Travel log

Lani, Randi and I took off for spring break and came to see my Dad and our favorite people...the Migdat's! I got a great deal on flights, the only drawback is we had to drive to Seattle and fly out of there to LAX. We arrived late Thursday night. I tell you, all the driving and traveling was totally worth the hour I got to lay out on their trampoline in shorts & a T-shirt feeling the warmth of the sun on me, while Wendy and visited. I'm already feel so relaxed and my "tank" is refueling (I don't mean with the In & Out burgers). Thanks Richard for giving me this "get away" !
More to follow with pictures...

We sure miss Ric...

Here is an email he sent today. It's hard not to miss him.

Ahh.. mk lets see if I can mail something off to y'all this week, so this whole month we haven’t had preparation days, we have until 12 o clock then we work normal. So the house is disgusting and my hair is super long, were going for 300 baptisms in the mission this month so it’s the month of sacrifice. The spring has hit and we actually got some rain last night! It was awesome, it doesn’t rain often around this part of the year but when it does, it comes down and we were a long way from home, actually in almost every city there's the centro, the middle of town oh, I guess its called down town for those that speak English. We were there talking to people in the street, in the rain and all the lights turned off it was pretty cool. But we made it back home in one piece. We ran out of gas a couple of days ago, the gas is used for everything… heat the water, cook all that jazz. And we didn’t have money to buy a refill so i've showered one time in the last two days, and it was my head and face. I suppose the rain counts as another too. But don’t worry we just bought another tank a little bit ago. We are all broke its pretty funny during the end of the month, there's no food in the house and were scraping to get by until we get our money for the next month.
We found this golden investigator, It doesn’t happen too often finding someone like here, in every 150 lessons we find someone half as awesome as her. Its makes all the hours in the sun and sore legs worth it. I bought a soccer ball, and a week later I was walking in the street kickin it around and a massive bus passed by and plowed right over it. It exploded and left me looking down at my ball in awe. A family behind us were outwardly laughing, pointing and mocking me. It was $2.10 in dollars brand new so I guess I might be able to move on with my life. And a family just gave me another one as a gift so I was pumped about that. I don’t really know what to talk about now because most things are just normal for me, knockin doors all day, teaching super duper old ladies with no teeth, getting chased by dogs. My comp elder flores is still chuggin along, normally when a elder has a little bit of time left they start “dying” but were working just fine. They just had a weird holiday im not sure what it was about I think of spring, but all the kids were dressed up as animals and there were fireworks flyin around at night. Elder valasquez told me they just make up holidays here so they can get some time off work… sounds good to me, more people that are home to teach. Were pluggin along here, ive got my health and testimony. I wish you the best week ever and take care mis amigitos!
love elder sherman

Note: Since a full-time mission for the LDS church is completely self-supported, we pay a set amount each month to a general missionary fund. Each mission allots a set monthly budget for the missionary. It's a great way to teach them to budget, plus it also means a missionary set to say Japan, doesn't have to pay more each month than a missionary in Mexico.

Jinxed myself...

Cody & I have been playing raquetball 1-2 times a week. He's helping me exercise because I HATE doing it on the treadmill, etc. I have to be having fun and not realizing I'm actually moving and sweating. Anyhoo. I made a comment last time we played that we hadn't hit one another with the ball. We had played doubles with Richard & Lani a couple weeks ago and Richard must of got hit at least 5 times in the back or head. Lani even hit him in the side of the head when she was serving...they were on the same team! So of course I jinxed us when we played on Monday. I hit him in the back and he got me a couple times. But the clincher was when he wound up, gritted his teeth and smacked the ball as hard as he could, I think he even growled when he made contact with the ball. Below is the destination of the ball he hit. I'm not exaggerating am I Cody?

And it continues to grow...

Sweetest gal at the ball...

Lani went to a belated school Valentine's dance
yesterday. I decided I better not post a pic of
her date without his permission. She went with a
friend (the best kind of date) and
had a blast. Every time I send a pic
of her to Ric, he freaks out. I think he
feels he needs to be here to protect her. But hey
that's why Richard diligently lifts weights ...
to scare any suitors away.

For Valentine's day, Richard was sick with a cold, so I thought I would make a special, different V-day dinner for the family. I decided to make Rock Cornish Game Hen. I got these really cool silver Renaissance looking eating utensils a couple years ago at a garage sale, so I thought we would have a fun dinner with grape juice in goblets and oven roasted veggies with the game hen. I laid it all out (didn't think to take a picture). I anticipated the ahhs and ooos from Lani and Randi when they saw the spread. As soon as Lani walked in the kitchen and saw
the minature drumsticks on the hen... she screamed. She said she couldn't eat a "baby chicken".
This is the same girl who told me she wants to go to Africa to do service work.
Anyway, next year I'll stick to BBQ steak for dinner; at least it doesn't look like a baby cow on the plate.

Another Teen in the house

Randi turned "13" on Tuesday the 27th. She celebrated with
13 of her friends on Saturday with a birthday bash. Thanks
to Janae who took care of the craft and games.
Randi is an absolute delight in our home. She is the
ray of sunshine with her smile and sense of humor.
She's probably the only one that gets Richard's joking and
can take it and give it back.
Randi is the only child in the family who is an actual Spokanite.
It's hard to believe she once was the adorable, chubby baby
everyone wanted to carry and Justin used as
a "chick magnet" at church.
Happy Birthday Randi!

Pics of Ric

Ric sent a CD of pics from the MTC up until Christmas.
Since there were no captions I don't know who any
of these people are. He also had a lot of pictures of
random animals he encounters on the street.
There were also many pictures of smashed, run over
cats. I don't know why he would take photos of these,
I guess he thought we would be interested in seeing
dead Mexican cats. They don't look much different
than Spokane dead cats.