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

Drool and Lemon Meringue Pie

Beautiful sunset in my area, Soufriere

As for here the work is going great! How you spoke about meeting some people that will hear something familiar when we teach, we have definitely found a couple of them. The most miraculous, is a lady named "S."

One day, we had a lesson at night up in a little area called Palmiste (its up on a hill) and we were walking through houses on the way down the hill. Usually, we don't talk to too many people at night because they don't normally like to be bothered (and half of them are drunk) but I saw two ladies sitting and talking to one another and I don't know what came over me but I just exclaimed HI! as we were walking by them, and that started the conversation. They were two nice older ladies by the name of "H" and "S". We just talked a little bit and set an appointment to come back and teach them. When we came back "S"explained to us that she has seen us pass her house often and whenever she saw us, she has wanted to talk to us but she was always to nervous to. She also mentioned that she wanted to do Bible studies with us ... so of course Elder Palmer and I forced our jaws closed and wiped the puddle of drool off the ground and taught her the restoration. She and her friend "H" loved it! We shared a lot of scriptures with them and every time we shared a new one they just exclaimed things like "wow! we have never heard that before" or "where was that scripture I have never heard of that" after the lesson we left a pamphlet with them, and invited them to pray and ask God if what we taught today was true.

We came back a few days later and had another lesson (just with "S" this time) and we asked her if her prayer had been answered and she said , "YES SHE KNOWS THAT JOSEPH SMITH WAS A PROPHET."....... wow............. more drool to clean up. Anyway she is super excited to be baptized into the church. She just has to come to church which is difficult since we aren't having church in Soufriere for another two weeks. I have no doubt she will be baptized though. This is just one story, we have quite a few others. This area could be GREAT!!

As for where Elder Palmer will be going home to, it is a little town attached to Logan, Utah. 

Yes, we do take a bus to Vieux Fort or Castries and we do have to stay for the weekend cause we can't get buses back on Sundays, it is impossible.

This week has been pretty great! Got to meet a lot of cool new people and get some good teaching done. Also, I taught the Hippolytes a member family that lives in Choiseul, how to make a lemon meringue pie - thanks to Grandma Schroeder I can do that (and yes the crust I make is very, very good)  

Also, this weekend I taught the branch presidents wife how to make pie, so the Branch President loves me now - he is a man that loves to eat.

Thank you guys for all your support and love.
Love,
Elder Schroeder

P.S. Here is a picture of the pie I made (that should make grandma proud - and yes the recipe came all out of my brain)

Guess who I saw?

Sounds like Grandmas birthday was super nice let her know that I love her!

Elder Palmer has been out just about two years now, he goes home on October 10th. I haven't gotten my package yet, they gave it to the Zone leaders and I will be getting it from them tomorrow at district meeting. You actually wouldn't believe this. Elder Palmer and I had an appointment with someone who lives right on the main road (here in Soufriere) and we took a shortcut to get to it and right as we turned right onto the main road a car honked at us and two people waved. (I didn't really see them) and then the car stopped about 15 yards behind us. Guess who got out? Aunt Rachelle and Trent ... super weird to see them.. they just took a picture with me then told me about the package and went on their way .... So you will have to grill her with all the questions... that I am sure, you now have.

Anyway this week was pretty good:) We had quite a few lessons with some very good people but the church attendance was pretty disappointing. We were supposed to have about 10 or 15 people there and the morning of, they all called and cancelled... we ended up having one older lady show up for church which was good but disappointing. We should be able to get these people to go in future weeks but Elder Palmer and I won't be here on Sunday for two weeks. Since Elder Palmer and I are in a group here in Soufriere we have to go to our branch once a month so we be in Vieux Fort next Sunday. Then the Sunday after, we will be up in Castries for General Conference because Elder Palmer leaves a few days after.

We haven't really meet anyone new and exciting this week but we did have some extremely good appointments with a guy named "D" who is a scuba instructor for a hotel. He is a very bright guy and whenever we go by to have lessons with him, it is usually just a short 30 minutes of teaching then leave an assignment for him. Which is really what we are supposed to do. Then when we come back, he has done the assignment and grown a lot spiritually. It really is great to see someone who has such great desires for spiritual things - you don't find that here too often.

"G" is still doing pretty good. However, he has lost some of his seriousness in regards to acting on the message we have shared with him. I feel like with a little more effort on our part we can likely engender that same zeal for the gospel he once had.

