Tuesday, March 31, 2015
Letter dated 30Mar2015
[Dear family and friends, here is the letter we received from Daniel yesterday! I hope you enjoy it as much as we did. I hope that, wherever you are, you are enjoying some Spring weather! Daniel's editor - BWS]
Dear Family and Friends,
This week was so good. We baptized and gave the gift of the Holy Ghost to Camsin and Akil. It feels so fantastic that we could help these two brothers enter the gate which leads to heaven. There is nothing better.
One particularly sweet moment was when, after Akil's baptism, he and his mom teary-eyedly hugged each other. It was a moment of forgiveness. It was a glance of what will happen at the Second Coming, when "the Sun of righteousness [shall] arise with healing in his wings." --Malachi 4:2
God is so merciful. I am so astounded and so glad that he gave us His Son to pave the way back to His heavenly home. I know He lives!
I love you all!
--
Äldste Daniel Schindler
P.S. Transfers next week! Saying "bye" to a great companion and getting another great companion. My new companion will be Äldste Ward, who's from Michigan! Near Ann Arbor. He's a ginger. It will be very fun.
Letter dated 23Mar2015
Dear Family and Friends:
It was a good week in the South Tälje with Elder Rasmus'sson.
Around the apartment buildings we often go to, there is often a nice play ground surrounded by a 50-cm-high fence. I think it is to thwart kidnappers. Well, every time we hop over one, we joke about tripping on it. Well, those jokes became a reality on Wednesday as I rushed to, graced over, and encountered the bottom of the fence with my big toe. Like a lever, I fell right down. It was quite hilarious and extraordinarily lucky, as no potential hearers of the message witnessed the fail. Elder Rasmussen actually got more dirty from it than I, as he fell on his back in jubilant laughter.
On Tuesday night, on the way to the apartment from Järna, we saw the Northern Lights! They were so beautiful! We stopped in a place called Mörkö to watch them. It was really peaceful and serene. Then, on Friday morning, we joined with the many who had come to Scandinavia to see the solar eclipse by looking out the window and disappointedly seeing that it was overcast. Nonetheless, we still did see some solar eclipse!
This paragraph will be some nice, mind-blowing trivia. The word "waffle" stems etymologically from "Mary." So, the old-Germanic phrase for "Mary" was "Voar fru," or "Our virgin\wife." When the Waffle was invented, the person must have really liked it, so she\he named it after Mary. Then, Voar fru became different versions of waffle! For example, in Swedish, it is Voafla.
We went to the Stockholm temple on Tuesday with some other missionaries. It was so great.
I was in a town called Norrköping on Thursday with Äldste Rhoades (see picture), where I met my first friend from Djibouti, Mike (see picture)!
This coming week will be great. The plan is for Camsin and Akil to be baptized. Please pray for them both! Teaching them has been so edifying. Each has a lot of trials in his life, and these are increasing as baptism is approaching. But even though Satan is working harder and harder, they are terrific at exercising faith, and they are not getting down on their trials. This shows the truth of the scriptural promise that when we have faith, fear vanishes, fear being on of Satan's most prodigious tool.
If you're reading this, I love you so much. I hope that you have a wonderful week. Remember to look up!
Love,
--
Äldste Daniel Schindler
Thursday, March 19, 2015
Letter dated 16Mar2015
Dear Family and Friends:
Congratulations to Joey on being baptized -- that is so exciting!
It was a fantastic week!
On Tuesday I had a good time with Äldste Luke in Eskilstuna. It was great to see Mohmoud and Zohreh, as well as Amrita and Johan!
And it was a good week in Södertälje. Camsin is doing great, and Akil is doing wonderfully.
I found out I will come home on August 6th.
This week will be really great. We are going to the temple tomorrow!
I learned a ton from Ether 2-4 this week. This group of people had such great faith, to cross the ocean in home-made, heaven-guided boats. And that faith came through prayers and following through on God's counsel.
