BoomFlag

I haven’t been to New York City yet, but when I go I hope I can get this tourist shirt.

After graduating college, every December I’d sit down and handwrite a few dozen Christmas cards for friends and family. It seemed like a good way to reach out to people I don’t see very often, and a fun tradition. Over the years, the number of people on my list grew. Eventually it wasn’t practical to handwrite everything, so I’d make newsletters or custom cards. They became more elaborate, too, and morphed into crazy, often silly designs. Soon there was a sort of expectation from friends about what we’d send… What wacky card will the Schroeders send this year?

Sometime around 2013, our list passed 200 people.

Last Christmas I ordered 350 cards. We keep accumulating friends!

Even though we’re serving a mission, I felt like it was important to keep the tradition alive. In fact, it seemed even more important because there are some people on my list who don’t really hear from me (or me from them) but once a year. So they wouldn’t even know we were serving a mission! What better way to update them on this big change in our lives? I shifted my creative gears to come up with a design for our annual card.

A postcard seemed appropriate. I modeled it on one of those old-school cards you’d buy at a gift shop.

Oh, and we had to update our list. We’ve met so many great people here: all the missionaries we’ve served with in the Valley, the senior missionaries scattered around San Diego, our young adult group, our seminary class, and of course the friends we’ve met in our wards. By the time we finished our spreadsheet, we’d reached 460 names. Oof.

At this point our process is a well-oiled machine. Designing the card takes the most time– by far– and then it’s all about creating an assembly line to stuff envelopes and label and stamp everything. We finished this evening.

Is an “assembly line” card a little impersonal? Probably. But is it a tradition I think is worth continuing? Definitely.

The day after Thanksgiving is always a day off work, right? That’s also true for our mission work: with the holiday behind us, we found ourselves with a free day. It was sort of an odd feeling– for six months we’ve been busy every day and now we had time to do something on our own. After a bit of thought, we decided on Joshua Tree National Park.

El Centro is blisteringly hot in the summer, and also very flat. The environs are all farmland or a dusty wasteland. That means there hasn’t been much opportunity to hike, which is one of my favorite activities. I was excited to get out and put some miles under my feet (and I don’t mean running around town for exercise). We drove up to the park and spent the day exploring.

The cholla “forest” was fascinating. These cacti look like short, fun, fluffy trees, right?

I knew from previous experience that cholla are not to be trifled with. What looks fuzzy is a tight group of tiny, very persistent spines. Pepper learned the hard way when she accidentally brushed against a few clumps lying on the ground. They stuck into the flesh of her legs, as well as the fabric of her shoes.

This doesn’t look bad, but we had to carefully pluck dozens of spines from her skin. Later in the day, her ankle was bruised and had a whole group of little blood spots from the spines. Ouch.

There were awesome rock formations to climb. This area is mostly sandstone, which is rough and “sticky”, making it fabulous for traction. We spent a while wandering and scaling these massive piles of rocks.

The desert plant life was really interesting, although it didn’t have much variation. There were maybe half a dozen distinct types of plants in the park.

We weren’t able to do any of the “serious” hikes in the park, because they were quite long and would’ve required the entire day or even an overnight itinerary. But we tackled a few short ones, as well as one that was several miles in length.

It was great to wander the desert. The sky was overcast all day, and the temperature hovered in the mid-50s, so it was the perfect temperature for hiking. The Joshua trees are fascinating and sort of otherworldly.

After a long day, we headed out of the park and looked for a place to grab dinner. We stumbled on a hole-in-the-wall pizza place that turned out to be really good… the best pizza we’ve had since moving here! And as everyone knows, after a good solid day of hiking, pizza is especially delicious.

I’m grateful we had an opportunity to do some hiking again. It’s good for my soul.

Holidays on a mission are a little different.

Without the opportunity to be with family, or even in your own familiar comfortable home, it doesn’t feel quite right. And for the young missionaries– some of whom are away from home for the first time– it can be especially hard. Homesickness is real. We decided to throw a little Thanksgiving party for the missionaries serving in the Valley. Not only would it help them not be alone, it would mean we weren’t alone either.

One of my favorite Thanksgiving dishes is cranberry bread. I went to work.

Unfortunately we don’t have any mini-loaf pans. I used our muffin tin and baked the bread.

Well, I learned something: cranberry muffins aren’t nearly as good as cranberry bread. Why not? Because a bread can be pretty dense and sliced so it’s okay… but you expect a muffin to be light and fluffy. These were decidedly not light and fluffy, and felt a little like biting into a chunk of fruitcake. A failed experiment, and next time I’ll buy some pans.

Anyway, as Pepper prepared the bulk of the meal, I brought out the good china. Well, not quite… I went to the upstairs apartment (which the Church is renting, but no one is occupying at the moment) and stole a bunch of the nice furniture. The result wasn’t too bad.

Several of the missionaries had been invited to eat with friends and church members, so our guests were those who hadn’t. Dinner was great.

Afterward we chatted and laughed for a while. Although I’m sure none of them felt like it was the same as Thanksgiving at home with their families, I hope they all felt our love and admiration for them.

Happy Thanksgiving, wherever you are, especially if you’re not at home. Life is good.

Every transfer, the missionaries are excited to go to the Imperial Sand Dunes. Sometimes we beg off, because we have a busy day and have already been there many times. But today we joined the group and rode in the party van with five of the sisters.

It was, of course, a ton of fun. Now that the weather isn’t so hot, we don’t have to get up before dawn. It also means the dune racers are out– hundreds of people flock to the desert with their ATVs, UTVs, and dirtbikes. We claimed a spot at the top of a prominent dune and spent a couple hours hanging out, snowboarding (err, sandboarding), eating, chatting, laughing, and generally enjoying a gorgeous day.

