Tuesday, October 27, 2015

through the fire and the flames (and transfers) ‏ 10.26.15

Dear family and friends

No sorry I am not gonna talk about Dragon Force.. (Dragon Force sings
a song called "Through the Fire and the Flames".
Well I had this email all typed up, but apparently sometimes the undo
key likes to "delete draft"
Well this week has been tuff! (credit to Jarum) The Lord answers
prayers I will tell you that! Early in the week I asked the Lord to
show me how I can improve. and oh boy did he answer that prayer real
quick like. I feel like I have been shown everything that I suck at
this week. But hey its what I asked for right! haha

Our numbers had nothing to show this week. 1 RC/LA lesson this week
with Margaret. Everything else we had 0's. Looks like my numbers in
Naperville. I think I set a new record tho, 11 appointments fell
through! Their loss I guess!

I am pretty excited for this week. We have a lot of finding to do
because we have next to no one to teach right now. Usually i hate to
see green weeks (in our electronic area book planner on our iPads
theres a calendar that we use to schedule all our stuff. There are
different "event types" for different things like service, lessons,
and finding, etc. and they all have different colors), but I am really
excited for the potential we have to really find some great people.
The only place we have to go is up!

I found a book in our apartment while we were cleaning (that's
another story I will tell in a minute) I found a book about tracting.
a whole book about tracting! It is a gold mine for good ideas to
improve tracting. it is about a guy who didn't baptize anyone for his
first 8 months of his mission and then started doing the things he
talks about in this book and he ended up setting a record for his
whole mission in baptisms.

So we had an apartment inspection this week. we failed... We didn't
vacuum or clean the bathroom last week. The dishes were done tho! our
apartment got declared "unsafe" because we had mold growing on our
shower curtain. I thought it was just cool red stripes! they told us
we had to get a new shower curtain immediately. so on Saturday we ran
to Walmart to get a new shower curtain and we ran into sister
holcombe... i feared that would happen. i didn't want to see any
members cause they would probably think we were just wasting time in
Walmart. oh well tho.

Elder Wells made Sister Nance cry while she was inspecting our
apartment. she was telling us what we needed to do to get our
apartment up to par. he was playing with his rubiks cube and she told
him to stop, he did for a minute,but then went back to playing with
it. she got mad and started to cry and left. you can totally tell he
came out when he was 18. he is super immature and acts like he's 15
most of the time in my opinion. he should have waited a while to grow
up a little bit. but whatever! hah

We found a family who offered to feed us dinner! right on the
doorstep they said it was a bad time, but they would like to have us
over for dinner! I was like, "excuse me? you're supposed to tell us
you have your own church and shut the door, that's what everyone else
does." I have never had a non-member offer to feed us before until
this area and now this is the second time!

Nothing is happening with transfers, I am staying in Morton with
Elder Wells. No one really in our district is being transferred
either. I hope one of the er's gets transferred down here. Still in
the Peoria stake yet again! This will be my 6th straight transfer
here. I am glad I get to stay because stake conference is coming up
and I will get to see Jo and everyone else from Galesburg.

I lost 6 pounds this week on my new diet i made up. I eat two eggs
for breakfast, one tenderloin of chicken and a half cup of rice, and
two eggs for dinner. I am finding some really creative ways to eat
eggs. Cajun seasoning on eggs is pretty good. Cinnamon on eggs is not
good. We have a ton of spices in our cupboard here so i try
everything.









Elder Scherer

Wednesday, October 21, 2015

dumpster diving 10.19.15

So I went dumpster diving this week. I'll get to that in a minute. I
don't really remember a lot that happened. This week seemed like it
went by really fast. I don't remember a lot that happened. Already
said that.. Too late now you get to read it twice.

We had a meeting with Bishop Mehr and we got a lot of new ideas of how
we can find new people. He told us all about his vision for the ward
since he is the new bishop. He says that he does not envision being
the bishop of this ward as presently constituted for very long. He
expects there will be a great influx and the ward will split pretty
soon. I believe that it will happen.

He told us what he expects of us as missionaries and it really helped
increase our vision, at least it increased my vision. We have
completely changed our finding and planning, still all within the
preach my gospel and mission guidelines, and it has yielded some
awesome results so far. We found two new investigators and had several
lessons this last week.

