Numero 70 ~ 2nd Christmas Skype

entry by Lisa: 

John sounded great!! It was wonderful to talk and SEE him. His same personality is still there.  :) We had lots of laughs together on the call as we got to visit with him. He shared with us some of his experiences and let us know he is doing really well. He loves the people and the work in Nicaragua. 

We miss him terribly! I am already looking forward to next Christmas to have him home. As much as well all miss him, we know he is needed there. He is blessed and happy to be serving the people there. 

Let the countdown to August 2nd begin! 

2016 is gonna be a busy year for the Sherle family!

Numero 69 ~ Reason for the Season

Well friends and fam. It is the christmas season. We are missing a little snow down here in Nicaragua but hey gotta take what you get i guess. 

This week was decent. 

The baptisms we had set up fell through because one went to Waspan and the other had a ton of work in the hospital so she didnt have time. She did come to church though so we will see if she gets baptized this weekend. 

We found a cool family in our area. It is huge! Probably around 20 and there are some less actives there and some non members so we are going to be working there more now. They are pretty cool. It is just hard to get the whole family to sit down at once and listen to us but we will see what we can do to try to get all of them to listen to our message. 

This week was a pretty normal week. Not much happened. I dont really know what else to talk about the week haha.

This week is christmas i am so pumped! 

I have definitely come to know the real reason for christmas and the beauty of it. 

I hope we can all remember why we celebrate christmas and who we do it for. I hope we can all strive to be a little bit more like him and try to come a little closer unto him. I know that is is for our Savior that we are here today and that you are all blessed to be with your families through the holiday season. 

I love the scripture in Isaiah 9:6 that says "For to us a child is born, to us a son is given; and the government shall be on his shoulders, and his name shall be Wonderful Counselor, Mighty God, Everlasting Father, Prince of Peace". 

I love you all. I hope you can all share some laughs and fun during this time. 

Elder Sherle

Numero 68 ~ new 2nd Counselor

Hey fam! how is it going?? 

This week was awesome! Full of miracles!

As you will see in the pics I sent. We baptized the 3 people we planned. We had the wedding of the family and then baptized them right after. Also, we baptized the 23 year old named Efrain. It was so cool. I baptized all of them. Efrain was the biggest guy I have ever baptized in my mission. He is like 6´4. He is a big boy. He told me he loves basketball too so I guess it was just meant to be!

The baptisms were cool because we didnt have to pass by for any of them to bring them to their baptism and we didnt ever have to pass by on sunday for them to come get confirmed. That pretty much never happens here. They made things very stress free for us! It was a pretty sick wedding because there was another couple that was going to get married so we just did it at the same time with the same attorney! At the baptism, I saw a guy who was getting baptized and this guy was an investigador I had here right when I got to this area. I brought him to general conference and he loved it. I went back and we taught him about baptism and he was willing, but then moved and I never saw him again. On Saturday I saw him walk into the church and I asked him what he was doing and he shook my hand and told me he was getting baptized and was going to change his life. He gave me a big hug and looked so happy. It made me feel so good to see him again. After so much time of not seeing him and the other missionaries found him and helped him out. 

I was really happy to baptize this family. I have found pride in baptizing families and this is the first family I have baptized in Puerto. It is such a great feeling baptizing a family. 

This month we have a goal of baptizing 7 people. We put our goal really high and we are exercising a lot of faith. As of right now, we are at 4 baptisms. We never measure people as numbers but we always put goals to help ourselves work hard to find the people the lord has prepared for us. We have a couple weeks left and feel like we can do it. With the faith anthing is possible. 

Starting next week we are going to be seeing some changes here in Puerto. We are now going to have 2 meeting for just our ward. One in the morning in spanish and one in the afternoon of just miskito. It will be good now because we will have a better control of the members here and be able to help themand support them better, especially the ones that dont understand spanish very well they will benifit a lot more going in the afternoon in their own language to learn more about Jesus Christ. Our branch president had a meeting with us too this week and said he needed us to do more in the branch so he called me to be the 2nd Counselor of the branch and called my comp to be the Secretary of the branch. It is going to be so fun to be part of the branch presidency because I will be able to know the needs of the branch better. So we will see how that goes. We are not sustained yet but next sunday they will sustain us, so im really not suppost to tell any of the members her until we get sustained. Good stuff!

I hope everyone is enjoying the christmas season! It will be a good one! We always need to remember the Lord in all the things he has given us. It is a special season! I love christmas so much!!!!!

love yall!

Elder Sherle

Numero 67 ~ It's been a great week here in Puerto

 

hey fam! It has a been a great week here in Puerto Cabezas.  

We saw a lot of miracles this week. First off, we had a meeting with President. It was a zone conference. He came to talk to us and help us in the work. I honestly love meetings with President. He told us that the lord wants us to advance the work and that we can double baptisms and establish the church and told us what we can do better to have more success. I think I like visits by President because i spend every day teaching people but when he comes its like him teaching me. He told us that if we have the faith we can find a family every week to baptize this month. Something that stuck out to me was that he told us that we cant do this work alone. He told us that we need to communicate with the Lord and tell him what we need and work with him so that we can have success. The Lord prepares his children and it is our duty to find them and help them come unto Christ.

We had the blessing to baptize this kid named Christian. His whole family are members of the church so we had a cool little baptism for him on Saturday. It was a nice little baptism. We had it just with his family and one of our investigadors.

We had another week of success here in our area for investigadors at church. We had 5 people with baptismal dates and 4 of them came to church. The other one didnt because she is in Managua still so that was super good that they came. We have three people to baptize this week. A family named Juan and Asucena and another guy named Efrain. They came to church and all seem ready to go so it should be a great week this week.

