Well this is going to be a little bit of a different letter this week.. Some strange things happened.
The first of which (sometimes it just happens) was on an exchange. We started Friday morning, my companion and I, and she asked me if I had had any crazy exchange stories.. I really hadn't had any super crazy, one-for-the-books, gets around the mission kind of story and so that ended up being a rather short conversation. Well we get back to the apartment that night (now on exchanges) and it turns out the the apartment downstairs had actually done something with all that ruckus they have been making during our personal and companionship studies for the past week and decided to throw on five layers of paint and redo the floors... Well all of these things (well fumes rather) creeped up into our apartment and decided to hang out there for the day.. make that going four days strong now. We made it through nightly planning and about an hour being home realized we were NOT going to be able to make it through the night. We threw open the windows and started making calls to our leaders to see if there was any way that we would be able to sleep somewhere else. We ended up staying that night at the Sister Training Leaders apartment.. Woo wee..
After that exchange Sister Haddock and I headed back to see if the apartment had aired out enough so that we could go back. Our apartment was so cold. About a half hour in, we both had major head aches. That resulted in night two at the Sister Training Leaders apartments. Sunday after church... well... I found the good ol' family business!! Who new... The first picture... looks like its actually spelled right. But the second one shows a little more clearly that the painter messed up a little. BUT HEY!!! The Schwendiman Taxidermy business!! I knew I had been in the wrong career field... But after that, back to the apartment, starving!! Clever little me (picture 3) turned up the heat!! Ate lunch by the fireplace... well since the apartment downstairs took the weekend off and never vented the apartment it ended up in a third night at the Sisters apartment. It's been a little rough. I remember being frustrated yesterday because I feel like I haven't been very stable. Moving around a lot and feeling like I just wanted to be able to stay somewhere for a little. And then we are moving at the end of this week.. BUT we were able to go see our apartment. The us and the senor couple have nicknamed it "the cave" and it is... a cave!! But the coolest feature is the all-pink bathroom! So excited. You'll get pictures of that this week. But later last night (moving on to the more spiritual points) we met with a member family.
The Sarabias. First of all, we walk in and there are at least 100 tamales sitting on the table just waiting for us.. and while we ate they shared how they met, which led to how they were converted to the gospel by a member referal, and then eventually sealed in the temple, and now they have a boy on a mission. It was really neat to hear Hermano Sarabia share is thoughts about how when they were married by a Catholic priest.. the words "till death do you part" had always haunted him. The moment he started to nurture his "seed of faith" was when the missionaries shared with him about eternal marriage. He said, "That is when I knew that this HAD to be the right church!" Well we shared with them that we wanted to commit them to be able to share the gospel with others.. or more specifically, be the member that referred them to the missionaries. We gave them a book of mormon and the moment we said that Hermano Sarabia said, "well there's a neighbor that just came into my mind..." and then he was interrupted by his wife.. "NO WAY!!! YOU HAD THE SAME PERSON COME TO YOU??"
Well we formed an "attack plan" with them. It's really interesting to see that if you really are willing... the Lord with give you missionary experiences! He has so many people ready.. he's just waiting for us to put in our request to be his tools.
This church is true. Families can be eternal. There are people ready.
One thing that change my way of thinking this week was from on of our Zone Leaders. " Every person on this earth chose to come her to qualify for celestial glory. How many people do we walk by every day that has forgotten that. The people who are looking for "something more" (or other words that goal of celestial glory) but have no idea where to find it. Well that changed out mindset this week.. We contacted 61 more people than we did last week... they are out there. It's our job!
Go get em!
Hermana Schwendiman
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