MTC and newly arrived in mission field pictures....

Home Sweet.....Home?

Well family. You will never guess where I am. Haha but you really could. 

I am either in 

1. Salem VA

2. Charleston WVA

or 3. Ohio

Any last guesses? You are all wrong! haha fooled ya! I am in Blacksburg VA! Me and my companion Sister Rowley are doubled in (which means we are both new to the area) as the new YSA sisters for Virginia Tech University. Go Hokies!

So you know how they say, oh your companion will know everything about the area, well apparently heavenly father thought i was strong enough to figure everything out with her. So its been a bit crazy. I think im here to toughen me up. its been real hard but i havent cried once. I KNOW WITHOUT A DOUBT, I AM HERE FOR A REASON. AND SOON ENOUGH HEAVENLY FATHER WILL TELL ME THAT REASON. 

Let me start from the beginning:

Tuesday:Got up at 2:00 am and got on a bus to the airport, i passed the house, said hi to everyone that was sleeping from the bus and then arrived at the airport. Flew to Georgia waited till about 3:30 or 4 to actually get on the plane. On a very tiny plane might i add, to then meet my mission president and wife. They are absolutely the sweetest people on this WHOLE earth. I love them so much already. One of the first things i saw in West Virginia was a waterfall and i LOVE waterfalls, so that was a real sign that i knew i was going to love the next 17 months of my life. We stayed with the Sister Training leaders and then got up to go take some pictures, do training and walk through a museum. It was really cool. ill send pics. then 

Thursday: was transfer day and i found out where i was going. Home of the Hokies. Then we got on a bus and drove 3 hours to get here. We get to our apartment. And it is NASTY. The last people to live there were elders and that was 3 months ago. and elders do not know how to clean so everything is not up to par. We dont even have cleaning supplies or a laundry. haha go us! We didnt have food so we spent that night going to the store then as we were checking out, my companion found out she had lost her wallet so therefore we bought everything on my card and we have like no food. But we have been getting lots of meal appointments so we have been taken care of.

We have been meeting with the bishop and his counselors and figuring out how we can get less actives to come back, but since school isnt in yet. We have nothing to do at all. We have been knocking empty apartments, but its fine. Im learning persistence and perseverance.

At church on sunday apparently we had the biggest turnout yet! It was 24 people! including us the bishopric and their wives! haha, thats so crazy to me! and the building we go to is the institute building which isnt even on campus. its the tiniest building ive ever seen.

I think whats been hard, and im just gonna tell you whats been hard, they advise us not to because they dont want us to worry our families back home but you all are strong enough to understand that i am strong enough to get through tough times. Ive done it before and ill do it again, is that we cant even proselyte on campus, at all. we arent allowed in dorms. basically arent allowed to do anything but call or text these kids and they dont respond back to us. And we are  a walking area. one of the only ones so its been hard to get to know the area when we can only walk so far you know? but the people have been nice so far. its funny though. I never realized how much youd be invited to join other churches while being a missionary. Ive been invited to be a muslim and a chrisitan. The one lady was really passive aggesive with us. she told us all about how we didnt believe in Jesus Christ as our lord and savior and i wanted to say, excuse me? It says his name right there on the name tag! But i didnt because i knew that wasnt the right thing to do. We just said bye and walked away. 

I feel i have been learning so much! I am memorizing scriptures easier and bearing my testimony has gotten easier and knocking on doors have gotten easier! I'm growing so much!But my hair is a frizzball so theres that.

My companion is sister rowley. shes from Lavan utah and has been out a year. She was a dancer but is now going into medicine. She is very sweet and working so hard to get me acclimated to the mission field and learn the area herself. I feel bad because she is basically doing everything and i have no idea whats happening a lot of the time. She is so stressed and i can see it but im trying to help her and make it easier on her. Its gonna get better, or though thats what everyone tells me.

Ive had some nice things said about me. The second counselor in the YSA ward said that he can just tell im going to be a good missionary and that im ready to be here. And my companion has said she sees how ready and willing i am to be here and how much i keep a smile on my face and am pushing through even though she can see how tired and overwhelmed i am.

Im a pusher though. Im willing to work hard to get some people to church. We've already been called names and been made fun of. but christ was made fun of and pushed around. And i am willing to put myself out there as a represenative of our savior so that all may know the truth.

I did service for the White sulfur springs area in West Virginia. I got to rake sticks and pick up trash for a while. It was hard but i met a really nice guy named joe who was one of the kindest souls who was so thankful for our help to him.

I hope ive said everything ive done. Theres so much we do its hard to think about the whole week and everything we do and write it all in here. haha

If you have any questions, email me! any inspiration! email me!

ill mail pics in a sec! 

