Week 32

That awesome time my bike got stolen....

Woo wee! Was this week a doozy! But first to answer questions:

First to start off with the area, we live in LA, its ok if you don't know where, I will be able to tell later on. All craziness is in the air for this transfer because 1) my companion is leaving because this is his last transfer, 2) We are whitewashing, which means that neither of us has been in this area before and so neither of us know the area. 3) Its a bike area so my legs are killing me. 4) We are double covering, which means that because of the lack of missionaries in this mission (meaning more are going home than are coming out) they combine areas, and they combined two areas and made it this one! The reason why it is called The Jungle, is for a really bad reason, but you can just think because all the streets are combined together and confusing, that's part of the reason. I don't have a pant clip so I just tuck my slacks into my socks when I ride, ya I look British haha. Our locks, well, lets just say my bike got stolen... I don't know really anybody in this zone or district, so I feel completely exposed, its weird. yes, of course we get to watch Conference!! I am super stoked for all those reasons!!

My companion: His name is Elder Aguilar, he is from Georgia, but his family is from Mexico. This is my second latino companion and we get along much better than the last:) He is a convert to the church and he is 23 years old. He got into BYUI with the help of the mission counselor for schooling (didn't know we had one, but cool anyways). He is a super good missionary and he is fluent in both English and Spanish. He talks a lot in the lessons and corrects me a lot, but I know that its just to help me in the long run with my Spanish:) He is really funny and we laugh a lot.

Let's just go slow about what happened this week.

Monday: After the transfer and everything like emailing, we went to the store to buy food. Now we basically just have to buy our needs because we have to carry the bags on our bikes back to the apartment, which is about 2 miles away from the store. It was interesting and I will learn ahah. We ate with this family named the M family. They were all expecting to see the missionary that was here before, but when they saw me, they looked at Elder Aguilar as if he knew why everything got switched. The food was very good. It was rice and chicken as always, but it was very good. We visited a couple potential investigators from the area book that we have from past missionaries, so that was good. Our apartment is super gross, ants everywhere. Its because they get through the back door (because there is grass there) and the back door is right by the kitchen, so what did we do? 409 to the rescue! We didn't have any bug spray, but 409 annihilated all those pests. You could call us exterminators if you would like haha.

Tuesday: It was a pretty eventful day. We contacted and visited potentials ALL DAY, because that's what you do when you whitewash. While talking to this lady in an apartment complex, a random bucket of water was pushed by this kid on top of me, yupp I got drenched. Good thing it was just water hahaha, that could've been a little gross. Elder Aguilar and I just laughed the whole time. This random lay stopped us and told us that we were devils and worshipped satan through the book of muslim.. haha. I don't know if she was high or something, but she just drove by and said it so we laughed pretty hard. We found this less active member and he is partially blind. His name is Hermano G and he is just... stubborn, like me. He has some problems with the Word of Wisdom and we decided to help him go back to the basics, you know: read, pray, go to church. During the lesson we tried to ask him "What are the 3 things missionaries asked you to do when you started to investigate the church?" That was a really bad question first off, he replied "Love God, have patience, and follow the Word of Wisdom"... ugh. We tried to help him understand what the basic things were and that we are there to help him along the way. AND he came to church! so that was awesome. So after a long day I was laying in my bed when I felt something crawling on me. I figure that it was probably an itch or I thought it was an ant because we killed so many the day before. Well I felt it again and I started to pull out my inner Charlie (BAHAHA) so we turned on the light, and nothing was there, until it moved. It was a huge red spider that did not look very nice, so we both flipped and went terminator on that sucker! After that, neither of us could really go back to sleep....

so that brings us to

Wednesday: The only really exciting story that happened on Wednesday is we got stopped by this black muslim. He asked us if we had ever read the Qur'an, we said no. He told us that we needed to read it because it was scripture. Well we told him about the Book of Mormon and asked if he had ever read it, he said no. Well I guess we were at a stand still, we talked/ chatted for quite a bit and there were a lot of craziness that he said. He said, for example, that the Holy Spirit, is the angel Gabriel... what? and that there is Lucifer and then there is Satan, two different people... weird. I asked him at one point if he believed that Christ atoned for us or if Christ is the Son of God, he said no. Boom, Elder Aguilar and I both then bore testimony of Jesus Christ and it was a pretty cool feeling. After that he said "Well then lets pray to have the sin fall upon whoever is wrong!" I simply replied, "I don't want to pray to have sin fall upon anyone" and then we both left. After that exhausting fiasco, we went back to visiting the potentials that we had in our planners.

Thursday: It was just a terrible day, we had a lot of set- lessons from the potentials earlier in the week, but practically every single one of them fell through. We have this investigator who had a baptismal date and she wanted to meet with us so she planned for a time later in the day with her member mentor, perfect! well that fell through, she didn't show up and nobody could get a hole of her. To this day neither of us have met her, we just know that she really does want to meet with the missionaries, but always cancels. We had also scheduled to meet with a recent convert named J. he lives clear out in Timbuktu flippin Idaho and on the way there I almost got hit by this chamaca not looking and making a right turn, good thing my glasses and brakes on my bike work:) The worst part about that whole experience is that J and his family weren't home! So we just got a good exercise. We had a lesson with this guy named K. K is a little slower than other investigators, but his intentions are pure. He is really funny though.

Friday: We had a special Zone Conference with the LA2 (us) and LA1 zones, basically because this month only 1 investigator in BOTH zones is going to be baptized. It was a come to Jesus moment from Pres. Weidman, IDK maybe that's why they whitewashed the area.

Saturday: So this is the story you have all wanted to hear. MY BIKE WAS STOLEN! We were biking to dinner at our apartment when Elder Aguilar thought he saw someone who he had met before, we turned around and it turns out that he is not a member of a family in one of his last areas! They live right in our area! We went up to talk with the family, ate with them, and everything. The son, J, said that every now and then he is going to take a peak to watch my bike, because kids steal bikes a lot in this area 'apparently'. Well all of a sudden, he peaks and just bolts downstairs, the mom and J shouts "The bike's stolen!!" and then her husband just runs down, neither of us knew which bike it was, so we are both awe- struck. It was my bike. We hear 2 cars screeching down the street from Julio and his dad. The mom then tells us to get Elder Aguilar's bike and to take it up to the apartment. I am freakin gout 'of course' and so I say to Elder Aguilar, "let's go man! I'm pumped" or something stupid like that. When we get outside we see Julio parking the car and he told us that he found the kid who took the bike. He basically almost ran the kid over and started to chew him out and asked where he got the bike, then the dad showed up. J told us not to worry and that he would go back to get the bike. So ya, my bike was stolen and then found and retrieved within 30 minutes, woo!! it was very exciting. So now we lock it upa different way.

sunday was pretty fun. It was the primary program and Elder Aguilar didn't know any of the songs (lo que imagino como Emily) and he kept telling me that I am 'super Mormon' because I was mouthing all of the primary songs. It was pretty funny.

This morning I think I over stretch my neck or something, so it hurts real bad and I kinda lean it to my right side, I just think its too tight, it'll go away, but E Aguilar is making fun of me... not nice

Well that was all the craziness for this week! most of it anyways...

Love ya all tons and bunches!

Elder Roberts

"I'm like oil bro, consecrated!"

"Don't make me go all Uchtdorf on you.. Stop. It."

just random quotes we said during the week.

They went for Joshua's birthday (Elder Roberts' brother who passed away)