Well first of all I miss you sooo much! Don't take this the wrong way but I miss you all a lot more than I thought I was going to. Like when I left for college it wasn't that bad because I still had a constant form of communication. Here it's been so hard wanting to tell everyone everything but I can't! And I also feel like I've been gone for a year already! I can't believe it's only been a week!
I know this is a missionary email and everything so I'm going to try and include somethings I learned but first I have soo much to tell you. Starting from the beginning, flying into here wasn't bad but it was super funny to fly over and see so many baseball fields EVERYWHERE! It is absolutely beautiful here! Although, there is a ton of poverty and in some parts of the city there is trash everywhere! The weather isn't that bad. It is actually pretty similar to Texas weather but just a little more humid.
My companion's name is Elder Powell. He is awesome. He has a really good testimony and I've loved being his companion so far. Also my mission president and his wife are AMAZING! It's weird being here with most of the people speaking Spanish but everyone is being really nice about everything. Our teachers are awesome and we my district is improving on the language really well. I know how to pray, give my testimony, kind of teach (not really) and I've done pretty well talking with the locals all in Spanish. And just in case anyone was wondering, Dominicans do talk REALLY fast and are super hard to understand so I still have a long ways to go!
I'm the senior companion right now only cause I'm older; there aren't a ton of responsibilities right now while we are in the MTC other than just like carrying the room key and whatnot, but two days after we got here President asked me to be the District Leader of our District so that has been interesting! I'm doing my best but I don't know how to be a district leader!!
Some fun facts about the MTC, The lights and power randomly go out and I'm still getting used to that! It's not that bad at the MTC though because they have generators, but we've heard from missionaries in the field that they normally only have two hours of electricity. There is really nice air conditioning here but we also hear that in 5 weeks we wont have it for the rest of our missions. Yay. The food here is so good! A TON of rice and beans but they make it really well. And to put all the rumors to rest, the mangos here are by far the best I've ever had.
The classes are really good but it can get kind of long sitting in the same chair for like 8 hours a day. Sundays here are amazing! We all have to prepare a talk in our mission language every Sunday and we don't know who is giving the talk until President announces it at the beginning of Sacrament meeting.
We also get to watch devotionals on Sundays, this past week was a missionary devotional given by Elder Bednar in 2011 which they call one of the two golden devotionals. He talked a lot about the purpose of being a missionary and something he said really struck me. He said that the only way to be a good missionary is if you are never, for one second, focussed on yourself. Every second of your mission you should be turned outward and focussed on serving other people. But then he went on to say that the greatest convert you should have on your mission is yourself. Which was super confusing to me because the two statements seem to contradict each other. But then I started thinking that the only way for me to become truly converted to the Lord and actually be the greatest convert on my mission, is to never focus on myself. Only when I have a mindset of serving others at all times can I truly become Christ like. That is what I'm really trying to focus on, trying to always have a mindset of being turned outwards and anytime I start to think of how hard things are or complaining about something realize that I am only thinking about myself and I have to stop doing that.
I miss everyone SOOO much! I hate being away from you guys but I really do love being here and serving the Lord. I love you guys so much!! Talk to you next week!!
Love,
Elder Robertson
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| I'm in the D.R. |
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| My district at the MTC. Elder Powell, my companion, is on the far left. |
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| My MTC president & wife, President & Sister Romney. President Romney is the cousin to Sister Trejo from my stake in Austin, so that's fun. |
