Dear Mom,

So, I will first answer your questions! My week has been good and you will hear about it throughout the email. Chez Noura's was very good. They actually had legit burgers with fries so it made my tummy very happy. It was only like $6, so it wasn't busting our wallets. I guess that place is a Lebanese hang out, so when we got there, we walked into a cloud of smoke and when we left we smelled horrible. We all washed our clothes that night so the smoke smell didn't go throughout the apartment. We might go there again soon. Elder Thibault is doing very good. It is neat to see the progression he is making with the french. He works hard and he is definitely a little brother. I totally mean that when I say that too... sometimes when he does things I feel like I am with a little brother and not a companion, but it has been fun. Training is a lot more difficult then what I thought it would be. My appreciation for Elder Lamb has gone up so much since 8 weeks ago. Elder Lamb rocked it as a trainer and I hope I can be half as good as he was. I am totally down with you sending him all those pictures. I told him I would when I got home but I guess he doesn't need to wait! It's crazy to think that he has been home for about 8 weeks now. Time flies! Thanks for the advice with the retainers... everything that you told me not to do is what I was doing... sooo, my bad. I'm not to worried about them in all honesty... I am pretty sure they will last me the rest of my mission. But I definitely want to invest in some new ones right when I get back. You are going to take one look at the ones I have now and say, "Yup, you need new ones." So thanks for the heads up with what to do! And what the heck?! I don't remember that story about the Marin's father! And I can't believe what went down! That is nuts! That is so sad too... I can't even imagine how hard that would be for the kids. I do have one question... did they figure out why he was walking away from his house in scuba gear? That is kind of bizarre. That whole story is kinda bizarre. It is crazy to see what some people are pushed to do. I hope you have a fun time up at the cabin. Grandma told me that there are four fires up there right now. Is the cabin in danger? Are they big fires? It sounds like Utah is getting burned up! Wildfire season is always so scary... it can happen anywhere.

Alright, my week. It was good! Well...yeah, it was good. It could have been better though. Right now we are struggling with our investigators. We have had awesome investigators who were so strong at the very beginning, who read the Book of Mormon in between rendezvous, who had the desire to improve their lives, and what not. It seems like almost every single one of our investigators has hit a brick wall and stopped. It gets so irritating because you work so hard with them and you know that they have tasted of the good fruit... the love of God, and then they just stop and don't want to continue. They tell us that they want to continue but they only want a good 'bible study'... they don't want to learn so that they can change their lives. I have really been taking it to the Lord with this one... I am running out of ideas and really we are just wasting time. That is what I fasted for yesterday... to know what to do with our existing investigators, and for us to be able to find new ones that we can teach all the way to conversion and baptism. My whole teaching method has changed... At the beginning of my mission, it was very easy to check everything off and say, 'yup! They have received all the lessons... they can be baptized." And then when you talk to them about it of course they say yes because everyone here wants to be baptized. But so many people are baptized without fully being converted. We have such a high inactivity rate in the branch here in Douala and I do not want to add to that disgusting statistic. I am totally down if I only have one more baptism for the rest of my mission... I just want to make sure that they are truly converted. So that is what is going down with my sector... it sucks but I am grateful for the trial and struggle because it is only helping me become a better person and helping me rely more on the Lord. He knows everything... Sometimes I think that me, with my finite mind, can solve the problem to anything, but then reality slaps me hard in the face and I realize that I need to dip into infinite wisdom that only comes from our Heavenly Father and Jesus Christ.

This past week I was able to go on a split with Elder Spens over in Bonaberi and it was sweet! It is so pretty over in Bonaberi. It is like a developed village over there and when you are over there you actually feel like you are in Africa. They have AC in their apartment over there too, and it felt so good to get out of humidity. It is going to be hard for me to adjust to life back home where everyone has AC because I get a super mild cold whenever I am in AC for a few hours. It's funny to see what happens to me after being here for 3 months. When I was over there it rained and rained and rained and rained... the road to our apartment was a muddy river up to the knees of some people. We didn't have umbrellas either, so we decided to study a little longer in the morning and then we went out and tried to go see some of their investigators but all the roads were under 2 feet of muddy water and I wasn't to comfortable with the idea of walking where I can't see. Especially here in Africa. Glass bottles, urine, trash, sewage, etc. So we headed back to the apartment and right when we got back Elder Nuttal was there to take me back to my part of town. The next day it rained for 14 hours straight! There was so much water EVERYWHERE!! We had our first rendezvous in a quartier called Babylone and then afterwards we needed to go over the the church, so we started walking and we found ourselves in a little problem. The road that laid ahead of us was completely covered in dirty water. If we went the other way we would walk about 5x as much as we needed to... so what did we do? We took off our socks and rolled up our pants and started walking. Before we knew it, we were in water past our knees about halfway up our thighs. A little higher for Elder Thibault because he is about 7 inches shorter than me. We had to walk in the middle of the road because on either side were huge gutters and if we fell in those we would be in filthy water up to our chests. I am sure people all around us were utterly confused as to why two young white men were walking, shirt and tie, in water up to their thighs. What made it even funnier was that we both had our umbrellas out to keep us dry... while we were wading through deep water. We didn't pass up this opportunity to take photos. We took some awesome ones and I can't wait to send them to you. We wanted to today but the Nuttalls are gone taking their truck to the shop so hopefully next week. There will be some pretty funny pictures :)

