Oswego 8.8.16

This week was a struggle! Haha trying to get members to lessons was
worse than trying to saddle a crocodile and ride him through the Great
Plains. The only two times we could get members to come, the
investigators cancelled or weren't there. Elsa was sick all week and
we never could connect for a blessing. Nina was busy all week. It was
all around kinda slow, but without all these you wouldn't enjoy the
good weeks as much.

We had a great zone conference. The focus this month is the
restoration of the gospel. We learned how we can more powerfully
testify of Joseph Smith and the Book of Mormon in our lessons. I had a
great interview with president Griffin, afterwards. He's a great man.

Roger Hoopes came to church this week. He's been investigating for a
year now. He's struggling with reading and praying everyday. We've
been able to help him start doing those a little bit more.

Those small and simple things of reading the scriptures, especially
the Book of Mormon, and prayer make the largest difference in our
lives. If we stop doing that we will start to die, spiritually. It
will take time, but after a while we will eventually get to a point
where we don't believe anymore or even worse, question why we even
believed in the first place. I've seen this pattern way too many times
on my mission working with less actives, and it's almost always the
same story, they stop reading and praying.

If you want to stay alive, spiritually, then we have to apply CPR. Go
to Church, Pray daily, and Read the scriptures. Jacob 3:11 - "O my
brethren, hearken unto my words; arouse the faculties of your souls;
shake yourselves that ye may awake from the slumber of death; and
loose yourselves from the pains of hell that ye may not become angels
to the devil, to be cast into that lake of fire and brimstone which is
the second death."

Elder G. Franklin Scherer


This church is in Plano, Illinois. Apparently after Joseph Smith died,
his wife Emma and family and a few others that apostatized from the
true church came here and this was the building they build.

I'm also not sure how you are supposed to get a car into this garage.

Oswego week 2 - 7.25.16

This was a crazy good week! 11 lessons with investigators. I think that is about how many I had the last month, and now we hit that in one week. We were able to get members to 4 of them. We now have Elsa Guzman (previously thought her name was Vazquez) on date for baptism for August 27! Her and her soon to be mother-in-law came to church yesterday! 

So with Elsa, she has had a pretty tough go about these last couple years. She's been kicked out of her house for reasons unknown to me. She now lives with Connie Vazquez and Juan, her boyfriend. She's been baptized in three different churches now and she can't seem to find all the pieces of the puzzle in one spot. She's been so awesome as we've taught her and we have been pondering and praying about a date for baptism and we felt like that was the day. There's a big obstacle to overcome as far as the law of chastity since she is living with her boyfriend and her family. We mentioned it as we passed by her house one day to follow up with her reading and we said hey just by the way there's something that you have to do before you get baptized... She said okay and that was it. Well later that same day Connie texted us and said Juan and Elsa are going to get married this upcoming week! Haha I don't know how it's going to work out that quick, but where there's a will there's a way! They came to church yesterday and bishop talked with them about getting them married and he thinks they're okay so they're gonna go for it. What a miracle!! Again I don't know how it's gonna happen, but we'll do it (:

I forgot to mention that it's really hot here. It got up to 107* plus 95-100% humidity this week. There were a lot of thunder storms. Our power got knocked out 3 times. It's pretty terrible trying to sleep with that kind of heat and no A/C for three nights. Could be worse I guess. Haha good times I guess.

The St John's didn't show up to church yesterday. Not sure why. She feels okay about the church and stuff, but she still doesn't quite understand what the difference is between our church and other Christian churches. So we are trying to work with her on that.

Elder Scherer

:Long Live the 3 er's:

#CaptureTheDream

Heroes get remembered, but legends never die

As for pictures this is all I got for this week. Elsa is the one on the far right. It was one of connie's granddaughters birthdays so we stayed a little extra long after the lesson for some cake and to sing. Don't mind my face I look like an idiot.

