Elder Kyle Schroeder: Another great week!

Sweet to hear from guys! Sounds like you are as busy as ever and will be busier. You are already turning into traveling grandparents haha.. I hope you guys have fun river rafting and traveling all over. Tell Sidney congratulations for me, that is super exciting! Also, good luck. Lastly, the insects here aren't bad, when you get out of the town areas they get worse. As for now though there is no need for bug repellent which is nice. Having loads of arm hair helps too cause the mosquitoes can't bite you there.

This week has been great! I got to go on trade offs to a new area. It's fun to see how when you as a missionary are perfectly obedient and just work as hard as you can that fruits can't help but come. I will tell you there is a fine line between just working and giving it your all. I look forward to the fruits of perfect obedience and spurring the work on.

This week we were entrusted by the Lord with 2 awesome new investigators! One is a woman that Elder Salima contacted with Elder Contrerez when we were on trade offs. She loves Jesus Christ and loves the message we have about Him. When the spirit tells her that this is the truth, I have no doubt that she will follow. The second lady is the fruit of persistence. We have many people here, when we contact them they say, "oh I have my own religion and I will never change." Usually, when they say that we mostly just give up on them cause they aren't willing to listen. But when she said this I said, as she was walking away." I know that the message we have can bless your life tremendously." She stopped and gave me her ear for just 30 seconds, it was long enough to make an impression. It was awesome to see the change in someone just by bearing a quick testimony of the truth!! We have been able to teach her twice now! Our testimony as missionaries is the strongest arrow in our quiver (that's a quote from James E Faust - I believe)

"T" is doing great! We finally helped him realize, what the answer the spirit gave him meant. He can answer all the baptismal questions now with a solid YES!!!! All he has to do now is finalize his divorce and get married. (all he is waiting for is his wife's signature) so that is awesome!

"M" is also doing great, I believe we got over the hurdle with his dad. His dad now talks to us and jokes with us which is awesome!!! So now his parents will let him get baptized but there is only one problem... they basically think that he has to be perfect before he is baptized. Every time we talk to them about his baptism they say "oh yeah he can be baptized, he just has a few more things he has to work on." They are super supportive of him in all his actions, like going to church and stuff it's just that they won't allow him to be baptized yet.

This week was pretty sad too. Along with the success we had to drop a few investigators. They are just not keeping commitment and progressing, we have taught them for months now. It is super hard to tell people you have gotten to know so well, that you cannot come anymore. It comes to a point though when we have to. We cannot waste a minute of our time :/ it is so sad :(

On a lighter note, I have seen many interesting things here in Trinidad. There is basically a vagrant that lives on every street - their minds have been fried by drugs. There aren't many dull moments here. The other day we saw one pooping in the middle of a field :O I wasn't even surprised so, based off that you can tell there a many strange thing that happen here.

Well another great week! I love you guys and I will talk to you later.

Love,

Elder Schroeder (Sholda or Shoda) - as they say here