It really is exciting for Connor to be training and be a district leader haha fun stuff ... I hope his Tagalog is good enough.

Love,
Elder Schroeder

This is the son of a cool family, they are fun .. they are taking us craw fish hunting today (fresh water lobster basically) and bamboo bursting. It works like a potato cannon just made of bamboo.The craw fish hunting works a lot like noodling - the only thing we basically have to worry about is leeches ;)

FYI- for those who don't know, Rachelle is my sister who was in St Lucia with her husband Trent. They were on a cruise and in port for the day, on their Honeymoon. I haven't even talked to her yet as they are due home late tonight. I sent a package for Kyle with them to give to the missionaries who serve in the city where the ship docks. Kyle is serving about an hour south. I'm excited to talk to her and see the pictures. Robin

Meeting great people!

9/9/13
Wow you gave me a lot to respond to.. Firstly, Elder Palmer and I both have our pedigrees so we are going to have to check that out and yes he lived in Logan for a while. I wouldn't doubt if we were related we look pretty similar and he could basically have been the fourth member of Connor, Wes and my gang haha. Needless to say we get along super well. Elder Palmer and I have basically decided we are long lost brothers. We are pretty much exactly alike. We are also pretty sure we are related he says he is related to the lady in the movie 17 miracles who puts the two biscuits in the dutch oven and is able to feed her family. I just can quite recall if that happened to Patience, I am about 80% sure it is. Verification would be nice.

This week has been awesome! One cool story is that Elder Palmer and I went out one morning to walk around the point, to see if there are people living around the other side.  We started walking and decided its not a good use of time and that walking put us in a very strange area (strange meaning we never ever would have walked there by our own idea) and we started walking up a hill, we walked by a house and I felt prompted to call into this house. We called in and we met a guy named "G"! He is awesome! He is definitely the future branch president here in Soufriere. After we had an awesome lesson with him (and committed him to baptism on the 5th of October) We left and Elder Palmer said he also was urged/prompted to go call into this house. So that was awesome! He was the only one at church on Sunday.

Another cool story about simple service, it was night time and we walked by this house were a ~15 year old girl was washing, we offered to help. Usually everyone says no but she said yes.. we went to go help her, she only had one shirt to wash haha.  That got us talking to her parents and then her aunt and then her aunts son who's name is "K".  He is a guy we met our first day here in Soufriere and we couldn't get a hold of him, the Lord has really led us to these two men to start this area off!.. He didn't come to church (we don't know why yet) but he should also be baptized on October 5th along with "G" if we can get him to church.

About day to day living. It really is quite amazing how some people get by.. I just wonder to myself when I walk past a single mother on the street, who has about 4 mango's and a bag of mints for sale. One huge mango is about $2 (Eastern Caribbean) = (.74 US) and you can buy a mint for about 10 cents  (EC)= (.4 US) If she sold all that she had that day she would only make about $10 EC thats ($3.70 US) dollars.  Now a bag of flour that weighs about 3 pounds is about $6 (EC). I have no idea how some of these people make it, but they do. They definitely live from day to day.

Well, I think that is about it for the week. Having great fun here is Soufriere! We are going to Sugar Beach after we email and shop and things.

Love,
Elder Schroeder


9/16/13
To settle your thoughts in regards to nutrition... I have cooked 3 pies in the past 4 days haha! Actually Elder Palmer and I eat very well. Breakfast is usually either eggs and toast or pancakes or bacon/corned beef hash and lunch or dinner is anything form homemade mac and cheese to beef stroganoff ... We usually eat lots of rice. Rice is the best.

Also, that is exciting to hear that Aunt Rachelle and Trent are coming down to St. Lucia!  If you gave them a package it would definitely get to me. The entire island is one district so we go up there for trade offs pretty regularly.  I will make sure to let the zone leaders know, I actually might be doing a trade off in Castries with the district leader but it would be best if Aunt Rachelle just got a hold of the zone leaders, they would probably be more than willing to meet up with them .. Also, she could actually ask them where to go and what to do, so she doesn't get jipped off.