Last night, we had changes. Only 1 missionary came this change and 18 left so the mission got even smaller. Now we only have 20 missionaries in the zone and when i got here there was 26. It feels a lot different now.

The devotional last night was good. I love christmas music so much. We got it going in the house and I love it. Just a few more weeks and we will be there!

Love you all!

Elder Sherle

 

 

Numero 66 ~ Thanksgiving Crepes

Pamiliki nahki sa? Pain baman!

Miskito is so hard! But im getting a little bit down!

We had a decent week here in Puerto!

Well this week was Thanksgiving. The best thing was Thanksgiving fell on Thursday which is weekly planning day so we got our district together with another district in the zone and we had a cool little activity in the morning at church. We decided to do a breakfast. So my comp likes to cook so he decided to make everyone crapes! We got there early and starting busting out crapes for everyone! We had to make 42 crapes! I say we because helped crack the eggs and mix and helped prepare so i took part in the action too! haha also the sister missionaries made bananna shakes and some other elders made hashbrowns! It was a good little breakfast! I had never really had crapes before but they were really good! I put a lot of powdered sugar and syrup and all that good stuff on it so it was a nice treat! Then we all planned together and just chilled for a little bit. It was pretty good for what we got here in Nicaragua so we were really grateful.

In the Thanksgiving spirit, I want to tell you guys that I am so thankful for all the help you have given me and all the love you have shown me. I am most grateful for my Lord and what he did for me and the oportunity I have to serve him and his children. The best thing about this Thanksgiving was knowing that the next one I will be with my family :)

This week we did better than last week. We thought we were going to have a baptism but they needed more time. So we will see how they keep progressing. We were very successful at church. We brought 5 of the people who we have on date to church. We were really happy to see them show up to church. We had 3 others go so in total we had 8 investigadors at church this week and we have 6 people on baptismal date. There are two for this week. One is named Christian, he is to complete a family and another girl named Yaoska. She went to the baptism on Saturday to see what it was going to be like. We are praying hard that they will be able to be baptized this week. They both are really positive and seem pretty sure but we will see what happens!

We are now over 2 weeks over here without water. It is so awful. No one has water it seems like. We have had to go to our neighbors house and haul water from their well to our house to shower. I dont know what is going on but we are all dry. Because there is no water, everyone has to get water out of the wells but now the wells are drying up. If we go another week without water we will be in trouble. The people need there water and they dont have enough money to keep buying oney from the store. I heard some rumors that it should come back today or tomorrow but you just never know.

We had a miracle this week. So we did service this week at a members house but right before we left to go work over there we got a call from our president and he told us to go to the church because there was someone there that wanted to talk to us. So we went and we met this guy who literally went to the church because he wants to get baptized with his wife. They live in our area and we talked to them and he told us he wants to be good with God so he wants to get married and baptized. I felt a little weird that that would happen but he seems pretty real. They went to church this week and they loved it. So that was a big miracle that we saw this week! Pretty cool stuff.

Thats what I got for you guys this week! We are just a little closer to Christmas. There are a couple houses here that have put up Christmas lights! I love it! I cant wait for Christmas! JI think this week we are going to break out the Christmas music!

I hope everyone has a great week!

Much love,

Elder Sherle

Numero 65 ~ Love the scriptures

Hey fam!

This week was a good week! We had some really sweet lessons with our investigadors.

We are teaching two families that are really cool. They are really Moravan though. But we are starting to see a lot of positive signs of their progression. I can feel the spirit working with them every time we go there. One guy named Francisco went to church this week and it seemed that he had a good time at church. He came up to us after and asked us when we could go by his house again. We set a meeting with him on Wednesday. We are going to see how he is doing. He has a baptismal date for this weekend so we will go see if he has the desire to do it.

The other family that we are working with was sick and couldnt go to church. My comp passed by in the morning because we do divisions in the morning and they live in Elder Walker's area. So he passed by them and they were really sick and said next weekend they would go. We are going to visit them tomorrow to see how they are doing and to teach them more. We introduced the book of Mormon this week with both families this week and they both seemed interested. President has been telling us a lot that we will be able to establish the church better and have stronger converts if they read the Book of Mormon and learn about it more and ask God if the book is true. He has been telling us that true conversion will not come without the Book of Mormon because it is what holds our religion up. Its either true or its a lie and we need to ask God personally to find out which. So we are puting that into practice in our area trying to focus more on that. I have come to love the scripture here on my mission. I love reading them and learning new things about the gospel. I can feel the spirit every time I open up the scriptures and read them to my investigadors. They seem to have all the answers of our lives. They help us know what to do and to receive guidance in our lives. I love the time from 8-9 every day to read the scriptures. I dont think i would have ever said that before my mission.

This week was District Conference for Puerto Cabezas. We went to the first session of the Priesthood and it was a little sad. There wasnt a big showup. Most of the priesthoods that showed up were the missionaries. The second counselor of President Collado came and kind of chewed out the priesthood because he said that if we want a stake here in Puerto we need to have a strong priesthood. There is a lot to do still here to get a stake but little by little we are getting there. One cool thing was my convert, Ceferino, was there and he received the Melchizedec Priesthood and said the opening prayer in the morning session on sunday. he is so awesome. His wife just got home from the temple on saturday and he told me that once august comes this next year he is going to go get sealed with her.

