Elder Schroeder's Mission Blog

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

¡Hola! ¿Cómo están? ¿Qué tal?

This week in the extremely exciting life of Elder Schroeder, I:

Watched a movie I’ve seen so many times that even though it was in Spanish I could quote it in my head: The Emperor’s New Groove (Love that movie!) And it was appropriate for my mission because if you think about it, it’s about ancient Peru (kind of)! (Even in Spanish it still has one of the worst end credits songs ever)

Discovered, while cleaning the NEW house of Roxana, that she is packing heat (She found four little handguns in the bags of miscellaneous stuff she had all over her house! I’ll send a picture of one, but where the heck did she get four police-issue handguns?!)

Realized (again) that this is my life for the next 21 months (It still seems strange that I’m a missionary — I don’t really think about it much…)

Had the Spirit guide our lessons in really weird directions that were actually exactly what our investigators needed (We taught about the Gospel of Jesus Christ when our plan was something COMPLETELY different! And it was really good!)

Discovered that this summer is very abnormal. It’s been MUCH colder and cloudier than usual, and I’m (kind of) loving it! (I would like it more if it wasn’t so hot, but at least it’s not hotter like it should be!)

Spent two days being trained in a general broadcast for all the missionaries in the world and being trained in a special mission-wide training session. There was a lot of good advice, and I think it’ll really help me be a better missionary. (Unfortunately we had to work extra hard to make up the difference in our lessons for the week)

Went to the Lima Temple for the sealing of the cousins of Elder Terrones. (Man, that guy can do just about whatever he wants! He can visit his family when the rules say we shouldn’t, he can go to the temple at the drop of a hat, and he can drag me to all of this even though I’m new and should instead be learning how to be a missionary!) I was really surprised at how short the sealing was; I expected it to last about 30 minutes, but really it was only about 5 for the actual ordinance! Who knew you could be sealed as a family for time and all eternity in 5 minutes?! (Sorry, that photo’s a little creepy… His cousin married a man from Italy, in case you were wondering who’s the big white guy next to the small Peruvian woman)

Discovered that I was right about how toxic Peru is. For the past month I’ve had this really bad cough, and a few days ago we confirmed that living here gave me bronchitis! (Ain’t nobody got time for that!) So, yeah, that’s not good…

As for the smaller stuff, I:

Had lots of trouble moving big rocks with a rope…

Didn’t have space to sit in the car properly, so we made do…

Lived off peanut butter and jelly sandwiches and oatmeal (again) (*sigh*…)

Other than that, not much is going on around here. It’s pretty routine, but this next week certainly won’t be because I’m going to be the senior companion. It’s part of the training I’m supposed to get in Week 11, and that means I’m in charge of making ALL the decisions, doing ALL the planning, and making sure my companion is doing what he’s supposed to! (Elder Terrones is loving this! He’s intentionally being really difficult! (I’m kind of hating his uselessness right now — at least I do something as the junior companion!)) So I’ll probably have some more to complain, I mean talk, about next week.

— Elder Schroeder

Well, this week was not really all that interesting — lots of walking and Superman… and walking and getting locked out again… and hiking up hills and making mistakes in Spanish… and teaching and getting chewed out by a stranger… and sweating and chasing chickens and spraying poison… and teaching and destroying and rebuilding a house… yeah. Such is the life of a missionary!

On Monday we went to tour a museum of the Inquisition — the thing where they tortured anyone who wasn’t a member of the national church until they confessed their faith was wrong — and we got to see a lot of torture methods (I have pictures!). Then we got to eat lunch! Mmmmm! So appetizing!

After lunch was kind of cool because there was Superman. Well, some Peruvian dressed up as Superman (Woof! Worst Superman costume ever!) for some TV show. Have I mentioned that Peruvian TV shows are pretty bad and really cheesy? ‘Cause they’re awful! So all us “Mormons” got on Peruvian TV and for the next couple days we ran into people that said they’d seen us on TV!

On Tuesday we got locked out (AGAIN!!!) Elder Terrones REALLY needs a better way to remember the keys! This is seriously the third or fourth time! Getting back in was an adventure; we’re just lucky our window is already broken and someone happened to leave a pole lying around (I’ll send a picture of this, too)! Needless to say, we were a little late to our next appointment…

On Tuesday I also made a pretty funny mistake in Spanish– luckily it was only during a practice! We were practicing something about the need to be chaste and I, as the investigator, said, “La Biblia dice que no debemos ser adulterios” (“The Bible says that we shouldn’t be adulterers”) — or, at least, that’s what I tried to say. In reality, I used “adultos” (“adults”), not “adulterios”! Elder Terrones took it in stride; he responded with, “Bueno, hermano, necesitamos arrepentirnos, porque somos adultos” (“Well, Brother, we need to repent because we’re adults”)! It was really funny for us, but maybe you just had to be there.

