Tuesday, September 27, 2016

Hello family! This week has been super delicious! Guess who the new zone leaders are in Zone 10. Elder Gardiner and Elder Schneider!! The hungarian missionaries left today, and so they called us yesterday to be the new zone leaders! We get to welcome the new missionaries that will come in, and also assign teachers, interview district leaders, and so forth. I have loved being the District Leader so far, because my capacity to love others and care for others has been increased, and I love being an example for others. I am so excited to be zone leaders, because that means we get to get to know all the missionaries in our zone/branch (about 60 missionaries) really well! Also, I'm getting better at just talking to people and learning about their lives and establishing a friendship which I know will be super helpful in Albania! Now I just need to learn how to make friends in Albanian... Ha.
My relationship with my companion has grown a lot even just this past week! He's laughing a lot more, and we've both loosened up to each other, and really all the missionaries going to Albania have become such great friends! Haha, we play four square like everyday!! It actually can get really intense, but not heated. It's funny because at the MTC, we're not allowed to keep score for most things, so no one ever really argues about if the ball is in our out, which is great. Most people will just go out rather than try to argue to stay in. This place is cool. 
So guess who I saw on Tuesday. NEIL L. ANDERSON!!!!! He and his wife spoke at our Tuesday devotional!!! It was just stinkin' awesome. I also got to sing in the choir that day, and it was the biggest MTC choir in history, so that was also awesome!! Usually while we sing the prelude hymns, they will show who is speaking that day on the big projector screens, but this time, they weren't, so we kind of were expecting for there to be an apostle speaking. While we were singing prelude, we were just singin', and then all of a sudden, everyone stood up really fast! And then we saw Elder and Sister Anderson, and that was sweet. I got pretty excited. It was kind of like when Spider-Man came on the screen during Captain America:Civil War, except I was more reverent this time. We sang "More Holiness Give Me" which was beautiful. Then Elder Anderson's wife spoke, and at the end, she bore testimony that her husband Elder Anderson is an apostle of Jesus Christ, which was very powerful. Then Elder Anderson spoke. I don't remember everything he spoke about, but what I do remember was how I felt when he bore his testimony of the Savior. He bore witness that Jesus Christ is our resurrected Savior. He did say that it is super important for us to bear our testimony of a resurrected Christ, and of the resurrection when we teach investigators lessons, which I plan on doing in my lessons. I felt the spirit very strongly as he bore his apostolic witness of the Savior, and it helped me to know that Elder Anderson is one of Christ's living apostles on the Earth today, and that Jesus Christ is alive and does visit and speak to his children today. And it gets better!!!! After Elder Anderson got done speaking, we sang "I Believe in Christ" for the closing hymn, which already was one of my favorite hymns. As we were singing the 3rd verse, I started getting emotional. As I was singing, I realized that all the things I was singing were things I had a testimony of, and that I truly believed. I was basically proclaiming my testimony of the Savior through that beautiful song. Also, as I was singing, started feeling warm throughout my whole body. Like weirdly warm in a way I hadn't felt before. I started crying, and then during the 4th verse, I calmed down a little bit, and my whole body and face and hands felt tingly. It was really interesting, because I've never felt that way before, but it was incredible. I know that that was a witness from the Holy Ghost that what I was singing about the Savior was all true. I do believe in Christ, and I love Him. :)
Haha, another thing you should know is that my district and district D (the other district going to Albania) get along really well. We live right next to each other in our residency, so we go in each other's rooms and stuff, and eat each other's food and whatnot. There is an Elder named Elder Harris from California that I think we would have a lot of fun hanging out with! He's from California, and he's super nice, and chill. He likes fat chillin' with people. "Fat chillin'" is a California term. Then there's Elder Nielsen, who is a super funny Elder from "Delda" (Delta) Utah. His voice is super raspy, so it's just always funny to hear him talk. He also likes Hot Rod and Wayne's World so that's fun quoting that around him. Those two elders will sneak into our room just when we're standing around, and then we'll turn around and they'll be right there! They're cool. 
So we committed our second "investigator" to baptism this past week! The investigators we teach are actually our teachers, but they do an extended role play as one of the investigators that they actually taught on their missions! For example, Vëllai Knight (Brother Knight) played our first investigator named "Juxhin" (pronounced "Eugene"), who was a young man about Conrad's age in Albania. When we taught him, he committed to baptism in the 3rd lesson, which we were ecstatic over! Apparently, in real life, Juxhin wanted like nothing to do with the church, and then i can't remember what Vëllai Knight said after that, but he eventually became a member! Then this week, we taught Maksim (Vëllai Bangerter), a 60 year old man who likes eating and was Greek Orthodox. When we taught Juxhin, it was pretty rough the first couple lessons, because we used a script, and were really nervous and were still very new to the language, but they did still accept our commitments. By the third lesson, however, we did it without a script, and it was the coolest lesson we had had yet, and he accepted our commitment to be baptized! When we were teaching Maksim, we had some difficulty, because he wasn't as accepting initially. However, we took time to prepare,  and then went into the lesson with faith, and taught some great lessons. In our third lesson with Maksim, we invited him to be baptized, and then he was like, "Oh I already have been baptized." Haha, that kind of stopped us in our tracks. We started to talk about the priesthood, and then he didn't really understand proper authority and that we receive our authority from God. So we left that lesson feeling ok, but not the best, because we didn't feel like we explained priesthood authority very well. So then the next lesson comes along and oh wait! My dear mother made me a super sick laminated priesthood line of authority before I left!! So we used that to explain how we receive our priesthood authority, and it went really well! Then we invited him to be baptized, and he accepted!! Woot! 
So this was super long. I love you all so much!! Momma, in my next package, will you send me an Albanian hymnbook? We use them all the time, and they don't sell them here in the MTC store. Also, if you could send the 17 Miracles and Ephraim's Rescue soundtracks, that would be super sweet!! Conrad, I wanna hear about Keeg's wedding! Also, Jessie, thank you for your Dear Elder! I love getting those, and I love hearing about your adventures, so tell me anything and everything! :) Dan, thanks for getting Gehrig's email for me! I emailed him. Dad, I love you a lot, and I had an impression about the Fall of Adam about that thing we were talking about in the temple before I left. Momma, I love you a lot! Thank you for the package! You guys rock! I love you shumë, shumë shumë!!
   - Elder Schneider

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