Letter dated 6May2013

[Dear friends and family, here is the latest letter we received today from Weston! We love hearing from him! Spring has finally found us in Michigan - and it's beautiful. I took the Scouts camping this past weekend - and we had a great time (no mosquitoes!). Daniel is back home with us after a successful year at BYU. It will be wonderful having him with us for the next 2 months - at which point he will leave for the Missionary Training Center to start learning Swedish! If you have a message for Weston, send it as a reply to this note and I will forward it to him. Wishing all of you a beautiful Spring! Weston's editor - BWS] Dear Family, ¡Bienvenidos a Valencia! Like I told you last week and as you might know now from the internet if you bothered searching for it, this city is amazing! It´s the biggest city I´ve served in yet, so big that there are 3 wards [a ward is a congregation] in the city itself. The only downside to Valencia is that you have to watch where you´re looking because they have tons of advertisements of women who can´t afford to buy enough clothes.. but you can´t just stare at the ground either because they have cards all over as well. [It sounds like we may need to do a clothes drive for the impoverished women of Valencia!] It´s a lot different than the Barcelona and Mallorca areas, but I´m doing good at avoiding it! Now I am also, for the first time, in a 4-elder apartment and it´s a a lot of fun to have the interaction with more missionaries every single day of the week! My companion, Elder Coombs, has been an excellent guide for me the past few days. He´s newer in the mission but he´s an ace when it come to speaking Spanish and also, he´s super tall! He makes me feel short, but then when we are in the streets I realize that he´s like a walking tower. It´s made a few interesting contacts as people have commented on his height! But he´s also really funny and loves tons of the same things as I do. Now just so you all know, there is a lot of diversity here in Valencia, especially with all the people whom we teach. Many of the people we teach are from Nigeria and speak both English and Spanish. I honestly have to say that I love the Africans that I've come into contact with on the mission! They are all so hilarious but also have great desires to learn more about God and strengthen their relationship with him. That´s a hard thing to find among many people these days. Here are some of stories from some of my favorite African friends. Let me start with Clemxymn and Joy. Clemxymn (pronounced Clemson) is married to Joy and they were baptized a few years ago but then stopped coming to church because they went back to the Catholic church. After years of saying no to their friend Victor, our ward mission leader and winner of the Micheal Jordan look-alike competition, they finally decided to come back to our church after their children just weren't learning much at the Catholic church, and there questions were too deep for their parents to answer. After coming back and asking the other Elders about some of these things, they were re-animated to come back to church and the weekend before I got here, two of the children were baptized! From this family they shared the gospel with their friend Isokin and her son Micheal who are both preparing for baptism on this upcoming Saturday. It´s amazing to see what kind of differences we can make in people lives when we share this incredible message of faith! On a bit of a lighter note, I hope that I won´t get fatter here... the members feed us so much in Valencia and I´ll have to make sure I do all of my morning workouts to keep in shape! For example, last night we ate so much of the best food at a member´s house, who feeds the missionaries every single Sunday night. At least you can know that I won´t be going hungry any time soon! On an even lighter note, here are some funny stories that happened this week. We were in a special conference and during the meeting I was talking to my companion under hushed words so that we wouldn't bother the speaker and I jokingly said that today was my birthday. At the end of the conference, one of the sister missionaries sitting in front of us handed me a piece of paper that said Happy Birthday because she only heard that part of our conversation! It wasn't until later that night that her district leader, with whom I share the apartment, told her and she got mad! Then another night we were going home on the bus and this man, completely disoriented, came walking down the aisle with a cart and in English asked me if I believed in God. I said yes, of course, and then he told me that I didn't look like I did. Bewildered, I looked at him for a second but then he toppled over his things and quickly got back up as the bus was making a turn. I asked him why he felt that way and he said ´´Because you´re a Nazi boy.´´ Almost laughing at this point I replied ´´You´re only saying that because you read my name tag´´ as I pointed to my name. He stood there and stared at it for a few seconds, then finally looked up at me and said ´´Nice! Have a good one!´´ Oh, I just love you all to death, what more can I say?! Élder Xander Weston Schindler P.S. This is what I´ll ask of you but if there are any changes I let you know ASAP. Have Skype ready to go right after church, preferably at 1:30pm. The only change would be if we have to do it earlier, then you guys will have to just do it super early.