January 19, 2015

Hi Everyone,

No I am not home, don't be fooled by the subject. But after week 1 back in my greenie area, it really did feel like I was back home. First to answer some of Mom and Dad's questions. The mission changed the areas for the spanish missionaries in this ward. However, the majority of my area is the same, there are only a few parts of the stake that I don't have now but I did have before. Unfortunately, la familia Sobrinho aren't in my area. So I am going to see if I can do exchanges with the ZL's one day and go visit them. I live in the same apartment complex, but a different apartment because our old one had mold, Yay... Our area literally covers over 2/3 of the stake, so we have a car and mostly drive around. I might see if we could bike one day just to see how out of shape I am from my greenie days.

Sunday was an awesome experience. I was surprised how many members actually did remember me. In Priesthood, they were introducing the new missionaries in the ward and they got to me. I said "I am not new to the ward, I was just inactive for a time." Haha I got a couple laughs and then I introduced myself. It was awesome to be back in this ward, there has been alot of growth in this ward and I hope to be able to keep it growing in a positive way.

So about Elder Arias... He is from Utah, but was born in Peru and lived there until he was 6 years old. He has been out for about 10 months now and has really grown since our days in Cerritos. I love working with him and we are having a blast together.

Well, like I said it was an awesome experience being back here in Bolsa Chica. There were immediately flashbacks to when I was first here and how much I loved this area. From Elder Kunz and I competing to win the chocolate milk to finding awesome people to teach. Our teaching pool right now is actually really good. We have several people who are progressing super well towards baptism. This past week we focused mostly on finding them and introducing myself to them. This week we are going to focus on the little things to help them receive an answer that these things are true. Plus we are teaching a guy how to read and write spanish. He grew up on a ranch and didn't go to school to read or write. So now we get to do so, and it is kinda hard I won't lie. Basically I am trying to remember how I was taught Spanish in the MTC so I can help this guy out. Kinda cool, and crazy at the same time.

First week as a DL was pretty good. Really the only big thing was conducting District meeting on Thursday. The mission creates outlines for these trainings and I didn't get mine until Wednesday night. Thankfully it was a topic I was familiar with and I spent Thursday during personal study to prep. Well we show up to the church and we are about to start until the Assistants to the President showed up. Yeah plus there are only 2 districts in the zone, so I was going to have one of the Assistants in my district along with a ZL. Well that just added to the stress of giving my first training. But we had a good discussion on teaching everynight and how we can do better at doing so. So ya that was fun, hopefully this next District meeting goes a little bit smoother. This week week I will start getting exchanges done.

Well that is most of the updates for now. I have to run because we are on a tight email schedule. Next week I will give a bit more details about everything. Have a good week!

Elder Roberts

This is Rosie, she was one of our investigators in Long Beach

On the left is one of our Investigators Mireya and her daughter Heidi. On the right is a member and her daughter, hna. Rodriguez and Natalia

La familia Paz. Members who lived in our area. Super bomb family

La familia Paz tambien. There are the parents to the guy in the first picture in this email.

These two hooligans are Elder Christensen (Left) and Elder Petersen. We did a lot of things together in Long Beach and they helped me visit people my last night in Long Beach.