Week 48 - Happy Mother's Day...Again

Yesterday was mothers day here in the DR so just another shoutout to how awesome mothers are!

Well this week has been super hard! Thinking back on my mission none of my transfers have been very "normal." Almost all of them have had some sort of extra thing with them. This transfer I am in a trio and it has been super hard to split up the time between two different areas. But on top of that one of the Elders in my district got hurt and hasn't been able to leave so now I have been trying to plan how to help them in their area. Basically we just don't have a bunch of time to work in one area. It has been quite stressful because I am trying to handle three different Elders who all want to spend every day in their own area. I have definitely been learning a lot on how to manage time well!

But there weren't any like crazy stories or anything. I did manage to get my hands on one of those teachings of the prophets of the church and it is about Joseph Smith so I started reading and studying that. I haven't gotten very far at all but he really was an incredible person. If you don't know much about his ancestry yall should totally go look it up! Some of his ancestors were some of the original people in the United States! Like the people that came over on the Mayflower! His like 5th great grandfather on the Smith side immigrated to Boston without his family when he was like 12! He had so many amazing and really important people in his family! I am super excited to read this book and learn about a lot on the teachings that the prophet taught.

I kinda feel bad because there isn't a ton to update on but I just want to share one quick last thing that happened. On Wednesday we went to go teach one of our  investigators who is like 60. We had a really good lesson about the restoration. When we finished he was just kind of looking down into the ground and I was a little worried about what he was thinking, we asked if he had any questions and he stayed quiet for a second, and then looked up at us and said (and I wrote it down the best I could remember it and now I am translating it but it was something along the lines of this) "I see yall walking, and a lot of people see yall walking through the streets all day and say that yall are crazy. I have said to myself before that yall are crazy. But now I KNOW that yall are out here fighting to save souls. Yall walk around all day looking for the lost sheep of Christ. I see a light and a happiness that yall have that no one else has. I thought to myself that there had to be a reason for it, and now I know why. I used to think yall were crazy, but now I know that the crazy one was me for never listening." That kind of took me off guard but it hit me so hard.

Guys, this message, this truth, that we have is so important! A world renowned reporter was once asked what would be the most important message that he could announce to the world, he responded and said that if someone visited heaven and then came back with a message from God, that would be the most important message. Well if yall haven't realized, we have that message! That experience changed the entire way that I view things. It is our job, our responsibility, and our privilege to share this gospel with everybody. It doesn't matter where we are or in what circumstances, if we pray for opportunities to share this gospel, we will get them.

I love yall ton and thank you so much for all the love and support! Have an amazing week!

Love,

Elder Robertson

Here is a picture I took by the ocean. Yay.

Week 47 - 11 Months

Whoooaaaaa I now have 11 months here in the DR. That is so crazy to me! I definitely do not feel like I have so much time but at the same time there is still a lot of time left.

But this week was definitely interesting.

Unfortunately, half way through the week, one of the Elders in my district had to go home for health issues. None of the doctors could figure out what was wrong with him so he had to go home to find a doctor who could help him out. He wants to get better and come back so that is what I am praying for because he is an awesome missionary! But the side affect of that is because we were so close to a transfer, President didn't want to bring in a new Elder, and so he just put his companion with Elder Morales and I in a trio. I didn't think it was going to be that bad because it was only for like 4 days... or so I thought.. Then transfers came and because there aren't a ton of missionaries and this transfer is short, he decided to keep it like this. So right now I have two companions. I actually wouldn't mind it but the problem is now my area, all walking keep in mind, is about twice the size of LakeWay. I am pretty sure now to walk from one end to the other would take at least 1 hour and 30 minutes, if not a little more. I think it is now the biggest walking area in the mission. Before it was three areas with six missionaries, but now they are all combined into one. But it gets scarier.. at the end of the next transfer we are losing 26 missionaries who are all going home (that always happens at the beginning of summer because they all leave after school) but for whatever reason, WE ARENT GETTING ANYMORE NEW ONES!! I saw a message that president sent to our Branch President and he told him that he will be forced to CLOSE 12 areas! And because my companion is going home and my other companion (named Elder Prosman) has one more transfer here than I do, I am sure that I am going to stay here with a new companion to deal with allll of it. It is definitely going to be an interesting experience!! But I am super ready for it and can't wait to see what this next transfer has in store! I am now determined to turn this branch into a ward before I leave.

In other news we had two more baptisms! Their names our Dileysi and Alfredo. They are siblings and Dileysi has been coming to church for a while and really wanted to get baptized. She was a reference from another girl in the branch. Her two younger siblings have been coming too but never really had an interest in getting baptized. But then when we were talking to Dileysi about getting baptized this past weekend her little brother just yelled out, "Wait I want to get baptized too!" So we finished teaching them both and it was so fun to share that experience with them! She has given us two other references who are twins so we will start working with them and see what happens!

