Hey everyone!
I hope you all had a great week!
Things are finally starting to cool down here a bit which is super great! It gets way to hot here in the summer.
So the news is that I was transferred back to Weslaco! It's awesome to be able to come back here since there are so many people that I love. I am in the branch side of the city so I get to meet even more people. I still get to see people in the ward too. I got to stop and talk to Sister Jess (the wife of the bishop in the ward) at church again and that was great. I love that family a lot and they showed me a ton of love when I was here. All three of their sons are up in Logan now at Utah State. I will have to talk to them when I get back.
My new companion is Elder Peake. He is a super fun guy from South Carolina. We have actually shared a lot of the same companions in the past like Elder Chacin and Elder Montgomery. So I have heard a lot about him. We are already really good friends.
There isn't a lot to talk about beyond that. We are reopening this area so we are just grinding along looking for people to talk to since we were left with very little information about it. It's good I am at least a little familiar with the people here, so it hasn't been all that bad to get acclimated.
Oh one more thing, Our new address is this, in case you want to send me something :) ;)
1602 S Airport Apt #82
Weslaco, Texas 78596
Have a great week everyone! I love y'all mucho!
Stay Classy,
Elder Sheehy
Monday, August 29, 2016
Monday, August 22, 2016
Last in La Feria
Well everyone transfers came around, and I am headed somewhere else! It's a bittersweet change for sure since I have been with my "greenie" Elder Rosaschi for three transfers now and I have grown a deep love for the members here. But it's just part of it.
Before I get too far thanks so much Grandma Jeri for the card. I always appreciate and love to hear from you.
So this last week was a lot of fun spending time with Elder Madsen our district leader when we could. He is heading home this week so we tried to send his mission out with a bang. He was super fun to have around.
To help celebrate his end of mission we went up to the northernmost town of the area they are covering called Port Mansfield. The water wasn't the prettiest on the ocean, but it was still pretty cool. The highlight for me was the neighborhood deer that are basically like pets and will come up and eat popcorn out of your hand. They had some surprisingly nice bucks that would come right up to you. It was interesting how little the whitetails are down here compared to the ones i'm used to up in Iowa and Missouri. They are cool little guys down here.
Our ward also had a chili cook off that was super good. The funny thing was that Elder Madsen had his dad send him a recipe and the one that he made actually one first prize in the competition! We also had our good friend Zuri who is a recent convert of Madsen's make an amazing completely homemade banana cream pie. She won the dessert portion of it.
Well that's about all I have to say for now. Elder Rosaschi and I didn't end up baptizing together, but there are a handful of people that are super close. I know that if he and his new companion work hard they will have success. Despite all that, I feel that I learned a ton in this area and I made a great life long friend with Elder Rosaschi. I am very excited to see where and who I go with for my new area. It's going to be great!
Stay Classy,
Elder Sheehy
Before I get too far thanks so much Grandma Jeri for the card. I always appreciate and love to hear from you.
So this last week was a lot of fun spending time with Elder Madsen our district leader when we could. He is heading home this week so we tried to send his mission out with a bang. He was super fun to have around.
To help celebrate his end of mission we went up to the northernmost town of the area they are covering called Port Mansfield. The water wasn't the prettiest on the ocean, but it was still pretty cool. The highlight for me was the neighborhood deer that are basically like pets and will come up and eat popcorn out of your hand. They had some surprisingly nice bucks that would come right up to you. It was interesting how little the whitetails are down here compared to the ones i'm used to up in Iowa and Missouri. They are cool little guys down here.
Our ward also had a chili cook off that was super good. The funny thing was that Elder Madsen had his dad send him a recipe and the one that he made actually one first prize in the competition! We also had our good friend Zuri who is a recent convert of Madsen's make an amazing completely homemade banana cream pie. She won the dessert portion of it.
Well that's about all I have to say for now. Elder Rosaschi and I didn't end up baptizing together, but there are a handful of people that are super close. I know that if he and his new companion work hard they will have success. Despite all that, I feel that I learned a ton in this area and I made a great life long friend with Elder Rosaschi. I am very excited to see where and who I go with for my new area. It's going to be great!
Stay Classy,
Elder Sheehy
Saving a tortoise on the way to Port Mansfield
Port Mansfield
Windy district picture
Elder Stanley reminiscing about the times he could go into the water
Port Mansfield deer
And some pictures off of Facebook....
