Hey, all! This week was pretty normal for us — Although probably really strange for the rest of you if I was to put it all in this email! — but there were, as always, some interesting parts, too. The life of a missionary is never dull!

On Thursday we went to the temple in Lima… and Elder Pastenes forgot his recommend! Since we only realized this when we got there, we decided to try and get Cristian, our ward mission leader, to bring it for us! We ended up waiting for almost the entire day on the temple grounds, but eventually Cristian showed up and we managed to do a quick session before we left. It really wasn’t bad, because being a missionary at the temple is like being a celebrity: all the people there are members and know missionaries, so we got a lot of people shaking our hands and calling, “¡Elderes!”

Also on Thursday I bought a Book of Mormon in Quechua, the language of the Incas, the ancient inhabitants of Peru. I’ll include a photo of me attempting to read it. Take a look at the words. Yeah… Glad I only have to learn Spanish!

Saturday was a little crazy and dangerous. My companion ended up getting attacked by a parrot and it bit him pretty good, so now he’s got a bit of a gash in his thumb. That thing just latched on to his finger and wouldn’t let go! (Really, it was all Elder Pastenes’s fault. Every time before when we’d gone over he’d bothered the bird because he wanted to hold it… Yeah, that didn’t go so well!)

And now I’ve got another entry for the “Most Dangerous Service Projects”. Right up there with “moving couches to the second story with rope while standing on the roof”, we’ve now got “standing on a ladder that’s on a very thin tin roof and leaning way over to cut bricks off the side of the house next door”. And, as the lightest, I was chosen to be the one to climb the ladder. Word of advice for missionaries: It’s actually safer to be fat!

“About three stories up in the air with only a wobbly, handmade ladder on a thin tin roof to keep me from falling… Time for a selfie!”

As for the more spiritual stuff, while we were waiting at the temple I found a really great article in the Liahona (For those who don’t know, it’s the magazine the Church publishes for countries outside the U.S.) that perfectly describes how it is to be a missionary:

“A Mission Was Better Than Expected”

“As a young man, I looked forward to the day when I would serve a full-time mission. When I finally entered the mission field, I discovered that missionary service was not what I had expected—it was better. It was harder than I thought, but the satisfaction that came from doing what the Lord asked of me was indescribable.

“Never before had I experienced the joy of helping someone attend church. Never before had I felt the thrill of hearing someone say, ‘Sure, come on in’ so that they could hear the restored gospel. Never before had I sensed the reality of the power that came as we declared repentance. Never before had I prayed with such real intent. Never before had an hour of scripture study gone by so fast. Never before had I been brought to tears by the realization of my imperfections. Never before had I experienced the devastation that comes with the words, ‘Elders, please don’t come by my house anymore.’ Never before had I gotten a blister on my foot the size of my thumb. Never before had I felt so protected. Never before had I felt so much responsibility for my actions because I wore the name ‘Jesus Christ’ on my chest.

“Never before had I been so close to my Heavenly Father as I came to be during my full-time mission.”

That’s exactly how I feel now! I really can’t say it better myself, because all the things that he said are so true for me too (Except for the blister part! Let’s hope that never happens!)! The mission is so awesome, even if it kills me most of the time!

Well, that’s all I’ve got for now! ¡Hasta luego!

— Elder Schroeder

YEAH! SHE GOT BAPTIZED!

If you remember from my email last week, we were supposed to have a baptism on the 20th, and we did! I’m going to put a little bit about her because she’s really cool and it’s a very boring story that I want to share with all of you.

Her name is Corina, but for the longest time I kept thinking, “Cortina” because she owns a peluquería (a hair salon or barber shop) on the corner of our street, and the Spanish word “cortar” means “to cut”, so I kept thinking “Cortina”! We met her one day when Elder Terrones and I went to her place to get his hair cut, and he talked to her about how we’re missionaries and share messages about Jesus Christ. She was interested and we had been teaching her ever since. She was really cool because she’s one of those people that ACTUALLY DOES THEIR HOMEWORK (!!!) and didn’t have problems living the commandments because she understood why we obey them. The baptism was good (Except for a few minor things, like forgetting the baptismal clothes for her to wear and her thinking the baptism was at 12 PM and not 7 PM because of some misinformation. Oops!) and she was really excited during it because her daughter, who she hasn’t seen for almost a year because she left to live with her boyfriend, came for the baptism, as well as some of the other members of her family! (In case you’re wondering, I didn’t baptize her, but that only meant less stress for me!) The only things that really stressed me out were forgetting the clothing, having to give a short talk about the Holy Ghost last-minute, and the fact that Corina almost didn’t show up on Sunday for her confirmation!

I’ll include a picture of her, with me, my companion, her son Bryan, and Christian, the ward mission leader.

As for the rest of the week, it was good, like usual. Lots of walking (We seem to average almost 12,000 steps every day, but I’ve only got a week’s worth of data so far!), teaching (We’ve found a really great family to teach! They’ve listened a little bit to the missionaries before, but with us they were actually excited to listen! And better yet, they went to the baptism of Corina on Saturday and church on Sunday! And EVEN better, the parents are already married! That’s about as likely as finding gold around here!), and sleeping (I’M SO TIRED ALL THE TIME!!!)

