April 29, 2013

Hello Family y Amigos.

Well another pday is here! Wow, time flies on a mission, I LOVE my mission. and I love Spanish too! One of the coolest things ever is to speak a different language. Ok let's see what happened this week.

My new area is great, it's A LOT bigger than my old area. So we have to cover a lot more ground. But I was afraid that my Spanish would start going down, so I just tried to find anyone and everyone that speaks it. We were crossing the street and I see a Mexican lady, so I chase her down.. haha and I talk to her telling her that I am a missionary and that I have been here for about a month and I really would love to practice my Spanish with her, so she said yes! So I talked to her a little bit and we asked if we could pass by her house again to talk more with her...she said...YES. Haha but she didn't just say yes she told to come over NOW. So we did, taught the first lessons, gave her a blessing, from there we taught her every day now,  so it's been 3 days and have taught her 3 lessons. And we have a tour of the chapel to give her on Tuesday! So cool! I am so pumped, one thing I have learned here on the mission. The Lord gives you want you want, if you are looking for it. I was looking for a way to make sure I was speaking Spanish and BOOM! I got it. Awesome.

Also, so we have these two really cool investigators named Maria and Irma. We taught a lesson with them and it was fantastic, I was literally speaking Spanish for over an hour! Because now that I have a white companion, I need to speak a lot more and I LOVE THAT! And this lesson I was seriously understanding and saying everything that I wanted to say, and I could understand all that they were saying. They were asking tons of questions and I understood them! Gosh I love Spanish!!

Now in my mission I live in a 4 man! Which means, it's 4 elders in one apartment. LOVE THIS. Haha, it's so so so fun. Because the other elders are so great and so wonderful.

Today, we are going over to Compton and go golfing hahaha, should be super fun. But yeah other than that all is going great! I love to be here and all it going well.

Also, I don't know if a lot of people know this but in my english class up at college, a kid got my same call but a transfer after me. Well now he is here and in my district being trained by Elder Koolmann, COOL! Haha it's cool to look at him and see where I was 6 weeks ago and how much you learn so fast!

Love it, and I love yall so much!

Also here in my new address:

16221 Cornuta #30

Bellflower CA 90806

BYE!

Elder Schooff 

Sabicho! Best food ever.

Sabicho

April 22, 2013

OK!!

Wow, sooo this week has been mind blowing, a lot is about to happen in the mission. Well at least for me. Well I'll just come out and say it...I'm getting split trained. haha, (Bryson you know what that means?) haha, So yeah it turns out that President doesn't think my trainer is the "doing what he should do". So yeah it's very interesting and I now have a new companion. haha So yes that all happens tomorrow. Don't worry about me y'all! The reason I am getting split trained is because my trainer just wasn't doing the things he should have been doing, so he had a visit with the President and this is what President thinks is best. SO yeah! Cool I guess! I'm excited!

Also, we have to move, they found out our neighbors are weed dealers and we can't be too close to that...they keep thinking we are cops haha. It's awesome, so we are moving to a 4 man (an apartment with 4 people living in it) haha YAY! They are soo cool, and I am being moved to a new location in Cerritos, I was 2D but now 2A. So cool! Same district and all but yeah. I don't know what is going to happen with my old companion at all. 

This week was FILLED with service, we did Helping Hands and helped the library with sorting books, (random huh?) haha super fun and a great way to tell them what we are all about- especially because they see us here in the library so much! Now we have a really good relationship with them. :) 

So something that was kinda sketchy this week, we were driving to district meeting this week with Elder Burns and Koolman, and there is this HUGE line of cars, crazy long line. It took us 40 minutes to go a half a mile. Because they were doing random road closures to check for illegals. Scary. We saw a little place to get out and show your ID and scan fingerprints, and a little JAIL in the middle of a parking lot with people about to be sent back to Mexico. It was really sad actually. Luckily I had my ID...

Spanish is AWESOME!!! I love to speak it, and it's becoming natural now, and for the most part I can understand most of what is going on. Like 70%...sometimes, haha sometimes I have NO idea what people are saying, but other times it's like I have been speaking it forever! It's funny. I love it and I love how the spirit really guides you to know what to say. Sometimes I just open my mouth and the words really do come to me. I LOVE IT! 

Also, we had a really cool lesson with the people in the trailer park. AND they commited to baptism, super cool. That is when I really fell in love with Spanish I think. I know I am here now in California to speak Spanish! It's a beautiful thing to learn a language! Love it so much. 

Tampico is the best drink in the whole wide world- it fuels missionaries here. LOVE IT

So the one (of many things) I love here, is the fruit trees, literally we are walking around and we are like "oh tengo hambre" and boom, a trees with some lemons or oranges or tangerines are there. Super cool, my favorite is Nisperos. Super cool and really flavorfull!! 

