Letter dated 19Nov2012

Dear Family, What an interesting and eventful first week in Terrassa. I know for sure that it´ll be difficult to top it, but hey, I´ll just let you know how the week went! Sadly, we didn't have a baptism this past Saturday.. he´s been in the hospital since Friday and he only has permission to allow family to into visit him. That was an extremely disappointing day when we heard what happened. We´re trying to find out more of the story, but we´re waiting until we can get in touch with him. We do, however, have a baptism for this Saturday which looks like it will be so good. Her two sisters were baptized two weeks ago and the whole family is incredible. They are from Ecuador and have been living here for a few years. They´re fantastic! It was also great to come to another area again and get to meet tons of people. I´m getting so much better at remembering names when I meet the person for the first time. I used to be the worst in the world but I've been getting so used to learning it within the first few moments of saying hello. Church was also a great day. It´s been the biggest chapel I've been in since... well, it´s the biggest I've been in my entire mission! I can´t wait to get to know the ward even better during the upcoming months! But this next part happened during the week... We had been away the entire day on Thursday and when we arrived at our apartment that night I realized something was missing... my camera. Just to point out, you can´t really misplace a camera of my magnitude. I went through ever emotion possible and every possibility of how it was stolen and I´m positive that our neighbors upstairs stole it. The reason for that is because we have a small patio in the back where all the apartments have back windows and people put their clothes to dry and wash and I´m positive that I could climb up into their apartment if I wanted to. Also, I discovered that they stole my tripod with the camera as well as my Pokedex but also... my milk. They came into our apartment and stole my milk! It was fun calling the police and the guy said ´´...hmmm, well, I can´t think of a solution for you..´´ because when we called we couldn't tell who could have done it for sure. I was thinking to myself ´´Well thanks a lot!´´ The thing that helped the most was the fact that I knew I was bringing the camera on my mission with possibilities that something could happen. I've had it for two years and now, I´m mostly sad that I won´t have the same chance to share the rest of my mission stories like I could have been able to. l have the majority of my photos saved so I´ll be sending those hopefully next week. I´m protecting our apartment like a beast right now as well so if anything else is missing, I´m going to make the police come down and search our neighbor's house. But oh well... I still have the photos so look forward to some Inca memories sometime in the future. Happy birthday Daniel! Sounds like you had a great weekend turning 18! I love you all! Did you know that? Élder Xander Weston Schindler