Baptisms and a new transfer!

Hey everyone!

I hope that this week went well for everyone. Mine was super great. It was truly a week of miracles and seeing all the efforts of the previous weeks pay off. As always, thanks so much to grandma Jeri for the letter. It's always a big boost to see a letter in the mail box on a weekly basis.

Also, today is transfers and we got it sooner that usual. The only news I have is that I will be staying another here with Elder Christensen. I am very glad to be able to spend another with him. We have a lot of fun together and he has been awesome to work with. The one new thing though is that he got called as a district leader. Very cool for him and very well deserved. So now I will be helping him with the district where I can. It will be fun to be doing that again like when I was in Alamo and Rio Bravo.

So this week was filled with exchanges. It was a little hectic, but I learned a lot I believe as I was running our area for a few days while Elder Christensen was working in the other areas. We found some great people like on Tuesday with Elder Messinger. We were out biking all over our area for anyone to talk to as the last week it seems that everyone was away when we tried to go by. It was the last referral of the night that we had time to go by and it turns out that the couple living there was super cool. It's the first time ever that I have been asked by someone to share my testimony of the church. It is always the other way around where I just tell them whether they like it or not haha. Also before leaving the husband drives up and before talking to us at all immediately asks when we can go back to sit down with his family and teach them. Super prepared people. It's a very interesting and true cliche that truly it's always the last house you knock that you find the prepared people.

The greatest miracle of the week was obtaining permission from the mother of our investigators Julian and Mauricio to be baptized and watching them enter that covenant along with our other investigator Randy yesterday. It's been so amazing to see the fruits of our hard work to have finally payed off and see our very good friends become members of the church. Especially Randy who has come so extremely far beating some hard addictions and changing his life over to the savior. I know that truly the atonement is for everyone and it doesn't matter how far we have strayed, we can always come back on the path that leads to eternal happiness.

I love you all so much and hope you have a great week.

-Elder Sheehy

(Left to right)Julian, Mauricio, and Randy being baptized by Elder Christensen, Elder Jensen, and Elder McFall

Weslaco Elders

A member posted this one on Facebook of these two visiting for dinner :)

Back In the Saddle Again

Hey everyone!

I hope you had a great week and enjoyed your MLK day. I hope that you were able to do something fun and remember the great examples of people like Martin Luther King Jr. in their efforts to improve the lives of others. There are so many great examples around us in our history books and in our communities of Christ-like service that we can learn a lot from.

This week has been very good. We are seeing a lot of progress with investigators and should be having at least one baptism this upcoming Sunday. This past week has also been filled with lots of exchanges as well so their has been a lot of good experiences and things I was able to learn from other missionaries. I am currently working with Elder Messinger from St. George who is a cool guy that works in an area nearby.

Monday-Tuesday Went on an exchange over in Edinburgh with a missionary named Elder Penman from Henderson, Nevada. A very good guy that was trained by Elder Chacin. We had a great time talking about our love for hunting and the great experiences we got to have with Elder Chacin when he was here in the mission. A definite highlight was taking a couple of minutes and taking some sunset-selfies next to a little reservoir in their area. It was a beautiful evening.

Thursday: Had a great Chicken Divan dinner on an exchange with Elder Newman over at the Jess family (Bishop of the ward i'm serving in). I had a very fun conversation with Bishop Jess about all his hunting adventures while living in Alaska chasing moose and bears and his love for deer. It was cool learning more about his job managing a refuge here and his desires to manage some ground up in Montana for deer hunting. We have a ton in common.

Friday: So super funny story. Elder Christensen and I were leaving a meal appointment at a great senior missionaries home in our area and Elder Christensen and I were in deep conversation about something. He continues peddling forward on his bike while turning backwards to speak with me. Up ahead there is a truck stopped at a stop sign, which I assumed Elder Christensen was aware of as we had been following it for some time. At the last moment I realize that he is completely unaware of it so I shout "Woah! Elder !" Unfortunately he only had enough time to turn around and face plant into the tailgate and make a loud smack with his hand. Luckily, he wasn't going very fast and didn't hurt anything at all, but his pride a bit. The truck driver however was very concerned at gets out of his truck looking very worried and shouts to Christensen "Esta bien mijo?!" (Are you okay son?) Elder Christensen then very embarrassed replies "Si, estoy bien. No se preocupe" (yes, I am good. Don't worry about it), then peddles off. The other funny thing as that while all this was happening Elder McFall and Dominguez who were joining us at the meal appointment were behind us in there car and saw the whole thing. I was dying of laughter all the way back to the apartment.

Other than being a bit busy, it's been a very memorable week. I hope you all have a great week and always remember to give our Father in heaven thanks for all the great experiences we get to have here in this mortal life. Even the difficult times are when we should give the most thanks, as it is during those times that we move closer to our potential.