As for the little random events that have happened, I’ve:

Had a dog steal my frisbee (There are a lot of dogs around here, and on Thursday we were playing in the park in the morning… and a dog comes out of nowhere and steals it!) It took almost 5 minutes of chasing it to get it back — I didn’t even know dogs understood what a frisbee IS!

Taught the mother of a crime family. We have a recent convert named Zarai in our area and she lives in a house with some of the most loca women I have ever met! One day we passed by to give Zarai a blessing of health, and we set up an appointment with her grandma. When we came by for the lesson, the grandma, named Gloria, was kind of hysterical because everyone had left, leaving her alone with her little grandkids. Why had everyone left? Well, apparently the entire family (minus Gloria, Zarai, and the grandkids) buy and trade counterfeit money in the markets around here for a living! (Almost all of them have been to prison at least once!) And on Wednesday the police started hunting them all because they caught wind of them in one of the markets! So… that was new.

Eaten cow stomach. I didn’t know what it was at first — it just looked like very strange, unappetizing strips of yellow meat — until Elder Pastenes told me. It really didn’t make a difference to me because it wasn’t great: very chewy and with a strange, unpleasant taste. I wasn’t disgusted to eat cow stomach; I was disgusted because it just tasted bad. But that’s one more strange meal I can brag about eating!

Had some blunders with Spanish. One of them wasn’t actually my fault — it was the fault of Elder Pastenes’s little Plan of Salvation representation. He has a bunch of little pictures to help explain the Plan of Salvation to investigators, and one of the things is a little plastic spirit to help`people understand that we lived as spirits before we came to earth and got a body. So he asked one of our investigators, “Hermana Vascilia, ¿Qué eramos antes de nuestra vida aquí?” (“Sister Vascilia, what were we before our life here?”) Her answer: “¡Plastico!” (To be fair, she’s 73 years old, but it was still funny!)

Had some bad hair days (I need a haircut…)

Eaten an orange banana. Wait… Orange?!

I forgot to mention this last week, but I got my Zone T-Shirt on Monday and, well, there was a little bit of a mistake with it.  It was supposed to say, “Head & Shoulder”, but “and” is “y” in Spanish, and I guess the words were a little close together… So with the help of Elder Terrones I decided to make my shirt make sense!

But yeah, everything else is great here. Just livin’ the life of a missionary!

¡Chao!
Elder Schroeder

Hey Dad! ¡Feliz Cumpleaños, and Happy Birthday!

I know it’s still a little early, but I’m not really going to get a chance to send an email until next Monday, and then it’s almost Mom’s birthday! So hopefully early is better than late!

I LOVE OUR CHRISTMAS CARD THIS YEAR!!! That’s so awesome! It looks great, and I really like Zack’s face in the hood! The problem is now you have to top it! Good luck with that next year! (I’ll try to send some good photos of me in Peru!)

Happy B-Day!
Elder Schroeder

Check out my wall!

This week was really cool! I’ve been having a lot of success lately and it seems like I just keep getting more! I can’t believe I ever thought this area was hard!

Part of what’s hard is my new companion, Elder Pastenes; I’m going to kill him! (In missionary talk, that means he’s going to die as my companion (As in he’s going to leave the mission field after these 6 weeks with me)). He’s really awesome, but he doesn’t know the area (Obviously — he’s new!) so I have to try and remember all the places we need to go and when. It’s really hard when we use a mototaxi, because if I act too much like I don’t know the area they charge me more because they think I’m some dumb rich American tourist. But other than that he’s great! I was worried that he would be really lazy because he’s about to finish his mission, but if anything he’s even MORE hard-working because he wants 15 more baptisms before he finishes his mission! That’s really cool, and we’ve been working hard to get that; hopefully I have the motivation to be like him when I’m about done!

He’s also a little crazy, which explains his desire for 15 baptisms. He’s very Type 3, as Mom would say, because when he has a goal he’s like, “Alright, let’s do this. Boom boom boom. Go!” But he’s even more Type 3 than anyone else I’ve ever met, and he’s also a little OCD (Obsessive-Compulsive Disorder), so everything has it’s place and he’s organized. It’s better than Elder Terrones, but I think it’s going to kill me; for example, I twisted my ankle pretty badly on Monday (It miraculously healed overnight, so I’m all good now!) but he STILL RAN up the 217 steps to get to one of our investigators! All in all, he’s really awesome, but it’s a pretty drastic change from Elder Terrones!

I’ve included a picture of him planning (Notice the Cheeto cigar).