We are struggling a little bit finding cool new investigadors in the area. A lot of lessons fell through this week but this week we are going to plan a lot better so that we find more and work with the members more. I am praying that our posibilities will go through this week because they are so close. Just got to have some faith.

I love you guys! Hope you all have a great week!

Elder Sherle

Numero 64 ~ Don't wait, Do good

Hey fammmm! It has been another good week down here in Puerto, as always.

So like I told you guys, we had to combine our areas and now we have to do what 4 missionaries used to do. It has been a little difficult as we have had to balance my area and his area. This week we did one day in my area and one day in his area. I liked doing that but at the same time it was hard for me because are people that I want to visit every day but I couldnt. We will see how we do it this week. In both our areas we have good investigadors so we cant just ditch one. We are going to look for a base in the area so we have a main spot where we work so that we dont waste too much time walking to meetings. I think just with a little time we will get the rythmn of things over here.

On Tuesday, my first contact in my comp's area we found a cool family and the best thing was we were with a member and so we shared with them a cool message and they accepted to be baptized. We sang a hymn and I could really feel the spirit in the lesson and the member helped us with the Miskito so it was a great lesson. They are really cool family but they are from the Moravan church and are really strong in the church. They know that they have to follow Christ and do what he asks them to do, but they are having a hard time coming to the conclusion that they will have to change religions. Here, there are a lot of traditions. The people say at whatever church the parents died thats where the kids need to be and if the kids move from that church they will be cursed or something. So it is really hard for people to not follow in their tradition and change something that they have always done. But Christ says "I am the way the truth and the light. No one comes to the Father except through me", so following Christ is the only way we are going to make it to our father.

Only the wife went to church this weekend and she said she liked it. We also had 8 other people in the church so it was a successful day for us. We were really happy with that because of all the changes in our areas but the Lord provided and we had success.

This week the attendance at church was pretty low. I think it is because it did not stop raining all week. It is crazy. I have been in my poncho and my rain boots every day. It rains so hard here. So i dont think a lot of people came because on Sunday morning the sun was out for the first time in the week so everyone was putting up their clothes to dry and washing all their clothes. Just so everyone knows, everyone here washes their clothes by hand and they use the sun to dry them so they took advantage of the sun and didnt go to church. I guess that is a good excuse. If you dont have clothes, you cant go to church. So hopefully this rain will stop for a little bit this week.

I want to share with you guys a cool scripture i found this week. Its in D y C 58:26-28

26 For behold, it is not meet that I should command in all things; for he that is compelled in all things, the same is aslothful and not a wise servant; wherefore he receiveth no reward.

27 Verily I say, men should be anxiously engaged in a good cause, and do many things of their own free will, and bring to pass much righteousness;

28 For the power is in them, wherein they are agents unto themselves. And inasmuch as men do good they shall in nowise lose their reward.

I like this because it says that we should never have to wait to do good works. We should be anxiously engaged in doing good works and choosing the right. It should be the desire of our hearts to follow the Lord and not have to have someone tell us to do so.

Thats what I got for you guys this week! I hope everyone has a great week!

Kaiki Was!

Elder Sherle

Numero 63 ~ New lunch cita

Well fam! hows it going?? All good over here in Nicaragua. Let me tell a little bit about my week.

Well to start off the week, we changed our lunch cita. We were really annoyed with our last one and so we decided to change to a new family that lives really close to the church. It was a great choice because she cooks us such good food. Since ive been there we have had some steak, lobster, and a famous plate here in Puerto called Rondon. Her food is so good! Her name is Ericka and she is a recent convert.

Thanks for the Halloween package guys! I forget how good some things from america taste! haha. I ate one of those jolly ranchers and i remembered how good american candy is. Thank you so much guys!

This week Elder Maughan and I worked really hard, like always. We went back to one of the dudes that was supposed to get baptised last week, Mario, to see if he was ready. He said he was ready now and he wanted to do it on Saturday. So on Saturday at about 7 at night he was baptised. It was cool to see him get baptised. We really had to show a lot of faith and a lot of patience with him to take that step but he did it. We were really happy. The bad thing was on Sunday he didnt get confirmed. I dont know why he didnt come to church to get confirmed. He hid from us on Sunday and we found him and he didnt want to go. He said he had a problem and he didnt want to tell us why and for that problem he couldnt go to church. I honestly was pretty disappointed because he didnt want to go. Like why get baptised if you arent willing to do the whole thing?? I guess we will see what happens this week if he gets confirmed.

So this week was changes. It was big changes here in Puerto. Every companionship except 2 had changes. 7 left and 3 came back. 2 areas shut down. One of which was mine. The saddest part was that Elder Maughan left Puerto. It was super sad saying bye to him. Him and I worked so well together. He taught me so many things and helped me so much be a better missionary. I really respect him a lot. After the sacrament meeting he had to go to the airport and almost the whole branch left the church with us to say bye to him at the airport. Its always hard saying bye to comps. Its like a brother leaving you. Also, today Elder Chen left back to the Pacific. Its like all my good friends are leaving. I got a couple friends here still but they might be going here soon in the next couple changes.

My new comp now is Elder Walker. He is from South Carolina. I wish i had my camera to send you guys a pic of me and him but maybe next week. We are going to combine my area and his area and it is just one area. So we have a lot of work ahead of us. I got to get to know his area and he has got to get to know mine, members, investigadors and all that good stuff. The best thing is that we are going to stay at Erick's house to eat! haha.

It was a good week. I was sad to see Elder Maughan go but now we are on to a new chapter in the mission.

Well, thats what i got for you guys! I hope everyone has a great week!

Love you all!

