Changes

This week was an awesome week. We were able to pull through a high number of new investigators again this week with 5. It was a good way for elder olsen to leave Miri. This week i got a new companion. Elder Barlow is so awesome! He is a way good missionary and we are way good buddies in great unity! We are gonna do some serious work here in my last 2 transfers of my mission. I love Elder Barlow!

We went to singapore this week for mlc. Due to visa issues we had to go in a day before the mlc in which president gave us permission to explore singapore! We went to the coolest place i have ever been in my entire life! It is called 'Sentosa" which translates to paradise. And it truly is paradise. I have no words to describe it you just have to experience it yourself. We went to the worlds largest aquarium which was there. It was incredible. Singapore is incredible. I am not able to describe it in words.

This week my faith increased at MLC. That was my first MLC and it was amazing! To unite with the mission leaders and discuss the mission and how we can all work better together was a really cool experience. I loved the counselling that accured. It wasnt just hearing a sermon but all were talking and counseling with eachother. My faith increased as i realized that revelation comes through counsels. That will be a great tool for me to know throughout my life. In the future i can have family counsels, and church cousels and all sorts of counsels. I am very grateful for all the wonderful skills that my mission has taught me! They will truly bless my life forever.

We had a pretty cool miracle this week. We have been teaching this family recently. It is a mom, dad, and 3 teenage boys. When we go over to meet them the dad never joins us because he is always out working on his car. It has been just the boys and the mom. This last week when we met with them the dad decided to join us. He came and immediately opened up all his concerns. My love for him grew as he expressed his lifes challenges through his tears. He knew we had something special and he reached out to us. He told us about how he feels like a failure father. He feels unworthy with god and that he has made too many mistakes. I am excited to see the joy that will come in his life as we help him understand that none of his worries are true.

This week we worked with members by having them perform the baptism of our investigator rather then one of us elders. I want to give the brethren here opportunities to excersize their priesthood. Its not about me. A lot of elders love to get dressed up in white but i would rather have the members use their priesthood. When they use their priesthood nothing but spiritual goodness comes to their soul.

This has been my first week as zone leader. I love it so much! I have a great vision for this miri zone! My vision is to bring unified ENERGY into the zone allowing us to have the faith and drive to find! When you find everything else starts rolling. Me and Elder Barlow were discussing how we want to 'light the zone on fire' We thought of the anatomy of a fire. I fire can start off big and huge but it is at its hottest point at the end when its dying. We want that to happen where this transfer we have the first lighting of the fire using 'lighter fluid' to get things going which will lead to a hot fire in the following transfers. A fire always starts with some sort of spark or something. Me and Elder Barlow are going to be that spark. Today we organized a pday luau in which we will attempt to bring the miri districts together in a spirit of unity!

Love yall

Love,

Elder Schwemmer

BIG NEWS

Today is transfer new day! I will be staying in miri as a Zone Leader! I will be finishing my mission here and i will be companions with my most favorite elder in the whole mission! His name is Elder Barlow! I am a bit sad because i will no longer be the handsome companion! He is a hunk! And we are already way good friends from zone conference and such.

I am speechless about transfers...... This transfer is going to be amazing. Where much is given much is required! I am am so ready to give it my all. I am going to light this zone on fire and bring in some serious energy! Transfer news has filled me with that energy!And i am going to really enjoy being with Elder Barlow! We are going to do some serious work here in miri! And dont be surprised when we lead the mission! I prayed way hard to have something that would keep me from dying! And this is absolutely it! That increased my faith that the lord does hear our prayers and he does care about us and our desires. And he wants to give us the things that will make us happy. I have learned that well on my mission. My plans for this zone is to cultivate an energy that will increase faith to find. Nothing happens in missionary work until you find someone to teach. And when we find, all the other key indicator numbers go up. I gained that testimony this transfer as when i came to miri we had 1 investigator. We now have 14 at the end and will get 3 more tonight. I am really excited to take this role as zone leader and am going to deliver my peek performance.

This weekend we have a baptism! We are baptizing a 18 year old named Adam! he will be a great addition to the branch here. He is a miracle. I have been praying sincerely that i could get one more baptism before my mission and the lord answered with adam. We worked with the members to really help jim out. He came to miri for studies and had 0 friends here in miri. But our branchs youth was able to help us out and now they are friends to the point where they hang out outside of church. That is both our miracle and how we worked with members.

