LETTER: Sister Adrienne Schneider • February 28th, 2011

haha...wow how time flies!!!! i can´t believe it! ya...the spanish is....coming...so slowly. haha i try...and say a lot of funny things. but i have learned they can feel my love. this story i´m going to write made my week! probably mission actually to the day!!!

so, there is this family and we visit this girl named flavia and boy named leonel. flavia was recently baptized and leonel wants to be baptized. they aren´t able to make it to church and don´t have any adults who can take htem really. each time we visit, my comp keeps buying things for them with our money, cookies, treats, food, and then we bought them an alarm clock. i asked her if she thought it would help, because she buys a lot of things for people. but i kept thinking that christ had nothing but his own two feet and the knowledge of the gospel. i hope i don´t come off wrong here. it was meant to be just a question. i just didn´t feel like a missionary buying things for people (not that it is bad) but i didn´t feel like it was solving their real problems. i don´t think my senior comp liked it very much. i was just trying to express my thoughts. I felt they needed support from their family and stuff. long story short, we kinda had an argment. for me, it wasn´t the money, it was about solving the root of the problem. we were both upset and luckily we had to pick up a member. my comp is nicer to me when members are around so it was a good thing. so she was talking to the member (not sure about what) and i just said a prayer. i told heavenly father that i didn´t want to be upset at my companion and was curious what he wanted.

so, we went to this family´s place...cardboard like house....and kinda talked to them but they didn´t have time for a lesson. she got them the alarm clock and gave it to them. i was so happy because they were so happy to see me. she kinda showed them the clock but they came over and did a cool hand shake and stuff. they were grateful for the alarm clock. after, when we were leaving, for some reason i lingered to say good bye after my comp and the member were leaving. before i knew it, this little skinny 10 year old wrapped his arms around my neck and gave me a kiss on the cheek. it was the sweetest thing ever!!! It made everything worth it here!!! i can´t even talk to him in his language...it meant so much to me and it was a surprise too. haha my comp said she has never seen him do that to anyone. it also reassured me that they can feel my love for them, and it just makes it all worth it!!! probably sounds silly in this email. but i think i will always remember it. the timing and everything was so perfect!

love you!

hna schneider

LETTER: Elder Colton Nunley • February 28th, 2011

oh man sounds like your trip was so awesome!! i wish i could relive that with you guys haha but i wouldnt skip out on the mission for nothing haha suckas!!!!!

so im gonna try to answer the questions first. my companions name is Elder Martinez Florez and he is way cool he reminds me a lot of Jesse Thayne actually but we get along super well both of us arent afraid to talk to anyone! hijole (thats like the oh my gosh in spanish i say it like 1000 times a day haha) we seriously talk to everyone it is awesome. umm the house is actually super nice for here. its probably the size of the theatre room and the storage room except one of the rooms is for the hermana who owns the house but we dont need anything else than what we have. umm we have a bathroom/kitchen haha its pretty sweet and our kitchen space is about the size of dads bathroom. the one by the laundry machine. haha oh yeah so we have a laundry machine and i guess we are like one of the 10 houses in all of mission houses in chihuahua that have a laundry machine haha soo cool!!! my spanish is rockin! and for real i know i sound like im bragging but its like alma 26 i only boast in my God. For real i finished the Book of Mormon in spanish this week and for real like it is ridiculous how much i know in less than 2 months. The Lord is so awesome. (oh in your next letter could you find out what exactly Pres. Hinkley said about that promise with the book of mormon in another language cuz i have a huge testimony about it already and i wanna read what the Lord said through Pres. Hinkley,,,,,oh also dont sent DearElders anymore and the emails. only emails haha whenever the zone leaders come they have letters for me...but ive already read them haha it brings my hopes up everytime haha) Elder Martinez actually knows quite a bit of english already but yeah im supposed to teach him as he helps me with my spanish. our personalities are a lot alike too its pretty cool. oh we can flush the toilet paper here...SO NICE haha. oh yeah im gonna break 200 poopies this week woot woot!!! haha i can find somewhere to buy more shoes here mom that is ridiculous that you would have to pay that much. please dont send them if it actually costs that much. Mom im doing so good for real. do not worry about me in the slightest. Im being 100 % obedient. like for real like on the minute!! haha dayton i busted up laughing for like a whole minute when i read what you wrote about the gun haha for real i was crying haha i love your sense of humor.

