Letter dated 27Jan2014

[Dear friends, here is the latest letter from Daniel. I hope you enjoy it! I hope everyone is staying warm and safe. If you want to send Daniel a note, simply reply and I will forward your note to Daniel! Have a great week! Daniel's editor - BWS] Dear Family and Friends! This week was a good one! To cap it off, we finished Sunday night by knocking on some choice doors. At two of those doors, we met Robert and Jenny, two people in high school. They both said no, they weren't interested in learning about God, but Äldste Hewitt still asked if we could come over over this week to share a message about God with them, and they both said yes! I'm not sure why either said we could come back, but it's exciting in any case. Yesterday in Sacrament Meeting, the branch's good pianists were all absent, which left me the responsibility over the ivories. I've learned to play "Come Follow Me" and "A Poor Wayfaring Man of Grief." Kind of well. And it turns out it's much harder to play when lots of people are singing. So it wasn't the best musical experience of my life. But it was still fun :) On Thursday right after we were said good-bye to a woman we had stopped and talked to, an outgoing man came from behind us with lots of exuberance and embraced both me and Äldste Hewitt. Then he started singing a song from some musical. He was drunk and actually wanted to share with us some "deep philosophy." Unfortunately, he could speak English pretty well so we couldn't get away very quickly. At one point though, to validate his philosophies, he asked "Do you know what I was?" After a dramatic pause he said "I... was a therasim." (We're pretty sure he meant therapist.) It was such a funny conversation! The branch just got two new Stake Missionaries, Gunnar and Gulre, which is super sweet! A family whose dad is from Sweden and mom from Peru just had Matthew, who's the scholarly baby in the picture. They are getting ready to get sealed in the temple in May! I hope you each have a wonderful week! I love you all and thanks for keeping me updated with things from home. Love, -- Äldste Daniel Schindler