Wednesday marked 100 DAYS IN THE MISSION for me (About 630 left!), and I spent an hour of it being yelled at by an investigator named Patricia. I was on splits with another missionary and we were late to the appointment. So Patricia (who’s a little loco) chewed us out for an hour about how we should be on time and give her money (because she doesn’t have any) and shouldn’t be hypocrites. Really she just used us as an outlet to vent her frustration about the problems in her life. That was kind of new.

Thursday we chased chickens all morning. Roxana, the woman I baptized two weeks ago, REALLY needs a new house because she practically lives in a dump. So on Thursday we went over to help her move the stuff out of her house — including the chickens she kept! The problem is the chickens have a lot of places to hide in a ramshackle house like hers, and they’re fast little suckers! And then when we’d finally get all but one, another few would escape and we’d have to hunt them down! When we finally got all the chickens and her important stuff moved out, Elder Terrones and I went through her house and sprayed poison all over the place to kill the bugs; we didn’t want surprises on Saturday while we were destroying and rebuilding her house. The liquid we used was scary! It had legit white steam/smoke like those crazy sciencey concoctions in movies!

Then on Saturday came the actual destruction and reconstruction. Luckily we had pretty much the entire ward helping us, but she had so much junk in her house that it took a full day — 7 AM until 9 PM — to get everything out! I’ll send some before-and-after photos, because it’s really cool what we did. The house isn’t completely done — we still need to do some plumbing and need to put an actual floor down — but the change is incredible!

Don’t have much else to share about this week. Hopefully everything’s good with everyone, and I’ll share some more stories about walking and walking and walking and teaching somewhere in between all the walking!

— Elder Schroeder

Sorry about the cliffhanger last week, everyone! I ran out of time to write it because I wanted to share my spiritual experience, but this week I should be able to get it all written and add some pictures, too!

Anyway, the baptism was really great and cool and also kind of funny. This hermana, Roxana, has 4 kids under the age of 10, and it was a struggle to keep her son, Irving, from spouting random stuff and trying to eat the cake we’d brought for refreshments (it was also Roxana’s birthday!) (That was probably the hardest moment of my fast that Sunday, right there.) Irving is 5, and he’s completely loco! And then there’s the baby, Estin… yeah, it was a little rowdy.

I gave a good little spiritual thought about baptism, and it was in really good Spanish (I think!). Then the baptism was the really cool and funny part. When I went to say the prayer (I don’t know what you call it) to begin the baptism, everything went dead silent. Irving, Estin, and even other noises that had been happening just moments before stopped during the prayer and actual baptism, and resumed almost immediately after. You could really feel the Spirit.

Then I think I ruined it (or she did, I’m not sure). See, I held her back as she went under the water, but she didn’t go under the water all the way because she didn’t bend her knees! (I had told her before that she needed to, but I think she was (understandably) a little apprehensive!) I didn’t really know what to do, so I shoved her under the water with my other hand! I really shouldn’t laugh about it, but she hadn’t been prepared for that so she flailed around a little bit while I brought her back up! (Maybe that’s why her face is a little grumpy in the picture Elder Terrones took afterward!) I’m glad I was able to keep a straight face because I almost couldn’t stop myself from laughing! So, yeah; that’s my first baptism!

As for this week, I don’t have a whole lot to mention. Until next week!

— Elder Schroeder

¡Feliz año nuevo, todos!

It’s been pretty good here in Peru. My only problem is really the weather: how hot it is, and being under it. On Tuesday I got really sick and didn’t do much, so that was nice. Of course, that means that my companion (It’s still Elder Terrones) went out with some members from the ward while leaving one of them, Alfredo, to babysit me (more or less), and, of course, that was the day my companion finally got one of our families to commit to a marriage date: January 28!

I’m a little disappointed to have missed that, but I got to practice my Spanish a lot with Alfredo. He’s really cool: he played professional video games before his time in the Church (he’s only been a member for two years or so), and yes, I know that only really me or Zack or any other boy cares about being able to play video games for a living, but that’s not the coolest part. See, he played video games and made a lot of money doing it — About 2000 Soles (or 635 dollars) for a few hours on Sundays! — but that was the problem: the tournaments were on Sundays. So he stopped playing professional and joined the Church! A cushy job like that isn’t easy to give up — He had sponsors and fans and everything! — but he did it to join the Church and be obedient! Awesome!

As for the weather, well… It’s hot. Every day I wish it would be cloudy, because when it’s not I’ve got sweat stains where my bag strap is and I’m constantly using my shirt sleeve to keep the sweat out of my face. And heaven help anyone near me when I lift up my arms!

This week was awesome because I had some really cool experiences on Saturday and Sunday. Saturday morning I wasn’t feeling so great — I was really tired because the night before (New Year’s Eve / New Year’s) involved a lot of really loud fireworks at midnight that went on for 15 MINUTES! I didn’t sleep very well and Elder Terrones was a little grumpy too, and I just felt really down about everything — our lack of success, being sick, and, most importantly, not knowing if our lack of success was my fault somehow or just a trial to go through.