Elder Sherle

Numero 62 ~ John Dillon

Hey fam and friends! It was another good week over here in Puerto! 

It has been so hot this week. We had a lot of trials of faith but in the end it worked out good. 

Before I start, i just want to wish everyone a Happy Halloween. They dont celebrate Halloween here so we didnt get to do anything. Right before we went to bed my comp told me happy halloween hahah until then I remembered it was Halloween. That was my last Halloween here in Nicaragua. 

This week when we were contacting I was walking through this guys backyard (which is perfectly normal) and my comp was behind me and then a dog comes out of nowhere and bites me in the back of the leg. I had never been bit by a dog before until that day. I tried to kick it but it ran away too fast. The dog had its shots and everything and didnt get me too bad but it freaked me out. I hate the dogs here so much haha.
We showed up to one of our less active families and one of the daughters had a baby of about 2 months. She told us that the baby didnt have a name and that she was waiting for us to give it a name. So we named the baby John Dillon. My name and my comps name. We wrote it down for her and she said she was going to write it for his birth certificate. hahaha i named a baby. It was awesome. 

I lost my wallet too. I went to buy something from the pulperia and i forgot to put it back in my pocket. A kid took it and i didnt have it for 2 days. I got everything cancled and everything and then the next morning a member called us and told us that they had it. Some kid recognized my face on the id and gave it to the members. It was definitely a blessing that he gave it back because usually the people dont give stuff back like that. I was so grateful to get it back. 

At the end of the week, we had the blessing to baptise these 2 brothers, Javier and Enroy. We had 3 people to baptise in the morning on sunday before church and so i went to go get a guy named Mario and my comp went to get Javier and Enroy in divisions. So when I went to Mario he told me he had to go to his dads house real quick before he could go with us so I had to wait there for forever and he came back and told me he didnt have time and by that time the other two had been baptised so I wasnt able to see them get baptised but the most important thing was that they got baptised. It was sad because Mario didnt get baptised and he was so close and so ready to do it. I dont know what made it so that he didnt get baptised. But the Lord blessed us with that miracle to be able to baptise those 2 brothers. It was very stressful and very tight on time but we got it done. We will go to Mario's house this week to see what happened to him and if he still has the desire to do it. We found some other cool people this week too so we are excited to go back to them to see if they are going to progress. 

So that was my week for you guys! Full of crazy things as always. Full of stress and trials but all in all it worked out how the Lord wanted it. All we need to do is trust in him.

Love you all, have a great week!

Elder Sherle

Numero 62 ~ Mom came back

Hey fam!!! How are you guys?? Another week down! 

This week Elder Maughan and I worked really hard. There was a couple cool things that happened. 

Oh first off, those 3 little kids that lost their mom, their mom came back. Hmm, I guess she just went on vacation or something haha. We saw her this week when we walking in the street. Good thing is those 3 little kids got their mom back. 

If I wouldve had my camera I wouldve been able to send you some really cool pics of me and a monkey. When we went to our little activity "mutual" thing at a members house, they had a little monkey that they brought from the mountains and it was pretty well trained. So we got to play with it for a little bit. I honestly might look into a monkey when i get home hahah they are so awesome. Its like a dog that has hands and is really smart. They are so fun to play with! haha

I went on divisions this week with Elder Monson. The good ole MTC comp! I love Elder Monson. He is an awesome missionary. It is crazy how much we have grown. We had a good time together. For some reason, all the dogs have something with Monson so the whole day we had a ton of dogs trying to attack us and bite us. This one dog came booking at us and Elder Monson just drills it with his foot and knocks it over to where I was standing and so I kicked it pretty good too and it ran away crying. It was good teamwork by the two of us hahaha. 

This sunday was pretty stressful. We had this family that we going to try to baptise. It was a mom and her two sons. They had come to church for the last month. We got them all to church and they were all in the room with the baptismal font and so we started asking them if they wanted to get baptised and the mom started to tell us that she still wasnt ready and that she wanted her sons to get baptised first and then her another time. We kept trying to encourage her to take the step of faith and show God her committment to him by being baptised but she just kept telling us that she wasnt ready. So she wanted one of her sons to get baptised right there so we had to call President to see if that was okay and he told us that it was better to wait and do it when the mom and the other son is ready. It was really disappointing because they were so close to doing it. We had to respect her decision and her agency. We felt that we had done our part and that the Lord was going to do his and help them to take that step but it wasnt his will. President told us to be patient, and if we are patient we will see miracles. 

I have learned that on my mission. I have learned that patience and faith help us see miracles from the Lord. There is no reason to dwell on the things from the past and be sad about them. I dont need to beat myself over what happened. I just need to keep the faith and be patient. Its really hard to be patient but it works. Sometimes we just need to trust in the Lord a little bit more and wait for Him. 

That is my week for you guys! I am doing good. I feel good. I am a little sick right now. I thing I ate something that didnt sit well in my stomach but that is normal haha. 

I feel like I am definitely in the rythmn of the mission now. 

Hope you guys have a great week! Thank you everyone for sending me emails! 

Love you all! 

Aysabe

Elder Sherle

Numero 61 ~ Rain boots

Oh hey fam and friends! 

well this week was full of hard work. Needless to say, I was very exhausted by the time it got over. I guess I could compare it to the way I would feel after a basketball tourney, just beat. My body hurt and I was drained honestly. That is missionary work though. It takes everything. Also, hard works brings miracles so thats how its got to be. 

