Week 25 - The holidays are hard

Buenos tardes familia. He tratando a trabajar en mi espanol esta semana pesada. Entonces voy a escribirles en Espanol un poquito. La primera cosa es que les amo muchisimo. Me he dar cuenta que la obra misional no es todo flores y mariposas. A veces esta tan dificil. Especialmente en esta nueva area. Me permiten explicar. En otras areas hay muchisimos otros investigatores los que podemos ensenar o por menos visitar. En una area nueve no es la verdad. Todos los que ensenemos son quien encontramos por nuestros mismos. Por esta razon es un poquito dificil porque tenemos que tocar muchos puertas. Y tocando puertas no es mi favorita manera para encontrando personas. 

One day, I'll take the time and write my whole letter in Spanish! But for now I'll send a little bit in English. So, I won't lie to y'all it's been hard as the holidays are rolling around to not be home. I miss all of the little things that we would do. Thanksgiving is going to be hard but yes we have a couple of places that we are going for dinner that night! It's going to be great. I will definitely get fat that night, that's for sure. 

Here are who we're teaching. Maria. Oh man!!! I love her and her family. She is a single mom of three kids and is our most progressing investigator. She reads like 4 chapters in the book of mormon a day! It's wonderful. She is super sarcastic and funny. She is having us over for dinner on Tuesday. The hardest part for her though is that she works soooo much. She works every sunday. Which we are trying to work with her so she can get them off. She also doesn't have a car or know how to drive. So, that's gonna be a challenge, but we're trying to figure out a bus situation or something. So there's a lot of hope for her. 

There's really only one other one and he's got a lot of potential. His name is Emmanuel. He is 18 and trying to get his life back together. We had a lesson with him and talked about how we are going to help him stop smoking weed. It's gonna be fun. We talked about how every day he can come and knock doors with us and some days we'll go and do service projects with him so that he can get his mind off of the smoking and not be bored all the time. He has a lot of enthusiasm and excitement for changing! It's gonna be awesome. 

We're still working with Geraldo and trying to figure out how to get him into the Rehab center. No new updates on that. Hopefully soon! So sorry it's short today! But I've got to go! We have a zone activity that I'm late for.

I love y'all so much and miss y'all. I will be trying to write y'all some letters for the holidays! They should be getting to y'all before christmas. 

Love y'all :D Happy Thanksgiving

Love,

Elder Robertson

Week 24 - Staying in Echo North for the Holidays

I get to stay in Echo North for another transfer! Whooo. Me and Elder Perez are both staying which is really nice, because we have both put a lot of work into this area and didn't want to have to leave it all behind and go to another area. So I'm very glad to be staying. Plus that means I'll be in this area for Thanksgiving and for Christmas! Which I'm super excited about. I like this ward so it will be nice to be able to spend some time with them through the holidays. I will say that It does make me miss home when thinking about the holidays and such. I'm definitely gonna miss stuffing and mom's pies on thanksgiving! But it's all worth the sacrifice. 

Elder Perez and I have become quite good friends. He's a very awesome missionary. He came from a pretty humble background from the Dominican Republic and really has a strong testimony. He can dance like crazy too!! But it's been cool to hear about his culture and everything too. He also tells a ton of funny stories from his past so those are always entertaining. 

This week has been wonderful! We have been able to find soooo many investigators. We have found 16 new investigators in the last 2 weeks. It's so awesome. The Lord is truly hastening his work. Although, not everything has been so wonderful. It's been a little bit rough the past few days. I got a bit of a cold or something. So that's been kind of annoying. But other than that it's been awesome! Hopefully all of these new investigators will start progressing. It'll be awesome if so! We currently have some really good potentials though. 

We trying our best to teach Emmanuel and his family. They have all got their own problems and will need some helping out but it really seems like they have been prepared up to this point to start applying the gospel principles to turn their lives around. So we're just trying our best to stay in contact with them and teach them because they are never all home together at the same time! 

