Quoi de neuf ma mère (Whats new my mother)!!

I love you so much. I hope you know that. Thanks for the email this week! I loved it! About 75% of the storms here are accompanied by thunder and lightning and it is amazing. Thunder is my favorite thing about nature and there is a lot of it whenever there is a storm. And as for your last question in the first paragraph... yes I am pretty sure that will be me :) So you better get ready!! Congratulations to Bug!! I got goose bumps when I read that awesome news! He will do awesome over there. I am so proud of that kid. He will have so much fun down there. I am way proud of Dallin as well! Talk about getting things done! I wish I was like that with my scouting life. Oh well... I still got my eagle right after I turned 15 :) So he has a little under a year to beat me. I can't believe that Ashlyn will be giving a family home evening lesson tonight!! I miss that little angel.

So, this past week was pretty sweet! Like always, I love working with Elder Thibault. My quality as a missionary has grown so much since being district leader and trainer. I love how responsibility can shape you. I am far from perfect... but I am progressing and that is exactly what the Lord wants. Serge is doing alright. He disappeared for two weeks because he found work and he doesn't have a phone number, so it is next to impossible to contact him. He showed up to church yesterday and let me know of his life situation and what not. He knows our message is true and that he needs it... so now its just a matter of faith pushing him to action. I have faith in him though... so I know with time things will fall into place.

We have another ami de l'église named Paul. We found him the same time we found Serge. They were actually together. Paul disappeared because of work and he was way far away. Well, one day we were in his neck of the woods in a quartier called Ngangué, and we were raté'd (had a "no show" for an appointment) so we went to see if we could figure out anymore about Serge, and his mom told us that he wasn't there but that Paul was back and she wanted us to go talk with him... so we did! We had an amazing rendezvous, and after 50 minutes we had one more person committed to baptism. I love working with Paul so much because he is a man that if he knows something is true, he will follow that faith. So our work with him involves us building his faith so that it becomes that amazing anchor in his life. We went over the word of wisdom and helped him understand that it is a commandment from God... yes even though Jesus drank wine along with all the apostles. I hate that argument. He knows that Joseph Smith was a true prophet and that The Church of Jesus Christ was restored through him, so after explaining that to him and explaining to him that if Joseph Smith was a true prophet, that would mean that the word of wisdom really came from Jesus Christ. So now he knows that it truly is a commandment and he is in the process of applying it to his life. It is easy to stop just like that. I was lucky with Remy back in Yaoundé. Paul will take a little longer but I know he will overcome that temptation. He came to church with his little 5 year old daughter and loved it! So I am happy.

We have an investigator whose name is Jeanne d'Arc... how awesome is that... Joan of Arc! I had no clue how to spell her name and then one day I asked her and she wrote it for me and it all clicked in my head. Anywho, she has an interview tomorrow for baptism and will be baptized this Saturday! If her interview goes well of course. She is such a solid amie. She loves the Book of Mormon so much and has such a solid testimony of it. Perfect!!! That is exactly what we want all of our amis de l'église (friends of the church) to have. If you know that the Book of Mormon is true then you know that our whole entire message is true! It is as easy as that and I love focusing on that when I teach. I love studying that amazing book each and every day. My testimony has grown so much because of the doctrine and gospel found on those pages.

I am pretty excited for you having those new windows! That must be so nice now! I remember waking up often and sweating pretty bad because the sun was shining on me through that 30 year old window in my room. Dallin and Aiden better be rejoicing! Any other news on home fixes? I was looking at my pictures that you sent me and I noticed that we have a monster coffee table now in the TV room! How is the progress of the shed?

I am in the process of writing letters to all the kids in the family. I am writing Dallins right now and I was rereading it and I realized how weird I sounded. I read it and said to myself, "Yup, I am definitely a missionary right now." I hope he enjoys it and doesn't think I am a freak. I don't know when the next person is going back to the states but when they do go I am almost sure I will have letters for all the kids. Welp, I gotta go. I love you all so much and I hope you have an amazing week! Je vous aime avec tout mon cœur! (I love you with all my heart!)

