So I’m starting this email off with trying to upload like, 8 pictures, so I don’t know how well they’re gonna turn out, sorry folks.
We’ve been having some success with people, but mostly, people haven’t been home, and so we’ve spent a lot of time trying to find new people. We do this thing where I have to use a random word they give me in my little greeting spiel. Which makes it pretty fun. I’m having a good time doing the work, but as far as stories, I don’t know, my memory sucks, so I’m gonna go through my journal and tell these stories as I’m learning them myself. Let’s roll.
At the end of P-Day, we were going out to dinner with this member in our ward, Sister Early. And she took us to a buffet place, and Elder Marler loads up on seafood. Now, Sister Early HATES seafood. She despises just hearing the SOUND of it being eaten. And Elder Marler is unaware. And we see he’s gotten himself some crawfish. We ask him how to eat those shelly boys, and he starts telling us all the details. Now, out of the corner of my eye I see Sister Early go to take a bite of her food, hear him describe the slurping out of the crawfish meat, and watch her drop her fork onto her plate, and sit back it traumatic disgust. I almost laughed, but caught myself and asked her if she was a fan of seafood. And that’s how we found out that she hated it, and then Elder Marler had to proceed to whisper us the instructions of crawfish consumption. She didn’t eat well the rest of the night, sorry Sister Early.
Tuesday Highlights:
Talked to a gang leader
Popped a bike tire
Moving on, Elder Marler was making potatoes. Classic lunch. But I look away FOR TWO MINUTES, and I look back, and I see him pouring the last couple drops of the orange juice directly into the pan. We lock eyes. No noise, just the sound of potatoes frying in OJ. “Elder Marler, is that ORANGE JUICE?” “You don’t need to worry about it.” And we didn’t talk about it. I just went back to eating cereal.
Wow nothing else has really happened this week, I’m already looking through Saturday and there’s not really anything wild. I mean, when we went to grab food one night, this dude just walked up to us and was like, “You see that lady over there? She’s a HUNDERD YEARS OLD” And I spell it “hunderd” because that’s how he said it. Like, cool man, glad to know that. Then he just walked away. So that happened.
I was gonna wait to bring this up when I find out that I’m leaving Lawton, but this place straight up has the ghettos. Like you got the center part of town, and it’s a kinda nice place, but the further out you get, the sketchier it gets. Literally, the area code is called the “Shady 580” because it’s exactly that. Shady. “The Lawton Lullaby” is when you’re going to bed and all you can hear are police sirens, which you can hear almost anytime you stop and listen. Sorry mom, but if I’m gonna get shot on my mission, it’ll be here. Straight up. Hope that’s making things a bit spicier.
Yeah I got nothing else this week. Sorry that the well ran dry, but she’ll fill up by next Monday. Thanks for reading this, and I hope it was able to keep your interest for the whole time.
Pictures: We got my recreation of a famous art piece, but with silly putty I found in my suit coat pocket, my recreation of Target ad signs, and then the new gang in town. Which is gonna be us.
Over and Out
With the Strength of a Fictional God
Here’s the email: the one you’ve all been waiting for. The email that has kept you sitting in front of your screen refreshing your email for hours on end waiting for it to show up. No, wait, it’s just Elder Schroeder, writing about some snooze tale that’ll send you straight to dream central. But that’s ok, because hopefully you can make it through this email, because not as much happened this week.
But yeah we finally finished with the moving, so we’re gonna be living at this apartment now for another 6 weeks. But some other stuff that we did that don’t make for stories, was: Help people move, cleaned the house up, got to listen to some general authorities and they had some way cool talks, got lost because I’m bad at navigation, and found this rad playground that had a circular swing set that you could swing up to the middle and kick people on.
We tried to find more people to teach, and tried to teach the people we found, but actually quite often this week, they weren’t there or had to cancel on us. Fun stuff.
STORY TIME!
We’re just gonna machine-gun these stories out. So cut back to Tuesday night; we just had dinner with this way cool member and we were laughing and having a good time on the way back. He drops us off at the apartment, and starts to leave. Then Elder Marler does a cheek check, and his expression drops. “My phone. I forgot my phone! Elder!! MY PHONE!!!” So he’s regretting his foolish mistakes, as I start trying to catch up to the car as he’s peeling out of the parking lot. He’s gone. So we have no SIM card, and we still need to coordinate a ride to a meeting we have in an hour. So we’re like, double dutch grab a crutch, and we think that the church might have a phone we can use. So we bike rodeo over to the church in the biting cold, and we start scanning the halls for a phone. No avail. But hope shone brightly, because we heard voices in this meeting room, so we awkwardly poke our heads into this meeting and explain that we need to use someone’s phone. They let us and we call the sisters, who agree to come pick us up for the meeting.
