Elder Schmid being his typical self with Daniel (the taximan)

Yaounde Mission group at the Gorilla Park in front of an impressive sized tree

Little piggy going to market

(Picture taken by Brother and Sister Thompson)

Bonjour ma mère!

K questions... I am doing very good! Except for the fact that I have
been sick this whole week. I guess I have the cold or something. My
nose was running like none other for like 3 days, and now, for the past
4-5 days I have had that nasty cough. But it is slowly getting better.
It doesn't help that I am inhaling dust almost every hour of the day.
But other than that, I am fine :) Nothing to worry about. My French is
coming along great! I am about to finish Moroni in my English
scriptures, and then I will start my personal study in my french set. I
already study my french ones in language study so now I will study for
almost 2 hours in french... so my french will get better and better.
Yes, I have had a few dreams in french. The entire dream wasn't in
french but there would be certain things that were said and they were
in french. It was pretty funny. I remember sitting in the MTC and
wondering when that day would come. But yeah, french rocks. I am
definitely going to continue my french at college when I get back.
Tell David that I will help him out when he has to deal with those
french people again concerning his data centers... I'm still willing
to go 50/50 with him :)

I can't believe that you took that speaker back! What on earth!! Did
Dad have anything to say about it? When I get back I want to learn how
to make one and I will make it according to "mommas design" standards.
Not going to lie... I was really looking forward to coming back and
watching movies with that thing... you may have broken my heart a
little :(

I got all the pictures that you sent me!! Thank you so much! That was
exactly what I wanted! Feel free to send more if you want :) I love
looking at my pictures so much! Tell Kendi that I really like her hair
style... I don't know if she still has it that way because it was back
in November... but still tell her I like it! I love Bronson's
announcement! I show that to so many people! They all think he is so
cute... and huge! I guess they don't have big babies over here. But
anywho, thank you so much for that little package. The CD is awesome
:) I love those songs so much! Just tell me one thing... is one of
those songs from that Gladiator soundtrack? Elder Pister and I have
been debating it... and I would like to settle it and rub it in his
face that I was right. Thanks!

I read Kurts email about his lessons... Its crazy seeing how different
our missions are. He was happy because he was able to do a 12 lesson
week. Over here, if you had a 12 lesson week, that basically means that
you are an apostate missionary who does nothing. A few weeks ago I
taught my 500th lesson. There are some days where I wish I could
experience the missionary life that Kurt is living. I want to have the
experience of knocking doors and having them shut in my face. Crazy
thing to want, huh?

Okay, so I wrote down stuff throughout the week that I wanted to tell
you, so this email will be a little bit better than last weeks!

So, on Tuesday, we were walking down this dirt road and we passed these
two little four year old boys walking home from school... and as we
passed them one of them said, "Les blancs manger les noirs! (Whites eat blacks!)" haha, I laughed because it was cute... it was improper french, but it was so funny! Crazy African kids... That night we went over to a recent
converts house (Paulette and Laure) and Elder Pister and I made them
an American dinner! We had steak, potatoes, and green beans and it was
amazing! It was by far the best meat I have had over here in Africa.
We had a legit bbq! While we were eating this 80 year old preacher man
came over and started preaching, singing, and praying. Every time he
would pray he would raise his arms to the sky. At one point, he asked
Elder Pister and I why we don't raise our arms when we pray... because
Moses did. We didn't really say anything because he went right back to
praying. I got a lot of it on camera so you will enjoy those videos.
It was dark outside so you can barely see him but I promise you, you
will hear him. I also recorded a spiritual thought I did, so, you will
be able to see my french in action. In the middle of my thought,
Paulette (recent convert) just busts out singing this goofy gospel
song. She is such a funny old woman.

"We believe the Bible to be the word of God as far as it is translated
correctly; we also believe the Book of Mormon to be the word of God."
TRUE!! Read Hebrews 6:1

So, the other day Elder Pister and I were walking down the road and
this moto passed us with two passengers... a man... and a HUGE pig on
that mans lap. And what was even crazier was that the pig was still
alive! I saw him blink and his body parts twitch! The pig had to have
been at lease 100 lbs... it was so big!

We had a water heater problem in one of our bathrooms and so we had
this guy from one of the branches come over and fix it. The water
heater, that he was working with, was mounted on the wall. It was a 50
Liter heater (haha that rhymes). Well, he unscrewed the mounts and
attempted to take it off the wall and place it on the ground. I guess
he didn't realize that there was still 50 liters of water in it! So,
when he took it off the wall, he totally lost balance and fell hard
against the wall. I would call it a controlled fall. He busted an
electrical socket though. It gave us a good laugh.

