Bonjour ma mère!

Thank you so much for your emails! You always add so much detail and I love it! And sorry about last week. I totally typed out the whole email and I sent it to you, but for some reason it didn't send it, it just stayed in my drafts. Sorry about that, but I am glad Alex was able to help you out. This week was awesome. I love working with Elder Spens so much. The kid is a genius with french. He is one transfer ahead of me and, like me, didn’t take french before his mission. I have learned a lot from him over these past 5 weeks. So as you know, there will be 9 missionaries leaving from the three cities this Friday and we will be receiving 8 new missionaries. Transfers will be crazy this weekend. The Nuttalls have a rough sketch up of what will be going down and they have figured out that, on Friday, there will be a total of 21 missionaries going in and out of their apartment. There are going to be so many trips to the airport and bus station. Elder Spens has been transferred and will start working over in Bonaberi. So that leaves me alone. Here is the awesome news! I have been assigned to train one of the two new missionaries coming into Douala! Elder Spens will be training the other. My new companions name is Elder Thibault and is from Provo. I will meet him on Friday when he flies in. I am so stoked to be in Elder Lambs shoes and finally train. I learned so much from Elder Lamb and I hope and pray that I can have the same influence on my new companion that Elder Lamb had on me. I have also been assigned to be the District Leader for the Bonapriso district. I am so excited to have been assigned these new responsibilities! Especially to train. I remember my first few days and how crazy they were and Elder Lamb would always tell me how much fun it was to watch me react to certain things and it reminded him of how crazy of a world we are actually in. Right now, when something crazy happens, its just life. The crazy stuff that would happen back home is like nothing now. For example, this morning we were all eating breakfast around the kitchen table and we hear this huge bang and some screams so we ran out onto the balcony and looked over at this carrefour that is right by us and there was a silver mercedes almost all the way through the intersection with a moto underneath it and there were two bodies laying about 25 feet away. Cameroon doesn’t have stop signs, and when they actually do no one respects them, so when you drive through intersections you honk your horn really loud and that is the only security you have. Well, neither the mercedes nor the moto stopped at the intersection so they collided and the two people on the moto were thrown about 30 feet from where the impact took place. You can see where all the skid marks and what not are… I took some pictures but they will not be on the memory cards that are going home to you this Friday. So one day you will see what I am talking about. But anywho, this big accident happened and I wasn’t surprised at all. I was just like wow that moto is messed up… and that was it. Back home I would of freaked out because I would of seen the fresh results of a motorcycle/car accident and just seeing bodies laying around almost dead kind of freak me out. But now its just a part of life. You probably won’t want to drive with me when I get back… It might take me a while to realize that I can’t just weave in and out of traffic, go whatever speed I want, fly through stop signs, honk every 3 seconds, etc. The list goes on and on. So after typing all that… I am STOKED to be training!

At church yesterday this guy got up to give a talk and I had never seen him before and I was trippin big time. It looked like Elder Reidhead was standing in front of the congregation… but in black skin. It was the weirdest thing ever. He even talked the same way as Elder Reidhead, except in french. His face looked the exact same… it was so trippy.

I was talking with Elder Tingey the other day and we were talking about what I did before my mission for work. I was explaining to him how I worked for the Ellsworths and I was explaining the products that we sold and he said, “Wait a second, I used those books!” So I am out here with Elder Tingey and he used the product that I worked with for almost a year. Small world.

There are 3 memory cards that are going home to you this Friday. I am going to try my best to get them backed up onto some DVD’s before Elder Thompson leaves… and on these 3 memory cards there are a little over 1,400 pictures and videos so you will basically see what my life has been like since the beginning of November. The four of us elders here in Bonapriso ate a bunch of eggs this week… 75 to be exact. In 6 days we managed to eat over 6 dozen eggs. Awesome.

One of our investigators (Maman Françoise) was in an accident last week and had some pretty bad neck injuries and was in the hospital. We got to the house and we were wondering where this one investigator was and her husband explained to us that she was in the hospital and that he didn’t know when she would be back at the house. So we decided to start and Elder Spens said the opening prayer. As he was praying he started praying for this investigator and right as he was praying someone walked into the room and stopped because they realized we were saying a prayer. Once Elder Spens finished the prayer we all opened our eyes and voila!! Maman Françoise was there!! Talk about immediate answer to your prayers.