Well Demory Dayton and Amoray its good to see that even though all of you dont like that the ward split up you can at least find positive things about it. I know for a fact that the things that President Greenalch does is inspired and think about it this way. If you dont agree with what he has done you{re disagreeing with what the Lord knows is best. There are some rules here in the mission that seem kinda goofy but Presidente Angulo knows what he is doing and everything he says is inspired by the Lord. I have no doubt in my mind about that. So continue with your positive attitude with that good job. Dad Congrats on the new calling!!! thats way cool. remember in my temple bag that i gave matt there is a tie that if you want to get released from your calling at anytime you can wear this tie and BOOM donezkis haha.

So this week we went to Chihuahua and Presidente Angulo had a conference with all of the missionaries in the state and it was so stinking awesome!!! for almost two full days we listened to what he knows the Lord expects of us. Im not kidding you he receives revelation like no other. And he knows the Book of Mormon so welll and when he talks about anything i want to strive to be the best at whatever it is he is talking about. same with his wife!! she is so awesome and sweet shes like my new mommy haha except i cant hug her haha. but i saw Elder Cluff again!!! oh my gosh that was so good like for real so good!! also i saw Elder España. who is braydens friend from american fork. but yeah next week ill write you more about this conference cuz it was so stinking awesome. the spirit was so strong the whole time. i really want to be able to humble myself even unto the dust of the earth haha like it says in the book of mormon and also be able to pour out my soul in prayer to the Lord.

but yeah i gotta go.

Love you tons and tons

thanks for the prayers and everything else!!!

LETTER: Elder Brayden Schneider • February 28th, 2011

so i was in Ljubjana till monday night, then traveled back here! man it was nice to come back to Maribor!

ok so for transfers..... you ready.... well i am staying!! i am so stocked, i love maribor, i hope i never leave. But i think everyone else went somewhere new or got a new companion. (excerpt maribor he kept the same) the sisters are super cool, i am glad they are staying they all wanted to stay but they said if me and my companion go then they dont want to stay! that is what we call team maribor!!! :)

ok so, on wednesday we had our concert... and because we were gone we didnt have any time to practice so we went thru it once and just hoped for the best. Well, remember how i said i had a solo... it was the first song of the concert and i totally tried bailing and giving the solo opportunity to someone else (because everyone in my district is really really good, one sister is pro) but there was pretty much no hope they said i HAD TO! so during practice i totally squeeked, hahaha oh man.... but i still sang my solo part in the concert and did ok.

well about 20 people came up to the koncert, (president came also) and it was awesome. After everyone talked and we had a really good time, also 4 investigators came!!! which is really good. But after the koncert president said that was probably the best mission exsperiance he has ever had... (he really really likes maribor.)

ok so that was good, also we had interviews with him, and he says they can only take 15 mins but i think on average they lasted about 45 mins. I was the last one that he talked to and he pretty much said the sisters and us are doing amazing things up in maribor and that we some of the most exciting missionaries in the mission... he also talked about how my district really respects me as a leader! haha but he also said that the sisters were almost breaking records with all their good numbers. :) so it was good to hear all that!

So this mourning we woke up at 5 and had a sunrise transfer breakfeast! it was super cool, we went to the church and cooked with the sisters.

also... bad news, our 2 best investigators dropped this week..... both!!! that was too bad, but hopefully we can find us some more!

also... good news, today is pday and we had a lesson so that we could go bowling tonight cause tonight is only 1 euro for an hour! so i am stoked to get my bowling game on!!

things are good family!!!

elder schneider

LETTER: Elder Colton Nunley • February 21st, 2011

Subject: Re: Wish you were here...BUT, We are so glad you're there!!!

what are you all doing in florida!!!! haha i thought it was arizona! haha it sounds like you are having so much fun. im glad to hear that mom and dad didnt take a bunch of 3 year olds again this year haha woot woot you{ve all grown up so much even since i{ve been gone haha oh yeah the { is in place of the apostraphy and i cant find the apostraphy haha so ill just keep usin { haha.