I ate goat this week. It was good.

We had three investigators baptized this week. Emmanuel, Remy, and
Brice. It was an awesome baptismal service! I was able to baptize Remy
and Brice. It was such a neat moment. The testimony meeting afterwards
was awesome as well. I wish you could all experience a baptismal
service over here. They are so incredible. It was a packed house and
everyone was from our branch. Ekounou 1 is great! I am so blessed that
I am working in this branch. I was able to confirm Emmanuel a member
on Sunday and it was so cool. He asked me to do it in English! It was
funny because a few times I started saying french words and I had to
quickly correct myself.

We had zone conference this past week and it was super good. We
learned about the importance of making sure our baptismal candidates
are ready. At the end, all the elders that are leaving at the beginning
of May received their flight plans. That was weird. That will be me in
14 months! Next zone conference President Jameson will be down here, so
I am really looking forward to that.

One day, as we were waiting for Emmanuel to arrive at his place so we
could teach him, we watched some little kids play soccer. It got pretty
intense! At one point there was this punk kid who strait up shoved
this other tiny kid to the ground and kicked him. He was such a jerk!
A few minutes later that same kid, who was the punk, got bullet soccer
ball to the face!! So after that I felt a lot better :)

At the beginning of this week, we went and talked with Remy because he
had been in Douala the week before that. He began to tell us about his
study that he did in the Book of Mormon while in Douala and he went
on for 15 minutes explaining King Benjamin and Nehor. He almost went
verse for verse! It was incredible! And this was a study that he did
completely on his own. We had never talked about those things with
him. Long story short... Remy is incredible!

One day we were teaching Emmanuel and he asked us about the gift
of tongues. There are a bunch of false prophets here that claim to be
prophets because they speak in the gift of tongues. I asked Emmanuel if
he ever understood them and he said, "No, no one ever understands
them." Voila!! If he truly were a prophet or if he truly had the gift
of tongues you would be able to understand him. The reason we have the
gifts like that is to edify one another. If you can"t understand them,
how on earth are you being edified? I then did a nice rendition of my
own "gift of tongues" and asked Emmanuel if he understood me and he
looked at me like I was stupid and said no. I then said "Brother, I
didn't even understand myself!" That is a major problem we run into
out here... false prophets and people faking the gifts of the spirit.

Well, that was my week. Ouch! I just leaned my head back against this
head board and I was stabbed by a screw that was poking through! Oh
Africa... Well I am doing well! I love my life :) I love you too :) Au
revoir!

Je t'aime,
Elder Schmid

Hello Mom!

First off... AWESOME email!! Thanks for that! I love getting your long emails. I will try my best to answer all of your questions. The Thompsons are leaving on March 25th. They are now on their last transfer... so that means six more weeks. We have no news yet on who will replace them. Dad sent me a video of a senior couple opening their mission call... well, they will be an office couple over in Kinshasa. So, as for right now, it looks like all the missionaries here will be alone for a little bit while they continue to wait for the news of another senior couple coming. The senior couple in Douala will be helping out a bit but they will spend most of their time, I think, in Douala. There is a good chance I will get transferred at the end of this transfer. I will have been here for 5 transfers... 30 weeks! If I don't get transferred that means I will probably be here for another 4 transfers. Because at the end of the transfer after this one, there will be 10 missionaries going home (Elder Pister, Elder Lamb, and the missionaries in their group) and 9 missionaries will be coming in...so that means that I will be a trainer, and when you are a trainer you are generally together for 3 transfers because of this new program that we have over here. So yeah... we'll see what happens.

As far as the mice.... there is no longer a problem. We found these traps at this American store just down the street from us and they have worked miracles. They are sticky traps that smell like peanut butter. Every single time we would set them up at night there would be a mouse stuck the next morning. We have caught/killed over 12mice. We have had the traps out for the past 3 nights and they haven't gotten anything, so I think the problem is finished. Thank goodness! It totally reminded me of Mt. Graham... I don't like mice. They poop all over the place.

You guys are so lucky that you were able to go see MoTab sing! I remember when they announced that show... that was a while ago. I love listening to them. You can always feel the spirit. I can't even imagine what it would be like to listen to them live. I want to go to a session of general conference so bad.

