09/23/2017 – Sister Schroeder's Mission Blog

Hey all!

I have been at the MTC for a week and a half now, but it feels like I’ve been through my whole mission twice! I’m having a great time, there’s just so much to do. We’re busy all day from 6:15 until 10:30. You’d think I’d be sleeping really well, but weird dreams make that hard. I dream about the MTC and missionary work almost every night. There’s no escape!

Sometimes, it funny to tell people that we go to church for 3 hours because it seems like such a long time to people who don’t go. Well, Sunday in the MTC is long even to lifetime members. I now know what eternity feels like. Church meetings last for about 12 hours, spread throughout the day. We get 40-minute breaks for lunch and dinner, but that’s it. Church starts at 8:30 and doesn’t really end until 9. They also randomly select people to give talks in each zone so you have to prepare a talk during the week and almost go into cardiac arrest when the branch president gets up to start church. I’m going to be really bummed if I have to speak in church this week because Sister Jackman and I have to teach the sisters in our zone this week. I’m glad tomorrow’s the last church Sunday I have left in the MTC (next week is general conference).

Monday was cool because we got to go out and get investigators through “street contacts”. These are volunteers, members and non-members, who come to the MTC and act as investigators and so we had to go set up appointments with 2 of them. Sister Jackman and I are teaching 2 girls that go to BYU: Chelle and Wan-Yu. Chelle is majoring in athletic training and Wan-Yu, who’s from Thailand, is here learning English. They’re both super fun to teach and we love them a lot.

I didn’t say much about the Elders in my last email because I didn’t know them that well, but this week we started to do stuff together and now we’re friends! Elder Winder and Elder Bell are my and Sister Jackman’s favorite companionship because they’re just so funny! (they’re now a threesome with Elder Toone– more on that later) Elder Toone is hard to swallow sometimes because he is a little condescending, but I still like him. Elder Harrison and Elder Holland (like the apostle! But he has assured us he is not related– when you see the picture it becomes pretty obvious) are quieter, but still funny. Elder Holland is the district leader and takes his calling very seriously. The other elders have some fun stories about him. We have great elders. It’s mostly thanks to Sister Jackman because she started to ask them questions and get them to open up. We still look super awkward in the picture, though, because sisters and elders aren’t supposed to touch each other except for handshakes so there are gaps between us. Sister Jackman has a bit of a problem with that: she poked Elder Bell’s cheek with her finger!!! She is quite scandalous and will probably have corrupted me by the time we get to Bakersfield.

As we were sitting in our room Monday night, writing in journals and getting ready for bed, the fire alarm started to go off in our building. All of the sisters had to evacuate immediately. Thankfully there wasn’t an actual fire, so everyone was safe and our stuff wasn’t burnt to a crisp. I did feel bad because some of the girls were in the shower when the alarm went off so they were outside at 10 at night in nothing but a bathrobe or a towel. One girl only had her left shoe! I am quite thankful I wasn’t one of those girls.

Tuesday was a little sad because one of the elders from my district, Elder Ellis, got sent home. During our first gym time, Friday night, Elder Toone accidentally knocked him down during basketball and he got a serious concussion. The elders said he didn’t speak for 5 minutes afterward and could only remember Elder Toone. He got a pretty bad concussion when he was younger so this one was definitely worrisome. He and Elder Toone were in their room for 3 days because he had to sleep. We saw him at lunch on Monday and he did not look good. When he went off to get food we asked Elder Toone how he was and he told us they were sending him home. His short-term memory and some of his long-term memory was gone and he was stuttering. When we said his name it took him almost 15 seconds to react. Hopefully he’ll heal quickly and be back at the MTC and headed to Bakersfield in no time.

Tuesday night at the MTC is devotional night and guess who was here? Elder Quentin L Cook! We were breathing the same air as an apostle, which is the bomb! It was a bit of an adventure getting to the devotional. We had heard rumors that Elder Cook was coming and so all the missionaries lined up at the door 30 minutes early in order to get seats. We (me, Sis Jackman, and the elders) weren’t too worried because there are lots of seats in the gym. However, we weren’t informed that the choir, about 80% of the missionaries, were all sitting on the bleachers so there actually wasn’t a ton of room. We got up to the door and the security guy made Elder Toone take his bag back to his room (Elder Bell went with him) and then the ushers told me, Sis Jackman, and Elder Winder that there were no more seats (Sis Allan and Sis Woodland– lovingly nicknamed “sista friends” were in the choir). As we were walking to the overflow, we ran into Elder Harrison and Elder Holland. When we got to the overflow area, there were only about 15 missionaries and then several older couple missionaries. Elder Holland said he felt like we were the 5 virgins who didn’t have enough oil! Elder Winder was slightly frantic because his companions, Elders Toone and Bell, had no idea where we were (he was also alone for a little bit with 2 sisters, which is a violation of page 33 in the white handbook). We were only there for a few minutes when an official-looking guy came over and told us to “get up and go over by the wall”. He led us out of the building and since none of us knew what was happening, we started to guess. Elder Harrison’s theory was that we were being taken to a classroom to learn the importance of being on time to meetings. It was pretty awesome because he took us back to the gym and led us to exactly 5 seats near the front of the room, directly behind Elder Toone and Elder Bell, who had gotten in. Both Elder and Sister Cook’s talks were great and made me excited to be a missionary. If you want to know what they talked about you can probably look it up on lds.org!

On Wednesday we taught Chelle and Wan-Yu, and both lessons went ok. We’re still learning so the first lesson was rough, but our other lessons with them went better and better each time. Our teachers told us that if we focused our message on Jesus Christ we would more easily bring the Spirit and everything would flow better. We did that, and lo and behold it worked! Now I just need to remember to do that when I’m in the field!

Thursday wasn’t super eventful. We mostly just went to class and Sis Jackman and I taught more lessons to Wan-Yu and Chelle. Our experiences at the MTC are fairly different from other missionaries because we are part of a pilot program. Most missionaries have 1 set gym time and 3 hours of class morning and evening. We have 3 different gym times we can choose from each day and only 1.5 hours of class required morning and afternoon. We also get to choose what we want to learn in class and when to have our lessons with our investigators. I feel slightly drunk with power when I talk to other missionaries about their strict schedules.

Friday was a really fun day. I don’t have many details to talk about, we just laughed a lot. Sis Jackman is just so funny and keeps me in stitches! I am going to be devastated when I have to say good-bye to her in Bakersfield in a week and a half. We finished lessons, class, and dinner by 5 and didn’t have gym time until 7:30 so Sis Jackman and I thought it would do us a lot of good to get our Sunday lesson out of the way. We were supposed to talk on the Creation, the Fall, and agency, which we’ve been talking about all week, so we didn’t think it would take long. We did not count on our sista friends being in the room with us. Those 2.5 hours turned into us talking about New York, cheesy 80s church videos, and the “unknowable” gospel questions like: is Cain still on the earth, if God used to be like us aren’t there an infinite number of Gods, did God give Adam and Eve two conflicting commandments, and how come the early people on the earth lived for so long. Sis Jackman’s answer to the last one was there was less pollution. She lost it for about 5 minutes after that. After we went to the gym we walked around our enclosure (there is a gate fencing us into the MTC) and looked at Christmas lights they put in the trees. It was a peaceful way to end the day.

I know my email was long today; there was just so much that happened! To give you a sneak peak into next week’s email– we get to be hosts for the new missionaries on Wednesday! I’ll leave off on a spiritual note by telling you all to go to this link and watch a super awesome video that brought the Spirit into our lessons.

Ciao,
Sister Schroeder

An awkward picture of me and my cousin Jake… and all our companions (page 33 people!):