Bonjour tout le monde (Hello everyone)!
 

It sounds like you all had a great week! You have awesome emails, Mom... I know that I have told you that but I am so grateful for your emails. You and Dad always get me laughing and I am always having to share things here and there with Elder Lavering. So that Titanium song is now big over in the States?? Save it for me so that I can get it the minute I get home! I love it! Is the subwoofer still in the truck? I miss that thing... it's my little baby. I miss good speakers.

 

My greatest memories I have of the family are just being WITH the family. To be honest... I can't really remember the specifics of what went down on our family vacations, but I will always remember that I loved spending time with my family. I took so much for granted before my mission, and now looking back, and after having been away from you all for over 15 months, I am starting to realize what was crucial... what was important. And that was the family. So I guess with the last year with Caelan, just be with her and have her be with you. It breaks my heart when I see families here in Cameroon because they are so isolated and separated. Yeah, maybe they are all together at by the end of the night but that's it... they are only physically together. What we have is so blessed... we are spiritually together. We are sealed by love and commitment. We are united. We are bound by the bounteous blessings of our loving Heavenly Father. I regret not understanding that earlier.

 

This week went by so fast and it was full of awesomeness. I am going to start off by talking about our ami de l'église Martin Joseph. He is solid. I don't know where to begin with him. We just got out of a rendez-vous with him and it was incredible. For almost half of the lesson he was teaching us and bearing testimony to us of the things he had studied and learned in the scriptures and brochures that we had given him. He has said many times, "I KNOW that I have found the one true church of Jesus Christ...THE ONE TRUE CHURCH... and I will NEVER turn back." He tells that to us every time we see him. Today we taught him about the law of chastity and the Atonement of Jesus Christ and it was so easy to teach him because he is already putting them into practice. He is so happy and he knows that the happiness that he has only comes from his desire to come into the fold of God. He is always inviting new friends to the rendez-vous and telling some of his other friends off and telling them to get lost because we are not here to give money (That is a huge problem we have here... we will have awesome investigators but as soon as they realize we won't be paying for their hospital bills and medicines and beers, they ditch us). I love Martin Joseph. He is a great man.

 

I was with a woman named Bernadette, and she has kind of been partially inactive so we have stopped by her place about once a week for the past 5 weeks. Last Tuesday, she asked me a pretty bizarre question. She took us into Genesis 6 where it talks about the giants and then she went on to explain that "the bible tells us that angels came from heaven and fornicated with very beautiful women and the offspring of these two parties were the giants." She then asked me to explain to her the geneology of the giants. Now, this woman has been a member for over 10 years... I had to bite my tongue and not laugh. The whole 'angels from heaven fornicating with women' doctrine comes from the JW's over here and for some reason people still hang onto JW doctrine over here. From what I understand, the reason why the JW's believe that is because of what we read in Peter when he says that Christ went and taught the spirits in prison. Well the JW's don't believe that there is a spirit world so in order to explain this scripture they say that Christ went and preached to the angels who fornicated with the women and were chased from heaven. Hmmm... interesting. Now that comes from a JW source here in my mission and I have found that many many people over here don't even understand the doctrines of their own church. I have had opportunities to teach Catholics what they "believe" in because they just didn't know... they just claimed to be catholic. Wow, I kind of went all over in this paragraph. Moving on.

 

You know Alex... our investigator? Well, he has now gotten into moto accident #3. I mean KNOWN moto accident #3. He just doesn't get the picture that he should never sit himself on something that has two wheels. Let alone any wheels.

 

We went and taught Catherine 4 times this week and for one rendez-vous we wanted to watch the little movie called "Finding Faith in Christ". We got over there and got everything set up and I just had to change the language from English to French but the remote didn't have any batteries and there were no buttons on the DVD player. So I said, "Sorry, it looks like we will have to do this another night." But they all insisted that we just watch it in English. I said okay but didn't think that it would be that edifying for them. Well, I think I was pretty wrong in assuming that. Throughout the whole movie Catherine was able to follow, and by what she saw she knew exactly what they were saying. She would be quoting the scriptures as Christ in the video would be saying them. It was pretty neat and at one point Catherine was in tears. The Spirit was there and it bore testimony that night... The language of the Spirit is never curtailed by the language of man.

 

This week we gave Catherine 3 Books of Mormon after we met with her and we got into the truck with Elder Gailey and right before he put the truck into first gear Catherine was there pounding on the window telling us to stop. She had already handed out her three books and was asking for more. She handed out 7 this week and she has been giving us awesome coordonnées. She loves missionary work!

 

Conference was AMAZING!!! I was only able to watch the first Saturday session and the Priesthood session. I got goosebumps when President Monson announced the new age requirement for Elders and Sisters. That is so awesome! When I got home I thought of Turley and Threet (two boys in our ward, just waiting to turn 19 so that they can go on their mission) and I wondered what they were thinking. I loved the press conference between the two sessions. "That is your third question, Peggy." Elder Holland is awesome. I loved it when Elder Nelson introduced himself... Hello, I am Russell M. Nelson and I am one of the twelve apostles. That would be a sweet sentence to associate your name with. I was really touched by President Christofferson's talk in Priesthood. Just be men! I learned so much from the 12 talks I was able to listen to. My appreciation for conference has grown so much since being out on the mission. I was glued to the screen during the four hours that we watched conference. I can't wait to get the conference Ensign to further study what was said. We are so blessed to have such a wonderful blessing.

 

I love my life over here and life is loving on me. The Lord has really blessed me and I am so grateful that I still have 9 months to experience living in a miracle 24/7. I am working my hardest and still overcoming weaknesses and shortcomings but I know that the Lord is helping me become a better Priesthood holder. One who does his duty. I love you!

 

Je t'aime maman :)

Elder Schmid