Well, not much to say. So I’ll try to make it interesting. Maybe you could publish it as a children’s story or something.

“Once upon a time there was a missionary named Elder Schroeder.

“He was from the United States and was serving his mission in Peru.

“Every day the drunk people and the little kids in the street would say hi to him, but they didn’t actually know any words in English. So sometimes they said other words in English, like ‘Yes!’ and, ‘Howryoo?’ for some reason that Elder Schroeder still doesn’t understand. Sometimes they yelled things like, ‘¡Gringo!’ because that’s the term for white people here, which makes a little more sense but still is a little weird. So he decided to start yelling, ‘¡Peruano!,’ the term for Peruvian people, when they did that so it wouldn’t seem as strange. But it still is.

“Elder Schroeder was a good missionary, but some days he had a lot of trouble because he forgot how to speak Spanish, and other days he forgot how to teach, too. Of course, this makes it really hard to do your job as a missionary because you kind of need to be able to speak and teach to help people to change their lives for the better. So that wasn’t great.

“Sometimes this happened for an entire week, like when he taught about the Book of Mormon. The people needed to ask his companion what he’d said because it didn’t make sense. So his companion had to explain it all over again.

“Elder Schroeder had a good companion named Elder Ushiñahua.

“Elder Ushiñahua was a good missionary, but sometimes Elder Schroeder got a little angry with him because they were always late for everything. Elder Ushiñahua didn’t get ready until when they needed to leave, and sometimes they were 30 minutes late for meetings with other missionaries because he took so long to do his stuff. He tried talking to him about it, but it didn’t really work because they were still really late.

“Elder Schroeder had a good district. The district had the two of them and two hermanas. Sometimes they ate breakfast at the church so they could practice teaching.

“The hermanas were good missionaries. They always did better than Elder Schroeder and Elder Ushiñahua, which is a good thing. But the zone leaders always bothered Elder Schroeder because he should be the example and should be the best in his district. Elder Schroeder wasn’t very happy with that, but when you forget how to speak Spanish it’s a little hard sometimes. But he’s trying to do better.

“So Elder Schroeder is good, but he’s tired.”

Today I took the most Northern-Lima picture ever!  All the little boxes explain why.

This week I only have a few things to mention, such as an earthquake (A little one, but still a little stronger than the others I’ve experienced!), a cool investigator, and a trip to the Granja Villa. I’ll start with the investigator, because that’s always exiting. (Maybe not as much for you guys, but I’m pumped!)

His name’s Marcelino, and he’s the only memeber of his family that’s not a member of the Church because he’s Catholic. However, the rest of the family (his wife and his son, Julio) don’t go to church, so he hasn’t had much contact with missionaries or the Church. Anyway, we started teaching them last week, hoping to help the family start coming to church again and to teach Marcelino. Well, we taugh Lesson 1 — about prophets, the church that Jesus Christ founded, what happened to the church after Christ’s death, why there are so many churches, and how the church of Christ was restored by Joseph Smith — and he paid attention and asked questions but it didn’t really seem like he cared a whole lot.

Well, Wednesday comes around and we go to visit them again, and he and Julio, his son, were waiting for us! Marcelino had felt something when we taught (The Spirit, obviously!) and was excited to learn more, and Julio had started reading the Book of Mormon and had already progressed 14 chapters! About a week before we told Julio that if he reads the Book of Mormon cover-to-cover in 6 weeks we’ll buy him pìzza, but he didn’t really care a whole lot. Then he prayed, felt the Spirit, and started to read! Then, on Sunday, they came to church! Awesome!

The earthquake wasn’t much, but the Granja Villa was AWESOME! Here I am with my district:

It was a little expensive (40 Sols) to get in, but it was TOTALLY worth it because it’s basically a little amusement park and everything is free once you enter (Except for the overpriced food, of course). They didn’t have roller coasters, but they did have…

Bumper cars:

Flying swing things:

Interesting animals in a little nature park:

And a few other short but fun rides. The best part was, we went on a Monday in the afternoon, so NOBODY else was there — just the 22 of us in our zone — and the operators let us do everything over and over again! We were in the bumper cars for 30 minutes straight because there was no one else!

My only problem: I forgot a change of shorts, so I had to use my dress pants, which, when combined with my jacket, t-shirt, tennis shoes, and gloves, I looked like someone from a boxing/workout class:

My companion hummed the theme from “Rocky” a few times throughout the day when he saw me!

So I’m all good down here in Peru, and I’ll keep you all posted about any other cool stuff that happens! ¡Chao!

— Elder Schroeder

This is kind of how I feel right now:

It’s kind of cold, I don’t have a whole lot of time to exercise because I’m so busy doing stuff, I’m still not entirely sure what I’m doing so I just go with it, and I feel kind of dumb and it all keeps life interesting.

This week was good , even if I did have a few downsides, like always. Traffic’s been especially bad in my area because they’re doing a bunch of construction to put gas lines under the roads here, and even if they work really fast (They finished almost everything in two weeks!) they have to block the roads. Then I’ve also had trouble doing the DL stuff I need to, like visits to get to know people in the other area in my district and visits to see how the sister missionaries work. Then I don’t sleep much ’cause I have to plan and organize so many things… To be honest, I really like being DL, but sometimes I would like a break to actually have time to study. That’s the biggest problem: I haven’t been able to study almost anything for an entire week straight, and it makes it hard to learn Spanish and know the Book of Mormon and the Bible when I can’t actually study them.

But this week, as I said, was pretty good, mostly because there’s a lot of good things that happen. For example, my companion fell asleep like this:

Then I got to eat some sort of weird fruit that they grow here:

I also ate another one that was REALLY sweet, called a custard apple, but I didn’t get a picture of that one.

And then, of course, it’s always good when someone gets baptized:

On Saturday I baptized one of our investigators, Silvia (I think I wrote a little about her last week). She’s really cool because she’s really changed and during the baptism, when she bore her testimony, I couldn’t stop smiling! It was also great because she had a lot of doubts about if anyone would actually support her in her baptism, since her family is Catholic and she didn’t know many of the members in Villa Hermosa. Well, I think she got some support:

These are all the people that came to her baptism (Well, minus me, my companion, and someone else who took pictures)!

So it’s been pretty good here, and here’s to a more interesting week to come!

— Elder Schroeder

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