A Day In the Life of a Missionary

Hi Everyone!

The broadcast yesterday is definitely going to change, quite a good amount about missionary work. You said, "it's exciting that I am part of such a huge change" and it is exciting. However, more importantly you guys back home are part of that change - the only way this change can happen is if the members step up and go out with the missionaries, give them referrals etc. I am excited to hear the stories of those people you guys bring into the church also!!!

This week was a pretty crazy week, we had tons of appointments. In fact many of those appointments were with members seeking after referrals. We have been doing this for quite a while and it really is beginning to show some fruits. We are now teaching two member referrals and we received two more referrals this Sunday.

When I say this week was crazy, I will give you an example of this past Saturday. I documented a day in the life as a missionary. I actually stopped taking pictures around 6:00 pm so I missed 3 stops that we made.

1-3 baptism for John, that's me on the right standing in waist deep water 
4- go back to the apartment (shower)

5- leave the apartment 
6- walk down the street then turn left (this is right outside my apartment)

7- walk along the Savannah 
 8- walk across the Savannah
 9- teach a lesson at this house (kadafi)

10- walk down the street  
11- teach a lesson at this house 
12- walk up a hill and down a trail

13-14 teach a lesson down the trail at this house

15-walk back up the hill and down the hill again

Lots of walking...

16- a members car drove us to the church we helped him prepare his talk for Sunday 
17- teach a lesson at this house 

18- walk up a huge hill for the third time that day then go and teach two more lessons 
(I missed two pictures sorry)

19- meet a member next to this store 

Traditional Trini food that i made. it's Roti and Curry

Here is one story for the week! Elder Salima and I met Jesus Christ on Friday, oh yeah we also met Billy Grahm or however you spell his name. ... this was a vagrant we met walking down a hill. He began talking to us so we kind of got stuck there. We probably got stuck talking to him for like 5 minutes, cause if you tell him you have to go they will just say "alright one last thing" and then talk for another long while. I will tell you right now, if any person came strait down from the states and talked to a vagrant here they would never ever be able to understand them. But hey I can hold a conversation with them now! So yeah just like Connor, I had to learn another language ;) haha but the one I learned was quite a lot easier.

Anyway this Sunday was crazy, we spent 2 hours traveling to and from church and 7 hours at church. This was because of the broadcast, it is amazing to see the commitment of the people here to come to church! I just think, what if we had to spend over an hour and a half traveling to church (like most of the people here do) I wonder how many people would show up to church?

Well now onto the important stuff ;) We had a pretty cool experience with "M" this week. Since his father stopped him from coming to church I thought a lot about what we as missionaries could do, I prayed for guidance, scoured over scriptures I could share with his dad and came up with ever possible apology, explanation, etc. After I had formulated what we should say and do I prayed again for guidance. As I prayed, I basically felt that sharing these things with his father would do nothing. I then felt that what we should speak to his father about was of the great goodness of God. To share with him the great love that God has for him and his family and then to bear witness of the great blessings that can come into his life from the teachings of the Gospel of Jesus Christ. It was quite amazing to have this experience. Just another great testimony builder that the Lord will help us after we have done all that we can do. From that, I also realized there is something "M" can do, we taught him about fasting and prayer and asked him if he would fast and pray with us on Sunday, to soften his dads heart. He loved the lesson! It is amazing to see the faith of people being exercised. And guess what? after all of this, when "M" asked his dad if he could come to church, his dad openly said yes! Awesome!

"T" is doing great he received an answer last week that the organization of the church is Gods'. We just need to help him realize what exactly that means. He loves the Book of Mormon! He started reading it just a little while ago and he is now basically one of those people who can't put the book down. When we stop by during the week, we basically just help him understand what he read, because he doesn't have much of an education.

Oh, I have yet to tell you about "V"! "V" is a mostly blind man we have been teaching, we didn't think much of him at first because he just sat in on a lesson we had with a more solid investigator. However, he came to church this week for the whole nine hours and he loved it! He also expressed to us that ever since we taught him it is all he has been able to think about. It is incredible to see how the spirit works in different people! He wants to come to church every week now and we are going to set a baptismal date for him very soon.

To Pops,

I can definitely see the workings of the spirit out here when we teach. In just these couple months my testimony of the fact that the spirit works through missionaries has definitely increased. I have learned a lot down here. the people here don't have the greatest education so most of the time they don't fully understand the lesson. Because of this I have thought to myself what can I do to help these people understand more. As I studied and prayed about this the spirit bore witness to me that I am not the one doing the teaching, the spirit is. Its cool to hear that experience you had and i think about it a lot. the spirit has definitely directed me to stray from our lesson plan, and It is awesome to see how the spirit moves you to teach.

I love you guys and I thank you so much for the great support!

Have an awesome week!

Love,
Elder Schroeder