I didn’t really know what to do about all of this, so I just prayed; all morning, for almost 30 or 45 minutes, I just prayed for SOMETHING to let me know what to do about, well, everything. And then, while I was showering, I remembered a scripture in the Book of Mormon. In a part of the Book of Mormon, Alma, the prophet, was having trouble in the Church and didn’t know what to do, so he prayed to know what to do. I looked it up during my personal study and found it: Mosiah 26:13-14:

“And now the spirit of Alma was again troubled; and he went and inquired of the Lord what he should do concerning this matter, for he feared that he should do wrong in the sight of God. And it came to pass that after he had poured out his whole soul to God, the voice of the Lord came to him.”

I read it and realized that I’d prayed like Alma — with everything I could. And what’s interesting is I received the impression to look for the footnote for “Revelation, Divine.” There, I again felt I should go to a scripture listed there: Doctrine and Covenants 6. And here I received my answer. I read D&C 6 until verse 35. And then I started crying, because it was EXACTLY what I needed to hear:

“Behold, I do not condemn you; go your ways and sin no more; perform with soberness the work which I have commanded you.”

Right when I’d been feeling like I was failing my Heavenly Father, like I was messing up, He told me, plain and simple, that I wasn’t; I just needed to do what I’d been told. And even more importantly, He didn’t condemn me for when I mess up or when I can’t talk to people because what I did was enough.

What was really cool was what happened with that later. We lost the keys to our cuarto (AGAIN!) and thought they might be at the house of one of our recent converts, Danitza. We went there and the keys weren’t there (Because they were actually in our cuarto!) but we talked to Danitza and she admitted to us that she really felt like no one understood her. So I shared my experience from that morning, and SHE cried, because she realized that Heavenly Father DID understand!

And, of course, Sunday was spiritual because I got to baptize Hermana Roxanna! I’ll share the details next time, because I don’t have any more! Until then!

— Elder Schroeder

Hey, everyone! It’s the week of my first transfer (I still don’t know who’s getting changed, but I’m pretty sure nothing new’s going to change with me)!

Hope you all had a merry Christmas and will have a great New Years! I know I won’t sleep because Peruvians love their fiestas and fireworks! I couldn’t get to sleep the night before Navidad until around 2 AM because of all the explosions outside my window! I just wish we were more in the hills because the fireworks were incredible and we couldn’t see a lot of them because we’re surrounded by buildings! But it was still great, and I got a Christmas package from my family and some sweet ties from my companion! He’s so funny: in the Peruvian mission field, you refer to the person who trained you, your capacitador, as your “padre” of the mission. So he put some scriptures on the back that relate to fathers and sons, like John 5:19! I thought that was pretty good, but what was really nice was he put it on the back of his favorite tie, which he gave to me! Elder Terrones is AWESOME!

Aside from not sleeping on Christmas, not much has happened this week (Well, a LOT happened in my stomach, but I’m not going to mention much about this! My stomach pretty much got loved to death by the members of our ward: the Christmas tradition around here is to eat paneton, which is a kind of sweet bread with dried fruits throughout. It’s pretty good, but I don’t want to eat any more for at least another year because we ate nothing BUT paneton all Christmas — every appointment, MORE PANETON! Not the healthiest diet, and our toilet and stomachs suffered for the next two days!). But we haven’t done much because it’s just been really slow. Almost none of our investigators are progressing, partly because it’s the week of Navidad and partly because they just don’t want to change anything. We do have one success story: One of our investigatores, Hermana Roxanna, is getting baptized on the 3rd, and it looks like she wants ME to baptize her! (My first baptism!) But besides her, not much is going on.

On the 24 I got a really nice break from everything while the entire mission celebrated Navidad together. Every group created a skit and they were all pretty good… except for ours, of course. I was really disappointed, because ours could have been awesome. We were going to do a parody of the “I’ll make a man out of you” song from Mulan about the mission, and it was really good. Elder Toth, our zone leader, had written some pretty clever lyrics and we’d figured out a really good way to make it work on a stage (I would send the lyrics, but they’re in Spanish and I forgot them, so I’ll try and send a translation next week!). Our problem was we’d only practiced once and we choked during the actual performance, so we probably looked really dumb. But the other skits were pretty good; one group did a “12 días de Navidad” that was really well done.

I also had my first encounter with true aji. Aji is a very spicy flavoring they use around here and I’ve only ever had it in small amounts before in my food. But in Christmas dinner with a member there were some mysterious yellow peas that I hadn’t encountered before, and I decided I’d be adventurous. That was a mistake! Turns out it was pure aji, and my eyes watered for about 5 minutes straight!

Well, not much more to talk about or mention. Hopefully some more interesting stuff will happen next week and we’ll have some more success. If anyone wants something Peruvian or has a question, shoot me an email and I’ll try to answer it! Here are some pictures of my Christmas presents, my companion, and fireworks.

¡Chao!

— Elder Schroeder