9 MONTHS! WOOOOO!
… That’s not really that big of a milestone, but I can’t believe it happened so fast! For me, the mission is like being trapped in a little time bubble: Education-wise and job-wise, I don’t go anywhere, every day is basically the same routine (Even holidays!), I can’t actually talk with any of my friends and family directly — I have to use email or Skype — and outside all kinds of crazy, different stuff is happening, like Kyra finishing high school and working at WalMart, Zack actually working (!!!) (Just kidding, Zack! (Kind of)), and all the other crazy stuff that I hear about. It’ll feel so weird to get back…
This week we officially got our new mission president! President Erickson finished on Tuesday when President Godfrey flew in. We got to meet him and I think it’ll be a little different, but not better or worse. Of course, we don’t really know what’ll happen yet — he’s got less than a week living here! But it’s a little wierd that three of his kids came with him — that was something I wasn’t expecting! I thought all mission presidents had to be older, so all their kids are older and indepentent, but apparently that’s not the case! From what I understand, his kids will basically go to a special type of school to teach them the stuff they should be learning as well as Spanish, so that’s probably really weird for them!
This week was really great because I got to have a lot of cool spiritual experiences. It started when we went to visit Sylvia, a really cool woman that we’ve been teaching for a while, but the last few times we’d had to prepare ourselves to fight a BUNCH of her doubts about getting baptized, so we braced ourselves for another round of fighting against her doubts.
… But it turns out it wasn’t necessary because we brought Mami Chela with us. She’s the Relief Society president who got baptized in December (There are so few members here that SHE became president, and she got baptized 6 months ago! But she does a really good job!) and we call her “Mami Chela” because she and her daughter are both named “Graciela,” and also because Mami Chela loves the missionaries and acts kind like a mother for all of them, always worrying about if we know where we’re going to eat lunch and stuff like that (Don’t worry, Mom! She’ll NEVER replace you! (If she played lots of Dominion, she could probably replace Dad, but you, no!)).
Long story short, she’s really cool, and when we went to teach Sylvia she came with us… and in one stroke destroyed all the doubts Sylvia had! Mami Chela explained why she decided to go to Church, explained how she became converted, and you could feel the Spirit so strongly when she finished! (Unfortunately, my companion at the time was Elder Clawson, one of my Zone Leaders, and he slept right through the super strong testimony, so he didn’t really get the full effect of the lesson!) Now Sylvia’s really excited and happy and she’s going to get baptized on the 9th!
As for being a district leader, it’s gotten a little better but I still have trouble remembering all the stuff I need to do, so I keep getting burned by my Zone Leaders for not having the information they need or something like that, which makes me less happy to be DL, but at least my district’s pretty cool! As I mentioned, I’m in charge of two sister missionaries, Hermana Meza (Who entered the mission field the same time I did) and Hermana Manrique (Who’s brand-new, fresh out of the Training Center!), so it’s a little wierd but it’s good. We had breakfast the other day and I guess they liked it (I’m not entirely sure because I was the one who cooked the pancakes, but hopefully no one’s going to get sick!).
But here we are (in order: Elder Ushiñahua, Elder Shrawu8objavnlkñasdt, Hermana Meza, and Hermana Manrique).
No one’s thrown up yet, so I think we’re good!
Until next week!
— Elder Schroeder