Week 22 - Happy Thursday the 24th!

Thanksgiving was super weird here. It didn't feel like a holiday at all. It was just a normal day. I actually didn't even realize it was Thanksgiving until like 10 in the morning. We went to our District meeting like usual and when I got there our Zone Leader (American) said happy Thanksgiving and I was like oh yeah.

But I did happen to make myself a pretty dope Thanksgiving dinner! I will attach a pic and shoutout to my amazing parents for providing the food (and the same Zone Leader for the pie.) We didn't do anything special really! We all ate together as a Zone and we all said something we were thankful for so yeah that was about it. I was really missing you guys and home and turkey and all of the fun traditions we do and dad does making the turkey. And I also missed stuffing a lot. But yeah that was my thanksgiving so yayyy. But next stop CHRISTMAS!!!!!!!!!!!!

One thing that I'm not sure why I haven't mentioned this but I have been working in two areas. There was an Elder who got super sick and had to go home so a ton of weird moving around we ended up with me and 3 other Elders living in my house working in 3 areas. But the problem is the other area (named La Victoria) is HUGEEEE!! It is one of the 3 areas that have bikes, which my body painfully reminded me the morning after the first day that I haven't ridden a bike in a reallllyyyyy loong time. But it is fine and fun so I am helping out there. It is kind of fun because now Elder Call lives with us and he is another American so I get to speak English a little more. But a quick little fun story is one day we were riding down the street and for some reason he tried to start arguing with me that BYUI is better than the original. I didn't have to argue long because like 3 minutes later we saw a kid strolling down the street with a super awesome BYU hat on so that shut him up pretty quick. But it was awesome and I asked to take a picture with him and I will attatch it.

But yes other than that we went to the temple this past week and it was AMAZING! I love the temple so much and it was kind of hard because I went a TON when I first got endowed, like once or twice a week and then I went to the CCM and went once every week and then boom now you have to wait like 4 months. It was a little interesting because in the CCM we had headsets so we could do everything in English but then this time they just didn't give it to us and I was a little nervous because I didn't know what to expect but it was super neat and most of the time I forgot it was in a different language because I just understoof everything. So that was super awesome. The other thing is we had a chance afterwards to have lunch and talk with President Corbitt in a downstairs room and it was super awesome because he know SO MUCH about everything and we could just ask him questions and he shared some really neat insights.

Really I just love this mission so much and wish I studied soo much more before my mission because when I learn something I just want to spend forever studying and learning about it but there just isn't time on the mission. So anyone thinking about going on a mission just read and study everything you can find!

But yeah this week was actually pretty awesome and I love and miss everyone so much!! I hope you guys have an amazing week and I can't believe it is almost December!!!!!

Until next week!

Love,

Elder Robertson

At the temple with President Corbitt

The Thanksgiving Dinner I made with the food that my family sent me. Not bad.

The Thanksgiving Dinner I made with the food that my family sent me. Not bad.

A nativity near the temple.

Cool BYU hat we saw on a kid just walking down the street.

Week 21 - Running to a baptism...literally

Okay so we had another baptism this week!! Her name was M**** and the story is kinda fun so here we go!

I met M*** when I first got here like 10 weeks ago! She lived next to a member and actually always went to church. We met with her at times but she never seemed to interested in listening to us. But she always went to church so we would spend one week wanting to srop her and then the next week trying to talk to her and it was just kind of a cycle! Until two weeks ago we decided to give her one last chance. We went over to her house and before we even said hello she cut us off and said "I want to be baptized what do I have to do?" Like OKAY thats fine! We can probably make that happen!! So we started setting more and more firm appointments with her and teaching her all the lessons and it was actually super easy because she has been through like 3 sets of missionaries so she already knew everything! But the day of her baptism was a little crazy.

So we went to the bishops house the night before and got her baptismal clothes but right after we had to go to a different area to do a baptismal interview (Elder Madrid is our district leader) and we were running late so we didn't have time to run back to the house to drop of the clothes. But we were going to go to the church early the next day to clean the font and set up so we would just grab it then. But what we didn't know was there were people coming to clean the church the next day really early in the morning. We didn't have a ton of time because we actually had to do another baptismal interview and we had to move the baptism a lot earlier because there was a stake activity so long story short we had about 20 minutes when all was said and done to find these baptismal clothes. So we called the Elders quorum president who told us who was in charge of cleaning the chapel that day, and so we ran (literally ran) to that house and asked if she knew where it was. She said she didn't and we would have to ask another member who did not live close to her, so we called her but of course she didn't answer so we took off running again to this house. We asked her where they were and she said she didn't clean the bathrooms (where we left the clothes) and we would have to talk to ANOTHER member who we didn't have the number of. So yes we ran to that house and she said that she put them in the one closet in the church that we don't have keys for. So when all was said and done we ended up just waiting for the bishop to arrive at the baptism and finally could get the clothes haha. But that wasn't all.

Originally M**** said she wanted the bishop to baptize her but then for whatever reason she changed her mind like 15 minutes before the service and said she wanted me to baptize her. So we continued with out workout and had to run to our house so I could grab my baptismal clothes.

But it all turned out to actually be an amazing service and we were all super happy afterwards!

The other quick story is that Yesterday we, as a mission, decided to have a Holy Day where the entire day we were exactly obedient to all of the rules. We did pretty good until it was time to leave our last appointment and it was super hard to leave because they weren't letting us. But it was getting really late and we wanted to get home on time, we finally got out but were realllllllly far from our house, so what did we do? Naturally we started sprinting. It was a long way we probably ended up running about a mile and a half and when we got home we were drenched in sweat and exhausted but we got home literally seconds before we needed to so it all worked out.

All in all I had a pretty good week!! I am super happy and super grateful for the opportunity to serve here and serve the Lord! Oh also fun fact I am almost finished reading the Book of Mormon in Spanish so that is fun!

