Easter Week

 

Dear Family,

So on Monday, we played in the gym with two Elders, Elder Tatafu from Tonga and his companion. They are serving in the YSA ward here and are super funny. They are really good at it and none of us really wanted to play against them because we know the ball is going to smash us in the face sooner or later. We then went and helped Mike again. We went to help him clean his help, he had someone coming over to check on him and see how his house was for his daughter, so he wanted it clean. We helped him do the dishes and clean up everything. He painted his room blue, well like 94% of it, and so we had to move everything back into there, he then said we would have to come finish it sometime.

Tuesday-We were with Maranda, we helped her with her seminary stuff and had a good time. We then went and tried a referral we got named Jeff. He is pretty cool, he had been meeting with the sister missionaries in another area, but then moved here. He got the house his mom lived in and she passed away, so he is remodeling it and moving everything around. We are going back to his place this week, which will be fun because he wants to knock some walls down and make rooms bigger. We also went and played our ultimate Frisbee with that ward, which we do every Tuesday night.

Wednesday-we did service for a lady in our ward, we had to throw crap (literally) into her garden and till it up for her. Her garden was pretty big and she had this tiny little tiller that had to be plugged in, so it took a while.

Thursday- was a super slow day, we finally gave up and went and helped Maranda with her seminary stuff again.

Friday-we had a progressive dinner so we got to go to other people's houses for food. It was great! What's better than not having to knock on doors and just go house to house eating food? We ate so well and had a lot more than what we should have.

Saturday-someone Elder Daines taught in Grand Islands got sealed in the temple, and we were invited to go. It was super neat, we went to the endowment session with them, and got to see them be sealed as a family. It was soooo neat to be there. It was sweet when they brought the two little kids in, who were all stylish in their white tux and bowties and be sealed to their parents. It was just awesome to see the kids be sealed. Coolest experience ever!! I also put my two grandma's names on the prayer roll.  Then that night we had a little going away party for Wayne who is leaving next week for BYU. We had a bonfire going and roasted hot dogs and roasted marshmallows and played Frisbee. It was a pretty epic day!

Sunday-We went to the Whatcotts again to have an Easter lunch/dinner/feast. They are the ones who fed us for Christmas. We ate super well! Steaks, chicken, potato enchilada stuff, it was so good. They had their family over so we got to play with them. It was raining hard when we left so we walked to the bishop's house and finished off our night at their place.

Thanks for the Easter tie, Grandpa would be proud of me because I told him I would never wear a yellow tie! lol

I wear the same thing everyday, the only choice I get to make is "what color of tie should I wear today?" Right now I'm wearing my green tie that Elder Schofield gave me. I guess a good website for ties is www.thetiebar.com  A lot of missionaries get their ties from there.

Anyway, I gotta go!!

Love Elder Searle

1st baptism

 

 

 

1st Baptism

Dear Family,

So we did a good amount of service this week, we helped a less active with his fence. He has some issues and has cancer, which is sad. He has a 6 year old little girl who is really funny. We fixed it up and also had to make sure his little tiny dogs wouldn't get out. We pretty much put up a whole new gate so that his car could get in and out. It took about 4 hours to do this, when the Kanesville elders came to pick us up, we all went for ice cream we were so hot!

We also got a call from a member in our ward who is super nice, they are also in the Temple Presidency. They said they were having a good friend come over for dinner and they wanted us to come eat with them so they could introduce us to him. We thought that was super funny that they wanted us to come because they have the sisters living with them. The food was soooooo good! The best  food I've had on my mission, hands down. It was all homemade and just awesome!! They also told us some funny stories about the sister missionaries so we will have to tease them about that. The dude that came over, he knows the church is true but doesn't want to change.

Since Keowa was going to be baptized, we tried to see him as often as we could. We had lots of check-ins with him because the week people are going to be baptized, Satan does everything He can to change their minds about being baptized.

One of the days Keowa came over, we were doing our weekly planning. Since it was a super nice day, we decided to go outside on these sweet lawn chairs we found in the garage. They have leg rests so that's why they were super cool! We were outside for 4-5 hours and my face got super sunburned. That night I found out I fried the inside of my legs because I was in shorts, that made it hard to walk a bit! Oh well, my fault.

So Saturday was baptism day! The Kanesville ward put together a service activity for everyone. We helped them redo this community garden place. I guess you can pay to have a spot of dirt to plant stuff, kinda strange. anyway...we all got in our yellow "Helping Hands" shirts (which I didn't take a picture of, fat people don't look good in yellow shirts!) :P So we did that all morning.

We then went home to get everything ready for the baptism, which went well. Keowa invited 2 of his friends to come, one even took a Book of Mormon so that was cool, and his mom came too. A lot of ward members came too, there were a lot of little kids running around, so it was kinda loud, but it was all good. My face was still super red from getting sunburned, I guess it hid my face for how nervous I was, but it went really well. I baptized him and Elder Daines confirmed him.

After the baptism, we decided to throw a little party and invited Keowa and Maranda to the Olive Garden, it was expensive because we paid for them. We bought for them because they have done so much for us. We ate and had a good time, we then went to Lake Manawa, we all went in Keowa's '79 teal Impala. We went and skipped rocks and had a good time. There was a TON of lightening going on, it was sweet!! The baptism started at 2pm and we got home at 9pm, so we pretty much spent the whole afternoon/night with them.

Love you guys!!

Love Elder Searle

April pics

General Conference

Dear Family,

So this week as you know, was General Conference, which was sweet. They broadcast it to every stake center, so we went there to watch it. There were like 5 other people that weren't missionaries there. Keowa came with us for the two sessions on Saturday, so that was pretty sweet. He isn't feeling too well, so he stayed home for the Sunday ones. I bet he is feeling pretty drained right now. Having an investigator watch two sessions is pretty sweet, I told him that's more that what I usually watch! So that made him laugh. Keowa is getting baptized on Saturday, which I'm super excited for. He wants me to baptize him, so that's even more exciting!

I can't really remember what all happened this week, I left my planner home!! We did sit at the stake center for 10 hours the past two days. This week has been pretty wet which kinda sucked. It was raining for a bit Wednesday so we just went out in our light jackets, well then it started to snow and the temp dropped super fast. Good thing we had an appointment and were only outside for 2 hours. I guess we should have been more prepared.

I got some sweet pictures that I took that I'm going to upload right now.

I promise a better letter next week! LOL

Love, Elder Searle