November 17, 2014 - Surgery, Book of Mormon and Zumba.

What's up family. 

This week, ah this week, haha, man what can I say. I have been out on my mission for a while and this week wasn't the funnest. Haha due to the surgery I had on Tuesday. But still there was a lot of things learned, Miracles seen, and progress with some awesome investigators. 

     

Ok, so let's just start this out! Tuesday morning rolls up and we head out to the hospital at 8am to check in by 8:30. We get in there by 10:30am in the little bed thingy and got my first IV ever...I almost passed out. Haha, then they wheeled me into the surgical room and said. "OK, we are going to give you your cocktail now." I had no idea what that meant. So I asked, what it meant. They asked if I have ever been "tipsy" or drunk on alcohol, I responded and said..."claro que NO!" They seemed set back and they took the syringe and injected some gnarly clear serum into my vain and asked how I felt...it did nothing. They were surprised and then loaded me up with another full syringe. Then...about 10 seconds later all the lights went spinning and I felt great. I couldn't control my eyes and I started to say something...and boom I fell under...knocked out asleep. Cool. 

    

2 hours later I wake up and my butt was stinging with pain. Haha, only for a minute though. The first thing my body registered was the pain, but it went right away by itself. I chilled in the recovery room for a bit, and got out of there at about 3pm, went and got some Chipotle and then bed rest began...just for that night :) hahaha

   

The members of the ward are way too nice. Seriously, they did so much and they gave us so much food. haha, I got to read in the Book of Mormon a lot. I'm reading it in Spanish in 60 days again. So that's cool! I'm getting so much out of it. I was reading through Enos and Jarom and Omni and I always wonder about the art when Jarom says, "What more could I write then my fathers have written? He talks about how he had HIS revelations and stuff, what where they? I wish he would have at least written his testimony! The Book of Mormon is sooo true! 

Wednesday we had specialized training and and we had to give a training to 4 zones. It was good and I was feeling fly haha. Like after the surgery I was feeling great! The only pain was to sit. So sitting in the pews of church for 4 hours was not the most comfortable thing. haha. We made it though. And then the next day we had District Meeting! It was super good and we learned about how to be bold with our companions. Whahhh?? Dang! 

    

Later on in the week, we had a great time with our investigators again at the Zumba studio. They teach a MMA class at the studio on Saturday mornings and then we teach them the gospel after! We got some of our youth to go and start going to the MMA classes, it was funny to watch! haha Didn't fight...not allowed for us! Then we had an awesome lesson of the Word of Wisdom and the 10 Commandments, they all came to church the next day. 

   

My companion only has 4 weeks left, haha it's crazy! But we are working super hard and I'm ready to go! La Familia that we are teaching is la familia Quintero! Pray for them if you would desire. I want them to get baptized so bad, the ward is doing so well to help! They go to those MMA classes, the son is in Boy Scouts, they have a Family Home Evening on Saturday with a family in the ward this week. Cool! 

Have a great week!

Elder Schooff 

November 10, 2014 - El Dia do Los Muertos, Exchanges y Church Services and GUNS.

Hello, hello. 

Que Dice familia, Que milanesas que no visteses? Bien. 

Well, this week was pretty much one of the most busy times I could get. I remember looking at the clock every morning right at 11am when we head out and saying, "How are we going to fit all that we have to do today in by 9pm?" It was una locura. 

   

Tuesday we we able to help the family that we teach with some service, instead of eating dinner went to go help her decorate her Zumba Studio with decorations for a huge zumba party that they would have that night. For the Day of the Dead, peeps were all dressed up in crazy outfits and doing Zumba, funny thing to see! I love the Hispanic Culture. It was good to help and build a strong relationship with the family, they came to church again this week making it the 4th time. How cool! They are in line to get baptized soon. 

   

Later in the week I had my doctor's appointment to do some lab work before I have surgery. I got my blood drawn for the first time ever. I was so proud of myself ;) haha. I have Surgery tomorrow and I'll let you know how it all went next week! I'm nervous but excited! haha. Trasero Trasero...

   

Later in the week we had one of the busiest exchanges of my mission. It was insane. Recently I have been praying that I can be better an dealing with problems that needed to be attended to without getting stressed out about it. This exchange was the Lord trying me on my desire haha. I was with a brand new elder and I wanted the exchange to impact him for the rest of his mission.  Everything that could have gone wrong in the Zone went wrong. haha And I had to deal with it all. We were running around all over LB to deal with other elders with matters (I wish I could explain all to you but I can't) and still get to set lessons and then get to baptisms and man it was sooo much! But it was such a blessing, I can't explain to you the whole time I just had this sense of happiness behind it all, I LOVE to help others that I love. At about 5:30 at night we had to run the the church building to fill the font and then book it back up to Paramount to have a lesson at 6. Then back down to the church at 7 for the baptism. Then back up to a lesson in the nighttime and then back down to exchange back. Time was a tool we had to use, not a crutch. in the confusion of all things we got to sit down for a quick lesson at 6 with our investigator Tony and we watched some Mormon Messages on his request. We watched "What Matters Most" and I was about in tears by the end. I love that message, to just rejoice in life and not get overwhelmed but realize the small things. As Pres Uchtdorf said, "We would do well to slow down a little, focus of the significant, lift up our eyes and truly see the things that matter most!" Watching that I was so happy, I felt like I handled the whole day super well and I was proud of myself for being in that uplifting mood the whole day. I truly saw what mattered most, cool! 