So, after all that news about unprogressive investigators, we were able to receive a coordonnée from a family in our branch and the coordonnée is an older woman from the Douala tribe!! Remember what I said about the Douala tribe?? Well she is awesome! She loves the Book of Mormon and loves to read it slow and really study it and understand it. We are also teaching her two granddaughters. The only problem with this one woman, whose name is Katrine, is that she only works on Saturday and Sunday. One of her granddaughters came to church yesterday and she loved it. She is 15 years old and we had one of our recent converts who is the same age totally show her around and be with her throughout the 3 hours. It worked out so perfectly. That is what we need for every single one of our investigators who comes to church. It is tricky teaching them because no one has a phone over there so we can't really "fix" our rendezvous... we just randomly show up and pray that they will be there. It has worked out perfectly so far! Actually I take that back... they weren't there one time. But hey, 75% is still pretty good! Here is an interesting story. One of our unprogressive investigators is Albertine and she was so solid at the very beginning. Well, we have been trying to simply read the Book of Mormon with her so that we can build her testimony from that... because if the Book of Mormon is true our whole message is true. As we were reading, this other old lady that was with us, Colette, started talking about her church and what she believes... excuse me, I meant, what she knows. She started going off on the false doctrine that no one can ever see the face of God. She even said that even Jesus Christ hasn't even seen the face of God. What the heck?! Is that what they teach in that church?? It would make sense... 1 Nephi 13. She said that when God spoke to Abraham, that he didn't even look at the face of God. He simply looked away, BUT he was still listening. I was laughing so hard inside my head. I asked her where it says that in the scriptures and she told me that she saw it in a painting. She stumped me... I was trying so hard not to laugh. That is so absurd!! I guess religious art can be considered as doctrine now. Thanks Colette. I didn't even bother proving her wrong with that one. I have learned that it is useless trying to teach her... because she knows everything. She doesn't listen to us either... we would listen to her and not interrupt her or anything for 15 minutes sometimes. And then we tried to teach and she cut us off almost immediately right after we started. I don't like teaching Albertine when Colette is there.

So, I have officially been a missionary for a year!! It is crazy to think that I have been away from you all for over a year. Time goes by so fast. It is neat being past a year because now I can go back into my journal and see what I was doing exactly a year ago. I have kept a journal for 370 days without missing a day. How neat is that? I can't even begin to tell you how grateful I am for my journals and for how grateful I am for the diligence I have put into them. It is already paying off and they will be such a huge blessing to my future family. Even you when I get home! Then you will get my true feelings :)

On my year mark I got a sweet birthday package from Alex and she sent me this awesome shirt that says "I'M WITH LAMAN --->" its just like those 'i'm with stupid shirts'. It is pretty sweet. I have no clue how she got it but I am so glad that I have it! She also sent me this awesome daily planner and decorated with sweet photos of the witness trees in the Sacred Grove. She is so awesome. I love my best friend :) I also got Dad's letter and his letter was awesome. As I was reading it, I felt like I was sitting right there with him and he was just talking to me. I miss that guy... he is definitely my hero. I hope I will be able to respond to his letter soon and I hope that mine will be as cool as his. On va voir!

Well, that was my week. Life is going well over here in Douala. Missionary work is so gratifying. I am so grateful that I am here and I am so grateful that I still have a year to learn, struggle, and grow. The Lord has been blessing my life so much and I look forward to doing what he wants me to do so that he can bless me even more. I love you all so much and I hope you have an awesome week!

Je vous aime,
Elder Schmid