Hmmm.....to start off this week it was raining like crazy. I mean, like crazy. Every day it would come down so hard. We are in that season though where it rains just about every day. The first couple days I was getting so soaked and my shoes were getting destroyed from the roads. For those who dont already know, the roads are just dirt so they get full of water and mud and all that good stuff. Walking all day and having wet and muddy shoes all day doesnt make it too fun so I decided to go and buy some rain boots. They are sweet. My feet were so dry the rest of the week because of my rain boots. I didnt think I would ever get to this point where I would buy rain boots but it was necessary. Now I can walk everywhere and not having to worry about where I walk. 

We changed our clothes lady this week because she wasnt washing it for us this week so my comp and I had to use the same clothes for 4 days straight and for the rain our clothes couldnt dry. By that fourth day our shirts were pretty yellow. It was gross. It felt so good to get fresh washed clothes haha but now we are all good with our new lady that is doing it. She even ironed our clothes this week which not very many people do. My shirts look so nice, I was very impressed. haha

Something really sad happened this week. We went to our recent converts house. The mom was a member and the kids were baptised about 4 months ago. We got there and the mom wasnt there. We asked the 3 kids where she was and all they said is that she left. So we went to the grandmas house right in front of the house and asked what happened and she told us that the mom just ran off with some other guy and left the kids. I honestly felt so bad for those 3 little kids. Their mom just left them with nothing. It was so sad. I asked myself. How could a mom do that? I dont understand it. Sometimes I ask why the Lord lets things like that happen. I just know that God has a plan for everything. 

On Sunday, we brought a family to church. Everyone went but the son and so we took the son in the afternoon to the Miskito meeting. We put him on the bus and we walked to the church because the bus was super full and when we got there we couldnt find him and no one knew where he was. I was so scared because the mom trusted us with the kid. We went back to his house and he wasnt there and we had no idea where he was. I was so stressed out and we were looking and looking and then about 30 mins after the church got over we got a call from the mom and she told us that he just showed up to the house. After everything I was just so relieved. I was so stressed for that. Im glad he is all good though. After that, I was just done and ready to go to bed hahaha. Sundays are crazy here. The plan never goes as planned, never. 

 

All in all. I learned something very beautiful this week. I learned about the love. Love is so important for us as misionaries. If we dont love the people here we are never going to help them feel the love of the Savior. Sometimes its hard for me to love and I get frustrated with the people and all the stuff we go through as missionaries. I realized this week that for me, if the people that helped me come out on a mission wouldnt have shown me love, i probably wouldnt be here by now. So i need to pay it forward and give that same love that I have felt to the people here. 

Well, thats what I got for you guys this week! I got a picture too of me and my rain boots! :) 

 

love you all!

Elder Sherle

Numero 60 ~ Visit with Sister Collado

Hey fam!! Whats up! Hope everyone is doing good!

This week was good. It went by really fast. Like every week, it was full of its ups and downs but all in all i guess it was a good week. 

President and Sister Collado came over to Puerto this week. There were here for Saturday and they left today. President came to do a bunch of number stuff and to do interviews and to help out the leaders and stuff here. It was good. I had a good interview with him. One cool thing that happened is Saturday night we were waiting for President because he was in a meeting with the leaders so it was a couple of us missionaries and Sister Collado. What happened was her and I were able to have an actual normal conversation for about and hour and a half. It was awesome. I actually got to know her a little bit as a person and get to know how she was called to the mission and the whole process of their call. It was so cool to hear all the things they have been able to do. I thought it was cool that we got to have that conversation because that was the first time in my mission that that has happened to me and now I feel like I actually know a little bit better my mission mom. I got a lot of respect for her. 

We had a girl named Ailing that was suppost to get baptised on Saturday. She went to conference and everything and she was all ready to go until the last minute and she backed out. Her family told us that she went to the hospital on Friday and then on Saturday she left her house early in the morning so we never found her. It was pretty annoying. I dont really understand why that happens. At the end of it all, i learned something from it. Every person in the world has their agency to act for themselves. We as missionaries are just the guides to the truth. We testify and invite people to act so that they might know what to do to be saved but we cant force anyone to do anything. It is a great gift that God has given us to be able to choose for ourselves and to make our own decisions and those decisions decide where we go after this life and for eternity. So i just got to stay positive and keep looking to help as many people as I can know what to do to be able to live with God again. 

I feel so blessed to have this gospel in my life. It has helped me so much. It really has opened my eyes to see the bigger picture of things and to see what my purpose here in life. I am so grateful for the atonement so that we can get back up when we fall and move on and be better  people. 

Well thats what i got for you guys this week! I hope you liked it. My camera is still broke. I hope Elder Lainez can get it fixed soon so I can send you guys some pics to make my letters cooler! haha 

I love you all have a great week!!!

Elder Sherle

Numero 59 ~ General Conference

Hey fammmmm! It was a great week here in Puerto Cabezas. 

Now that I am in a new area I spent this week trying to get to know everyone and get to know the new area. I love the new area. It is a lot bigger than my last area. From what I have noticed, this new area is a lot more spanish than miskito. It is more closer to the main part of town so everyone speaks spanish really well. My comp is awesome. We are working good together. 

I was super tired this week because we walked a lot more than usual with general conference and trying to get as many people to church as possible. We were really successful with bringing investigadors to church. I broke my all time record of investigadors to church with 18 this weekend. By the end of the last session I was dead. We saw miracles though getting that many investigadors to church. I was really happy to see so many new people go to church. The church was super full. 