We have a member that we have been working with a lot lately because he hasn’t been the most active member. We are helping him find that love he once had in the gospel. We decide to surprise him and show up without him knowing that we were coming and we walked into his house and we found his older brother, who is also a member, in the process of preparing his goods that he was to sell that day. Wanna know what those goods were? Drugs. It looked like he had a table full of marijuana all cut up and he was putting it into little paper balls that he made. We asked him what he was doing and he said that he was making medicine. Haha… yeah, right. He had a buddy there right next to him and he was so plastered. He was just nodding his head and agreeing with everything that we were saying. I’m positive back home I would have freaked out and not known what to do. But here we just said, “Look man, you need to repent and get back to church.” He didn’t say anything and kept on working so we left.

Well, there is my week for you! I have been at the computer for an hour and the stupid internet is not working. Internet here is so frustrating. You have no idea how nice you have it over there in America. It is going to be so nice going back and being able to go log into my email and not have to wait 15-20 minutes to read the first email. If I am not the most patient man in the world when I get back from my mission then I have failed. I love you all so much and I can’t wait to email you next week and tell you about my new companion. Life is going to be so crazy for him these next couple of weeks. Awww yeah!

Je t’aime,

Elder Schmid

Christiaan's testimony of forgiveness

Hello Mom :)

So this week was just another week over here in Douala. Nothing to crazy happened. This past week we celebrated the birthdays of 3 elders… Elder Thompson, Hancock, and Tingey. Elder Thompson is in the same apartment as me, so we decided to go out and get some chwarmas. One of his investigators has the same birthday as him so we invited her to come and eat with us. She is in her upper 30’s and her name is Aurélie. I have no clue how to spell her name. Anywho, we had the most bizarre lunch table conversation I have ever had in my entire life. She sat down and before we ordered anything she insisted that she share her “birthing” story. So, according to her, her mother was in Yaoundé and she was crossing a carrefour (an intersection), and at this time she was 9 months pregnant with Aurélie. While she was crossing the carrefour her water broke and she gave birth right there in the carrefour. Aurélie stopped there in her story and shared with us that in her african tradition, “if you are born in a carrefour you will have a life full of luck.” Hmmm, interesting (Picture me saying that the same way dad says it). She then went on to tell us that she drank a lot of milk from her mothers breasts and that is why she is so strong. She then looked at me and asked, “Elder Schmid, did you drink milk from you mothers breasts?” I was kinda caught off guard by the weird question and didn’t really know what to say… I then looked at her in the eyes and with all the seriousness I could muster gave her a firm and solid, “oui.” It was so hard not to laugh. She then went on to ask Elder Spens, Thompson and Nash the same question. We all admit and agree that that was one of the weirdest conversations we have ever had. The chwarmas were awesome though!

I know that more happened throughout the week but I would like to focus on something more important. I feel prompted that I need to write about this right now. What I am about to write is coming strait out of my head, through my fingers, and into this email. I know that my grammar and english are not perfect. But the Spirit is... and I hope that you can all feel the Spirit bear testimony of what I am about to tell you.