Not a whole lot happened this week to report besides the change of companion (And pace!). This week’s highlights:

The cat struck again! Last week it ate my pizza, and this week it peed on my birthday package (the one full of gifts from my parents) out of spite! It couldn’t eat the food, so it just peed on it! It was nasty, but at least everything was pre-packaged in plastic so ‘tsallgud

I think I’ve developed something like the Gift of Tongues 1.0, because I can’t really speak fluently or correctly but sometimes when I want to talk I think of the idea I want to get across and it’s like a little voice in my head tells me the phrase I should use with the conjugation and everything. Sometimes I don’t listen because I’m not sure if it’s the Spirit (Sometimes the “translation” doesn’t sound right) but I guess if it is I should listen anyway!

I spent 30 minutes on Sunday trying to get one of our recent converts to go to church. He didn’t have any formal clothing to wear, so we searched in our cuarto to find stuff he could use (He didn’t want to show up in street clothes — ¡Qué vergüenza!. Since we couldn’t find anything that would fit him (I’m too tall and skinny!), he refused to go! (*sigh*) It’s always a continual struggle with the people here to get them to stay active!

I think my stomach is trying to save me, but it’s a miserable way to do it. See, I’ve managed to gain weight here (SOMEHOW! I still don’t understand how I can walk almost all day, eat basically rice, chicken, and bread, and STILL gain weight! I’m naturally skinny to begin with!) and a few days ago I ate something bad and now I can’t eat very much (As Peruvians say, “¡Yo como como un gato!”). So I feel bad whenever I can’t finish the food they give me, but in my defense I physically CAN’T!

I got a pedometer in my birthday package (Thanks, Grandma and Grandpa!) and I counted my steps on Sunday. The total: 8,194.  That’s a lot of walking! And that’s on the Day of Rest!

Well, I’ll keep you all updated on how it goes here in Peru! We’re supposed to have a baptism this Saturday, and if all goes well I’ll include that and some info about her in my next email! ¡Nos vemos!

— Elder Schroeder

Yay! I finally finished my training for the mission! Now I have a little bit more freedom to choose what I study and when!

This week was a good week. It’s nice that things seem like they’re starting to go our way here in (fake) Machu Picchu! Other than the improvement in the work (We might actually be able to get 4 baptisms this month!) and investigators falling out of the sky (We’ve had several people now ask us if we’re Mormons and where the chapel is, and they’ve agreed to let us visit them!), not much has happened. I’ll mention some small highlights (and lowlights, too):

Last P-Day we played Jenga, and that was kind of interesting because we had everyone in the zone play, meaning there were about 16 of us. One of the things that makes games in Peru fun is the loser (or second place) has a castigo, or punishment, so there’s a little more on the line! There are a few I’ve seen, such as “estatua” (“statue”), where the person can’t move and everyone else gets to take turns moving their limbs to put them in goofy positions, but the castigo for Elder Herrera, who finally toppled the Jenga tower, was the funniest yet: he had to spell his name with his rear end! I got a video, but it’s a little too big to send in the email. Needless to say, we were dying!

Also, apparently I have ANOTHER nickname in the mission! I already had “Elder Head & Shouder” (“Elder Head and Shoulder” with a Spanish accent) and “Elder H&S” because to try and help people pronounce my name Elder Terrones told them it was pronounced like “Shoulder” in the name of the shampoo “Head & Shoulder”! So that’s one, and apparently I’m also “Elder Ken”, as in Ken and Barbie, because of a training meeting we had! President Erickson was sharing his conversion story and he had me and another Elder come up for a demonstration. So we were both standing up there and President told everyone about how the two Elders who met and converted him were like us: white, blonde, and “muy guapo” (“very good-looking”), like Ken from Ken and Barbie! We were both just kind of standing there, and I thought, “What the heck, time to look dumb!” So I struck a pose and everyone laughed! So I guess I’m Elder Ken now, too!

We celebrated my birthday a little on Wednesday with pizza but we didn’t get to finish all of it because a CAT got in while we slept and ate the last piece! We REALLY need to fix the window!

But my favorite part about Wednesday was I KICKED A DOG! I’ve been wanting to kick a dog for a while now because some of them are REALLY vicious and bark at us and get a little too close for comfort, gnashing their teeth and everything. Normally Elder Terrones will swing his bag at them and that kind of works, but if you pick up a rock and throw it in their general direction is better. But this dog kind of surprised me and it got really close, so I just kicked it in the face! Don’t feel too bad for it; it’s a big dog and it ALWAYS bothers us whenever we pass by. It was really satisfying!

On Thursday I got really sick and still can’t eat anything; I think I got some kind of stomach bug from the pizza. This is the SECOND TIME I’ve been sick because Peruvians don’t cook their food enough!

Anything else? Well, we didn’t have electricity but needed to shower, so we kind of made do; #ghettoperu!

What else, what else?… Oh yeah! Changes!

Every 6 weeks we have companion changes (maybe), and this is the first time that I’m actually having a change of companion. Elder Terrones is going to another area and I’m going to stay here with another companion. I don’t remember his name, but apparently he’s only got this following change left and then he goes home, so he might be a little lazy, but hopefully not. I’ll let you know how it all goes.

¡Hasta luego!
— Elder Schroeder

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