Now, as we all know, I am already the fastest person, but even I was unaware that I was tied for strongest man, alongside Elder Marler. We’re having chicken enchiladas at this person’s house, they’re groovy and we’re having a good time, and I’m cutting through the bottom tortilla that is occasionally harder than the rest of the tortilla, so I start to put in some elbow grease, and through the brute power of my bare hands, I shatter the fork I’m using. It was made of plastic, but if it was metal, I’m quite sure the result would’ve been the same. I take the shards of the fork and just kinda set them to the side of my plate. “Can I have another fork please?” I have to ask. There was no humiliation in my voice, for my vessel was filled with pure, unfiltered power, and I had to do all I could to not terrify the mortals at the table. But little did I know, I was not the only one with the might of Zeus, because Elder Marler also ends up breaking his fork, seconds after I acquire a new utensil for myself. Good to know there’s still a challenge out there for someone like me.
Now cut to the night before the mission tour, which is the big meeting where we heard the important people speak. After driving for an hour and a half, we get to the apartment of the Elders we were gonna be staying with. Elder Quick was the only one that we really talked to, and he said he had to go grab something from the other room. So we start looking around and we find these Nerf guns with the revolving barrels you can pop out of the gun to load the bullets. So Elder Marler is talking about how you can put a bullet into the chamber, cock the gun, and then spin the barrel, flip it closed and fire, and it’s like Russian roulette. So we’re having fun with that little hoot, as Elder Quick enters, stage left. So Elder Marler, with the speed of a bolt of lightning, cocks the gun, spins the barrel, whips it closed, aims at Elder Quick and fires. MADMAN MCGEE MARLER SHOOTS HIM DIRECTLY IN THE EYE. 1 in 6 chance to actually shoot the bullet, 1 in 100 to actually make that shot.
Cut past like, 3 days of nothing crazy, and focus back in on Saturday lunch. I’m heating up some pizza in the oven, and I just put it on a plate and toss it in. After I let it get to the ideal temperature, I grab a hot things mitten and I take it out. Now I love me a glass of milk with any given meal, so I get some milk, grab my plate to go sit down at the table to eat, yes, GRAB MY PLATE TO GO SIT DOWN AT THE TABLE. The grabbing of the plate that had just returned from the volcano ritual it participated in seconds ago. As I grab the lava disk, my brain plays the “Hooked on a Feeling” screaming part throughout my hollow skull and I regret underestimating the power of plates. Not a good time. But cut to later in that same lunch: I’m holding these shin coolers I found in the cooler, and Elder Marler begins to make a burger. I see him put LITERALLY every spice and seasoning we have on this burger before he waterfalls it in hot sauce. It sounds like a broken electrical wire with all the sizzling and crackling that’s emanating from that dinky little pan he had. I get up to clean my dishes and as I enter the Danger Zone my nostrils flare up like the trees in Vietnam and my eyes begin to fill with tears. Any burger that can instantly incapacitate 2 of my 5 senses is one I truly fear. But after the initial blast to my respiratory system, I was able to adjust to the harsh environment of that kitchen. Then Elder Marler realized we don’t have hamburger buns so he puts this chunk of beef on a freakin’ bagel. What is this man.
Thanks for reading this, and I hope you guys all have a great rest of your day!
Over and Out
They Call me Trauma Patient
So I started this email on Monday, and then our internet died at the church because of a MASSIVE wind storm, so President approved saving an hour of our P-day to use another day. Which is today. We have to use the public library and it’s kinda sketchy here. Oh well. I’m only gonna include stuff that happened on the week before, so the stuff that’s been happening on these last two days will be saved for next week’s email. Anyway, here’s the sauce:
Alright fellas, this email isn’t gonna be as action-packed as some of the other ones, but I’ll do my best. Let’s start with the spiritual stuff first. We are teaching a couple different people, and we have two people on date to be baptized, and we’re gonna be asking a third this week. It’s honestly been fun doing missionary work and sharing the gospel with people. But there are highlights to every week, and that’s what we’re gonna talk about now.