This past weekend I had the opportunity to listen to our beloved prophet, apostles, and leaders speak in General Conference. We finally found time in our crazy schedules to get everyone together in Douala and listen to the prophets voice. The four of us elders were upstairs in the church because we all wanted to watch it in english and I am so glad that I did. There were so many talks that touched my heart and helped me grow spiritually but the one I think touched me the most was the powerful and inspired talk by President Uchtdorf. My testimony of forgiveness has grown so much over the last 10 months of my life. I know that it is something that is real and something that is necessary. Sometimes I feel inadequate when talking to others about forgiveness because after all, I am only 19 years old, I haven't lived a long life and because of that I still don't have the wisdom and knowledge that comes from a life of learning and growing. BUT I do know what the scriptures say and I want to talk about some of those scriptures. I loved that President Uchtdorf used D&C 64:9-11. That scripture has helped me out so much. Problems, bad actions, scandals, and so many other 'trials' will come our way as we are traveling throughout life. That is how God works! We read in D&C 95:1-2 that heavenly chastisements are necessary in the plan of God. I am a firm believer that those 'chastisements' are actions that befall us because of the free choice of others. So in life the question isn't 'How can I avoid being chastised by God?' but instead 'How can I handle myself when I receive these chastisements and what does the Lord want me to learn?' That's reality, and it bugs me so much when people here complain day after day and ask me why, why, why?! If we are truly Christian and if we truly believe in the bible we would never ask ourselves that. We know exactly why... because God wants us to grow. I love how President Eyring put it... God wants us to be that much more polished before we return home. The question, "How can I handle myself?" has helped me out a lot. Out here on my mission I received, by far, my biggest trial and it was so difficult. But thankfully before that day my mentality changed... so I wasn't asking myself "why, why, why?" but instead I was looking at my future and seeing how I can take this trial and make the best of it so that I can make my future even better. At that moment, I was asking the Lord for so much forgiveness... I realized that change was necessary in my life and I bit the lemon and took on responsibility. While I was in the process of asking God for so much forgiveness, the Lord threw at me another trial. It wasn't a physical trial... but simply a test to see if I could extend forgiveness. A test to see if I could hand out the exact thing I was pleading for. I am proud to say that the moment that 'trial' came into my life I knew exactly what I was going to do... forgive! That little choice has had one of the greatest impacts on my testimony. I thought it was funny that God would work like that, and I am so glad He did. So where am I going with this? It all goes back to D&C 64:9-11. If we are real with ourselves and realize our worthlessness we should all be on our knees every day pleading for forgiveness so that mercy can be handed to us and we can return and live with our Heavenly Parents and with our families for eternity. A necessary requirement for forgiveness is found in verse 10 of the 64th section. It is REQUIRED that we forgive others. It does not say, "of you it is required to forgive all men, unless..." It is plain and simple... forgiveness received for salvation comes when forgiveness is given for temporal matters. When someone wants to hold on to those evil horrible feelings of hate, bitterness, jealousy they are only doing ONE thing. They are creating a two way road... a lane for the Spirit of Christ to leave a lane for the spirit of the devil to come in. That is the ONLY thing that is happening. It creates tension and unnecessary contention. And we all know that eternal verity found in 3 Nephi 11:29... contention is the fruit of the devil himself. When we harbor our feelings and anchor our hearts in the anger of a TEMPORAL act we are hindering our potential to receive things that are ETERNAL. When forgiveness isn't given, destruction follows. We can all see it today in the world around us. There is internal, personal destruction...and then the even worse... external, involving families, destruction. God created Adam and Eve the next thing we read is that the 'man was with the woman'. God married Adam and Eve... he created the first earthly family. Right there we see the importance of the family in the eyes of God. It is one of the most important building blocks of the Gospel of Jesus Christ. Satan is working so hard today to destroy that which is so precious to our Heavenly Father... us and our families. God's work and glory is to bring to pass the immortality and eternal life of man...US!! and not just us personally but with our families. The greatest joy, 1st degree in the Celestial Kingdom, will only come IF we have a family bound and sealed together for eternity. That is EXACTLY what Satan doesn't want... and it breaks my heart to see the success he is having today. What does Satan do? All he needs is for us to not forgive each other. It is simple. I will paraphrase what the doctrine says in D&C... "Look, I will forgive whoever I want to forgive, but you need to forgive everyone. If you don't want to forgive everyone you only bring upon your own head the greater sin and you tumble down at a faster and faster rate and make that hellish chain around your neck even stronger." I know that is bold... but it is also truth. No unclean thing can enter into the Kingdom of Heaven. We all have those infamous 'spots' on our souls that we need to get off. So we go to the Lord for help because it is only through Him that we can have those eternal dirt spots removed. If we don't have them removed they will scream to the Lord and testify of our unworthiness when we stand before His judgement seat. So what will help us remove those spots? Us having the strength, courage, and faith to forgive others. I don't know how merciful the Lord will be. I know very well that I have no right whatsoever to cast out judgement in that regard. But I do have the right to preach the Gospel of Jesus Christ. I do have the right to call others unto repentance... and forgiveness. I am swimming in the blessings that have come my way because I can forgive others. At this time you are probably saying, "Huh, just wait big guy! You have no idea whats coming for you!" And to those who are thinking that I say 'what right do you have to judge me of my spiritual strength and my spiritual foundation. Was it not a 14 year old boy who had so much faith that he saw our Heavenly Father and our Savior and Redeemer, Jesus Christ? Was it not the little boy David who killed the giant Goliath? Was it not the 10 year old Mormon who was entrusted with the responsibility to take care of the plates of Nephi when the time came? Yes, I am only 19 years old but I know that power of forgiveness is real. My heart aches for the destruction taking place today because of the pride of others. Please forgive, please show your love, and I promise you that the Lord will only pour out His Spirit upon you in even more abundance. I know that I am not perfect and I hope that you can all forgive me for any wrong that I have done to you. Take my hand and lets show our Heavenly Father and our Savior Jesus Christ that we are not hypocrites... that we truly are disciples! We truly are members of The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints! We are the symbol of our religion! We heard that multiple times in conference... now lets show the world who we really are. I love you all and I leave this things things with you in the name of our Savior, Jesus Christ. Amen.

Elder Christiaan Schmid

PS - I am sorry that I wasn't able to email everyone this week. This took all my time. I love you all and thank you so much for your love and prayers! Til next week!