Love yall, Love life

Love,

Elder Schwemmer

Caught this Biawak...then ate it

Mothers Day

Happy Mothers day to all you incredible mothers out there! Thanks for making the world go round! Especially my mom. With out her i would be nothing.

This week was an awesome week. We were able to find for the second week in a row 4 new investigators. Maybe i can expound a bit on how we are making it happen. So on my mission i have learned a lot of valuable things about myself, the lord, and his work. Among those lessons i have learned how the lord works with individuals and the talents and abilities that they have. Missionaries misunderstand what being a missionary means. It does NOT mean that you are a robot. That you cant smile. You cant laugh. That you cant be yourself. Infact just the opposite is true. The very reason the Lord puts us in the places he does is because the person that we are is what the people there need. I have learned how to do that on my mission. How to be myself in order to do the work. And it makes the work SO much better. There is an agony when you try to be someone your not. Missionaries also misunderstand the meaning of change. They think that on their missions they are supposed to change into some completely different person. Like they are supposed to fit into this imaginary mold of what a good missionary is. But thats not how it works. A good missionary is our best us. To change as a missionary doesnt mean to change into someone else but to change to a better us. 

With that being said i feel that because i have learned that, i have been able to apply it and find success from doing so. This week we met with some awesome people. I feel that the reason why they wanted to meet with us again is because they realized they we are human beings too with a message to share. They dont put up that "salesman" wall and autimatically reject us because they know what we do. Be we have just been ourselves, our best selves, in contacts, teaching appointments, working with members, and all aspects of missionary work. And it is making the work a lot more enjoyable and the unneeded burden of stress to be someone different is gone. We were able to find this incredible family by just being ourselves. We met this 25 year old guy and when we contacted him it wasnt the oh so terrible "hey wanna learn about Jesus?" contact but we were being ourselves. We joked with him, laughed with him, told him why were here and what we wanna do, and just made friends with him. Then the following apointment he met us and he brought all 6 of his family members along. It was an incredible miracle. We actually just met him again last night and he brought more friends! I truly feel that its because the experiences we are having with him are human to human not missionary to investigator.

Love,

Elder Schwemmer

Singapore

Wow i loved zone conference this week! Going to zone conference always recharges me spiritually and adds fuel to the fire beneath. I took a lot of things from zone conference. One of the things that impacted me the most was the talk by brad wilcox. I have heard and read that talk several times but each time i listen to it i learn something new everytime. That talk teaches marvelous things. In my missionary efforts sometimes i get down on myself for not being perfect. As you know i am a perfectionist. That is my least favorite attribute that i have been trying to change on my mission and that talk has helped a ton! Zone conference has, like always, increased my faith this week!

We had an awesome miracle this week where we were able to start teaching the family that i talked about last week! We used english class as our initial approach and that led them to be interested in us and what we are doing which led to them now investigating the church. My whole time in miri i have been praying very hard to find families and god has provided. It seems that my whole mission i have been teaching individuals or couples and hardly families. But finally ive found a good one! I am excited to see how they progress.

This week we coorilated with our branch president on the things we learned at zone conference. The biggest take away me and elder olsen had for our area was working with people 15-25 years old. So we sat down with our branch president and discussed organizing a weekly activity for the youth. Back in Kuching every saturday night at 7 pm the youth and ysa would play at futsal. They had up to 20 nonmembers attend! So we will be trying to get something like that going in miri to really work that age group!

Last Pday we went fishing in the jungle and hunting for Biawak's! Biawaks are monitor Lizards kind of like komoto dragons! At singapore we went to Marina bay and china town! Today we are going hiking!

Love,

Elder Schwemmer

Families

This week was an ok week. This week my faith to find has increased a bit. For some reason on saturday we were so well recieved. I dont know what was different but this last saturday we went out and everyone we talked to invited us into their home. We have been praying and searching very hard to find familys. We pulled up to a familys house and told them about english class. They heard that then invited us into their nice home. They were a nice full family. Mom, Dad, and 3 teenage boys. I was way happy and way grateful to meet them. It seems that my whole mission ive only been able to find and teach individuals but i just want to teach familys so it was an awesome miracle to find them and it increased my faith.