Now for those of you that aren’t aware, I’m apparently the fastest man on planet Earth. Because last Monday, when we were leaving the church, we had to turn off the lights, and since everyone here HATES me, they tell me I have to turn off the light alllllllll the way at the end of the hall, so I start to do a little half jog thing, when I hear one of the sisters just utter the word, “Run.” So y’already know that ya boy Elder Schroeder goes from 1st gear into 8th. And I just start SPRINTING. So by the time I’m a little over halfway, I have entered THE SPEEDFORCE, and there is no stopping me from barreling down these halls like Barry Allen. As I’m nearing the end of the hall, I hear voices in a room just near the end. But I can’t stop now, so I just ZIP past the room and turn the light off. Little did I know, Elder Spillman had followed me down, and I saw him as I 180’d after smacking the switch. Now the reason I say I’m the fastest man is because Elder Spillman later told me that the people in the room had called him out for being a “Little boy running down the hall.” Notice, only ONE little boy was getting called out. That’s because I was moving SO FAST that the mortal eye couldn’t even see my image. The only conclusion.
Now some stuff happened in between this first story and the one I’m about to share. However they don’t really make for good stories, so I’m just gonna list off what happened:
Went to a goat roast and ate some goat
Mobbed Lawton with 20 missionaries all tracting on different streets
Got pressured into going to a military training thing
Okay, now that the fluff is outta the way, we move on to the thick of things. The meat. The juicy center. This next story is not for the faint of heart, or weak in mind. On Friday, the sisters asked us if we could come over and help this old lady they were teaching move some stuff around her apartment. So we agree and we all pile in the car and head over there. Once there, the sisters go in and hug her and say hi and all the works, and once they’ve exchanged pleasantries, we elders cruise in. I was foolishly the first one in, and therefore the least prepared. So I go for ‘The Handshake’, a classic move, used to introduce yourself to people you don’t know. However, this was not this lady’s first time traumatizing elders, and it wouldn’t be her last. So she implements ‘The Grapple’, where she grasps my arm, quickly gliding past my open hand and clenching my wrist. Then phase 2 of the Grapple: she pulls me in. I end up getting caught a bit off guard, and I catch myself before I land on her and knock her 6 feet under. But then she hits me with ‘The Rapture’, which is when her frail hands move stupid fast and just apprehend my entire face. When she tries to pull me in this time, I’m ready, halting her plans cold turkey. She keeps trying to pull my head closer, and my mind is still trying to figure out whether she’s going to knight me into the service of Queen Elizabeth’s royal guard, or just take a bite straight out of my neck. The amount of effort she exerted into trying to reel me in probably took 5 years off her life, but I eventually yielded and just accepted my death sentence. Then she of course pulled a classic old lady move, where she just gives me a FAT OL KISS ROIGHT ON MY FOREHEAD. She may have lost 5 years, but I’m pretty sure she just stole 20 from me. I’m guessing that reading through this you figured out that this was her master plan well before the end of the story, but in real time, all this transpired within a span of about 4 seconds, which is why I had so much shock running through my body. So I was still in traumatic horror, as I look at the sisters, who are chuckling at my misfortune like hyenas on laughing gas. The other elders got the same joyride of a time that I did, but they at least had some prep time before getting thrown in the furnace.
You may remember previous emails where I brought up that little girl who kept denying Elder Marler’s gracious offers of gum and cookies. This story is when he finally redeemed himself. In fact, he redeemed himself too well. Lemme explain. We went to the family that was feeding us dinner on Saturday, and we had no clue who they really were, but when we got there, we’re greeted by the whole family, including the Queen of Carnage herself: Little Cindy Lou-Who. I don’t actually remember her name, but it was that little girl. HOWEVER. She remembered us, especially Elder Marler, who she supposedly HATED. But after we hung out with them and talked and stuff, she slowly warmed up to Elder Marler, even to the point of that warming up transforming into BURNING PASSION. We were all gathered around talking and finishing up, when the Princess of Purgatory strolls right up to him, constantly trying to touch him by any means. So Elder Marler is just going full STIFF ARM with a pillow, keeping her at bay, as he’s trying to finish up what he was saying. The time came for us to drop a prayer and dip right outta there. So these next few phrases are WORD FOR WORD accurate. She is still trying to get to Elder Marler, but she says, “Can I tell you a secret?” And Elder Marler is just like, “No we gotta pray.” But she wasn’t going to regard what we had to say from step one, so she just says, in a starstruck fangirl voice, “I love you.” And everyone in the room just kinda heard it, but pretended not to as we said the fastest prayer in history, and made an escape at the speed of a getaway car after a bank heist. Elder Marler was shaken straight to the core, ya know, rattled right to the bones, and has vowed to never have dinner with that family again.
