Almost 11 months (11 months already?! I’ve almost finished half my mission?! It’s too soon!)

Well, this week I don’t really have much to report, so I figured I’d just send some of the goofy pictures we took recently when we went to a park last P-Day.

It’s been a really long time since I’ve ridden a bike! So that was cool! (Except that it costs 5 soles… that’s like 5 dollars here!)

Then I also returned to my childhood (Except I’m too big to even fit down the slide, and it’s a ride of about 2 seconds and my legs are touching the ground!)

And then this, obviously, isn’t from our time at the park, but this was when we helped someone dig into the hill to expand their house a little bit. It’s hard work!

— Elder Schroeder

My companion’s got 3 weeks left in his mission, so he’s excited! He’s already planned his last day in the mission in his Agenda: Flight, Lunch with his family, and Welcome party! I’ve got so far to go that I can’t even begin to think like that, but I’m honestly happy I only have 10 months here, because one of the hermanas in my district, Hermana Meza, completed 9 months and she had a little party because she’s already halfway done! I don’t think I could serve for only 18 months! That’s way too short!

I’m happy about this week because we had a baptism (and the hermanas had another baptism), which is always great. The problem is that, for the missionaries, a baptism is the most stressful day of the entire week, especially if your ward mission leader almost never comes to church and didn’t prepare anything for the baptism. But either way, we’re always really stressed because a baptism is something very important and we have to have everything perfect! (So I got really stressed by our baptism because it was almost a big fail!)

The hermanas, on the other hand, had a baptism that was really great, except their ward mission leader ditched everything halfway through! He left during the Spiritual Thought and didn’t come back, and nobody had any idea what to do! So I just took the program from where he left it in the back and started leading, which is really weird, but I guess someone had to do it!

My companion always leaves me to lead everything because, as he says, I’m district leader (As if that actually means anything!), but it’s made me get used to leading and stuff. I don’t think I’m really a good leader, but at least I can ad-lib and fake my way through the stuff I need to do. So that stressed me out too!

Anyway, here’s a picture from the first baptism, from the hermanas. Her name’s Martha and she’s really cool — as district leader, I had to interview her to see if she was ready to be baptized — and she actually wanted me to baptize her! Unfortunately, our mission president has put a new rule that it has to be a member, so we got her friend Carlos to do it. I’m a little disappointed because I’ll never baptize again during my mission, but I’m happy that she got baptized by her friend!

As for our baptism, my companion got permission to do it because he, Freddy, didn’t want anyone else to do it, and it’ll be my companion’s last baptism, so…

It’s also been a pretty good week because my companion got his suri! Suri is apparently some kind of grub or maggot or something that they eat in the jungles of Peru. It’s actually kind of tasty (It’s got a flavor kind of like pepperoni!) and we all ate it as a district.

And just so you know what they look like from up close:

We fried them because they taste better that way, and it was kind of funny to see everyone’s faces! The hermanas were the funniest because Hermana Meza was trying to encourage Hermana Manrique to eat it (She didn’t want to!) and they both did, but when Hermana Meza ate it she almost threw up and had to drink water while Hermana Manrique ate it without any problem! (For the record, I did eat the head, too!) Achievement Unlocked: Suri!

Not much else to report for the week (Except for some crazy old woman that tried to stone us when we went by her house! Apparently she thinks we’re robbers, not servants of the Lord, so she picks up a rock whenever we pass by! Luckily it’s not in our area — I went to visit Elder Seminario in his area — and he was able to warn me about it because he remember where she lives! Some old people are nuts!)

— Elder Schroeder

Well, I still don’t know why nobody received the email I sent two weeks ago, but I guess I’ll just try sending it again. If it doesn’t work this time I guess you’ll never know… Mwaa ha ha ha haa!

Aaaaaaaanyway, what happened this week…:

Nothin’.