Monday, August 15, 2016
Hola!
No mass email this week, but I wanted to share a cool picture of Austin and his great friend, Zach Thometz. He has been working in New York this summer installing security systems, but was sent to McAllen, Texas for 3 weeks to do some work there. He emailed Austin and arranged to meet him for dinner. I knew nothing about this, and was just just casually scrolling through Facebook one night, and this popped up! Talk about being surprised!
Austin's letter to me...
Hey Mom!
I bet you were surprised by the picture with Zach! I told him to nonchalantly post it on Facebook and see how long it took you to notice, hahaha. It was super fun to talk to him and not distracting at all. It was weird though seeing him down here. It totally seemed like it didn't happen and was just a dream.
That's sad to hear that Em has had a such a nasty recovery process on the wisdom teeth. That surgery was the worst! I'm so glad i'm done with all that. What has she been up to with all the extra time?
That is weird that Brooklyn is leaving soon. Life seems to be going quicker and quicker for me. I hope it slows down a bit when I get home. That's also cool that she will get to have that much time in the temple before she goes. That will help her out a lot.
Things are going pretty well here for me, especially now. I'll be honest that visit from Zach was a great pick-me-up for me. It's been a tough month for me, so I hope things keep looking up from here.
Love you a lot!
Love,
Elder Sheehy
(p.s Sorry i'm lame again and don't have too much to talk about. So I won't be sending out a mass email)
And a picture from a member at church :)
Zach wrote... "Whoa, look who it is"
Austin's letter to me...
Hey Mom!
I bet you were surprised by the picture with Zach! I told him to nonchalantly post it on Facebook and see how long it took you to notice, hahaha. It was super fun to talk to him and not distracting at all. It was weird though seeing him down here. It totally seemed like it didn't happen and was just a dream.
That's sad to hear that Em has had a such a nasty recovery process on the wisdom teeth. That surgery was the worst! I'm so glad i'm done with all that. What has she been up to with all the extra time?
That is weird that Brooklyn is leaving soon. Life seems to be going quicker and quicker for me. I hope it slows down a bit when I get home. That's also cool that she will get to have that much time in the temple before she goes. That will help her out a lot.
Things are going pretty well here for me, especially now. I'll be honest that visit from Zach was a great pick-me-up for me. It's been a tough month for me, so I hope things keep looking up from here.
Love you a lot!
Love,
Elder Sheehy
(p.s Sorry i'm lame again and don't have too much to talk about. So I won't be sending out a mass email)
And a picture from a member at church :)
Monday, August 8, 2016
Sup y'all!
Hey everyone,
Just wanted to apologize on not staying on top of emailing,
In truth it's been kind of a tough last couple of weeks and not a lot has happened on the missionary front. We are just grinding away at it and thankfully things are starting to look up. I am doing well however, and I have great hope in the future.
Before I get too far, I just wanted to thank Grandma Jeri for her letters and wish my cousin Katie a very happy birthday this upcoming weekend! Tell her I owe her sushi!
I will share a short cool experience that happened this last week:
So we were out looking for the less actives in our area, since that is one of President Torres's big focuses. He has also been making a lot of great changes in the mission and building a lot of unity between the members and missionaries. I like what I am seeing. If you want to see how awesome this guy is here is a link to a mormon message he is in. It is in Spanish, but you can turn on subtitles for it:
https://www.lds.org/media-library/video/2015-12-01-youth-family-history-in-the-guaymuras-stake?category=family-history-blesses-the-living&lang=eng
Anyways,
We were out contacting these less active families and weren't having very much luck at all. No one was home or willing to answer the door. So I came across a name and address that was located very far away in our area. I felt like we should just go for it regardless. So we made the drive clear out on this dirt road filled with pot holes and came close to where the home would be located. Now the big problem down here in South Texas is that either the home doesn't have the address number on it or the home sits far enough back from the road that you can't see it. So we went up and down the road a few times trying to figure out this house. We were just about to give up on it and turn around when we picked one more house and decided to go knock it just to see, if nothing else, if they could point us in the right direction. As we made it up on the doorstep we noticed that it was the right number from a plaque that was obscured from the road. So we knocked a few times and no answer came. So I figured we would write our number and a little note to them on a pass along card since we probably wouldn't be back up there any time soon. Just as I was beginning to write on the card, Dulca opened the door and exclaimed "Oh you guys came already." We were very confused and inquired as to what she meant by that. We came to find out that a member had said that she would send over missionaries to help her move things to her mother's new home and thought that we were them. We explained to her that we had received no notice and that we were just out randomly contacting a list of less-actives and were guided there. Pretty cool how God works like that. Just goes to show that He is in every detail of our lives and in His work. We had a great conversation with her and she is super excited to get back to church after battling cancer for the last couple of years. She also has two brothers who want to be baptized so we are excited to see how they progress and see if we can't get her reactivated too!
