November 24, 2014

Hey Everyone,


Well, like mom described so well in her email to me, another week has flown by and we are now starting the final week of the month. Also another Thanksgiving has approached us! I am sure all of you are wondering what will happen this Thanksgiving for us here in the Great California Long Beach Mission. So we just found out that we are having a mission wide conference that morning at 9:00 a.m., then we will hold District Meeting and Weekly Planning as usual. Then at 3:30 we can go to as many dinners as we want for the rest of the night. Right now we have 1 solid set dinner with a member from Honduras, then a semi-solid dinner set up with our investigator Rosy. I am sure we will find other dinners or other members to chill with for the night. So we are pretty excited for that day.


I have a favor to ask, and I feel bad that you already sent me a package. But would you mind sending me my other Utah State sweatshirt? It has been pretty chilly in the morning running and I have started wearing a sweatshirt instead of a long sleeve. I apologize that you have to send another package because I am sure it is pretty expensive to send them. I really appreciate it.


Sounds like it was a pretty chill week for you guys in Utah. This week, like it says in the subject, this week we had some success, but it was also was one of the most difficult weeks of my entire mission. I will start off by describing the success that we had this week.


So an update with Rosy. So she has been attending a christian church with her friend to find one that she likes. Well on Monday she had a really bad experience with one of the pastors and she didn't like the way that he talked to her. Well, "By their fruits, ye shall know them" she decided that she is going to stop going to that church. Well that opened the door for us to re-teach the Restoration and about how the true church has been restored. She really liked it, and we committed her to be baptized on the 28th of December. She wants her husband to learn as well and support her in this change. But she knows that baptism by the proper authority will help a lot in her life. So she is bomb! We are praying that her husband will listen to us as well, and that she will receive an answer to her prayers.


We have an investigator named Julio. He has been investigating the church for a long time, like over 9 months. He was super focused on renewing his drivers licence and not a whole lot on what we were teaching. So we dropped him about a month ago. Well he passed his test last Tuesday and wants to really commit himself to what he is learning. So we talked about baptism with him, using Mosiah 18 with him and how when the people learned about the truth, they acted immediately and they were immediately blessed. He understood it super well and we invited him to be baptized on the 21 of December. He wanted the weekend to think, and pray about it, and said he will let us knowon Tuesday. So that was a miracle for sure.


Well to be completely honest, that was all the success we had this week. We literally went 2 straight days of not finding anyone at home. So most of our time was talking with people on the street and inviting them to listen to the message of the Restoration. I can tell you that this week was probably one of the most difficult weeks of my entire mission. In fact we had one experience that just cut deep. We were going to try by a potential and his mom was outside of the house. As we got closer her neighbor started talking to her and we decided just ask her if her son was home. Well right as we got close, her neighbor said (In spanish "Quieres hablar con ellos? Porque yo no."), "Do you want to talk to them? Because I don't..." That really cut deep on me and kinda ruined the rest of my day. I probably shouldn't have let it, but after a tough week like we had little things like that kinda stick with you. Plus I fear that I might be getting a cold and that is draining my energy every day. So hopefully, with the holiday, we will have a little bit more success and re-build that fire again.


How is everyone doing with your Book of Mormon reading? If you want to be on track, today you need to be in Alma around page 209 in English. Right now I am loving it! Yesterday I finished up Mosiah and I loved the example of Alma the Elder in Chapter 26. I also started the other day listening to the Book of Mormon in Spanish. We weren't able to get the CD's to our investigator and he is in Mexico right now and won't be back until maybe February. So I thought I would take advantage of them and improve my listening in Spanish.


Well that is the update for the week. Like I said we are hoping to bounce back from last week and find those who are prepared for the Gospel. We are all excited for Thanksgiving and enjoying it with the members and our investigators. Hope you all have a good Thanksgiving!


Love,


Elder Roberts

After one night, I got home freezing. So I broke out the Hot Chocolate and wrapped up in a blanket for daily planning.

This is Elder Ortega from Mexico. He works in the same ward as us, in the area just south of us. This is a pretty "typical" dinner at night. El cae muy bien conmigo.