Week 51 - Earning the Ward's Trust

Okay... I'm really doing bad at budgeting my time at this emailing thing! But this week was really good. We were able to have Alex at church!! It was amazing! He had such a good time and was loving every second of it. He even sang the songs nice and loud. He's so awesome and I'm so excited for him.

Elder Collins and I are doing well. We are having a great time trying to figure out how to be exactly obedient and find all of those that we can to teach and bring unto Christ. One thing that we are working really hard on right now is to really gain the ward's trust. We know that they like us and they know we are good people but we are not sure if that is to the extent of them wanting us to be teaching their friends and completely putting their confidence in us! So we are working on that. It's going well. We are trying our best to get into their homes and teach them and see if we can help them come closer unto Christ so that they can help all of their friends do the same.

It's been kind of surreal seeing that Javauna is home and seeing some of my friends out here on the mission go home. I don't like it... It's been kind of sad! But it's something that I know is going to be real one day. So I'm just realizing how short my time is and how much more I need to be giving to the Lord because I know he needs soooo much more than I can give! So gotta get as close as I can to what he needs and then he'll take care of the rest :) I hope that y'all have a wonderful week and get to have some great missionary opportunities!!! LOVE Y'ALL!!

Love,

Elder Robertson

Us in front of My companions like favorite car that a less active member took us for a ride in! A jeep wagoneer.

Selfie!

Week 50 - Bad BBQ

The Fair

So this was pretty much the big part of this past week... for some good reasons but also for some bad ones. So I'll start with the good ones. We got to go to a little bit of the fair! So that was fun! It was cool to get to go see and all the "fun" stuff that all of these chowchilleans have. It's totally a farming town out here! But we got to eat the BBQ there. They made brisket... bad choice. I was a total snob! Not to anyones face... but it wasn't even close up to par. Okay, it just wasn't very good in general. But the experience was fun. It was cool to be able to experience that and such. Plus we got some good contacts while we were there. It was nice. So the bad parts. I got a little sunburned.. so that was nice. But the real thing that was kinda hard was the fact that for 4 days there was NO ONE HOME!!! haha everyone was at the fair so it was super hard to do any missionary work. So we were a little bit frustrated. But Heavenly Father still led us to where we needed to go and we were able to get some good work done. I'll send pictures of the parade and stuff!

VANESSA WENT TO THE TEMPLE!!

So Vanessa, Ricardo's wife, went to the temple and took out her endowments!!! It was so exciting :D It's so cool to be able to watch these people go through these things and progress. It's truly a blessing to be a part of their lives and get to experience this stuff with them. So that was super awesome!

Black Jesus

So yeah.. this was a legitimate thing that I had to explain.. in depth. That was weird. We had a couple of investigators who, being of African American decent, were arguing that Jesus is and was black. But we pretty much just responded saying, well... if you read the Book of Mormon and pray about it and come to know that it is true than you will know that Joseph Smith saw Jesus Christ and said that he was well.. white. So yeah.

Sad Day With Salina

So she pretty much told us that she doesn't really want us to come by anymore. She is pretty content with where she's gotten to. She is happy the progress she's made and doesn't really want to go any farther. It's super hard.... and kind of frustrating but I know that we have planted good seeds and that one day she'll be able to find the full truth! But that's kind of where we are with her :(

Hope y'all have an amazing week and I love y'all sooo much :)

Love,

Elder Robertson

Ticket to the (definitely not Texas) BBQ

At the the Parade

At the Parade

At the Parade

Week 49 - Jesus (no, not that one) is moving to Utah

Jesus Leaving :(

So.. Jesus S., our recent covert, is off. He didn't pass some of the exams that he needed to here for English so now he is having to go to another school to finish his schooling in Utah! It was super sad to say goodbye to him today. I just really hope that he is able to stay strong over there. He is so awesome! We are actually teaching his mom, who just moved here... weird right?! He leaves right when she comes... But it'll be cool to still have someone from Venezuela to talk to! She's super nice and very interested in the Gospel. She came to church last Sunday and even brought a friend with her! It's gonna be a lot of fun watching her progress.

