Elisa's Baptism

Elisa's Baptism

Dear Family,

Well, it sounds to me like you all had an excellent week!  Very busy, as normal.  It sounds like you had a fun New Years, and you were able to spend some time with the family and that you had a really good sacrament meeting.  All great things! 

Like Dad thought, things are starting to normal out here again, but shortly everyone leaves town again for summer vacations.  They basically leave Santiago abandoned, but on Saturday we had a mission leadership council, and we talked a little about that.  We have lots of good plans made as a mission to have success during the summer season.

This week was amazing for Elder Sercovich and me.  Really, there could not have been a better way to start off the new year.  I am not going to get into too many details as much as I would like to, SO to make a long story short, we have been able to keep teaching the family that we found (well, technically they found us) last week.  We visited them the whole week, including with the bishop.  And the Daughter, Elisa, who is AMAZING, and very intelligent, got baptized on Friday night -- the first baptism of the year.  The baptismal service could not have been more perfect -- lots of ward members showed up to support, even though it was a Friday, and there were great talks and musical numbers -- it all just went so smoothly.  The confirmation happened during sacrament meeting on Sunday, and Elder Sercovich and I both were able to participate in the ordinance.  Right afterwards, Elisa, the little girl got up and bore an awesome testimony.  They are seriously the coolest family ever, and it has been such a blessing getting to know them over the past several days.  We will be teaching them on Wednseday with President Wright after our monthly meeting with him and the stake president.

Claudio is doing great.  I am not sure if I told you guys that now he works at the supermarket right next to the house, so now we see him on an almost daily basis.  I have lots of faith in Claudio.  He is going through lots of trials right now, but I know that he really want and needs the gospel in his life.  We found lots of new investigators this week, and that was a huge blessing too.  We`ll see how their progress goes -- they are all really great people.  David is doing great too, we ran into him yesterday in the street and we will be teaching him this week.  His back is healing really well, too.

Today for PDay we went down to Puente Alto (former area) to have lunch with one of Elder Sercovichs old investigators from Pirque and it turns out that they know the Dolls. They had done family home evenings together, and they just had so many great things to say about the Dolls -- it was really sweet to hear.  

New Years was fun, nothing too special.  We had a nice little feast in the apartment and then watched fireworks from our windows, which was really cool actually because we were able to see fireworks from three different counties just from our window.  I seriously can not beleive that we are in 2014 now.  I actually don't like thinking about it, so Im just going to pretend that its still 2013 if that's alright with you.

I love you all SO MUCH.  Thank you all for your love and support and everything.  I hope that you have an excellent week!  

Love you all!

Elder Schwartz

The Bishop, Elisa's Family, and Hmo Santibanez

Elisa's Family