Big leave - Aug. 28, 2017

The Fort

Fleas

Well, if there never was a title more West Virginian than Fleas.

So this week was an adventure with fleas because, well, our church has them. Apparently its INFESTED with fleas. Needless to say, I am never going back to that church. Jk. I will.

The story goes, and this is just what we've heard, there is a stray dog (you know its never good when it starts out with a stray dog) who is wandering around south charleston, and some neighbor of ours decided that it would be a good idea to set a bowl outside OUR church so it can eat. Very christlike, we need to find them and teach them the gospel. But this dog has fleas and so the fleas decide to hop off the dog and hop onto the people walking into church. So basically the whole church was jumping with fleas. The nursery and the gym were the most affected. If you ask me, I think that is NASTY.

Monday: I don't even remember. It was pday and I think I told you our pday adventures last week. #hotsardines

Tuesday: We had interviews with President Lindhardt! He is sooo cool. :) I was the first interview of the interview schedule so that was pretty daunting. But we went into his office, said a prayer and then we just started talking. He asked me what he needed to know about me, what kept me up at night, what I think I'm good at, what I'm not good at, what I wanted to see or do in the rest of my mission, the future, how me and my companion are, and how much he loved us. It was such a good first interview with him. I'm super grateful that he has come to serve with me and my fellow elders and sisters. Super cool compliment, he told me he could tell I was worthy to serve because of how my countenance was glowing. #thespirit that was really cool. :)

 

We went on exchanges with Teays Valley. I was with Sister De La Cruz. :) SHE IS AWESOME. She's a keeper. She loves to laugh and have fun and man we had a killer day. We started out with seeing Debra Jones, an investigator, we had an awesome lesson on the gospel, then we went to see Wanda Gore, another investigator we havent seen in a while, and when we went and sat down she said "girls ive been doing some research" and when you are a missionary you NEVER want to hear that. So im sitting here with this brand new missionary and when wanda left the room to get her "notes" I looked at her and we both just started laughing! So that was lesson was crazy, as you can imagine. She said at the end, hopefully i haven't offended you girls with all this. As a missionary, you don't have room in your life to be offended, nor should you ever be offended for anything, so we just said dont worry, we'll talk more! :) haha then we tried this potential investigator and he tried to give us back the Book of Mormon, and on our way home, now this is WV for ya, we saw four cats on a rooftop having a meeting, a fat beagle with its tail sticking straight up, and the ALBINO DEER. I legit stopped the car in the middle of the road so she could take pics of the deer. Luckily everyone around us was taking pics too. I was laughing sooo hard. It was a crazy night. She's gonna remember this exchange for the rest of her life.

Wednesday: well this was kinda a boring day, nothing really exciting happened. Just talking to everyone and being rejected. Same old same old

FELICIA MOUL HAD HER BABY. She was born at 11:28 am and she was 7 lbs 13 ounces and she is 19.5 inches long. 

Thursday: Weekly planning. Ya know. Then we went and saw Felicia and man, she looked exhausted. She was telling us about epidurals and what it's like to have a baby and we were standing there like  we are never having kids. jk haha. I love her though, and I can't wait for this family to get baptized now!! There was a football game going on at the high school, so we were stuck in a lot of traffic a lot.

Friday: We had district meeting. I taught about Faith UNTO Repentance. :) And the office couple, the scotts, took us out to lunch! :) They remind me of my grandparents. Then Sister Sore got super sick. So we stayed in.

Saturday: We did stuff in the morning, then she still wasnt feeling good, so we just did missionary work from inside basically.

Sunday: We switched to the stake center in Sissionville for church, because of the fleas in our church. We got some potatos from a member, so we stuck them on the assistants and zone leaders car for them to have. HAHA! Then because Sis Sore was still sick, I built a fort with all the beds downstairs. It's pretty awesome. 

We are gonna play volleyball with the zone leaders, the assistants and the sissionville elders today. Wish me luck haha!

