Week 15 - Knockin' doors

Hey Hey, how is everyone doing? This week has been a great week! We didn't have that many lessons, but we were really busy! We had a trunk or treat here on Wednesday and the ward did a primary program this Sunday! It brought back a lot of great memories. We have not found any new investigators but we are working with S and C as much as possible. We have knocked a lot of the doors in Osceola most of the time we get a response like "Hello boys how are you doing, I'm not interested right now". Osceola is a small town and everyone knows who we are, so knocking doesn't work too well. But we keep trying and having faith that the Lord will prepare someone. Well I love you all so much have a great Family Home Evening,

Love,

Elder Roberts

An Iowa sunset:

This spider was outside the door of our apartment

ME:

This is me and Elder Ganoe, he's serving in Lenox, IA and is such a stud:

Our District:

Week 14 - Strengthening the members

This week our focus was to strengthen members, recent converts, and less actives. We had a very successful week, and we cant wait for this week to. We had exchanges with our Zone Leaders on Friday, the exchange was great! I learn so much from our zone leaders every time they can make it down here. They are great examples to me of awesome elders. I can't express the love I have for the members here. They are amazing they just need help to get started. Bishop Bair is an amazing guy too. We had our biggest week number wise this week. We really want to keep the momentum going this week and throughout this transfer. We have interviews with President Jensen coming up not this week but next. There is a pretty good chance that I will be training next transfer. I think it's a 50 50 chance right now. I have no idea how I can train others when I wasn't really trained, I just trained myself. But I know God will mold me into what he needs me to be.

Love you so much,

Elder Roberts

Week 13 - Time flies and it's getting colder

Time flies when you work your hardest. Missionaries tell me that the first 6 months are slow and then the rest fly by.  If that's the case, I can't process how fast my mission is going to go. My first 3 months have flown by. I'm scared though, here in Osceola we do not use a lot of Spanish! If you are not completely  surrounded by it, it is very hard to improve!! I think I have lost some of my vocabulary!! 

I would love another sweater it is getting cold here. Do we still have three missionaries in our ward? We mostly have 1 dinner appointment a week here. On a good week 2. In our ward we are trying to figure out how to pump them up. We now have 6 missionaries in this ward, 4 elders... Me, Elder Blauer, Elder Brown, and Elder Croxall which is what we have always had. But we got 2 sister missionaries this week who opened up a new area down in Lamoni, so now me and Elder Blauer's  area isn't an hour distance north, south, east to west!!!! It's going to be nice. Our ward does have a trunk or treat on the 23rd. We aren't in a car share anymore, Chariton has their own car now, so we will not have to walk every other week. 

In Osceola right now we have dropped all 5 of our investigators because they didn't want to keep any commitments and weren't serious.  This whole week Elder Blauer and I are going to focus on finding the elect that God have prepared to be taught the Gospel. We are really STOKED! It going to be a crazy week. We also get to go on exchanges with the ZL's this Friday which I always love, they are such solid missionaries and I always learn so much from them.

I got your card, It was pretty hilarious!! Thank you so much for the letters the make the hard days a little better.

I love you,

Elder Roberts

Week 12 - 6 weeks in Iowa already, and pictures!

Right now we are at the church. That's where we email from if we have the car. If we don't have the car we go to the library.

First I want to tell you about the new thing Elder Blauer and I started. Since he is training me how to be a successful missionary, I decided that I would be his personal trainer... So every morning we wake up a 6am and go on a run, then we do a workout, then yoga to finish everything off. I do yoga about 3 times a day it is awesome!!! I thought it would be dumb but it is actually cool. 

This week the work didn't go so well, it's hard to recover from a big hit sometimes, no matter how many times you say "O lets go, let's work our tails off".  The work is going to pick up here soon, I know it, we are doing everything we can think of this week!!

The temperature dropped here pretty fast! Thank you so much for the sweater. It says it was like 40, but that doesn't take in account the wind, when the wind hits you its about 30 something degreeeeeeesssss.

                               

Training is a 12 week process so I'm here in Osceola for at least another 6 weeks.

  

My favorite General Conference speaker is always Elder Jeffrey R. Holland, he is the man!!

I look forward to getting emails, it's so awesome to hear from the real world! Some days it gets hard to remember what the real world back home is like. O and did you know Danny W, Amber's husband has the same birthday as Dad and also he LOVES the Miami Dolphins too!!!!

I pray for the family a lot, and hope everything is going great, I'll talk to you soon.

Love your little boy,

Elder Roberts

And some fun pictures this week....

This is what we made when we were on exchanges with the Centerville Elders:

It's a pizza with 2 lbs of bacon, then 2 boxes of mac n cheese then more bacon then crazy bread then another pizza on top.  Eating dinner with Elder Blauer, Elder Keeley and Elder Bailey:

My desk:

The awesomeness that is Iowa:

I have been studying like crazy, my preach my gospel is pretty destroyed with notes everywhere. It is a great tool in missionary work:

I made this for dinner the other night -  I've found out I am a great cook!

These train tracks are by our apartment, we walk on them a lot to cut through certain parts of town, they are a shortcut!