That’s all that really happened this week, and I’ll just include all the stuff that happened Monday through today on next week’s email because I’m running out of time here. Thanks everyone for reading my emails, and I’m sorry that I couldn’t send this sooner.
Over and Out
Cleansing With Hellfire
I’m gonna just start out saying that I probably forgot some events that have happened this past week. I usually just grab my journal, which I write in every night, and bring it to the church on P-day to dump all the information that I have into these emails. But I forgot that journal. So I’m just gonna actually have to remember what happened using my brainpower, which I’m not a fan of. So let’s get this thing rolling, because that means it’s gotta go downhill, as it inevitably will.
These tales of mine will probably be way out of order, but honestly, who cares? Anyone reading this better not. The important thing to know is that we are moving from the house we live in to this wacko apartment place. And that has kinda been a week long process.
Alright we’ll start with: The Hammock.
So of course this starts back at day 1: When we got to the house for the first time. We found that on one of the walls there were these massive holes in them where the previous elders hung up a hammock. Inside the house. So yeah, they just RUINED that wall. So we took the hammock and threw it in the closet. But we then were talking to Sister Christenson, the mission president’s wife, at new missionary follow up (which is gonna be a later story, so grab your lions and tigers and bear with me). But we told her about that hammock and the wall and what we should do since we’re leaving. After hearing all this, Sister Christenson said, and I quote her exact words, “Could you elders please get rid of the hammock?” So we pledged our undying loyalty to getting rid of that hammock.
Now, the house we lived at had a fire pit, so of course every single one of us was ready to purge this thing with hellfire: a baptism of flames sorta ordeal. And so throughout the week, as we’re cleaning out the house, we’re finding things that we need to get rid of and throwing them into the “fire pile”, which was all the things we were gonna burn. Then on that fateful night, which I don’t remember the exact night, because I don’t have my journal, we went out to the fire pit with various chemicals, a couple bottles of lighter fluid that we found, and all the stuff to burn. We practically DROWN this hammock in lighter fluid and after we run the pile of stuff to burn dry, we arrive at the finale. We grasp our soaking wet hammock and drag this thing to the fire pit like we’re getting rid of a body. We lift it up over the fire pit, and just send it in like a package addressed to Satan himself. Oh the inferno that ensued was glorious, and the neighbors probably believed we were in a cult by the way we were chanting, “Sister Christenson, the hammock has been rid from this world!” Fun times.
This next story is just an enlightening experience for me personally, because I became more humble as a man and learned some valuable life lessons. So ya know how on Halloween, you can buy a big bag of candy, and in that big bag, there are those eyeball gums. The ones that you think have the eyeball design on em, but it’s just the wrapper and you feel lied to as you chew on some trashy gum? Yeah, those things. But we got this big ol’ bag of candy from sources we don’t need to get into, and we put all of it into this big red plastic bowl we had at the house. So over the course of time, soon all that’s really left are the stragglers of good candy, and a butt ton of those eyeball gumballs. So of course I’m like, “Ya know what, sure, I’ll have some gum.” And I pop one in, chew the flavor outta it for all of 40 seconds, and then grab another gumball and toss it in. This then sparked the idea: How many of these grody gumballs can I fit in my mouth? So I start piling them in, ball after ball, bite after bite. The wrappers are filling my desk as my jaw is kicking it into TURBO CHOMP MODE and the raw mass of gum proceeds to build. I eventually reach for another gumball from the bowl and find that there aren’t any left. I double check we don’t have more because I KNOW that I have yet to reach my limit. I then take a second to work the gum in my mouth as my spit is just about to ooze straight onto the floor. I throw my head back and retain everything, but my jaw is feeling the hurt from chewing gum for 30 minutes. I announce my victory through my flapping lips as I pull the golf ball sized hunk of gum from my big ol face hole. After I got some water and went through psychological regret, I came back and counted the wrappers. Only 29 gumballs. I could’ve done more, but we had none left. To everyone that is reading this, I formally challenge you to try and fit all the eye gumballs you have left, and if anyone can beat my 29, please email me and tell me your record, so that next Halloween I can SHATTER IT INTO PIECES.
