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