Also, it's really interesting, EVERYONE in the OneWays has inflatable bouncy houses (like the kind that Micheal Scott wanted to jump off the roof onto) for their kids...I was always curious why, and now I found out. haha It's so their parents can have their kids in there while they drink...sad. But yeah everyone has them. 

Fam fam, I love you. I need some hair gel, Dad you know where to find it! haha We are going back to the swap meet today and I will try to get yall shirts maybe! Love yall! I'll write to all separately! 

Love you all and have a great.week! 

Elder Schooff. 

April 15, 2013

Hello Fam!!

Well how are yall?! Good I can tell from all your warm emails! I love to get them and I love to hear from yall!

So yeah well this week was great, it was just another great week! Haha, Spanish is coming! There are some people I can't understand AT ALL! Haha, and some people I understand the conversation completely  It's super cool! It keeps on coming! Like you said Dad, word by word. ;) 

So guess what...my companion's bike seat was stolen AGAIN! Hahaha, wow he got a new one from a member of the ward and it was stolen again! I feel bad, it was kind of funny though. On top of that Elder Burn's and Kulhlmann's bikes were stolen completely! The lock was cut! Haha wow. So yeah good thing they have a car. 

It's Elder Kulhmann's birthday today! So we are going to the swap meet in Paramount for him! What what?! Haha, should be fun. We have had an intense run-in with a lot of drunk people this week, we taught two lessons to them...haha it was pretty funny.

So this week some cool stuff has hapened too! 

We decided to go knock the trailer park! NO ONE has done it yet in this area cause they say it's "dead" for Spanish. No one there speaks Spanish but we acted on a  prompting and went. Well, it turns out that we found the ONE person there that speaks Spanish and now we have a lesson with her tonight! Yay! Should be great.

CASEY!!! YESSSSS!! Your mission call man!! I am so happy for you!!!! Oh my gosh, you are going to do sooo great! I love you man! Thanks for the letter and I sent one to you today, expect it in the mail soon!

SO this week, I had the opportunity to play guitar but I chose not to. Haha I kind of just decided that I don't want to for now. I'll just play when I get back. I'm here to serve the people of California  that's my first focus! LOVE IT! LOVE MY MISSION! 

It's crazy to think juut 6 months ago I was still at college and just barely thinking about my mission! Wow, time flies, I have already been in California for a month! Wow. It's awesome. I love it.

Oh we also did some gnarly service this week washing some cars! And after church yesterday everyone was freaking out! It turns out some bro-nasty (Kaitlyn I know you'll love that word and can imagine me saying it right?! :) ) came around and broke 3 peoples' car windows in and took all their stuff! It was crazy.

I also saw my first police-live in action-tackle this week. That was pretty cool. We were just biking and all the sudden 4 cop cars ZOOM by us, pull over, run out of their cars and tackle this one random guy and taze him. They took him and drove off. haha. COOL! Good thing I watched Gangland before I came on the mission. :)

Well fam I love you!! Tell me about your lives, what's going on and how's the life. I heard that North Korea wants to bomb us or something! 

I love yall and I'll see you soon!

Elder Schooff 

April 8, 2013

SUP family!! How is it going?! I bet it's going soooo good!

Man, I love yall so much- I have been thinking about you all this last week a lot because of Conference here!

Muchos Muchos de cosas han pasado aqui en CALI!

Well, let me first say how much I LOVED Conference. Here, on the mission it's bigger than Christmas. Every elder and sister has been freaking out for it...no one more than me. haha I was sooo excited for it. And it flew by! These last two days (Sat and Sun) went way too fast. Dad - how was it going alone without me, did you cry? ;) Haha, jk. But I missed you and was thinking about yall soo much. It talked a lot how to be a family and I was like, "Well my family is already perfect so yeah." haha But really it was so cool about the messages about how the most important things that we can do are within the walls of our house. THIS IS SO TRUE. I have seen that with our family and how blessed we are to have such an amazing role model to look up to - that's you dad. So I just want to say thank you for all that you have done for us. LOVE YOU!

I also thought Elder Perry's talk about obedience was great! I have never heard him talk so profoundly and basically just lay it out there for all of us to hear. Really, really good. 

But again, my favorite like everyone had to be Elder Holland. The way he talks and just the way his voice is, is so comforting! Love it! Just believe, that's all we have to do! 

Ok so besides Conference, a lot has happened here. One, thank you sooooo much for the music!! Ahh wow, that is literally the greatest thing to have on the mission ever! I love music. 

I also went on exchanges this week, that was super fun. I love my District and my DL! He is such a good leader, he taught me a bunch! 

Ok well, I'll just tell you a really cool story that actually happened last night. 

