¡Cambios! (Again!) And I’ve got 14 months!
I’ll be honest, I have no clue how I have 14 months in the mission. Part of it is that I feel like I just finished a year, and that’s what I tell everyone: “Tengo más o menos un año por aquí en Lima”! But I’m not lying! The other thing is that I should have almost 15, if we go according to cambios and assume that every cambio is 1.5 months (6 weeks), becuase I have:
1 cambio in the CCM
4 cambios in Machu Picchu, Canto Grande, San Juan de Lurigancho
4 cambios in Villa Hermosa, Collique, San Felipe
1 cambio in Año Nuevo 2, Año Nuevo, Comas
So that should be 10 cambios, or 15 months! Either way, I’m scared because my mission’s coming to an end and I don’t want to finish!
… Well, to be honest, after this cambio, I kind of do.
This has definitely been the hardest cambio in my mission up to this point– spiritually, emotionally, physically, area-wise, and ward-wise.
Spiritually because I realized just how much I need to teach with the Spirit and I realized that I haven’t been doing that much and I’ve really been striving to learn how to teach with the Spirit. I’ve realized that the difference between a good missionary and a great missionary is how much they teach with the Spirit, because the Spirit is what adds power to our teaching.
Emotionally, this has been tough because it’s hard to be excited to work when every day is basically trying to find the sort-of interested people that we contacted the other day and contacting new people because we have nothing else to do.
This is also why it’s been the hardest, area-wise– we’re always trying to find people to teach, but a lot of them reject us, unlike my other areas where everyone was willing to listen to us but didn’t want to change their lives according to what we taught. Then it’s just been really crazy, and that makes anyone stressed!
Physically, it’s been tough because our area is 1/3 flat, 2/3 giant cerro (I would use “hill”, but that doesn’t really do it justice. In Spanish they have two words for “hill”, and “cerro” works better). We managed to go up the giant hill in 10 minutes, bottom-to-top, but we had to pause for 3 to take a break, so… yeah! And then the ward here has had problems with missionaries (Another ward like that!) and we’re trying to get everything all fixed so they’ll help us and trust us a little bit more.
… But that doesn’t mean that we haven’t celebrated and had some fun!
We’ve done some more interesting service projects (If you count hauling sand and rocks (Again!) as interesting!) (Man, I burn every time I go out in the sun! I feel like a vampire!)
I took a victory photo ’cause I made it to the end of my Spanish book! (Take that, Spanish!)
We ate breakfast in our district meeting because it was Elder Escobar’s birthday (The Hermanas gave him a charmander stuffed animal!) and because I’m just the most awesome district leader ever.
And then we just felt like being cool (Obviously because we are!)
So it’s been a good, hard cambio, but it’s all good!
— Elder Schroeder
P.S. I’ll let you know what happens in the cambio! Stay tuned!