Scriptures... $... food... holiday...

Hi!
This week has been super good we have met a bunch of awesome people. When we went up into Bisee yesterday, we taught a guy named "R." He quoted scriptures from Aaron placing his hands on the head of the bullock all the way down to revelations where the two witnesses will lay in the streets dead. He asked me questions about all of these opaque scriptures and I could give him answers from the scriptures. It was a great test of my knowledge and I really have come to know that if you do know the Bible well enough you can prove anything you want. However, we also have the Book of Mormon! We went back and forth between his theology and the theology of the church for about 30 minutes and the Spirit definitely stopped my utterance because it was going nowhere. The Spirit then prompted me to put the Bible away and show him the Book of Mormon. He was very open to it, he is going to study it, and pray to know if its true. I am excited for him, I really hope he gets an answer, I trust he will.  At the beginning of my mission I thought to myself,  I want to be able to answer someone with the scriptures -for any question. I study everyday and have been blessed.
Do Mormons regard the Bible as Holy Scripture and the word of God?
What blessings can you receive from reading the Book of Mormon, the Bible, and other scriptures?

A mission is definitely a fun and carefree time. I love just having money appear in a bank account just for me to withdraw, buy food, and then eat the food. I am definitely glad I can cook, it would suck if I couldn't cook. I feel sorry for the missionaries that can't cook...

(As a side note, to clarify for those who don't know. Kyle worked very hard before his mission to save money.  A mission is self supporting by the missionary and/or his family and cost about $10,000 for 2 years. I would love to have money "appear in my bank account" too. haha... They do live on a budget and have a certain amount, depending on where they are serving. That set amount is re-loaded on a debit card to withdraw every 6 weeks for food and other expenses. I am still laughing... at the way he wrote this.  I'm sure he meant he has few worries and gets to concentrate on being a missionary. He is a good cook:) which I am thankful for, I don't have to worry about him eating well.) Robin

Anyway this weekend was a pretty fun one, it was a little slow in the appointment realm, there was a holiday down here called Junior Creole. It is basically a giant food fest/party where the people celebrate their Creole heritage. So the church had a big party at a members house and of course they invited the missionaries (because there were going to be nonmembers there) The church members down here really do know how to put on a pretty good (clean) party. I am pretty sure it's because they all used to party and now there is just no alcohol involved haha. There was a member in the ward who had a friend that could play the traditional creole style drum and basically everyone danced. (except us missionaries) It was super cool. If you could imagine one of those African dances around a fire with drums blaring that was it.

Love,
Elder Schroeder

P.S. Just some of the different foods we eat. The first are Jamaican bakes, I will have to make them for you when I get home. The latter is Chicken Alfredo (all homemade from scratch)

This is the scripture I memorized Ether 6: 3-12 President Mehr had everyone memorize 10 consecutive verses from the Book of Mormon wherever you wanted - I finished in 5 days. You guys should do it.

Cuisine, Climbing, Contacts, Conference

As for the cuisine here in St. Lucia basically there are only a few different traditional dishes that I know of. One is green fig and salt fish, they prepare salt fish in numerous different ways but generally they just boil the fish let it cool and then pull all the meat off and make some sort of fish version of chicken salad. We had a family in Soufriere prepare some for us and it was really good but I could definitely imagine it going terribly wrong and tasting absolutely horrible. The other dish they make is called bouillon, basically its just a chicken stew with green fig or plantain and macaroni noodles in it.

Sounds like you guys are having some great fun in Idaho! Has snow fallen yet ? I learned how to climb a coconut tree really good last Monday (don't worry... I didn't climb to the top, I only went up about 5 feet) If you want to know how to climb the a coconut tree look up a video of Samoans climbing coconut trees and you should find a video of how I climbed it.

This week as far as missionary work goes it started off slow but towards the end of the week we got this place rolling. We went to a new area called Bisee its just right outside of Castries and we taught two lessons and got many solid contacts, in about 3 hours. We will be spending lots of time there from now on.

