Healthy and Happy!!

July 21, 2014
Wow! That flood was crazy... actually "Sister C" (she is a member down here) has a son up there at school right now so she showed me videos when we were at church! That is insane! I am glad I am not up there right now...

The baptisms went smoothly and they were both confirmed on Sunday, "J" the 17 year old was even interviewed and ordained to the Aaronic Priesthood on Sunday!! That is a rare occurrence down here, we have got to thank Bishop for that! He is good! We also took him out teaching with us on Sunday. Another young man! We just have to get him on a mission now! I think he will go.

That is scary to think I am the next missionary in the ward to get home... ughh!

This week has been kind of slow ... we did teach many lessons this week but we don't have too many new investigators... We have been relying heavily on the members but it has just not been working the way we would like, we still have plenty to do and it will get better.

The ward has had some great activities recently... we had a movie night on Saturday and watched "The Testaments" it was pretty good and then we played some games after. It was fun and there was some good friend making going on, or as we say down here fellow-shipping.

I still can't drive yet, my permit has not quite come through yet, it will soon!

Love,

Elder Schroeder


July 28,2014
Lots of stuff for the week! Sounds like a great week, thank you so much for letting me know what's going on. It is fun to hear whats happening in your lives.

Some business first... my running shoes are worn through... my left one has got a hole in the bottom. I have been using them a lot so I need some new ones. A good pair down here runs at about $120-140 USD probably more around the 140 dollar range.  I don't know if you want to buy some at home or online and have them sent to me. Or you could just put the money on my card and I could buy them here. I am the same size as Connor so he can be the test dummy. I need those pretty soon. On another note my Dansko shoes are running pretty low... I may need some new shoes pretty soon. What I probably could do is buy a cheap pair here for about 40 US and use those for just a couple months and that would extend the life of the shoes I now have. I think that would get me through my mission. - I will leave this all up to you. P.S. Nike is the best.. Connor would pick good ones :)

Now onto the regular stuff.
I have been doing great, feeling real healthy! No pudge yet, so that's good. I will be staying with Elder Babb for another transfer! Woot Woot. This now means that I have served in the Port of Spain ward for 6 months now! Maybe I can be here for 6 more haha...Whatever the Lord wants for me. I love this area! We have tons of members and they all love the missionaries, they feed us, they go teaching with us! It is the best!

So Elder Babb and I are staying together but the Zone is changing up quite a bit. We had sister missionaries in Port of Spain but they are no more. They have closed that area, we also are getting two new Elders. One is a temp actually from the last ward I was in, from San Grande. Elder Sookoo and the other is an Elder Hopkins. I hear he is post military so he should be good!

As far as the work down here, it is going great! We have so many members in our area we can't even take all of them out. They all want to come out with us! Well I shouldn't say all but most of them do!

"J" is one of the ones that wants to come out with us. In fact, so much so that he has come out with us every day this week! He is learning so fast. He taught the first vision to a couple of our investigators booyah!

One great lesson we had this week was a member referral, you should have seen the way her eyes were glued to me as I shared the restoration with her. I just hope that she acts on what she has learned now... we are seeing a slow increase in member referrals here and it is great!.. It was hard for a while but it is picking up now! Good stuff!

One pretty funny thing that occurs down here revolves around an Elder Evans, he has been out for about a year and he uses all manners of contrivance to get us to go to Dairy Queen! You should see the things he does!

I am pretty sure mostly every sentence ends in an exclamation point. I bet you guys have realized that already but I thought I would point it out.

I think that is all I have for the week. I love you guys, have a great week!

Love,

Elder Schroeder

Good times Here!

July 4th!!

July 7, 2014 

Wow sounds like you guys are having a blast back home!

It has been a good time down here!
We had quite a few meetings this week. Zone conference Tuesday. Mission leadership council on Wednesday, interviews with the mission president right after that.  Zone meeting Friday. Wow! In spite of that, we still got some great work done this week!

Here are some highlights:

In zone conference we practiced contacting with the Book of Mormon and this is how we did it. A couple missionaries volunteered to practice and the assistants held up cards with the description of who we are contacting. President Mehr was the person we were role playing with.  I volunteered and you guys knowing my corny little self threw a joke in there.  President made fun of me for that and we had a good laugh but then I got serious. I went one more time all the way through and at the end President said, "I don't know if I could of done it any better myself." Not trying to brag but it does feel good to know that you are actually good at what you are doing.

Mission leadership council was great! We spoke about the blessings of the mission wide fast.

We have a couple baptisms coming up that we are pretty excited for.  Two 9 year olds that we have been teaching from recent convert part member families. They should both be baptized on the 19th of July.  Another one is a 17 year old boy.  He recently has become much more interested in baptism from what I have seen he is practically jumping into the water.  I hope it stays that way.  He also should be baptized on the 19th so we should baptize 3 people this transfer!!! That's good stuff.

Having a great time down here, tons of members! It's the best! Port of Spain!

Love,
Elder Schroeder

                                                                

July 14, 2014
The "M" family is doing pretty good... We actually took "M" out with us all day Sunday.  He is solid, it is incredible to see how much he has learned! He can answer any question (in regards to the gospel) the way a missionary would! So that is great!

I have another cool story though there is a recent convert here named "N"  I did not know it until this last week when I went on a trade off. I was with Elder Eggbert in my old area and we went to see her. I found out that Elder Jamison and I contacted her the Friday before I was transferred to St. Lucia and she got baptized a couple months later! So that's cool! I am going to have to take a picture of all those that were baptized here in Port of Spain partially from my efforts! That would be great! 

The Lord has truly blessed me. I love it here! 

We were supposed to have 3 baptisms on Saturday but now we are only having two. The parents of one of the them are having difficulty deciding which day she should be baptized because of their work schedule. In spite of that we are still having two baptisms. The two being baptized are very prepared! We are excited for them!  Expect pictures of that next week!

Highlights of the week! I have been really focusing on Christlike attributes and it is interesting. We need to totally reverse who we are to become like Christ. I have been making an effort, though feeble, to teach some recent converts this. It has been great. It is amazing when you culture a proper learning environment how much people can learn. Without even knowing that they are learning too. Here are some helpful things that I learned.

When something aggravating or potentially contentious occurs do the following

1) get the facts (if only we knew everything we would make the correct choice every time - so long as our morals are on board)
2) take yourself out of the situation
3) teach or correct with love
these are difficult to do...
We so often times when aggravated, throw our opinions or how we feel (emotionally) into the situation, which opens the gates of argument.  It is true that it takes two to tango but if one chooses not to tango, then there is no tangoing. I am not saying that walking away from a situation is good, in fact no progression will occur if a problem is left unattended in the foreground.

It is possible to not tango and annul the problem, it takes practice but it is possible. Its very hard to explain. Anyway, that is what I have been focusing on recently.

Well, I think that is all I have for the week.
I will for sure take pictures this week, you can hold me to it!

Love,
Elder Schroeder