Lately I've been reading a lot from the Book of Mormon (i know, real shocker right?), with a different outlook on it, and its been unfolding before me. I'm understanding more of what God needs of me, and what he's done for me. The spirit has come tenfold into my life. I don't understand how anyone, when truly wanting to see God's answers and wanting to know if its true, couldn't see or feel of how true this is. It's a real pleasure to be a representative of Jesus Christ and have the opportunity to share God's truth with all those around me, no matter where I am. Let us listen to the Prophet Thomas S. Monsons last message, and read the Book of Mormon daily. I promise, as a representative of Him, that you will feel him, you will recieve guidance, you will change. Because I know I have. I know him. I feel him daily. I LOVE HIM. I can't wait to KEEP shouting it from the roof tops. I am soooo happy. :)

Let me know what I can do for YOU! :) ​

I LOVE YOU ALL TO THE MOON AND BACK!!

Sister Schoemig

Eclipse day - Aug. 21, 2017

Her companion trimming her hair and fixing it from a bad haircut she had a while ago.  Her companion is awesome!

BIG NEWS

SO BIG NEWS.

Elder Quentin L. Cook of the quorum of the twelve apostles is coming to the West Virginia Charleston mission to do a couple things. (I would just like to say, I am positively the luckiest missionary alive right now.) He is coming to do a mission wide conference in Charleston for the missionaries, then a combined stake conference for the Huntington and Charleston stakes on the second weekend of September. He will literally be staying in my area. #what

But to my week!

Monday: Honestly, I dont really remember much of what happened. Sister Sorensons ankle was really hurting her so we didn't do much.

Tuesday: MISSION LEADERSHIP COUNCIL. Literally this is one of my favorite parts of each transfer. So many good things happened. First off, we talked a lot about how to help our missionaries, and we talked about how the doctrine of Christ and the gospel of Jesus Christ are intertwined and stuff. It was sooo good! I love President Lindhardt. He is so inspired. And I got to see some of my favorite people. They are my best friends. I was walking into the church and I saw Elder Ladue and I yelled Elder Ladue! Yellow Grapes! (back story: when we were in roanoke we always quoted kid history) and he was like Green Grapes! Anyways, I have so many stories from that day that I'll have to tell y'all later! It was just basically the best day. :)

Wednesday: Sooo we saw Sister Payne. She is awesome. Every time we come, she like jumps out of her chair each lesson, she's so excited to keep learning about the gospel. :) She gave us these butterflies that we could wear too! (pics below) We had a bomb district meeting. Then we tracted in the heat. Like all day. #wahoo We also picked up a new investigator named Brother Carr! 

Thursday: Weekly planning. Sometimes it's just too much to spend several hours inside. I get WAY too distracted. We got some solid plans though, to help our investigators! We got our house inspected too, and we had a surprise visitor. It was pretty crazy weekly planning.  We had stake coordination, basically the best one ive ever had. #miracles #workinghard. We ate dinner with the Jones. They are like the family I aspire to be. I love them. 

Friday: We saw Sister Payne again! She is awesome!!!! We saw Brother Cupit. :) His lessons are always sooo spiritual. We are like best friends. :) We ate dinner with the Whites. They showed us all their pics of their trip back to Utah, man, UTAH IS AWESOME. Just saying. We saw Sister Morgan and we taught her about the ten commandments and the different finger signs for it. She loved it!! We went to the mission office to get Elder Tooley to look at our car, because the oil light was showing. We were down looking at our car with him when he couldn't figure out how to open the front of the car when I kneeled down and said do you open it with this? pulled a lever and the front flew open. He started laughing and was like Oh man you are so smart Sister Schoemig! Haha. Like I know anything about cars... 