Love y'all!

Sister Schoemig

Miss me yet?

Hello family! How y'all doing??

Mom, tell jenny i wish her the best of luck and that i know the lord is on her side. She just needs to keep a happy attitude the whole day so that they can see what a loving generous person she is. She wont have any problem if she trusts in the lord with her whole heart mind might and strength. look up Joshua 1:9.

I am done with my second week and i leave for West Virginia in t-minus 4 days. I have my flight plans and i have when im gonna call home all worked out. So heres the deal, on Monday at 1:10 i will be calling home via skype so be prepared for the best call of your life. So get dad home and be ready for me. (Mom, I need your skype name) they said i can call for however long i want but probably only an hour. Im super excited to call everyone and say hi! My flight plans are this: be at the travel office at 3:30 in the morning. Get on the plane at 7:40 and leave for atlanta georgia. Get to georgia. Have a three hour layover. Fly to West Virginia and ill get there around 4-5. And then from there i will meet my mission president and his wife, have dinner with them, and sleep at their house. Then wednesday we are having a cultural tour and get to know west virginia day. then sleep over again and then on thursday Ill be shipped out to my new area! Whats crazy is that my whole group of people flying to west virgina consists of 25 people. Im super excited!

My week consisted of many very exciting things, as always. haha on friday we had an exciting day of classes but really nothing happened. But saturday. I had the most amazing class of my life! We practiced teaching an investigator to pray and we had a situation with an investigator during this where she did not want to pray because she was atheist. By the way my teacher was gone so we combined with elder quirings district and it was so fun, also the teacher switched up companionships during this class because sometimes it gets too repetitive to teach with the same companion, its good to switch it up so that you can learn new things. So i got to role play this investigator and elder quiring and elder roper got to help me learn how to pray. And it was so amazing. I felt the spirit so strong and i knew heavenly father was there with us and that he cares for me so much! And I know elder quiring is killing it out there in nashville. He left on monday so the last time i saw him was sunday. and im super sad that hes gone now. Apparently he came looking for me one last time to say goodbye and i wasnt there! so yay me for not being in my class at that time. I was going to get something i think. But its all good. I know hes going to be the best missionary our there in Nashville! and also saturday we had a super long devotional about the history of the church which was interesting but all the while super boring because of the way they presented it and then we went and watched the stadium of fire fireworks which was pretty good i guess haha. 

Then sunday was super long but really good. We got to walk around the temple. And then we went to sacrament meeting and it was so amazing. It was cool to see how eager everyone was to share their testimony. it went way over. haha and dinner was basically a delicacy for us starving missionaries. We had a salsa party and it was fun but the salsa basically was the hottest thing i ever tasted so i didnt eat much of it. ps. sister missionaries love whales (the crackers) its kinda funny. i pulled mine out and everyone wanted some haha

Then monday came and some of my favorite missionarys left for their mission. They really helped me a lot and helped me realize that i need to kick satan out of my head and realize that i can still have fun while im here. and we didnt even really celebrate at all which i guess was okay, haha but me and some of my friends here took some pictures, and they really do not know how to take silly pictures or clear ones so the pictures are all kinda blurry. sorry bout that.

Then tuesday came and we had a devotional that kinda made us all feel bad. it was one of those devotionals that are meant to weed out the people who havent repented yet but in all actuality all they do is make everyone feel like they are the worst person in the world, which was definitely how i was feeling. But being the strong girl i am, i dwelled on it a little bit, prayed and felt a comforting feeling from my heavenly father then i kicked those unworthy feelings and thoughts to the curb, where they belong! but then me and the girls in my room kinda talked about the things we were feeling and it was good to see that everyone was feeling how i was and it was good to see how strong we all were and that even though we felt like that that we would stick it out because we know what our heavenly father wants us to be. But a downside to this night was that my district kinda got in trouble because some of us had left early and our district president was going to say hi but me and my companion stayed so she could talk to him and our district presidents wife came and talked to us and we kinda told her what our elders were doing during their down time and they got mad about that too. but me and my companion felt like it was the right thing to do because they were doing some things that are not allowed on the mission field. like looking up sport pages and emailing not on p-day. so that was great, but then yesterday our elders were starting to shape up so that was good. 

July 7, 2016

But lets see, what else happened... yesterday i got to host new missionaries! and i got to host one of my best friends that i danced with! Sister Hodgson! And so that was cool, it was really sad to see these poor kids being ripped away from their families but it was so fun too! haha And sister hodgson said to me that you guys are posting sad stuff about me missing things while im gone and that made me sad because i dont want you guys to feel like im missing things, in fact i want you to think about all the amazing things i am getting to do here and all the things that i am going to tell you about when i get back home! So dont think about it as im missing everything, think of it as that i am getting one of the best experiences of my life here! 