So an update on Geraldo is that we found a rehab center for him and went and talked to the owner. He told us that he will be able to admit him and help him. We were very excited about that. Even more exciting is that the rehab center is in full cooperation with us. Meaning, that we will be allowed to take him to church every Sunday from the rehab center! The Lord works in marvelous ways! Now we are just figuring out the final kinks on getting him to the center and paying for it and all that jazz. But it's coming along greatly. 

I've been studying in the Book of Mormon lately and have been reading in the beginning of Alma. I read this morning about Alma and Almulek contending with Zeezrom. It made me realize how bold we have to be sometimes as members. While it is true that we need to be polite of what other people believe and what they choose to do that does not mean we can not be bold! I'm truly learning how to make this gospel a legitimate part of me. Better, the whole part of me. It's amazing how true it is that when you are living the gospel you are just happy. It's because you really do completely understand what is going on. You know where you're trying to get after this life and how to get there. It's a truly beautiful thing. And one that I love sharing with people and helping them realize!

Love y'all so much and miss y'all!!! I hope everything is going wonderfully and gloriously. Let me know if there's anything I can ever do for y'all!! Love y'all!!! :)

Love,

Elder Robertson 

Week 23: The Lord is blessing my companionship more than I can describe

So this week was absolutely incredible. The Lord is blessing my companionship more than I can describe. So just some background information our mission has a goal this year of getting 1000 baptisms! We are in the last two months of that goal and have about 190 baptisms left. So we're a little behind. So all things are now about to go full speed. We are all going crazy! We are all trying to be the best disciples of Christ we can be so that the Lord will bless us with those last 190 baptisms to reach our goal. 

So this last week we hit the streets to knock doors and try and find those prepared people to be baptized! Oh my goodness. I'll share a few stories with y'all. Actually I should say I'll share a few miracles with you:

Elvira: We prayed and were trying to figure out where to go first to be able to talk to someone and be able to find people to be baptized. We felt impressed to knock a certain street in this little neighborhood/suburb type thing called Pinedale. So we said a prayer when we got there and hit the streets. And lo and behold the first door we knock she invites us in! That's pretty rare to be invited in right away! So we sat down and had a good lesson with her and talked a little bit about the Gospel of Jesus Christ and the importance of baptism. We came back a few days later and taught her the plan of salvation and she really liked that lesson. She has previously lost her sister and so she had a lot of questions. She said she wants to be baptized but she just needs  a little time to try and prepare herself!!! SO THAT'S AWESOME!

Victor and Janette: At the end of the day of knocking doors we were tired and hadn't had a ton of success. WE were a little down. But we realized that there were some members in the area and so we thought we'd try and visit them and see if we can just practice teaching and get them to do some misisonary work. So we head off to one of the members we felt like we should visit. We pull up and it's a little duplex type thing. We see this little family playing outside. They kind of look a little weirded out when they see us but we just walk past them and try to find the members. They weren't home.. which seemed to be the case with everyone that day. So as we're walking out we start talking to the family that was playing outside. Well it turns out that they had just recently moved here from Mexico. We had an amazing first lesson and they all committed to be baptized!!! We're going to visit them later tonight. 

Emmanuel: Emmanuel is an 18 year old boy. We were trying to contact his dad ( who we had taught once and said we could come back to his house sometime). We were stopping by and Emmanuel opened the door. He said his parents weren't home but we started talking to him. It turns out that he had just come back to his house a few days before from living on the streets and doing some bad things. He also had gotten out of jail little while back. Needless to say he's been though a lot. So we ask if we can share a message with him and he accepts and we sit down with him. We talked about the restoration and he was absolutely fascinated. Here's the most incredible part. We talked about baptism and how it can wash away all of the bad things we've done in life and can take all of our guilt away. Elder Perez asked him "Does that sound like something that would feel good?" He replied "Yes! I feel really good just talking about it." We then invited him to be baptized on the 29 of this month. He accepted saying, "What do I have to do to get myself ready?" Wow.