Hello Mom!

Another week has come and gone and I can’t believe that I am here again in this hole-in-the-wall cyber café. This week has been pretty eventful so I am just going to jump right in. So, remember last week in my email when I said that I wasn’t feeling too hot? Well, that was towards the beginning of my time there at the café… by the time I finished my skin was very hot (very uncomfortable to touch) and I felt super weak and tired. I knew that I was dehydrated because I hardly drank any water the day before and I walked out under the scorching sun for 3-4 hours. So, I told Elder Spens that I needed to go back to the apartment and rest because I didn’t want to get really sick. I got back to the apartment and crashed on my bed and was in my bed for 6 hours. I had a pounding headache… every time I would stand up or I would lay back down again it felt like my head was going to explode. It was horrible. I felt like I was going to throw up and eventually I did… every little thing that was inside of me. It was horrible. My bowels were going crazy too. I was feeling super hot throughout the day so we took my temperature and I was at 102.2. It was so uncomfortable! The Nuttalls came by that night to drop off some things and to bring me some malaria medicine because all the symptoms I had were the same symptoms of malaria. They left and I went and laid back down and about an hour after that I got up and had the 3 elders give me a blessing. Elder Spens was the one who gave the blessing. In the middle of the blessing I received the strongest urge to throw up and I knew that I was going to blow soon so I hoped and prayed that the blessing would be short… and thankfully Elder Spens listened to the promptings of the spirit and finished the blessing relatively quick and so I quickly got up and shook everyone's hands and quickly went to the bathroom. As I was walking everything went black and I couldn't see anything... I wasn't all there in the head either and I ran into a wall and busted open my lip and as I was falling down from that I nailed my knee and head on the bathroom door breaking it open and slamming it into the bathtub and I fell to the ground. It took me a while to get myself together so I was just laying there on the bathroom floor in the dark... I got up after about a minute and threw up into the sink and I looked in the mirror and saw blood running down my forehead... I busted open my forehead when I hit the door. So I went back to the elders and told them that I basically passed out and told them to call the Nuttalls and then I went back and laid down and they all took care of me. Elder Nash made this water mixed with sugar and salt and once I drank that I started feeling a lot better. All it was was a pretty extreme case of dehydration...well, for me it was extreme. Nothing like that has ever happened to me in my life. The last time I was "out" was when I collided with a giant in the outfield at Cooley park. I stayed in the next day and rested and studied a lot. At the end of Tuesday I was feeling back to normal and didn't have a headache or anything. Nothing was in my system though so I have been trying to eat a lot lately. So there you have it... my first 'sick' story from being out on the mission.

On Thursday, Elder Spens and I did a lot of door-to-door contacting and we had 10 lessons! Its crazy how accepting people are here. Yes, there are always the people that want nothing to do with us and they yell at us and say some pretty funny things, but there are also the people that have that genuine hunger and thirst for something new... they recognize that their spiritual life is lacking so when they see us or hear us they are more than willing to accept us and listen to our message. That brings me to my next subject: Paul and Serge. We me Paul and Serge when we went contacting on Thursday and it was simply an amazing rendez-vous. We walked up to Pauls door and presented ourselves and said that we have a message about Jesus Christ and asked if they had a few minutes so that we could share it. We ended up being there for about an hour talking about the Book of Mormon and Joseph Smith and the Restoration. It was incredible! Paul and Serge were so excited to receive their own copies of the Book of Mormon...for free! We left them with a few verses in Moroni 10 and 2 Nephi 26 and fixed a return rendez-vous the next day. The next day we get there and Serge was at work so we met with Paul and we asked him what he read and what he learned. He went on to explain that he read all of 2 Nephi 26, Moroni 10, and he read the title page, introduction, and all the testimonies! He read so much and loved every part of it. We had an awesome lesson with him! Paul is in his 40's and has some kids, so in my head I was already thinking of how we are going to combat the law of chastity in the future and as I was thinking that he started to explain how him and his girlfriend live separately and we asked him why and he said, "Well, in the bible its says to not fornicate, so..." I was in complete shock! I could not believe what was coming out of the mouth of a Cameroonian man. I will testify to you that that will probably never happen again to me on my mission. I couldn't believe it! I wanted to jump up and give this guy a huge hug! I was so proud of him! Go to dictionary.com and look up golden investigator... they will have a picture of Frère Paul. So that was our lesson with him that day. That night we get a call from Serge telling us how sorry he was that he wasn't there and that he really wanted us to come by the next day and teach him... so we did! And we had another great rendez-vous with him and Paul. We are going through the first lesson right now and everything is going smoothly. They both came to church this last Sunday and they brought a few of the little kids with them. In our investigator class they were teaching the law of chastity and Serge was kinda surprised that we can't have sexual relations before marriage. Oh well... I'm glad he knows about it... ça arrive. So there you have it... my two newest investigators! I really hope that we can get two baptisms out of this because then I will have seen someone baptized from the effort of me knocking doors. That would be cool.

