It's Only The Beginning...

Wow, this is so crazy that I'm actually here and in Arizona talking to REAL people! haha. The MTC was super awesome and I learned so much there. There is so much I want to say and so little time to say it! Thank goodness for journals right?

So I miss my MTC companion sooooooooooo much. I'm literally having withdrawals. However, I do have a great trainer :) We get along well but we're still learning about each other and I'm still trying to figure out everything in the field. She is from Buffalo, New York and every once in a while she has a little accent :) She has only been out for six weeks! She isn't even done with her own training and now she is training me! My mission president said he is hoping to have us stay together for my whole 12 weeks of training though. I definitely hope that is the case because I feel like we will just be beginning to figure things out really well and mesh well and stuff. Anyway she is great and our stats have been better than they were before I arrived so that's good! They say stats usually drop when you get new people but we have been going steady. She jokes that I'm a good luck charm because we are finally starting to have some good investigators (hopefully) and have people follow their commitments.

So I arrived in Tempe on Tuesday. Guess who got sick again? Ya, me.. This time I was just normal sick though. I hadn't eaten much because of our crazy schedule and not to mention it was SO hot. So I ended up feeling really nauseous and so I had to lie down with an ice pack and I ended up falling asleep. We only got two hours of sleep the night before because of our travel plans and packing and such so you can say it was much needed. Luckily we got to go to bed early that night and I was able to sleep off my sickness. SO sidenote, I stayed at a members house. I was looking at their family pictures on their wall and guess who their son and daughter-in-law are? They are Adam and Eve on the temple video! Crazy right? That was super cool though.

Anyway I am in one of the smallest areas in our mission. It is literally so small and so we bike everywhere. We cover two wards and they are pretty great. I already had my "first" baptism. Haha the Elders taught the young woman because she is 18 and they teach the YSA age investigators. However, she wanted to be baptized into one of our family wards so she was our baptism! She is super amazing and such a cute, sweet girl. She is going through a lot to be a member of the church and we are so proud of her.

We have another baptism scheduled to happen soon (hopefully this week, but there are some things out of our control that might push it back).This little girl is SO amazing. She is 9 years old and her family is less active but members. She has such an amazing spirit and heart; it's so unbelievable. We took her to the Mesa Temple visitors center last night and right when she saw the temple she asked, "Why do I feel so good?" Then she went on to say that she felt God was telling her she was making the right choices and that she was doing good. It was AMAZING! Seriously? A 9 year old said that! She is so awesome.

On my first Sunday we had a woman show up to church! My companion has visited her before and asked her to come to church but she never has. We tried to visit her the other day but she wasn't home. So she just started crying when she saw us and she said she just felt prompted to come today. She came late so she wasn't able to go to sacrament, but she commented in the lessons and cried during most of it. She agreed to let us come and teach her more! So that's super exciting and we are praying for her.

We also met another family that is super nice! They are so non judgmental and they want to learn more so they know what is a rumor about our church and what isn't. They are super feminist and don't like women being degraded so they congratulated us over and over again and said how proud they were of us being on missions. They didn't know anything really though. They thought we were from Arizona and they didn't think that we believed in Christ. So we were there for about two hours just dispelling rumors and such. They want us to come over and cook dinner and pies and teach them more. The mom is pretty adamant about not converting, but she is a very spiritual lady so if anything we will just be strengthening her relationship with Christ and helping her understand the restored gospel. She doesn't like religion because she thinks its just a business and such. Anyway we are praying for their hearts to be softened. However, they are truly amazing people and were so nice to us and we had a great conversation. They said their opinion, but would also listen to what we had to say and would commend us for being brave enough to say it.

We had a trunk-r-treat to attend this week and my companion and I aren't allowed to dress up. So we got as close to dressing up as we could and put tape on our glasses and did our hair in braids to look as nerdy as possible while still looking presentable. We borrowed tricycles from a family we know. Like grown tricycles!!! haha. We loaded the basket with Book of Mormons and candy. Some kids were so cute and they asked if they could have a Book of Mormon instead of candy! It was awesome. It was a good experience for us to be able to meet the members and get to know them more.

We had a pretty funny time the other day. Long story short, one of the members forgot they were feeding us so asked if they could take us out to eat. They said they would pick us up at 5. They showed up a half hour late and dropped us off at Golden Corral! We thought they were going to eat WITH us! If we had known, then we would have just eaten at home! We had to walk for a half hour to get home! We had an appointment at 6:15 so we ate in ten minutes and booked it out of there. Unfortunately, we were still 20 minutes late. It makes for a good story though! haha.