You will have to record everyone singing so I can here them! I would love to hear Ashlyn and Darian. I can't believe that Grandma is 78! When you see a person that is 78 over here they look like they are walking on the edge of life... its incredible to see all that Grandma does. She is such an amazing example to me. She must have been really good to her parents :)

So lets see... what happened this week. Not much... it was just another week as a missionary. I was pretty sick yesterday... for the first time on my mission. My nose was running like none other yesterday. My throat was swelling up and I just had a fat head ache. I took some nyquil and hit the sack. That didn't really help though. I woke up a lot throughout the night and this morning my back hurt so bad. I ended up missing my personal study and just slept. I felt like crud this morning. My throat is still swollen but I have finally gotten my sniffles under control. My nose is raw though... I hate that feeling.

So, I forgot to write out a little list of what I wanted to email so this email might be scatter brained. I don't have that good of a memory. Thats why I take this journaling thing so seriously. Ummm, Oh here is a sad story for you... so back in October we baptized a guy named François. Ever since his baptism he has faced trial after trial. Right after his baptism, he was kicked out of his apartment because he wasn't able to pay the bills and when they kicked him out they locked his door and wouldn't even let him go and get his stuff. So, he found this super run-down place (shack) in Carrossel and has next to nothing because everything he does have is locked up at his old apartment. Then his dad finds him and basically disowns him because he has joined the "Mormon cult" and wants nothing to do with him. This is really hard for François because he was really close to his father. And just recently he found a new job and it was all going well until a few days ago, this woman accused him of stealing 216,000 cfa. Well, the next day at 9 in the morning the police when to his house and got him and threw him into jail. He was there for almost 24 hours. During his stay he had this guy come up and play good cop bad cop with him. "Okay, its just you and I... Did you take the money?" and at one point he said "Where is the money? I will let you go if you give me half of it." François kept on telling him that he didn't steal the money and that he was innocent. The cop then pulled out a machete and tried persuading him to confess with that. Things are so corrupt here in Africa. They finally let him go at midnight. Oh! while he was in jail he received a visit from his dad and he just came to tell him that all this was happening to him because he joined the "mormon church". He didn't even help his son... he just went to rub it in his face basically. It was so sad to hear that story. François has such a strong testimony.

Well, thats about all... I am sure there was something pretty exciting to tell you but I can't remember... oh, hey, I wrote a letter to the family and I put 12 gb card worth of photos and videos in there. I made sure to copy them over to spare memory cards I have just in case they got stolen during the voyage... so just be looking for those.

I love you all so much! I pray for you every day!

Je t'aime,
Elder Schmid

Mom :)

I just thought I would let you know... I love reading your emails! I
am always laughing and smiling throughout the entire thing. Thank you
so much for always being on the ball. So there is a lot of stuff that
I want to tell you about from this week so I am going to get right to it.

So, here is a little laugh for you all... Elder Pister and I were
walking through this little neighborhood and these two little kids
that were walking home from school passed us on the road. They were no older than 6 years old. When they passed us, one of the kids looked at
us with a disgusted face and said, "Les blancs sont méchants!" So, basically, we had two little kids tell us that the whites are wicked. I
couldn't help but laugh, and then I told the little kid that we weren't,
but he was obstinate and insisted that we were wicked. I love little
kids!

In my past few emails I have spoken a little about our ami Remy. He
is progressing so well! Well, he has completely abandoned alcohol and
cigarettes and now he is getting nasty headaches and stomach aches. I
feel bad but it is really helping him become strong in the faith. We
have finished teaching him almost everything! We only need to teach
him 2 more commandments and then he can get baptized. He will be
baptized on the 18th of February! Every time we give him a new
brochure or a chapter to read in the Book of Mormon he reads it that
night, and the next day, when we talk to him, he has the whole passage
underlined or highlighted and the amazing thing is that he totally
understands everything! It is so incredible! He truly is a golden
investigator. This past Sunday, he got up in church and bore his
testimony and it was so powerful. This mans faith and desire is so
strong.

Another amazing investigator that we have right now is Emmanuel. Now,
this man was with the Jehovah's witness people for 14 years... so he
has some pretty different backgrounds with certain doctrine. A big one
was the fall of Adam and Eve and we tackled that one this week and I
couldn't be more impressed with this mans progress. At first, he was
really upset with Adam and blamed him for everything. But now he
understands the necessity of the fall and how God knew that they were
going to fall. Why else did we all choose a Savior and Redeemer? Because God knew that there would be a need for one! That doctrine is so
simple and yet so many people see right past it! He also thought that
Adam and Eve could have children before the fall but we went into
Genesis 3:20 and explained that it wasn't until after the fall that
Adam named his wife Eve, and that it wasn't until after the fall that she
became the mother of all living. Emmanuel knows so much but he is
always missing the main key point... and Elder Pister and I have been
providing those all week. He just sits back in amazement because it all
makes sense now. Sometimes he will cut us off and stand up and shake
our hands. There was one time he left the room because he had to go
share that with his secretary. This man is awesome! He will also be
getting baptized on the 18th of February.

