Hey Mom!

OK, I'm not going to lie... this email produced some tears. That is probably some of the most heart wrenching news I have received on the mission. (A couple, Floyd and Karen Wells, formerly from our ward, recently passed in an auto accident).  I love those two people so much. I loved going to their house to collect fast offerings because they would always invite us into their house and talk with us and visit. I think it is a blessing, though, that they went together. It's funny how death always affects us like that, yet we have the greatest knowledge anyone can have... the knowledge of the Plan of Salvation. I will definitely keep their family in my prayers. Families are forever :)

Thanks for helping me out with those photos. I know she will really appreciate that. What you and Sister Thompson is doing is genius.  (We, more Sister Thompson, set up a bulletin board at church that has self addressed envelopes and pictures of each of our missionaries.) I love letters :) I feel bad though because it is so hard for me to write some and respond because mailing stuff here is so risky. I am slowly writing some, and then when someone goes back to the states I will give them all of my letters so they can send them from U.S. soil. I trust USPS more than Cameroon.

So, here is some stuff that I wrote down that I wanted to throw in my email this week. Last Monday, we had family home evening over at this family's house. They had us help them prepare the dinner. I made french fries in a fryer! It was awesome! I felt so out of place using that fryer in Africa. Well, as we were preparing the dinner we were waiting for two young men to arrive because they were going to eat with us, one of them being Frère Legit. Well, they arrived and as they were getting out of the taxi Frère Legit opened his door right as a nice Mercedes was driving by and totally messed up the whole side of the car. Crazy drama followed and I am not going to even attempt to try to explain to you what happened. But I will tell you this because it is pretty funny, Frère Legit only knows like 10 English words and whenever I ask him how he is doing he always says that he is, "very so happy good!" Well, when he arrived that night I asked him how he was doing and he said, "Oh, Elder Legit, I am very so happy bad..." It made me laugh. I love that kid. I don't know if I told you or not but he asked me to ordain him a Priest and confer upon him the Aaronic Priesthood. It was a pretty neat experience. Later that night Jacques (Legit) had us do the hokey-pokey and the tooty-ta. It is so much fun playing stupid games like that with Africans here because they just don't care about how you look or how silly things are... its all about having fun and spreading happiness.

So, in the Missionary White Handbook it tells us missionaries to call each other by our appropriate titles... so Elder Thibault and I have come up with 'appropriate titles' for each other and they are quite funny. Here is how a normal conversation starts... Elder Thibault - "Hey, all powerful, master, district leader, trainer, senior companion, Elder Schmid?" Moi - "Yes, padawan, trainee, junior companion, not all so powerful, greeny, Elder Thibault? Pretty clever, huh?

We had a baptism this weekend! Sœur Jeanne d'Arc entered the waters of baptism on Saturday and was baptized by Elder Thibault! It is his first baptism on his mission! It was neat because he was asked to do the baptism. Then on Sunday we laid our hands on her head and I was voice in conferring her a member of The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints. It was a really neat experience but what was even neater was seeing the joy and excitement coming from her after church. She knows that she just made the best decision of her life up to that point. We were supposed to do the baptism at our church but when we got there, there was no water... the water wasn't pumping for some reason. So there we were with no idea what to do. The Nuttalls told us to join the other baptism over at Bonaberi... the only problem was that that baptism service was to start at 2:30... four hours later. So Jeanne d'Arc, Maman Françoise, and Papa Bell went over to the Nuttalls apartment and watched 17 miracles and I was able to watch some of it. HOLY COW!!! That movie is so sad/happy/amazing/heart wrenching/depressing/joyful thing ever created. I really want to watch the whole thing. Their story is amazing. I ask myself sometimes if I have enough faith right now to do what they did back then. That would be so hard. I am so grateful for our amazing ancestors and pioneers.

As we were going to Bonaberi, we ran into some traffic on the bridge... like always. Except this time it was due to something pretty bizarre. The train that goes down the middle of the bridge hit a big dump truck and drug it for a little bit. Don't worry, no one died and there was no crazy damage, just a lot of traffic. Once we got past the traffic we were finally going pretty fast again until we found road construction. There wasn't really anywhere to go... so what does the taxi driver do? He just goes up on the sidewalk! It was awesome! I am pretty sure we could have never gotten away with that back in the States. Elder Nuttall ended up doing that when he was taking us all back to our part of Douala later that day. I love my mission.

Last night we ate an amazing roast. We have a crock pot over here and we busted it out last night and broke our fast by eating one of the most amazing dinners I have had on my mission. There was one problem though... I ate wayyy too much. You know how I am with mashed potatoes. I had two ginormous plate fulls and 1.5 liters of water sitting in my stomach in a matter of 10 minutes. I hurt afterwards. I couldn't lay down or even stand up strait. I was walking around the apartment for about 15 minutes hunching because that was the only way to not feel the pain of an overloaded stomach. I decided to take a shower because there was nothing else I could do. I felt like an old man...

I wish you could all come over here and experience an African testimony meeting. Yesterday we had this one guy tell a 12 minute story about how he lost his watch and how he prayed and prayed and he found it in his pants pocket.  We had a man from Lyon, France visiting our branch. He is down here for work and I sat next to him in Sacrament meeting. It was neat listening to him speak. He got up and bore his testimony and I was so happy because I could basically understand everything he was saying. African french is so much different than french french. He spoke awesome English too. During the Sacrament he whipped out his iPad and read some talks in the May 2012 Ensign... I miss technology. There is a good chance he knows some of my buds from the MTC who went to Lyon for their mission. He gave me his contact and I will be emailing him and updating him on where my friends are and what their names are.

Well, this past week was great! I love missionary work and I love learning and growing. There is no where else I would rather be. Things are going well. I love you all so much and I can't wait to see you again :)

Je vous aime,

All powerful, master, district leader, trainer, senior companion,
Elder Schmid


* I will be with Elder Thibault for at least 8 more weeks but I think we will be together for 14 more... its all up to the Lord. And a replacement has not been found yet for Yaoundé. We have a senior couple there right now who transferred from Lubumbashi, DR Congo to finish their mission. They will be gone towards the end of July, I think but I am not sure.