Last week as a zone we went bowling. It was super fun but I hadn't been in a little while and so I didn't do so well jajaj.... But it was still fun to hang out with the zone!

Quick side note, my left top wisdom tooth randomly decided to start growing in. I mean I am missing a tooth on that side so it shouldn't cause any problems but if anything happens I will keep yall updated!

Today for P day we played baseball! I am surprised that I made it 11 months here without playing because it is so huge here. But it was sooo much fun! We played against a team of teenagers. They were wayyy better than us and completely destroyed us the first game. We had only scheduled to play one game and at the end of that game a few of the Elders left. Then they asked if we wanted to play another game, we all said yes. And I am not sure what happened the second game but we absolutely destroyed the other team! They actually started playing even harder and we still beat them! I mean I don't want to brag or anything (especially because we obviously weren't playing on a regulation size field, but it was still pretty big) but I totally hit a home run so that was fun. I think we are planning to play more which is funny because I never have really enjoyed playing baseball but I had a ton of fun today!

Also I saw a guy with a BYU hat and that is always super fun. So I took a picture of him.

Well that is about it for this week! I love yall a ton and will talk to yall next week!!

Love,

Elder Robertson

We went bowling as a zone

Our baptism this week

I saw a guy with a BYU hat

We played baseball for P-Day

Week 46 - Happy Mother's Day

Well I am on cloud 9. Yesterday was so amazing. We had two baptisms, 10 investigators in church, 3 less actives came to church, and I got to talk to my family! That was probably the best part about the whole day. It was so fun to meet my future sister in law (again) and to see all of my family and hear their voices. although Dad had to leave part way through it. I kinda feel bad about how I got on a little late and he couldn't stay the whole time. I was worried that he would have some meetings to get to.

But really all of this, Matt getting married, talking with my family, and an experience that I had this week, have really got me thinking about something that Dad talked about last week in his email to me. This past week we were contacting and we met a woman from a different church. We were talking and she expressed her doubts on a few teachings of Joseph Smith. We asked her if she could explain a little more and she told us that in her church they don't believe the concept of eternal marriage or eternal families. That it they are some things really amazing for this life but in the next one it will all be single. She quoted a scripture that says something along the lines of that in heaven no one gets married or is given in marriage or something like that I would have to look up the real scripture. Now I don't want to bash on religions or talk bad about anyone especially because "We claim the privilege of worshiping Almighty God according to the dictates of our own conscience, and allow all men the same privilege, let them worship how, where, or what they may." #ThanksForTheArticlesOfFaithCardsMom

But I had an opportunity to bear my testimony to her, probably with more conviction than any other testimony that I have bore, about how blessed I feel, and how eternally happy I am, that I have the knowledge that after this life, I will be with my family again. I know that my parents have been sealed, and by doing so sealing me to be with my family by the authority of God. Because of that I know that I will be with my family for all eternity. I am so happy that my brother is taking that step with Michaella and even though I wont be there, I am so proud of yall. I will be forever grateful to my parents for making those decisions and raising my in such a Christ centered home. I am the person I am today because of all of those decisions they made.

Alright thanks for letting me rant a little bit about that.

Okay the last thing I want to share is a story that happened this week. It isn't like a spiritual experience or anything more just the most stressful night of my life. It was Wednesday night and we had just gotten home. It was a little after 9 because we were in a lesson. A little while later I called the other two Elders in my district like I do every night. But it said that they couldn't be reached. I thought okay that’s normal because they don't have great signal up there. But usually if I wait a bit and call again it goes through. Long story short I call about 10 times and get the same response. So I call the Zone Leaders and ask them to call them and to text them and tell them to call me. He calls back and tells me he also cant get ahold of them. I wasn't worried until I remembered that they had been in the capitol all day for a medical thing with one of the elders and when I called them at 6 I asked them to call me when they got home and they never did. So now I am trying to figure out what the best thing to do was. What I was thinking is they got robbed and  that’s why their phone wasn't working. But it was like 10:00 at this point and we still couldn't get ahold of them. But surely they were back in the house. So I called a member who lives close and asked if he could run and go knock on their door and see what was happening. He came back a little bit later, called me and told me.. that they weren't in the house. That he called and knocked and everything was closed and locked and dark and no one answered. So at this point I am really starting to freak out and talking with my zone leaders who were talking with the assistants. He asked if there was another member who could pass by and there wasn't. So my zone leader was talking to the assistants for a bit and then he called me and just asked, ^hey, you ran track in high school right?^ Ûhhh.. yeah, why?^ ^well, if yall want, yall have permission to run up there and see what is going on.^At this point it is almost 11 at night (I am skipping a few details just for time sake.) The thing was is that they really don't live super close to us. Like walking it is a good 20 minutes. We were super lucky because at that time there was power here so the street lights were on. But they told us to go in normal running clothes and not as missionaries. So my heart was super pumping because I hadn't been outside of the house later than 9:30 since June of last year. But we take off. Sprinting. We got people yelling at us and dogs chasing us but we were just booking it up there at 11 o´clock at night. My heart is racing and I don't know what is happening but we have been trying to get ahold of the other two people for two hours without any success. When we are more than half way there already drenched in sweat because it is so humid, I get a phone call, I just stop, answer the phone, and hear in a quiet voice,