Now as I’ve been writing my email this week, the other missionaries have been harrassing me for writing such long emails, and saying that I will die out of writing long emails. Well I would argue with them if they weren’t all a bunch of chumps, because I will NEVER YIELD to their negative attitudes and Debbie Downer lifestyles. So if you actually read my emails, thank you because I usually make these things LONG AS SOCKS.
This next story needs the background of me finding this big weighted jump rope in the house, and us owning this little wax melter thing. After I had found this rope, I made like old Indiana Jones and begin to crack it back and forth at some boxes we had. Lemme tell ya something: I was on my way to becoming a force of weaponized mayhem, literally tearing holes in boxes with nothing but a whole bunch of thread woven together, when Elder Marler pulled the plug on the fun machine, demanding to see the rope. He grabbed one end of it, expecting me to put up a fight, and ripped it like a Beyblade champion finalist. I just had this really loose grip on the rope and this blur of black carnage flies like a sniper rifle bullet DIRECTLY INTO THE WAX MELTER, SPREADING THAT STUFF LIKE IT’S THE GOOD WORD OF GOD, ALL OVER THE NATION. For some unknown reason, Elder Marler tried to blame me for this disaster, but he knew full well that he was equally to blame, if not more.
This next one isn’t long at all, but basically we carpooled to this thing called “New Missionary Follow-up”, where we have to go and check in with the mission president and listen to some good words of advice. We carpooled with Sister Nakai and Sister Wendt. They’re both home-run missionaries and really cool people, but when you’re on a mission, you like, literally can’t look at sister missionaries for too long, let alone touch them, or you’ll get in trouble. So of course I get thrown under the bus and into the backseat of the car. It was an hour and a half drive up there and that doesn’t sound TOO bad, except I spent most of it doing straight car yoga to avoid being an apostate missionary. It got hard on the way back when both the sisters fell asleep and was just spider-manning onto the window, with my legs arching onto the console. I got a good core workout at least and we had a grand ol’ time up there.
Well I don’t have all the other snooztastic tales of mine within easy access, so I’ll run you through the rough ideas of things I remember. I created a group of individuals that follow and perform acts and have the same ideals called “The Association Organization”, and found all the associated garb that I wore to express things such as honor and humility. Elder Spillman was a part of my group of like minded individuals, but Elder Marler decided to leave in open rebellion and start his own group called “The Dastardly Disassociation Disorganization.” I felt attacked and betrayed, and it took me a bit to recover. After a couple of altercations betwixt the groups, we finally joined hands in alliance and moved past our differences, progressing toward a brighter future.
Then we also had the zone leaders, Elder Martineau and Elder Su’esu’e, come down, because they had a truck and helped us move. We had fun just chillin’ with them for 2 days doing some missionary work and such.
More stuff happened I’m guessing, but this email is REALLY long and I’ll just leave that stuff out. Thanks to any real homies that read my emails all the way through! You’re a cool person and I appreciate it. I’ll email next week and actually remember my journal so it’ll work all good.
I also actually have some pictures and I’ll throw them on here. In no particular order:
My hand after an unfortunate rope incident
The Alliance of our groups
The eyeball gum episode
Over and out
P.S. So in my mission, there are some sisters that requested getting a shout out in my email. Now if they do something that is worthy of my weekly email, of course they’ll be in them. Unfortunately, that doesn’t happen very often, because I see the sisters about once a week for around 3 hours max. But the first shoutout request comes from Sister Nielson. She wanted to be in my email for, literally no particular reason. Actually, she wanted to be put into the email after she found out that Sister Hartman made it into one of my previous emails. But she’s pretty cool and really funny. The Next is Hermana Salazar, who found out about people getting put into my emails, and asked to be as well. So she is awesome and came straight from Mexico, completely skipping the MTC. We usually end up going shopping with her and her companion Sister Benesch because we have to share a car with them. Then Sister Howcraft wanted to join the bandwagon, and so she’ll be in this email as well. She’s the nice one that doesn’t throw shade with us elders, which is a good break from the others. Then Sister Keller, who goes home in like a week and a half. She asked to be in the email, then said some unkind remarks about my emails, and I threatened to take her off the list. But lucky for her, she redeemed herself for the first and last time. She’s the one that makes the most jabs at the elders, but it’s all some fun jokes in the end. That’s all for the shoutouts, and I’ll catch ya next week.
