 105 with the humidity today...so that's fun.

I love you all!

Love Elder Searle

Temple Trip

Dear Family,

To start off my week, I got sick, so that's always a blast. My companion got a cold from a member that gave us a ride on Saturday and he got sick on Sunday. Then I got sick towards the end of Monday, I'm still full of snot but that's about it.

On Tuesday, the family that fed us decided to just bring dinner to us and we could eat at a park. So we ate at Baylis Park which is always interesting. You have to scout the place out first because strange stuff happens there sometimes. So anyways, we had a really good dinner and at the end of it, this dude just came up and hugged us and was all shaking our hands and we had no clue who he was. He had on no shirt, but he had a leather biker vest on and torn up pants. He was all on us and was like "What's up my brothers!" I guess the sisters met him walking to their apartment and talked to him for a bit, we got talking to him and he is King of the Park. He also said he has ran this block for 48 years now and he was King of Everything! We gave him some leftover food and then he just took off, so that was interesting.

We also had exchanges this week, I had Elder A come here with me. He is from the Philippines and he brought all his food with him for exchanges....like ALL his food. I guess he wanted to make sure he had food?? He was only with me half the day, we went over and saw M and he wanted us to help clean up his place...like clean the toilets and scrub the floors...let me tell you, that was a blast!

On Friday we were able to go to the temple, so you can tell already that this day was awesome. We decided to go down to Omaha and eat lunch with some of the other Elders. We ate at Pepper Jax's and I got to talk to Elder Schofield the whole time, which was awesome! It was good to see him again.

By the way, I hate driving in Omaha, scares the crap out of me! There were 5 of us that tried to fit in our little Barbie car we drive, but at least we were smart enough to put the two bigger guys in the front and I had to drive! City driving sucks!

After the temple, our ward was having a ward pool party, so we decided to show up, since they had food and that was our dinner. The only missionary from this ward came home early because he and 3 others had been sick for months. He was serving in Russia so we talked to him and compared how things were done there to here. We are actually having dinner with him tonight so we will get to talk to him some more.

On Saturday we helped a family move all their big stuff, since they weren't moving far, we just loaded up the truck they had. Guess what we moved......yep...a piano! I think that's all we do is move pianos. My companion and I did most of the work, there was the coolest black kid I've ever met named Omar there. He's 12 and has The Coolest Name Ever!! We just yelled OMAR like the whole time and he'd come over and help, super cool kid!

Sunday night I got a call from Elder Herde...my MTC companion and we got to talk. It was super cool to hear from him, we have both have been in our same areas the whole time and it was good to talk to him.

Today we went and had breakfast with my companions grandparents..yep,  his grandparents are on their way to their mission to Missouri and they asked our mission pres if they could come and see us. It was really good for my companion to see them. At the end I was taking pictures of them and his grandma was like "OH, COME HERE!" and gave me a big ol' hug...so that was really nice.  :)

So there's my week, gotta go!

Love, Elder Searle