Good luck to all my karate friends who are going to be performing these next few weeks and for all my friends testing this next week, you guys are going to kill it!! 

Mom, tell michelle im praying for her and her son. Hope all goes well.

I cant wait to see all the cool things you are doing with the house, by the way... hows my plant doing?

my TRC investigator this week has been much easier, she understands everything and really feels the spirit when we are teaching so thats been an amazing experience seeing someone actually understand and accept the gospel into their lives!

Being honest, my district has really started to get on my nerves this past week. They have all been so rowdy and they dont talk during lessons at all so i feel like i am getting nothing out of it but i am, just i would like to hear from them every once in a while you know?

i am honestly just so excited to talk to you guys. i dont know what else to talk about. Thats really all thats happened. I got to see a lot of friends yesterday and yeah it was cool. 

Please send letters, theyve really slowed down which is funny because ive only been gone for two weeks. haha but i really do wanna hear from you!! 

I dont know what else to say, so im gonna go, but if you want to talk to me today i can reply until six! 

Love you all so much!!!

Sister Schoemig

Week Numbero Uno

Hellloooo mother father family and friends!

There has been so much that's happened this week, I cant wait to tell you all about it! I feel I am the luckiest girl alive right now, to be able to be doing what I'm doing right now and serving the lord full time. WHAT A BLESSING! I feel at times a bit inadequate but then I have an amazing moment later that makes me feel like I'm where I'm supposed to be.

So to start off I would just like to say THANKS FOR THE SUPPORT EVERYONE!!! It means so much to me that I am getting letters and packages from all of my favorite people! Keep sending them! My day gets that much better when I get to hear from home!  Plus I have an IPad here at the MTC so I can look at my emails whenever I want so just know that if you send one, I'll probably have read it really soon after.

MY FIRST DAY: wow. intense. Kenny really helped me by being the tough older brother he is and telling me to buck up and put a smile on my face. It really helped me not feel so homesick. My companion was super late the first day because her flight from Idaho got in late so I was by myself for the longest time. I met the elders in my district and they are all something else. There is 12 of us in a tiny classroom, and we all argue about the air conditioning, the elders think its too cold and the sisters think its too hot and sometimes it switches. But its funny to watch, I'm really okay in all types of weather so I think its super funny that that's something they are all so picky about. I am definitely learning a lot about what kind of a chill person I am. like really. Everyone is such high intensity here and I'm just like well lets go to work haha. KENNY: Sister McKay is actually Sister Owens. I learned after I sent my last email that she got married. She told me the story about you and Livengood baptizing someone and you like dunked them in the water, but I told her I had already heard that story from you the day before I came into the mtc. I kinda already told you about my companion but I'll tell you some more. She likes to talk a lot. I have a hard time during lessons to speak up because I dont know where to stop her but lately we've been talking about short and sweet is better than long and complicated so I hope something inspires her to let me talk more. haha but I'm learning patience. I feel like I have patience out the wazoo now. I've seen some of my friends!!! Yay! I love friends! I saw Sister Odette, Sister Boss (I love her, I see her every day and every time I wish we could just sit down and talk, she is my best friend), Sister Harrison (the one who gave her farewell talk the same day as me, Sister Sudweeks (a friend from junior high), Sister Gurney (who is a girl from high school but she never talked to me until now, can you say awkward? haha), Elder Quiring (oh  my goodness i love seeing him around! He is my favorite person and it just helps to have a piece of home with me every time I see him, I just want to give him the biggest hug every time I see him but sadly I cant), Elder Aalders (a friend from junior high), and I don't even know who else!

Our first week was kinda confusing because of the mission president seminar but another reason I consider myself the luckiest girl ever is because I got to see mission presidents from all over the world and I SAW TWO APOSTLES!!!  I saw Elder oaks and Elder ballard and they are the cutest things ever! It was Ah May zing! The devotionals have been the most amazing thing ever, they are so full of encouragement, like when you feel you cant go any longer they are there to say, hold up, its not over yet for you.

I got a package from the Robinsons! THANK YOU SO MUCH!  Those cupcakes made my day!  My roommates are a teensy bit jealous of the amazing neighbors I have! but seriously those made my day so much better.

Can I just say how much I hate waking up early?  It is the hardest thing to do, I love my sleep but its okay, I'm on the Lord's errand.

 

On Saturday I got a blessing from my district leader and his companion and he said exactly what I needed to hear, that my Savior trusts in me and I wouldn't be here wearing his name if I wasn't worthy and ready to be here.