Love,
Elder Schmid

Our awesome branch missionaries here in the Douala branch!  The one in the back row on the very left is the one that always calls me "Frere Legit!!"

Some HUGE storm clouds moving into Douala.  I thought this was a wicked photo so I wanted to send it to you.

Jimmy and Elder Schmid

(Notice Elder Schmid's height)...baptism of special members in Yaounde

Planting banana trees?

We recetly received 3 memory cards from the last 7 months of Elder Schmids mission.  These are some of his pictures, but we are unsure of the people who are in them or the stories behind each picture...sorry.

Hello family!

I hate doing email at this stupid internet café… I have been sitting here for 25 minutes and it still hasn’t opened up to my inbox in myldsmail. We had a sweet place in Yaoundé that was pretty fast and I am really missing that right now. Mais, ça va… at least I am in a place where there is email. So I loved reading your last emails. It seems like you had a great week last week. I am proud of Dallin and Caelan! I wish I could have been there for their concerts. Mom! How could you have forgotten your camera! I am curious to see how Dallin handles MVT football. They will work him like a horse but he will learn a whole lot. I never wanted to put in the time to do football. I bet he is having a lot of fun with those braces… sucker!! It will all be worth it in the end though. I am so grateful that I had braces.

I will try to answer all your questions that you asked in the last email. I think the leadership skills are doing alright. I love being a trainer because there is a whole new responsibility. Elder Lamb basically paved my mission for me… I want to be just like him. Your trainer has, by far, the greatest impact on your mission, I feel, and so I am really feeling the responsibility on my shoulders to be a great example and I love it! I can see myself becoming someone better. I love having this responsibility. I know that I am not the best leader, but I am trying my hardest. There have been some issues in the district between two companions and it has been kind of challenging working with it and trying to help them out. I was thrown into this position without any training or anything and I have had to learn very fast what my responsibilities are. Elder Thibault is doing great. It is awesome seeing his French improve almost everyday. He has adjusted very well. A lot better than I did, I feel. I love working with this kid. Right now, at this moment, he is talking to some guy in the cyber café and giving him a Restoration brochure. I’m telling you, this kid is a stud! Douala is Douala. Hard. Missionary work progressed a little easier I feel over in Yaoundé. Here, we have had to work a whole lot more on contacting and finding people and sifting through all those people and finding those who really are interested and have that desire to change their lives and follow the example of their Savior, Jesus Christ, and be baptized by someone holding the priesthood authority of God. I can't believe that Tyler is already back!! I miss that kid so much. Only 13 more months until him and I can go eat Steves Krazy Sub!! Living conditions here in Douala are pretty nice. Just like Yaoundé except we are never out of water. The power goes out about once a week for an hour or two but its no big deal because most of the time we aren't even in the apartment. It does suck, though, when you don't have a fan blowing on you. You sweat like crazy if you don't. We have a horrible ant problem. They are tearing up the kitchen. We don't know what to do!! We thought we killed their big nest and the next day there is a huge trail of ants coming up the wall from the apartment below us! It is ridiculous. There are no cockroaches... I have only seen 2 and they are only the small ones... like only an inch long.