   

We got to do service as a whole zone this week, it was actually 2 zones the LBS and the LBN zone all together. so a total of 32 missionaries. We all got to help clear out and clean up an old Methodist church here in LB. The church was beautiful and I loved the service. Here in LB religion is not the most important thing on peoples' minds. But, with people who really are; they are all so united in faith. It was so humbling to see two faiths come together to help one another. The day consisted of clearing out old furniture, paining. smashing old furniture, mopping and sweeping and eating! It was a Samoan Methodist church, so of course there was food :) haha. 

   

Later in the week after finally all was done my companion and I finally had some time to work, he and I. We went out and hit the pavement hard. Talking to everyone we saw. We went to our favorite trailer park and saw a pretty sketchy person just chilling with his hood up looking for trouble, standing on post behind his fence. So naturally we go and talk to him (talk to everyone right?). We get to talking and he starts tripping out. Just so stressed out, freaking about telling us how people are looking for him and he is looking for some crazy people. We get to talking and we asked where he thinks he is going after this life, he told us... straight to hell. It was sad to hear. So we asked if we could share with him a way to change that. With tears in his eyes, he says and yes, but he said he wanted to be appropriately behaved while talking about God. So he pulls out a gun out of his pocket and says "Let me just put this away right quick so I can listen." He put it on the side of the fence. We taught a lesson and committed him to get baptized. Wow. We will see what happens. Cool miracle.  

   

In all I'm sooo happy, these days are truly some of the most rewarding days of my mission. I'm grateful for every moment where it's just jam packed.  i love y'all and I'll see you soon. 

Elder Schooff 

November 3, 2014 - Modismos, Halloween and Emergency Meetings that Matter

Hello Family! 

This week was a very very unique time for us, everything is changing here so I'll do my best to explain. 

This week, was Halloween and there was tons and tons of meetings for us. With District Meeting, Zone Conferences, Interviews and MLC it was a battle to work! But all these meetings lead to an understanding that we need a change. 

    

Halloween in The Long Beach CA mission means from 6 to 9 you stay in and deep, deep clean your apartment. Kind of of a joy-kill but always a need. The whole day of Halloween we had MLC, which is where all the Zone Leaders and the STLs and the APs and President and his wife all get together and discuss what the mission needs. It's a meeting that lasts from 10am to 5pm. A long time of pure spiritual awesomeness. Usually when we go to those meetings its a lot of trainings that are given or we give to others. Stuff that we think we need to have worked on in the mission. 

This time was totally different. 

It started out normal with the usual training. Right after the first training, it was time to make and set goals for the mission. We usually push up the number of certain key indicators that we focus on, but this time...none of us were feeling it. There was no spirit behind it...we all knew that there was some things that really really needed to change in the mission. None of us were having it with the goals that we have set and we wanted a new start. A blank page you could say. So President being the amazing man that he is, took the whole agenda of the MLC and threw it away and for the whole day we discussed and came up with the fact that the mission is lacking faith, and we need to bring it back up. But how? That's what we talked about. After all was said and discussed, with so many true firm testimonies shared and tears cried and ideas on the table. We knew we could change the mission, together. We came up with 3 main things that the whole mission will together. 

1. We will all read the Book of Mormon all together by Dec 31st. The whole mission, how cool is that??? 

2. We are going to pray every single missionary at 6:30am and 10:00pm for a specific purpose to have out eyes opened to the miracles around us. 

3. We are going to write down EVERY NIGHT the miracles that we saw in a journal. 

How cool is all this? The whole mission will grow so much faith. Along with that, there are things that we are needed to do as the Zone Leaders. President wants all us of to talk to all the Elders in our Zone one on one. To get to know them and help them establish visions they have individually to help the whole mission grow. It's an ingenious way of approach. We individually work together to grow the Work of the Lord. We are now focusing completely on new goals, usually we were focusing on finding and member present lessons, now that's not a focus, we know now that importance of it. We are now shooting high for investigators with a baptism date, investigators at church and progressing investigators. These 3 key indicators are what really shows if someone is truly ready and wanting to be baptized. We also set an AWESOME new goal for how many baptisms we need to have for the end of the year. 60 days. 

President did not want this new revelation for the mission to wait to be heard. So he did emergency Zone Meetings, from 6-8pm we would clean the apartments but from 8-9pm we would get the zone together and announce the new Culture of the Mission. Before we got the whole zone together we went and bought little journals for all the missionaries in our zone so they could have an official miracle journal. We called them up and told them to meet at the church at 8. Everyone was freaking out and wondering what was going on. Everyone thought it was iPads. HA! Yeah right. So at 8pm we started the meeting. The same feeling that was there in the MLC was there in that emergency meeting on Halloween night at 8pm. The Elders in the zone are just awesome. I love them all so much and I loved to see their faith just increase so fast. They are all pumped! We got to sit down with them and really help them out! 

I wish y'all could have seen all the elders at church this week ready the Book of Mormon so much. It was great. 

Overall this mission is going to change so much. Elder Calle and I really wanted to be an example since Friday the Lord blessed and we got to find 5 new investigators and set baptismal dates with 6 people! How cool! We had a bunch of people come to church too!

I love you all so much and i hope that y'all have a great week! 

Elder Schooff