I Love Sundays!

Hola hola everyone! Que me cuentan? 

Ahhhhh I´ve been so sentimental this week! I had my last zone meeting and it totally caught me by surprise, I thought I had one more left, but nope. At the end all of the missionaries that are "ya para irse" share their testimonies. My heart just started pounding because I didn´t know what to say! I did a tiny prayer in my heart and just felt peace knowing that this definitely wouldn´t be my last testimony---I have a whole lifetime to testify of my Savior Jesus Christ!! It was pretty cool and I felt the spirit really strong, it was also crazy comparing it with my first testimony that I gave when I arrived in the field. The mission changes us so much, but for the better! 

The zone conference taught me so much, it focused about working with all our HEART, MIGHT; MIND; and STRENGTH. And about enduring to the end!! There could not have been a better message for me. I´m amazed by how President always knows exactly what we need to hear. 

Also, this week we FASTED and saw huge results! Sundays are always super stressful because we never know who is going to show up to church and who no, but our investigators arrived and brought their friends! It was amazing. This week was ward conference and there were a lot of prayers answered their in the chapple. 

Aline is amazing and she knows that the church is true! She has had so many little answers to her prayers! Last night we had a family home evening again and she was a little more convinced about her baptismal date, and today we brought in the big guns! President and Hermana Reynoso! She´s definitely a lot more excited now. ;)

I had the best time doing exchanges with Hermana Nelson this week, she is super sweet and we had the best day together! We found a family and taught the Plan of Salvation. I looooove teaching families! It´s just so much better because they support each other. 

It has been so stinking hot but I love it, I will honestly miss the heat of Cancun. And we are super blessed because we have a portable air conditioner. God loves his missionaries :)

Including a few selfies, lots of love and prayers,and wishes for a wonderful week!! Love yall!

Hermana Schwartz

PS. the green stuff on our faces is a guacamole facial #spanight

La Verdad, Cochinita, and 17 month mark!

Hi everyone! How´s it going?

Why do I always forget everything that happened this week when I start to write? Haha let´s see....

This week we ran around like crazy again, we got to go to other areas to help in the search for new investigators! We were in Kohunlich and we got hopelessly lost looking for a comic store, and found it after an hour of searching and talking to people in the streets. But it was cool and we learned a tiny bit more about the local bus system. The one that we took went in the OPPOSITE direction than where we wanted to go, hahahaha. It was an adventure :) 

We had a bit of a let down because Victor went out of town, the day of his baptism. But we are going to work hard and he will be super ready for this coming week. 

A huge miracle was that yesterday we had an amazing FHE last night and a recent convert, Dany planned the lesson. He tailored it exactly to the need of our investigator, Aline! She has everything, she just needs to recognize her answer. He taught with deep questions and the scriptures, and Aline realized that she already knows the Church is true! It was so beatiful and the spirit was so strong. And then we ate tostadas :) We´re super excited to keep working with her, go over the lessons one more time, and have her baptism soon! 

We found a ton of clothes, shoes, even a hammock that misisonaries have left in our house and today we deep cleaned the house. It was like a treasure hunt because there was some cute stuff in there!

This week I completed 17 months in the mission!!! What??? It feels so surreal but my cute companion made me a little banner to celebrate. PS she made it to her year mark! We ate pancakes, like always. 

Gotta work hard in this last month!! I feel so inspired by the great missionaries of the Book of Mormon, Ammon, Alma, Aaron. They never gave up, even after being in prison and passing through all sorts of afflictions. That´s the attitud of a good missionary!!

What else? We ate yellow kiwi, our 84 year old investigator went to church, and I had the yummiest torta de cochinita ever. I asked for seconds, it was perfect. yum! 

Well I am out of time but I love you all so much! Sorry for this scattered email, read your scriptures and pray every day! The little things make the difference! 

Have a great week!

