Week 87 - The Eye of Faith

Holaaaaa!!

Well as of a few days ago I officially felt a little old in the misión as I hit the same age in the misión that I am in real life. Elder Slack (the only other American in my group) told me a few days ago that the 25th would be our 100 day mark so that means today I am officially in double digits. I have now been away from home for 20 months (and a few days) but it still feels like just yesterday y'all were all standing there in the airport just watching me go through security and everyone kept asking me if y'all were my family and why y'all were just standing there lol. But there was one nice member mom who asked if I was a missionary and where I was going. Ah good times.

But anyways this one will probably be a little short and sweet (sorry mom) but like y'alls week my week was pretty low key. Not much new stuff to report on. We had a few cosechas in the zone and it was fun to work with some other Elders in the zone.

This week we also had Zone Conference! It was super awesome! I always love being able to meet together with President and a bunch of other missionaries! They talked a lot about what Elder Renlund talked about, like the importance of working hard but with a good attitude. President took it a step further and talked about the importance of that but together with faith and works.

And now because I don't have any awesome stories for this week I think I will talk a little more about what I have learned a little on faith in my studies. Something we talk about a lot in the mission that I think I have heard before but it is the eye of faith. Like looking at things how they can become and even more so looking at them as if they had already become that thing. For example, when I contact an investigator, I am already thinking about what size baptismal clothes he needs for his baptism and picturing him standing in the font. This week while I was studying the Book of Mormon I realize that it is full of this stuff. There are a few prophets in the Bible who talk like it for example Isaiah but the best examples are in the Book of Mormon. For example, Nephi in chapter 25 of his second book talks about how they already live the gospel of Jesus Christ and live as if he had already come and atoned for the sins of the world. They obey the law of Moses because it is the commandment of that time but to them the law is already fulfilled and they live something they can't see or don't have proof that it will happen, but that they know it will happen. (Alma 32:21) There are many more examples (aka the entire Book), but just for my purpose this is a good one.

It says in Preach my Gospel that faith is a principle of power, a power to change. It doesn't matter what you apply or which aspect of the gospel or life, to have perfect faith is to see yourself, or whoever, as whatever you want to become. If I want to be a more charitable person, first of all I have to have faith and hope in the Atonement of Christ and know that he wants me to be the best person I can be. I have to, of course, know what it means to be a charitable person and then when I see myself in the mirror I look at myself as that person and start living as that person should live (aka works) and before you know it boom you have become who you want to! I have tried to apply that principle in my mission and also with the people I teach. If someone wants to be closer to God, they have to know what that means and then DO IT! If I want to become more Christ like, I have to study Christ, and then look at myself as if I already have those attributes and actually live like I do! I know this kind of sounds like the whole "fake it till you make it" kind of thing but trust me. IT WORKS! I can actually exaplain this a lot better in Spanish jaja.

I can't believe February is already ending. Here comes March and then SPRING! Which really is no different here, it is just summer 24-7. But I am excited to start to see a bunch of pictures of spring time over there and all the BLUE BONNETS!!! Also t-minus a little under 5 weeks until next conference and we will see who the next apostles are! (still rooting for Pres Corbitt)

I left my camera at home sorry....

I love yall a ton and hope everyone has an amazing week! And if it isn't, make it amazing!! :)

Con amor,

Elder Robertson

Week 86 - Answering your Questions

Helloooo!!

Well this week was a lot less interesting than last week. I mean it was still amazing but definitely not as eventful. We spent most of the week in the area just working. There is so much potential here! Elder Arnold and I were talking and we decided that we really have to narrow down who is going to progress and who is not. There are a lot of people here who say they are interested but who we feel aren't really going to progress. We have a lot of other people who are so close to getting baptized but all of them have a few things holding them back.

