Well, nearly 7 months down! (And 6 months here in Machu Picchu! Probably means next week I’ll be transferred to a new area!) Normally I’d be really excited to go to another area and get some new experiences, except now we’re finally starting to get somewhere with some of our investigators! Two of them, Jacky and Ricardo, are finally going to get married so we can baptize them, but if I go now I’ll miss it! Oh, well. I guess that’s just the mission life…
Well, not much to report here, so I’ll try to spice it up a little…
“Good morning, all, and welcome to Elder Schroeder Central, your source for all the crazy events in the life of an American missionary in Peru! This week we’ve got a little bit of everything, from cucarachas to testifying of the truth! (Unfortunately, that’s about as interesting as it gets, but stay tuned anyway!)
“On Tuesday Elder Schroeder “single-handedly saved mission work in Machu Picchu of Lima, Peru” — at least, according to him. According to the report, Elder Schroeder and his companion, Elder Mayta, left their apartment at around 7:45 AM to go buy breakfast at a tienda nearby. Upon returning to the house, however, they realized they couldn’t get in because Elder Mayta had forgotten the keys — both the one to enter the black door below AND the door to the apartment! And while it is true that Elder Schroeder and Elder Terrones (Elder Schroeder’s first companion) already figured out how to open the door to their room: They just bust out the cardboard where the pane is missing and then open the window, stick a big rod of metal through, and jiggle the latch until it opens. Lucky for them they figured that out a while back, or they would’ve had a LOT of trouble (They’re quite prone to forgetting the keys!)
“However, Elders Schroeder and Mayta had ALSO forgotten the key to the bottom door, the one behind Elder Schroeder in the photo below.
“So the problem they had is how to get the first door unlocked, because there’s not really a broken window to stick their arm through! So Elder Schroeder had to use his ninja skills to climb the black door, grab the small gate on the second floor, and then heave himself over the short wall above to get the door open. ‘That was pretty tough,’ said Elder Schroeder. ‘I’d just finished doing 50 push-ups during my exercises, and even if that’s not my best it made climbing the door a lot more difficult. I probably looked more like a beached whale than a ninja when I went over that little wall up next to the gate!’ Well, that may be true, but at least it let him open the doors so they could return to their room to do some studying and retrieve their scriptures!
“In mission news, Elder Schroeder got a chance to testify of the prophet to a skeptical investigator. On Thursday he and his companion were off contacting new people in some hill in their area (‘There are so many that we’ve lost count!’ says Elder Schroeder) and encountered a woman who was willing to listen to their message. They taught about the restoration of the complete truth through the prophet Joseph Smith, but when they explained that there is still a prophet today she said, ‘I don’t believe this man could be a prophet, because he doesn’t actually do the work of God. If he did, he would come and visit here, where there are lots of poor families and children who need his help. He isn’t a real prophet.’
“According to our sources, Elder Schroeder couldn’t just let that fly. ‘I don’t even remember what I said,’ he says. ‘I just remember that I testified that I knew he was a real prophet, even if he didn’t visit every part of the world, because I had felt it.’ Apparently she felt it, too, because she seemed quite willing after to accept it.
“Then Friday we received reports of strange cucaracha attacks, including one instance in which Elder Schroeder encountered one in his shoe! ‘I didn’t really know what was going on, but I felt something in the toe of my shoe while I was walking. I took it off and a cucaracha fell out!’ Normally the missionaries don’t have much trouble with bugs, but I guess Elder Schroeder needs to start checking his shoes!
“Well, that’s all we’ve got for you this week! Be sure to tune into Elder Schroeder Central next week for a whole new list of this week’s adventures in the life of an American missionary in Peru!”
— Elder Schroeder