It included a tense game of… chess?

Someone had the idea of forming the word JESUS in the sand. If you stand back and squint your eyes just right, you can make out the word…

Happily, there was some ultimate as well.

Good times.

I’m working on our annual Christmas card, and I asked Zack for a picture of him “doing something cool”. He responded that all he really does these days is work (full time) and go to school (also full time). And occasionally he hits the slopes on his snowboard.

Well, I can work with that. He put on his work scrubs and picked up his snowboard, and sent this photo:

While that’s a fun picture, it feels a little strange for our Christmas card. I worked a bit of magic…

The doctor is in! Now he looks much more impressive.

A few months ago we welcomed a new senior couple to our mission: the Nielsons.

When we first met them over dinner, we were chatting about our lives. One of the questions they asked was where we’d come from. We said Montana, but actually we’d spent many years in Colorado, where we’d raised our kids. Where in Colorado? they asked. Near Denver. Suburbs? Yeah, north of Boulder. Longmont, to be specific. (We find that most people have never heard of Longmont, but many know of Boulder and even more know of Denver… so we typically work in that order depending on how familiar they are with Colorado.) But prior to Longmont, we mentioned, we’d lived in Superior. And before that, Aurora. At that they perked up. Aurora? Where? Oh, you know Aurora? Well, we were down by Chambers and Parker. That’s where we live!

It turns out they attend the Piney Creek Ward… the first ward we attended as a couple, after getting married in 1996! Moreover, they showed us their house on a map and it’s about two blocks from the townhome where we lived. Oh, and their daughter babysat Alex and Kyra a couple of times. Whoa. What felt really strange was we really had no recollection of them at all. But we know the same people (still living there), and some of them continue receiving our annual Christmas cards.

It’s been nearly three decades, and we’re a thousand miles from Aurora, but here we are, serving missions together. It’s a small world indeed.

Throughout this summer I’ve been stunned by the heat. Who lives in a place like this? It’s nuts! Well, once Halloween arrived, everything changed. Now it’s in the 70s every day, and it cools off to around 50 each night. It’s glorious.

Tonight, Pepper and I enjoyed a neighborhood walk in the lovely cool of the evening. We were in shorts and t-shirts.

Now I understand why people live in a place like this.

As missionaries, we’re encouraged to be involved in service work in the community. When we arrived, we were told there was a local food bank who distributed boxes of food to people in need, and we attended a couple of their projects. It was a good opportunity to serve, and after seeing the need for more help, Pepper shifted into high gear. She talked with the volunteer coordinator at the food bank and said we have a group of young adults who are eager and willing to help… what could we do? Now, a few months later, our little missionary group attends food distributions multiple times a week, in locations all over the Valley.

Our mission leaders heard about our work here, and asked us to coordinate service efforts throughout the mission. That includes all of San Diego and its surrounding communities, and over 200 missionaries. We used the magic of delegation by asking various senior missionary couples to find organizations in their areas, then figure out how to put the young missionaries to work. They’re at food banks, thrift stores, churches, soup kitchens, senior centers, city parks, and a dozen other good causes. It’s been a rousing success, with those 200 missionaries contributing many hours of volunteer service every month.

For us, our morning begins when a trailer full of food is unloaded in a parking lot. There are boxes that volunteers have packed (in a central warehouse), pre-packaged food, frozen food, vegetables, canned goods, milk, juice, and on and on. It’s always slightly different– depending on what’s been donated or purchased by the food bank– and it’s an impressive setup when it’s all ready to go.

Volunteers stand on both sides of these piles as the recipients pull up in their cars. We load the food into their trunks or back seats. They move along, and another car comes through the line. It’s actually quite efficient, and I love talking (briefly) with the recipients as they come to my station.

Here’s our hard-working crew this morning:

Today we had a record distribution: nearly 600 cars came through our location! That means we fed at least 600 families (actually probably more like 800, since some cars receive double or triple portions because they’re collecting for other families). It’s a good feeling.

For almost two years I’ve been working on Spanish, first with Duolingo and lately with the people here in the Valley who are fluent. I’ve found that native speakers are very patient and forgiving as I stumble through their language. For some reason, I find that even though I know the words, when I attempt to string them together into a sentence during a conversation, my mind turns dull and I stumble over the simple stuff. Practice, practice, practice.

Well, Sister Maravilla, one of the missionaries here, challenged me to speak in church (as in, over the pulpit) in Spanish. She supports a Spanish congregation, and we attend when we can. Frankly, I spend a lot of mental energy listening to the talks and attempting to make sense of them, but hearing the Spanish is helpful as I learn the cadence and flow of the words. We agreed that if I rose to that challenge, I would “earn” a Spanish mission name tag.

Well, I did it. I went in front of about thirty people (it’s a small congregation!) and talked for maybe two minutes entirely in Spanish. Sure, I stumbled over a few words, and I probably sounded like a toddler, but I got through it. Afterward, an older Mexican woman came up to me, grabbed my arm tightly, and said enthusiastically in broken English, “You keep doing it! Keep doing it!” She said that’s how you learn a language, and how she’d been learning English. She was really excited for me.

I talked to our mission office and explained my little challenge with Sister Maravilla, then asked if I could get a Spanish name tag. It arrived today!

Pepper received one as well. She’s much stronger in Spanish than I am, since she spoke Spanish on her mission in Boston thirty years ago. She says she’s “still rusty”, naturally, but that it’s “coming back”.

It might seem like a silly little thing, but it makes me pretty happy to see my progress in the language. I’m a far cry from fluent– and don’t expect to be even at the end of our mission– but it’s been a rewarding journey.