I am in absolute stupor for the amount of miracles that I am being blessed to witness. I know with my whole heart and soul that there are people out here that are super prepared for our message. I love this gospel! So for Gerardo, the news on him is that we are still trying to figure out all the kinks but I'll let you know when we have more of an update on getting him into the center. Keep the faith Family and work hard to be missionaries every day!! LOVE Y'ALL SO MUCH!!!

Love,

Elder Robertson

Week 22 - The Miracle of Gerardo

Buenos Diassssss!!!

Como estais?! How is everyone? I miss y'all especially when the holidays are finally coming around. It's sad not to be at home. But it's definitely made some good stories so far! We decorated our apartment for halloween and then had about 6 other misisonaries over to play games and just hang out that night. As missionaries we have to be in at 6:00pm on halloween night since it's a holiday and probably too safe to be outside! But it was still very fun. :) 

I'm glad y'all had such a wonderful time! It was kind of weird though because nobody I was teaching really celebrates that holiday. Mexicans don't really celebrate Halloween at all. Especially because it's kind of a weird spin off of their holiday, Dia de los muertos, which is I think in a couple of days or something. Who knows. 

This week was great! We have a standard of excellence in our mission or in other words a goal that every missionary has to try and achieve throughout the week. And this is to have 20 quality lessons every week. This has been quite the challenge for us since we are opening a new area and all. But this past week we had 18 of them! We are almost there!!! :) That's kind of a fun accomplishment. 

We had kind of a crazy miracle this week. So there's a bit of a back story. We have a recent convert in the area named Juan. He lives in kind of a sketchy place. there's always a bunch of berrachos over there playing poker haha. A berracho is a drunk. He's amazing though and has an awesome testimony. He just kind of lives in some weird circumstances. But anyways there is one man who is always over there that they call "Pescado" which means fish. They call him this because he is literally a drunk. He is never sober. He drinks all day every day. He is also homeless. All of the men over there always laugh at him and whenever we are over there they laugh and say, "If you can save him you can save anybody!!" "He's so hopeless!" It's very sad. 

So one night when we were over there I felt prompted to go talk to him, his name is Gerardo. It turns out he hates being an alcoholic (which isn't that surprising.. most people don't like it.) But he was very humble about it and sluringly said in spanish that he really wants to change and he knows that he needs Christ's help to do so. We came back the next night and had a lesson with him. He was of course still drunk. But we taught him the gospel of Jesus Christ and he was very responsive, which was surprising. We asked him to say the closing prayer. Y'all, I have never felt a stronger spirit then when this drunk, homeless man prayed. He literally cried and yelled, pleading with his Heavenly Father to help him. He plead that Christ would help him stop doing this. It was seriously incredible hearing this humble man's prayer from the heart. 

We realized though, how hard this was going to be because he is homeless and really doesn't have anyone to help him. So that was a miracle in itself but here is the one I was going to talk about. That was the back story. We didn't know where to go the other night and so we went to the closest member to us who we found on the ward list and visited them. It turns out they are a part member family and the husband isn't a member. He has always hid from the missionaries but for some reason that night he was there and willing to talk. We had a great lesson with him and the wife expressed that she knew that we were sent from God in that moment to help her. So here's the incredible answer to our prayers. This man, Hermano Pacheco, works in a rehabilitation center. He told us that he would help us get Gerardo in there to get him sober. We were amazing at the way the Lord answered our prayers. We then thanked them for their time and set up a return appointment so we can try and help Hermano pacheco be baptized and him and his wife can be sealed. 

We then raced to the other side of town to Juan's house and found Gerardo. We told him that there is a center we can admit him to and they will help him get sober. Now get this, Juan (who is not a super wealthy man at all) offered Gerardo to pay for everything if he's willing to go to the center and stay. There's so much more that I want to tell y'all but I don't have time. I love this gospel and am amazed that I am getting to be used in the Lord's hands. 

I love y'all soooo much!! 

Love,

Elder Robertson