The other day Elder Spens and I were in the taxi coming home from this quartier called cité-sic and I was in the front seat and he had the whole back seat to himself. All the windows were down because it was blasted hot... like always. Elder Spens decides to call the other elders in our apartment to figure out dinner and as he was on the phone a random arm came in through the window and grabbed his scripture bag which was on his lap and tried to pull it out the window, but it was strapped around Elder Spens so it only went so far... while this is happening Elder Spens is just going, "Hey! What the?!" and I look back and see this guy in a blue shirt take off... I bet he felt like a retard. He is lucky he didn't get caught because here in Douala they have a thing called Public Justice... if you get caught stealing you will pay the bloody price. Many people are killed. A few weeks ago two guys on a moto stole the purse of Sister Nuttall and drove off while they weren't looking. A recent convert was talking to the elders and told them that there were a group of guys down by the river going through things that they stole from a 'white woman' in Bonanjo and it broke out into a fight and one of the men was killed (drowned) and the cops came and the murderers bribed the cops with all the money in the purse and were able to go away free. How wicked is that. I witnessed a little 'public justice' over by the prison in Yaoundé and that will be a moment in my life that I will never forget. It was heart wrenching. So yeah, Elder Spens was almost robbed but he had a strap on so the guy got away with nothing.

The last few days it has been super warm and super sunny and now I have a sweet tan. That also means that I have a legit farmers tan and ring around my neck. ça sera grave quand je rentre chez moi à la fin de ma mission. Vous allez rire jusqu'à! (Will be serious when I go home at the end of my mission. You will laugh)

This Friday we had Zone conference over at the Nuttalls and we had all the elders from Yaoundé with us as well. They took a bus down and stayed the night with us at our apartments and then we had our big conference the next day. It was awesome! I love it so much when President Jameson is in town. I love talking with that man. He always knows what advice to give me and I always walk away from a meeting with him with a greater desire to do good and a greater fire to be the best I can be... I guess those are kind of the same thing, but to me they are different. I am so lucky that he lives so close to me... it will be fun visiting with him and Sister Jameson after the mission. It is very intimidating speaking to him in french... because he was a french professor for so long. The first time I ever confirmed someone a member of the church he was right there behind me on the stand. Talk about pressure!! After the conference Elder and Sister Nuttall made this amazing chili! I haven't had something like that in so long! I miss the mexican food. I wasn't the biggest fan back home but right now that is the food that I miss the most.

In Africa there is this evil tradition called "la dot". Basically that means that if a man wanted to marry a certain woman the two families would get together and present the two wanting to get married and then the father of the bride would put a price basically on his daughter. The poor guy wanting to marry the girl would then have to satisfy the demands of the "beau-père" and once 'la dot' is paid they can get married. There are so many people that aren't married simply because the man cannot pay 'la dot'. There was a conference for all the stakes and districts of Africa and Elder Oaks spoke and pretty much said the 'la dot' comes from the Devil. In the recent Ensign, with the picture of Pres. Monson and his flag tie, there is an article with a skimmed down version of what Elder Oaks said about a year and a half ago. It is so bad. It is prolonging marriage... eternal marriage. So basically is prolonging the potential of our members to receive salvation. La dot vient du diable. (The dot comes from the devil)

I got your Easter package and I think that card you sent me is by far the best Easter card I have ever received! I laughed so hard when I read that! I love my family and I love the humor that is shared in our family. Thank you so much for that card! I can't wait to get that letter from Dallin. I miss that kid! I am so glad that he is doing well in basketball. I smiled so big when I read that he busted out my dance move in a basketball game. Atta kid!! I am really bummed that that letter I sent to you with my memory cards didn't make it to you. I wrote Dallin a really good letter. I promise you that you will all have a personal letter around the 10th day of May. I am writing a bunch of letters right now and I will send them home with Elder Thompson and when he gets home he will send them out... so that way you are basically guaranteed to get the letters. There will also be photos. All the photos that didn't get to you, and about 8 more gb. So you will have about 20 gb of photos and videos. I definitely suggest that Dad goes through them before anyone else does and makes sure that not all of them are seen. He will understand why when he is looking through. There are some pictures taken just to help me remember something crazy or funny that went down. The photos will explain themselves when the time comes.