I hope all is going well with everyone and that you all have a terrific week!
Love ya!
Stay classy,
-Elder Sheehy
Just wanted to apologize on not staying on top of emailing,
In truth it's been kind of a tough last couple of weeks and not a lot has happened on the missionary front. We are just grinding away at it and thankfully things are starting to look up. I am doing well however, and I have great hope in the future.
Before I get too far, I just wanted to thank Grandma Jeri for her letters and wish my cousin Katie a very happy birthday this upcoming weekend! Tell her I owe her sushi!
I will share a short cool experience that happened this last week:
So we were out looking for the less actives in our area, since that is one of President Torres's big focuses. He has also been making a lot of great changes in the mission and building a lot of unity between the members and missionaries. I like what I am seeing. If you want to see how awesome this guy is here is a link to a mormon message he is in. It is in Spanish, but you can turn on subtitles for it:
https://www.lds.org/media-library/video/2015-12-01-youth-family-history-in-the-guaymuras-stake?category=family-history-blesses-the-living&lang=eng
Anyways,
We were out contacting these less active families and weren't having very much luck at all. No one was home or willing to answer the door. So I came across a name and address that was located very far away in our area. I felt like we should just go for it regardless. So we made the drive clear out on this dirt road filled with pot holes and came close to where the home would be located. Now the big problem down here in South Texas is that either the home doesn't have the address number on it or the home sits far enough back from the road that you can't see it. So we went up and down the road a few times trying to figure out this house. We were just about to give up on it and turn around when we picked one more house and decided to go knock it just to see, if nothing else, if they could point us in the right direction. As we made it up on the doorstep we noticed that it was the right number from a plaque that was obscured from the road. So we knocked a few times and no answer came. So I figured we would write our number and a little note to them on a pass along card since we probably wouldn't be back up there any time soon. Just as I was beginning to write on the card, Dulca opened the door and exclaimed "Oh you guys came already." We were very confused and inquired as to what she meant by that. We came to find out that a member had said that she would send over missionaries to help her move things to her mother's new home and thought that we were them. We explained to her that we had received no notice and that we were just out randomly contacting a list of less-actives and were guided there. Pretty cool how God works like that. Just goes to show that He is in every detail of our lives and in His work. We had a great conversation with her and she is super excited to get back to church after battling cancer for the last couple of years. She also has two brothers who want to be baptized so we are excited to see how they progress and see if we can't get her reactivated too!
I hope all is going well with everyone and that you all have a terrific week!
Love ya!
Stay classy,
-Elder Sheehy
Monday, July 18, 2016
Thanks for a Great B-day!
What's up everybody?!
Thanks so much for a terrific birthday and the awesome packages/cards! You guys spoil me so much!
Thanks to:
-Grandma J for the great package, letter, and program from the Maluendas homecoming
-The Coys for the delicious burger card (I was so surprised when I opened our mailbox to that, lol)
-Hermansens (my Deb-rah and company) for the card and pictures!
-Steve, Kim, Katie, and Jared for the card!
-Grandma Lorraine for the card!
-Aunt Sherrie for the card!
-and the fam for the package!
-Also anyone i may have forgotten with my terrible memory :s just know you are loved lol
Y'all are the greatest!
So it's been a crazy cool birthday week! So first round of business is that they took out one of the missionary companionships in our ward so we are helping out are good buddies Elder Madsen and Stanley (the weslaco wacko lol) to cover our giant ward boundaries so we are in Harlingen for half of the week now. It is nuts, but I really like the challenge and getting to go by all the members. Plus I love the other Elders in our district to death so we have a blast spending way more time with them during the week. All the missionaries that went home in July put a big hit on the mission this month so we are all spread pretty thin.