"Uhhh.. sorry, we got home and we have been sleeping this whole time, but it doesn't show that yall called us. Why didn't you call us?""

Apparently the left their phone in a place without signal and that’s why the calls never went through. But I had to try very hard to keep calm and keep my patience and calmly explained that not only I, but the zone leaders, the assistants and up until President have been calling them and briefly explained everything. But I still was freaking out because I was now out of my house in a pretty dangerous part off the DR at like 11 something. But it was a huge relief to know that they were safe in the house. We now had to book it back home and I just completely fell in bed because all of that energy and adrenaline just basically sent me into a crash. And that was very briefly the story of the most stressful night on my mission.

But to end on a happy note! We had two baptisms this weekend. One was Jose, the youngest kid of Digna who got baptized a couple weeks ago but he couldn't get baptized that day because he wasn't there. And the other is a girl named Mayelis. She was a reference from one of her friends who really wanted to get baptized. The story of their baptism is also super cool and stressful but I will save that one for another time.

Have I ever met Gary? I mean I am named after him but I don't know if I have ever actually met him!

I love yall so much and it was so fun to see yall and talk to yall yesterday! Sorry this email is super long but I just had so many things that happened this past week! Have a great week and I'll talk to yall next week with transfer updates!

Love,

Elder Robertson

Baptism

Week 45 - I met Michaela?

HOLD UP WHAAAAAATTTTT??¿?¿?¿?¿?¿ I MET MICHAELA? THAT WAS HER? I TOTALLY REMEMBER THAT!!  THAT IS INSANE!

That actually makes me a little more content that I wont be able to be there for the wedding. Although I am still super sad about it at least I have met her before. That is so insane to me and just blowing my mind. I am so excited to hear and see (in pictures) all of this play out!

Well I don't think I am going to send the day by day report this week because it was ridiculously boring hahah. It was just one of those weeks as a missionary where really it doesn't matter how much you try, nothing really happens. Basically like all of our investigators weren't home this week for some reason so we just spent the week contacting. Which personally I thought it was really nice because when you are in an area for 10 weeks, even though it isn't a ton, you get into a groove of going to the same places just because that is where all of your people are. So this week because we were contacting a lot we had to go find the places that we haven't been to before. It was actually really nice because I got to know the area a lot better and it made me realize that we need to work even harder than we already are to share this message with all of those people who we haven't been able to talk to yet.

I can't believe how fast this mission is flying by. I remember so well the day I left and said goodbye to everyone. That still only feels like it was a couple weeks ago. But here in a couple weeks I will complete 11 months here. And I have absolutely loved every second of it, even when the times are super hard.

I don't have a ton of time today because we are going to go to the temple with a family and talk about eternal families and I am super excited!

I can't wait to talk to yall next week! How it is probably going to work out is I will be able to call at about 12:30-1pm my time. I will get everything super set up and working so there wont be any problems. That should be two hours before yall go to church, will that be a good time?

And yes sorry I never said anything about it I did get the package and thank yall so much!!

I love yall so much and will talk to you in a few days!!!

Love,

Elder Robertson

Week 44 - My Ukulele Saved the Day

First of all congradulations to my brother who is officially engaged! I am so happy for you bro although super sad I wont be able to be there.

Okay I have been hearing my letters have been a little boring and undetailed so I am going to go through and try and write a Little bit at the end of every day and maybe then my letters will be a Little more detailed because I will be able to remember better!

Monday: We didn't really do anything. I have visited a lot of the main tourist sights and because we aren't allowed to go to the beach and everything costs a lot of money we usually just stay home and sleep all day which personally I have really enjoyed because oddly enough when you are walking around all day every day you get a little tired.

Tuesday: Rain, rain, rain, rain and when it looked like it was going to stop, it rained even harder. It was kind of crazy the rain started flooding into our house and it was dripping into our ceiling, no joke it looked like it was raining in our house haha. Pictures will be attached.

Wednesday: Our branch started a domino tournament. If yall didn't know the game domino is the biggest game here and everyone plays it.