Here is something funny... so here in the Bali apartment we live on the 3rd floor and sometimes when we have left overs we give them to our guards down stairs. But because we are so lazy we built this little lift/crane thing. We have a big bucket with two jump ropes tied together and a long pole and whenever we have stuff for them we whistle and they come out and we lower it down to them. There will be pictures of it when you get my photos in May.

Well, everything is going well here in Douala. Yes, the work is a little harder but amongst the struggles there are so many miracles and success stories. I love the mission so much. I miss you all so much and I can't wait to be together again in 14 1/2 months, but right now I am living THE life. Its incredible. This won't be the best two years of my life, but I quote what Elder Richardson said once in the October Conference, this is "the best two years FOR my life." I love you all and I pray for your health and safety! Au revoir!

Je t'aime,
Elder Schmid

Hello Mother!

Not going to lie… right now I feel like crud. Yesterday, after church Elder Spens and I went into this cartié by the airport and neither of us had water and we were basically in the sun for over 2 hours. I could tell that I was in the process of becoming dehydrated, but we had to continue the work. Now I am really suffering the consequences. I have a nasty head ache and I feel like I am going to throw up and everything else is just not going like I want it to. But that is okay…I am alive and I am in the greatest mission in the world.

Here is something pretty… weird. We (the four Douala elders) were driving home from a little FHE we had last Monday night and we drove by this dumpster overflowing with trash. I was looking at the trash and seeing what people here throw away, and as we were driving by, I saw this homeless man just chilling in the pile of trash sleeping. It was disgusting! Imagine going to the dump and just taking a nap on the pile of crud you find there… that is exactly what it was like… but only worse… because this is Africa. I saw another homeless man as Elder Spens and I were walking by the airport and it was exactly like that scene in "A Knights Tale" when that naked guy walks right by you. He had no care in the world and was just strolling down the street… with absolutely nothing on. I didn’t know if I should say "Bonjour" to him or not because I say hi to everyone I pass… I decided to let it slide.

So that cartié I was talking about at the beginning of my email is called Bafia and it is right by the airport. If you go onto google maps you will see that the two runways make an ‘L’. Bafia is that little neighborhood towards that left of the point of the ‘L’. I love teaching there because you will have planes fly like 200’ above you and it is so loud! When the DHL plane takes off you feel like you are going to go deaf and everything around you is shaking. It is pretty intense. The church is right under the flight path as well so you will be sitting in meetings and everyone has to stop talking because no one can hear when the plane flies over. It is so neat. I really want to find a sweet place like that over at Sky Harbor. I found an alright place but I know there has to be a better spot.

We have a newish investigator named Joseph, and he is a gas man. He has a little shop by the airforce base and whenever people need propane he has a little moto with a trailer and he delivers gas to people who need it. He is very interested in our message and reads a lot in the Book of Mormon. The only problem that this guy has is that he doesn’t stop talking and he asks waaaaaay to many questions. It has been a little bit of a struggle for me because I have been really working on patience when teaching others, so I sit there and listen until they are done saying whatever they want to say and then I will finally respond. Well, with this guy, he talks forever and then he asks a question, so then I go to respond to that question and I get maybe 5 seconds into my question and he interrupts me and talks even more and then asks a whole new completely different question. It drives me up the wall. But I haven’t cracked, so all is well! Pretty soon I am going to strait up tell him that he needs to be quiet if he wants to learn our message. We have been with him since I have been here and we have made very little progress. The only thing making us hang on to him is his desire to learn and understand our message. He tells us all the time that he wants to get baptized and become a missionary… but with the rate we are going at, he will definitely be dead by that time.

Here is an interesting contacting story… so for the first time in my mission I went and did actual door to door contacting and it was so much fun! The first door the guy was working but took our brochure and said he would read it. The second guy was all po’d because we interrupted his ‘nap’ and he said he doesn’t need white men to come to his house to tell him about Jesus Christ… because he already knows about him. So we smiled and told him to have a good day and went to the next door. It was a lady who was cracking pistachio nuts. We walked up to her with big smiles and asked her if we could help her. I am sure she was shocked to the bone to have two white men come up to her and offer to help do manual labor. But she accepted and so we started to help her. The only bad thing about that experience was that we were standing in the sun cracking nuts for close to 45 minutes and there was no shade or clouds or anything that helped us out. Its all good though… we were in the process of giving service and nothing beats the feeling of peace and joy you can get from that. As we were cracking nuts we were also explaining to her the Restoration of the Gospel of Jesus Christ and answering her questions. I think we had a really good impact on this lady and she really wanted us to come back and teach her more. It was an awesome experience.