The next thing that was pretty sweet was getting to go up north to a town called Raymondville for a day with the other elders that had been a branch in the past, but closed down. We are putting our focus there as the missionaries of the ward so that someday the branch can be reopened. It was a super ghetto place, but had a lot of cool abandoned buildings.
For my birthday I was given a lot of cool things from members and cakes (they spoiled me :) ) and a really good friend here who is a recent convert named Zuri heard of my obsession with Mickey and disney and got me a bunch of mickey stuff for kids including a coloring book lol it was great. The day after was actually the day between our birthdays since hers is on the sixteenth so we had a party at a super good pizza place in Harlingen. I also got her back with a bunch of gag gifts too.
On Saturday I got an irish dinner! The Mallowneys ( Super cool family that loves the missionaries. Brother Mallowney is from Brooklyn, New York so he has the cool accent) in Harlingen knew I was Irish and that i loved corned beef so they cooked up some corn beef and cabbage like our St. Patrick's day dinner back at home and we had a feast! It was super good! I even wore a clover tie made in Ireland and St. Patrick's day socks I found to celebrate. I didn't think I would be getting that until I got home so that was super cool.
Well it's been a terrific week so I am so grateful to all of you and the great members in the Harlingen ward.
Have a terrific week!
love y'all!
Stay Classy,
Elder Sheehy
Hey mom!
Things are great! I had a super fun birthday! Way more fun than last year. A lot of members did really nice things for me.
Be sure and let all the peeps know thank you on facebook. . Thanks so much for the mangos, cds, shirt, and other stuff! I appreciate it :) you guys are the best!
Thanks for everything again and making my birthday fun way out here :)
Love you so much!
(p.s. You unleashed so much chaos at our apartment by giving Elder Rosaschi and I nerf guns, hahaha)
Thanks so much for a terrific birthday and the awesome packages/cards! You guys spoil me so much!
Thanks to:
-Grandma J for the great package, letter, and program from the Maluendas homecoming
-The Coys for the delicious burger card (I was so surprised when I opened our mailbox to that, lol)
-Hermansens (my Deb-rah and company) for the card and pictures!
-Steve, Kim, Katie, and Jared for the card!
-Grandma Lorraine for the card!
-Aunt Sherrie for the card!
-and the fam for the package!
-Also anyone i may have forgotten with my terrible memory :s just know you are loved lol
Y'all are the greatest!
So it's been a crazy cool birthday week! So first round of business is that they took out one of the missionary companionships in our ward so we are helping out are good buddies Elder Madsen and Stanley (the weslaco wacko lol) to cover our giant ward boundaries so we are in Harlingen for half of the week now. It is nuts, but I really like the challenge and getting to go by all the members. Plus I love the other Elders in our district to death so we have a blast spending way more time with them during the week. All the missionaries that went home in July put a big hit on the mission this month so we are all spread pretty thin.
The next thing that was pretty sweet was getting to go up north to a town called Raymondville for a day with the other elders that had been a branch in the past, but closed down. We are putting our focus there as the missionaries of the ward so that someday the branch can be reopened. It was a super ghetto place, but had a lot of cool abandoned buildings.
For my birthday I was given a lot of cool things from members and cakes (they spoiled me :) ) and a really good friend here who is a recent convert named Zuri heard of my obsession with Mickey and disney and got me a bunch of mickey stuff for kids including a coloring book lol it was great. The day after was actually the day between our birthdays since hers is on the sixteenth so we had a party at a super good pizza place in Harlingen. I also got her back with a bunch of gag gifts too.
On Saturday I got an irish dinner! The Mallowneys ( Super cool family that loves the missionaries. Brother Mallowney is from Brooklyn, New York so he has the cool accent) in Harlingen knew I was Irish and that i loved corned beef so they cooked up some corn beef and cabbage like our St. Patrick's day dinner back at home and we had a feast! It was super good! I even wore a clover tie made in Ireland and St. Patrick's day socks I found to celebrate. I didn't think I would be getting that until I got home so that was super cool.
Well it's been a terrific week so I am so grateful to all of you and the great members in the Harlingen ward.