Saturday: This was a pretty rough day for some reason. We went to go find a less active, turns out we have a giant apartment complex in our area that we had no idea about, and we were walking around trying to figure out where we were when I looked at Sister Sorenson and said Are we in an old folks center? Seriously, no one there was younger than 70. We just wanted to laugh and cry at the same time. So we sat down on a bench for a little bit and just laughed it out. 

Sunday: Church. After sacrament, President was like Sister Schoemig, can I talk to you and your comp after church? And in my head I was like AHHHHH but on the outside I was like Sure. Now after church he was like, I need the zone leaders and you guys and the scotts. He pulled us all into this tiny little room and asked us how much musical talent we had. Then he told us Elder Cook was coming and that my companion, one of the zone leaders, and Sister Scott were in charge of a musical number for that meeting. Sister Sorenson is freaking out a bit, but she'll be great! I just know it!!

Monday (today): I have to tell you this story. Flash back to Sunday. We got this giant box of food from a member, it had sardines in hot sauce in it. Well, we werent about to eat that. And the assistants were texting us at the moment so we told them we had something for them and that we'd bring it to them tomorrow. ;) We go to the mission office today, to talk to Elder Tooley and to give it to them. Elder Webb was like I believe you have something for us. Then they got all nervous as to what it was and if it really was theirs. We convinced them it was for them and then we tossed it to them. THEY WERE PUMPED. Ew. They cracked that baby open and then tried to convince us to eat one with them! Elder Gallegos was like Wait I need to eat one with a chip! So while they both were running around, we went and talked to President while he was in the office, they ran back up and was like President have you ever eaten a sardine? he was like Get those out of here. And then he said yeah i've eaten one. So while Elder Gallegos was trying to get his courage up to eat a sardine, Elder Webb went to show President and President just grabbed one out of the container and ATE IT. AHHH. Then Elder Gallegos and Elder Webb had to be cool and so they ate theirs too!!! NASTY. We ran because they were trying to get us to eat one too. NOT FOR THIS SISTER MISSIONARY. 

Well, Keep reading and praying folks! 

I LOVE YOU ALL TO THE MOON AND BACK!!

Sister Schoemig​

Few pictures this week 8/15/2017

If He did it for you, He can do it for them

This week was seriously a doozy. It's been a crazy one. I can't think of any other ways to say it. It's been insane. Being a leader is one of my favorite things in the entire world. But sometimes I'm just like what? IDK WHAT IM DOING.  Anyways, the mission is life. I love it. <3

Monday: We got some fro-yo. And then we walked up to a less actives house and met his girlfriend, a really awkward moment in the mission life. And then we went tracting in another part of our area, but we weren't really feeling it. So we were more like walking, but Heavenly Father had a plan for us. We were walking down this road, laughing and having a good time, talking to people along the way, when we both suddenly just stopped. We looked at this house to our left and Sister Sorenson said we need to knock this house. So we did. There was people laughing inside, so we got a bit nervous, but this man soon came out. I gave our little introduction and asked him if he was very religious, he said no, and  the spirit totally took over. It literally hit us like a wall. I asked him "what do you think of when you think of God?" he told us that he is the person in charge (to be short in writing) and the spirit led and guided us to what we needed to say to help him to take the book of mormon from us. He eventually told us that he has some really good friends that are mormon, turns out he's friends with like the most solid people in the ward. God is soooo good. I can't wait to go back and teach him and his family!

Some hooligans in our neighborhood kept me up that night.  

Tuesday: We had exchanges with Cross Lanes. I was with Sister Thorsteinson here in South Hills. We tracted like all day, even though I was like sooo tired from the night before. We found two new investigators that day which I was like SO happy about. (me and sis sorenson made a bet with each other that whoever finds the most new investigators doesnt have to do the dishes, needless to say I ended up doing the dishes for the week, she found a family of three!!) A few awkward moments happened...when a girl locked herself out of her house while we were talking to her, when I tried to handshake a guy who had just taken a big bite of his sandwich, and so many others that you probably dont need to hear about. 