The branch I am in is really strong. We have a lot of returned missionaries in it and they are a lot of strong members. One thing that I have noticed in the branch is that the members are a lot closer than the other branches that I have worked in. There is more love. I already feel comfortable with the members. The liders know who are investigadors are and everything. That is something that almost never happens. I am going to love being in this branch. 

The highlight of my week was General Conference of course. It was awesome. I have honestly come to love general conference as I have actually watched them on my mission because of the spirit that the profet and the apostles have with them. There were a lot of great talks and I was able to learn a lot about how to be a better follower of Jesus Christ and how I can love the Lord more in my life. I am so grateful for living Profets and Apostles that talk with the Lord that can guide us through life that we might be able to stay on the straight and narrow paths. They help us know the boundaries in life that protect us from danger and show us how to find the happiness and purpose of life. 

President Uchdorf said "Exaltation is the goal, Discipleship is the journey". It is so true. Our goal in life is to be able to live with God once again and to be able to enjoy all the blessing of Him and we need to be disciples of the Lord to be able to reach our goal. 

Elder Oaks said "The future is as bright as your faith". I really liked that because for our faith God can work miracles in our life but if we dont have faith and we dont believe, our future wont be so bright and God wont be able to work so many miracles in our lifes. 

And there are so many more. 

I am so grateful for the many things I have learned here and without a doubt I know that the Lord lives and he wants us to be happy. For that reason, he has given us guidelines and his gospel to be able to follow the path that leads back to him. He loves us so much. 

I hope everyone was able to get something out of Conference. I love you guys and hope you guys have a great week this week! 

Love you guys!

Elder Sherle

Numero 58 ~ New Puerto Branch ~ Camera broke

Hey fam! Another good week down here in Puerto Cabezas.

This week was pretty cool. This week we worked really hard and found some really cool people. We were able to help a lot of our investigadors progress more in the gospel. We found a super cool family this week and were helped them commit to a bautismal date to prepare for but the guy went out to the sea to work which is always a downer. That is the worst part about here is the dudes all go out to work in the sea and they dont come back for weeks at a time. We just have to adjust though.

The baptism we were going to have fell through. The girl was too scared of what her family was going to say if she did. She knew she had to do it and that this was the truth. I understand how she feels but the most important person in our life should be Jesus Christ.

At church this week we had 9 investigadors in church. It was really good because the most of the ones that went are the ones that we had dates with. Its the best feeling seeing your investigadors show up to church. It is a step of faith for them and it helps them grow closer to the Lord.

On Sunday, I found out that I got changes. I was super suprised because I was almost certain that I was going to stay in my area. I got moved the the Puerto Branch. My new comps name is Elder Maughan. He is a gringo and he is a cool dude. Actually last November, we did divisions together for one day and now we are comps. Another cool thing is that my new house is wayyyyy better than my last house that I had. Its always weird being changed because now I have to start all with new faces and new people. I am excited though it is going to be awesome.

One thing I learned this week is that we as missionaries need to be direct with the poeple here. I learned that if the people dont know why we are here and if we dont invite to act and promise them the blessings that God is willing to give us, no one will do anything and their faith wont grow. We need to be bold and help the people learn more about the Lord and to be able to enjoy the same blessings he does.

Thats what I got for you guys this week. A new start. I am excited. I will let you guys know how it goes this next week!

Love you all!

Elder Sherle

 

 

Numero 57 ~ First contact in English

Hey fam!!! This week went by really fast. Almost too fast. I dont even really remember what happened. Ill throw down a couple thoughts though.

Emilio. Emilio didnt have time to move out of his house. So he didnt get baptised. His job right now is really demanding so he had no time this week outside of his job. Our branch president told us that Emilio is having a hard time taking the decision because he doesnt want to live his kids but his wife is really rude to him and wont marry him so he is living in a big sin. We are going to give him a little bit more time to make his decision. He is so cool though. I got faith in him.

This week was really good for us in finding new investigadors. We found some really cool families. We met this family from Honduras and they went to church and the wife came up to me and told me "Sorry that I was late, next week I will be on time". Anytime a new investigador tells you that it is always a good sign. We were able to put a couple other baptismal dates with a couple other cool people. We are doing good. We are getting better and better each week it seems like. We use our time really wisely and we are working hard. At the end of the week I am always so beat. Pdays come at the best time. They are a need.

Another family, Pedro and Anna, went to church this week too. Anna is the sister of a returned missionary from our ward that got back about a month ago. They are really cool. They are having problems in their relationship and so we are trying to help them realize how the gospel blesses the family and that if they live the gospel they will be happy and wont have so many problems. We are going to have a family home evening tonight it will be good.

On thursday we were walking around contacting a bunch of people and I contacted this dude and he started talking to me in english. He was actually speaking with me really well. It threw me off but I went with it and contacted him in english. It was so weird. I felt so different. It my first contact ever in all english. Its weird I had to translate from spanish to english in my mind haha.

Well, that was my week I guess. Thats what I got for you guys today. I hope you enjoyed it :)

I love you all. Have a great week!

Aysabe!

Elder Sherle

Numero 56 ~ Puerto ~ Running Fast Falling Rats

Hey fam! How is everyone?

I am doing good here in Puerto. I guess I'll tell you a little bit about my week...

We were really busy this week. We had a lot of people to visit and spent a lot of time finding new investigadors. This week we found out that there was a part of area that we didnt know was ours so we got to go discovering over there this week. The place is called "Los Angeles", just for the name I know we are going to have some success there. We actually found a couple cool people over there. We found a guy named Linder. He came from Chinandega over here to Puerto Cabezas. His gf over there is a member of the church and he had been investigating the church but then he moved over here and when we contacted his house he was really happy to see us and was super positive. He really understood our message and was very open to learning more.