So, this week was a pretty good one. Last night I had a super random headache that nailed me, and I couldn't take it, so I went and got into bed after taking some advil. I was just laying there when I heard this loud BOOM... BOOM BOOM BOOM!! I thought someone was getting shotup in the street so I looked out the window and right as I did the whole sky lit up and there was this huge firework! I guess May 20th is some kind of holiday for Cameroon and they were celebrating it. So we had a sweet firework show that was super close to the apartment. The rain came and it was raining hard but that didn't stop it. I got some sweet pictures and videos that you will see when I send this memory card home. One of our progressing investigators took a big step backwards. We were teaching her and she was doing great and then at one rendezvous I asked her if she would come to church this Sunday and she told me that she would be at her other church. I took that opportunity to explain to her that covenant of baptism that she had accepted to undertake on June 2nd. I explained to her that when we make that promise with the Lord we promise to follow all His commandments... including respecting the sabbath day... which includes going to church, and not just to any church, but to The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints. I told her that when she would be baptized that this church would become her new church and that she will have promised with God that she will always go to that church. I explained to her 2 Nephi 31:14 and said that we are not going to baptize her if she is not willing to completely accept this promise. I think that is a big problem that we have had here in Douala... we have tons and tons of inactives here in Douala because they didn't fully understand the significance of the covenant they made. So Elder Thibault and I are really focusing our efforts now on inactives and helping them come back into the light that once illuminated their souls. This is how I see it... God is a just God. It is promised to all of His children that we will have the opportunity to accept the gospel of Jesus Christ and follows its precepts. We also have the agency to deny it. That choice WILL come to all. Well, there are many people here in Douala who have already made that choice and have now fallen away and there is no second chance... that theory is as fake as that sheriff guy that got caught recently. So we want to help those who have once tasted of the fruit and who know that the fruit is good. Because theoretically, they are the ones who have the greatest need of us, the missionaries. So yeah, Shella is no longer progressing, but I hope that that will change. We weren't able to see Serge at all this last week because he found work and his hours don't mesh well with ours. But no worries, we will figure something out. He is way excited about the gospel. He has been sharing his testimony a lot with his friends and they want to meet with us now so I am hoping that a whole lot of good will come out of this.

I want to share something that has really been helping me out a lot lately. Go to the Preach My Gospel and open up to the very last page in chapter 6 and evaluate yourselves with how you live a Christ-like life. I have been really trying to become Christ-like recently... improve my patience and love for others and that page has been working miracles. That whole chapter has, actually. I love studying Christ-like attributes. And I love what Alex said in her last email about gaining intelligence... it is as simple as asking!! It is so true and so simple but so many of us have a hard time understanding that. But along with asking comes effort on our part. DJ gave me The Infinite Atonement and I have been reading in that a lot just to improve and build my testimony of my Savior and of His atoning sacrifice and that study has blessed my life so much. Every time I find myself studying that topic I am so happy and my love for the gospel is so much bigger and my desire to do good and everything necessary to get back to my Heavenly Father is always on fire. Every time I feel like that, it is when I study... I am starting to understand what "feasting upon the words of Christ" really means. I love studying the gospel of Jesus Christ!!

Well, that's about all I have for this week. I love you all and I am so happy that everything is going well back at home. You are the best :)

Je t'aime,
Elder Schmid

Hey! Wow, I can’t even begin to tell you how awesome it was talking to everyone and seeing everybody’s faces and what not. Those truly were some precious minutes. They go by way too fast. I hope you enjoyed the French. It was cool being able to share a little something like that with you. The end of the phone call is always a killer… but really my love for you grows even more. I am so grateful for the family that I am a part of. Here in Cameroon you see a lot of dysfunctional families and I am always reminded how blessed I am to have the family that I do and that we all love each other. We are so blessed! I wish I had more time… every time I finish a call I feel like people get jipped on time and I wish I could have spoken a little more to Ashlyn. It made me a little sad to hear that she wanted to read me something. I would have loved that so much. But I am sooo grateful for the time I was given to talk with everyone. Those are some of my happiest memories on the mission… talking with my family. I love you all so much :) I am sorry to hear about Brother Brown passing away. It sounds like he was an incredible example of charity and service. I loved your little story about helping him out a little with his Christmas lights. Service is amazing… there is no other way to put it. The only consequence of true service is happiness and joy… on both ends. I love serving so much!