Transferred to Oswego 7.18.2016

Oswego

Back to the land of my nativity, Joliet stake. It's been about 16 months since I left here. It's all still standing. Oswego is a nice place 🏼 We live in Montgomery, Illinois in Boulder Hill. I haven't been able to figure out if it's a different city or if Boulder Hill is just a subdivision or what. It takes up at least 1/4 of Montgomery. Kinda like a city within a city, I guess. #Vatican

Every one prepare yourselves...

We had investigators at church. 3 of them! We started teaching the St John family. He's a member, but his wife and kids aren't. She agreed to take the missionary lessons. That is super exciting! We got a referral from a less active member, Connie Vazquez. It's her son's girlfriend, Elsa Vazquez. Same last name, but no relation (so they say 🙄) anyways, Elsa is super cool. She's been going to some different churches and says she picks out what she likes from each one. She says that she is looking for one that has it all together. We got one for her! We've taught her the first lesson and going back tomorrow.

The Ward here is amazing! They have welcomed us in and have had a lot of members invite us over for dinner. It sounds like there's a lot of missionary work going on here. We've had some good meetings with the Ward mission leader and the assistant Ward mission leader (Brother Doherty bought the most heavenly doughnuts I've ever had; better than Krispy Kreme [Barrett, Auti, Jaylen, and Ashlynd know I love Krispy Kreme; remember that one day we had Golden Corral and got 6 dozen doughnuts? #bestdayever]). They seem to be really engaged. The Ward has a strong Ward council as we saw yesterday in the meeting. I'm glad to be here.

It's almost like we're whitewashing. Elder Harris was only here for 2 weeks before there was an accident with his companion. Elder fry broke both of his wrist from falling 10 feet off a stack of hay bails. (No comment, Jacob 6:12) Elder Harris has been in a trio in a different Ward. So there weren't missionaries here for about a month. All the members we have met so far have been excited to have us back.

Well things are better now that I'm in a different area. I probably could and should have been better at finding happiness and trying to be happy where I was at.

Elder Scherer

:Long Live the 3 er's:

#CaptureTheDream

Heroes get remembered, but legends never die

In desperation, we tried to ask Siri how we could find people. Didn't work...

Sister Lynch. We took her the sacrament every week in canton. Amazing lady!

The Kent's. Love them! They told me I can come back and stay with them!

The Brancecum's - they started coming back to church and have now gone back to the temple after 20 years!

Robert and Verna the ones we were teaching. Really gonna miss them, I hope they get baptized soon.

4.11.16

Well another week down I guess. Seemed to go a little quicker than most because it was a day short since our preparation day was moved to Tuesday last week. Everything went well this week as far as numbers go, but I definitely hit a valley mentally. I had a few of the Aggie fight songs or whatever in my head. Getting too excited I guess.

[Show me the Scotsman who doesn't love the thistle.

Show me an Englishman who doesn't love the rose.

Show me a true blooded Aggie from Utah, who doesn't love the spot where the sagebrush grows!]

I've never gotten so many referrals in my whole mission as I did this week. We got a total of 9 and we have contacted 4 of them and we're working on the rest.

Last night was tough, we had to drop one of investigators, Carolyne. She said she just wanted to stay baptist. I think there was some external pressure from family not to join.. She accepted a baptismal date without hesitation a few weeks ago, but has now decided to not continue to learn. We also talked to a guy named William last night. It's the second time we met him and he is the most genuine man I've ever met. He was touched when we offered to help him clean his house or take out his trash. He said he hasn't heard someone make an offer like that to him in a long time.

We had a mission wide fast yesterday. Starting Saturday night at 9:30 the whole mission was to pray all at once and ask Heavenly Father to open the hearts of the people of Illinois. The whole mission is struggling to find new investigators. We fasted yesterday and we also had stake conference for the Peoria stake. That's my third time having stake conference in Peoria. I got to see Jo and a lot of the members from Morton and Galesburg. I didn't get to see Margaret there, though, so I was pretty bummed about that. There was an elder from the second quorum of the seventy, Allen F. Packer. If I understood correctly he is president Packer's son, but I heard a few different things so I'm not sure. President and Sister Griffin also spoke. Sister Griffin invited the whole stake to join with us as we concluded our fast and pray at 9:30 again and plead for the doors to be opened. Something is going to happen if we have 180 missionaries plus a stake of Zion praying all at once!