Thursday: Wow Thursday was awesome! We had Zone Conference. We could all tell that President is starting to feel that he is going home soon. These Zone Conferences aren't like the rest of them where they are only focused on missionary work and our goals as a mission but more focused on like life in general and how we can stay active after our missions and it is super hard to explain but it was the most spiritual zone conference I have been to on my mission! Also Digna and her 3 kids, Treisi, Joselina and Jose passed their baptismal interviews!!

Friday-Sunday: I will write a long story about what happened in these days…

Alright so Friday through Saturday were some of the hardest, best, worst and just straight up craziest days of my mission. There were so many things that we had to do that I decided to make a check list of everything and I wish yall could have seen it. Every day it was soooo long! So starting on Friday we had a pretty normal morning. But then I had to walk like 25 minutes to the other area to do some baptismal interviews. Those took sooooo long because it was with a mom and three of her kids and they all live in a one room house, like where in one room they have their beds, kitchen, bathroom and everything in one room that probably was about as big as my bed room. So everyone was waiting outside while I was inside doing the interviews. But the problem is that it kept raining on and off and so everyone had to come back inside and I kept having to pause the interviews. No joke the whole process took about 3 and a half hours which put me wayyyyy behind schedule especially because it all ended at about 7. And still on my list is I had to walk 40 minutes from where I was to look for all the baptismal clothes and then I still had to fill up the font because the baptism was the next day and it always isn’t a guarantee that there will be enough water so I wanted to do it in advance. Basically there were just so many things I had to do and just not nearly enough time.
I ended up only being able to go get the clothes and then run home. But the people were sooo awesome and I love doing their interviews and just seeing how converted they were to the church made me so happy. Walking home with the clothes I turned to my companion and just said, "It's days like today that I love being a missionary."

The next day we started earllllllllly. We basically got up and showered and headed for the church to clean and set up for the baptism. We did a ton of things and in the end ended up passing by Digna and her family at about 3 (two hours before the baptism) Treisi told us that everything was good to go and that they would be ready to leave at 4:30. But this is where everything started do go wrong. When we came back they told us that their mom had hurt her hand pretty bad and was sleeping and they weren’t going to be able to be baptized that day and we were going to move it for another day. At this point I was freaking out because one of our goals as a mission is that everyone baptized in April and they were so ready to be baptized. I asked if we could talk to her mom and she said that she had been sleeping for a while and didn't want to come to the door. I could sense that something was odd about the whole situation. (Quick side note, I have really missed my ukulele a lot and so for my birthday I found a 15 dollar one and bought it for myself for a birthday present and it has been amazing. We were planning on doing a special musical number of that song When I am Baptized that is like I like to look for rainbows whenever there is rain ect. So I just so happened to have it with me at the moment.) So basically I had no idea what to do and I called my zone leader and he just said to do what I thought was best. So I did the only thing I knew would work for sure; pray. I just said a really quick prayer and asked for help to know what I needed to do. I had a SUUUPER strong impression to just start playing my ukulele. I thought it was odd but I just pulled it out and started strumming some things super quick. As soon as I started doing that the entire family came outside, including the mom so we had the chance to talk to them all. We kept asking what happened and what we could do but the mom just kept telling us it was nothing and that we would just move it for another week. But I knew something was up. We kept going on and on asking what was happening and them denying anything that we were just on the point of giving in and letting it go. Because at this point it was late and there were the other three people who were getting baptized so we just told them to start.

We were about to leave until I got another impression to what? Play my ukulele again, but this time it was to sing the song that I had been preparing. Now I was just going to play and let the other two missionaries in our branch sing because they are both amazing singers and when my companion and I, not so much. But I asked them if it would be alright and they said yes. So we ended up singing it for them and I could see in their faces that the words to that song really touched their hearts. When we finished everyone just sat there in silence. After a few minutes I asked how they were feeling and they opened up and told us how nervous they were and how recently they had been having a lot of doubts including a few people saying things to them about our church. We then had an opportunity to bare our testimonies about the power of baptism and how really it is something that is so amazing and how they were going to feel exactly like that song describes, clean. It was such an amazing sweet experience and my testimony grew so much. Although by then it was way too late to do it that day, we called the other missionaries and told them not to drain the font and they were able to be baptized on Sunday after church. I will never forget this family and the impact they have had on my life. It was kind of funny because we first met them when they were looking for a lost chicken in a field, we offered to help them and then it just took off from there. Digna, Treisi and Joselina (Jose the 9 year old wasn’t able to make it to church today so he will be baptized next week) have been huge blessings in my life. Thank you for letting me go on about that but that was the story of the best but craziest weekend of my life!

I will be able to skype on Mothers Day, it will probably be right after my church at like 12:30 my time. Will that be okay?

I love yall soooooo much!!!!!! Go have a great week!!!

Love,

Elder RobertsonWeek

Rain, rain, and more rain

Zone conference

A baptism