CATS!!

Dear Family,

So this week, it seems like we didn't do anything, like really. We did service for a few people, we tilled up a garden, we fixed a fence and we raked some leaves. I went on exchanges with the Kanesville Elders, I went to their area with Elder Sellers. We saw 3 people, the first stop, they had 2 cats, the next stop had 4 cats and the last stop had 8 cats...I told Elder Sellers, if we go to another house and they have 16 cats then I am done....it was good. The people with 8 cats are huge gamers. So I got the husband to come out and actually talk to us because I was talking about Wow and LoL (World of Warcraft & League of Legends) So that was kinda fun! Elder Sellers said that's the first time that the husband has actually come out to listen...so I made some progress! :D

Keowa's baptism will be on April 12th so that's exciting, it was set for the 5th, but his mom wasn't able to come so he moved it to the following Saturday. His mom also came to church with him yesterday and she really seemed to enjoy it, Elder Daines was sitting by her and said that she had some tears. She then told us that she will make an organized list of questions she has for us. She didn't say anything about her Pastor being there so hopefully we are making progress!

We set another lady for baptism for May 3rd, they have been taught for about 4-5 years now, she has been set for baptism before, she just never comes to church. SO hopefully she decides to start coming.

So, super warm weather today, it's like 70 with a nice breeze. We had studies outside on the deck, then we jumped up on the roof and enjoyed the sunlight. Need to enjoy it before it gets too hot and your swimming in your own sweat!!

So yep, here's my week! :)

Love Elder Searle

Crazy Weather

Dear Family,

So while getting a little sunburned this week and enjoying the nice weather, it decides to get cold again and snow! This week was great, but trying to put everything we did in an email just doesn't work, since I can't put a lot of the experiences into words, that, and some of it's just silly stuff that wouldn't make sense unless you were there.

Monday, played games with the Kanesville Elders

Tuesday we pretty much did service all day, we picked up a TON of sticks and branches that fell into a members yard, so that took quite a while.. We also deep cleaned our car, mostly because we had an hour and a half until we had to go more service and we didn't want to switch back into our white shirts. The lady that we helped said that she had something in her yard that would stick to her dog, so the dog wouldn't walk on the grass. She wanted us to rake her whole yard and we thought we were doing a good job getting all of these little things picked up...until we decided to look at them closely. We found out that it was just rabbit poop, it made her happy though.

Wednesday- we walked :/

Thursday- we also walked a lot, we decided to walk to an area that is by the library, which is about a 2 hour walk. The weather was super nice this day, I got sunburned! So we were walking and Elder Daines found a pinwheel on our path, he decided to pick it up and put it in his backpack, he had it sticking out so the pinwheel would spin above his backpack. We got the most attention this day! We had people honking, waving, we even found a potential investigator because of the pinwheel. We were just walking and a dude out smoking saw the pinwheel and asked where we got it. One thing led to another and we taught him a little bit. We told the zone leaders that they need to talk to the mission president and tell him to invest in some pinwheels! That was our fun for the day, we have some super spiritual times, I promise we don't just walk around and goof off. :)

Friday-we taught Keowa again, he decided he wants to be baptized on April 5th so that is sweet!
We've taught him everything so now we just hope and pray it will all work out. After teaching him, our ward was having a cake auction fundraiser for the Young Women and were having a free dinner, so of course we were there! They started to auction off the cakes so I decided to throw in some bids just for fun, even though some went for $50-$80 bucks, we thought at this rate, we might be able to buy a cupcake and split it 3 ways. We finally bought a cake for $15, it was one of the lowest cakes to sell, I couldn't tell if no one wanted it, or if everyone just felt bad for the missionaries. So my companion and I and Keowa bought a cake and were able to enjoy it. :)

Saturday-we knocked on this one door and two teenagers answered, they said to come back next week, so we left and knocked on the next door. Someone showed up to the house that we were just told to come back next week and he yelled at us to come back. So we went back and turns out he was drunk. We were talking to him for a bit and 3 teenagers that were there came out and we talked to them. They were smoking some weed so they were a little up there. We had 2 of them crying, I have no clue why they were crying. They got talking to us and they seem cool. We are going back sometime next week to see them again, hopefully they won't be high or drunk.