We met a sweet lady named "D" who has been trying to quit smoking for a number of years now, she invited us in for a lesson but there was no man home so we sat on her steps outside and taught her. She is older probably around 60 or 70, she is super nice. She feels very hopeless - in regards to quitting smoking, so we shared the gospel of Jesus Christ with her and promised her that the gospel will help her. It was a very powerful lesson and we definitely left her with a little more hope. Today we are going to go by and give her a CD with church music on it to help her when she is tempted.

That also reminds me zone conference is on Tuesday here and St.Vincent missionaries are coming here. We will be housing 10 missionaries in the 3 apartments (that are already occupied) since Elder Pierson and I have the largest apartment in the best location we will be having 6 missionaries stay with us for one night and 8 with us the next night..... crazy... it is going to be fun and also we are going to start the week off with a bang since we will have 6 missionaries with us tonight, Elder Pierson will take three with him and I will take three with me to go teach lessons. We have 5 appointments set up for tonight so all the missionaries will be busy! If we had an army of missionaries like this all the time it would be great!

Well, I think that's it for the week, got to go...
Love,
Elder Schroeder

New Area and Training

10/7/13
Sounds like you guys are having more fun than ever with us being gone ;) haha looks like you had fun at the beach with Summer and family. The beach here is also super fun .. that's basically where all our p-day activities happen football, American football, Frisbee. Yeah, it's pretty fun! About me looking good in my pictures, I would have to say congratulations to you and dad you guys are both lookin' good!!! I think dad might have a six pack ;)

Anyway as for transfer calls, I was a little bit surprised .... Soufriere is being closed temporarily and I am moving up to Castries to open a new area there with a trainee named Elder Pierson. So I will be training and opening a different area. The area is basically going to be the town area of Castries surrounding the church. We will have members to work with now!!! YAY!!

It is really quite depressing actually (closing Soufriere that is) I believed there really was a lot of potential there. Sad day, we also just moved into a new apartment and signed a 6 month contract for it. The mission is going to have to pay for an empty apartment for 6 months. The trials of missionary work... oh well, it will reopen again someday and we planted some seeds:) Anyway, I am super excited to train a new missionary it is definitely going to help me be just a little more obedient.

Most of this week was absorbed with transfers. Transfers on an island with only one mission vehicle can be very difficult I have spent a lot of time driving around this week - not me driving, Elder Durphy the zone leader. ... just lots of logistics ...

This has been a fun week however Conference was great! We got to watch all sessions of conference and even the world report. It was good stuff, a very spiritual time for sure.

Love,
Elder Schroeder

10/14/13

Hi!
That is crazy to hear about Courtney!! super weird.... (It was a joke from a friend that posted a fake FB proposal from "BYUi do" and I sent him the picture. Ugh! not sure why? I don't think he caught the joke:/ I will clear it up next week.) Elder Palmer emailed me and he is also engaged he has only been home for two days! You should look him up and send him a small wedding gift for me :) (.223 ammo is what he would expect to get form me) just saying. You don't have to send one its just a thought. (maybe he is joking with me and I didn't get it either)

All those pictures you sent from Disneyland were awesome especially of Walker on the sword... that's a good one haha.

Anyway, Elder Pierson thinks on his feet well and picks things up pretty quick. I have no doubt he will be a great missionary! He is from Canada a place near the border called Lethbridge. It sounds like his mom is a lot like you. She is on the West Indies missionary moms thing so I don't know if you want to try and talk to her (probably already have) I forgot how much of a culture shock it really is to come here and it is bringing back a lot of memories from the beginning of my mission.

I am glad I have members in my area now and know it will help in the work. We have a lot of work to do, it's also nice to get fed every once in a while ;) as for investigators, its off to a slow start however we have met a pretty cool guy named "B." He is actually the brother of a member in Vieux Fort, he was a temporary missionary for about a month, I got to know him pretty well. "B" seems like a very good guy. This is going to be a great transfer we got a lot of great missionaries sent in so i am excited to see how much the work progresses.

That pretty much it for this week, it has been a great week!

Love you,
Elder Schroeder