Letter dated 9Apr2012

[Dear family and friends, I hope you enjoy this letter from Weston! He has included his address below. If you'd like, you can simply reply to this note and I will send your note to him! Thanks for the love and support that you show Weston! Love, Weston's editor - BWS] Hola Familia, I would like to apologize for the rushed letter I sent last week. I´ve been really busy and I ran out of time to write you all what I´ve been doing but I enjoyed greatly what you all wrote me last week and this week. I feel sort of badly too, because I realized I didn´t leave a scripture with you last week! But don´t worry, I have a special one just for you this week. I believe I´m a little ahead of you in our reading, but this is a very special scripture about the soujourn of Nephi´s family in the wilderness. In chapter 16 Nephi accidentally breaks his special bow and his entire family start complaining about not being able to have food. (Yup, they definitely were American to complain about not being able to eat) But Nephi´s such a great guy and he goes and makes a bow on his own and then goes to his father to see what he should do. Lehi, Nephi´s father, then realizes his mistake at turning away from the Lord and prays and is able to inquire of the Lord of where they should go find food. Then in 1 Nephi 16:32 ´´...I did return to our tents, [carrying] the beasts which I had slain; and now when they beheld that I had obtained food, how great was their joy!´´ This verse reminded me of home, whenever mom and dad would bring home food and how happy we would all be. But in all seriousness, I greatly enjoy verse 29, as it states that ´´by small means the Lord can bring about great things.´´ [Here is a link to the story to which Weston is referring! http://www.lds.org/scriptures/bofm/1-ne/16?lang=eng] And since I´ll probably be in Gerona for a while I´ll let you know what my address here is. It is as follows: Elder Alexander Weston Schindler (or shorter, my whole name is not necessary) C/ La Cruz 53, 4º2 Gerona, B 17002 Spain Alright, now here are some things that I left out of the last letter as well as some new things I´d like to share with you. As far as Spain goes, it´s very similar to the USA, or maybe I´m just very used to it. At least, the new areas of cities are very similar; the old parts are way better than most anything I´ve ever seen before and are trully amazing. I´ve been on an intercombio (splits) and have seen a lot of another city called Mataro which is right next to the Mediterranean Sea. While there we traveled down to a place called Calello which is a huge tourist place and (por su puesto) I had some ice cream, and was very pleased with the German Kinder ice cream they had. Also, in Spain they have great pastry shops, sometimes called bomboneria. Another thing I have adapted to is the milk here, since it has so many preservatives in it but it stays good for several months and is only 50 cents for a liter of milk. Also, there are a lot of people who ride motorcycles here, and strangely, many women are driving them. I guess it´s just what they do here in Spain. It´s awesome. But some other experiences I´ve had have been in Gerona, such as a time when a drunk man came up to us and asked us for money. I wanted to tell him that I´d like some money too, but I didn´t say that. It doesn´t help that we are always wearing suits.. anyways, I said I didn´t have any money, so he pinched my cheek and that was sort of different. Never had that happen before. But also there are many people from Nigeria and various other African countries that we teach but they have the lamest excuses for not being able to visit with us. My favorite is ´´I am cooking´´. But when they pray, I love it when they ask God ´´to bless everyone to be able to eat well and not be eaten´´. I love it! And the other week I got a few ties from President Hinckley [Weston's mission president] and I´ll be hanging on to those for a while. I might ask him to sign at least one of them, but then again, I probably won´t do that. But most importantly is what I´ve been doing here in Spain. This past General Conference we had several of our investigators come to the Chapel and see conference there and my favorite was from the Sunday Monring Session from President Uchtdorf and the reason I loved it was because even though I listened to the Spanish translation, he speaks plainly and simply and it was all things that can be applied directly to everyone´s life today. [Here is a link to this talk: http://www.lds.org/general-conference/2012/04/the-merciful-obtain-mercy?lang=eng] Earlier this week, during one of the training sessions with my companion and me, we used the wedding invitation of Brigitte and Doug as our investigator and it was great to teach them the Plan of Salvation! [Brigitte and Doug were married on Saturday!] They were really great investigators too, but they didn´t have too many questions for us. But this past Saturday we had two baptisms, of Lesly and Seidy. For me, it´s been an amazing few weeks to teach them and to see the beginning of a new chapter in their lives. Lesly is 14 and is from the Dominican Republic and Seidy is 23, has a husband who is a member, a son, and is from Honduras. A really special experience for me was to see the sister-in-law of Seidy, Lorena, come to the baptism and to church the next day. She hasn´t attended church in a very long time and she had a brother who died when she was younger who was going to serve a mission too. She definitely found something that she had been missing for the past several years and it was great to see her participate in church yesterday. We actually had over 80 people attend church yesterday in our small branch and Gerona will soon become a Ward. Our little area is exploding and there is definitely a lot of work to be done still and I am thankful to be a part of it at this time. I had a realization the other day, that I shouldn´t dwell on regrets. I made the best decision to come on my mission. Love, Elder Weston Schindler