Letter dated 7May2012

[Dear family and friends, here is the letter we received from Weston this week. I hope you enjoy it! We are excited to talk to him on Sunday! Let me know if there are any messages you would like me to pass along to him. Thank you for your support and prayers. I hope you are all having a wonderful May! Weston's editor - BWS] Dear Family, I hope that this message will meet the demands from Joseph "Pepa" "The Boss-Man" Schindler and that I can write you all a good letter. Even if I can´t, oh well. It'll be better than the letter that Andrew may or may not have sent last week (which, by the way, made me laugh a whole lot). But that is exciting to hear all the things that have been going on. Congratulations Joseph in getting a job and best of luck with the rain. Spain is a lot like Michigan with the rain so I´ll just figure if it's raining here then you won´t be working that day. ¿Estoy correcto? Pues, no pasa nada! And Daniel, your stories about the hotel rooms and the croquet games were awesome! [Daniel and his other Senior friends have decided to take up croquet during the school's lunch hour -- in the school yard! They wear preppy clothes -- and get LOTS of attention.] I would love to see pictures of either if there are any pictures. I´m glad to hear that all is going well and that home is still home and not something else. [We're happy about that also! We'd hate to have our home turn into a mall!] That would be terrible! I just read in 2 Nephi a great scripture. ´´And it came to pass that we lived after the manner of happiness.´´ Sounds like that´s what you´re all doing right now and I´m glad for that! And in continuation of what I ended my last message with last week was a request for recipes and family stories. Here are the reasons behind those. For the past two months of being here in the field I have had a knack for making Turkish Delight [the name I use for ANY and EVERY meal I cook!] for ever single meal and frankly, my companion is getting sick of watching me eat it every day. Most specifically, I would enjoy knowing how to make the insides for Pot Stickers and I´ll be on the lookout for ingredients at Asian stores for the wraps if possible. But also I want to receive family history stories; I would like hard copies that I can read and then share with investigators. I had a wonderful expereience a couple of weeks ago to take out the family charts I have and hang them up right next to my desk. I especially love the one with Grandma´s lineage and one thing that´s great to share in lessons is family stories because they are so powerful. Family Home Evenings are also a hit for us to teach to new members and really do brings families closer together. Here in España they are called Noche de Hogars, just in case I refer to them with that name in any future letter. Yes, but I did have a great Fourth of May. My companion didn´t seem to enjoy it as much as I did when I wished him a "May the Fourth Be With You," but that´s OK, I´m sure he liked it. He also liked it when I forgot the keys to the apartment and we had to wait to get back in and had to pay (confidential) euros. Yes. But this is what I really want to share today. This Sunday is Mothers Day and guess what? We can Skype! It´s actually best if we Skype, because it´s free and it´s been approved for us to do that. So what we have planned as of right now, since my companion's family lives in Alabama, is for us to start out call at 4:00pm here and that would be about 8:00am over in the States. If that´s wrong, then just be on the computer ready to answer a call right before church and the call should be about 45 minutes. I´ll try to be prompt so that I don´t take you away from your time at church too. If I remember correctly, then Dad, you have an account so just make sure you have it open and then I´ll call you. I´ve been thinking that in case the laptop is not working, you can use the Mac and plug in my microphone or something like that. If you could actually hook that up for the call regardless to either computer, then the quality of sound would be the best for me. Just make sure you get Joseph to get everything working right and that the computer is using the good mic as the mic to be used in the call. It´s a bit tricky, but he´s the family member I trust with that job. My skype account is ´´wes_alex´´ in case you use a different account, but yes! I´m excited to talk to you all and (maybe) see you this Sunday! [I am glad Joseph is the one with this assignment!] Happy Mothers' Day, Mom! Con la amor de me corazon,´ Élder Xander Weston Schindler P.S. No one knows how to say my name. I don´t know if I´ve mentioned that before, but I always get things like Elder Sandler, Elder Sindar, or Elder Hitler (no lie). But when they ask me what my full name is, I just tell them Alexander and they love that name. I usually don´t bother with Weston because that is even foreign in the USA! P.P.S. Happy Mayday! Besos!