Cigarettes and Nachos 11.14.16

Well I won't write a whole lot cause I'll see you in 2 days.

It's been a rough week, saying goodbye to everyone and taking pictures.

My birthday was last Thursday and it just so happened the relief
society was having an activity that night all about missionaries and
those serving the in the military. They invited us to come. They had
lots of food and fun decorations and what not. They had all the mom's
who had children serving missions or in the military come up and share
something that they heard from their kid. Then at the end they had us
go up and share some experiences from our missions. Then they had a
cake for me! It looked really good, but man I hate cake... the
frosting almost made me throw up. But! Paula St. John and sister
porter came in hot with a tower of brownies! (That's why you need to
make friends with people so they know what you really like!) it was
awesome and they all sang (:

In fast and testimony meeting yesterday the very last person who got
up was a youth named Justin. He's about 17 I think and he just got out
of rehab in Wyoming or something like that. He got up and everyone in
the audience was like, "what's he gonna say?" He got up there and said
the first they had him do at the rehab place was have him write down
all the things he was grateful for. He said he only wrote two things,
cigarettes and nachos. But he said by the end he had a big list of
things he was grateful for, especially the Savior. It was amazing to
see him change like this, I saw him before he left and there's a huge
change. He concluded by saying something along the lines of, "some
people hate it when the missionaries come over, but I LOVE IT!" That
was way cool to hear. The Savior really can change our lives, He's
changed mine.

See you in 2 days.

I will be speaking in my home ward on November 27, 2016 at 9:00. The
address is 3350 N 1050 E, North Ogden, UT 84414

Elder G. Franklin Scherer

 We all got our calculator watches.

 The box of stuff the relief society gave me for my birthday!

 The Wayne family

 The brown family, jake gets baptized November 26!

 Me and Elsa who got baptized two weeks ago

 Powered through the Reese's football

 St. John family, she will be baptized soon!

 Sister Porter and her daughter

The Smith family

Elsa got baptized 10.31.16

Elsa got baptized on Saturday! It was a great service, several members
came up to us and said how nice everything came together. I had the
opportunity to baptize her. That was my first time so it was super
special. I was nervous and I thought my voice was shaky, but bro. St.
John came up to me afterwards and said I sounded really calm and
confident. I can only thank the Holy Ghost for that! The Spirit was
unmistakeable preset during both her baptism and confirmation, which
was performed by elder Bingham. I felt it the strongest during her
confirmation, I could really feel Him fall upon her and light us all
with His presence. I am so grateful for that gift which has been given
to me as well as to all those who are purified by the waters of
baptism.

This last week we just spent a large part of our week planning for the
baptisms and visiting with people to get it all arranged. We had one
of our investigators, Paula, show up with her family to the baptism.

Another very exciting thing happened, we put Jake Brown on date for
November 12! I really hope it works out for him! It's the one weekend
that he's home on Saturday til late December and he said, "Well I'd
rather do this sooner than later, so lets go for the 12th!" We were
super pumped!

We had our fall fest on Saturday as well after the baptism. There was
a chili cook off and a mac-n-cheese cook off. I liked the mac-n-cheese
part myself. There was some with bacon in it... I voted for that. We
had Paula and Jake come to that event. Overall this was a really good
week.

Tomorrow we have some conference in Joliet. This will be my last ever
zone conference in this capacity as a full-time missionary in this
mission. They usually ask the departing missionaries to bear their
testimony, I'm kinda nervous for that. Hopefully they skip that part
of the meeting. (;

Elder G. Franklin Scherer

Oswego 10.24.16

Good news first! Elsa passed her baptismal interview and is all set
for this upcoming Saturday, October 29, to be baptized! It's amazing
the change I've seen in her. I hope she always continues to stay with
the church. Elder Limary, our zone leader who interview her, said she
was more than prepared!

Elder Bingham and I have still been fighting with the devil on the
daily with some of our investigators. He just never quits! But he'll
lose anyways so it's okay (:

We've had lots of meetings and things we had to do this week so we
didn't do a whole lot of proselyting. But things are going, overall,
pretty well with our investigators.

I didn't think I was going to come home fat, but I might after these
last couple weeks. People keep giving us food! We have a whole table
full of junk food that people have given us. We are trying to just
power through it so it will be gone and we won't have to worry about
it anymore, but it keeps refilling! Haha sorry mom (;

Okay so for the title, cranberry mustard sauce. We were teaching this
recent convert, Ryan, and we were having what I thought was a really
good lesson, the spirit was really strong and we were reading mosiah
4. I bore my testimony then right after that he says, "ya know I've
just really been thinking about this cranberry mustard sauce I had one
my subway sandwich today." 😑X11,000 I swear people don't ever listen
to what we are trying to say to help them awake from the sleep of
hell. Oh well, at least I felt the spirit and confirmed my testimony
(:

Elder G. Franklin Scherer

 A Mormon household that doesn't have a Y on their house! That's so
rare! Usually everyone out here has Y flags.

 Went to the mission office today. It's right next door to hooters.
That's the only way I can find it. lol

 A member in Oswego has these cool things in his window. I knew Keaton
would appreciate them

 A few after-planning pictures in the kitchen. #choosethesprite
We made a few options for when our rap albums launch.