So I went dumpster diving. We do service at a library in Washington.
We move a lot of boxes of books for them into storage. I have moved
over 300 boxes of books by myself! The pile just keeps getting bigger
and bigger! Anyways there were a ton of older books that they were
recycling. So we took them all out to the big dumpster bins and were
throwing them in, one by one. There was one, Quitting Smoking for
Dummies, that we threw in the dumpster. I thought about it for a
second and I was like, I could use that! Without much thought and
before I realized what I was actually doing, I was halfway in.

This was one of the biggest dumpsters I have ever seen. I was standing
all the way up in it. I probably could have made a pretty decent home
if I had more time. It was all recycling so it wasn't gross in there.
It would have made for a better story if it was gross tho. Anyway I
found the book and I stacked some books and boxes so I could get out.
It was great. After it all happened I realized what I just did and was
like well that just happened.
Elder Scherer

The biggest hill in Illinois! (I think) I live in the forest.
 Elder Wells and a very small section of our plans



My playboy collection (; They just smell really good and they're cheap. haha Miami, New York, and London. Don't judge too hard.

Wednesday, October 14, 2015

Midnight break-in 10.10.15

Hello family and friends,

My favorite missionary (other than the members of the 3 Er's) goes
home at the end of this transfer. I saw him for the last time at a
zone training. But don't worry we have already planned a trip to San
Francisco in 2017. Gonna miss elder Hermansen!
My little boy is growing up (': he fed the ducks for the first time
all by himself!
We got a new ward mission leader, brother smith. He is pretty cool.
Hopefully he will do well. Nothing really new with any investigators.
We just have a ton of flaky people. We taught this guy named John Dom.
He tried to drop us a few times during the lesson, but I wouldn't have
it. I was kinda like no John, you are going to listen and you are
going to like it and you are going to get baptized! It was really
funny. I love teaching people like that. They keep trying to knock it,
but they don't even give it a chance, but eventually we convince them
to pray about it. If people are stubborn I just tell em "hey if God
told you to do it, wouldn't you do it?" They usually say yes, so I
tell them to just ask and they will receive. People just don't
understand the scriptures! I love just talking to people.
So I did something you should never do.. I called a guy Satan.. I'll
tell you what happened: we knocked his door. And he immediately
started trying to bash (I destroyed him and that made him mad) I
handed him a Book of Mormon and he took it, but he set it on his porch
and said he wouldn't bring satanic stuff in his house. So I took it
back and was like well I'm not going to give it to you then. He went
on to tell us that the devil is an angel of light and that Joseph
smith was the devil in the flesh like Jesus was God in the flesh. He
ended up saying Joseph smith was Satan and I got mad and said no
you're Satan! And I left.. You don't want to do that, but it made for
some great laughs for the rest of the day.
So a kid from my first area, Jack Angus, got called to the Logan, Utah
mission and his first area is north Ogden! So if you see an Elder
Angus ask him if he remembers me, he is a stud and he played
lacrosse!!
There was a crazy thing that happened. I'm hesitant to tell it because
it's pretty scary. No one was hurt and nothing really happened, to us
anyway. Well I guess if you want the extended edition that I typed up,
email me and ask me for it, otherwise I'll just give you a watered
down version real quick.
A guy broke into our apartment at 2 in the morning and went into our
bathroom and started peeing. I'll give you my train of thought: first
thought was its the A/C guy (we have been having problems with our A/C
so we told the land lord and she said she'd have it fixed). After I
thought that I was like no it's probably too late for maintenance.
Second thought was maybe it's Elder Pettey, our zone leader, because
he was peeing with the door open and Elder Pettey does that. No wasn't
him. Third thought, well it must be Elder Wells. Looked over at his
bed, he was sleeping. So I was trying to figure out what exactly I
should do. Finally he finishes and I grabbed my knife and run out
there and got him to get out (I didn't actually have my knife out just
in my pocket just in case) so he leaves and I lay back down. Elder
wells didn't even wake up!
Then 15 minutes later a pounding came at the door. I woke elder wells
up this time so I could actually have a witness this time. It was a
cop and he said he was looking for that guy. So I told him what
happened.
Long story short we had to get our locks changed on our doors, but
everything was fine.

Sorry about how long this email was. Enjoy your week!
Love, Elder Scherer