Merry Christmas! (They’re still celebrating it here!)

One of the kind of cool, kind of not-cool things about Peru: They celebrate a lot! Christmas celebrations for them start on the 24th and keep on going to the 25th, and then after that they just keep on celebrating until New Years! It’s also pretty awesome ’cause almost all their celebrations involve blowing things up:

Sorry if the camera was a little shaky — there were a lot of explosions going off at the time!

Funny story: The guys below us bought a type of firework called “la mama rata” (the mother rat) or something like that and it’s basically a stick of dynamite! When it exploded, it was so loud the windows shook and my compi and I — On the balcony of the second floor! — could feel the shockwave! (It scared the guys below us so much that they didn’t light any more of those after that!)

I don’t really have any funny stories or interesting events from this week, aside from a few photos I took, so I’ll just share those and an explanation:

We had a mission Christmas party:

While there, we had lunch — actual steak!

One of my Christmas gifts:

How nice — they included a user manual! (Yes, a 2-inch-long flashlight apparently needs a user manual) (Good thing I read it, too! 5 pages of how to twist it to turn it on and off! I never would have figured that out just by looking at it!)

Here’s basically what our companionship study is like:

(These were gifts for my companion and me. They dance in the sun, so we did companionship study outside on the balcony to see if they work)

That’s all! Merry Christmas, and Happy New Year, too! See you in 2017!

— Elder Schroeder

¡Feliz navidad a todos!

… I cannot type in Spanish. If I try, I end up with problems for the next 5 minutes because I have to remember where the keys are and how to spell things!

I think my problem is that I can actually speak Spanish now (Still got some grammatical errors there, but for the most part I’m good now!), so I don’t need to translate Spanish to English and vice-versa (Which is, quite honestly, one of the most awesome things about learning and speaking two languages! Now they’ve become two separate worlds, and I can enter both of them! I just need to improve a little bit more so I sound like a native speaker!).

But anyway, because of this I start typing in Spanish but I’m used to English, so it takes a minute to adjust to Spanish, and then I can’t switch back because I have to calibrate my mind for English again!… And don’t even get my started on texting! Here in the mission is the first time I’ve ever had a cell phone that’s basically mine (For all of you who just gasped in shock, no, I never had a cell phone, and even now it’s not really mine — it’s the area’s!), but since we can send unlimited messages we use that a lot to communicate. Sooooo I end up texting everyone, and I’ve gotten used to texting in Spanish! I tried it in English, but it doesn’t work, so I just do Spanish now!

This week wouldn’t really be very interesting for all of you, just because we didn’t do much, but I’ve had a lot of “lightbulb!” moments lately that have been cool. For example, I’ve realized that the only reason I understand and use some parts of Spanish grammar is because of moments when someone used it and then all of a sudden it clicked and I understood the purpose and how it’s used! Little things like that helped me understand it all, and it’s really cool to see how it’s natural for me now.

Another cool thing is that I’ve learned a little bit of psychiatry! Being district leader has forced me to analyze the people in my district to see how they are and what they need, so I’ve learned how to understand little signs and things like that. I’m not an expert or anything, but I’ve noticed a difference! It’s kind of cool that it’s just natural now! (Of course, I’m still kind of a moron, but at least I have a better idea of how everyone’s doing!)

Speaking of my district, here’s a photo of the new people:

(Well, minus my companion, ’cause he took the picture…)

We painted the house of a member, so that’s why my hand’s blue. Anyway, left to right:

Hermana Bozarth, Hermana Cárdenas, Hermana Domitila, Élder McMurray, Élder Schroeder, and Élder Escobar. Elder Escobar is training Elder McMurray, and Hermana Domitila is Hermana Cárdenas’s new companion!… And if you believed that, you might not know me OR the mission very well!

And then we also implemented one of the greatest ideas ever conceived in my mission:

We bought a stamp! We got sick and tired of having to write everything by hand, so we bought a stamp with the church’s address and stamped everything!

But yeah, this concludes my super exciting week! Have a merry Christmas, and for those who I’m going to Skype on the 25th, I’ll see you then!

— Elder Schroeder

I’m starting to get scared that the end of my mission is coming too fast! Even if the mission is tough, draining, and stressful at times, it’s been AWESOME! It’s very special to be able to focus everything in serving God and changing people’s lives for the better. I’m not a really great missionary or anything — far from it — but I’m loving what I’m doing!

Anyway, as of note, we’ve had a couple of changes in the mission rules (AGAIN!) so now I can use the computer for as long as I want, but the problem is that it costs money, so this week I’m not going to write to everyone like I want because I already used a lot of time working on a few other little side projects, but next week I’ll be able to do what I want! (To be honest, these little side projects have been waiting for almost 6 months to be finished, but I never had time before! ¡Por fin!)

But yeah, I kind of left you guys hanging last week with the cambios and all, so I’ll start with that. First, I’m still with Elder Marino:

And if you’re wondering about his incredibly stylish hat and the cotton earplugs, we did a service project sanding cement walls so they can be painted, and it makes a lot of noise! And when you clean the ceiling, all the cement dust falls in your hair, so he had the hat! (The thing I don’t understand is why we decided that the guy who’s 5′ 4″ should clean the ceiling!)

And in my district, we’ve had a few changes, but I’ll wait until next week to show you who they are ’cause I still don’t have any píctures of the newbies in my district (I’m still District Leader!) (Poor missionaries…!)

In local news, my bag finally up and died on me:

DANG IT!

I was hoping to use it until the end of the mission and then burn it or something to celebrate (That idea’s still in process!), but unfortunately the strap broke and now I can’t use it. And that’s the only thing that’s broken! But I guess I know what my Christmas gift for myself is going to be! (I also guess I shouldn’t carry around the Bible, the Triple Combination, two Books of Mormon, 10 folletos, a bottle of water, a flashlight, and the Ward Directory in the future…!)

And then, just for kicks, here’s a cute picture of a kitten the size of my shoe:

Have a good week! I’ll write next time with more stuff! (My companion’s a little bored now… He’s been waiting for a half-hour!)

— Elder Schroeder

¡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!