Hermana Schwartz

I Forgot It Was the 4th of July

Wow, what a week!!! We were running around like locas getting some good stuff done! let me see if i remember everything. Sorry for my bad capitalization...this keyboard is a stubborn one! On monday, we had transfers!! Hermana Aguilar left for Playa and Hermana Rios arrived! she is amazing, she likes learning english so she likes it when I call her Sister Rivers. she is very calm like a river as well, haha. She´s from Cuotla Morelos and i am officially convinced that I want to visit her there, it sounds beautiful! This week she completes a year on the mission!

on tuesday, we had a bunch of meetings, I taught her the area a bit. wednesday was crazy because we had a super potente lidership training, and then our mission coordination, 

Thursday we had the cutest ward mission activity! we talked about the armor of god, and formed teams to dress a little mini warrior with cardboard armor! it was adorable and a lot of people went, including our investigadors and converts! It was super last minute but it was a success! 

We really saw miracles this week because we committed to do everything in our power to find a family of 4....and we found one! we are starting to give english classes and that helped us to find an amazing family!! the mom and the kids accepted baptism right off the bat. Now we just need to win over the dad, but I think he´ll say yes. :)

A new american missionary got here and I am her sister training leader! it reminds me so much of my first transfer. Her companion is also from Monterrey, and she even forgot her hammock in a taxi like I did. She is super sweet and i hope I can be a good example to her and help her adjust to mission life. 

in all of the business i completely forgot it was the 4th of july until my companion reminded me. Que pena, lol. 

hope it was wonderful for all of you and that things are going well! thanks for the emails and prayers!! i am doing really well, i am happy to be in Mexico serving the Lord! 

Lots of love from sunny cancun!}

Hermana Schwartz

photos:

the very exotic pb and j (they don´t eat it here and i made it for my comp)

Hna lili kicking her duck out of the picture}

With Hna Hall (she left the zone, now in tizimin)

With Hno Enoc (convert that we visit)

Pidgeon Pile

Hey everybody! How´s it going?

I am doing well, excited to start this next (and my final) transfer!! I´ll be staying in Nichupte ward, and I couldn´t be happier!! I love these people. My new companion will be Hermana Rios, from Morelos, Mexico. She is a sweetheart and I´m very excited to work with her! 

Other than that I don´t really know what else happened.....it all happened so fast (tear...)

Oh yeah! One day I felt the impression to go and visit a little old lady that we had dropped about 2 months ago, Lourdes. We passed by and we found her, as always outside her little house. She was feeding about a million pidgeons which was interesting because they were all tripping over eachother trying to eat the breadcrumbs like a bunch of locos, but she finished feeding them and listened to our message. We talked about the plan of Salvation and what we need to do to return to God´s presence. And guess what? She accepted a date for her baptism!! We had invited her many times before and she never was interested, but this time was different. 

We are trying to truly minister unto her because she has a lot of needs. She is sick, she can barely walk and barely see, but she has a sweet spirit and she prays with real intent. Hopefully all goes well! And if not, she might be ready in the future. 

We also tried to make flour tortillas but they are pretty tricky and turned out rock hard. We will keep practicing. 

I loved reading conference talks this week, We read: Small and Simple Things (Dallin H. Oaks) and I recommend it highly to everyone!! It is so true that the smallest things make the biggest difference. 

Hope that everything goes well this week, that you can enjoy the summer sun. We are definitely enjoying it down here in Cancun! (Aka we are melllllttiiiing but it´s all good!) 

Lots of love, until next week!

Hermana Schwartz

(sorry no pictures this week. I forgot to use my camara, lame, I know)

Santa Clara, Sinai, and AMBER

Heyyyy everyone! Super quick highlights from this week!

1. We bought santa clara. Best. Milk. Ever. and it was on salllleeee!!

2. Sinai was baptized!!! She was honestly so prepared and the Lord just put her in our path. Her baptism was beatiful and she was so happy!! 

3. Mexico won some important game and everyone was cheering in the streets and wearing soccer jerseys. They love the game. 

4. Aaaaaand the best miracle ever!!! I saw one of my first converts from Tizimin, Amber!! she is visiting her aunt that lives in cancun and we just bumped into her in the streets! It was such a joyful reunion. We went to her aunts house, they gave us juice and received us super well, and her AUNT AND COUSIN ACCEPTED A BAPTISMAL DATE!!! Whoooo! We are so pumped and so amazed by the way the Lord works. I love Amber so much and it was so special to be able to see her, and remind her of her baptismal covenants! She hasn´t been going to church lately, but I think this visit will help her so much! I´m so grateful. :) 

We also ate coconut and I have a cool video of my rockstar comp breaking it open. 

