Letter dated 14Aug2012

[Dear family and friends, here is the letter we received today from Weston. I hope you enjoy it. Weston also sent some pictures - I will post some of these later on his blog -- and I'll let you know when they have been posted. We are in Idaho right now. We will be leaving Joseph and Daniel at BYU next week for school. May you all have a wonderful August! Weston's editor - BWS] Dear Family, I´m almost at my 5th transfer of my mission.. but it´s exciting because I have plenty of time to continue learning and progressing! Every day is still an adventure, that´s for sure. This is also the last week I´ll be with Elder Greep, because he is going home! His family is coming to Barcelona next week and he´ll actually be leaving the island on Sunday because he´s going to attend a baptism from his most recent area. I´ll be finding out who my new companion is but it´ll be hard to beat Elder Greep. That does mean that I´ll have my Preparation Day on Tuesday next week as well and then I can inform you about all the changes in my life! Ohhhh, exciting! (^_^) Yesterday I had a great opportunity to have some specialized training for our zone here on the islands. I was happy to have been able to learn what we did, recieve feedback to questions that we had, and also just to get to know our new leaders. The focus of the training for working with those people who have drifted away from the church was especially powerful for me. All the things shared in that conference were things that I knew would help our area here on the islands. What part I think affected me the most what what Sister Pace said about paying compliments. Her whole talk about us as missionaries giving sincere compliments to our companions, members of the church, and everyone else, really was an inspired thing that we learned. At the end of the day yesterday, we were teaching our family but as soon as we began we knew something was wrong. We could just sense it in the air. We asked them if there was anything that was wrong and we came to find out that the parents had been fighting just prior and they definitely were all feeling down in the dumps and we were all feeling a bunch of negativity in the family. At that time we had our trio of Elder Greep, Elder Swenson, and myself and we were just sitting there in silence for a few moments because we knew that anything we would try to teach them would be like throwing water balloons at the wall. Then Elder Swenson got up and said, ´´Alright, here´s what we´re going to do. I want you (the parents) to come together and give compliments to each other about what you love about the other.´´ At first I thought, ´´What in the world?´´ but then I thought ´´Man, why didn´t I think of that!´´ That visit became one of the most powerful moments we´ve had with them and everyone in the family cried at least once, as everyone gave compliments to each and every one of their family members. Finally, when we were leaving I asked when would be a good time to come back and they said, ´´Viernes!´´ [Wednesday] without any hesitation! The power of gratitude and the love of our families are some of the most powerful things we have in our lives! Everything that I´m hearing from you sounds positive and absolutely amazing! Have a great time in Idaho and dropping off Joseph and Daniel at BYU. Keep me posted coming up and I´ll be looking forward to everything that you´re all doing. The right thing is going to happen and everything will be for the best! Oh man, I´m just so excited for all of you! Ahhhh, HUG ATTACK! Con cariño, Élder Xander Weston Schindler, P.S. I´ve been showing lots of people the picture I have of me with all of you brothers! I might stop doing that though, since they all say, ´´Oh, so you have three older brothers?!´´ Maybe one day I´ll look older than a 16 year old.. (^_^) P.P.S. Send my love to Adam Jensen! He´s going to love Colombia! There is a Colombian family here in Inca and the mom has told us to call her our ´´mission mommy´´! As soon as I get my camera working, I´ll send more photos, but I´m very, very short on updated photos... and the one of our family is blurry... but hey, it works! :D I´m just dissapointed that I don´t have too many photos with Elder Greep...