I love you guys so much and I will talk to you next week!! :)

Love,

Elder Robertson

Our baptism

Week 20 - We had power all day!

Man I kinda feel bad when I have weeks like this where nothing super eventful happened so I don't have a ton to write about. It has actually been kind of a weird week. Like REALLY uneventful. It's weird we are trying to be the best missionaries we can be and the most obedient that we can be and it seems like everything is falling through! On Tuesday we taught one lesson. We had 8 planned. 7 of them fell through and even when we just tried to go contacting nothing happened! And it has been kinda like that all week. I'm not sure what happened or why but I'm not going to let it get me down! I always try to look for things to learn from experiences like that and I am always grateful for opportunities to grow!

Oh one super weird thing happened this week! On Wednesday we had power ALL DAY!! That never happens! Elder Madrid said that hasn't happened in his mission and he has 15 months out here. So there was one awesome thing that happened!!

Nah but really we are just always trying to find the people that we know the Lord has prepared and I am trying my best to be in tune with the spirit so I can be led where I need to go.

A random lady who I have never seen before at church randomly asked me to sing in sacrament meeting. I think she has a stake calling or something but she asked me if I would sing a solo but we will see because it is after the transfer ends so I told her that if I am still here then we will see.

Life at home seems to be crazy! It is weird hearing about everyones lives and how much is changing. I have had at least 4 different people email me and tell me about a friend who is now engaged or married so that is SUPER weird!! Christian just turned 20 and now I'm the next one in our little trio to be headed for that and I don't feel that old yet jajaja.

The mission is going by crazy fast!! It is crazy to think that some of my friends, like Emma, are almost under a year away from going home! And I almost have 5 months! And then next month I get to call home!!!!!! :))))) that is going to be so weird after six months of not seeing you guys! I will have more information on how that is going to go down after the 6th of December because it totally depends on where I am.

But yeah I apologize that this email is super uneventful but that is all I got for this week! I love you guys a ton and I will talk to you next week hopefully with better stories! I love yall!!!!!!

Love,

Elder Robertson

Week 19 - Girls are super flirty here

Okay the first thing I want to do is give a birthday shoutout to my homie Christian... Yesterday but still. Feliz cumpleaños!

But yes, as you all read in my email girls here are suuuper flirty. ESPECIALLY with Americans! You could be the most unattractive guy but if you are American there will be girls who will try to flirt with you. There is a term for girls who are super flirty here and I'm not sure if it is only here or a spanish term in general but it is "Freka." Normally it isn't that bad. Just if we buy something and the cashier will make a flirty comment or something and I will respond in the nicest way that I can appropriately but sometimes they are just super direct and I don't know how to respond.

This week I had one of those times. We picked up on a new family. It is a part member family who is also inactive so we found them and put an appointment to come back. When we came back we met with the whole family. And as it turns out one of the members of the family is probably one of the most freka girls I have met since I got here. And she was not secrative about it. The moment she saw me she stopped what she was doing and said (in spanish) "Oh my you are beautiful! Hey look (talking to her friend) He is beautiful!" This continued the entire lesson.She wouldn't stop looking at me and trying to talk to me. She insisted that she sat by me and literally kept trying to hold my hand the entire lesson! But that most awkward part was when she tried to hug me at the end when I was leaving. It was just a mess. She did come to church though and it was kind of the same process the entire first hour. I mean she's only 8 years old but still!

But frekas are actually a problem here so we normally just respond with a pass along card or something from the church when they try to invite us to go somewhere and we just invite them to church.

Okay one more story is I want to talk about N****. On Tuesday we didn't have anything to do because all of our morning lessons fell through. We had 3 set lessons and not one of them was home. So we thought about what we could do. We had an impression to go try and find this one inactive member who we found in the street but she only told us what barrio she lived in (barrio technically translates to ward but I guess here it is more like a neighborhood) but she didn't have time to give us her address, which if I am being honest still wouldn't have helped much because everything here is so unorganized. We went to a member who we thought lived close but she didn't know who we were talking about. But she did give us a reference who lived pretty close. And because we still didn't have anything to do we decided to contact this reference.

We showed up and met her and she actually knew who we were because her brother is a recent convert but doesn't live with here. But we didn't have a guy with us so we set an appointment to come back. We went back on Friday but we did an exchange so I had a different companion with me and he is in the group in front of me and actually knew less Spanish than me. But it is always weird on exchanges when I stay in my area because I have to lead and direct everything with I'm not used to because for the past three transfers I have obviously been the junior companion. But that really isn't relevant soooo back to the story. We get there and start talking and she tells us that 10 years ago she had met with the missionaries and had gone to church for a year! A whole year! She wasn't baptized because she wasn't married to her husband by law and he wasn't really interested. And then both the missionaries got white washed and they never made contact with her. But she remembered a ton and we shared the first lesson and she knew it was true. But then after she said she wanted to share an something. Like 20 before we got there on Tuesday she had been thinking about her life and how it is really hard and how her Husband works and she has to take care of her two kids and one always seems to have a problem and when he gets over it the other gets some sort of problem and basically she thought her life was just hard. And she prayed and said that if she was a part of some church she knew her life would be better. And then RIGHT AFTER we showed up! She told us we were an answer to her prayers and I am so excited to start working with her!! I will give more updates on her as she progresses!

But yeah the work is really picking up especially as we are trying to be the most obedient missionaries we can!

Well I love you all a ton!! Hope all is well back homes and everything! Aren't the elections this week? Hahah good luck with that imma be chillin here for the next year and 8 months.

Until next week!!

Elder Robertson

Here's a picture of a parade I saw on the way to the internet center

Here's a picture I took walking to the internet center where I send emails