Sunday-we went and saw Grandma (in investigator) and talked to her for a bit, she is helping her daughter with her kids, they all live in the same house. We left them some Ensign magazines and hopefully the kids will go to Young Women and Young Men's.

Love Elder Searle

Birthday Week!

So this week has been a blast! On Monday, Keowa and Miranda took us to the zoo, which was awesome! I got some sweet pictures that I'm uploading right now. So we went to the zoo and were there pretty much all day. After the zoo, we went and got ice cream then we went to the Spaghetti Factory and had endless pasta and it was super good! We then went back to Miranda's apartment and we had cake and Mama Beck got me a funny Council Bluffs shirt that has a black squirrel on it. It's a little small so I wear it as my "Buff Shirt" every once in a while. I really can't describe how cool the zoo was, but hopefully the pictures that I took will show you how awesome it is. There is a gorilla there that just hates missionaries, if you look at him he will just turn around and sit against the glass without looking at you, he will charge at you and smack the glass, he only does this to the missionaries. :)

We had to go to the mission office so we all got ready and I remembered the mustaches that you guys sent me for my birthday. So all 4 of us had one on while we drove to Omaha, and when we saw President Weston, he thought it was funny and said how missionaries should do stuff like that more often, just to brighten the mood. The office staff had a good laugh when we walked in too. I got a good picture of all of us with them on.

Tuesday we walked around a lot. It was super nice this week so we were working on our tans enjoying the sunlight. I helped Jerry set up his new computer.

Wednesday Elder Schofield came on exchanges with me after our zone training. Afterwards, we went and all ate at Huhot again. By the time we did all this, we were suppose to have like 2-3 hours to try some former investigators, but the Bishop called us and said he was on his way home from work and wanted to pick us up then, since he was the dinner for us that night. We chilled at Bishop Kellers for a while. They did bake me a cake and their oldest boy Jett, thought it would be funny to get me a gift. So he hands me this huge box and when I opened it, there was another box, and then another box, all wrapped up. It was 3 king sized candy bars.

Thursday we went and taught Keowa at a park since it was super nice and we wanted to sit in the sun. We then went to his house and we talked to his mom for a little bit, she doesn't agree with what we teach, she gets her info from the FLDS and RLDS. His friend came over and we talked to him for a little bit. We also shot their bow and arrow, which was a PVC pipe, a rope and a stick, it was fun. We got to cruise around in his sweet car, which I took some pictures of for Travis to see the awesomeness!!

Friday we were walking down by Lake Manawa, throwing rocks on the little bit of ice that is left. We saw Cody, our 15 year old investigator, we were talking to an 18 year old girl who was waiting for the bus to get her little brother and Cody got off the bus. He had a question about Lehi's dream so we taught him more about that. It was also super nice this day too so we sat outside on his driveway and Elder Daines drew the tree and iron rod and everything in chalk. So they now have a huge picture of Lehi's dream on their driveway.

We also were going to teach Keowa at Miranda's house, and that is like forever away, we couldn't get a ride so we just walked the hour and a half to her house. Good thing there is a sidewalk along the highway or that would have sucked. We were picking up good "trash" that we could find on the side of the road/fields. We ended up finding a really nice fork, that Elder Daines uses, a huge teal comb, some golf balls and a kids play microphone, Elder Daines has been having too much fun with it, he used it in our lesson with Keowa, you could only speak if you had the purple and teal kids mic.

Saturday we finally were able to talk to this potential we have had for a while. We talked to him for about an hour and a half, we really taught him a little about everything. We have seen him a few times before today and he would never give us his name. So we were trying really hard to get his name from him, he knows our first names, but we don't know his. The ward mission leader and Bishop had a good laugh when on our progress record it said we taught "The Dude." He just avoided answering the question when we asked him his name again. He did it in a way that you would forget that you even asked him.

Sunday was fun, we talked to Miranda for a bit since she has been having a hard time, we sat on the golf course by her apartment. It was really good to help her out. I even got sunburned sitting outside as often as we did this week.....then yesterday it snowed!