Yesterday we kind of had a funny experience, Familia TR came to church for the second time but they showed up a little late and sat back in a couple open chairs near the back. We were sitting there listening to a talk when out of nowhere this older lady who I have never seen before, who was sitting right next to them got out of her chair and kneeled down and started praying... OUT LOUD. She was down there for like 10 minutes! Elder Arnold and I were standing in the back and we just looked at each other because there obviously wasn't anything we could do but I actually think it wasn't a bad thing because the wife used to be super evangelica and that happens a lot in that church so I think it made her feel a little more comfortable, so way to go old lady!

Question time!

What have you discovered by living in the Dominican Republic that will change the way you live when you are back home?

This is kind of a loaded question because I have learned a lot of things. I think most of the things that will change the way I live are things that I have learned by being a missionary and not so much by living in a different country. The thing that will change when I get back home most from living in the DR will be not taking things for granted. I have been so spoiled my whole life. Dad has worked crazy hard to always provide for the family and I never really thought much of my life and actually at times I was a little jealous of other people and what they had. I never realized just how lucky I was to even live in a good house with air conditioning, hot water, and always have food in the house. The amount of people here who have all three of those is I would say about 5 percent. I don't think I will let small problems bother me or waste my time worrying about things that don't really matter and try to use my time on what really matters. I want to go to bed earlier and wake up earlier. I want to have a schedule in my life. I obviously want to study the scriptures more often and I want my life revolve around the gospel and not just have the gospel as one of the parts of my life.

What are the goals for the last six (now four) months of your mission?

My only real goal is to learn how to seek the Lord's will in my life and follow through with it. I have spent too long thinking that with my own strength I can get things done. I feel like if I can learn to seek out the Lord's will and follow it, that will help me for the rest of my life.

Which of your friends have you stayed the closest to on your mission (via emails obviously)?

Is it a surprise? Christian and Zach, we haven't gone one week without emailing each other #bffs

Which of your friends do you feel you have grown further apart while on your mission?

Casey. We talked a little bit at the beginning of my mission but I don't really have a clue what is happening with him.

What attribute of the Savior has meant the most to you while on your mission?

Wow this is such a hard question.

The answer is all of them really. Throughout my mission I have strived to because more like my Savior. I have tried to learn and teach and live as he did. In doing so I have studied and restudied all of the attributes of Christ. One of the most meaningful (and probably one of the hardest for me) would be humility. Before I came out on my mission, and like I said before because of the situations that I have been in, I don't think I have ever truly had to work for something. I have worked in sports and school but I have never had a moment in my life where I have been on my knees and had to turn everything over to the Lord. Most of my life I have had a pretty prideful mindset of "I can do this myself." Learning to submit my will over to the Lord has probably been one of the hardest things for me to learn. It is easy to say yeah I want to do it but it is another thing to actually do it. But I know that if I do and really humble myself, the Lord will change me. Last week when Elder Renlund came with some other authorities, the wife of Elder Kearon shared her testimony and gave advice to all of the missionaries who are in their first two transfers. Now I know that I don't fall into that category but I do feel like her advice applies to me and to all people. She said "The Lord loves you exactly the way you are right now, but he loves you enough not to let you stay that way." If we let him, the Lord will change us and always help us to become more like him.

Well, that completes all of the questions that Dad sent me a while ago. If yall have any more yall can totally send them my way! I love to know what yall want to know!

This church is true! I don't have a doubt in my mind about that! I love yall and miss yall! Have an amazing week!!!

Love,

Elder Robertson

This is what happens when you have no power but need to iron

Week 85 - A visit from an Apostle

Mi Gente!! This week was a full one! I will try and cover the most important points and talk a little about them.

1) Elder Renlund. This meeting we had with Elder Renlund was AWESOME! It was different than the other times that an Apostle has come to the mission. It kind of shows in his Conference talks but he isn't one of those super energetic talkers, he is more of a serious talker and when he talks you want to listen. He was accompanied by two other General Authorities, Elder Civic who is in the presidency of the Caribean, and Elder Kearon who is in the presidency of the 70, he is from England and he has the coolest accent ever. We didn't get to hear much from the other two authorities but it was awesome to have them all there. Elder Renlund talked mainly about two things, the Prophet and our purpose here as missionaries. He said he had three purposes of his visit which were:

1) On behalf of the Lord Jesus Christ and the Church, Thank you

2) You have been called of God to come to the mission you are in, if you haven't received a confirmation that it is true, seek it.