Jimmy (Rugby captain) is in a tough little situation. His mother-in-law sometimes stops by the house to stay for a few days and one day she came and she started talking to her daughter. She told her daughter that a prophet
came to her and told her that there were some serious problems with
Jimmy and his situation as father and that she needs to leave Jimmy.
What the heck?! First of all... this "prophet" has never met Jimmy in
his life. Second, the mother-in-law doesn't really like Jimmy too
much. And third, what the heck?! People here in Africa are pretty
crazy sometimes. They love their prophets and their sorcery. It's
interesting coming across people that think we do sorcery.

In companionship study, Elder Pister and I have been watching these D&C videos and there were two about John Rowe Moyle and one about John
Tanner. I highly suggest you watch those with the family. They have
the 'new' Joseph Smith actor in them so you will know them when you
see them. Watch them for Family Home Evening or something. Those two men are such extraordinary examples of a good Latter-day Saint.

The other day Elder Pister and I decided to do our language study at
the church... ha, I can't believe that I actually thought we were going
to do language study. We ended up playing on the piano and singing
together. You are going to get a lot of funny videos on the next
memory card I send home. That will be soon by the way. I have a 4gb
full and I only have like 100 pictures left on my 8gb.

So, you know a little bit about Rachelle. She has totally left her
boyfriend so that she can get baptized. Well, now she lives in the
village! We had to go visit her one evening and it took us over an
hour to get to her! We had to tell her that we can't teach her anymore
because she doesn't live in our sector... but that is alright... we have
taught her everything there is to know before baptism. She also
will be baptized on the 18th of February! On our way back home for
visiting with Rachelle, we got into a van... more liked packed into a
van... and started our drive back. I started talking to this guy about
how Lady Gaga is wack and then we got on the subject of the gospel.
Him and I were talking and at one point this random onlder lady butts in
and tells us that it doesn't matter how you are baptized. She says it
doesn't matter if we are baptized like Jesus or not. I asked her if
she has read the bible and she gave a pathetic yes. I just ignored her
and kept on talking to this guy. I ended up giving him a brochure on
the Plan du Salut and he was looking at the pictures of Jesus and he
asked me why the pictures all look different... why isn't it the same
man. I went on to explain that it is what the artist thinks about how
Christ looks... and that it wasn't really important to know why they look
different. Then that lady peeped up again and said, "yeah, just like
baptism, it isn't really important how you are baptized. I started
talking to her and explaining to her, using bible scriptures, why we
need to be baptized just like our Savior, but she was so stubborn she
didn't want to accept that this white kid was right. I ended our
conversation by saying, "ma soeur, je ponse que vouz ne comprenez pas
l'évangile de Jésus-Christ." (My sister, I reply that you do not understand the gospel of Jesus Christ). You run into some pretty funny people out here.

We met this man named Eli and he took us to his office. He is the
president of some humans rights organization. It was a pretty funny
rendezvous. Before we got there, he told everyone that they could only
ask 2 questions and he had to know what the questions were before they
asked them. So, throughout the rendezvous, his employees were asking,
"Please, Mr. President, can I speak?" and he would then give them
permission. At one point, some guy asked us if we were going to get
married after our missions... and not even thinking, really, Elder
Pister and I gave a firm yes in unison. Well, Mr. President didn't like
that... he yelled at the man and said he didn't have authority to ask
that question. The man sunk down in his chair and said, "Yes, Mr.
President. I'm sorry Mr. President." Funny meeting.

We have a ward missionary who works with us whose name is Daniel. He was with us when we were teaching Remy one time and we were talking
about faith and at one moment Remy asked for Daniels number and Daniel gave it to him and started telling us that he has never changed his
phone number. He said that God wants us to be faithful in ALL
things... so he doesn't change his phone number because he wants to be
completely faithful! I got a good laugh out of that one.

Last night Elder Pister and I ate caterpillars! Yeah, that's right, I
typed that! It actually didn't even taste that bad. The only bad thing
was just knowing what you were eating. They were HUGE like the ones in
Lion King, when Timone and Pumba are eating the grubs. Mmmmm :)

Well, I think that is about it for this week. I am alive and doing well
over here in Ekounou 1. I will be with Elder Pister for another
transfer, so I am pretty happy. I love my life! I love you! Until next
week!

Au revoir!
Elder Schmid