Well, this week was pretty eventful, hopefully I made sense as I was trying to hurry and type all of this.

Love, Elder Searle 

March pictures

 

 

Birthday Boy! :D

Feb. Zone Conference 2014 Elder Searle and Elder Schofield



Dear Family,

Hard to believe I'm 19 today, it seems so weird to say! I just hope that when I tell people my age, they won't freak out as much anymore. I would tell people that I'm 18 and they would be like "you are still a baby!!!"

On Monday we had a super awesome lesson with Keowa. Super awesome and super cool!! Elder Daines said it's in the top 3 best lessons taught, so that was pretty cool.

Elder Schofield from Kanesville had been having a hard time this week so we went on exchanges with him. Elder Daines went with him for 2 days. He had been having a hard time before and we thought it was his companion, which was part of it, but I guess his dads health hasn't been doing very well and he was worried about him.

Turns out his dad had a stroke while he was flying to Seattle and he was put in the hospital for a few days. He had a 50/50 chance to make it, and he didn't, he passed away on Saturday. Elder Schofield was on the phone with him when he passed away so he has been very down. He is putting on a good face but I can see him emailing his family right now and he is struggling to keep it together.

We stayed overnight with them on Saturday night, we went to the adult general conference with them, then we went and got ice cream and just played some card games until late. They stayed over with us last night, just so we could kind of keep an eye on him and help keep him busy. He is determined to stay out here. Our week mostly revolved around time in Kanesville, spending time with and keeping Elder Schofield busy.

We didn't have too many lessons this week, we taught Keowa three times though, we took him to a YSA baptism which was sweet. We taught him at the Becks because he is friends with their daughter. Keowa and Miranda are actually taking us for the day today and we are doing something with them. They won't tell me a thing and it's driving me nuts! I just know we'll be with them most of the day. I think we're going to the zoo, but I'm not sure...I will have to tell you guys next week what went down. Tomorrow night we are going over to the Bishop's house because they wanted to make me a cake. I'm going to save my party stuff you guys sent me until then, I bet the kids will have a blast with it!!

So that was my week...hopefully this week will go well since I think it's should nice all this week. I do hope so, yesterday was 70 and it was sooo nice!!Driving with the windows down and not freezing is sooo nice!!

Thanks for the birthday box, cd's chocolates and all the party stuff!!!

Love Elder Searle

New Changes

Council Bluffs & Sioux City Zone Conference (February 2014) 


This week has been interesting, a lot of new changes with my new companion Elder Daines. He's from Logan so not too far from Morgan! He came from serving 6 months at the University YSA ward, so he's not used to knocking on doors like we have to do here.

It's been different too because we were both sick. I was sick Tuesday night and all day Wednesday with a terrible cold. My companion was sick Wednesday night and got worse on Friday. On Thursday we had to drive up to Sioux City, which is 2 hours away and we were there all day.

This week, most of the people that we did get to see were less actives that are in the ward. We are trying to help the ward/less actives out a lot more this transfer because the Bishop feels like that would help the ward out. You have to take care of the people that you do have, before you go out and bring new people in. So we have been focusing on that a lot! One of the families we saw used to be in the Council Bluffs ward when my companion was first here, so that is great! Brother Downing said that when it warms up, he is going to make some BBQ wings for us! Hopefully he won't throw in any Ghost Peppers since those are his favorite....he tells us stories about people eating them all the time at the restaurant he works at and it's 10 times worse than that Triple Atomic I had!!

Sunday we went to choir practice again, my companion thinks it would be good for us to work with the ward and gain their trust, which is great, except it sucks when I don't really have a singing voice...but my companion can sing really well!

So really not much went on this week with us both sick, next week should be a lot better!

Oh, the Bishop's family are making me a cake for my birthday! lol They said since it's Captain Crunch's special day, that they will bake me a cake. I'm not sure if I ever told you the nicknames they game me? The mom calls me Lucky Charms, Captain Crunch and Special K. She gave me Special K because I wasn't catching the frisbee very well one time and I was throwing it like crap so she said I'm Special K because I'm a "little" special!! lol

Love, Elder Searle