A funny story. We got into this house to teach and we start teaching and we start seeing 2 rats up by the roof start runnig around and chasing eachother and they were so big. It was so hard to stay concentrated on the lesson because she didnt notice because her back was to them but we could see them clearly and it was so gross. My comp hates rats and he freaks out when he sees one so image how he was hahha the funniest part is they were running so fast that one of the rats fell from the roof and landed in the chair right next to my comp literally like a foot from him and he jumps up and starts screaming and he grabbed me and hid behind my back hahahaha. He was behind my back for a good five minutes because he was so freaked out. We definitely lost the spirit in that lesson hahaha but it was pretty funny. Lets just say we wrapped up that lesson pretty fast and got out of there hahahah.

We saw a miracle this week. We had been working with this guy named Emilio this last month. He is awesome and wants to change his life. The thing is, he hasnt been able to progress much because his wife is a member of another church and refused to marry him so he is not able to be baptised because he still lives with her. Also, he has been working on sundays so we kind of stopped visiting him for about a week. But this sunday he showed up to church and he brought a friend too. He told us that this weekend he wanted to get baptised. So we need to help him move out of his house and find somewhere to stay. So that is our goal this week. I was so happy to see him go to church and see him happy.

So many litte miracles that the lord does for us.

I got a couple cool pics Im going to send. We went to the beach today for P-day!

Well, there are a couple highlights for you guys this week. Thats what I got for you guys!

I love you all and hope you have a great week!

Elder Sherle

 

Numero 55 Puerto~

hey fam!

Well this week went by super fast like always! It was a good week!

We worked really hard this week. We were really focused on getting our goals every day. We did good. Last night when we got home we were both really tired for the work we did. 

We saw some miracles this week. On that note that we worked hard, the people we had committed to church only a couple came and the rest were news that people presented to us at church and we have visits with them this week. We were super excited to see a brand new family in the church and they live in our area. It was a miracle because we didnt see the people that we had committed come to church but God always finds a way. He blessed us with that miracle which was pretty cool. 

Another cool thing that happened was when we started the week we didnt have anyone with a baptismal date and by the end of the week had 5 people with a baptismal date. God put us in the path of these people for us to help them. It was cool because all of them were brand new people and they accpeted to be baptised on the contact. That is one really cool thing about this mission is we can put baptismal dates in the contact. I guess it is because there are a lot of people here that are ready to accept the gospel in their lives. 

Hermana Karen is a lot better now. She was the one that had a stroke. She is feeling better and she is now back in her house and walking around and doing good. She healed really fast. She has therapy now but she was a lot better than what she was before. God works miracles. Its a beautiful thing. 

 

I got a new plaque this week too! My plaque was all dirty and nasty and you could barely even see the letters on my plaque and they finally sent me a new one so it was cool to actually be able to present myself as a missionary of "La Iglesia de Jesucristo de los santos de los ultimos dias" to people. I felt like a brand new missionary because my plaque now is so perfect and nice and clean. haha that was just a funny thought i had.

I hit 13 months yesterday. Wow. 13. Its going by fast. I cant believe I already have over than 3 months here in Puerto. I feel like time goes by so fast. Everyday is kind of the same so I am in a good little rythmn. 

Just want to leave with a shoutout to my sister, Raims, for completing her 17th birthday this last week! If you havent already, wish her a happy birthday and when you see her give a big hug for me! :) 

I love you guys! I hope you are all doing good! 

Always remember how much God loves us and wants us to be happy. This life is to be happy. 

Until next week

Elder Sherle

Riding on top of the bus

 

Numero 54 ~ "Do your best and the Lord will do the rest"

Hey fam! Another week down! I cant believe we are already about to get into September!

This week was full of its ups and downs. Ill let you know what happened.

Well we did better this week with our contacts and we visited more the recent converts and the less actives. We taught about 65 lessons this week counting recent converts, less actives, and investigadors. We were pretty diligent and we stayed focused through the whole week so that was good. The weird this was that we kept running into a ton of Pastors. Its so funny when we talk with them because they always try to fight with us and bible bash. We have a good time with it though. haha

I was still feeling pretty sick though the week. The Hermana Barker told me to buy some antibiotics and so i have been on those. I finished them today and now I am finally feeling back to normal. It has been like 3 weeks feeling this pain in my stomach but now I am starting to feel better. I have gotten a lot better keeping everything clean and drinking good water.

President Nelson came to Managua on Saturday. Ya we couldnt go because we are too far away and the mission didnt want to pay for us to go over there. Messed up. Because we couldnt go, the zls made a nice breakfast (pancakes and smoothies) and so we ate before he spoke and then we got to listen. It was alright, the connection wasnt too good so we got disconnected a few times but his message was awesome. I took a lot of notes of what he said. He has a such a strong spirit with him and he is so happy. He told us that keeping the commandments dont restrain us, they liberate us. I have definitely seen that in my life. When we keep the commandments we are always filled with happiness.

One of our members in our area had a stroke this week on thursday. We went to the hospital and gave her a blessing on Saturday. On Sunday, her husband told us on sunday that she had gotten a lot better and that her face had stopped twitching. It was a cool little testimony of Priesthood power and how God works faith though people that believe in it. I think she might get out of the hospital today so we are praying for her.

We had a baptism planned for us on Sunday but it fell though. I dont know what happened because we saw her in the morning and talked to her and she was all good to go but then when we went back to the house in the afternoon to go with her to the church she was gone. She didnt answer her phone or anthing so we dont know what happened. I got pretty upset because everything went bad and then that was just the cherry on top. I guess it just wasnt meant to be. Maybe she will be ready later on.