but yeah my new comp is awesome his name is elder martinez florez and guess what he doesnt speak english haha but my spanish has improved so much even since he came here. we contact so much more people it is so awesome. its so awesome to see that like after 4 hours of contacting and no no no no no no over and over again and again haha that the Lord will bless us with a family that is super awesome haha like yesterday oh man we contacted so much and no and no and no haha and then at like 720 (we have to be in our houses by 8 on sundays) we contacted this hermano in his house and well the way we are supposed to contact here (the way the Lord wants) is one testifies the other testifies and then we invite them to do something and in our testimonies we have to talk about the book of mormon, prophets, and Jesus Christ. but yeah so after we told him we would like to share this message with his family he was like ... oh of course come on in! haha elder martinez and i looked at each other with like a face of well what do we do now haha it was awesome but yeah we went in and boom boom boom so awesome but yeah great lesson we{re gonna go back and well we teach baptism the first lesson everytime and they all said they want to be baptized but that doesnt necesarily mean anything. but yeah they want us to come back which is so good.

but the Lord is so awesome for real. like He helps out in this work so much. its like if you work your butt off and dont see anything He{s gonna give us something. AHHHHH i love this work!!! but yeah we walk so stinkin much haha my legs are so so so tired everynight haha last night i basically fell asleep writing in my journal haha and i noticed this morning that i was writing super crooked and into other sentences and stuff haha. but when i come home that tired i know i{ve worked real good haha so its a reward really.

but yeah we are actually studying the talk by elder scott the whole month of february not just the one week. and im still learning stuff from it. its so awesome sometimes i wish i could read others but his talk is so stinking good it doesnt even bother me. but yeah everyday flys by here and the weeks are even faster somehow haha. no i havent received the package yet and probably wont for a while yet haha. but you would not beleive how many jehovas witnesses there are!!! haha oh my gosh. and i{ll leave it at that with them haha. but my skin is already becoming mexicanized and it definately isnt cold here anymore haha. i wish i could write you all of the experiences that happen everyday but there is definately not enough time haha. my spanish is doin pretty good. i can ACTUALLY understand most of what people are saying haha i know when i was in the mtc i said i could but i was wayyyy wrong haha.

we got a new bishop and he is so stinkin awesome they{ve actually been my favorite family here in this ward since i got here. their son is like 11 and he is so cool!!! haha he is like one of my best buds haha we were contacting by their house and he was outside and so i had him come over and he helped us contact!!! he bore his testimony about the book of mormon and it was so good!!!

ahh man im so jealous that you all are having so much fun in florida but the work here i think is probably just as much fun so dont feel too bad for me haha. im gonna be home before you know it haha ughhh it is so crazy thinking about that cuz i know its gonna happen haha. umm i cant think of much else to write right now and my time is up but thanks so much for the letters write more!!! haha jk but seriously............... write more haha

LETTER: Elder Jared Jensen • February 21, 2011

Dear greatest Mother of Elder Jensen.

I am so over joyed right now with the way things are going at home right now. Truly I am. I have heard so many things are going so great back at home. So much so that i'm not sure if all of what you and others have been telling me the full truth. It just sounds to good to be true.

