Elder Kyle Schroeder: Momentous week!

Well that's great that Connor got there without a hitch. Its crazy to think we are a full world width apart.

This week was a momentous week! Besides zone conference, I got attacked by a dog for the first time. I did pretty good, it was a medium sized dog so I held my ground and took a couple pretend (but very fierce) kicks at the dog and then kept walking. It was pretty terrifying, definitely got my heart pounding haha. The other missionaries keep asking me if anyone has tried to rob us yet. I am very curious how that will go, if it every really does happen. Every missionary I have talked to here seems to has a story about it so ...

We do arrange with the members to go out with us and I spoke in church last Sunday. It is amazing the attention that the members give to missionaries here. Basically because every person in church is a convert, so the people here hold us in very high regard. So when i spoke it was like every person was staring with the most extreme intent, and they hung on to every word... so it was quite different than speaking in a ward back home.

Zone conference was awesome! I got to get to know my mission president a little better which was fun. Before that however was of course all the lessons, there was a lot of emphasis on the concept of member missionary work. President Mehr specifically spoke about how we as missionaries are teachers and the members are finders. He also spoke concerning the problems or concerns that missionaries have regarding obedience. He is definitely an inspired man he spoke about every single thing I had questions about. My interview with the president went really well, I spent the most time with him out of all the missionaries cause right when i got in there someone from church headquarters had called him and he had to pay some bills for the mission right away so he spent about 15 minutes doing that while we just talked. So about 20 minutes into the interview, the interview actually started. We talked about lots of the doctrines in the scriptures we both enjoyed ,and we probably spent 10 minutes looking for one scripture that we both knew but we couldn't find. In the end we couldn't find it so he asked me to tell him what it is when I find it. It was Hebrews 11:3.

The work here is going good. We taught one of our investigators the law of Chastity this week and we found out that the woman living with him is not his wife :/ bummer! He was married before and he hasn't been able to get a divorce so that is why he isn't married to the woman he is living with. He has however been working on the divorce for the past couple weeks (even before we started talking to him about it) so it should be wrapped up soon and he should be married. We also started teaching his younger sister and she loves the gospel too so hopefully she will get baptized too.

It's getting ever easier to wake up early and work out, which definitely helps throughout the day. I think I have already gained 5-10 pounds from both eating very well and working out every day.

The rainy season has definitely started it has been raining quite a bit. It has basically been raining all day today and half of yesterday and some the day before. I have some pictures on the Savannah in which I am soaking wet. It's so funny here when people see you soaking wet they say "what are you thinking? you are going to get a cold" all I think is are you kidding me its like 80 degrees out haha. I just tell them "oh back home when it rains it is freezing so I am used to it" I have also taught a lesson while the woman we are teaching is breast feeding (with nothing covering her or anything) its quite different here.

We had a big activity for all the missionaries last week in Port of Spain - it was like a sports activity. So since our apartment is the apartment in Port of Spain, it basically became the staging house. Lots of the missionaries didn't sleep at their apartments the night before so they could get to the activity so basically nobody had eaten breakfast. So I made pancakes for about a 10 missionaries.

I'm starting to get into the swing of things here and getting use to the area. I know my way around the area really well now. However, with getting to know the investigators and people here I am really starting to understand the struggles of the area. It's pretty frustrating actually because I know that if people just listened to us and did what we asked them they could receive so so much more than they even know is possible. I have already been out in the field about a month, pretty crazy. Its weird to think I am living in the Caribbean.

Thanks for the scripture reference, Connor actually wrote me and said the same thing - to read John 15 Thank you for sharing that, I will read it. A mission is quite a bit more trying than I expected but it is awesome.

I hope you guys have an awesome week and oh yes I have gotten a hair cut I did it myself hehe.

Love,

Elder Schroeder