My companion and I were on a spiritual high because of Conference and we decided to go knock IN the one ways (which they have recommended to be VERY cautious when doing so because it's pretty rough) but we knew one day we would have to so we did last night! It turned out great! WE actually got into a house by knocking and taught a lesson and committed them to baptism! Que en el Mundo?! It was soo cool, they were the nicest people and they LOVED to hear from us, they always wanted another way to know how to pray to God because they felt like their prayers of repetition were not good enough. We taught them to pray and they prayed for us at the end of the lesson. Basically this could turn out to be a golden investigator. Really, really cool.  We had a really cool contact with a girl a last night too, she was walking by herself balling her eyes out and we started to talk with her, she just started to tell us her life story. She was walking around because she had to leave her boyfriend's house because he was drunk and started beating her...so that is why she was crying, but she said she prayed to God that morning asking for a sign if he was really there or not...she said we were her answer. She has a really hard life, but she wants to come to church on Sunday but doesn't have a car. But we have many ways to get her there! 

California is different than Colorado. Being here I have realized how lucky I have been in my life. It's insane. I am soo blessed, and all these people here have really hard lives. Many of the members of our ward literally have NOTHING. Like Nothing. But they are some of the happiest people I have met. I am so blessed in my life. 

So yeah, after our amazing night last night, we were walking back to our bikes (we lock them up to stop signs) we noticed that some one had "messed" with our bikes. My companion's seat was stolen! hahaha, It was so funny! So yeah. They tried to take mine too, but I bought a lock for my tires and seat, HA! Nice try!

Haha ok well family I love yall soo much! I'll see yall soon! And thanks for everything. 

Elder Schooff! 

PS. Tell Casey congrats from me on his mission call!

Hello fam!

Wow! What's up?! How is it going?! I LOVE to hear from all yall and to hear all about your awesome stories.

Well, let's see. This week has been good. Just super busy serving the Lord! Haha, I am truly finding a love for this work especially when you see it helping people's lives. This gospel is such a gospel of PURE JOY and when people see that it's so fantastic. I LOVE it.

Let me just first off say, thank you all for the mail. I ADORE getting mail. It's the best. and thank you sooooo much for the packages. The food is amazing and dad...STOTCHAROOS!!! YUM!! Haha, Auntie thank you soo much for the package too, I named the little chickin pollito (little chickin). Ash you are the best, your package was amazing and again, food is the best gift you can get on a mission!! Granny thank you soo much for the letter and the "extra help" inside, I did what you said and got a nice Easter bunny, and it helped with my laundry :)

So yeah let's see, a really cool experience this week. I have a couple. 

It was Thursday and Thursday on a mission means weekly planning with your comp. Which personally I love this part of the week! We were doing good, talking about what we can do for our area and who we need to teach. I decided we need to find more members to give us referrals, because fellowshipping is a HUGE help in the ward. So we decided to pray. 

As we prayed we asked for guidance on who to go and visit. A name popped into my head. It is a Hermano in our ward, he is basically the only person I really know in the ward by name (because Spanish names are hard to remember!) haha, But yeah it kept popping up in my head, I thought it was just me over thinking it because I knew he was like the only name I knew. But I just had a feeling that he was who we needed to go see! I told my companion but he said we can't because he isn't in our area, but I dunno I just really felt like we couldn't leave it there. So I checked the ward directory to see where he lives...and it turns out that he moved into our ward 1 month ago!! It was soooo cool! So we visited him that night, and got three referrals  Woot woot! haha, It really just showed me that the Lord does tell us where we need to go, and we need to act on all spiritual experiences! 

Another cool thing is a contact I had in the street this week. It was this old lady and her freind, and well basically it was soooo cool! Because we just had a really spiritual contact in the middle of the street, got both of them crying and I had the inspiration to ask them to get baptized. I built up the courage and kinda just said it near the end of the contact..and she said yes!! It was soo cool, but then we found out she doesn't live in our area, so now she is going to other missionaires in another area. Cool!

So yeah, everything here is going great, I have never rode a bike so much in my entire life. haha, But it's good, the weather is beautiful too. I'm loving it. 

I kinda forgot yesterday was Easter...haha for some reason I thought it was next Sunday! haha, so yeah it was a really good day. 

My Spanish is slowly getting better, I am starting to understand people A LOT better now. It's so cool. Like this morning I had a full on conversation with a lady in the store for like 10 minutes in Spanish! It was so rad! It's still dificult but it's all about patience. LOVE IT! 

I AM SOOO EXCITED for Conference.  I cannot wait, and we get to watch all of them here. So that will be awesome! Man I love it. 

Ok, well fam and friends. I love yall sooo much! Keep praying for me and I always pray for you! Always BYB :)

Love Elder Schooff

Making Tortillas

Buer and Kulhmann 

Study!

My bike.

Art in the street

Back of house

House

Fig tree