The baptism went great and this family is just so amazing. They will be receiving the Holy Ghost next Sunday since they were out of town for some rugby games. The work here is still moving on and is going wonderfully. I had the greatest lunch ever this week too. No joke i have never been so full in my life! We brought Mike Jones with us to one of our members house named Brigham Young and Issac Young( They both live up to there name too.) We had the biggest Texas dinner/ Thanks giving dinner possible. I have not eaten that good for so so long. After that we were able to have a wonderful testimony meeting with Mike Jones. We had that lunch at 3:30 though and I forgot that we had a member dinner at 5:00 so right after we had lunch we went tracting for a little bit and had to go eat again. And I can tell you that never before have I prayed to God so much to eat my food for me. I was literally begging my Father In Heaven that he would help me eat this food that was placed before my stuffed face. Each and every single bite I had to drink a cup of water so that I would be able to keep it down. And of course I was smiling and saying how good it was tasting. But the important part is that I made it and I was able to finish it all ( Even though I was the last one done.) But no hard feelings were hurt so all was well. =) We have started getting alot of set appointments now too. Alright so this next part I'm going to tell you is part of the fulfillment of my Patriarchal Blessing. Truly my testimony has grown alot after this week. Being able to see things come to pass. I'm not going to lie since I have been out God has taught me so so much. I remember in my blessing it said I was going to be a great teacher for I had a great capacity to teach. During the time I didn't even know anything about teaching and I always felt very dumb and weak in everything that I did. But these last few weeks I have been able to see how much the Lord has been teaching me and helping me. My ward missionary leader came to me and said we need to start seeing more members while we still have you here because you have a great capacity to teach. He almost said it word for word on what my patriarchal blessing said. Mom the Lord really has been helping me and teaching me so much. I have been able to do things that I have never been able to even think I would be able to do. I was also able to bare my testimony during church. It was fast and testimony meeting and no one would go up. So my companion told me to go up. Of course I had to say "If you go I'll go." So he stood up and bore his testimony and came back down. So I felt like great well now I have to go up. But I understand now when my blessing said I would be able to stand up and bare testimony of my Lord and Savior Jesus Christ. Mom, I felt the Spirit so strong when I went up and I know that the Lord was telling me the things that I needed to say. I was pretty much telling my story how I went away from the church but at age 18 and came back because of my brothers testimony and how strongly I felt the Holy Ghost again. Then started bearing my testimony that people change and don't ever give up hope. After I sat down members started to flood the pulp-pet and started to bear testimony on how there were still members in the family that they have been trying to help come back and so on. After words a couple families came and talked with me just saying how much they needed that. Mom, I know that the Lord gave me the things that I needed to say. I'm so blessed to have a family like I have that has been able to help me receive this testimony of the Savior that I have. That night I got a call from the mission president and of course I was scared to answer. "Hello this is Elder Jensen" President:" Elder Jensen this is President Palmer how are you doing Elder? Me: "Ah, I'm doing great president" Thinking inside oh crap what have I done this time. President:" Elder I just got out of one my meetings with all the stake presidents and president Pennington said that you gave one of the most beautiful testimony's that has helped him out so much at this time in his life. Elder Jensen I cant tell you how happy that makes a president to hear something like that from one of his missionary's. We talked a little more after that and man was I happy. I am so grateful that the Holy Ghost was able to bare witness of what I was saying was true because I felt like I was speaking pretty weak. But as the scriptures say " I will make your weak things become strong" So this is my miracle of the week. But this is not the only miracle that has happen. The other miracle is how well everyone is doing back home. You have no idea on how grateful that makes me. God has been blessing us so very much. So please in your prayers have a prayer of gratitude to our wonderful loving Father In Heaven. I love you the best mom in the world. And I am sorry I was not able to write yesterday. It was a holiday and well we work the most on those days. =) So if I dont ever write you its because its a holiday.

-Elder Jensen

LETTER: Elder Brayden Schneider • February 21st, 2011

hahaha hey family! ok first off i have to say logan sounds like a little ladies man! thats pretty crazy, that he got asked to a dance twice in one night.

Ok so..... this is a little different cause i am actually in Ljubljana right now... cause this week my companions mouth was killing him and we went to see a dentist and stuff in maribor but they dont have the best dentists. So we came down to Maribor and we were planning on staying only a day but the doctor wants to keep an eye on my comp. So i got to chill at the mission home.... it was so fun, i just chilled with sister hill, (the mission presidents wife) haha cool huh, she just would cook for us and it was kinda nice cause we got more time to study.

hahahahaha and i definely took advantage of the situation cause sister hill knows alot of secrets about transfers that we are going to have this week and also about the new president coming in 4 mouths!! hahaha so i got a little info. haha she thinks i am just the funnyest missionary ever! so that good i havent lost too much of my personality! :)

So yeah then after the first day of staying at the mission home i went to some elders appartment and now i am in a three-some until my comp and i head back to maribor.