Love you all!!! 

Have a wonderful week and remember that miracles DO exist!

Love, 

Hermana Schwartz

​

Happy Father's Day!

Hola buenos dias, buenas tardes! Como están?

I have very little time but I´m super excited to tell you all about yet another week in the gran misión! Father´s day was super sweet because our investigator Dante was able to be baptized and confirmed by his dad. ❤ He´s been waiting for like, 2 years and he was finally able to be baptized! It was a beautiful service because Dantes mom is super crafty and made a Pinterest worthy table complete with twinkle lights, framed photos, and we had an acoustic guitar musical number (they planned all the details, haha!) But there was a super sweet spirit and the family members were all super united in suppporting Dante. 

The best part is, our investigator Sinaí was doubting if she wanted to keep listening or not. She went to the baptism, and as she left she said, "See you on Sunday." With so much confidence and peace!!!! She is so ready and now she feels ready too. :) She´s such a lovely person and we´re very excited for her progress. 

Aaaaand it was super funny because a member was giving us a ride and Dante´s family went right along next to us. It was like a race and it was funny because we both stopped at the stoplight and all the crazy niños were cracking up. 

What else is new? Oh, my amazing comp is from Honduras and she opened my eyes to the wonders of green bananas! Soooo good! It´s funny because I can barely eat ripe bananas, but the green ones are good stuff. We fried them and ate them with rice. There is another hondureña in our ward and she gave them as a gift to Hna Aguilar.I have never seen anybody so happy do see bananas. (Here in Mexico it´s hard to find platano verde) I also tried another recipe with green bananas, ground beef, pico de gallo, and fry sauce on top! That´s right, utahns aren´t the only ones who know about fry sauce, they use it in Honduras too! Very tasty. 

Unfortunately, it has been raining ALL WEEK and everything is slightly damp. It is so humid! They cereal boxes are floppy, papers are all super soft, the walls are wet, it´s slightly bizarre! But prayers are truly answered because we prayed for sun so that we could at least dry our clothes and it is nice and sunny today. :)

I am learning that miracles aren´t always the big events like a baptism, or a miraculous healing. Even though those things happen on the mission and they are amazing, the miracles are the little things that are important to us, so they are important to God. I am super grateful because we had an amazing district meeting where we learned about the importance of listening and putting ourselves in the investigators "zapatos." It helped us to be able to find and teach Antonia, a sweet lady that was almost baptized but she is deathly afraid of water. (A bit of a challenge, right?) I can feel the saviors love for her and HIs desire that she can overcome this fear and be baptized. We´ll be working with her and all prayers are very appreciated. :)

Sorry that I don´t have time to respond individually! I love you all and I read your emails and I´m super grateful! I hope this week is fabulous and that all of your wildest dreams come true!

Oh also I got a new watch but I´m dying because it´s not digital and I am a lazy person that never learned. It´s now or never!!! My companion always asks me....Hermana Schwartz....what time is it? With an evil look in her eye because she knows I don´t know. I am going to master this analog watch! Yeah! Haha now you all know the secret. Be smart and learn young, kids! :)

Hasta luego!

Love,

Hna Schwartz

Ward Activity!

Hey guys! I don´t have much time but this week was great!!!! We organized a ward activity with different minute to win it games in a relay race and it was hilarious! It included bobbing for apples, popping balloons, answering scripture trivia, and much more! It was to teach that we need to endure to the end, and each game had a meaning and lesson as well. It was quite entertaining. 

Dante is awesome and we had a lesson with him and his parents this week! He is super ready and the best part of the lesson was his little brothers comments. Isak had us cracking up the whole time. He said that he wants to donate 90% to God instead of just 10%. That´s the attitude!

We learned a lot about exact obedience, had exchanges with the hermanas from the other ward and it was a blast, aaaand we ate mole today! Mmmm... love that stuff! 

I read in Mosia 1 today about the value of the scriptures! They truly change lives and make all the difference in our homes! Remember to read something every day, even if it´s just 5 minutes!!! I promise you will have a happier day, a happier week, a happier life! :)

Sorry it´s short this week but whatever questions, stories, jokes, experiences feel free to ask! 

Love you all! Hope you are doing well! 

Con amor, 

Hermana Schwartz