VC Love

Familia, holy schniekes this week has felt like a century.

Business: i depart tuesday, the 6th at 5 am and my flight id at 8:30, so you will get to talk to me on the phone sometime during then, so be sure to have your phones charged and ready. oh and my mission home address in AZ is 6265 N 82nd st, scottsdale, az, 85250, usa, so you can send my mail and jazz there after tuesday.

Monday-Wednesday Hna Turner and I had to wake up at 3:45 to ship off Hna Turner and Cole and do morning service. Wed we started our visitor's center training and let's just say we didn't look so incredibly rough that they changed our calls to serving regular missions. But on wednesday, I rode in a CAR for the first time in what 2 years? and we went to SLC Temple Visitor's Center, got a tour by some sick sisters and basically it rocked my world. Holy cow. I have fallen in love with visitor's centers. there is so much crap that goes down that no one even has a clue about!!!!!

So part of visitor's center training is that we get put in a room with a ton of people, then they give us 5 minutes to get to know someone on a deep personal level, discern their needs, and then powerfully teach a lesson accustomed to their needs and leave them with a compromise (or some sort fo promised action for the future, like pray to know god exists,e tc). nbd. They basically ask me to talk to people, and with the size of my mouth i'm a pro. Except that i still need to work on getting to know them on a deep profound level and not surface level, which is tougher but i love the challenge. But here's the part that absolutely rocks my world: WE TEACH PEOPLE ONLINE VIA CHAT. the church is SO BOMB and SO ON TOP OF THINGS. hardcore. So mormon.org has this thing where you can chat with an online representative (aka VC sisters, aka ME), and the incredible thing is that we teach them lessons, and they can become our online investigators and we prep them for baptism. OH HOT SLAMMMMMMMMMMM!!!!!!! it's absolutely wild and incredible and rocks my world. Not only do I use my first name Agent[Rachel] to talk with these people but i'm literally teaching people all over the world. it's unreal. Yesterday, hna turner and i taught this lady in uruguay(oh yeah in spanish, rock solid), a guy in chile, a guy in denmark and a guy in jersey. Okay, story time: Denmark man- starts off with my family is strict muslim but i've been meeting with the missionaries and i want to be baptized, but i'm dependent on them financially and they will disown me if i get baptized, but i know i need to get baptized and i want to because it's what god wants from me and i want to follow the path god has given me, yada yada. how do i tell me family i want to get baptized. hardcore awesome. the guy from jersey, ronny, asked us about this article some byu prof just sent out about blacks and he was asking us why they weren't allowed to have the priesthood before the 70's. go figure he's black, goes to fsu, and the way to convo was going he was getting upset(like i haven't dealt with that before, pobre hna turner was freakin out) and so i asked him "are you a part of any faith?" and he said nope, i just don't know how to choose a church. gold. we turned the convo around, taught him about the restoration of the church and IT WAS CRAZY!!!!!!! oh my freakin word, so part of our chat is that we can see what the person is writing before they send it and we literally saw his heart soften during our chat, he would start writing really offensive and rude defensive things but he would delete them and ask something completely diff and believe it or not i actually felt like i was teaching with the spirit VIA CHAt. do you know how rad that is? and i get to do that everyday for the rest of my mission. SO HARDCORE.

Tuesday night devotional Elder Holland came, and basically that means my world got rocked hardcore (he's one of the apostles of the church). Pulpit pounding, check. Basically he said if you're going to come back from your mission and regress to the exact same person you were then you failed your mission, you did something wrong. And you know what, he's right. I feel that applies to anything we do in life. If we choose to go through something challenging and life changing and then learn nothing from it, remain the same person we were before we went through that experience, then what was the point? The whole point of life is to constantly be progressing and becoming the person you want to be. If you're not doing things in your life that's making you into the person you know you have the potential to become, then something is wrong, you're failing life. This mission is already helping me see my flaws and strengths and helping my mold myself into the person I know I have the potential to become. It's freaking hard, and I straight up love it. If I come back from my mission and you don't see an obvious change within me, then I would have failed. So expect change, and don't be freaked out (Mom) when I say i'm going to change. It's more along the lines of just becoming a better version of my self, and that's sweet action. I'm super pumped to be heading out to Mesa VC. I KNOW without a shadow of a doubt that is EXACTLY where I need to be, there are people there that only I will be able to teach and reach their hearts, there are experiences I need to have there and shoot I am ready to be shipped out for service.

THE MISSION IS ZE BESSSTTTTT!!!!!!

Los quiero!! hna schwartz