Teepee Thief - 10.10.16

Quote of the week: "He's not Donald Trump, but he's the Holy Ghost!"
This quote comes from Barbara, our investigator. She's an older lady
who is Pentecostal. I'm not sure what her statement meant, but she
said it right in the middle of her closing prayer for one of our
lessons. Elder Bingham and I had to try really hard to not laugh too
hard.

Speaking of elder Bingham, this man is awesome. I've never had so much
in common with someone else. It's super fun. He has an STX mini
lacrosse stick and he let me play with it and I was doing a bunch of
stick tricks and it was a blast.

Miracles have been happening here in the Oswego Ward this week. It's
been amazing to see how the Lord is working. It's hard when we don't
see it happening, but I believe it is always happening around us,
sometimes it is more apparent to us than at other times.

So I told everyone about Jake Brown who called us and said he wants to
get baptized. So we go there Thursday and I think he was expecting us
to baptize him that day. Haha he was so excited and so ready. He's
been reading/listening to the Book of Mormon like crazy. He was a
little disappointed when we told him we have to teach him all the
lessons first. He objected by saying, "in the Bible when people said
they believed, they got baptized right then." We told him there was a
little more of a process than that and he was like, "I'm going to talk
to the bishop about this." It's such a weird situation, this guy wants
to get baptized so bad and so fast that he doesn't even want the
missionary discussion. Haha what an blessed problem to have! He has
been married to his wife for 11 years and she's a member. He's been
coming to church for like 6 months and has had the missionary
discussions before in the past, but he said his heart was hard at the
time. It's a unique situation, well honestly they all are, but we'll
get it worked out. All he has to do is give us smoking for 2 weeks
then he can be baptized. I think he's got the zeal and determination
to quit. Hopefully before I go home! Either missionaries didn't keep
very good records or something got deleted because there was no info
on him besides his name, address, and phone number. That's why we have
to do the lessons again because we don't have any record of it
previously. But he met with bishop and he is okay with going through
the process. We are teaching him tonight and again Thursday, and
hopefully again this week. Tonight we are going to shoot for a
baptismal date of October 29.

Another miracle, on Saturday we went to Plano and we're stopping by
some potential investigators. We stopped by Jaimee Sigler and she was
in the process of moving so we offered to help. She said yes, but just
after we started to help move a desk she said, "I really didn't think
you would help." Well why would I offer! Haha but after we helped for
a while she said, "I'll make you a deal, since you helped me move,
I'll come to church tomorrow." And she did! It was super cool. We had
5 investigators at church on Sunday. It was awesome.

There's lot of things running through my mind that I wanna tell you
about, but I'll just leave it at that. There were a lot of awesome
things happening this week. Elder Bingham is awesome.

Oh yeah, so the subject line.. Elder Thornock took the toilet paper
when he got transferred! And a half-pan of brownies from Paula St.
John! He must have stuffed them in his suitcase! I know he's new to
the mission field, but who steals the toilet paper!!? Haha good times.
Good thing I had some extra pairs of socks. (;

Elder G. Franklin Scherer

Sukkot - 10.17.16

I hope everyone enjoyed Sukkot eve last night and will continue to
enjoy Sukkot (Feast of Tabernacles) throughout this week. It's a
Jewish holiday. So if you don't celebrate it, don't feel bad cause I
won't either.

Satan 😑
He was trying to get in the way this week. Our investigator, Jake
Brown, had some really bad news hit him this week so he said he was
scared for what was going to happen. We are going to give him a
blessing tonight with out lesson. We are still shooting for mid
November when he can be baptized. I'll have to extend if he needs a
couple extra weeks.

Elsa accepted a baptismal date for October 29!!!!! We have the
interview all set up and everything is going pretty well. Except Satan
came in again.. right before she was about to leave for church some
family from out of state showed up.. she will still be okay for
baptism because she's come enough times already, but we definitely
want her to come this next Sunday or else we might need to hold off
for a few more weeks.

We attempted to put Paula on date for November 12 yesterday, she said
she'd think about it. But yesterday's lesson was unique. The spirit
was stronger than normal with her and she seemed a little more focused
and receptive. It was awesome.

Elder Bingham is still awesome. I've just been trying to master all my
stick tricks again will his fiddlestick. It's super fun.

Well let me tell you of a testimony building experience, among many
others, that I had this week. So I told everyone, over a year ago, of
my Rubik's cube experience and elder wells being an answer to my
prayers. I lost our car key on Wednesday. We looked everywhere. We
were supposed to have lunch with our bishop and Ward mission leader
and right when we were about to leave we couldn't find the keys. We
had to call them and ask if they would come get us, but they were
already at Portillo's but they came and got us and let me have it...
haha they are the funniest people I know. We've got a good
relationship going. It'll be hard to leave them.

Well we prayed and prayed and prayed. And I did my rubiks cube over
and over to remind myself that god answers prayers. We spent most of
our Saturday helping someone move that we helped move 3 weeks ago;
it's a long, but really good, story. We came back to change and the
key just dropped out of my pocket. I checked those pockets at least 10
times.. I don't know how, why, or whatever, but the Lord tested our
faith and patience and ended up finding it!

Have a good week. Don't forget about Sukkot, or do.

Elder G. Franklin Scherer