January 20, 2014

Hello family!

This has been a wonderful week here in the wonderful state of California. We had a lot of fun with some cool stories to tell. YES! Well first off, is there a fire going on in California? Because we woke up on Thursday and the sky was filled with smoke, you couldn't even see the sky, and it was raining ashes. There was a full layer of ashes on our car. So gnarly.

This week was super cool, President Tew is truly the most inspirational man alive (right after you dad of course!!) haha But no joke we can just feel his love for us all the time.

This week Pres Tew called all the Spanish elders to the office one morning, so we all had a sweet meeting with him (all 70 or so of us) and we just had a huge language study with him, he taught us so much Spanish. He truly has the gift of tongues and it's cool to hear him speak. At the end he just really told us to LOVE our language of Spanish and how wonderful it is to learn not just that but a whole different culture, but even more so many different cultures because in CA there are sooo many different types of people here and we can have a multi-country mission if we choose so. The culture is something I have come to LOVE to learn on my mission! I love all the people I serve so much. I truly love my mission.

This week was super busy, tons of meetings and I went on exchanges a lot too, I was out of my area for a lot of the time, it's so weird I'm not used to that! But it's good to go help others in their areas too.

On Saturday night and all of Sunday was stake conference, it was AWESOME! So cool! And what's even more gnarly is that I had to translate it all...haha so cool! Friday night rolls around and Hmo Reyes calls me and asks if we could have some missionaries willing to translate the conference for the members who can't speak English. We are in an English stake with only one Spanish ward, and the presidency is all white and English. It's kind of weird but funny how it worked out because Elder Ziegner (my old companion in Cyprus) and I translated! It was fun, and we are both the oldest missionaries in the ward. So weird, I haven't even been out for too long and still I am one of the oldest! Haha cool! In the whole zone I'm the 2nd oldest - this mission is young!

But it was fun to translate, it's cool to be back here in Cerritos and actually SEE my progress, I can compare it to when I was here before and see that I really have improved!

This week was awesome! I love my mission so much and I know that the work I am doing it true, go talk to your friends about it! I love you all and see y'all later!

Elder Schooff