Our elders are super goofy, anytime they see someone doing something they shouldn't they give them a violation. I have gotten two so far, one because I didn't give them my cupcakes haha so it doesn't count at all.  Their motto is "Lingering handshakes lead to heartbreak" and they call themselves MTCPD. They are so weird but they are becoming my family. There is  Elder Meldrum a super sweet and spiritual with Elder Roper and hes a tougher elder from Idaho. Elder Williams a super quiet but once you get to know him hes really funny with Elde Baxter a 6'8 basketball player whose going to play for BYU, Elder Smith a kid who tries way too hard to be cool with Elder Langtot a really annoying "Im gonna date a girl from every country" elder.( and that is legit what he told us, Im not making it up), Elder Gleed our district leader from Idaho with Elder Nelson a quiet but inspirational missionary.  I sound really mean but that is exactly what they are like, And they are all going to Washington D.C. south. then there's me and Sister Stettler and then Sister Jarmen from Ogden and Sister Condie from Idaho. 

Its amazing how much the adversary really goes against you here. They know what you are doing is so good and they are trying so hard to get you to stop. Its constantly an uphill battle but its so worth it. My advice to everyone back home is that your Heavenly Father loves you so much!  He is waiting for you to get on your knees and pray to him. He wants to give you blessings and help you, Its your job to ask. Don't be afraid to tell him how you feel because he already knows anyways he just needs to hear it from you. I have learned so much here and I feel more and more confident every time I finish a lesson. 

Our TRC's. Wow these are super hard. We have like the hardest investigators here. One is from South Korea and shes interested but she doesn't know what the spirit is or what it feels like, we had an amazing lesson with her and we felt the spirit so strong but she said she still wasn't sure what it feels like. And shes a real investigator, not a fake one.

Our second one is a fake one. We can definitely tell, but shes giving us a run for her money because she keeps telling us she doesn't know what she wants to hear from us and is just here because her aunt sent her here. So we are having a hard time receiving revelation for her because we don't even know what to ask for help with. 

Our Tuesday evening devotional for me was exactly what I needed to hear. it was really about, at least for me anyways really leaving your will behind and doing what the Lord needs you to do. I have so many things that I want to tell my investigators but cant because I realize the Lord doesn't need them to know that right now. So it was really good in helping me realize that.

I got my mission shirt! and its super cute! I cant wait to send you pictures of it! 

Well I don't even really know what else to talk about!  That's the majority of everything that's happened so far.

Its so amazing here and I am beyond blessed to be worthy enough to be here. Strive to live your life so that if someone were to convict you of being a christian, you'd be convicted. I know I definitely am and I couldn't be more proud of it!

The sisters here are so friendly, they come in and talk to us every night and make us feel better about things that go wrong during the day and give us motivation. Its super helpful!

Okay Sister Jarmen wanted me to tell you how awesome she is. So just saying shes awesome. I get along with her really well. We both love concerts and music and we have the same view on life.

I heard there was a flood in West Virginia?  Some of the elders going there with us are super pumped about it haha. He was all "THE PEOPLE ARE BEING PREPARED!" but really I think that too but I think its really just about we needed some tough sisters and elders to help them come back from that. Its really just a planting seeds of faith mission than it is a baptizing one.

LOVE YOU ALL SO MUCH!

Sister Schoemig

Oh some things I forgot. Our elders caught and found a duck. I found five bucks in my bed, I lost my ring from Sister Boss (my best friend) and I'm super sad about it, and our teachers are Sister McKay and Brother Fallales

Short email from second day at MTC

Hi mom! 

I'm doing so good! I'm safe, happy and healthy! I feel the spirit so strong here. Its been so amazing. I have no idea why i was so nervous to come. Everyone just wants to be here and serve the Lord just like me! I'm SO HAPPY TO BE HERE! 

My companions name is Sister Stettler. Shes from Boise, Idaho. She went to LDSBC for interior design. I met my branch president tonight and hes super nice. I cant wait to get to know him and the presidency more. 

This week is apparently kinda crazy because all the mission presidents and lots of the brethren are here also. So its really special. But i also have no idea what I'm doing most of the time, so its nice to have a companion. they've changed our schedules a lot so its been confusing.

I've met some of the people going to West Virginia but not everyone, and there's a lot more than we thought! so its been awesome!

I'm actually pretty used to the walking because of dance so its been pretty easy so far. 

My p-days are on Thursdays. I'll email you more next week. 

Love you guys!

Sister Schoemig

P.S. Kenny, Sister McKay, my teacher says she knows you, she served in Washington DC North with you and all the elders in my district are going to Washington DC South so that's pretty cool :)