EDITOR'S NOTE: As I was
looking through my camera trying to decide which photos to put in this
email, I realized that I actually didn't take any photos this week, so
there won't be any in this email. Sorry.
Hey everyone!
This week has been nuts. On Tuesday, I was feeling absolutely horrible, so we went home in the middle of the day and called the mission president's wife. She diagnosed me with Zika. (Yay!) Basically I had to spend all day Tuesday and a good part of the day Wednesday resting. There isn't really anything anyone can do with Zika more than simply resting and weathering it for a couple of days. Basically you just feel extremely tired and hot and you sweat a lot and you feel like you want to throw up. Ugh. Needless to say, I've become a little more diligent with the mosquito repellant.
When I finally got feeling better, we stepped outside Wednesday evening to get back to work, and about 10 seconds after going outside, it began to storm and hail like nobody's business, so we decided to go back inside. We lost power for about and hour, and we found out the next morning that there was a super huge tornado in Texas not far from where we were (big enough to have killed some people, from what I heard), and we were on the edge of it. Luckily, we were far enough away that all we got was a bad lightning/hail/wind storm. I don't think anything got damaged here. Crazy.
So when the week officially began Thursday, we set out again, but about 2 hours into the day, the cable for the transmission on my bike broke, so I've been stuck in the absolute lowest gear all week. It was rather slow and tiring. Imagine if your car wouldn't shift out of first gear into second. The engine is screaming it's head off, but you're only doing 20 MPH. That was basically me all this week. Between the fact that the only bike part shops are in the center (VERY far from our area) and that everybody's been closed for Easter, we weren't able to fix it until today. So that was fun. :)
But we didn't lose faith. We kept hoping, praying, and fasting for miracles.
And the Lord provided.
This week, despite all our opposition, we were blessed with a lot of miracles to make up for our lost time. We managed to get a record number of new investigators this week who committed to come to church, including a large group of youth who want to come to Mutual this week. Unfortunately, because of Easter, everybody except one person had to cancel coming to church. But hey, Easter was hard because everybody is out of town. Everybody seemed to feel bad for missing out on church, and the majority still want to keep meeting with us. We're looking forward to this next week with lots of ánimo!
It was really cool working as a missionary through Easter. A lot of people liked the Easter video the Church put out (it's called the Prince of Peace, and if you haven't seen it, I invite you all to repent, go to mormon.org, and watch it. It's really super awesome).
It was also really refreshing to forget the Easter bunny and focus completely on why we have Easter in the first place: because of our Lord and Savior Jesus Christ, commited the most selfless, difficult, heroic, and history-changing event in all of human history. The Atonement and Resurrection mean that all of us can have hope and peace, and that Christ will change us to overcome the challenges and sadnesses of this life, if only we let Him do so by striving to live the Gospel He taught.
Sometimes, as this crazy week of mine has shown, life gets a little frusterating at times. We face more and more opposition. The Great News of the Gospel of Jesus Christ is that He is on our side, so we literally have nothing to fear. He can help us, no matter our struggles. I love being a missionary because of the opportunity to share this awesome message!
Thanks for all the love and prayers! I love and miss you all!
Happy Spring!
Elder Jakob Schramm
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