I've had a good time here and it feels like I've been here much longer than 6 days. It's hard work and I'm really tired, but I wouldn't trade it for the world. I have grown so much already and I'm so happy I can help others come to Christ. AMAZING. I wish everyone could understand and feel what I do!

Back in Business

Hello everyone! So my email last week was a little crazy considering I was super sick at the time while trying to write it. My companion ended up finishing it for me while I curled up in a ball on the floor. My efforts to not throw up didn't work however :/ Anyway I am doing much better now! I have had a few followup appointments and everything seems to be fine. The cysts should hopefully go away over time and I'm praying it doesn't happen again. The branch president's wife compared the pain to having children! (and she had one of her children naturally!) I've had a few others tell me its comparable pain to child birth as well so that's really crazy to think. So thank you everyone for your concern and prayers. I honestly don't think the pain was as bad as it could of been because of all the prayers in my behalf. I also think because I'm a missionary that I was "protected," if you will, a little more. I also received a blessing from the wonderful elders in my district too so that was really awesome. I am doing much better now though! And can I just say, I have LOVED the MTC. The spirit here is so amazing and it's super hard work, but it's all worth it.

 

I am on the West Campus. Not gonna lie, I'm glad to be over here where there isn't as many people and stuff. However, yesterday we went to the main campus to go to in-field orientation and we got to eat two meals there. THE FOOD THERE IS SO GOOD. I began to be jealous then that I wasn't able to eat all my meals there. West Campus isn't like that AT ALL. But, all in all, it's still good :) It's so crazy to think, but I have learned so much and it feels like I've been here for years. Yet, at the same time I can't believe I leave for Arizona on Tuesday. It went by fast! The first few days were seriously so lonnnnnnnnng. It felt like the time between each meal was like a week. But after Sunday, the time has just FLOWN.

 

So, I absolutely LOVE my companion.  She is super cool and  I'm positive our friendship will last long past our missions. She is truly amazing and I'm hoping we can become companions at some point in the mission field again. It would be super cool to begin and end my mission with her. We have learned so much together and we have truly had some amazing experiences with our investigators. We have had some super cool moments when we know God is speaking to us and that he has told us what we need to teach each person. It is so amazing and I've never had God speak to me so strongly. Well, maybe I have, but I just didn't know how to recognize it/I doubted if it was just my own thoughts. I've learned that it is easy to doubt those promptings from the spirit because we think it's ourselves. However, God knows us better than we know ourselves and so of course he is going to speak to us in ways that we can understand and in ways that relate to us. So ya, it's going to feel natural and like it's coming from ourselves because that is the way God knows we will be able to understand it!

 

So Elder Oaks gave the devotional on Tuesday! Our zone got to ride up to main campus and be in the same room as he was :) It was really cool and he explained why our church is the only true church on earth.. There are a few things that distinguish our church that no one else has. It was kind of like a lesson on the restoration. We had just taught that to one of our investigators that day so it was really cool to see that we had basically taught the same things to our investigator. Speaking of which, our investigator is sooooo cool. She is the sweetest old lady and she has taught me so much. She has insights into the Book of Mormon that I have never even thought of and by talking about some of those things together, we were able to have some amazing spiritual discussions. She is such an amazing women and I literally cried when we had our last lesson. It's so amazing how much the love of God has been given to me. I know it's just the tiniest taste of what God feels, but I'm able to love people in such a short time that I never thought was possible. It truly is amazing. My companion and I also had a cool experience teaching her the other day. We had prayed and prayed to know what we should teach our investigator and we were inspired to plan a certain lesson. However, once we got into the lesson, we knew that wasn't the direction we needed to take it. We instead taught something completely different. It was something that we hadn't experienced doing yet but I'm really glad we recognized the promptings of the Spirit to take the discussion a different direction. At our last lesson, this investigator committed to think about getting baptized. She has felt the spirit in her life, but she doesn't want to do this without her husband. She also made great progress and prayed in front of us! It was so cute and so special! She calls us "her mormons." So she would pray and say, " Please bless my mormons etc." She is so cute.