We tried contacting again later in the week and I was really in the mood so I said a little prayer and I asked my Heavenly Father to help us find someone who is ready to receive our message. We then went to the first door and there were two women cleaning and they politely told us that they were too busy so then we walked to the next house and we found this man cleaning up in the kitchen. When he saw us he immediately stopped everything he was doing and walked up to us and greeted us with a big smile and shook our hands and invited us to sit down and then he went back inside to get some things and came back out with a Book of Mormon and two of our brochures. He then went onto explain how he had taken lessons from the missionaries for close to two years and how he loved them so much. But then he went onto to tell us why he doesn’t believe our message… I guess after two years of lessons he only learned that we regard Joseph Smith as more than Jesus Christ and that we believe that the faith of Christ died (not true). We tried to explain to him that what he thought about Joseph Smith was completely wrong and what not but he wanted to bash with us… he started arguing about who Jesus Christ really is. He told us that he is a devout catholic and then he went onto tell me that Jesus Christ is not the Son of God because God cannot procreate. He then went onto say that Jesus was a good prophet who did a lot… but that was it. I was super confused… I looked at him and said, “Wait, you are catholic? Are you sure you are not Muslim?” Well, after 10 minutes of talking with him Elder Spens decided that he had enough of this guy and stood up to walk away… but I wasn’t ready to leave this guy so I continued to sit. I put Elder Spens in an awkward situation but that’s alright… it wasn’t our time to leave. I then started talking to this man with all the love and respect I could muster and he immediately changed his mood and at the end asked us to come back. He then turned to Elder Spens and said, “I like this guy (pointing to me) because he speaks well and listens.” That made me feel good… like I am achieving the goal I want to get. We will see what happens with him in the future.

I had a really interesting run in with some JW’s the other day while on splits but I don’t really want to tell you what happened over email… I don’t want to offend some people so I will write you a little letter and then when Elder Thompson goes home in 4 weeks he will mail it to you. I will do that with my photos as well. I’m sorry but I don’t think that you will be getting too many letters from me while I am here in Douala. I spent so much time writing the whole family personal letters and it bugged me that they didn’t even arrive chez-vous. I could go with DHL but that would be close to $70-80 for a letter. Nope! But don’t worry… you will get something about a week or two into May along with everyone else. I refuse to send letters here from Douala.

The missionaries here are in the choir and this Sunday we sang Ce matin-la (That Easter Morn) and it was incredible. I love singing so much. I think the Lord is blessing me with improving my voice skills and overcoming the fear of singing in front of people. Next week I will be singing "A Child’s Prayer" with a sister in my branch so that will be neat. I love that song so much. So that was my week! I can’t believe another week has come and gone…before you know it you will all be driving to the airport to pick me up. I can’t believe how fast time is going. I love it though :) I can’t wait to be reunited with my eternal family! I love you!

Je t’aime,
Elder Schmid

Hey Mom!

I can’t believe that another week has already come and gone. It seems like it was just yesterday that I was in this little internet shack. So for questions… in Douala it only feels good outside in the morning time… like before 10. After that, the heat starts to kick in and you sweat like a dog. In the morning time, I feel like I am in California walking down the streets and seeing all the trees and having that nice sea breeze… but then its gone the rest of the day. I like Douala…yeah,it is hot as heck but the atmosphere and life here is fun. I will enjoy my work here. I am way excited for Caelan to go to prom! I only went to one prom, and that was my junior one, and that was a blast. I am going to email you what the Thompsons (couple) emailed me… you are going to be so surprised to see what they have in store for them. I am so stoked for them! The Nuttalls are awesome. They are so nice and genuine. I am really looking forward to working with them. Life will be good here in Douala. So, my first full week here in Douala was pretty crazy. Not super crazy… just crazy. After emailing last week, we went to this family’s house and had a family home evening with them and we played this game that was a lot of fun. You have a box of matches and a bottle and you stack matches one by one on top of the bottle and if you set down your match and it falls you are out. Kind of like Jenga, but opposite. I didn’t win… but I wasn’t the first one out either, so no worries.

On Mardi, we went and visited with this girl who we are trying to reactivate. She was baptized back in September and was an awesome strong member, but then she fell into trouble with this other recent convert and now both of them are inactive… so we are trying our best to get them back and active again. There are over 300 members here in Bonapriso but only around 100 are active. Its sad and it’s a bummer because a lot of our work is focused on finding our inactives and helping them out when we could be putting more time to finding more amis de l’église and building the church here. So that is keeping us busy. I still have yet to have knocked on a door. There is so much work here. And because the church is still small (branch) the missionaries are still doing a lot of what normally the ward would take care of. Slowly but surely that will come. We have an awesome branch here in Bonapriso. The active members are so awesome. We have a 75 year old investigator named Martin and he speaks English. We call him Yoda because one day we had to cross the freeway together and he has this cane that he uses and when he got to the edge of the freeway to the barrier he strait up hopped it and pulled some Yoda moves. It was totally unexpected and hilarious.