Oh Judah

We are teaching this black young man named Judah... Oh my goodness! It's so hilarious!!!!!!!! He is seriously the funniest person I have ever met. He grew up in a rough home and is going through a ton right now but we're trying to help him as best we can. But he gets suuuper excited to see us and it's super fun. He always is willing to meet us where ever if he's free to talk about the Book of Mormon. When we taught him about Joseph Smith... He was all over it! He was yellin' "this is it!!" "This is the truth!" "It's gotta be" It was very awesome. He has quite a few things to overcome but I know that Heavenly Father and Jesus Christ can help him with all of it.

Temporal vs. Spiritual

It's been amazing how many people we have been finding as we are striving to talk to everybody! Truly inspired council for sure. The hardest part is some of the physical trials many of our investigators have. Many of them are really struggling with financial, housing, even food problems. When these problems are present it makes it very difficult to help them! Sometimes I just want to say here.. have all my money for this month and go get your life in order! Then I realize two things.. One, I don't get nearly enough a month to help them turn their life around; and two, I don't know if they'd even know how to handle that money! That was a long rant. With all of that though, it has been really cool to watch the gospel help them individually in each of their own lives. No matter their struggles, the promises found in the Book of Mormon and other scriptures are still ever so real for them! It's been really cool to be able to help them as best I can. I'm not gunna lie... it's really hard having so many people struggling with problems we can't help with (directly that is!)

All the Rest

As far as everything else goes. Thanks so much for being such an awesome family. I love y'all so much. It made me so happy to able to talk with y'all on Sunday. Sister Deatry, the member at whose home I skipped, said that I talk different when I talk to y'all cause I'm just so excited and happy. It's true... y'all make me happy. I love y'all!!! Hope you have an AMAZING week!!!

Love,

Elder Robertson

Jesus and Elder Robertson

Matt Skyping with Mom and family on Mother's Day

Week 48 - Going overboard with our obedience

This past week was really awesome. So quick background. We have been kind of decreasing on obedience as a mission. I'm not exactly sure why it is happening but it is. We are seeing the correlation directly in our work and numbers. We are not baptizing  at all like we need to. So with this my companion and I are trying reeeeally hard to go overboard with our obedience and hard work! We have seen soooo many miracles! It's glorious :D

Here are just the two biggest ones.

Salina

I've talked about her before. She is awesome. We have a baptismal date with her on the 30th. so we have been trying to get her to church!! The first time in the 4 months that I've been here she came to church!!! IT WAS AMAZING. She loved it :) she was so happy and said she's gonna come every week. She's going to have a baby soon... so that is going to prohibit her a little bit. The other crazy miracle with that is the man that is living with her named Bo! He told us last week that he wants to serve a mission and get baptized! LIKE WHAT?! It was amazing!! He's going to get baptized! Wooo

Nancy

Nancy is someone that we found by being obedient to what Elder Ballard (the 12 apostle) told us. He told us to try and talk to 10 people a day every day. So because of that... we were driving home one night and saw this lady was watering her lawn. it was dark and late but we stopped at a stop sign right by her. I had the weirdest prompting ever. I told Elder Collins to get out and talk to her... it seemed super weird but he was like... uh okay. He did it and we set up a return apointment.

She shared with us last time that that night she knew something was coming.. but she didn't know what. She said when we pulled up she knew we were from god and that she felt the spirit stronger than ever in her life!!! Oh it's so amazing. In our last lesson we committed her to be baptized on the 20th of june. We haven't taught her the law of chastity and she told us that she wanted to move out from living with her boyfriend before baptism! She is so prepared! She also told us that a bunch of people were telling us to never have us back cause we were horrible people. To their response she told them, "I know they're from god and that way of thinking you have is of the devil so I won't listen to it!!" OH YES! She is so prepared :)

Y'all I love this work! I hope that y'all have an awesome week. It's gonna be fun to see y'all during our Mother's Day Skype. :) Love you toooonnnnss!!

Love,

Elder Robertson