This week we worked with our branch president in helping us to find our investigators new jobs that would allow them to have sunday off and come to church. 

Sorry this email is so tiny i am not feeling very good. I am a bit light headed and may be coming down with a fever. Hopefully it will go away so i can be healthy for Singapore this week!

Love,

Elder Schwemmer

Working with Members

This week was a good week. Miri is growing on me. I tried hard to get to know the members and area better this week. Considering theres only about 20-30 active members it was not a difficult task to get to know most of them. This week i had a faith building experience. It was thursday, a rough day. Miri is a lot tougher area. I can compare it to sibu a bit. But i am trying to keep my faith high and strong to show god that i trust that he is preparing people here in miri. On thursday we did our normal weekly planning then got out to work. Everyone we talked to rejected us. Every person we tried to reach out to turned their backs on us. I was put in a bad mood. It killed my faith and i didnt feel like trying anymore. We had an appointment that night scheduled for 8. It was a bit past 8 and he wasn't showing up. It was putting a cherry on top of the bad day. we called him to see if he was coming. He answered and it was hard to hear but we think we heard "i cant make it tonight" and then our phone died right after we heard that! So that was frustrating. I layed there on the church floor expressing my frustration to elder olsen. As i was sitting there complaining, the investigator walked in! It was a bit of a surprise. We then taught him one of the best lessons ive had on my mission. At the end of it we taught him how to pray and he just went straight into prayer not second guessing how to pray or what and offered a beautiful prayer. He was asking god to show him the truthfulness of the book of Mormon. As he was asking a loud and clear thought came into my head "Oh ye of little faith!" A laughed at myself on how god just slapped me in the face. That actually ended up building my faith. God does have people prepared. Thats a fact. Preach my gospel states that there are people prepared in each area or else we wouldnt be there! 

We had a cool miracle in working with one of our members this week. We decided to work in an area that is on the opposite side of miri from where we live. We have a way strong member who stays there and that area is highly Chinese populated. We told that member that we would be going up there to work for the day and she immediately responds with 6 referrals! Then we spent the day following her around to all of her friends houses that she wanted us to teach! Missionary work is so much easier, effective, and fun when things like that happen. Members are the best missionaries!

My companion was sick all day yesterday and today. I was able to do a lot of meditating as he rested. It was nice. He is still sick today so i dont know if we will get to do much for pday. Last week we went to the beach. We got coconuts from the trees and sipped on them while we relaxed. Then we went bowling then shopping.

K love you

k bye

Love,

Elder Schwemmer

Miri

This week has been pretty stressful as transfers usually are. I was in kuching for a very long time and due to that i grew a love for that place and the people there more then ive ever loved anything else! I love the branch, my investigators, and recent converts there! Kuching has a big piece of my heart! Transferring to Miri has been a bit tough. I felt that the feelings im feeling are probably similar to what it will feel like in the future when i move houses for my job or something. On the mission you get so many experiences that prepare you for life that you couldnt get anywhere else. 

My faith has increased this week as i have reflected on my time in kuching and on my mission and saw how far i have come. I feel that my mission has done a complete 180 turn on me. The first half was rough but this second half has been the time of my life! I am thankful for the lord and all that he has done for me in these past 2 years. These have been the craziest 2 years of my life but they have been so worth it. My feelings are tender as i realize that i am coming to an end pretty soon. This week i have tried my hardest to get to know miri quickly so that my final months will be full of work and adventures! The members are awesome. There is a lot fewer then kuching but that ones that are here are amazing. My faith always increases as i hear and see the testimony of members. Its so much harder to be a mormon in a place like this then it is in utah! So i respect the members so much and are so grateful for their faithfulness! As for miracles this week, we were able to talk to a family that comes to english class. We invited them to a branch party that was on saturday and they came! English class is by far our best tool for finding as chinese elders! I love english class. This week Sister Montague who is the EUL here handed me the reigns and i will start to work my magic here in Miri!

Not too sure what were gonna do for pday today. Maybe go to the beach or something!

Love,

Elder Schwemmer