Guten tag! Ich bin Elder Schroeder!
That German might have been a little confusing since I’m serving a Spanish-speaking mission and all, but I’ve actually been talking a lot in German this week — I think I’ve said more things in German than in English! It’s because a LOT of people ask if I’m German (“Aleman” in Spanish) because my last name is German. I tell them that my ancestors were, but then I made the mistake of admitting that I took a few years of German in middle school. I don’t remember a whole lot, but now a bunch of people are asking me to teach them some German. I really don’t remember much — I can say, “good day”, “butter”, “please”, “I am / you are / he/she/it is / we are / they are”, “I’m a foreigner and don’t speak German well”, and “the eraser is not wet” — but it’s still really amusing to the ward members!
Thanks to everyone for all your birthday wishes! I know that not everyone sent me an email about my birthday, but I know that you’re wishing me a happy birthday and all (And if you forgot, well, ¡no se preoccupe!). Honestly it didn’t really feel like my birthday because it’s really hot here and normally I’d celebrate turning 19 in the middle of winter, but hey! It was still pretty good! (I got my first kiss!) (I’ll explain this later)
This week was a lot harder than the past few because it’s Semana 11 (“Week 11”) in 12 Semanas, my 12-week in-field training course, and this means that I was the senior companion. I had to do all the planning, calling, contacting, and decision-making and also had to start all the lessons. I was REALLY stressed on Monday because Elder Terrones was intentionally acting like he didn’t know the area, meaning I had to lead EVERYTHING and then on Tuesday we had a work visit from our District Leader to see if everything’s good in our area. I wasn’t as stressed the rest of the week because it got a little bit easier, but I still would prefer to be the junior companion for a little while longer.
As for the more interesting stuff, on Monday I ate venison (I was a little confused: They have deer here?! I’ve only ever seen dogs, cats, and the occasional llama!), on Tuesday we met a less-active member who has schizophrenia (I had to look up how to spell that!) and that made for an interesting lesson!
Not much happened Wednesday, Thursday, or Friday, but on Saturday we had a really strange contacting situation. Normally when we contact we start by saying, “¡Hola!” to someone walking past us, talk to them a little, and then we share a brief message and ask if we could visit them sometime later. In this contact, however, this guy literally JUMPED out of a taxi, showed us a pamphlet from some Testigos de Jehova (“Jehovah’s Witnesses”), and asked us if we could teach him a little more about death, like it said in the pamphlet. We were a little surprised and admitted that we weren’t Jehovah’s Witnesses, but that we could explain this an more and then gave him a pamphlet about the Plan of Salvation. He was cool with this and asked us to come by his house sometime this week! So… I guess sometimes the Lord works through other missionaries to help us!
And then there’s my birthday. Sunday was pretty normal, but I discovered that there are a lot of perks to being a missionary and it being your birthday! The first is that EVERYONE wishes you a happy birthday and if you go and visit the members and investigators you get things! Probably the best was the cake Roxana (The woman I baptized) and her family gave me, and the most surprising was with one of our investigators. I’ll start with the cake.
I’d kind of guessed this from being at Elder Terrones’s birthday, but the Peruvian tradition is that everyone sings, “Happy Birthday” (Yes, in English (It’s a little funny to hear them try to pronounce the words!)), goes, “ba-dum ba-dum bum-bum,” and then sings, “Feliz Cumpleaños”. After this the birthday person takes a big bite out of the cake and sometimes someone else mashes their face in the cake — this is what happened to me! (¡Gracias, Elder Terrones!) He got me pretty good, too, as you can see in the picture! You can also tell just how much trouble Peruvians have with my name (It doesn’t have a “W”, for starters…)!
With the investigator, well… she kissed me! It wasn’t actually a kiss; the Peruvian tradition is that the women, when they greet each other, go for a kind-of one-armed hug and make a kissing sound right next to the other woman’s ear (if you’re really close, you actually kiss the other person’s cheek). This tradition also applys for when women greet men, but only during a special event — like my birthday! So when this investigator (we’d just met her about 15 minutes earlier) found out, she went in for a kiss and I froze! I don’t know what the heck I’m supposed to do to stop her! I didn’t really know her and realized I basically had to explain that, as a missionary, we have to be a little more reserved to honor our calling — in three seconds! Normally it takes me that long to remember how to conjugate the first word! So she “kissed” me and I just kind of sat there… and then Elder Terrones explained that we can’t really do that as missionaries… So yeah, my first kiss in the mission (It happens to everyone, apparently, even Elder Terrones!)!
So that’s what’s new here in Peru! Hopefully I’ll have more to share next week, but until then, ¡Quédense!
— Elder Schroeder