We are teaching this family called La Belle famille and they are awesome. Papa Belle and Maman Francoise are so willing and so eager to read all of the homework we leave them and every time we come they give us a report of what they read and of what they learned. They are the investigators that everyone wants. There is only one problem with them… they aren’t married. They are an older couple and have grandkids and everything… its just money… everyone needs money here. Marriages are different here because you have to break your back buying your wife… and then you have crazy parties for a few days. One usually spends their life’s earnings on either their marriage or funerals. If you want to be rich, just come here to Cameroon and work in the funeral business. So anywho, that is the problem with Papa Belle and Maman Francoise. He has been doing a lot of interviews for work but no one is taking him because of his age. I know it will happen though. They have so much faith.

On Vendredi, we did this service project for this member who lived out in the middle of nowhere. Elder Nuttall drove us missionaries out to this members house and thankfully when we got there they had almost finished. Trust me… if you saw the kind of stuff we had to move you would be grateful that we didn’t have to touch majority of it. There were cockroaches all over their house. They were going crazy because we basically messed up their whole metropolis that they had going on in the living room. You would lift one thing and about 10 cockroaches would fly out and go find another hiding spot. I had a few crawl on me… I didn’t like that. You have seen me at the cabin when a stupid little daddy long leg crawls on me. I would take that 1000times over a fat 3 inch long cockroach. So this guy, who already lived in the middle of nowhere, decides to move deeper into the middle of nowhere. It took us quite a while to get out there. The whole time we were following this moving truck so we wouldn’t get lost. Imagine the road we take to get to mesquite wash… times 2… and now imagine a huge 40’ moving truck trying to go down that road. It was utter chaos. The driver of the moving truck was bouncing around so much. We unloaded everything super fast because there were a lot of people and then we all drank water and fanta. Getting out there was even crazier than getting in. The moving truck got stuck three times and so did we, in Elder Nuttalls truck. After about 20 minutes, the moving truck slammed on the gas and didn’t let off, and he was flying over all the bumps and holes… I am pretty sure I saw the driver nail his head on the ceiling of the truck about 5 times. I am surprised he was able to hang onto the steering wheel. When we got stuck, we all got out, except for Elder Nuttall, and we, along with about 10 other Africans, lifted up the back end of the truck and pushed it forward… talk about man power. That whole service took us about four hours and I was exhausted at the end… it was nice though. Victor, the member, appreciated our help so much. I love the feeling you get after you see the blessings and the happiness given to others through the service that you render. That is such a sweet feeling.

We had baptisms this week and normally we do it at the church but the churches water was not pumping so we had to quickly change our plans and we ended up doing it at the Nuttalls apartment cause they have a pool. Problems like this have happened in the past so this wasn’t the first time we did the baptisms in this pool. We had our little program in their living room and then we all went out back for the baptism. The pool is very deep …Elder Tingey and Elder Nuttall both got wet up to their necks while performing the baptisms. They try to stand on the steps of the pool but they are super slippery so you are almost destined to fall in deep water… mais ça va!

Sunday was crazy… we were at the church for 7 strait hours. We need to rearrange our schedule. We weren’t able to do any rendez-vous at all because of all the meetings and classes at church.

Last night we were able to watch the first session of conference in English over at the Nuttalls. The talks were all amazing! I loved Elder Hallstroms and Elder Oaks. Conference takes on a whole new meaning now as a missionary. At the end of those two hours I felt so spiritually uplifted and happy. I felt the spirit so much throughout those talks. I can’t wait to watch the rest! Last night we had a sleep over with the Bonaberi elders and we stayed in their new apartment… they have 4 AC units in that apartment… so that means 0% humidity!! It was amazing! Until I woke up at 2 in the morning cause I was freezing to death. It was so cold… blowing out 60 degrees fahr. I had a little sheet to cover me up and was in direct fire all night. Rough night. This morning was fun though… we went to this abandoned school and played basketball. That was the first time I had played basketball since October, I think. It has been so long. It felt so good to shoot and dunk. I miss basketball so much.

Well, that was my week! I love you all so much and I hope you have an awesome week!

Je t’aime,

Elder Schmid