3) President and Hermana Smith have been called of God by Prophecy.

He told us the process from when President Monson passed away until President Nelson got ordained to be the new President of the Church and Prophet of God. It was kind of a long story. Basically it ended with all of them in the temple setting apart President Nelson with Elder Oaks being the spokesman. He said that in that moment he received a very strong spiritual confirmation that it was supposed to be like that and that President Nelson is who God has chosen to be the next Prophet. He then told us that each and every one of us in the church have the opportunity and the obligation to receive that same confirmation that he had. Even if we trust in the process and know that is how it always happens, we should receive a spiritual confirmation that God has chosen President Russell M. Nelson to be his prophet on the Earth today.

For time I am cutting out a few things. The other big thing he talked about was who we are as missionaries and how we should be. He gave an example of 4 missionaries (he didn't say it but you could relate them to the talk the 4th missionary.) I will attach the chart in a picture. He talked about what each missionary looks like and what each missionary gets done. He says most of the time an obedient missionary is in the upper two quadrants. He told us that he tends to be in the upper left quadrant where he has good effort but his attitude isn't the best about it, he said he blames his Finnish roots whose 2nd verse of the national anthem starts off "Our land is poor and it will remain so." But in the end he said it is the missionaries who are in the top right quadrant that have the right to see miracles and call down blessings from Heaven over our investigators. One thing I love about hearing the Apostles talk, they talk about Jesus in a way so personal, like we all are his brother but it is just different, but awesome. I could talk about this forever but just for the sake of time gotta move on. But it was AMAZING!!!

2) Marielis. This little girl is one of the smartest little girls I have met in my life. She is also really sassy. She is the daughter of a less active member who has been less active for quite some years now. She has been so fun to work with. She was so nervous on her baptism day. When she got into the font she was shaking, but after she got baptized I didn't see the smile leave her face. She has a lot of family that is less active and most of them have some big problems, but I am sure that through her example many of her family members will come back to church. Her mom came to the church building for the first time in a long time the day of her baptism! She is super awesome!

3) We are working with two AMAZING families. When I got here to El Cristal, the missionaries had just baptized a few people and we didn't have a huge list of investigators, so we started contacting. These two families have kind of similar stories to how we found them, sports. The first one is the Familia Tejera Rodriguez (Fam JR for short.) Elder Arnold, a couple days before I got here ran into this kid named Ismael. He seemed pretty interested in what the missionaries had to say so he took them to his house. His parents weren't home but they said that we would pass by later. So we went back again after I got here and met the family and they are AWESOME!! When we passed by the parents weren't home. Just their 3 kids. So we were talking with them to see when we could come back, when the parents roll up and get out of their car dressed in really nice clothes. They saw us and said "Have yall been waiting here a long time? Sorry it took so long we just got back from getting married." (The biggest problem I have seen here is living together without being married, it is mostly a money thing but this was a huge deal because normally we have to go through that whole process.)

So we sat down and started talking and they were right away interested in what we were sharing. We have shared a couple times and they are so amazing. The dad calls us Los Siervos (the servants) and every time we walk up to their house he yells "the servants are here! Come listen to what they have to say!" Yesterday they shared something sweet. When we passed by their house, after giving us a meal of boiled plantains, chicken feet, chicken necks and some weird organ on the inside of the chicken, they told us that as soon as we started visiting them they have seen little blessings in their life and little improvements. We shared with them that those blessings don't come from us, rather from our loving Heavenly Father as we try harder to live his commandments. The wife then shared that she almost never lets "preachers" into her house. Every time someone passes by the door she always hides, but something told her that she needed to listen to what we have to say. The church is so true and the spirit is so real. It's awesome. Also, I remembered that there are not many more stressful things that when an investigator, let alone a family, with a lot of potential comes to church for the first time in their lives, you want it to be PERFECT! I think I have to be a better member when I go home to make sure those experiences are perfect for people visiting the church for the first time.

