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

Photos from Owego 10.3.16

 These tall ducks run Illinois. They don't move for anything. Not even semis.

 The awkward moment when you're in the same mission as sister Aubrey

Turner who you went to high school with gets captured in picture by

Elder Bill Wells. (#Bill&Frank)

 Me and elder Thornock when I picked him up in Naperville.

 A couple of cool guys we met on the river. We helped them catch

crayfish and taught them the gospel for about an hour. Didn't even get

my shirt dirty!

 No one would let us come over for conference Saturday morning so

luckily we have wifi in our apartment so we could watch on my iPad.

 My district

 The great city of Oswego

 A couple pictures from a bridge on the fox river.