May 27, 2013

Hello Family! How is it going?! 

Well I don't have too much time today, the library is closed due to the Holiday! So we are at the Family History Center! 

So this week was great, and we have a baptism this next week on Saturday! Yay! She is a little 10 year old we have been teaching, her family was less active and we have been working hard to reactive them, this baptism should be really good for the whole family! 

This last week I learned some cool stuff, 1) Grease the movie was filmed in the high school in Cerritos. I bike by it all the time, I thought that was cool! haha and 2) Disturbia the movie was filmed up in Whittier  cool! 

Ok, random facts out of the way. I had a really cool experience yesterday. So we were heading to an appointment and suddenly my companion's tire popped. Boom, basically a tragedy! haha, But out of NOWHERE ab ambulance drives up, this little guys pops out and is like, "Hey y'all need help?" So we said yes, and he loaded the bikes in the back of the ambulance and he took us home. He isn't a member or anything. He just said that he is Cristian and loves to help out. What's crazy is that he knew a TON about Mormons. And (this may sound creepy but it's not) he knew what street we lived on! He just knew. I swear it was one of the 3 Nephites! haha, It was a really cool experience! It showed me that the Lord really is always looking out for us. That even when we are down and bummed, don't be! Look for what's good in life and that's when the miracles start to happen! So cool. 

Oh also, yesterday was ward conference and it was great! Here they do two wards at a time, so it was a Spanish ward and an English ward at the same time! And it was so funny to see all the white people wearing the little translator headsets! It was kinda cool to not have to wear one! I LOVE Spanish! It's so great. 

Ok well, I don't have too much more time. But this next Saturday is transfers so we will see what happens there! This is the craziest transfer yet! This next one will be a 2-transfer transfer, it's where everything stays the same for 2 transfers! The new President comes in 1 month and President right now is "cleaning up" the mission. So yeah. So I don't know if we are going to stay here or leave. But yeah! I'll tell you next week! Yay! 

Love y'all so so so much! 

Elder Schooff

May 21, 2013

Hello once again!

Well, one we went to the temple today!! So so so cool! LA temple is HUGE! So big, so yeah that's why our Pday is today.on Tuesday but next week it'll be back to Monday! haha, Great time so far.

Well this week, has been great. We had a ton of great chances to meet with some "menos activos" (less actives) this week. And they are all really, really cool! We have just been going ham lately trying to find all the people in our ward. Our motto in the mission is Bring One In, Bring One Back! So that's what we are trying to do: bringing all the menos activos back! They are all just really cool, but the main problem here is that they are all working on Sundays. A lot of the families cannot or will not dare try to get Sundays off. So we are just really trying to be their friends and all this stuff.

Also, finding has been rough for the whole district lately. So we decided to hit it with a new approach. We decided to throw a party. haha, A member, less active, and an investigator party. This was this last Thursday and it was a complete success!! So, so, so fun! 3 of our less active families came and 2 investigators. We had tons of activities and they all participated a bunch. The ward really helped us out this week and they were super friendly.  After we did a church tour and showed them the chapel, they loved it and the spirit was so, so strong! I loved it so much.

Spanish, again, is the greatest thing in the world. It's so fun to learn. Right now I'm just really focusing on reading and my accent. But it's coming pretty well!

Fam fam, thanks for much for all you do! I love to get letters from all y'all and the lovely packages too :) It means so much that I have so many people supporting me! Love y'all!

Well, next week, we find out about transfers, since my mission has already been pretty crazy I have no idea what is going to happen! haha Sounds fun! Can't wait!

Well I love you all, let me just end with my testimony. I know what I am doing is right. I know that we give up two years of our life for a reason. Because this message that we share is true. This church is true. People think it is crazy that we do this, but when people sit and listen to what we really have to share, there is no denying it. I love it so, so much. I can't wait to see what the future holds! Love you all and please email with anything y'all need from me! 

Until Monday!

Elder Schooff 

May 13, 2013

Hello Mundo!

Wow was it oh so good to hear yalls voices yesterday! I love yall and can't wait to do it again in 7 months ;) haha. It seems like you guys are doing great and I LOVED hearing Ava's voice. So so cute! Well yeah, love you.

Ok well as you already know I had the opportunity to speak in sacrament meeting yesterday in church. It was a very powerful and wonderful experience.  Especially because it was on Mothers Day and I talked about Mom a lot in my talk. It really made me miss her but in a good way! It brought such a powerful remembrance of why I am on my mission! I love it so, so much.

Spanish is so wonderful. I love speaking it! I know I say this every week but I have found such a love for the people here and their language! So AWESOME!

