Hello Family!
So I should be back to the regular email schedule... So please don't procrastinate your emails if you want me to read them in time. The last two weeks were just odd circumstances. Mother, thank you so much for the stories you sent! They were so great to read! I've already used a few of them in my lessons! The spirit is really strong when I am able to relay to them an experience that affected someone I know personally, instead of just me telling them a principle and hoping they can understand how it could apply. SEND MORE! I am always looking for them! Tell Grandma and all the aunts and uncles to send me stuff! I would love to hear from them and their experiences that may have strengthed their testimonies! That goes for any friends who are reading this as well!
So Everything is going well with my companion! We get along really well, and even tough we are really different, we are both pretty chill about stuff, so we never have arguments or anything! Which I really like. haha! He still can't eat human food... But he's been getting more creative with what he can eat. I have as well actually, which has been fun. Mother, please send me recipes! Chicken Broccolli Casserole sounds really good, and your soups! Hamburger, broccolli, chicken noodle! Missionary work has definitely picked back up! My companion can walk long distances again, so we are excited about that. We can go tracting again!! I love it! I don't know why people don't like tracting... I do it all the time! Contacting outside is fun and all, but nothing beats getting invited inside to someone's christmas party and them trying to force you to drink vodka and then them getting all interested when you say you don't drink. I really love it!
So the other day, Penza had this big youth conference for youth all over the mission! It was really cool to see different youth all finding strength in each other's example! So cool! I met one kid from Moscow who asked me if I knew Robbie Olsen, Mark Harris, and Andrew Wadsworth. I kind of got really excited and we just talked about how they were all doing. haha!
Jane is doing well! She's been in the hospital for the past two weeks... Russians and their hospital vacations... She's been reading the Book of Mormon though and she says she's loving it! So hopefully she'll be getting baptised this month! Anya is such a pain! I love her, but she just will not come to church! I really am praying she doesn't turn into an eternal investigator... Sergei is wonderful, but he's been an eternal investigator for some time now, so it is really difficult to get him moving... but I really feel like he is moving closer to baptism! I'm really falling in love with Penza. Especially the investigators. At first, I felt that I probably loved them, but I didn't feel like I felt the same way that RM's say they loved their investigators... well now I do! I have really been blessed with a love for these people and what they have to bring! You can see such potential in every person, even when they can't see it in themselves because they feel their is no hope for them! I never want to leave Penza! I know that if the Lord wants me to go, obviously that is what I should want too... but I don't!!
Okay, one last story before I go! So I was talking to some missionaries and they that said in one of our branches here about a year ago or something, these missionaries had the craziest miracle. So apparently, thirty five years ago asked this guy for a cigarette and he gave her a whole pack to be nice and walked away. She opened it up and instead of finding cigarettes, she found these little pieces of paper rolled up to look like cigarettes. The papers were the account of Joseph Smith and the first vision. The spirit bore testimony of the truth of the little papers and she kept it a secret that this is what she believed for thirty five years. Well a year a ago, a member invited her to come to church, and for the thousandth time, the woman said "Trust me, what you and I believe is very different!" The member asked her to just tell her what she actually believed, so the woman decided to tell her as long as she didn't tell anyone. People would think she was crazy! The woman told the member the story about the cigarettes and the first vision. Obiously the member was like "Lady... you have to come to one of our church meetings..." and the woman was baptized two weeks later. Crazy! I don't know if that is just a legend floating around every mission, or if it's true to our mission... but I thought it was cool!
Got to go! Love you all!
Elder Swartz!
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