April 25, 2012

Thanks mom! Wonderful email. sorry carcar that a ball hit your face :( thats why i didn't like baseball haha. good job in your game :) mom i know that it is hard with dad gone, and we should be praying for something better, but last week i also realized it is important to be sooooo thankful to the Lord for providing so much for us thus far, and if it is His will to give dad a better job then He will give it.

 

to carcar: what am i doing? i'm emailing you! haha and i'm in the ghetto part of dc called trinidad. it's right next to gallaudent university for deaf people. cool you get to go to the zoo with mom! there's a zoo here but i haven't gone yet, hopefully soon! that picture on facebook is in virginia! i go there about 2 times a week. i miss you too! love you! bye :)

good that weather has been nice, it was rainy over the weekend here, more rain then i've ever seen it was like 2 days straight haha. it was really good at the Ks, sis k is a great cook. the nerf gun is cuz we had to shoot sentences that made up the first vision in the order it went and they were all scrambled. elder kinne left this morning though :( more about that later. i miss the kids a lot.

sightseeing will really start next week on pday! gonna be fun. we saw a huge wall of graffiti on monday though, it was pretty sweet and artistic, gonna get some pictures soon of it. i've been writing in my journal every night, so that my posterity can know what in the world i did every day hahahahaha.

Make sure you record the song so i can listen to it when i return. 

Anyway, about my past week. Kinda slow, but emotional past few days. I'll have to make it fast. Elder K left this morning and it was hard for me. He is my "dad" and he left. he was such a huge help in everything that i did. i will miss him. well gotta go now!

 

(Note from his mom:  Bill has been working long hours these past few days with a full time and part time job so we don't get to see him much during the weeknights.  He is still looking around for something better, we asked that you pray for him.  As for the nerf gun, I asked him on what were they doing at their trainer/trainee meeting with the mission president, the pictures is on the mission president's blog, www.teachallnations5014.blogspot.com.  Check it out.  As for the song part, I told him that his Aunt Jenny (my sister) and her daughter and Amanda and Autumn are all singing acapella and I will be signing the song for my parents' mission farewell coming up this Sunday.)

April 18, 2012

  Wow, I am feeling great this week. I want to say first of how thankful that I can be here serving the Lord. I realized today that I am in Washington DC. I am in Maryland. I am in Virginia. These places I never thought I'd go to and I'm here experiencing it. Anyway the reason I am feeling great is we have 5 new investigators. One is a former investigator and another is his cousin. Then we have 3 deaf ladies from Ethiopia! They work at Gallaudet and we found them by checking up on a former and one of the ladies, F, said she wanted us to come by her house. Wow look at these miracles! The Lord placed these people in our paths that we can teach them the gospel, and I am so grateful to Him for the opportunity to be out here. This morning I went into the Washington DC temple for the first time. Let me tell you it is truly a Mountain of the Lord. It is so beautiful inside and it was really quite special for me. I felt so close to the Lord and just offered up my humble prayer to Him for thanks and for giving me strength that I can know what to say to our new investigators that will help them. On Monday I started to get the first traces of homesickness, but they quickly vanished as I recognized the blessing of being here. I wish every week could be like this week. To my family, I love you so much and the strength that you provide me. I wouldn't be here without their support. Also to my friends, old and young, you also helped me to get here and receive these marvelous blessings. Love for the Lord is the way to be happy. To the edge, Elder Schoemig.

Favorite notes from General Conference

General Conference was so amazing!  I will share some of my notes.  Elder Oaks, "What can I do on a day to day basis to better myself?"  Elder Eyring, "Praying for challenges that we may overcome them.  Trails to help us build unshakable faith."  Applicable to our situation huh?  Elder Holland, "Why should you be jealous when I choose to be kind?"  and the Parable of the laborers, and life in general, is a story about GRACE!  (There's your word mom :) )  From Elder Scott, "It is revelation through dreaming and is usually accompanied by a sacred feeling."  From Pres. Uchtdorf, "Blessed are the merciful..." & "Don't judge me because I sin differently from you!"  (That's something Kale would always tell me and I am thankful  for his wisdom.)  From Sister Beck, a desire to always support my wife in Relief Society.  And from the prophet, Thomas S. Monson, peace and joy in my soul.  What a great conference it was.

April 11, 2012

Greetings from DC. First things first, yesterday I saw a Lamborghini Gallardo. Next, things are pretty much the same every day. wake up, pray, exercise, pray, eat breakfast, pray, personal study, pray, companion study, pray, language study, pray, eat lunch, pray, get in the car, pray, teach a lesson, pray, leave the lesson, pray, go to another lesson and on and on til you pray, eat dinner, pray, have some lessons, pray, write in your journal, pray, go to bed, repeat. It's a pretty good system. Anyway not a lot of excitement this week. Two of our investigators dropped us. Bummer. Hopefully they will see what they're missing and ask us to come back. Well we will just keep tryin and keep prayin ;) To the edge.

April 4, 2012

Wow seems like only yesterday that I emailed and now I'm at it again! Time flies when you're having fun. Anyway wasn't General Conference awesome? Such a great time for the church when it is conference weekend. I got to watch every session, although here they started at 12 and 4 and 8 instead of 10 and 2 and 6. Needless to say Saturday was a late night trying to get back to the apartment and get ready for bed. I love how simple and strong the GA's testimonies are, I want to be like that.
Anyway I wanted to share a couple of experiences that happened to me that I thought were pretty funny. The first is yesterday morning we got locked out of the apartment! We have bars on our windows to protect us and our AC unit so we couldn't climb through the front. We tried climbing up to the second story window but it was way to hard. We went around back and have a cellar with a way to get into the house but it was super sketchy and I wouldn't fit so we didn't do that idea. We ended up climbing up to the balcony in the back, but there were bars on the window and AC too. We opened the window and the doors and tried to jerry-rig something to grab the keys and it wouldn't go. Elder A P luckily fit through the bars and into the house! It was crazy but we got in. We related it to the keys of the priesthood, they were locked away and many people tried to get them and do what is right but only one man, Joseph Smith, could do it haha. The second is at 2 in the morning last night, Elder G heard a noise and someone in our backyard going down into the cellar. The cellar door doesn't lock cuz my first week here someone broke into the cellar. Scary neighborhood right ;) Anyway Elder G woke us up and we got bats and golf clubs and Elder K grabbed an ax and we went outside to check it out but no one was there! It was freaky cuz when me and Elder G were on the balcony in the back I swear I saw a shadow move down near the cellar. Anyway until next week! To the edge.