Have a wonderful week!

Love,

Elder Sheehy

Sunset selfie with Elder Penman

A ton of donut holes a member gave us from his shop here in Weslaco. It's a good thing we have a bunch of Elders coming over to our apartment to help out with these.

Lost track of the weeks!

Well I just wanted to apologize to everyone for not sending out a mass email in sometime. It's been a crazy ride as of late, but I am back on track and have learned a lot.

First, Thanks to Grandma Jeri for the great new years package and letter. You da best! Thanks for all of the cards and gifts that were sent by everyone for Christmas, in case I don't get a chance to respond to each of you separately. I really do appreciate it.

Being here in Weslaco with Elder Christensen has been a huge blessing. Such an awesome loving guy, that is teaching me a lot. I also enjoy the ward here a ton too. They are all very kind and caring and have really made me feel at home. Especially spending Christmas away from home for the first time. I am also very glad that the cooler weather came to town. It's been great getting to enjoy the weather out on the bikes.

We have been working with an awesome family named the Cuellars. The mother and daughter were baptized by Elder Christensen and his greenie Elder Moser the week before I got here and they are the strongest recent converts I have been around. Now we are just working on getting the husband and son on board. The son has been a struggle because he is a great guy, but because of past struggles has some bad addictions to drugs. So we are doing our best to help him beat it. We are also teaching to younger kids named Julio and Mauricio that basically live over there all the time. Their parents work out of state all of the time and the grandparents that watch them are pretty grumpy, so the Cuellar family has basically adopted them for the time being. They are the coolest little kids that are super good at dancing (They are obsessed with Michael Jackson and did the "Billy Jean" dance for us) and sports. It's been super fun to teach them. Julio reminds me so much of Koda from the movie Brother Bear. He literally has like the exact same voice and acts just like him too. He is a stud.

Anyways that's about all for right now. I will be better at writing good mass emails.

Have a fantastic week!

Love,

Elder Sheehy




And this from his email to me....

Hey Mom!

This week was super interesting. Things have been super nuts ever since I came back to the McAllen area. Luckily the end of this week finally settled down.

The weather has been sooo nice here. A tiny bit chilly sometimes, but I love the cold so much more than the heat. I've gotten to really appreciate that since coming down here. I haven't had a reason yet to get a jacket, so at this point I don't think they will be necessary for this mission.

Yeah Elder Christensen's middle name is Jacob too, which is cool. I don't know how I am close to being like Jacob, but maybe someday I'll be a little more like him. I had mentioned how I picked his middle name of Jacob because of Jacob in the Book of Mormon and talked about the traits I thought Austin had that were similar to his. There was an article in the Mormon Times this week about the apostles favorite heroes from the Book of Mormon, and how Elder Holland had picked Jacob saying,

"The prophet Jacob's teachings are limited to a few dozen pages in the Book of Mormon, and many of those pages quote other prophets.

But Elder Holland wrote that all you need to know about Jacob comes in the last chapter of his book when he is confronted by Sherem the anti-Christ and "could not be shaken."

"Jacob, the believer. Jacob, the foe of the anti-Christ. Jacob, the unshakable. By definition, all Book of Mormon prophets had great faith and were unyielding in their convictions. All had a deep witness of the mission and divinity of Christ," Elder Holland wrote. "Although he considers his contribution to the Book of Mormon to be small (see Jacob 7:27), nevertheless this prophet comes to us in word and deed as absolutely rock-like, solid, invincible, and unshakable."

I apologize for not writing a mass email lately. I'll be honest it's been super hard to do these past few weeks and honestly I wouldn't know what I have been able to write about. I haven't had any unique experiences per say. The mission gets pretty much similar to any other day most of the time. This is a fantastic area though with a super great ward. So that has been nice. Right now I've just been super focused on the work and lost track of other things.

I really do feel your prayers and appreciate them a lot. It's helped me more than you will ever know on the tougher days. Thanks so much for that. I have also kept all the family in mine constantly.

Have a great week!

Love you so much!

Love,

Elder Sheehy

Christmas Skype

Once again, we didn't hear very much from Austin. I guess I'll take that as he is far too busy working hard, and doing good things. :)
We did enjoy a great Skype call with him on Christmas morning.  It had snowed pretty hard, and we were all meeting as a family at my brother Steve's house for Brunch.  I was worried that the storm might mess us up for getting everyone there in time for his call, but everything worked out well. It was great to see him, and especially to hear his testimony in Spanish. He was very obedient to the mission rules and kept it right to 45 minutes. :(

Here are some pictures,

Best Christmas Present!

The Mission Christmas Party

Visiting at a members house

Elder Christensen