04/02/2018 – Sister Schroeder's Mission Blog

Who you gonna call? Satan Smiters!

This week was another week I don’t remember much of. I think the mission life has partially fried my brain because I’ve been having memory problems like I’m 80. But I can remember the gospel and that’s all I really need to know, right?

The most exciting a part of this week was Easter!! And with Easter came General Conference!! There were some amazing talks and we had the opportunity to sustain a new prophet, Russell M Nelson. He is an adorable old man and I know that he’s a prophet called by God. I think he really enjoyed announcing new temples this conference. He waited until the last 10 minutes of the Sunday afternoon session and then said “and in a major city yet to be determined…*pause for effect*…Russia”. For those of you who don’t know, there are no temples in Russia. This is such a huge and amazing thing! It opens up a whole new world, literally, to members of the church in Russia. For a hot second I thought he was going to say China, but I guess it’s good it wasn’t, because I’m pretty sure my brain would have exploded. It was already pushed to the breaking point when our 2 new apostles were sustained. Elder Soares is from Brazil and Elder Gong is from… California. Don’t feel bad if you thought Elder Gong was from Asia, I think almost everyone watching conference thought the same thing. I know I did at first, and then I thought “it’ll be funny because I feel like he was probably born in the US”. High five to me! There are a lot of amazing things happening!

For Easter we decorated eggs with the sisters below us, and then the people we ate dinner with made hard-boiled eggs for us to decorate. The Macfarlanes (the people we ate dinner with) also had us make tomb rolls. We took a marshmallow (Jesus Christ) and put it in butter and cinnamon and sugar (prepared it for burial) and then wrapped it in croissant dough (the tomb). We then put it in the oven, and the marshmallow disappeared. It was a fun way to represent Christ’s resurrection. They also gave us adorable Easter baskets full of candy. It was a good day all around.

And now last, but not least… our apartment is possibly haunted. Or we’re haunted. It all started with the sisters below us telling us they keep hearing something moving around our apartment when we’re gone. And then we were at the clubhouse a few days ago sitting in the conference room doing paperwork. The only other person in the clubhouse was an older lady who was in the movie room next door to us. Suddenly we heard a feeble old lady’s voice saying “whoever’s out there, help”. We looked at each other and then Sis Williams jumped up and poked her head into the movie room. The lady told us we could join her, but we said we just heard someone calling for help. She said that it was probably just from the TV. She was watching a baseball game. We went back to paperwork and heard the same thing 5 minutes later. We decided we should probably leave. A couple days after that happened, we got home and our DVD player was on and a movie was playing. That’s not creepy at all. We were talking to the elders that same night, and while we were talking to them, we heard scratching from the big cupboards next to the couch. Sis Williams and I both started freaking out and Elder McEntire made it worse by telling us all the things that could possibly be happening to us, ending with the possibility of Satan being in our apartment. Thanks Elder McEntire! I guess I should give him points for reminding us that we have the power to smite Satan. As a missionary we get the power of God on our side. Who better to back you up, right?

Well, that’s all for this week. Our investigator Keely is getting baptized on Saturday so my next email will have details of that. She is so adorable and excited. I’m proud of her for taking this big and important step!

Ciao,
Sister Schroeder

Photos…

Our movie afternoon: