6 Months!!

Happy Chinese New Year everyone!!!!!!!! Or as we say in Chinese, Gong xi fa cai!

This week was pretty good! As you know we rode ostrich's for pday last Monday!! That was probably one of the funnest things I've ever done!! Haha it was a lot harder than I thought it was going to be! But I was a pro! I only fell off twice! Haha one year ago, never did I ever think that I would be riding ostriches in the middle of Malaysia hahaha. My whole life I've always wanted to ride an ostrich so I can now cross that one off the bucket list! Ostriches are the funniest, stupidest animals ever. The way they move and eat is just so silly haha. My ostriches name was Earl. He's a boss. The whole time I was riding ostriches I couldn't do anything but smile. Even when I was falling off the ostriches I was smiling haha it was one of my favorite things I've ever done.

"silly gary"

Elder Schwemmer is having too much fun with these Ostrich!

This week is Chinese new year! That means that this week missionary work is going to completely die! For Chinese new year all the Chinese people return to their hometowns and don't do anything but eat mandarin oranges and give each other money. Last night was pretty cool though! So the Chinese tradition is pretty cool, When it turns midnight on the new year, everyone lights off a firework. So last night I was laying there in bed when I hear one of our watches beep at midnight then not a split second later thousands of fireworks go off!!! It was like a war zone! Our curtains in our bedroom were glowing because of all the fireworks haha. And today there is not a single Chinese person in sight. Everything is closed and nobody is out.

This week was a tougher week. This week I have battled Satan a little bit and have started my studies on the atonement. I feel like I don't understand the atonement well enough and don't have enough faith in it so this transfer I have a goal to read the whole book of Mormon and as I do that, I am going to mark and annotate every single scripture that has to do with the atonement. Hopefully I will find the answers I am looking for. I also got sick this week and have been in bed with a fever these past few days.

This week we had a cool miracle towards the beginning of the week. We were teaching one of our investigators about the Book of Mormon. We had a member there which was her same age and personality type which we thought would get along great. So we teach her about the Book of Mormon and it was a really good lesson! It was simple, it was short, it was powerful and spiritual. At the end of the lesson we closed with a prayer and we wanted our member to fellowship her so we pretended like we had to leave really fast and we left the 2 together. Well a few hours later during nightly planning we get a text from the member we had there and she told us that she sat there with her and talked for a while and our investigator shared with our member that she knows the Book of Mormon is true, that she can feel it! So that was way cool, I've never really had that happen to me on my mission yet so I was pretty excited!

Well transfer news came in today! I will be staying in Puchong but Elder Eggertson will be leaving. He will be going to JB! My new companion will be Elder Avery!!!! I am so excited!!! He is my favorite missionary I've met in the Singapore mission! He is super hard working and super spiritual and super fun! I think he will be really good for me! I'm really excited to work super hard this transfer with someone who has the same desires! He is also from Grammy Schwemmers ward back in Utah! Way cool! I'm super excited!!!

Well that's all I got, Love you all! Have a wonderful Chinese new year lol.

-Elder Schwemmer