MERRY CHRISTMAS EVERYONE!! :)

Heyoo whats up yall. I hope you all are enjoying Christmas time and the snow! I'm certainly enjoying Christmas in a Muslim country! :) It's really interesting how Christmas works here. Malaysia is a Muslim country and the government is ran by Muslims. But the Chinese and Indians all celebrate Christmas (kind of). Actually, I don't think anyone really celebrates Christmas or even knows why we have Christmas. They just do it because America does it haha. When we're on the streets talking to people we ask them all about Christmas and if they know what it is. I think we've had like two people actually know that its celebrating Jesus Christs birth. Its so cool though, when we are walking through the malls they are blasting Christmas music like, "Hark the Herald Angels Sing" and all the ones that talk about Jesus Christ and we're in a Muslim country! Like... that's so cool! If you don't think that's cool then you're crazy! Muslims hate Jesus! Also, at the dimensia center that we do service at, we sing Christmas carols with them and all the Muslim college students that are doing research there sing along! It's so cool to hear a Muslim sing "Chriiist the Savior is booorn" Haha I love it. The Chinese people here don't know what Christmas is they just like the trees and shopping. The Indians usually celebrate dipo vali. An indian holiday. But all the Christians know what Christmas is, so that's good. All the members here are stinking awesome!! I've never been anywhere but Ipoh but I'm sure that there's no better place in Malaysia to celebrate then Ipoh. All the members feed us so good and give us presents! Yesterday after church we walked into the chapel and there was a huge stack of presents that the relief society put together for the missionary's! It was awesome and a pleasant surprise! The members here are legit yo. Haha me and Elder Perritt always have a blast when we're on our bikes. We both ride through the streets with no hands singing Christmas hymns as loud as we can and yell Merry Christmas to everybody. Everybody looks at us like we're crazy haha but its way fun I love it. I got a ton of Christmas presents to open this year. Thank you so much to everyone who sent them to me! I'm sorry you had to pay so much for shipping haha. 

Last week me and Elder Perritt were out talking to people when we see this white guy. We're like oh that's unusual lets go talk to him! So he's walking towards us and he goes "Hey Elders" Woah, what? You know who we are?! Haha me and Elder Perritt were shocked. This guy was actually a member. He was from Texas. He actually served a mission in Peru but sadly we found out that he has left the church :( Me and Elder Perritt were shocked so we didn't really say anything to him about coming to church or anything and we left. Well about 10 minutes later we were locking up our bikes and we hear "HEY ELDERS!" so we turn around and this time its some dude in his car. We walk up to the window and its this big south american guy with ear gages, a bull nose ring and tattoos and all that good stuff. We got talking to him and he was actually a member as well! And he also served a mission as well! He is from Venezuela and served in Barcelona. This time we actually got his phone number and invited him to church. I think God was telling us we messed up by not inviting the first guy we met so he sent us another one haha. But this guy is so cool! The other night we had dinner with him and he told us his life story. Man, he has had a hard life. He is the only member in his family and is currently traveling around the world. He doesn't know where he's going ever. He will go to some random city and somehow find work for the month that he stays there and just lives in random city's all around the world. Way cool! He told us his mission experience and life story and I was way inspired! It was way cool! He is one of the most inspiring people I have ever met. His story and the things we were talking about were answers to my prayers. I have had some questions about things and his life story answered those. Way cool. We brought him to church on Sunday and he loved it.

This Sunday I was getting ready for the day and about 30 minutes before our first church meeting was when I remembered I had to give a talk in church! So I started freaking out and prepared a talk really quickly haha. The talk looked really good on paper and sounded good in my head but when I gave it at church which was the first time I practiced giving it, it kind of sucked haha. Oh well, everyone was asleep anyways lol.

Well I wish you all a Merry Christmas. I invite you all to take time to ponder the true meaning of Christmas. I also invite you all to turn outwards this Christmas rather than inwards. These past few weeks we have been working really hard giving as much service as we possibly could. And it has led me to have one of the best Christmas seasons I've ever had. And this week we are going to go even harder. Christmas day is going to be the busiest day of the year and it's going to be awesome! There really is so much more joy in giving then in getting. I love Christmas and am so thankful that Jesus Christ loved us enough to come down to earth and pay all debts. To give us all the opportunity to become like him if we are wise enough to do so. To pay for all our sins and mistakes and to sacrifice himself for all of us. I hope you all can give a little this week and experience the joy that comes in that because I for sure have felt that this year. It is amazing and I wouldn't trade it for anything! I love you all! MERRY CHRISTMAS!!

-Elder Schwemmer

Haha so silly

Gifts from the relief society!!

Dressed up! 

Going Christmas Caroling!

Caroling!!

Elder Schwemmer's first time trying durian!

Haha Elder Schwemmer wasn't a fan!

First present he's ever wrapped. Haha!

Christmas :)

This week has been another good week. Lots of work and a lot of long hard days, but its all so worth it!