Wednesday: This was a weird day. Sister Sorenson sprained her ankle so we had to take it easy. And I feel like I got to live the life of an office missionary. We had some things we needed to take care of like getting another new key and getting our vacuum fixed. We helped Sister Scott (an office missionary) make a video to send to her granddaughter, and bringing vacuums around places, and we helped Sister Scott with some mission stuff she had to figure out. Needless to say, not much outside world missionary work was happening but we did plenty to help the mission out haha! We saw Brother Cupit, and he is just the best. :) We stopped by the Mouls to see if they've had their baby yet, and no baby yet! (PRAY FOR THIS BABY TO COME OUT) We also took Sister Morgans trash out, we were like little spies in the night, taking out people trash. It was awesome.

Thursday: Can you guess? Weekly planning. We saw Sister Payne and we ate dinner with the Atkinsons again! Jesse is the cutest little boy EVER. Sister Atkinson was really nice and she told us that she asked her brother what the hardest part of a mission is and he said "You are nobodys first priority" And man, that is so true. But then she told us that if we ever needed ANYTHING that we could go to her. I love that cute/awkward family. <3

Friday: We had district meeting. Its #awkward but I love our district. Nothing really exciting happened this day. Just lots of teaching and preaching!

Saturday:We saw Charlotte, her crazy dog jumped on me. We talked to Karen, saw Anne Marie (she basically tried to get us to believe that Joseph Smith was a con artist, twas awkward because she had no idea what she was talking about), we tracted in the rain and met this lady named Patsy Taylor, she called us while we were with her so we could have her number, then after we , left to go somewhere else, in the next 24 hours, she called us 10 TIMES. She is crazy. 

Sunday: We had church. The most amazing sacrament meeting i've ever had. Well the sacrament was really the best part for me. (we had some really weird talks on how "pathetic" it was that our ward wasn't doing family history) We were challenged to read the hymn 185 while taking the sacrament, that basically changed my life. I challenge you to do that! But long story short, ive been working on charity a lot. And I had a thought. The Lord told me "If he did it for you, he can do it for them". The atonement of Jesus Christ is for all. He loves all his children. And I should not be one to stand in the way of anothers relationship with Jesus Christ and I should not judge them for how their relationship is. Just because it isnt like mine, doesnt mean it's wrong. The gospel looks different on everyone, and it works differently for everyone, even though its the same gospel. So Charity is pretty cool and I need to BE WAY BETTER AT IT. :)

OH! I got a pretty sick bracelet from Sister Mullins. I'll have to take a picture of it to show y'all next week. ;)

This gospel is true. The work is true. He is true. 

At times it may seem like He's far away, but know that He's carrying you. When it seems like He doesn't care, He's sitting right next to you. When you don't know if He loves you, rely on my testament of it. He does. He is always with you. 

I LOVE  YOU ALL TO THE MOON AND BACK!!

Sister Schoemig​

Dear meat and other....Aug. 7, 2017

WV: My Goat Adventures

SO this was a typical West Virginia week. Full of goats, teaching appointments, and deer meat. IM SO PUMPED TO TELL YOU ABOUT MY WEEK.

Monday: Well, Sister Sorenson was still sick. So no bueno to that. :(

Tuesday: We went around trying to accomplish our zone goal, of contacting every member, so that was fun!!! We also prepped more for zone conference. We went to the church building, it smelled like fish so we went and looked around in the gym and found there was six tents set up IN THE CHURCH GYM. Like what? So we quickly called up the zone leaders, good ol' elder baggett and watkins. We told them so unless we were planning on camping for zone conference someone needs to come figure this out. 

