Week 93 - Zone Conference, Interviews, and me almost Dying

Another amazing week has passed here in the good ole DR. The highlights of this week were Zone Conference, Interviews, and me almost dying!

That sounds like a crazy week back there with all of the changes! I feel a little dumb asking but I was under the impression that usually the bishop was the one who called the Elder's quorum president? But that is awesome that they got all that done within a week! I love all of these changes! It hasn't effected our branch here much. In most of my areas the High Priests and the Elders usually meet together because there are not many high priests here. In my branch, apart from the branch president and his first councilor, there is only one other high priest so he always was with us in Elders Quorum. I actually don't think I will see the full affect of these changes until I go home. But I am excited to hear about them in the mean time!

Zone Conference was super awesome! I am going to go back like 9 months to when I made a comment but it was reinforced this past Friday. I have received many confirmations that President Smith has been called of God to lead this mission and will help us further the work of the Lord if we would let him. President Corbitt really focused on the amount of work we did and working really hard. In January of last year the mission baptized 256 people in one month. In 2016, over 2000 people were baptized in our mission boundries. That is enough to form various stakes. But there wasn't even one more branch formed. That means that most of them were going inactive, or as one came into the church, another was leaving. I received a confirmation that President Smith is going to help us improve the quality of our teaching and with that experience of working hard, helping them really be converted.

This goes hand in hand to what dad was talking about, the importance of the spirit. In Zone Conference we were trying to find a way to improve our teaching to really just let the Spirit do the teaching. As many of you know, us missionaries have different pamphlets (I don't think I have used that word in over a year...folleto) that help us convey the message of the lessons that we teach: the Restoration, The Plan of Salvation, The Gospel of Jesus Christ, The Law of Chastity, The Word of Wisdom and The Law os Tithing and Fast Offerings. We decided as a mission this past zone conference that as we teach, we are going to go for a goal of teaching each lesson shorter, preferably no longer than 15-20 minutes (the actual teaching part) and we are going to teach our lessons just based out of the pictures in those folletos. For example (openening the folleto of The Restoration, there is a picture of a happy family) "What do you see here?" "A happy family" "Why do you think they are happy?" "Answer" "That is because and we testify that when we live the gospel of Jesus Christ, our families are immensely blessed." It is kind of long to explain but Elder Arnold and I put it into practice and it is SUPER effective in bringing the Spirit. It basically helps the investigator teach themselves the lesson as we kind of guide them along and lets the Spirit testify of what they are teaching themselves. It is super cool. Basically, President Smith is awesome and receives some awesome revelation for the mission.

Then we had interviews and it was super awesome. I always love interviews. We talked a lot about the importance of the Spirit and how we need to continue studying the conference messages during these six months!

So I was also protected by the Lord yesterday. Our ward mission leader, Antoni, stopped in his car and said hi to us while we were walking. It was around 7:30 at night. He pulled over to the side of the road and we ran over to say hi. We weren't there for long but Elder Arnold was on my left closer to the front of his car standing at the drivers window. Out of nowhere a drunk guy, teaching his girlfriend to drive stick came speeding behind the car and hit the back of Antoni's car. I had the impression to jump backwards, but something made me step even closer to Antoni's car, as soon as I did it the car bounced off and went to the left, right where I was standing. If I would have jumped backwards it probably would have broken something and probably would have ended my mission early. I don't tell y'all this to worry, I tell y'all this because I know that the Lord protected me. Everything in my body wanted to jump backwards away from the harm but something kept me close. The Lord knows what he is doing and obviously still has a purpose for me here in the DR. I have to do my best to find it!

Quick thing, if y'all could send out some prayers for President Smith that would be awesome! He had a fall a little while ago, while nothing appeared to be damaged, there were some unseen fractures in his tibia and from walking on it for a little bit it ended up breaking so now he is in a cast. He wants to operate on it as a last option so he is going to see if it will heal up on it's own. Like I said, the Lord will take care of his servants but some prayers would be appreciated!