Have a terrific week!
love y'all!
Stay Classy,
Elder Sheehy
Hey mom!
Things are great! I had a super fun birthday! Way more fun than last year. A lot of members did really nice things for me.
Be sure and let all the peeps know thank you on facebook. . Thanks so much for the mangos, cds, shirt, and other stuff! I appreciate it :) you guys are the best!
Thanks for everything again and making my birthday fun way out here :)
Love you so much!
(p.s. You unleashed so much chaos at our apartment by giving Elder Rosaschi and I nerf guns, hahaha)
The aftermath of getting a chocolate cake to the face on my birthday
Corned beef and cabbage!
Cool beetle we found. The green dots on the back are bio-luminescent. Crazy bugs you find down in Texas.
These are all pictures members posted on Facebook, I love when these randomly pop up on my feed. :)
Monday, July 11, 2016
Thanks for the Birthday Wishes!
Hey everyone!
Sorry that my emails have been a little lack-luster as of late. I will try to do better. As I said in the title, thanks to everyone that has either sent something or said something about my birthday. I truly feel all the love and hope I can reciprocate that back to you. Thanks specifically to Grandma J for the packages, Mom, Dad, and Em for the package, and Aunt Sherrie for the card. I can't wait to open them! To any that may have sent something, I'm sure that it will arrive soon, so don't worry. The mail is pretty reliable where I am at right now.
So good news! I will be staying in La Feria with Elder Rosaschi for at least six more weeks! We are super stoked because we have had so much fun together and really love the people in this area.
I guess to recap a bit this past week, Elder Rosaschi and I had a great time on our "celestial P-day" on the 4th cracking jokes, and eating some delicious apple pie that we bought.
We also had some extremely powerful lessons with some long-standing investigators of the church in our area. I know that their time to enter the waters of baptism is long overdue and I feel we have had a real breakthrough with them. I know that we are going to witness some big miracles this transfer.
Sorry to cut this short, but I hope you all know how much I love and appreciate every single one of you! Have a wonderful week!
Stay classy you lovely people,
Elder Sheehy
Sorry that my emails have been a little lack-luster as of late. I will try to do better. As I said in the title, thanks to everyone that has either sent something or said something about my birthday. I truly feel all the love and hope I can reciprocate that back to you. Thanks specifically to Grandma J for the packages, Mom, Dad, and Em for the package, and Aunt Sherrie for the card. I can't wait to open them! To any that may have sent something, I'm sure that it will arrive soon, so don't worry. The mail is pretty reliable where I am at right now.
So good news! I will be staying in La Feria with Elder Rosaschi for at least six more weeks! We are super stoked because we have had so much fun together and really love the people in this area.
I guess to recap a bit this past week, Elder Rosaschi and I had a great time on our "celestial P-day" on the 4th cracking jokes, and eating some delicious apple pie that we bought.
We also had some extremely powerful lessons with some long-standing investigators of the church in our area. I know that their time to enter the waters of baptism is long overdue and I feel we have had a real breakthrough with them. I know that we are going to witness some big miracles this transfer.
Sorry to cut this short, but I hope you all know how much I love and appreciate every single one of you! Have a wonderful week!
Stay classy you lovely people,
Elder Sheehy
Bye bye Elder Ivey ;( The most loving missionary I know
Elder Downer with toad tower
Flashback photo from two transfers ago. I give you...the most intense tickle battle with Elder Ault
Elder Packer is a beast (actually it's an airbag, but looks like a giant bag of grain or something)
The strange things you find out proselyting.
We got to go to President and Sister Maluenda's Homecoming on Sunday in Sandy. Here is a picture of a portion of the returned missionaries who were there, along with the Maluenda's and their family.The missionaries all got up and sang a medley of songs in English and Spanish in the sacrament meeting, It was beautiful and made this missionary mom cry.
I can see why Austin loved the Maluenda's so much, they gave amazing talks, and you could just feel their strong spirits and the love they have for their missionaries. President Maluenda said, "We arrived in McAllen with 6 kids and returned home with 600...and 6."
So thankful I had the opportunity to meet them.
Tuesday, July 5, 2016
Happy Independence Day!
Austin hasn't written a mass email the last couple weeks, so here is part of the letters to me and to Grandma Lorraine....
