I Love Amish Jam!

  Elder Moses and me and our Amish Jam!

Frolfing!

Well hey there sweet Fam.

This week has been a huge reflections week for me as far as the mission goes. I look back and think about me being trained all the time. Its fun to see how far i have come as far as my knowledge in the Gospel and as far as My testimony is. I have such a strong faith in the Gospel of Jesus Christ and how much happiness it can bring someone. This has been a pretty short year that i have been out. A lot has happened and i would never go back and change anything from the 1st year. There are however things im gonna change for this second year. We have had some great success this past week and last night. Michelle is still doing good and she is looking good for June. We havent taught her kids yet but they are never home so yeah. We are gonna try and set 7-10 dates this week. Last Friday we went out with Brother Higdon. It was only for like 6 hours this time and not 8-10. ha ha but he took us clear out into the country where the houses are half a mile apart from each other and he took us to a Amish Farm. Coolest thing in the world. The amish people seem so depressed. They are so boring, but i was way cool to talk to them. They live some pretty boring lives. I have found a new precious commodity in my life that i cherish with all my heart. AMISH JAM. Its the best stuff in the world. It doesn't even belong in the Jam category. thats how good it is. I have strawberry and its almost gone. its way too good to just look at. Imma get me S'more and send some to ya'll. We also had our ward party which was a lot of fun. We were out in the country on a huge farm. I gotta ride on come huge tractor. I felt way southern. i wanna drive one so bad. Okay so last night we had a cool experience. We went to go teach a new investigator and he ditch out on the appoinment. Well on the way back we talked to this Black guy Jerry and we tried to set a time to come back and see him. well he was like just come in now and teach us. We both looked at each other like we wanted to do standing backflips cause we were so happy. But we stayed calm and collect and we went in and had a great lesson that was spirit filled and they are coming to church with us on Sunday. They are a family of four and they are so awesome. Pray for Pamela, Jerry, joshua and Christy. Christy hit a semi when she fell asleep at the wheel. She is in bad shape. Well This week should be a little more eventful and i will try and send more pics for ya'll. Just know i love you all and hope ya'll have a great week. And i look forward to talking to ya'll on Monday.
Love Elder schwendiman

quoicdeho!

Hey there Goodlooking Family! 
It was so good to see ya'll last week. Ya'll look amazing. We have had a really busy week. With Bailey baptized we have geen trying to John Long baptized and he said its closer than we think, so its really close. We played basketball with the ward on tuesday night and some of our investigators came. well I dove for the ball and another missionary did too and he ended up sitting on my face ha ha my face was so swollen. It was really funny tho we all starting laughing cuz it knocked me silly for some time. Im all better tho. Every Wednesday we go out with this guy Bro Higdon. He is like 75 and we go with him from 2-9 and we drive an hour away(still in our area) and we go and see all the people me and Elder Moses can't. It really fun but stressful because he gets mad if someone is not home but he does alright. I like the guy! And then on saturday we called this girl that we have been trying to get a hold of for like 5 weeks and we finally got through to her and she said we could come over. She lived 20 miles away so we just drove out there. We had a really spiritual lesson with her and we set a baptism date with her for the 14th of June. She is so ready. He husband is a member but he is in prison but the day he gets out they are getting married and then we can baptize her. On easter morning her house burnt down to ashes. Sad story but she put everything in Gods hands and now she lives in a house that is really cheap rent, everything in her house was donated by every church in town. haha i love the south people here are so nice. Pray for her. Its Michelle Samples! and possibly her kids too (I hope).  But on sunday i got asked to speak on the 31st of May. AHHH! i hate speaking in church. Im speaking on Unity and Brotherhood. ITs gonna be an interesting topic to speak on. We will see how i do. If ya'll find any talks on that let me know k? Dad im gonna need a new debit card mine broke in half today but take all the time in the world sending it out to me. I don't wanna spend any more money for the month. Stupid Habbit! but other than that This week has been pretty ok. Not getting transferred thats for sure! We are staying together at LEAST another transfer. I guess there are more people here that the Lord needs me to teach. Allen Beck went Zone Leader! cheay!  We just got done playing Frolf again today. We only played 36 holes. Mom ill send pics in like 16 minutes i have to get my camera! Just know i love you all and that ya'll mean the world to me. Have a great and safe week.

 Love Elder Schwendiman

My joy is full!

Well howdy yall!!!
What a great time to be on a mission. This week has been filled with a lot of ups and downs. okay so no downs just ups. ha ha this week went very well. okay so on monday i played frisbee golf. im gettin a lot better at it. its been rainy all week. We have had non-stop thunder storms all week. Way annoying. ITs gonna be high 70's this week though so no complaints. We had interviews with president Hutchings on wednesday. it went very well. Something he asked me kinda thru me for a loop. Nothing bad but he asked me a series of questions and one of the questions he asked was "how is your personal testimony"? I have yet to have someone ask me that on my mission. and i couldn't tell if he knew something that i didn't or what but it made me second guess my testimony. That has never happened to me and it kinda freaked me out. We i told him it was good and that was the end of the interview. Well the other day i was seriously pondering on what he said and im totally convinced that the spirit told him to ask me that question. So what i did was for personal study on saturday morning was i wrote down my testimony on a piece of paper and put it in alma chapter 30 where Alma meets up with Korihor and Alma talks about how he has a testimony. Good chapter bytheway. But anyway it made me realize how much a i know and how strong my testimony of the Gospel is. Thats my challenge to you is to write down on a piece of paper your testimony and whenever you are having a hard day or something just grab that piece of paper and read it to yourself. You will find that everything you are worrying about doesn't matter and the only thing that mattters is your testimony. Mom there were only a couple of things that i missed this week so in lue of that i will write you a gigantic letter consisting of my whole week and everything therein. We had stake conference for the whole eastern coast yesterday. Its was awesome. President Monson spoke and a few others. i love listening to President Monson. Okay so for mothers day i will be calling at 7:00 in the PM. We are gonna be at a members home and we will use their phone. IM so excited to talk to ya'll. Can't believe its been like 5 months. So im getting pretty scared. Im running outta time. i only have like 1 year and 3 weeks. AH! everyone says that after your 1 year mark time travel doubles. Hope thats not true. I love being out here so much. Its way too fun. Well i hope ya'll have a super great week and i will talk to ya'll on sunday. I love you so much.
Love Elder schwendiman