This past week has been amazing! I love working with Elder Thibault so much. This past week was so effective. A week ago we had 0 baptismal candidates and now we have 3! They are all set for June 2nd! I am so excited! Elder Thibault was able to ask all three of them and commit them to baptism. It is so awesome seeing the Spirit of the Lord working through him. I am always blown away by how effective he is as a missionary. His French is still coming along. He is exactly how I was when I first got out here into the field. I always thought about how I probably didn’t even attribute anything to the lesson and what not because I couldn’t speak French, but I don’t think I could have been any more wrong. After working with Elder Thibault for a week I have seen the exact opposite. New missionaries truly are such a treasure. Our investigators here are ALWAYS learning and growing whenever Elder Thibault bears his testimony. I love working with him! We have done so much good over this past week. He is such a goof ball. His humor is always making me laugh and have a good time. Elder Thibault and I were in a taxi going back to our apartment and I was sitting in the front seat just watching the life around me as we passed by and all of the sudden Elder Thibault was talking in the back and he wasn’t talking to me… he was contacting some guy in the back seat and presenting to him a Restoration brochure! It was awesome! He was struggling with the French but in the end the message got through and the man contacted totally understood. I turned around so that when he finished I could bear testimony and support everything he just said and I looked at the man and it was this militant man with a huge AK-47 on his lap. Atta kid Elder Thibault! Speaking of French… I had an interview with President Jameson yesterday and he had me say the opening prayer in French and afterwards he commended me on my French and went on to tell me that he considered me fluent. I was pretty shocked to hear that coming out of his mouth… but he was a college French professor for over 30 years… so I’ll take it!! That made me feel so good. The gift of tongues is real! You are totally right about my desire to change my attitude and be a happier person… so that is why I don’t like to focus on the negatives in my emails. A mission is a miracle and I am so blessed to be out here… there is so much good I could share with you but I never have enough time… so why would I share the bad? The only thing I could ask for is to always pray so that I can have that Christ-like love and patience. Really, with those two things there won’t be any bad experiences. I have been working on those two attributes a lot lately and I have found so many blessings and it has really helped me become a better missionary. So I hope you understand why I don’t really talk about struggles and what not. There are always struggles… but there are ALWAYS more miracles and blessings.

This will make DJ laugh… I went on splits with Elder Nash the day before Elder Thibault got here and we met an ami de l’église and her name was Christianne. That was the first time I have ever come across that name… and DJ always gets a kick out of it when he calls me that… but that’s okay. I guess it comes with old age, finding humor in weird things :)

If I could ask for one thing, it would be this. We have an investigator whose name is Serge. He grew up in Yaoundé in a life of sin. He came here trying to escape his life and start over but it has still been hard. A few days after he arrived here in Douala, Elder Spens and I were contacting in this new quartier that we had never worked in before. We thought to ourselves, “Hmmm, lets give this one a shot.” So we started contacting… going door to door asking people if we could share a message about Jesus Christ… basically what I presented to you yesterday in French. We weren’t finding much success… we handed out a ton of brochures and what not but you can see in the peoples eyes if they are interested or not. They will tell you until they are blue in the face that they are interested but the Spirit of the Lord will never lie… and he won’t waste His servants time. So an impression came to me… look for people sitting down in front of their house relaxing… so I mentioned that to Elder Spens and he said okay so we started looking for people who were just sitting down in front of their houses. After passing tons and tons of doors we saw ahead two people just chilling… so we went directly to them. And guess who we found… Serge. Just a few days before that he realized what kind of life he was living and decided to do something about it and change. So he came to Douala and was searching for the truth about anything that could help him spiritually and mentally. And just a few days later we showed up. I know with all of my heart that we were directed to Serge and I know that the Lord knows that we can help him. The Lord wants Serge… and that’s why he sent us to him. Serge is a strong ami but I want him to be stronger. I still have some doubts about him enduring to the end. So I think you could all help him out sooo much by simply praying for him… pray for your brother Serge. Thank you so much!

Well, that’s all I have for today. I love you all so much and I thank you so much for your emails. Don’t ever worry about your long emails. I love them so much!

Je vous aime,

Elder Schmid

Bonjour! Yet another week has come and gone and I am sitting at the computer again. Thanks for the email! I love all the detail you put into it. This past week was pretty crazy with the transfers, missionaries going, missionaries coming, splits and so much more. I forgot my daily planner so if this email is kind of scattered I am sorry.  Gah… the lady that works at this cybercafé is watching Clash of the Titans…don’t look! Don’t look!