The second family is the Familia Tabera. Okay this story is straight up the spirit leading the missionaries to someone who needed the gospel in their life...again. We met a kid named Randy playing basketball on a local court that we have in our area. We were walking past and he yelled "GRINGOS" so we stopped and he came running over to us but didn't say anything. It was kind of weird. So we asked him his name, he told us. We asked him if he had talked to missionaries before, he said no. We asked him where he lived and he just said follow me. So we followed him to this house crazy far back behind a ton of stuff that we never would have found on our own. Nobody was there but he told us to come back a few days later and his dad would be there, so that is what we did. When we came back we met a man who was doing the laundry, we started to introduce ourselves "Hola! Somos misioneros de..." He cut us off "La Iglesia de Jesucristo de los Santos de Los Ùltimos Dìas." he finished.

When someone here knows the real name of the church and not just the Mormon church it means they know quite a bit about the church. So we went on to talk and for all of you who don't know, (which is probably all of you) the church is farely new here in the country compared to how old it is. The first Dominican family (who were baptized in the states) moved back to the country in 1978, it was a young couple. A new American couple named the Rapleyes (now the temple president of the Santo Domingo temple) were transfered here three days after by his company. They soon realized the the church did not exist here. Comunicating with a mission in Florida there were some missionaries sent here a few months later. The church grew rapidly. On January 1st 1981 the first mission was opened here in the DR. Apart from Portugal, the Church in the DR acheived the quickest climb in the world from entry of the missionaries to establishing the first stake when in 1986 the first stake was established with then close to 13000 members in the country. Basically the point of this little history lesson is most of the original members of the church in the country, the pioneers, are still alive. The man washing clothes, named Ruben, was one of the original members baptized in this country when we was just 9 years old. Because of moving a lot and kind of a crazy life he has been inactive for over 20 years. But he has not lost his testimony, he knows the church is true and wants to come back and wants his two kids, and his wife to get baptized so they can be sealed in the temple. And another crazy fact, I know his dad! His dad is a crazy firm member in Valiente! He is pretty old and a little crazy but I remember telling him that he prays every day that his two kids, one who lived with him and the other that didn't (Ruben) would come back to church! I had to tell yall about these two families because I know I will be talking about them a lot, they have been such blessings in my life for just only a few days, I can't wait to work with them the next few weeks!!

Okay I know this email is crazy long but just one last story,

4) I learned that it is kind of dangerous to show 8 year olds magic tricks. I do this really dumb magic trick to the kids here in the street where I take a coin in my left hand, pass it to my right hand, place my hands on either side of their head and pass in from my right hand, through their head, to my left hand. We walked up to a couple of kids who were playing with some marbles, I thought it would be kind of fun to do it with a marble. They handed me this one huge marble a little bit smaller than a golf ball. To my surprise it actually worked pretty well, well...it definitely tricked this little 8 year old named Angy. She was so amazed that she "I want to try!!" grabbed the marble and, in a desperate hope to pass it through the head of her friend, wound up and -WHACK- slammed it as hard as she could in the side of her friends head! We didn't really know what to do we went and asked her if she was okay and she said yes but we could tell that it hurt her friend but trying to be a good friend she kind of laughed it off. But confused why it didn't work, Angy came in from behind, wound up again and -WHACK- on the other side of her head, remember this is not a small marble. To avoid brain damage we had to take the marble away from her. I haven't tried to show that trick again.

Well I think I am going to have to end it there so yall can get on with yalls life. I love yall a ton! I am glad all is well! HAVE AN AMAZING WEEK LES QUIERO!!!

Love,

Elder Robertson

Baptism of Marielis

Baptism of Marielis

My apartment. That's mosquito netting

My Apartment

My Apartment

The "effort-attitude" diagram that Elder Rendlund spoke about. The top right quadrant is when a missionary has great effort and great attitude.