Pictures this week: rub-a-tub-tub. Two men cleaning the baptismal font. Baptisms on their way!
I was back in Eskilstuna! And Eskilstuna's gotten a huge statue of a needle.
Äldste Dahle and I reunited!
This is a pile of pebbles that were used to make a parking lot unslippery. So many rocks!
I love you all, and wish you the best week this week!
Love,
--
Äldste Daniel Schindler
Tuesday, March 10, 2015
Letter dated February 26, 2015 - from Mission President
Dear Brother & Sister Schindler,
We are pleased to share that your son, Äldste Daniel Schindler, has been assigned to serve as a Zone Leader in the Södertälje Zone.
This is a position of great trust and of leadership among the missionaries in the Sweden Stockholm mission, and we are confident he will lead by example and love.
We express our gratitude for your part in preparing your son to serve so honorably. We pray Heavenly Father’s blessings will be with you and your family as Äldste Schindler continues his missionary service in love for our Savior, Jesus Christ, and for the people of this blessed land.
With respect and kind regards,
James E. Beckstrand
James E. Beckstrand, President
SWEDEN STOCKHOLM MISSION
Letter dated 9Mar2015
Dear Family and Friends:
Last week was so exciting! All the missionaries in this half of Sweden gathered to see Elder and Sister Donaldson. That meeting was focused on following the Spirit and assisting others to learn how the Spirit feels and works.
I went on exchanges following that meeting with Äldste Demke, who was in my MTC group, in Linköping. While with him, he made me "poverty patties," which is fried flour and water. They were surprisingly good!
Camsin is so cool. We taught him the Plan of Salvation with a paper display of a couple of people moving through the stages of life. When he retaught it to us, he started beat boxing as he moved the people through eternity. Very entertaining :)
Prayers were answered as five of our friends came to church on Sunday!
I noticed in our Sunday school class that I was in perhaps the most diverse group of people I've ever been in. There was a Hungarian, a Turk, a Pakistani, five Nigerians, a Cuban, a Swede, a Peruvian, three missionaries from Utah, one from Hawaii, one from Canada, and me :) Three of them were investigators, five were recent converts to the church, and the other nine of us have been members quite a while. Despite the diverse class and a complex language barrier which one might think would lower the amount of learning in each individual, I learned lots about how to better serve people and God that hour. I am sure that the other sixteen people got much out of it to, because they continue to come. That goes to show the power of God's Holy Spirit, which teaches all people.
I am so grateful God has given us the Holy Spirit, a way to learn the truth. I know, from that Spirit, that God listens to and answers our prayers. :)
The pictures are of all the Södertälje missionaries at Nina's and Richard's lake, and of our apartment, which is so nice and quite large!
Tomorrow, I'll go on splits in Eskilstuna. I can't wait to see all my friends there!
I love you all, and I pray for you :)
Love,
--
Äldste Daniel Schindler
Wednesday, March 4, 2015
2Mar2015 letter
Dear Family and Friends:
We saw the Lord's hand at work so much this week.
Beauty, a member from Nigeria who found the elders on the train the day before I came to Södertälje, finally knew where the church was (having met the missionaries). She came to our family home evening on Monday with her son Camsin. Camisn is the coolest 10 year old in Sweden! He wants so much to be baptized and loves the Lord, Jesus Christ. When we taught him on Monday about baptism, he asked such good questions (e.g. Why did the Lord need to be baptized?). And when we showed him the baptismal font, he started jumping up and down in excitement! On Saturday, we asked him what he remembered reading in the Book of Mormon, and he said "Hmm. Oh yeah! And it came to pass!" He also remembered about the Liahona, but t's funny how many times the scriptures use that phrase :) He and his mom are so humble too. When they met with us Saturday, they had just heard some worrisome news. And even though we couldn't help them with that news specifically, they wanted to meet so their spirits could be uplifted, and they knew the word of God would help them :) They are great examples.