So it's cool to see that basically all my friends have left on their missions! (except for you, Casey and Mike haha jk, hope your prep is going well!)

This next transfer is going to be BIG, so many new changes and splits of areas, there are so many sisters coming in that they have called Sister District Leaders! Wow! haha, And there are 6 more coming into our zone next transfer! It's so cool to see the work taking place!

This week I fulfilled one of my tiny dreams of a mission, I know why now I wasted all those hours of my childhood skateboarding, getting mad and freaking out if I couldn't land a trick... :) haha We saw a skate park this week and we contacted into it, we started talking to these two teenagers and they actually seemed pretty interested in our message we talked a lot about baptism  So after talking for a little we asked them if we could stop by another time to talk more. They said yes, then I asked them if I landed a 180 kickflip if they would get baptized. They were all tough and said ok, haha so yeah, I did the flip and committed them to a date! I finally used my skating "skills" for good! So now we just have to see if the date sticks!

Also, paps. I have a really cool less active family we are working with right now, and one of the daughters of the family is trying to join the Air Force! You should send me a tshirt and maybe some info about ROTC or something! Or the Prep School too! Thanks love you! haha

Well family I love you and you know how I am doing! I love you all and it was so good to talk to you guys. I love this church so, so much. It has been such a blessing to be out here, I can't believe I am about to hit my 4 month mark! Time is flying!

Love you and see you soon,

Elder Schooff  

We sent out Happy Mother's Day cards to our investigators! 

Bullet holes yo

May 6, 2013

Hello Mundo.

Sup! Ok, so wow. This week has been great. It's crazy to me that again, it's already Pday! Wow. haha, Ok, it's so crazy to me that I am here and I have been here for a while now, it's cool to see all my other friends who write me that are just starting the MTC or stuff like that wow! Haha

Thank you all for your wonderful letters, I love to receive them! And Auntie- YES! Thank you so much for sending all those pictures, it's funny to see it in Instagram form and who all likes them and stuff. haha. I would of course love for you to keep doing that! I love to have pictures that I can hold and stuff, show other people my AWESOME family. And Granny, thanks for the card and the help too, haha I love those little quotes you send, I like to glue them into my planner and stuff so I always have them with me. Ash and Bryson thanks for the package for the gift of tongues haha so, so cute and we have a lot of fun with the sour spray :) Dad- thanks for the cookies and other stuff, they all got here perfectly! Not one broke! Wow! haha.

So this week something really funny happened. haha, So in our ward we have 10 missionaries! 10!! And it's really hard for us to get dinners at night from the ward, so our investigator told us she would LOVE to feed us and asked us to PLEASE come back on the 4th of May. haha So we did, we planned and awesome lesson and we were so pumped to go over there. Well, we go over and there are like 50 cars at her house and yeah we walked in and it was a HUGE Cinco de Mayo party. So yeah, haha our lesson got canceled. But the party was funny :) haha Some live band was there and it was a grand ol time.

One thing I have really learned is that God will give you what you want. Truly, if we are doing all we can to follow Him and strive to do our best. All is well :) And yeah, we really needed to find more people to teach this week. So we decided to go to another trailer park. And lo and behold, we got THREE new people to teach in 30 minutes. It was so cool and a powerful experience, and now we are teaching this mother and her son. So we go over there 2 days ago, to talk with the son and see what he wants out of us, and it was crazy. This random guy I have never seen before what there standing watching us talk with this son. And as we are bearing our testimony about God and this church, he started freaking out on us. Saying that there is no God and it's all a lie, trying to tell the son that it's all a hoax. Turns out this guy freaking out on us, was a member 20 years ago, served a mission and married in the temple but completely dropped it all because he didn't like his bishop...Satan is always there yall.. haha, but it didn't even matter, because we just bore our testimony of the power of the Holy Ghost and the son told us that he really wants to learn a lot more! It was such an eye opener for me to know that this work it true! Satan is working to break us down, but it doesn't work! So cool.

Haha, well I hope that all made sense. But yeah, so how is all back at home? Good I hope and can see, it's weird to think at this moment last year, I was about to graduate and my biggest problem was an assembly and speaking at Graduation. haha, Crazy to think how much life takes off AFTER high school. I have done so much and met so many people!

Well also, Mothers Day is coming up! You know for me, I just want to thank all the people that have really taken my mom's shoes and helped so much to raise me to be the young man I am today. I love you all so much, I miss my mom like crazy but I know she is so proud of me, most of all I want to thank my amazing sisters. I love you Ash and Kait so much :) Yall have always been there for me since day 1 and I never forget that! I see so much of Mom in you and I KNOW she is proud of you girls! Love yall!

Well until next week! Love yall!

Elder Schooff