Week 84 - I love my new area

Well, I LOVE my new area!! I have always liked this area geographically better than any of the other areas I have been in. It is just outside of the city so the people here are usually pretty educated and sane...for the most part...but it isn't quite out in the campo, but because it isn't in the city the people are usually a little more humble. I love it so much and we have had a crazy week of work so far! My new companion is Elder Arnold, he just got out of his training and he is excited to work. He is from Washington. We have been working like crazy this past week and we have found so many miracles!! And I am just realizing we haven't taken a picture together yet...lo siento.

I am going to be jacked when I leave this area. The entire area is just steep up hills and down hills. My legs were so sore after the first two days! But I like it and it is good to get the extra work outs. Elder Arnold is also super into working out and running so that is the first time one of my companions has been down to run so also something that is awesome. There are a lot of houses piled on top of each other too. I tried to take a picture but it doesn't really do the area justice. I have running water again so that is always a plus!! The branch is super awesome! The Branch President has been president for 9 years. We went and talked to him about what the Branch needs to become a ward and it is SO CLOSE!! I am convinced that if we work with him and the ward members we can totally make this Branch into a Ward. We have a lot of work to do!

A few fun stories from this week:

It was Elder Arnold's birthday this past week and I didn't know that until the day before because it was two days after I got here. I didn't really know what to do because there isn't much we can do. I found this recipe in my last house for a sweet and sour sauce so I decided to give it a try because he said he loves food like that. So I wipped up what I could and put it with noodles and it actually turned out pretty well!

Yesterday the ward was supposed to have a baptism. When got there the baptismal font was on but someone left it unattended and it started overflowing. The problem is we didn't know if it was turned off or not (it is a long story of why but we had to check if there was water flowing from the outlet at the bottom of the font. So I started making my way on the rails and was about to stick something down to see if water was coming out and "CRACK" the rail broke and I fell into the font... Luckily I was still on the side and didn't fall all the way in. There was a nice member who drove us back to the house so I could change my pants. It was kind of funny.

Today for P day we went to a big mall that was in the West mission to celebrate the birthday more formally of Elder Arnold. When we got there we decided we wanted to go eat at McDonalds (dad this kind of goes directly against what you talked about in your email.) We got there and we were deciding what we wanted to eat (because oddly enough, everything is super over priced at McDonalds here.) Then we found a family deal which was a little more money but by far the best deal for the amount of food. So basically Elder Arnold and I, for less than 10 bucks each, together ate food meant for 5 people.

Last thing is out of nowhere I broke out in hives a few days ago. It happened when we got home and all the drug stores were closed so I just kind of dealt with it all night until the next day. It was kind of weird how they spread but the next day I went to get some meds and realized that they had a ton of prescription medication that I could buy for 10 cents lol. With advice from the mission doctor I got this one pill that wasn't supposed to make you sleepy, but it didn't work. So I had to take a stronger one, but that made my sleepy. That was a hard day because I got REALLY drowsy and couldn't really remember how to speak in Spanish haha. But we are all good now.

Okay a question realy quick:

What do you miss most about living in the US?

Oh boy what don't I miss about living in the US? I mean I love it here! I thought it was super cool when I first got here because everything was so different and I didn't mind cold bucket showers or no air conditioning or washing machines that don't really work but I remember a few months ago I just kind of missed living in the US jaja. I miss a lot of things, a few of the biggest would be food, hot water, and CARPET!! That doesn't exist here. But really I don't mind it here especially when you are here for such an awesome reason!

I love yall a ton and hope everyone has an amazing week!!!

Love,

Elder Robertson

This was a pic of me when I forgot my shoes going to zone conference

This was my last zone in Alm Campo

At McDonalds for Elder Arnold's Birthday

Me after falling in the baptismal font

I broke out in hives. I don't know where they came from. I'm better now.

My attempt at sweet and sour chicken for Elder Arnold's birthday

A picture of the houses here in my area. They are stacked on on top of another