On Wednesday, we went to a friend's apartment, but she canceled. We were a little saddened, so we just left back to the car. But we remembered that we had felt good when praying the night before to knock that building. Then we realized that the building door had been locked, and would have locked as we closed it. But we reckoned that because we felt good about it the night before, we'd be able to get in the building somehow. So we went back, and somehow the door was still open! We found two families who were interested. One from Iraq, whom we visited and gave a BofM to yesterday, and one from Egypt whom we haven't visited again yet. We thanked the Lord then for that success, and went on to the next item we had planned, to swing by Manuel. On the way to his home, we found a Slovenian family that we taught on the street! And we taught them again on Friday. Then they moved to Slovenia on Saturday, so it was a miracle of timing that we found them, and now they will meet the missionaries in Slovenia. After meeting them on Wednesday, though, Manuel was home. We re-began to teach him, and he came to church and everything yesterday! He wants to be baptized with his wife when she emigrates here from Cuba :)
It is such a miracle we found these wonderful families! I am convinced that the Lord led us to them and them to us because of our prayers that we would find a family to baptize. I am convinced the Lord hears and answers our prayers.
Tomorrow we will go to Stockholm to hear a missionary conference from Elder Donaldsen. That will be great.
I love you all so much! Congrats to Andrew on being accepted to BYU!
You're in my thoughts and my prayers.
Love,
--
Äldste Daniel Schindler
P.S. Theses pictures are of a nice place by old-town Stockholm. We took a trip there last Monday :)
23Feb2015
Dear Family and Friends:
Congratulations Emily and Summer for your baby boys! That is wonderful to hear :)
Well, I am getting settled in here in Södertälje (this is pronounced weird, and doesn't really mean anything, but is close to södertälja which is "south whittle\south whittling" by translation. It is half-way between Stockholm and Eskilstuna, or a little south-west of Stockholm). Äldste Rasmussen is great to be with. He's from Orem, Utah, and is an excellent teacher. He is someone from whom I can learn a lot and with whom I'll have lots of fun!
Leaving everyone in Stockholm was very sad. But the missionary work is thriving, and it felt good that I left it in good hands. As a last lunch, we made the most of Äldste Sweat's fryer and made deep-fried ice cream! (see the picture) It was really good! It tasted quite similar to fries + Frostie.
There is also a picture of the two of us, the Södertälje sisters (Sisters Kamauoha from Hawii and Taylor Alberta), and Nina and Fredrik, at Nina's family's lake! They are such a fun family. They live in the the woods, and we had moose meat while visiting. She is the Swedish voice for GPS, as well as several of the answering machines! And there is a picture of cinnamon biscuits, which Ä. Rasmussen made, and Turkish delight, which I delightedly found in our apartment!
The people here are so great! Lennart, who was baptized in Jakobsberg a few weeks before I arrived there, has moved and now lives two floors bellow us! He was a sailor, and is so cool! We are teaching a good friend named Akil, who has received a very strong testimony of the gospel; he should be baptized soon! Our mission leader is brand new to the calling, and even new to the church! His name is Okoro, and he is a very capable man. He was telling us how he had felt unprepared to fill his calling, but how he realized it was the Lord who had called him, and that he needed to stop worrying. What a strength of testimony! A man in the ward named Åke shared a funny story in Priesthood meeting about how he stood up for his faith while in the sauna :) That was a funny story :D We swung by a part-member family and had a wonderful discussion about needing to be humble, and how we are placed in mortality by the Lord so we will be humble and rely on him. I am so thankful for this probationary time, and to be able to follow Christ!
I love you all and hope you each have a great week. Hope and pray anyone who's sick gets better!
