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.

Week 49 - Transferred!

So I got transferred... What a surprise!!! It was very unreal only being in Muscatine for 2 transfers and then leaving but that is ok, because I love my new area just as much! Elder Steele and Elder Akaka are still serving in Muscatine. It is so crazy what has happened in the past few days, so much is going on, and when you get transferred they expect you to hit the ground running full speed. I am not all the way unpacked yet, because we have just been having to go to appointments.

Monday- got the transfer call at 10pm that I would be getting transferred on Thursday.

Tuesday- Elder Steele, Elder Akaka, visited the people we had been teaching knowing it would be the last day of work as a trio in Muscatine.

Wednesday- Packed and prepared to move on to my next area.

Thursday- Headed to Iowa City where I found out that I would be serving with Elder Johnson in Perry Iowa!!! What is really cool about our companion ship is that we both were in the Mexico MTC together at the same time and flew to Iowa together, so there is no senior or junior companion. We both know how to do the work, and both expect to see huge success here through working hard, following the spirit, and truly loving the people.

Our padre here in Perry is Jaime!! My first night here he made us a delicious meal, and since then has fed us multiple times. He also comes out to lessons with us, and everyone here in Perry knows him and loves him. He is amazing.

Friday- Started work here in Perry meeting the people we are teaching. We also have to work with the English speaking people here. This transfer they had to close the sisters area that used to be in Perry. So Elder Johnson and I get to teach all the people they were teaching, too.

Saturday- We had great lessons, and worked, worked, worked!

Sunday- Had church in the Perry branch, and had the opportunity to pass the Sacrament and introduce myself in Sacrament meeting.

Today---- We woke up. Studied.  Our car was dead. We got it jumped, then had to drive 45 minutes away to the big city called Ankeny to make sure our battery was still good. Then we stayed there and had P-day there with the 3 sets of Elders and 1 set of Sisters that serve there.

I am sorry if this email does not make since my mind is scattered and constantly going hopefully in a couple weeks it will slow down!

Love

Elder Roberts

Baseball in Muscatine:

Empty drawers:

All packed and ready to go:

Saying goodbye to Elder A and Elder S:

Family in Muscatine:

Elder J:

Jaime feeding us an amazing dinner:

Week 48 - A week where things fell through

This week has been a lot different than most of the weeks here. A lot of the things we planned on doing just fell through. 

We get transfer calls today! We haven't heard anything yet. 

I got my packages, thank you soooo much. I love everything! I looked at the calendar Mom made me for Christmas, and noticed that you are going to be very busy this week. Good luck! Happy birthday to Sophie and Annie! 

Nothing is new this week, except for possible transfer doctrine. I wouldn't be surprised if everything stays the same here in Muscatine. But I am also ready for what ever happens, the Lord's work can sometimes be unpredictable. 

Oh, and I shaved my head.

Missionaries in the Muscatine district (all serving in the same ward):

Making poppyseed salad for dinner:

Elder A. made Hawaiian curry for district lunch:

Week 47 - Lots of lessons

Monday we met a man named Juan.  He is very prepared and wants to learn more, but he expressed the fact that his whole family is Catholic and it would be very hard to change. Then we had dinner with a wonderful family here the MacAffes.

Tuesday we walked a long ways from appointment to appointment getting swarmed by bugs!! It was awesome.

Wednesday we saw countless miracle after miracle!! God truly put people in our path and we were extremely blessed.

Thursday we had a Zone Training Meeting in Washington. President and Sister Jensen came to it! And they gave us great advice and counsel. After ZTM we had dinner with the Beans, and had a great lesson about the Savior's purpose in coming to this Earth and him visiting the Americas.

Friday we had an amazing lesson with Juan! At the end of the lesson we invited him to be baptized on July 12th when he finds out that this is Christ's church!

Saturday we had a great lesson with Barbara y Vince. This was our first time teaching them. They had many great questions! We are very excited to continue to teach them more and help them find the truth. Then after that we headed to IA City for the adult session of stake conference! Elder Pain of the Seventy was there and it was such a great meeting.

Sunday we went up to IA City again for the morning session of stake conference, and the rest of the night we worked here in Muscatine.

Our week here was great and this week is going to be amazing as well.  Hope everyone is doing great!

Love,

Elder Roberts

Week 46 - One of the best weeks so far

This week was one of the most amazing weeks I have had on my mission so far! We were truly blessed, and were led by the spirit to people who are interested in learning more about the gospel!

On Monday we had a great P-day! We grilled at the church and played sports and celebrated memorial day! At 6 o'clock it was back to work. So the whole night we knocked on doors. We met a man named Andreas and taught him about the Restoration of the Gospel. It was a wonderful experience! We learned a ton from the lesson we had with him

On Tuesday we had a amazing day, too! We started the day off by visiting someone that had been taught by missionaries before. We taught him about the Gospel of Jesus Christ, and he told us that he wants to make changes now, and wasn't ready the first time the missionaries taught him. Then we went over to Bishop Cloves' house and had an amazing dinner made by Sister Cloves and the Sister Missionaries. After that we went to find more people to teach. We knocked on tons of doors. But one door was so funny!!! We knocked on the door and a teenage girl answered the door she was probably 16 or 17. Her face was priceless, she was in complete and utter shock! She said "I don't know what to say!" We proceeded to tell her about what our purpose is as missionaries. I didn't seem to sink into her brain though because she was just staring at us! She told us that we could come back and talk with her whole family!! We were super excited.

Wednesday we went to West Liberty. We had an amazing lesson with a member who has not attended church in a very long time. He wants to come back but realizes he will have to change a lot, so we are starting with baby steps. The rest of his family are not members of the church so we are also teaching them. 

Thursday I woke up with a pretty bad cold. We had an awesome district meeting, got our car fixed at Good Year, and to wrap the day up we taught Kat and her mom Catalina and left them to read more about the restoration of the gospel. 

Friday we had an amazing exchange with our Zone leaders!! I was pretty exhausted from having no sleep the night before but we went out and hit the ground running, finding many people to teach and contacting many Hispanic people!!

Saturday we did a lot of service and had a wonderful dinner with Ross #1 Hawk Eye fan! And the baptismal font we have been building is almost done!!!

Sunday was amazing we had a great Sabbath day and had an amazing dinner with the Heath Family. Brother Heath helps us out a ton here in Muscatine. He teaches Spanish at a college here, and comes to a lot of lessons with us.

This week I learned that when you are afflicted yet choose to go to work and do everything you can, the Lord will bless you for your efforts and help you get through it. The spirit definitely carried me a couple times this week.  

I love you all!!!

Elder Roberts