Happy Anniversary to the greatest parents in the world!! I love it when these days fall on a Monday because I can actually get on and wish well on the actual day! 24! That is a tooon! It is kind of crazy to think about that when yall got married yall were our age! Like I am almost exactly the same age mom was when she got married, actually I think even a little older! And y'all look almost the exact same as that picture! That is crazy to think that it was 24 years ago! I am so thankful for y'alls decision to get married in the temple. My life has been blessed by it from even before I was born and I never even knew it. In such a crazy world with so few moral boundaries I am so glad to be able to say that I was given the chance to grow up in such a stable home with loving parents. That is such a hard thing here. Every where you turn you see single parents. And if there are two parents (and both of them are the parents of all the kids) they aren't married. Most people here believe that they will see their loved ones again but most of them don't understand the importance of being sealed by someone who has the proper authority, the same authority that the Savior gave to Pedro, which was later lost, and then restored to the Prophet Joseph Smith. It is so important to share this message with everyone so everyone can have the same blessings that we have! Thank you parents for being so awesome! I love y'all!!
The week was a pretty average one! A lot of basic missionary work. We have a few investigators who are really promising. The first being Ysmael. He is a young single adult who has visited the church various times in his life and goes a lot with his friends. I originally thought he was a member but as it turns out he just had a few doubts. We are working with him and he will probably get baptized within the next couple weeks! We have a goal with him for next Sunday!!
The next one is Maribel (funny thing about this country, everyone has their given name but at some point they kind of just pick out their own nickname and then go by that, so we call her Yudelis.) She is 12 and the smartest little 12 year old I have ever met! Her mom works a lot so she basically takes care of her little brother and does everything in the house, cooking, cleaning, laundry, like everything. And then goes to school. She was baptized in the Catholic Church about a year ago and was confused why she would have to be baptized again. She loved the Restoration and prayed about it and the next time we saw her she just asked "So when are you going to come by to do the thing?" Us, "What thing?" her, "that interview thing that you need to do before you get baptized." She is super awesome and depending on her mom, we also have a goal with her for next Sunday!
The last ones are Ronny and Randy as always. They live so far away from the church and are so poor so it is so hard for them to get to church. We have an FHE with them tonight so we are going to try and make a plan so that they can get there, their dad can get reactivated, and he can baptize them.
Needless to say there is much work to be done! There is an awesome primary hymn that I actually don't know in English but we kind of have turned it into our mission theme song, in Spanish it is called "Voy a ser valiente." The letters are
"Valiente siervos busca,
para su obra nuestro Señor,
por sus preceptos los guía
y sierven a su pueblo con amor,
voy a ser su siervo
y mis convenios observar
defenderé la rectitud,
y en mi Él podrá confiar."
Yall can translate it or just look it up in English, it is basically all the Lord needs in these last days.
I don't have any huge awesome stories this week. Just two little things.
The first is Satan works in mysterious ways. We were with 4 other Elders and one of them asked us if we wanted to order pizza from this hole in the wall, none of us having eaten pizza in some time thought it was a great idea. It wasn't...we all got super bad food poisoning. My zone leader and I got it the worst but luckily it only lasted a little bit and now we are back to 100.
Second thing, I decided today that when I get home I will want to go to the basketball gym a lot. We played today and well...the lyrics to one of my favorite country artists came to mind. I'm not as good as I once was, but I'm as good once as I ever was. Basically I did really well the first game and then fell apart, so I got to pick up on that if I am going to walk away with an intramural championship.
Oh yeah and we are having transfers, Elder Arnold and I are staying together to ball up for another 6 weeks here in The Cristal!
But yeah that is about it for this week! I love yall a ton and am so happy that I am part of your eternal family! Have an awesome week!!
Love,
Elder Robertson
