Don Sherwood Family Blog: Transfer 1, Week 4: The New Mission President

Hey Everyone,

This week has been great. Lots of fun surprises, and new things to talk about. My mind is staring to blend days together, so bear with me. So let's jump right into our highlight reel.

On preparation day, we did a whole lot of nothing. Just kidding, after the emails were sent, we went and did normal preparation day things. While we were shopping, we wanted a couple games to play, so I bought a monopoly game. We played it, found it fun, but has kind of a weird ending. Other than that preparation day went pretty normally until the evening. The Swenson's came over and cut our lawn. That was pretty awesome. I wish I had pictures. But to give a description of the way it looked, we called it our "Grass Forrest". We had wanted to get it cut for a while, but all 3 of the lawn mowers on the property are broken.😭 But it now looks like we have a grass lawn again.

Tuesday honestly sucked mostly because of my attitude. We were a little high on miles at that point, so we cradled out the bikes. There were two issues that made it suck. 1. I had not hidden a bike for about 3-4 YEARS. Ouch. I was so sore and raw afterwards. 2. The bike I have, I got from a recently returned elder. Turns out, he was like 6ft 4in, or taller. The bike was/is way too big. We have lowered the seat as much as possible, making it bearable. But it still isn't all together a great experience. But it works. It was also my sister's birthday. HAPPY BIRTHDAY LIANNE.

The 4th of July was probably more like a preparation day than preparation day was. We were busy, but never had the chance to proselyte. We were invited by a ward family to see the show-doe sorry for incorrect spelling, parade. It was a cute little parade. I don't think I had ever seen so many old cars in one place. It was pretty sweet. Of course I was expecting this though, a huge tractor. It was taller than the buildings, and as wide as the whole road. The rest of the day was pretty low-key. We studied, had meals, and spent some time napping because Elder Ritchie wasn't feeling too good. We got to go to kind of a bbq for dinner with our ward mission leader. That was fun.

Thursday, we were on bikes again. Yuck. We rode 14 miles. It hurt. We met with John, had a good discussion with him. We are still struggling with his smoking. I need to find some way to get him out and about, so he doesn't have to sit in his apartment and smoke all day long. Any ideas? The Cut Bank elders arrived that night in preparation for our fun adventures the following day.

Friday was the day we finally net with our new mission President. Their names are President and Sister Larson. They lived in Chandler Arizona, and were super excited to come here. I feel kind of bad for their 15 year old son, Elijah, who got the privilege of tagging along. He got to move as a sophomore in high school. And he doesn't get to get the full attention of his parents over the next three years, poor guy. But on a good note, he just met all 200 of his new brothers and sisters. So, win win?

Something new happened that day. I went on my first ever exchange. I went to Great Falls for the night with Elder Madsen. It was quite the adventure. We did missionary game night, and I learned a lot from him on how to be a better companion.

Saturday was also kind of weird. We woke up, started to get ready for our service appointment at 9 am, when we got a call from someone in Missoula, giving us a referral, but he took around 30 minutes to do so. So, yeah we ended up being late to our appointment. We got to help the Sunriver Methodist church again. We spent almost 5 hours tearing carpet, removing drywall + insulation, and scraping old tile off the floor. It was definitely hard work, but it was totally worth it to see how much it help those poor people recover from the flood.

Elder Ritchie, being the great guy he is, left the keys at the apartment, when we quickly went home, in the zone leaders car, to change. That was quite an adventure, trying to find a way to make the trip back and forth.

Well, that's about it for the highlight reel. We had a good week. I hope yours has been as well. Let me know about anything cool that happens ok?

Spiritual thought of the week. I was reading in 3rd Nephi chapter 18 during my study this week, and this verse, kind of stuck out to me. It says,

"Therefore, hold up your light that it may shine unto the world. Behold I am the light which ye shall hold up—that which ye have seen me do. Behold ye see that I have prayed unto the Father, and ye all have witnessed."

It reminded me of the Mormon message about letting our light shine. I know that as we shine our lights, which light comes from Faith in Christ, others can see and come to understand the importance of Him to us, and how we feel we can come closer to Him.

Well, anyway I love and miss you all, and can't wait to hear from you soon.

Love,
Elder Sherwood

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