Elder Schroeder's Mission Blog

One more day and I’ll have finished 11 months in the mission… That’s kind of weird to say…

This week was pretty normal, as far as you can get with a companion who’s dying (finishing, for those of you that don’t know mission slang). He’s spent some time packing and preparing himself to leave, so I’ve got some funny pictures of him as he took all his stuff out and put it back so it was all nice and orderly! It’s like when you clean your room and find a whole bunch of cool stuff that you forgot about!

But anyway, this week we didn’t really see anything very interesting as far as pictures go.  I have a few from our district (without the Hermanas, anyway), eating 2.5 liters (about 0.6 gallons) of ice cream…

But this week we’ve seen a couple of miracles and it’s been pretty cool to see the hand of God in our lives. Here are some of the more recent ones:

We were looking for a person we received as a reference and ended up teaching one of his neighbors, Abraham. He was just chilling in his house with his family, and his son in the other room had some crazy music from the jungles of Peru playing really loud in the background. So we taught Abraham about the Restoration of the Gospel, and right when we got to the part about Joseph Smith’s first vision — the part, as any missionary knows, that brings the Spirit more strongly than any other — the music in the background disappeared for the entire story! And when we moved on to the rest of the lesson the music came back, but you could barely hear it! It was really cool!

About a week ago we went to visit a less-active sister in the area, named Haydé, that hadn’t come to church for a while because her whole family has a lot of problems with their house: the people that live near her weren’t letting them have any water for a long time, and they had to build two other houses for her family, to name a few of the things. But we went to visit her and helped her remember that she needs the help of her Heavenly Father if she’s actually going to overcome these problems, and in the end not only she came to church but the rest of her family that also haven’t been coming for a while! And they came this week, too! It’s a good feeling to know that when we teach with the Spirit we can actually touch people!

This happened a little while back, but I didn’t mention it. Last week I sent some of my pictures from our service project when we were mining the hill. Anyway, to do this we have to use a few interesting tools, like a barreta, which is basically a giant solid-steel spike that you thrust into the rock to break it, and a comba, which is a massive hammer. Here is a picture of my companion holding it up. We had to take this picture quick because it weighs about 20 pounds!

Anyway, I was using the comba and I was trying to break a giant rock that we’d managed to cut out of the hill with the barretas. The rock was, obviously, very hard, and in one particular swing the comba actually rebounded off the rock and would have nailed me in the head if I hadn’t had some divine intervention! I don’t really know how (Because the comba was so heavy that I didn’t have any strength left in my arms to stop it after the rebound!), but the comba stopped just before it would have hit me! (I decided to stop for a little while after that…!)

But anyway, that’s how my week’s been! Hopefully it’ll all keep being good until my companion dies, too! (He’s really excited! Only 1 week!)

— Elder Schroeder

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

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