This week my faith has increased by being obedient. At the start of my mission it has been really hard for me to wake up on time. I would snooze the alarm a couple times and would be very slow. I would often make us late to exercise. Consequently we would be tired for study's which would lead us to being tired for the rest of the day, which then could make the rest of my week or even mission go bad. I'm very happy to say that through repentance I have changed that. Every single morning I am able to hop out of bed the second the alarm goes off. I then immediately make my bed and say my prayers then get started with the day. It really does effect how the rest of the day goes. When I get up quick and on time I have a better workout, which leads to better study's, which leads to a better day. Elder Hollands quote about this is exactly right. Elder Perritt and I always compete with each other on who can get out of bed the fastest. It has gotten to the point where we're almost waking up before the alarm to beat each other haha. Of course I always win ;) It has started to become a habit and that's something I'm very happy about because my whole life I have struggled with waking up on time and being on time to things. It has increased my faith by showing me that by being exactly obedient really is what makes you happy and effective as a missionary.

This weeks miracle is about another family. The other week we found these 4 girls on the side of the road that were way friendly. This week we were able to meet with them. They are a huge Tamil family. We show up to their house and there were a bunch of thugs smoking outside their house and stuff and when we went up to go and talk to them, all of a sudden all these little kids started coming out of nowhere. There were like 10 kids and then finally the girls we talked to earlier came out and we taught them all the restoration with brother P***. It was way nice. The older ones understood everything and were really interested and became new investigators. And all the little kids were sitting there staring at me so I started blowing bubbles out of my mouth for them and they all just loved it haha. They were just in awe that I could blow bubbles and their chins dropped to the floor haha it was way fun. I always knew that would come in handy :) They are way prepared and I wont be surprised when their whole family gets baptized.

This week we helped paint brother P*** walls and he gave us a lot of referrals. He also has decided that he wants to help build up the church in Ipoh so hes going to drive the people who don't have transportation to church every week. Way cool! He is such an awesome guy! He has a really strong desire to do missionary work.

So on Saturday we had the baptism of the Sisters investigator. 

Singing at the baptism! Sounds so beautiful!
(See video in "Video's from my Mission" tab up at the top of the blog!)

After the baptism, brother P*** asked us if we wanted to go to dinner. I have a really funny story about that! We had an appointment set up already so we couldn't go with him. We biked to our appointment and we show up at the guys house and hes not there. So we call brother P*** to see if he still wants to go to dinner. He tells us yes come over to my house, my neighbor has invited me to dinner. So we show up to his house and right next door there is this huge party going on. There were tons of indians there and loud Indian music (which I love) blasting and lights and lasers and fog and stuff. Haha so brother P*** comes out of his house and he like, "Ok lets go, this party is a golden finding opportunity." Haha so me and Elder Perritt go to the party and I'm just like awe man this is just like high school dances haha and my heart was breaking inside because I wanted to dance really bad. But we walk up and there's this big Indian guy dressed up as Santa with the creepiest Santa mask on and like all these Indians and tons of food and a DJ and a big sign that says "House Warming and 6th Year Anniversary". A house warming is when someone buys a new house they invite everyone in the neighborhood over to party. Way cool. But we met the hosts and they are Christian and we will teach them later. So Elder Perritts like "If we don't make this a finding opportunity it will be disobedient." So we made it a finding opportunity. We talked to everyone we saw but it was kind of hard because the music is so loud. Well we got some food and sat down and were eating when brother P*** leans over to me and says something about singing a Christmas song but I couldn't hear him because the music was so loud. And so I'm just like "yeah, yeah" pretending like I know what hes saying. Then he gets up and goes and walks over to the DJ and is talking to him and points to us and I'm just like... oh no... did he just ask me if we could sing a Christmas song and I said yeah?!?! Haha so then he comes back over to us and hes like, "Ok they're ready for you to go sing on the mic." Hahahaha and I'm just freaking out like NO NO NO I don't want to! And Elder Perritt is very musically talented so hes like YEAH LETS GO! So.... I get up and go sing a Christmas song with my awful horribly unpleasant voice to like 300 people hahaha. Haha it was so awkward. Luckily Elder Perritt has a really good voice and made it somewhat ok. Haha we wanted this to be a finding event so we sang "Angels We Have Heard On High" haha the worst possible one for my voice. We tried to bring in the spirit but I'm not too sure how well it worked haha. Everyone was just staring at us like ok when is this over? Lol it was way fun though. Hopefully it left an impression on them and maybe we will run into them some time later. After we sang we left and it was absolutely DUMPING rain! it was one of the hardest I've seen. We were like a 20 minute bike ride from home as well. Lol it was way fun though, we got absolutely soaked and there was one point where I almost fell over because the puddle went all the way up my bike tire haha way fun.

Well that's about it. This week was way good. We went on exchanges this week and we went to Sitiawan. Sitiawan is really small. But I went with Elder Brown which was way nice! It was nice to be reunited with my dad :)

Ok Merry Christmas everyone! I love you all! Have an awesome holiday and don't forget to check out the church's new Christmas videos and website! I love you all thanks for everything!

-Elder Schwemmer

Teaching English Class!

Getting some yummy ice cream!!

Grocery shopping!



Elder Schwemmer tried Wasabi and wasn't a big fan haha!
 (If you want to watch the video click on "Video's from my Mission" at the top of the blog!)