Well anyway, now for the important stuff... this week was a pretty trying week. Basically, throughout the week we had every day full of appointments and it just turned out that every single appointment (save a few) fell through. It also has rained consistently every day this week, and when an appointment falls through what we usually do is contact. We contacted for four hours one day and we literally got about 4 contacts and it was raining ... so that is basically was what our week was like - a lot of rejection. We did however have some good things happen, we met a boy named "D" - he is 15, and he is awesome. We taught him, his grandmother, and his older brother the restoration. You should have seen the way this kids eyes lit up when we talked about the first vision. After we taught him about that, we asked him what he was going to do and he just exclaimed, "we have to pray!" It was awesome to see a young man so excited for the things of God.

Sadly though we only had one person turn up at church this week, it was "D"! "G" however had a good excuse for not coming, he had a debate Saturday night up in Canneries or Dennery and he couldn't make it back in time to be there for church. (the buses here don't generally run on Sunday) We also had two other men that were going to come to church named "D2" and "M" as we were walking to pick them up for church, It began to rain and when we got to their house, they were nowhere to be found.

What you said about coming back in thirty years and being able to see the growth here makes me curious. It really would be exciting to see!

Oh yeah, today we climbed the Petit Piton it was super cool, and hot. It was definitely fun to get dirty again going hiking. It was a pretty ridiculous hike but I loved it! I also caught a big crab about halfway up the piton and I just happened to be a proper eagle scout, "be prepared!" I had the shoe laces from my old shoes in my backpack. So we tied the claws shut and threw it in a backpack. Let me tell you, this thing was strong, if it got a piece of you it for sure would have drawn blood and a lot of it. When we got to the bottom we walked past some shops and met someone we knew, so we traded the crab for 4 drinks. It was a pretty good trade if you ask me. Our original plan was to eat it but hey 4 drinks is enough for me. So that was fun!

P-Day Hiking Petit Piton

From the top, looking down on my area .... not too big...

Oh yes, we also moved our apartment today, it is a much better apartment bigger and better for sure, and the water doesn't taste weird.. I think... haha

Good week this week.

Love,

Elder Schroeder

New Area: Soufriere, St. Lucia

The past couple days have been crazy... I was supposed to leave Trinidad at 9:30 on Wednesday. I was getting ready in the morning to leave and we got a phone call that my flight was leaving at 8:30, we had to rush off.  I got to the airport,  rushed through security and I was on a plane 40 minutes later. We landed in St. Vincent got off for what was supposed to have been a three hour layover. I took Elder Jacobsen out tracting for his first time (he is a new missionary) and he loved it! Then I took him to get some food and checked back in through security for our flight. We ended up waiting four more hours for our flight. The plane got there around 7:30 and we were off the ground by 8:00pm. Keep in mind my flight was originally supposed to arrive at 11am in St. Lucia originally ... so the missionaries in St. Lucia spent all day waiting at the airport for us. That was crazy.

10 minutes from leaving the airport, I found myself at a branch beach party and I got to meet a lot of the members here. We spent the night in Dros Islet just north of Castries and then we were off to Soufriere in the morning. Got to Soufriere and went to the apartment with Elder and Sister Gartz, went to the store to get groceries, went back to the apartment finished building a bed for one of us to sleep on, cleaned the apartment up, went to an appointment at 4 to go look at another apartment. (we will probably be moving there in the next week or so) Needless to say this week has been absolutely crazy!!!!!

We are hoping we don't have church alone the first week. I don't think we will, there are a lot of cool people here is Soufriere. There are two members here in Soufriere just Elder Palmer and I.  We will work hard to get a teaching pool and hopefully change that. Elder Palmer requested a missionarry that works hard and I got sent here,  it's good to know that the mission president knows that I work hard :)

 That's a river going through town yes, I said town

Elder Palmer is the second on on my right

Also, they speak Patuá (French Creole) here and I can mostly understand it! It is quite funny because the people here if they don't want us to understand them, they will switch to it and I can understand them. Just with the little French background I have, I can catch about 80% of what they say. The word for white boys is boobla haha.. I'm sure you will get more of that in my other emails. Well it's about time to go, I wish I could type more but I don't have time.

Love,
Elder Schroeder

P.S. we will climb the petit piton one of these p-days so you should get some cool pictures... specifically of my area

For those who may not know what tracting is, it is door to door contacting. Those of you who are not members of our faith, if they knock on your door, please be kind to these nice young men and women. Please offer them a drink of water and know they are good people with mothers like me:) You can identify them by their name badge, it will say Elder or Sister, followed by their last name and under their name it says, "The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter Day Saints." They do service too, so if you have something that needs to be done, put them to work.  Robin