Wednesday: We had zone conference!!!!! I <3 zone conference. I learned so much and we had to teach for 45 minutes! But you know, once you get up there and start teaching, the time JUST FLIES. We taught about our purpose and what a successful missionary looks like. (#shoutouttothecharlestonzoneforbeingthebest) I just love the spirit so much. It helps me to teach and it'll let me know what I need to say. So I don't really get nervous teaching in front of big groups anymore. I am loving my leadership calling and what I get to do on the daily. :) The assistants told us that we did really good too. So I feel a bit accomplished. Haha. While I was asking one of the elders, Elder Lawrence, how to clean our carpet, another elder, Elder Sandlin, told me that Frank Jackson one of the kids I went to school with got drafted to the NBA and that he was given a brand new mazaratti (how do you even spell that??), so that was pretty cool to find out. 

THEN, We went on exchanges with Parkersburg, Sister Jarman and Sister Rawlings. I was with Sister Rawlings in South Hills. She has been out a week, but MAN that is not stopping her. She HAS SO MUCH KNOWLEDGE ABOUT THE GOSPEL. I wish I was as prepared as that sister is. Anyways, it was like the funnest exchange and I just LOVE HER. Can't wait to keep working with her through the next couple transfers!!

Thursday: We were still on exchanges. As stated above, I LOVE SISTER RAWLINGS. We tracted this really fancy street and the last door we knocked on, i asked this lady what she already knew about what we teach and she was like what i know about my salvation or yours? Well, its a good thing the spirit was holding me back throughout the rest of that because I was ready to brawl. haha. Sister Rawlings thought it was funny how worked up I got about it. But I don't like when people say they already know our message when its BLATANTLY clear that they don't know the message we share. Anyways rant over. 

And Sister Sorenson brought home dear meat in a jar. to be continued later in the email...

btw, HAPPY ANNIVERSARY AMANDA AND CODIE!!!! <3

Friday: We had like the best district meeting of my entire life. Shout out to my new district leader, Elder Krebs. We weekly planned too. We went to a members house and they told us all about how when he got back from his mission, he met his wife, dated her for a week, and then three weeks later, they were married. I was flabbergasted. #ew

Saturday: Get ready folks. For the time of your life. We went to this hollar to try this investigator, Karen, but she wasnt home. Her husband started coming around with this goat following him. He told us she wasnt home, so we started talking to him and we started petting this goat he had. He told us its name was Jackson and why it only had three feet. WELL, it started to get friendly with Sister Schoemig. It was like standing way close to me THEN ALL THE SUDDEN, IT HEAD BUTTED ME IN THE LEG. haha, i couldnt hold it together from laughing so we told him bye and walked on. 

then the adventures in the hollar continue... we keep walking and the roads get like sketch but we decide to keep going because #godsarmy. We knock on this one door and this one old dude comes out and he had tan lines on his stomach from sitting down...west virginia...he wasnt interesnted. We got to help this old man take his trash out. Turns out, the house that was boarded up next to his was the house he was born in 90 YEARS EARLIER. He was a bishop at the church at the end of the street, so he wasnt interested. 

We see this GIANT spider on the road and Sister Sorenson wanted me to kill it with my shoe. BUT nah, not for me. so she had me take off my shoe so she could smack the spider!! Haha! #complove

BUT we found a new investigator while in this hollar so that was stellar!! We also saw the Mouls and taught them about tithing. :)

Sunday: We had CHURCH. I <3 church. Nothing really crazy happened except, Sister Sorenson made that deer meat we got, it was kinda not my thing. But at least we ate it! We saw this investigator Hisam and his family, he loves to talk. I was really bold and was like well we gotta get going but read this pamphlet, we'll talk about it next time. #boldnessisgood

We got an eggplant from some members at church and President Lindhardt was teasing us telling us that we should eat it like an apple. No thanks President, No thanks. 

WELLLLLLL, guess that's enough for today. Hope you liked my crazy week. Because I SURE DID. 

I love West Virginia so much. I love Charleston so much. I love my mission so much. 

Hey, why dont you read from the book of mormon today? I promise that it'll help you. :)

I LOVE YOU ALL TO THE MOON AND BACK, 

Sister Schoemig​