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