Letter dated 24Sept2012

[Dear friends and family, I hope that Fall is treating you well! Here is our latest letter from Weston. He loves hearing from you -- so send a reply and I will pass it along to him! It is so good to hear him sounding so positive! Best wishes! Weston's editor - BWS] Dear Family, Oh, what a good week. For the past while, we´ve been hitting some walls with people but I feel like we finally jumped over quite a few. We had an invitation from our Zone Leaders as a district for every compaionship to get over 20 lessons during the week. Now, I´m not a numbers guy, but Manacor/Inca are quite a bit harder than other areas. But we made a plan that we would meet that goal and guess what? We were able to teach 22 lessons this week! A huge improvement to what the area really ever sees. We also had the great chance to spend time with President Pace for a day, since he came out for our Branch Conference. It was a great pleasure to have a moment to work with our president. It was a fantastic opportunity for me to learn and gain better insight for the work we´re doing here on the island and I feel that I learned a tremendous amount from him. It was especially great while we were visiting a less active member of the Church, Jorge. I was able to see, personally, a great change from him during our visit with our president. He really does want to improve and get back onto the right path and his entire family is special beyond description. We´ll be continuing to visit him and I know for a fact that he wants to see President Pace again as soon as he can. A little bit about Jorge, he has been all around the world, is from Colombia, has been to Japan, all of Europe, Canada, and is learning about 5 different languages, including English from us. He´s fantastic! Most Colombians I know are great people, including a family in Inca that we visit every week. They are just full of love and are just so caring. Let Adam Jensen know that, please! The biggest miracle that we were able to experience happened directly after our time with President Pace. We were walking down the street on the narrow sidewalks and we saw a family coming towards us in the opposite direction. Elder Swenson quickly and quietly said, ´´Let´s talk to them´´ and as soon as we approched them we stopped them. We told them who were were, that we are missionaries of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-Day Saints and that we have a message, one that families can live together forever. The family consisted of the mother and father and 5 children, the oldest being a 9 year old girl and all the rest just running around in every direction. We asked them if it would be possible to visit them in their home. They looked at each other, then said ´´Of course!´´ and gave us their address. We then asked when would it be possible to see them again and the following Sunday worked for them so we set up a time and went on our way. That Sunday we went to the visit, shared the Book of Mormon and the Proclamation to the Family and were able to establish a great friendship with them. They are a little bit rougher around the edges, but all the kids running around reminded me so much of my childhood that I loved every distraction that was going on during the lesson. We saw a blessing and we have plans to see them tomorrow evening. I love you all a ton, I miss you all a bunch, I pray for you all the time, Élder Xander Weston Schindler P.S. During a lesson with a new member we were reading 1 Nephi 2 and at the part where it describes Nephi as being youthful yet large in stature, President Pace took that opportunity to say that Elder Swenson and I personify that description; me being youthful (for real, like a little 10 year old sometimes..) and Elder Swenson since he is a pretty big guy! I thought I´d share that funny experience I had. It´s going into my journal!