Letter dated 26Nov2012

Dear Family, Happy-Week-After-Thanksgiving! How are you all doing? I´m doing- FANTASTIC! We had a fantastic week and I believe that I´m going to be looking at several more weeks like this one in the future. In regards to Thanksgiving, I was blessed to be fed by a wonderful member from the USA who lives here with his family and they prepared an awesome meal for us on Thursday night! I have reason to believe it´s because you had the Elders over for dinner at home last week that we were blessed with this treat, so thank you! I forgot how good biscuits were and I actually ate a ton without stuffing myself. I usually always feel like I´m about to pass out when I eat Thanksgiving dinner, so I was good this time. Our baptism went swimmingly (literally) well and it was a great feeling for me to get back in the water personally ^_^! The service was fantastic and so many members showed up, it was fantastic. I´ll try to get photos from my companion and send them soon. We were disappointed to not see Nicol come to church for her confirmation yesterday, but we´ll be visiting them and going over just how important it is to receive the gift of the Holy Ghost. She´s great and I´m sure the family had something come up that was just unexpected, but we´ll be working hard nevertheless to get her to church this week. We are also incredibly excited to have two more baptisms this Saturday! They are two great girls, Yurimar from Venezuela and Carolina from Ecuador, and they are telling everyone about their baptism. The are really just honestly and sincerely excited for baptism! That would have to be the greatest miracle I saw last week. We had visited the girls two times and both times we asked them about how they felt about baptism and about the church as a whole. They had been taught by Elders a few months ago but then felt that they needed more time to develop their testimonies. In our second lesson with them we asked them once again how they felt about baptism, showing them the video of Jesus being baptized by John the Baptist, and we shared some great scriptures about baptism. We gave them a few seconds to think about it and they both said, individually, ´´Me gustaría´´ (which translates to ´´I would like that´´). As soon as they both said that we both just got huge smiles on our faces (well, they were already there, but they got bigger, that´s for sure!) and we started planning for their baptism. We suggested having it on the 8th of December but they both said ´´Do we really have to wait that long?´´ It kind of caught me off guard, but I knew that they had been taught everything before, had been coming to church regularly, and knew that it would be a blessing in their lives to take this step, so the sooner the better, right! They´ll be baptized on the 1st of December and we´re going to be working with the Ward a whole lot to bring the service together, which should be a great one. I´m so happy to be here on my mission! I've been keeping up the promptness of getting up on time as well. [Missionaries wake up at 6:30 AM.] We had some interesting days because we hardly had time to get to our apartment so we went throughout some of the days with little to no food, then we had our fast for the mission, but overall, we survived and we´re still operating at full capacity! Elder Wiggins is a great guy and we´re really working hard together to get our companionship unity down. We´re open with our feelings and if one of us does something that bothers the other, we tell each other and work on fixing it. I easily see many more blessing here in Terrassasaurus while we´re together and I´m positive that we´ll both see plenty throughout the rest of our missions. He has so much great energy that drives a great personality which I appreciate so very much. I´m excited for the rest of our time together. I´m thankful to have such a wonderful family and I hope that you all love me equally! I´m thankful for all of our opportunities we have in our lives and the blessings that we can receive when we are faithful and obedient. Muchas gracias por su amor y consuelo en mi vida y por todo de mis experiencias! Os quiero mas que puedo decir! Es un montón, a decir lo menos! Élder Xander Weston Schindler P.S. Here´s my new address! Élder Alexander Weston Schindler c/ d´egara 164 Nº 1,1 08225 Terrassa España If you send me anything, I would appreciate a dradle very much ;). But I don´t really want to buy a new camera. If Joseph doesn´t use his camera anymore and if it still works, I´d be down to having that one. If not, then I´ll just borrow my companion´s cameras for the next year. A cheap substitute camera would be nice, but I´d rather get other things, you know what I mean? Also, I see myself staying in Terrassa for a while now, so unless it changes in the future, send stuff (letters and packages) here and tell people via Facebook as well. Thanks! P.P.S. We have to go back, Kate. [Weston's random quote from Lost!]