We also went and visited previous members that i taught and ohhhh that was so much fun!! i loved it!

Ok so i went to church here in Ljubljana..... that was soo soo soo different. They had 4 MEN passing the sacrament and the church was almost full... there were like 54 members that came and like 10 visitors!!! oh man it was soo different cause in maribor we had 5 members come to church this week!!!! they almost had 5 members passing the sacrament!!! i was just blown away to see the progress in the Ljubljana branch, the members do so much missionary work. I think all of their investigators came from members.

So i just had a blast though at church talking to everyone that i havent seen forever, but..... i am kinda worried cause we have transfers this week and i think i might be out of maribor...... and i LOVE maribor more the anything!!!!! So next week i will keep you posted on where i am, and who i am with!

well thanks for the letters family, and love you.

ps... hey i decieded for sure that i am going to be a dentist! cool huh. I talked to president and i will actaully be coming home at the end of December and going to school at the first of JAN 2012. hahaha just so you guys know.

pss... I didnt hear from sister schneider so hopefully everything is good with her! :)

psss... Ida stopped smoking and is doing really well she is coming to a koncert this wednesday!

pssss... i forgot i am singing in that koncert with the 3 sister missionaries and they gave me and SOLO. (at first i refused to sing but sometimes as a missionary you get stuck with the crappy jobs!) hahaha love you guys

LETTER: Elder Jared Jensen • February 14th, 2011

Dear most gracious and marvelous mom.

Things have been going great but I know I say that all the time but they are! We had a baptism this Sunday with the Ribble family and the place was packed! Everyone was so supportive for them and they are going to make great Mormons. Alright so miracle of the week. Last Monday after I emailed you guys we had a lesson with a guy named Mike Jones. This guy looks just like the red headed Ron guy on Harry Potter. Well anyways we had our third lesson with him and we were going to teach him about the Plan of Salvation. As we were talking about the atonement of Jesus Christ we started to talk about the Holy ghost. So I looked at Mike and asked him " Do you love Jesus Christ?" He looked at me and said "Yes I do."... " Do you want to come closer to him?"... " Ya I do." I then looked at him in the eyes and asked " Then what do you have against being baptized by someone holding that priesthood authority of God?" He sat there and started to think for a minute and replied " I'm not really sure that you guys have that authority." After that we started to answer some of his questions and bore our testimony's and asked him a second time if he would be baptized and we got that same repeating answer... "No"... I could feel the spirit there and I couldn't understand why he just wouldn't say yes. So I decided to ask him some more questions. "Mike do you believe there is God?" "yes" " Do you believe in Jesus Christ?" " Yes" " Do you believe that He is able to answer your prayers?" He sat there and started to think for a moment and said " Yes I believe he does answer my prayers." I then leaned up in my chair and said " Then Mike, if this church is true and that if there really is a God, and that if this really is his true church on the earth today then there is nothing stopping us right now from kneeling and praying to ask God if this church is really his church. And that if the book of Mormon was truly written by a prophet of God. So will you right now kneel down and pray and ask God of these things?"

He sat there and started to ponder for a moment. A few seconds later he asked if we would give him a minute to think. We nodded and gave him a little time. We waited on our knees while he was there thinking on what to say and ask in the prayer. He then knelt down with us and asked the things that were in his heart. And asked all the questions we told him to ask. And he then closed in the Name of Jesus Christ Amen. We sat there for at least 40 seconds in silence after that prayer. He finally spoke up and said he feels like there's something pulling on his heart and chest. He tried to explain what he was feeling but you already know how impossible that is. =) We then asked. " Well Mike... For the last time... Will you follow the example of Jesus Christ by being baptized by someone holding that authority of God?" He sat there and started to ponder about everything that just happened and looked back up at us and said.... " Yes." And he smiled. Oh man it was the most beautiful yes in the world! He then said "Man my grandfather and grandmother are going to love me.... But my parents are going to kill me!" We all started to burst out laughing... Well his baptism date is set for the 5th of March so we'll see what happens.

=) Happy Valentines day Most wonderful mom. I love you so very much.

-Elder Jensen (your huge son)