Hey Mom!
Great to hear from you. I am jealous of the stadium of fire Tim Mcgraw concert. I bet that was a lot of fun and super cool. The pics make it look good too! Thanks for sending them.
That sounds like a fun bbq with the Hermansens. Be sure to let them all know I say hi and that I would love to hear from them ;).
(He got a new mission President this week) I love president Torres to death already. I thought the Maluendas were amazing... man, president Torres is on a whole different level. That guy literally baptized villages on his mission, haha. He also had some awesome inspiring words to share with us and in our interviews. I'm super excited. That will be cool to go to the Maluenda's homecoming. I wish I could be there. They changed my life forever. I owe them so much.
Well everything is still going super good for me. Thanks so much for the excercise dvd. I have been using it.
Anyways I sure do love you a lot. This will probably count as my mass email for the week since i'm not sure what to write about. I have hardly been able to work in my area this last week with all of the new mission president craziness. I did get to see Elder Christensen again and he said that his mom had seen a picture of Reilly and wanted him really bad haha. I miss elder Christensen, he is a super good guy. Also Elder Rosaschi and I had some pretty good apple pie in honor of Independence day.
Anyways, have an awesome week!
Love,
Elder Sheehy
Hello grandma!
So glad to hear from you again. It sounds like you had a fun 4th of July. Ours was very strange because we had our P-day as normal, but we had to go in at six for the holiday. So we didn't get to go out at all. It felt very weird. I can't imagine how it will feel the first couple of days I return home. We also were fed some delicious barbecue as all the missionaries in the Harlingen region from a very generous member. What I love is that all of the holiday food is very tex-mex around here. You had your normal hotdogs, chips, and barbecued roast, but they also had rice and tortillas, and such. Something I will miss about here. I love the combining of cultures.
Thank you so much for the kind words. I hope I am helping you all back at home as well. I also feel our loved ones helping out a lot on the other side of the veil. I'm almost convinced that Tyler is teaching the ancestors of the people that I get to teach. It's a vibe I get quite frequently. Something really cool.
Well I love you so much and look forward to hearing from you again soon!
Love,
Elder Sheehy
Hey Mom!
Great to hear from you. I am jealous of the stadium of fire Tim Mcgraw concert. I bet that was a lot of fun and super cool. The pics make it look good too! Thanks for sending them.
That sounds like a fun bbq with the Hermansens. Be sure to let them all know I say hi and that I would love to hear from them ;).
(He got a new mission President this week) I love president Torres to death already. I thought the Maluendas were amazing... man, president Torres is on a whole different level. That guy literally baptized villages on his mission, haha. He also had some awesome inspiring words to share with us and in our interviews. I'm super excited. That will be cool to go to the Maluenda's homecoming. I wish I could be there. They changed my life forever. I owe them so much.
Well everything is still going super good for me. Thanks so much for the excercise dvd. I have been using it.
Anyways I sure do love you a lot. This will probably count as my mass email for the week since i'm not sure what to write about. I have hardly been able to work in my area this last week with all of the new mission president craziness. I did get to see Elder Christensen again and he said that his mom had seen a picture of Reilly and wanted him really bad haha. I miss elder Christensen, he is a super good guy. Also Elder Rosaschi and I had some pretty good apple pie in honor of Independence day.
Anyways, have an awesome week!
Love,
Elder Sheehy
Hello grandma!
So glad to hear from you again. It sounds like you had a fun 4th of July. Ours was very strange because we had our P-day as normal, but we had to go in at six for the holiday. So we didn't get to go out at all. It felt very weird. I can't imagine how it will feel the first couple of days I return home. We also were fed some delicious barbecue as all the missionaries in the Harlingen region from a very generous member. What I love is that all of the holiday food is very tex-mex around here. You had your normal hotdogs, chips, and barbecued roast, but they also had rice and tortillas, and such. Something I will miss about here. I love the combining of cultures.
Thank you so much for the kind words. I hope I am helping you all back at home as well. I also feel our loved ones helping out a lot on the other side of the veil. I'm almost convinced that Tyler is teaching the ancestors of the people that I get to teach. It's a vibe I get quite frequently. Something really cool.
Well I love you so much and look forward to hearing from you again soon!
Love,
Elder Sheehy
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