I preached a sermon about obedience and honesty to myself last night. As a district leader you have to collect all the key indicator numbers from the members in the district every Sunday night and then report them to the zone leaders who then report to the assistants who report to president all the numbers. There's a few Missionaries counting numbers wrong this whole transfer. I don't want to judge them, but it seems like they're stretching the truth a little bit in order to count more numbers. We're trying to help them because they're struggling a lot, but we're struggling to help them. Anyways I got so fed up after weeks of this so I gave the phone to elder Williford and I went into the other room, grabbed my scriptures, and preached to the wall about obedience and honesty. I used for a text Articles of Faith 1:3, 13 among other scriptures. It was a fantastic sermon! I wish I had more of an audience.

Remember

"Sin is the result of deep and unmet needs." President Kimball

Elder Scherer

Weekly 6.27.16

It's crazy that is preparation day, again. Seems like every other day is preparation day now. I only have 20 Sunday's left...

Well this was a good week. I got to go on exchanges with Elder Golling. That was a blast. Right at the very tail end, before we were about to exchange back, we knocked on a door and guess who was inside! Sharon Arnold! The exact lady who ran into us a few weeks ago in the Taco Bell drive thru! What are the odds? Her husband actually let us in and as we turned the corner I saw her, didn't recognize her at the beginning, but she noticed me and said, "are you from canton?" It was pretty cool. We found out she is interested in family history and she knew that the Mormons were big into family history. We told her that we would come back in a few days and teach her why we are interested in family history.

We've still been teaching Robert Baler and Verna. Haven't really broken any ground. Sounds like it backslid a little bit on the last meeting, I wasn't there because I was in Pekin for the day. We've been taking a member with us that has a similar background, but he honestly isn't helping much. He doesn't believe that preach my gospel works. He calls it the "Utah Conversion tool". He says the brethren don't know what it's like out here and we have to do it differently. HAHAHA! I'm gonna tell him to listen to elder Rasband's talk, Standing with the leaders of the church from this last conference. It's been real frustrating. He also told us he went to a grove in Nauvoo to pray for how to teach this guy. He came up with a "short discussion", as he called it. Anyways it's been really dumb, but that's about the maximum member missionary work I've seen in this branch so I guess I aught to be happy that he is trying to help. (:

It's still hot. 

Jacob 1:19

3 Nephi 5:13

Romans 1:16

Elder Scherer

Corn blown over by wind storm

Elder Golling

Home burnt down. Wife didn't make it

Bass Pro Shop

First Exchange - 3.28.16

I conducted my first companion exchange this week with Elder Western of the Pekin West area. He is being trained right now so it was fun to be around a younger missionary. He has a lot of enthusiasm and wants to talk to everyone and share the gospel. I was thinking back to how and what I was when I began my mission. It's amazing what the Lord can do with raw materials, he can shape them any ways he wants/needs to. It's great to look back and see the gradual change from the first to the second, the second to the third, and the continuation of becoming and striving to be the fourth missionary.

