Elder Schwartz just got the news today about his brother Andrew's mission call to serve in the Brazil Sao Paulo south mission starting near the end of April 2013. He is excited for his little bro as you can see below:
Here is a clip of the call opening:
And Elder Schwartz's email:
Dear Family and Friends!
BRAZILLLLLLLLLLLLLLLLLLLLLLL!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! AHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHH!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! Is he so incredibly excited? He better be! He´s going to be basically my next door neighbor. the only thing seperating us is Argentina..... But seriously, I'm so proud of Andrew, and he is going to be an awesome missionary. Cindy is back in Utah! :,( It's okay though; I'll see her again in twentyish months! She is an amazing missionary, and I still have a lot to learn from her example. She sent me a whole bunch of care packages right before she left that I'm still getting every week. Super sweet! I hope that you get home safely from the East Coast, Pops and I hope that the service (for Uncle Charlie) went well. SO, Andrew is going to go back to school for a couple months, and then end early? Still going to live in heritage or what? What's the plan? The MTC in Brazil eh? I've seen some pictures of the MTC in Brazil. It's a pretty fancy place! I'm very excited for him. Oh, and thank you for the video link. It was SUCH A GOOD VIDEO; you should post it on my blog ;D Congratulations to all of you sister missionaries out there. La obra misional needs all the help from the sisters that we can get; they're just like us guy missionaries, but better in basically every way.....
Well, this week was dang busy for me,
It started out right after I ended my letter you you guys last week. Elder Garcia and I went to the chapel to practice a musical number that he was playing the piano for, for our zone conference on Wednesday. Long story cut short -- they manipulated me into singing with them, and Elder Garcia decided not to play the piano, so we all sang acapella. NEVER AGAIN IN MY LIFE WILL I DO THAT! So, we spent a lot of Monday and Tuesday practicing. We sang Lead Kindly Light/Divina Luz, in this English/Spanish mash up kind of thing, and it was ME, Elder Garcia, Hma Hardman and Hma Achucarro (sister missionaries), and in practices, it sounded pretty dang okay. But when Wednesday finally came and we were in front of all of those people, we kinda really crashed, and it came out super bad (not just saying that). But I learned a couple really good lessons from that experience, 1. I'm never going to sing the song Lead Kindly Light ever again in my life and, 2. I want to take singing classes at BYU when I get home.
Aside from that, the other musical news of the week was that on Saturday, we went to the temple with Eduardo to see the choirs, and much to our surprise, the show was featuring special musical guest, Elder David Archuleta. So that was pretty stinkin cool. He´s a really good singer. He sang ´´The Prayer´´(more popularly done by Celine Dion and Josh Groban) with this one girl, and my heart melted...... sooooo dreamy. He's no Josh Groban, but he did a really good job, and MOST IMPORTANTLY, Eduardo had a really really good time. He also came to church on Sunday. He is progressing FAST and well. And do you want to know the secret? He has member friends that are helping him along the way. He has that support from other people -- SO IMPORTANT.
The zone conference went really well. It was long, but we learned a lot. The main focuses were on the importance of working with the members and asking for references. There was a really good quote by President Wright that kind of really caught my attention and Elder Garcias attention which, was, "Every member is a missionary, and every missionary is a member." WOW, why didn't that click sooner! This is MY ward these members are MY fellow ward members. I need to be a part of this ward if I want the support of this ward, so that's something that Elder Garcia and I have been trying to do more of over the past few days. Today we bought a bunch of ingredients and we are going to make cookies for a whole bunch of members. If the members here are anything like us missionaries, the best way to get to their hearts is through their stomachs ;D
I did some service on Tuesday and I would love to give a special thanks to John McDonald and Teri Wygal for helping to prepare me. I spent a good 2 hours sanding chairs with Rodrigo (one of our investigators), and all that i could think about while I was doing that was when i was back working at Chairs for Affairs doing the same exact thing, to basically the same exact chairs. Rodrigo was very impressed with my sanding skills that I picked up from John and all of those dang pinewood derby cars. So thank you all for preparing me for my mission!
Sadly Im running out of time, so im going to wrap the letter up here, and I'd just like to end with an invitation for all of the people out there reading this who have their mission calls. It's the same invitation that I sent to Andrew a half hour ago:
The Fourth Missionary
What i would like you to do is, print it out and take a pen and a highlighter and read it (it's a long motha, 24 pages, so you're going to have to dedicate a good hour or so to doing this). When you are done reading and dissecting it, I want you to set some personal goal on what you are going to do as a missionary based off of what you learned from the talk. I just read the talk 2 days ago, and it's full of information that i wished that I knew going into my mission, especially about our purpose as missionaries. It will help you out a lot."
Thank you all so much for all that you have done and are doing for me. Thank you for your support -- it means a lot. I know this church is true and that the happiness and the blessings that it brings into people´s lives are REAL. The only way we can expect to get blessings is from actions of faith, and that's a lesson that i am learning every day, Have a very merry Christmas. Stay safe. I love you all.
until next week,Elder Schwartz
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