I love y'all a ton! It is crazy that it is already April! That is cool that LT swept the District Meet! I remember back when I was there when LT one the meet for the first time ever! That makes me happy that they are still doing pretty well!

Stay tuned because this week we are waiting on a huge miracle so next week should be an awesome email!

I LOVE YALL! MAKE THIS WEEK AWESOME!!!

Love,

Elder Robertson

Our Zone Conference (and Pres. Smith with his cast)

Week 92 - I turned....12?

Wow this week was just FULL of craziness!!!!

I completed another revolution around the sun here on planet Earth. It was a pretty normal day. I loved the rest of the stuff in the package! The ovens here are kind of garbage so we didn't really want to cook the cake in the oven and risk ruining it soo...we made real pancakes and from that I made a fun little cake! Just big enough to put the two number candles! :) We ate with a member that night and had spaghetti! It was a pretty good Birthday!! Today to celebrate we got permission to go way outside of our mission into the west mission and eat at Fuddruckers! It was super awesome and my good friend Elder Slack came way down from out in the middle of nowhere so that was a ton of fun! Hamburgers are still really good.

Next...Brittany! MAHAL KITA!  IPINAGMAMALAKI KITA!! Okay so that isn't your mission language but I would be surprised if you don't learn a fair amount of it. Aparently in the Philippines there are like 4 different languages. One of the main ones is called Tagalog. I lived with a Philippino for 2 transfers and he is probably one of my favorite people in the whole world. I don't know a ton but he taught me some words in Tagalog. If he is right then you will probably eat a few weird foods! I am SO excited for you!!!!!!!

General Conference was AMAZING!!!!! I got to watch it in English which is always awesome! There are so many things that we can take out of conference. I personally found two main themes. The first is love. There are a lot of amazing changes happening. One of the things that they focussed on is that this will allow us to love those we serve more, not just do things because we have to but actually do them and seek ways to serve because we love them. They focussed on the Love that the Savior has for each of us and how we need to share that love with all people. The second theme I saw was part of what dad talked about, the importance of the Holy Ghost. Personal revelation is so important and I don't think I can count the amount of people who talked about the Holy Ghost in their talks. The Spirit I have come to learn is so important in our lives and we need to seek it and be able to recognize it during the calm times to be able to find it during the hard times. I loved that story of that young man on the ship. One thing that Elder Renlund said when he came here is that we have the right to recieve a personal witness of President Nelson as a Prophet of God. The second I saw a picture of him after he was set apart as the President of the Church I saw that mantle on him and felt a confirmation that he is a true Prophet of God. I recieved a similar confirmation yesterday watching him testify and teach. I love General Conference and am sad that I didn't take better advantage of it throughout my life but I will not make that same mistake going forward. We have to study the talks given! One of my favorite talks was the talk by President Uchtdorf, I have always loved his talks.

Life is going pretty well! We need to find a lot of new investigators, a lot of the current ones we have aren't really progressing. That will be the main focus this week!

Thank y'all so much for the package and for the pictures! I love Texas during spring time! It is crazy how much has happened and changed in just one week! I very much look forward to the future of the church! Big things are coming and we are all a part of it! We have to do our part!

I LOVE YALL!!!!!!!!

LOVE,

Elder Robertson

My mom sent a package for my birthday that included cake mix and frosting and candles. So, I made a cake

I made birthday pancakes from the cake mix because our ovens don't really work

I nice member family had us over for dinner on my birthday. We had spaghetti.

On P-Day, I got to go to Fuddruckers and my buddy, Elder Slack got to be there also

Week 91 - I love the Temple!

Helloooo!!

I have actually been thinking about B's mission call all week! That is super upsetting that she is going to get it today and I won't find out where she is going for a week! Maybe I can ask President for permission to just jump on one day and see! I can't wait to see where she goes! I am rooting for the DR :-).

This week was AWESOME!!! This week basically just shows how important members are in missionary work. So Yudelis rescheduled her baptismal date for Wednesday for family reasons. She was supposed to take a note with her on Monday to her school to give her a permission to leave early, she normally gets out of school at 7pm. (They kind of do school weird here in like two blocks where you either study in the morning, like from 7 to 1 or in the aftnernoon from like 1 to 7.) So we weren't able to pass by on Tuesday to make sure that she sent in the note, then Wednesday we went to the temple so we didn't get back until like 5-ish to the area. The baptism was scheduled for 7. We basically ran to her house once we got back to make sure that she was there and ready. When we got there we found a closed empty house. And nobody knew where they were. We ended up finding her dad and he told us that she was still in school. We didn't really know what to do because if she would have gotten back at 7 there probably wouldn't have been time to have the baptism because she lives pretty far away. But the dad was leaving and we didn't really know what to do.

Elder Arnold and I stopped and talked about what we should do. We ended up saying a prayer and we both got the feeling to call this one member whose name is Annie, she is a friend of Yudelis' mom. We called her and asked if she had heard from Yudelis or her mom and she said no. She then told us to give her a few minutes. About 10 minutes later she called us back and told us that we needed to go find them at a different house. It is a crazy long story of what happened but basically Yudelis had gotten out of school a little later than planned and her mom got back from her job late and they weren't near their house. And to make matters worse, no one remembered that there was a baptism even though we had announced it multiple times and reminded people. With a little more help from some members and their cars, Yudelis got home to change (all schools here have uniforms). During this time, two members with cars started running around and basically dragging people out of their houses (not really but they went looking for members) and loaded them up in their cars and by about 7:45 we were starting the baptism. Her mom showed up a little late but it was so awesome! We could feel the spirit there so strongly! Her mom isn't a member but we think that because of the example of Yudelis, we are going to be able to start working with her mom! It was kind of a crazy night but it was awesome! God is good!!

Like I said we went to the temple!! I love the temple a ton! One of the missionaries in my zone pointed out to me that it is the last time I will go with the mission. That was weird to me. I will have one more temple trip with president the weekend before I leave but that will be with like 6 people. But the temple here is so beautiful! The revelation that you can receive inside is insane. It truly is the house of the Lord.

I got the package!! Like any good missionary I did not wait until my birthday to open it :-). It is PERFECT! As always! Elder Arnold and I have already eaten most of it. I am saving the mac and cheese and the cake for my birthday, although I have eaten a little bit of the frosting already. You guys are the best!!!

There is so much work still left to do here! The branch is so close to becoming a ward!!! I am looking forward to working here for the next few weeks! The Lord is preparing a ton of awesome people! We just have to find them!!!!!

I love y'all a ton!! That Salt Lick looks so good! That will probably be the first place I want to eat when I get back.. RIGHT BEHIND TORCHYS OF COURSE!!! I miss BBQ so much. (whoever guessed that was right).

MAKE THIS WEEK AMAZING!!! (The best birthday present yall could give me is if each one of you invite a friend to church or share the gospel with them!)

ENJOY CONFERENCE!!!!!!!!

LOVE,

Elder Robertson

My last trip to the Temple until I go home

Yudelis' baptism

Week 90 - Basketball and Baptisms

Helloooo!!

I am on a little early today because it is a short p-day because we are going to the temple this week! BUT this week was AWESOMEEEE!!

First and most important thing is that Ysmael got BAPTIZZEEDDD!! He was so excited about it! He wanted to know everything. Like exactly how it was going to be and everything. When he finally got changed in the bathroom he said that there was no need to wait or do anything special or have a service and he wanted to just jump in right then and there. We convinced him to wait and while Elder Arnold was changing Ysmael was dancing in the mirror and it was super funny. Like I said last week, he had been to church a lot throughout his life. When he was younger he visited a church by himself but a couple of his friends would tell him "hey come with us to the true church." From a young age he like the church but then moved and lost connection with the church. Here through a friend (who we are also working with to get baptized but that is a whole different story) he found the church again and started visiting but never understood why everyone said it was the true church. We taught him a little bit and after we taught about Joseph Smith we could feel the Spirit really strongly. He just sat there for a bit and thought and then looked up and asked, "so when can I do this whole baptism thing?" He has been so much fun to work with and he is helping us with one of his friends. Ysmael is one of the kids that we play basketball with on P-days. He is a super good kid. He has a pretty strong testimony of the church and wants to serve a mission!

For family reasons Yudeli's baptism fell and we rescheduled it for this week! Prayers! She is super nervous but super prepared!

Elder Arnold bought a basketball and we have been waking up a little early to go play a little bit and it has been super nice. We played today and we did a lot better. We beat them 5 games to 1. I love basketball. Do the guys in the ward still get together on Wednesday nights and play?

GENERAL CONFERENCE IS IN TWO WEEKS!!!! IT FALLS ON EASTER SUNDAY SO GET READY BECAUSE THE TALKS ARE GOING TO BE AWESOMMMMEEEE!!

There isn't a ton more that happened this week that I can think of. I might keep this one a little short due to some complaining by some unnamed Elder whose name is Elder Lynn. But still love that kid.

Just some fun little pictures that I can send because I know only send this to the family, all my missionary friends have gone home (We all can agree that Christian and Zach are part of our family.)

Really the only picture that is awesome is what we found in our neighbors house. Right now we are just a normal companionship so I don't really have many responsibilities which has been a weird change because if we get home at 9, I have no idea what to do with all the time. I have to call our district leader but then I have time to make dinner or do a lot of stuff. We have to be in bed by 10:30 so we have an hour and a half. A lot of time we will just climb onto our roof and talk (hence the picture of me laying down, my back was hurting.) Well we were just kind of looking around and there was this big ole gaping hole in our neighbors wall and as you peek, we found something kind of interesting. I will let yall guess what it is.

This week is going to have a lot more awesome stories I think! I also think my suits might be done this week and I might try and pick them up when we go to the temple on Wednesday. IM PUMPED!!!

It sounds like life back there is pretty full of adventures! That is awesome that the cousins got to go on trek with yall! That must have been a blast! I remember when we went on trek and I kind of cheated the system because I had a qualifying meet one of the days so Dad came and picked me up and I slept in my own bed. jeje. Spring break here is always the week before Easter and they call it the "Holy Week" and that week gets crazy! But we still got a week before that!

That is super crazy and a little scary about the bombings in Austin. Be careful! Just don't order any packages until they catch that crazy guy!

I love y'all a ton! I hope everyone has an amazing week!!!

Love,

Elder Robertson

Ysmael's baptism

Ysmael's baptism

Week 89 - Happy Anniversary to my Parents

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

Week 88 - It all Starts with our Desires

\Wow what an amazing week! I don't really even know where to begin! Okay I will begin with the most important...

RAFAEL!!

Okay so something we do in the mission here is we seek revelation from the Lord at the start of every month to see how many people he is preparing and if we work diligently, how many baptisms we will have in that month. We get them as both zones and a mission as a whole. Well in our zone this past month of February we had the promise of 21. That was kind of a high number considering the most this zone (which is also a stake) has baptized in one month is 19, (which actually happened when I was in Lotes y Servicios at the beginning of my mission.) The problem is this past Sunday we had only found 18 of the people that the Lord was preparing in the month. All 18 of them had been baptized but we knew that the Lord keeps his promises and we knew that there were three more people and we had three days left. So we went crazy working with the people we had. Long story short we had a HUGE miracle happen. His name is Rafael.

Here is a little back story on Rafael, he lost his parents when he was young and when he turned 10, he basically lived on the streets. When that happens you usually get caught up with the not so friendly people and he hasn't lived the most Christ-like life. He had never done anything horrible and has never gone to jail but he definitely didn't have the best friends. We have been working with him all of this transfer and he has grown so much. A few years back he wanted to change his life so he bought a little tin shack that is like 10 feet by 10 feet and he started selling bread in the morning to earn a little bit of money for him and a little kid who he started taking care of (kind of a long story, it's basically the kid of the kid of an old friend but doesn't have a dad so Rafael took him in.) Well as fate would have it he got wound up in a sticky situation and got attacked and with a little accident with a machette and a really bad infection he got his leg cut off. (this happened a few months ago.) He didn't know what to do because he couldn't go around on his little motorcycle and sell bread anymore but he needed to earn money.

There was a big tempation to start getting in touch with some old contacts and maybe getting into some stuff like selling drugs and what-not but he decided that he never wanted to go back. So every morning he started to wake up at 5 in the morning and go sell water bottles down in a really busy intersection to make just barely enough each day to feed himself and his "son." His leg was healing so he couldn't get wet but he wanted to get baptized. The water here isn't the cleanest and if he had an open wound it could get infected pretty easily by whatever is in the water. We went to go visit him on Wednesday (the last day of February) and shared some scriptures out of the Book of Mormon and he sat there thinking for a long time, he then told us that he knew he needed to get baptized and he knew that God would protect him and his leg and he wouldn't let his leg get infected by the water. He asked us when the soonest baptismal service would be, we let him know that the ward that meets in our same building was having a service in an hour and he immediately got up, when we asked what he was doing he said "well one hour isn't a lot of time, I have to get ready!" We got him down there and we got everything ready and he got baptized. He was so happy and so in peace. And with some other miracles in some other areas in the zone he ended up being the 21 baptism in our zone in the month of February.

The Lord is preparing so many people and we can't wait to go find them and help them. He went to the doctor a couple days later and the doctor said that the wound had miraculously healed was faster than they were expecting and looked completely healthy. God. Is. Good.

We aslo had interviews with President this past week and I always love those! My interview was pretty simple and basic this time but President really is a man inspired of God. We talked a lot about desire. Both our desire to help people and the desire that our investigators need to have to follow Christ. What is our desires to one day return and live with God? What would we be willing to do to get there? We talked about an example about what would happen if you lived in a house by a lake and looked out the window and saw that your mother was drowning. What would you be willing to do? Would you be willing the say a prayer? Or would you be willing to do more? Would you be willing to call someone on the phone for help? Or would you be willing to do more? Would you be willing to go yell out your door to someone? Or would you do more? Would you be willing to throw a life preserver to her? Or more? Would you be willing to jump in and save her even if it meant risking your own life? Most people would, I know I would.

It is this same desire we need to have to be saved. It is this same desire we need to keep the commandments of God. If we don't have it yet, work on it, ask the Lord to give you that desire. I was studying in 2 Nephi 28 this week and there is so much truth about our day. I have heard so many times here "I know that I am a sinner but I believe in God and I know that he will save me someday." Of course he will! If we do our part. No unclean thing can live with God. I have stopped to check myself many times on my mission to really see where my desires are. Everything starts with our desires. It is something I have studied a lot on my mission.

After a lot of challenges The family of Randy and Ronny and Ruben (the super less active guy) got everything arranged to go to church for the first time in a rreaaaalllllyy long time! Like 20 years! It just so happened to be stake conference where they basically only talked about family history work jaja. It was still awesome and they loved it! We went back to their house afterwards to eat and he told us that he isn't sure why he ever left. While he was there a ton of hymns started flooding back into his head and he started singing them all! Randy and Ronny have baptismal dates for the 17th of this month! We just have to work a little with the wife who is super hard to find! God. Is. Good!

There are so many people here in this country who are so awesome! We have been working with the Branch President who says that the branch doesn't need a whole ton to become a ward! We worked it out and made some plans but if all goes well and we keep working hard then we should be seeing some awesome miracles VERY soon!!! GOD. IS. GOOD!

Guys, the gospel is true. This church is true and this work is the work of the Lord, BUT HE NEEDS ALL OF US! I don't have a ton of time left but I know that I've got to work my tail off in the time I have left!

I LOVE YALL A MONTÓN!!!

Love,

Elder Robertson

An awesome pig we ran into and contacted

This is a pic from zone conference

An orange chicken attempt (turned out alright)

some comp bonding on our patio last night

some comp bonding on our patio last night

Our Zone

Rafael Baptism

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