Letter dated 30May2012

[Dear family and friends, here is the letter we received earlier today from Weston! I hope you enjoy it as much as we did. If you have a note you'd like me to forward to Weston, just reply to this note. Thank you for your love and support! Weston's editor - BWS] Dear Family, Today is transfer day and I´m still in Gerona but I have a new companion. I actually already know him, because he has been serving in my district and I´ve gone on some intercombios [trade-offs - where missionaries go with a different companion for the day] with him already and we already hit it off really well. His name´s Elder Carlson and he´s from California. He´s been out in the mission for just over a year and his Spanish is fantastic. He makes a point to study whenever possible and he has dedicated a lot of time to learn and understand an incredible amount of the language. We´ve already made it clear that we´ll be having some English Fasts [when no English is allowed!] during this transfer so that I can learn more Spanish and also so he can learn more. I´m going to miss Elder Call and he was definitely one of the hardest working missionaries I´ve ever met. This will be an interesting transtition too, since Elder Call and Elder Carlson have completely different personalities. Just as long as we both stay focused in Gerona we´ll help bring about great things. I´ll try to send some pictures next week as well when I have my camera (we´ve been in Barcelona the whole day) including some pictures of our latest baptism from this past weekend and some of the members of the branch here. The baptism was a woman from Ecuador whose mother was a member but died about a year ago. Her name is Sister L.M. and she´s been living with one of the families in Gerona. As we got to know her and teach her she began getting really funny and really crazy with us (crazy is a good thing in this sense) but is was great for us to get to know her and help her during these past few weeks. Right before her baptism we visted the jail in Gerona to say hello to one of the members who´s waiting for his trial. Do you remeber the photo I sent of the baptism of Lesly and Seidy? He´s the husband of Seidy and has been in jail for about a month now. It was an interesting experience visiting him in jail but he´s one of the nicest people you´d ever meet. We´re still trying to figure out if he actually committed the crime that he´s been accused of, but I suppose we´ll just have to wait and see. The weather has been getting a little bit hotter and I´m thinking about cutting the sleeves of some of my long shirts since I am short on short sleeved shirts (too bad I don´t know how to do it without it looking bad..) but we´ve also had some days with rain. It rained yesterday while we were having some last visits with members and investigators for Elder Call leaving. We ate so much, but it was all so good! I´m going to make sure that I know how to properly make some of the Honduras dishes that we´ve had so far in Gerona because they are so good. I´m excited to get some recipies from you all so that I can add that to some of the things I´ve learned so far. If you´d like, I might start taking photos of some of the meals so that you could get a better idea of what I eat out here. Just a thought. Too bad I missed Memorial Day.. sounds like you had a good time at the picnic the other day. I always loved going to the picnic with everyone there. I love you all and can´t wait to hear more about what´s going on in Michtown. Congragulations on the baby as well! [My niece, Natascia, had her baby!] Sounds like everything is going well and everyone´s doing fantastic! With POWERFUL love, Élder Xander Weston Schindler