Love,
--
Äldste Daniel Schindler
16Feb2015
Dear Family and Friends:
I have gotten a transfer call, and will head to Södertälje with Äldste Rasmussen this Wednesday. I am really so sad to leave Äldste Sweat and all here. But it will be exciting! The ward feeds the missionaries A LOT! We will have a car (it has been over 18 months since I last drove a car.... Pray for our safety.)! I got to know Äldste Rasmussen while he was in my Lund district, and he's a great missionary! We will be zone leaders, so I'll be able to visit all my friends in Eskilstuna, which is in the zone!
This week, we were meeting Narcisa and read the Book of Mormon with her, in Romanian and Swedish, sitting on the sidewalk in the middle of town. It was one of the moments where I realized "I would never have imagined me being here a couple years ago." Pretty cool :)
Äldste Sweat found a working iPod in the dumpster this week :D People in our neighborhood are quite wealthy.
Enjoy the pictures!
Love you all!
--
Äldste Daniel Schindler
9Feb2015
Dear Family and Friends:
It feels good to sit down and write to you :) Thanks for you letters. It's good to hear that Andrew's play went well and that others are up to good things. For me, this week was uniquely fantastic. The weather is warming up, and I rode on my first double-decker bus!
The new people in our ward due to the ward boundary change are really great! The ward felt much more lively and warm yesterday than it had before, when it was already quite good.
We have been teaching many Chinese lately. Yang, who has the chemistry laboratory I talked about last week, is really progressing! We had an appointment to call and read the Book of Mormon with him. We talked about the Holy Spirit while reading Moroni 8, and afterward in the prayer, I asked that we might be blessed with the Holy Spirit. After I said that phrase, he whispered "wow!" He also called us before we got to call him to remind us the call was happening :) He is really fun to teach!
We are also teaching Jin, who studies economics. He always asks us about America's economy. We never know the answers to these questions :P But he has enjoyed coming to church, even if only to build a network :)
And we teach Yihang, and we were put in his path twice so that we could teach him. We watched "The Restoration" movie with him. At the end, he said "WOW!" We asked "What did you think of during the movie?" And he said "The director must be very proud. It is a terrific movie!" Haha, he is a blast :)
I went on exchanges for a day with Äldste Walker, and got to help teach a Persian class with him. The translator\main teacher, Mojgan, is a missionary and does a terrific job teaching many Persians throughout Sweden!
It is good to be in Stockholm. I love the phrase "marvelous work" used in Doctrine and Covenants 4 to describe missionary work. It really is a marvelous work, of which I am so privileged to be a part! I hope you each have a wonderful week!
Love,
--
Äldste Daniel Schindler
2Feb2015 letter
Favorite people!
This was a terrific week!
These first two pictures are of incredible sushi and Japanese fried things (perhaps spelled tempura) to which we were treated by our new friend Leopold! There is a picture of me at our new friend, Yang's, laboratory, experimenting the peace sign in an only-Argon environment. And the final picture is of me in an extremely dangerous situation. That's right, it is me stepping on a banana peel on ice. Do not worry, though, I survived.
While on exchanges this week with Äldste Smith, we met Yang at the university. He is a PhD student working on organisational chemistry. He also came to church!
The next day, when back with Äldste Sweat, we met Leopold, who's from the Philippines, and a devout Catholic. We have had a couple very deep conversations on faith with him. He is researcher of analytic chemistry.
A few days later, I went on exchanges with Äldste Held. He is Danish, and a super fun guy. He lives quite close to the church, so we went there for our morning exercise. It was a cool realization as we went there that I was driving through the middle of Stockholm in the middle of a snow storm at 6:00 am with a Dane. I didn't see that one coming when I was 17 :P
A new friend, Kennedy, met up with us on Sunday morning, having been referred by other missionaries. He came with us to church. He did not really understand it, because he is from Bangladesh, but really loved it (or at least he loved the sandwiches afterward), becasue he wants to be baptized! We are also working with Karim toward baptism.
Our ward boundaries have changed to include President and Sister Beckstrand, so now we will be under strict supervision :)
Have a terrific week!
Love,
--
Äldste Daniel Schindler
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