Jairo

I don't know if any of you reading remember me talking about a  young man named Jairo.. but that's our miracle for the week. I found the page in my journal of the first day we taught him, July 30, 2013, three weeks after we met him on the street. Well... seven months later... he's getting baptized. 

When we first met Jairo he was living a very rough life. The street life, they call it. I even remember in our first lesson he told us he wasn't able to read and write. You should have seen our amazement when he responded to our text message... miracle! Or we just proved his excuse wrong. Well it has been an amazing experience to be able to walk the path with him. To see all of the progress that he has made in the past seven months. I cannot wait to see him in white..  

It's been a weird transfer... and I haven't really had the desire to write a weekly email for the past two weeks and my comp is super speedy at doing emails so I don't wanna make her wait!! I'll repent and do a super good one next week!

Love you all! 

The church is true. 

Onward and Upward.

Hermana Schwendiman 

Windy AND cold!!  Nothing frozen yogurt can't fix!

The Alex Boye Way... @alexboye

Today I'm going to talk a little bit about how we did something the Alex Boye way!!

Wednesday at Zone Meeting I was sitting next to my district leader, Elder Traasdahl, and turned to him suddenly and out flooded the words, "I want a family of six!" "huh?" he responded... "I want to teach of family of six.." He just kind of looked at me, nodded his head and said "Well okay!" 
That night as I knelt down to pray I had a "movie reel" kind of moment and started to replay the talk from Alex Boye at the Christmas devotional. Saying that we have more power than we think. Our expectations and faith in God are too low and he is willing to give us miracles, we just lack the faith the ask for them and we sure don't expect them. So with that, I just said to my Father in Heaven.. Well Father, I know that you can do anything and right now, well, I'm putting this on my "expectations" list, to find and teach a family of 6. 

The next morning we were in an appointment with a potential investigator that we had called from our formers. A woman named Trixi. We walked in the door and there was a three year old boy on the couch and a baby in his carrier. As we started into our "how to begin teaching" she mentioned that she had another 4 year old who was at school at the moment. Then came Alex Boye, and I remember started to pry a little... counting up 4.. and wondering if she was married. That would make 5. It wasn't 6.. but I could settle with a family of 5. So I asked.. she started to talk about the relationship she was in. Not officially married because she had been previously married (the Latino teaching curse). 5. Family of five. Not bad. A few minutes in the lesson as we were talking she mentioned ANOTHER DAUGHTER, from her previous marriage. I remember my eyes getting big and whispering under my breath, "No way..." I almost jumped up with my fist in the air and said, "And that's how we do things the Alex Boye way!!" But instead I said a humble little prayer in my heart... 

Well done Alex, Well done!

By the way, Bryan... the awesome Dominican hipster that came to church last week, now is getting baptized that the end of the month!! 

Onward and Upward

Hermana Schwendiman 

Cake Boss is in our zone and one of our members works there and we got a tour of it.  Yes, that man is half hugging us... Awkward!  but not as awkward as Buddy (the boss man) accidentally touching my butt after the group photo

The 3 Alta Hawks from our zone!!

I'm staying put...

Well it's that time of transfer.. Text came in last night. I'm staying a fifth! I bore my testimony yesterday in church and got up to the pulpit and said,"Well I've been here long enough that I'm basically a member." I've been here since July and will be here till February.. Unless I don't ever leave and spend the rest of my mission here. I couldn't be more grateful to stay with my companion though.

This week was crazy.. 

New Years eve we went over to Veronica's. My first convert here in this area. She invited us over to her brothers house and her mom came, and her cousins. One big Ecuadorian New Years eve party. One thing that I remember when we went to Ecuador was that every New Years Eve all the men dress up like women and then they stuff some of their old clothes to make a pretend human. They write the last year on it and then at midnight they light them on fire. I remember walking into this apartment and there was a "Weekend at Bernies" type man sitting in the corner. It looked so odd to me and took me a second to realize what it was. Well then i adopted him as my date for the night and we got along just fine. It's a bummer that we weren't in Ecuador and couldn't light him on fire. I guess it wouldn't have mattered because we were home LONG before midnight anyway! 

Little spiritual fun note.. Street contact came to church yesterday and it was testimony meeting. Young 19 year old very spiritual boy. I sat next to him in sacrament meeting and I went up and bore a quick testimony and as I was closing he came up to the stand and bore his. I was in awe. First time at church. Way to go kid! He's was on page ten in the book of mormon and even volunteered to say the prayer in sunday school.. even though he started it off.. Oh God who art in the heavens.. I was pretty impressed. He lives in the Elders area but it was still really fun to see that happen.

One other really fun miracle. I don't think I shared this last week... But it goes to show that even small things can have a huge purpose. When I was up here with Hermana Schaefer one night I had a really odd desire to eat ice cream... she did too! So later that night when we had time set aside we went and found this ice cream shop that everyone had been talking about. Walked in sat down.. and I had a the prompting to talk to the ice cream shop owner. As I started to move he came up to us.. Said he grew up with his uncle who was a patriarch and his cousin told him that NY had really fun young single adult activities so he wondered if we could get him information on that... well he was baptized yesterday!! A sweet little reward.

One other fun note.. has to do with the weather. This weekend it snowed.. HARD. and then Saturday night.. it rained. And then all froze. We didn't walk to church yesterday.. we ice skated!! We were dying laughing and poor sister Acosta has never seen the snow let alone dealt with ice before. We were all over the place!! The best part wast the there is a slant in the sidewalk going up to the church door and we couldn't get up. I had to get a fast walking start and slide up to the door to get there!! 

Well onward and upward just like it was like getting into the church!! Love you all!

Hermana Schwendiman

Diego turned 21 this week and kept saying he was OLD.  So since I am already 21, we took an old people picture

My Ecuadorian date for New Years Eve!