Letter dated 6Aug2012

[Dear family and friends, good morning! I hope this note finds you safe and well. Here is the letter we received from Weston this morning. I hope you enjoy it. He would LOVE to hear from you. Simply reply to this email - and I will forward your response to him. Take care and be safe! Weston's editor - BWS] Dear Family, All is well in the land of Inca and we are making new efforts to see changes and new activity here in the area. Even before I arrived here I was told to be ready to work a lot. From the little bit of experience I do have in the mission I am learning a lot from this area. As of right now I feel comfortable knowing the area and most of the men and women in the branch. It is a bit different getting ready to say good-bye to Elder Greep, seeing as he goes home in two weeks. It´s been great having that extra edge of experience with me so that I can learn more here but still I´m anxious for the next Elder to come and join me in the area. I know that everything will be fine and we are working to make the appropriate preparations for the future. The family that we´ve been teaching have their baptismal fetchas [project date] for the Saturday in two weeks and we´ll be working as hard as we can in order to get them feeling welcomed and comfortable with the Branch. They didn´t come to church yesterday but they already had a planned activity in Palma, the main city on the island. We've been doing a lot of fasting and praying specifically for them since we both know that they are great people. I have found that the mission is one of the most powerful ways to feel love for other people and honestly think about them with sincerity of heart. I´m positive that the Lord is also at work and that the right things will happen according to His will. This week we are planning to make new efforts to contact more new people so that we can introduce them to the Gospel of Christ. It´s going to be a vital thing for us to do since I am going to be the experienced Elder in the area and I´m going to need to set some good foundations for the next several weeks so that we´ll have a great time and also help the people here progress! So that´s some of the missionary work of Elder Schindler(^_^)! Another thing that we had was an activity that we worked pretty hard to get together, code named ´´Noche de Juegos´´ (or Game Night), for the youth and the YSA (los jovenes y JAS). The night was really fun and we got 5 kids from our area to come and a few others from the other branches on the island. We also had some incredible help from the Senior Missionaries here on the island (who are in charge of the YSA here). They brought their computer, projector, and the first Pirates of the Caribbean to watch at the end of the activity and of course, we did *NOT* watch it with them. But we played a bunch of fun games, including one similar to that Police and Criminal game we would play with the Wilsons. It was a blast, but we didn´t have food, because a member said, "Oh, but it´s fast Sunday the following day!" It would have been so much better if we had food but it was still a success. We´ll try to get pizza or some small snack foods for the next one we do in the future. I did get a letter from a friend the other day and it reminded me how nice it is to get letters. I´m going to do my best to write everyone who´s written me so far because it just gives you a great feeling to see letters in your mailbox that are not advertisments! OH YEAH, and we were at a members house and the daughter was wanting to become Facebook friends with both of us and so we gave her our names to search and it was super weird when she got to mine. I hadn´t even seeing my profile picture in well over 7 months and I forgot what it looked like. I wish I could get it changed to some of my new photos in Spain! Speaking of which, my camera battery died last week and I left my charger in Gerona! Elder Carlson said he was going to get it to Barcelona but he hasn´t yet and now I can´t take my pictures once every day... but it´ll all be okay in the future. Con cariño, Élder Xander Weston Schindler (^_^) P.S. I got a lot of wiffs of very exciting news! I´m so excited for Donald and his mission call to the Ireland/Scotland Mission. We´re going to be little Europe neighbors, except I´m still super far away from him. I´m sure that he´ll like the Preston MTC a whole lot! I´m also very excited for Joseph and Daniel going out and getting dropped off at Utah this upcoming week. I´m sure that´s going to be an experience unlike any other! Probably way too many college adventures to even count! Andrew also sounds like he´s going great and that band camp was a blast! I´m so happy that you all sound so great right now! Man, we´re just all doing really great!! P.P.S. HAPPY BIRTHDAYS TO ANDREW AND TO JOSEPH AND TO JACOB! Sorry, I didn´t get you anything, unless you still have Netflix. You´re welcome!