Our other investigator is a man. (He is just one of our teachers who role plays someone from his mission). Just a little side note, I hate role playing, but you seriously do it ALL THE TIME. And you continue to do it all throughout your mission. Anyway he has committed to be baptized and is working towards that goal! Super cool, and he is teaching his family about the things we teach him as well. He has made some really good progress and we have our last lesson with him on Monday. I absolutely love teaching and I can already recognize that I can't do it alone. The spirit has helped me to know what to say and how to say it. I know this because our first investigator has asked us some REALLY hard questions. My heart seriously has dropped with some of the questions she has asked because they are so hard and I don't know how to answer them! But through the spirit, we have been able to answer them and help her understand. It's truly amazing.

I haven't had an MTC breakdown yet, but there a few more days for that to happen. My companion and I kind of had a rough day the other day with feeling pretty down and such. It was silly because there was no reason for it. However, trying to always have the spirit there and be listening for God's promptings really is spiritually draining and HARD work. So I think that was just hitting us a little bit, not to mention we are SO tired. The MTC schedul is super silly and only gives us 15 minutes to get ready and head to breakfast so we have to wake up early so we have time to shower and such. Hopefully in the field they give us that half hour to get ready. We live with the only other girls in our district. They are super cool as well and we have all become really good friends. I absolutely love my district and zone as well. That is super crazy too because I basically just love this huge, diverse group in such a short time. We had a cool experience the other day. Our zone was supposed to be studying and somehow we all got together without really meaning too and we started to watch some Bible videos and share our feelings and thoughts. It started out with just something to do and kind of enjoying the down time but still being spiritual. However, as the night went on, it became this super amazing spiritual opportunity. There weren't teachers, it was just our zone. Many people shared their testimonies and we watched a super awesome video on the atonement. I don't think there were very many dry eyes that night. It was really cool because I think we all needed that spiritual boost in a way where we didn't feel too overwhelmed by all the things we were learning and such. It was so cool and I'm so glad we got to have that unplanned, yet totally needed experience.

There are so many other things I wanted to say, but I'm running out of time. Can I just say, the spirit rocks! I totally know this church is true and I'm so glad I made the decision to be out here! I was really nervous, but I wouldn't change it for the world. It has already been so amazing, and I'm just beginning. I just wish everyone could experience this. I just want to cram all the things that I've learned into everyone's heads because it has been so amazing and has changed the way I think about life and the gospel. I feel like I hardly know anything. I've already grown so much and I can't believe that I'll be heading to Arizona on Tuesday! The time as flown. I can't wait to get out there and start finding the people that God has prepared!

Love Sister Schroeder

My Mission President and His Wife

 First day in Arizona! The Arrival Group...

The MTC

Dear friends and family,

I was hoping to tell you all these awesome things that have happened to me at the MTC so far. However, today I had a pretty rough day and do not have the time or energy or strength to email everything I wanted to. I am on the West Campus so there aren't as many people here. The food isn't as good as the Main Campus (i hear) but it's still pretty good. I have been having a really good time and I absolutely LOVE my companion! We are already best friends. The other girls living in our residence are really awesome too. I have been learning so much that I wanted to tell you about but today I woke up and was really sick. My back hurt really bad and I thought if I took Advil it would be fine and eventually go away. Well I was really wrong. It is some of the worst pain I've ever had. Long story short, I ended up having to go to the emergency room. They did all the normal tests such as urine samples and drawing blood. However, I ended up having to have an ultrasound. I had thrown up at the hospital and hadn't eaten all day so I had to have an IV to fill my bladder so they could better see what was going on. I also was drugged up with a couple of doses of morphine and some other medicine for my nausea. The pain never really has gone away though. We were there for about five hours and eventually found out that I have multiple cysts on my ovaries....soooo they can't do anything about it and I basically just have to live with he pain for the next few days. The reason it hurt so bad is because one of the cysts ruptured. Not fun. Hopefully none of the others rupture though. I'm very sick to my stomach and haven't been able to do anything all day. I wish I could write more about how awesome this experience has been but I'm doing all I can right now not to throw up. So hopefully next week I will be able to write about all the GOOD things going on here!

 My MTC Companion

 

Until We Meet Again :)

This process has gone by so fast. It seems like just yesterday when I got my call and thought it would be FOREVER until I got to leave. This time has gone by so fast and I haven't even really done anything! But I have cherished the time I have had to spend with my family. I'm gonna miss everyone so much but I know this is where I'm supposed to be and that everything will be ok! 

I have had so much support from friends and family and it has meant the world to me. I am very excited to be leaving now, even though I'm nervous, I have been waiting for this and I'm excited to be serving. 

My mom will be posting my letters on here each week as well for those who want to read them! 

 Until we meet again, good luck every with everything! :)