I've learned a lot this week. The biggest is to not put off counsel you receive from leaders. A few things have come together where I have realized (Do you not realize I have had diarrhea since Easters?* There's a little Easter joke for ya) the importance of heading counsel given by those who you are under stewardship. I was talking to President Griffin in an interview about 5 or 6 months and I was telling him about some struggles I had and about things that were going on in our area. He suggested I read the talk that I have attached to this email, The Fourth Missionary. I said okay, he sent it to me for me to read, and then I brushed it off or forgot. Well he sent it out to the whole mission just a little bit ago and I reminded me that I never read it. But then again I forgot. Only just the last couple weeks have I read and studied it and it has made a huge difference. I wish I would have read it before when he counseled me to. I can imagine the vast difference it would have made. But nevertheless I am where I am today and I can't change the past. Through the grace of Christ I can and will change. (You should all read "His Grace is Sufficient" by Brad Wilcox)

We had an awesome lesson with Rita and Crystal. We taught them the plan of salvation based on a few questions that they had. They are now on date for April 30! Everyone pray that they will keep that date and that Crystal's boyfriend Joey will want to be baptized as well. He is always there for the lessons, but doesn't want to even read or anything, but I think he's softening a little bit.

The branch life still is weird. There aren't a whole lot of members to call upon when we need someone to come to a lesson with us. I'm beginning to feel a little better about being here after
reading/singing hymn 270 everyday.

I gave sister Lynch a blessing yesterday. She is confined to an old folks home. It was the most powerful blessing I've ever given. It was awesome (:

Hope ya had a great Easter Sunday and have a good week.

Ps we are going to the Nauvoo temple next Tuesday so our preparation day will be moved. So no one get scared when they don't hear from me (;

Pps Remember to laugh and I'll try real hard to get a funny story this week.

*Elder Williford had never seen Nacho Libre. I have basically quoted him the entire movie and he thinks it's hilarious. He said that's the first thing he's going to watch when he goes home. I have succeeded.
Elder Scherer
:Long Live the 3 er's:

 Golf ball size hail from the tornado

Warnings from the tornado

Canton: Week 2 3.14.16

I made it another week here in little canton. This was better than last. I'm starting to get a better understanding of the area and the members. I've offended a few of the members this week. I've discovered that many don't even read the Book of Mormon. I've been challenging them to read it and telling them how important it is. I've been trying to be more bold; I really don't feel like I've been overbearing. If they're offended, then they need to repent according to president Brigham Young.

We found 3 new investigators: Robert, John, and Carolyne. Robert was a former investigator that we stopped by and he let us in. He has a lot of struggles and didn't fail to let us know ALL of his sins. Haha John Moore was a media referral from a long time ago that showed up again in our areabook as uncontacted. We went there and I remembered I actually contacted this same guy almost a year ago when I was serving in Galesburg and went on an exchange with a district leader to canton. Carolyne we met when we were going to an appointment with a less active family. That appointment fell through and right across the street there was a family outside playing bean bag toss. We talked to a guy named Jeff. He said to come back on Tuesday so we did and he was asleep, but his mom, Carolyne, answered and said we could talk to her. We taught her again on Saturday and she is on date for baptism for April 23!!!

She came in on Saturday to teach Carolyne and she said as we were walking in, "I was baptized in the baptist church and I'm gonna stay." Without thinking I just walked right in her house past her and said, "that's okay Carolyne, we'll just read the pamphlet we gave you last time" and sat on her couch. Well we didn't so much as crack open the pamphlet! Haha we taught her the gospel of Jesus Christ and put her on date. She said she knew Joseph smith was a prophet and knew it was
true. We just fractured her testimony of her other church so she tried to justify it back to herself by saying she was baptist.

We had a pretty intense lesson with brother Goldsmith, who is preparing to go to the temple. He doesn't believe in a lot of the doctrines of the church including the fall of man, or Adam and Eve in
general he doesn't believe. I am in no position to make the judgement, but he is totally not ready for the temple. His home teacher went with us and was even saying a lot of false doctrine about Adam and Eve. It was just a bad scenario. They both get the Golden Helmet Award.

I gave a talk on Sunday. It went pretty well I think. I was supposed to talk about missionary work, which I did, but I used the latter portion of it to talk specifically about the Book of Mormon and the doctrinal restoration. I ended with, "Joseph and Hyrum Smith did not give their lives so we could tell the other Christians that we're just like them."

Elder Scherer
:Long Live the 3 er's: