Week 50 - MANY miracles and Bed Bugs...

This week has been so full of teaching opportunities and spiritual experiences!! This week we have been truly blessed and realize that missionary work is truly the Lord's work and not ours. All we can do is give it our all, and when we do that, miracles occur! 

   

   Monday- We went to go shopping and e-mail and bam!!! Our car was dead. Really dead... A guy in our apartment complex helped us jump it. But it still wouldn't start. Luckily one of the Hispanic men in the complex we live in that we are cool with noticed that the Americans just didn't know how to jump a car. So Ulysses hooked the cables back up and gunned his engine! Elder Johnson and I were cracking up. Turns out he knew what he was doing, because our car started. Then we had to drive to 45 minutes Ankeny to make sure our battery wasn't ruined. 

  

  Tuesday- We did service at the Library here and helped summer school kids color. Then we visited Sister W who is an elderly woman in our branch, we just check up on her once a week and make sure she is doing alright. After that we had an amazing lesson with John K, he is from Africa and doesn't know any specific language. He is deaf and mute. But Elder Johnson and I have been teaching him ASL. So really we are having to be tri-lingual. Elder Johnson luckily knows ASL so he has been teaching me a little and i pick it up pretty fast in lessons. John was just baptized here in March! After our lesson with John we had a great lesson with a Sister D. The sister missionaries that used to be here talked with her a few times. But Elder Johnson and I have really focused on teaching OUR message. We taught her about how God is our Loving Heavenly Father, and it was a very powerful lesson. To wrap the night up we went out to Yale to help build a wheelchair ramp for Sister G at her home. 

   Wednesday-We had a great lesson with R we focused a lot on the priesthood and baptism. We have taught him twice and set a date and goal for him to be baptized on August 8th. After that we went to the rec center to help with translating for people here who don't speak English. Then we had another great lesson with O, he is a 16! We taught him about the Plan of Salvation and he said that we have answers that no one else has. We invited him to be baptized on August 2nd. He came to church this Sunday and is really excited for his baptism. In the prayers he offers he thanks Heavenly Father for the things he has learned and for being able to be baptized. We then had dinner with Jaime and talked with him about missionary work.

   Thursday- We had district meeting in Ankeny. I gave a training on Teaching when we Find, and Finding when we Teach! After district meeting we headed over to A's house. He hasn't attended church in a while, but went to youth conference and loved it! While talking with him we let him know that we were teaching O. He was so shocked and happy. We invited him to come teach him with us for our next appointment. After that we had an amazing powerful lesson with JC and explained to him our purpose and went over the Word of Wisdom. 

   Friday- We had another lesson with O! We taught him about the Gospel of Jesus Christ! The best part of the lesson was definitely A sharing his testimony with him. It was so powerful! The rest of the day was mostly filled with trying people and weekly planning.

   Saturday- Jaime had appointments set up for us to go to with him. While working with him we invited M and B to baptism, we had a great lesson with them. They came to church on Sunday also!!!! Then we had another good lesson with Sister D, but we had to talk with her in the hospital since she had fallen. After that we had another great lesson with John. Then at around 8pm we had a lesson with J. Her mom is a member but no one else in her family is, and while growing up her mom never went to church. So we started from the beginning and taught about the Restoration of the gospel and invited her to be baptized, when she comes to know it is true as well!

   Sunday- We had four people who are interested in the church come!!! And we just had an all around great day.
 

I am loving the people and work here in Perry

Love
Elder Roberts

p.s. Elder Johnson kept waking up with more and more bug bites each night till we found out that we have bed bugs. This week every morning at 3 am we wake up and search for them. There have been none in my bed but so far we have found 4 in Elder Johnson's bed. But we are getting rid of them tomorrow with a machine the mission has.