We had to drop a bunch of people and now we dont have a ton of people progressing so this week will be a big week of finding the chosen people.

So that was a little bit of my week. Its ups and downs. I guess thats how life is. Ups and downs. Just got to keep the faith and move on.

"Do your best and the Lord will do the rest"

I love you guys so much! I hope you have a great week!

Elder Sherle

Numero 53 ~ Puerto white jumper

Hey fam!!!! I had a good week this week.

I am feeling a little bit better now. I had to do a paracite test this week and thank goodness it came out negative. I am not even going to explain to you guys what I had to do for the test.....for those who know what you have to do for that test you understand me. Anyways haha, I found out I have an infection in my intestines so the mission gave me a pretty strong antibiotic to help me out. I am going to start taking it tomorrow. I talked to a doctor and she told me that we should de-paracite ourselves every 3 months to keep us clean. She also told us that we need to always put bleach in our water. The mission has been really focused on that lately. They are going to give us little bottles of bleach so that we will always have a little to put in the water.

The work has been good. We had a really cool family named Lenin and Janeth go to church this week with us along with 5 other people. Lenin has a baptismal date for this weekend but he works on Sunday so we will see what happens with them.

We had a couple people ready to get baptised last weekend but a lot of them fell through. One lives with his wife and they arent married and she doesnt want to get married so he told us he is going to move, his name is Emilio. The other went to Managua because he dad was really sick and she comes back on Wednesday, her name is Elsi. We have faith that they will be able to get baptised this weekend or real soon.

One good thing is we had a baptism this week. We baptised a girl named Gaby but everyone calls her (Pistola). She is super cool. It was cool because she is the neighbor of Ceferino. I also saw her and never talked to her but then Ceferino and his wife, Karen, presented us to her and from there we started to teach her. She was really positive and really willing to learn and this week she got baptised.

Somebody forgot his white baptism clothes :-) 

 

Well that was my week for you guys. I love you guys so much!

Kaiki Was, Aysabe

Cuidénse, Adios

Take care, Good bye

Elder Sherle

Numero 52 Puerto sick this week.

Hey fam and friends! I couldnt write yesterday because there was no internet again. I dont know why they have to cut off the internet on Monday, do they not know that i need to write my fam on Monday? Guess not.

Good news, we had no problems with rats in the house. I think we scared the rest away. But now, we are getting a ton of spiders in the house. We literally cant win in our house. I am going to buy some heavy duty poison though that is going to kill those suckers real quick. haha

This week was going good up until about Thursday when i started to get sick. I dont know what hit me but I got super sick. I didnt eat anything for over 3 days and was just dead. It was awful. It is literally the worst thing being sick because you cant just stop working so I had to work while being sick and just deal with it. I got a lot skinnier from not eating very much. Its tuesday now and I am feeling a little bit better. I need to be a little bit better washing my hands and drinking good water and stuff like that so I dont get sick again like that.

Anywayssss, this week we had a baptism. We baptised a girl named Eliana. She is the daughter of a member. She always goes to church and never was baptised so we baptised her this weekend. It was a cool baptism because what we do in Puerto is everyone does their baptisms together so there were like 15 people that got baptised at the same time on Saturday.

 

This next week could be a big week for us. We have a couple people that should get baptised on Saturday. We are going to work with them a lot this week, visits every day, and with members so that they are nice are ready for their baptism this weekend. It should be a good week if everything goes good. I got faith that God is going to work some miracles for us!

Sorry this is short thats just all I got for you guys! Hope everyone has a great week!

Elder Sherle

Numero 51 ~ That One Year thoughh!!!‏

Heyyyy fam! As you can tell from the title, i hit one year this week! It was a great week! We had a good time!

On Thursday I hit a year mark. One full year away from my house. I cant believe it. Im not going to lie i was a little trunky. I thought about all the experiences I have had in this year and everything I have learned. I am so glad I came here. I am so thankful for all the people that helped me come here. I have learned so much and I have still so much more to learn. I am now on the downhill stretch.

Tradition of burning a shirt at the year mark

On Thursday, after we got done working we went over to Elder Monson's house and we made a little bonfire of all of his trash that he had been saving up. We did the tradidicion of burning a shirt. I got some cool pictures from it!

 

On friday, President came over and we were with him for a day. He came here with a doctor and the doctor talked to us about how we need to be more careful with the water here. He showed us all the nasty parasites that are here and that we need to stay away from the gross water and only drink purified water. It scared us all because we always drink normal water and we didnt really know how bad it could be for us. haha now we know. Also, we talked about the work and he helped us better the way we teach and helped us be able to teach to the needs of our investigadors in a better way. I always learn so much from him. I love watching him teach. He really knows how to talk to people and help people feel the spirit.

Sunday was a good day. We were successful again at church having a lot of investigadors. We have a good amount of people getting ready for the 22nd of August and the 29th of August. We are inviting everyone to be baptised and helping people grow more to Christ.

I also called some of my converts this week. I called Jaime and Jose. They are doing good. They are active in the church and they told me that they are very blessed. It was so great to hear from them and be able to talk with them. Jaime told me he is going to go to the temple in November with his wife! That made me so happy. I hope he does it. I love my converts so much.

Well thats all I got for you guys this week! I got some cool pics for you guys! I hope everyone is doing good!

One year down boys and girls!

Love yall

Elder Sherle

 

Another Rat caught in the trap this week (GROSS!)