I am sure you are all wondering about my new companion… my trainee. His name is Elder Thibault (tee-bow) and is from Provo, Utah. He is awesome… I don’t know how to put it any other way. Yah, his French is just like every other new missionary’s French but that doesn’t stop him. He has a great testimony and a great desire to learn. I am so excited to work with him and to be his companion. I know that I will learn a lot of good things by working with Elder Thibault. He has an awesome sense of humor, so that will be great. It is awesome having him as a companion because everything is so new and crazy to him, so when he points something out that is so bizarre I realize how habituated I am. Crazy things don’t phase me any more… it’s just life. So, it is fun having him around. Yesterday, he was given the opportunity to bear his testimony in church and he did very well. Afterwards, we taught one of the recent converts here and he was able to participate and he was able to teach. It was incredible. I had to translate a lot and help him understand what everyone was saying and sometimes I had to help him say what he wanted to say but for the most part he did it all on his own! It was so cool seeing a fresh missionary like that teaching and seeing the people listening to him learn. Now that is the gift of tongues!

We went to look for one of our inactive members who hasn’t really been to church in six months. Elder Spens and I have tried and tried with her to get her back but nothing seemed to be working. The spirit led us to her house yesterday so I started asking her questions to see why. After asking her a few questions about her family and how she was doing I asked her a very simple question, which was also the key question… “Why were you not at church today?” She looked down and said, “Well, now is the hour of truth…” and she went on for about 10-15 minutes explaining everything. I felt bad for Elder Thibault because he probably didn’t understand one thing and she was talking very fast and I couldn’t interrupt her… I looked at him and said, “Hang in there bud. I will explain everything afterwards.” This girls main problem was that she was offended and persecuted from inside the church… when she was active and when she became inactive. I explained to her that the church is perfect, but the people aren’t. I explained to her that salvation can ONLY come through the ordinances that are done in the church... so by not going to church because of what someone said to her was only hurting herself even more. My goal was to have her feel the love and concern that we have for her. I wanted her to see that we want what is best for her… the Gospel of Jesus Christ! After explaining all that to her she looked down and was pretty quiet. You could tell that the spirit was really working with her. I then told her, “Look, Elder Spens and I have tried and tried to help you but you have always fled when we came. Do you want Elder Thibault and I to continue? Do you want our help?” She looked at me in the eyes and said a soft, but desperate ‘oui.’ It was a pretty powerful moment. I love working with inactive members. I love seeing that fire that they once had, rekindle inside of them and begin to burn again. That was the spiritual part of that lesson. Something pretty funny happened… well, not funny. It was more ridiculous. As she was talking there were two teenagers who were getting very upset with each other and calling each other very bad things in French. Because of how loud they were they attracted a pretty large crowd really fast. Crowds are bad… they always taunt the people in the middle to fight because they all want a show. And that is exactly what they got. So there we are… having this awesome lesson and all of the sudden these two kids start throwing a bunch of punches. There were some pretty sweet hits to the face and some nice tackles in filthy poop water. Elder Thibault couldn’t believe what was happening right before his eyes. Here we are in his second rendezvous ever in Africa, and there is this huge fight right in front of him. They were no more than 15 feet away. After about 5 minutes the two punks got tired of hitting each other and left… and because the show was over everyone else left too. Welcome to Cameroon, Elder Thibault!

This past week was so chaotic. I wasn’t even with Elder Spens the last 3 days that we were together as companions because he wanted to do splits and say goodbye to everyone. I wasn’t in my sector for almost half of the week… and Elder Spens was only saying goodbye so hardly anything got done. It kind of frustrated me… but I can’t get mad. I can only take what is bugging me and let it change me into a better person. The Lord is really helping me out with my patience. It was weird having all those missionaries go home. In total there were 7 that went home from Cameroon and they were all at the Nuttalls house on Friday. The Nuttalls invited all the missionaries to be there so we could all spend time together and say our final goodbyes. It was weird because I felt like I was going to leave with them and then reality slapped me in the face and let me know that I still had 14 months left. And then I started thinking about how long away that is. It was annoying. I just wanted to get back to work the whole time so I could focus more on my investigators and converts than about the time I still have until I go home. I love to work. Time only goes by fast when you are actually working. So that is why I try to work as hard as I can… and of course because it is the Lords work.

So that was my week. I hope you are all doing well and I can’t wait to talk with you on Mothers Day! I have no clue what the plans are but once I do I will email you and let you know, so no worries! I love you all! Au revoir!

Je vous aime,
Elder Schmid