Well, maybe that’s not exactly true, but it hasn’t really been all that different and I’m not really sure what to write about. So I figure I’ll explain a little bit about what it’s like being a missionary here in the mission Peru Lima North, because every mission is different, of course, so even those of you old people who already served missions should find it interesting! (¡¿Cómo?! ¡No dije nada!) Anyway, here’s what our routine is like:

6:30 — Wake Up and Exercise
7:00 — Shower
8:00 — Personal Study
9:00 — Companionship Study

We start (almost) every day like this, but our schedule after this depends on the day:

Monday:
10:00 — Internet
11:30 — P-Day
6:00 — Start Working

Tuesday:
10:30 — District Meeting
12:00 — Start Working
1:00 — Lunch
2:00 — Language Study
3:00 — Working

Wednesday:
10:00 — Service
1:00 — Lunch
2:00 — Language Study
3:00 — Start Working

Thursday:
10:00 — Weekly Planning
1:00 — Lunch
2:00 — Language Study
3:00 — Start Working

Friday:
10:00 — Start Working
1:00 — Lunch
2:00 — Language Study
3:00 — Working

Saturday:
10:00 — Start Working
1:00 — Lunch
2:00 — Language Study
3:00 — Working

Then every day after ends like this:

9:00 — Return to the house (Maybe)
9:30 — We have to be in the house now so we can Plan for Tomorrow
10:00 — Get ready for bed
10:30 — Sleep

Now, of course, I should probably explain that this is how our day should go. In reality we end up losing 15-30 minutes of lunch because we usually have to eat lunch with members in the 7th or 8th Zone, which is really far up in the hills, and then we have to wait for them to prepare everything, then eat, and then share a spiritual thought, and then return. During all this time we usually lose the rest of the time we had to study Spanish (Or English, for my companion), so we get back to the house just in time to leave again! We’re so far away from everything that we have to leave early to get ANYWHERE on time!

The most interesting thing (And also the thing we do most, of course!) is work, or proselyte, or whatever you want to call it. Here we basically hike up and down hills to find the people who set appointments with in order to visit them. Along the way we talk to people we meet in the street to invite them to learn a little bit about our message or just to invite them to church on Sunday. It’s always a little interesting to talk to random strangers, but it’s also really cool because I’ve become WAY more comfortable with it and now it’s really easy to make small talk with people, something I couldn’t do at ALL before the mission!

But yeah, that’s my day. And here’s some photos:

Someone outside our house started a HUGE fire to burn all their junk!

My companion sleeps the entire night with a blanket over his head:

I don’t know how he breathes, but it keeps his face warm, he says!

I present: The poor-man’s Peruvian version of Ritz crackers:

Leaves a little to be desired…

And your face when your cell phone dies while you’re calling to collect your district’s numbers for the week and the only available outlet is in the bathroom:

Anyway, until next week! I’d love to get any questions you guys have about the mission life or whatever so I can answer them the next time I don’t have anything to write about!

— Elder Schroeder

Well, not exactly sure what happened last week, but I guess my email messed up and didn’t send anything! Hopefully you’ll all get it, and then you can read this one afterwards so you understand it better!

Anyway, this week’s been good — nothing new’s really going on here, except we’re trying to get used to some of the changes in the mission, which I’m actually really liking. The shorter lessons that we have to do now give us more time to work with more people, and I’m already starting to see a few changes! Last week we met a lot of cool people with potential, and it seems like it will just keep getting better!

Of course, I’m also getting used to being district leader of a big district, which is really interesting when I’ve also got to lead the district meetings and stuff. We already know each other from being together in previous districts, but  now that I’m DL I have to “be the example!” and all that, so I get a lot of pressure from my ZLs (zone leaders), but it’s all good.

This week I’ve got some pretty sweet pictures because we hiked up a hill as a district and took some photos from there. I suppose I need to explain some of them:

This is obviously me (duh!) holding the Standard of Liberty (but written in Spanish). For those of you who aren’t Mormon (or don’t remember), the Standard of Liberty is the flag that an army captain from the Book of Mormon, named Moroni, wrote to assemble and encourage his soldiers and his people to fight for a just cause. In English, it says, “In memory of our God, our religion and freedom, and our peace and our families,” and I got it from Elder Rodriguez when he left. It’s so cool that I couldn’t just leave it hanging up as a curtain!

This picture’s really cool because I’ve got the sun in the background, the flag, and this cross that’s up on top of the hill (They put crosses on just about every hill!).

A good old artistic shot of my shadow. I think this looks pretty sweet!

Then I’ve got this one of me jumping off a rock. This was my companion’s idea; he thought it’d be cool if we jumped off a rock, but cropped out the rock so that it looks like we’re in the sky. It turned out pretty well, but in order to get this effect you have to jump off a tall rock and you have to jump really high, so it hurt a lot when I landed and I almost collapsed upon impact, but other than that it wasn’t bad. (It’s not like we’re really dumb and thought, “Hey, let’s jump off a rock close to the edge of the cliff!” or anything, but I imagine that thought passed through someone’s head!)

And, just ‘cuz, here’s a picture of a cat eating a rat:

I’ll let you all know how it goes next week! If things go well, we’ll get to baptize one of our investigators (Who we married recently!) named Freddy!

— Elder Schroeder

Hey all! First, I just wanted to thank all of you who wrote to me for the uplifting messages I got. Maybe I need to complain more or something, because I got WAY more emails than usual! Nah, just kidding, but seriously, it was good to hear from you all and I liked the stories from you ex-missionaries! I know I’m not alone, but it’s nice to think that I’ll be able to laugh about all this after my mission, too!

Well, as the subject says, we’ve got cambios (“changes”) again! And while I’m not exactly disappointed about the changes to my companion (It’s the same) or the hermanas (They’re the same hermanas), I’m still trying to wrap my head around two things:

1. I’m now district leader of, not only my area and Collique, the area of the hermanas, but I’m also in charge of two other areas, Casuarinas 1 and 2! I just barely figured out how to work with the sisters and be DL, but now I’ve got to get used to it again because now I have four Elders, too! I think I just became the largest district here in my zone! (I’m gonna die…)

2. Well, as I mentioned a few weeks back, we have a new mission president, Presidente Godfrey. He’s very different from Presidente Erickson, but we didn’t really realize he would do so many changes until this week! We learned on Monday that he has decided to change the following:

We aren’t going to have zone meetings every week, now it’s district meetings, meaning we don’t get to be with other missionaries outside of our district as often and I have to start preparing something to do for an hour and a half, not just 30 minutes! And now my district is twice as big, too!

I don’t have to call and verify with the missionaries every night to see how they’re doing, just once a week (Which actually works in my favor after my district’s growth, but how am I supposed to know what’s going on if I can only call once a week?)

All our lessons have to be really short, quick, and powerful. We shouldn’t teach longer than 15 minutes the first lesson, and the others should only take 30 minutes at most. Sooo… I have to re-learn a few things and start practicing teaching quick!

The zone leaders are only going to interact with the district leaders (me, in this case), not with anyone else. So I’m basically on my own here (I’m seriously going to die…)

Sooooo… Yeah. That’s going to be interesting…

Moving on, last P-Day was pretty cool because we went to the Park of Legends, which is a zoo with a much cooler name. Anyway, there we got to see a whole bunch of cool animals, but my camera died halfway through, so unfortunately I didn’t get a picture of a monkey with the most amazing mustache I have ever seen in my life (I know you’re all really disappointed about that). But here are some other cool animals we saw:

A penguin with big dreams (Feel kind of sorry for him, right?)

An amazing, one-of-a-kind animal from the selva (jungle) of Peru:

Elder Ushiñahua! (In front of a giant pineapple) (He actually is from the selva, a part called Urimaguas)

Then I guess some other people got a photo of a REALLY strange animal from North America:

That’s right: Some little Peruvian kids ran up to me and asked me if they could take a picture with me because I was such a strange sight! I thought it was funny, so I went along with it!

So that’s pretty good, but not really a whole lot of things you wouldn’t find in other zoos in the States. I guess that’s kind of the problem with zoos: They bring animals from all over the world, so you don’t really find anything new in any particular zoo (Except for Elder Ushiñahua, I guess, but I’m kind of over that ’cause I live with it! Elder Schroeder, too!)

And then we also helped out with a wedding! (And Elder Rodriguez, my companion before, was there too, so he got a free ride into the picture)

However, it was kind of *pbthhh* because the husband, Freddy, went to go work in the morning and was really far away! So he didn’t get back until really late, and we didn’t get there until after everything had already ended! So I was a little ticked and I imagined his wife would kill him (I’m pretty sure that if I even thought of working on the day of my wedding my wife would refuse to become my wife — She’d end it right there!), but she was all good because they’d already signed the papers and were legally married. But still!

So yeah, those are the adventures from this week! Hopefully I have some more goofy things to share next time, but until then I guess I’l be figuring out how to be district leader all over again!

— Elder Schroeder