Week 64

Week 3 Korea Town

Monday we went shopping and so I bought very little because I don't like to bike with all of my stuff home. Well this area has a lot more hills than my last biking area, so I became immediately amazing, not really, at biking with one hand up hills. Yes it probably was dangerous, but I took it slow so it was fine. I even had my milk in the bag... Not too shabby. We then fixed Elder B up with some bike lights because we had interviews this week and along with that our bike inspections, to make sure that your bike is safe, brakes work, lights, everything. We ended up hanging with our DL Elder L and his companion Elder W. Then the English elders came and we played with them too, we ended up playing soccer and frisbee at the church. In frisbee it was really fun, until everyone realized that I knew how to play so they would always avoid me. Afterwards I sent of a card to you Mom, so hopefully you got it. We went to go and visit the P family. They recently came here from Mexico and so the kids are still learning English. We talked to them about how we could work with them to help excite the B family and to help them reactivate. We then rushed over to the D L family for dinner, but nobody was home, only the daughter. The daughter is a member and she was telling us about all the problems that are going on in her life right now. It seems as though her family, even though they have a son in the mission field right now, still have a lot of doubts. Silly doubts that sometimes people just say to get under the skin of us members. She is judged a lot by her family because she doesn't go to church and they always judge her by saying that if it is the true church, then she would go to it. Let's just say that I am learning a lot of patience because you got to love these people if you want to help them come to know these things for themselves. We then went back to the apartment to get some dinner and clean a little bit more. It was a long day and it just ended weird.

Tuesday I went on exchanges with my DL Elder L. He is just one of those missionaries that you always hear about throughout the mission and then you finally get to serve with him. It is really funny because we know a lot of the same missionaries and have had a couple of the same areas, so it's pretty cool. He first took me to this bike shop so that I could fix my bike. It cost about 30$ I think, but my bike is a beauty now! The brakes work amazingly and the bike is a super smooth ride, so no worries about me. We then set goals for the exchange and then headed out. We talked to everyone, almost;) we tried to talk to more people about family history work, you know, the whole spirit of Elijah thing, and it actually worked! There were a lot of people who were interested in it. Not everyone was interested of course, but it was super cool to see that some people were!! It was nice to talk to so many people, and so many miracles came out of it! We took a nice little slurpee brake at good ol 7/11 so that was nice. We even ran into a guy who always likes to bash with us, so that was interesting. We visited a less active teen who is going through some rough times right now and it seems as though he is coming out of it, so that's real good. We then switched bikes just to go to the church for dinner and coordination. Elder L has a really light bike, like featherweight almost, and he calls it Zeus, so obviously I have to try it right? Well he took Peggy for a ride and I rode Zeus. By the end we determined that Peggy is more of a smoother ride and that she is A LOT heavier than Zeus. We then had some teens ask us if they could see our bikes and ride them for a bit, so hey, we gave them the keys and told them to lock it up when they were done (man did I feel like a parent just there). Coordination was fun, I said some pretty funny things because I think I finally was able to relax today, even though we worked our butts off. I said a funny comment about a recent convert that kinda went like this: background- so he did not come to church this week because he stayed over with a friend and because it was the end of the month his phone was dead, so he didn't wake up in enough time to go to church. Well Elder B was explaining it that he might've been doing "something wrong" like drugs or something, which is totally not the way he wanted it to sound, so in English I said "he basically had a sleep over and slept in so he missed church" and everyone just laughed because hey, that's more likely to happen. The sisters that are in our Ward were dying in the back row. They even keep joking to themselves about how small I wrote because their handwriting is not the best. It was a blast because earlier in coordination there was a little bit of tension with something that happened in the Ward, but it's good that it ended up on a lighter note.

Wednesday we switched back pretty early and so Elder B and I had to plan. It was really difficult to try and put the day together because it was completely empty. This transfer has been difficult because of that, planning. I know very little about the area and Elder B doesn't know that much more, so it's really difficult to plan and to set goals, because he never did it with the missionary before me, and I'm new in the area. We decided to start out and go and see S. She is just so chill. We were talking and laughing just about the stuff that's going on in her life. We started to talk about church a little bit when she said "ya, I was talking to my mom, and I want to get baptized"...     😳🙄🙄😐😑🤔😯🤔😬😄💦💦💦 that's about how my reaction was. She dropped the B word! Oh my goodness I was so happy for her. We told her that the next time we come by we would bring a Book of Mormon for her to read in. She also told us that that day she didn't even smoke! She is progressing very quickly and we aren't even doing anything! We then went to go and pick up our dinner from this sister. We had to pick it up because there isn't a man in the home. We took the dinner back to the apartment. We had this pomegranate juice that she gave us, so we decided to be bartenders and mix it with Almond milk so that way it was a little creamier.... It wasn't too shabby. It was pretty good actually. After that we went to go and see E and E. E ditched us (for reasons that I'm upset about) and E was having a bad day, so she wanted to take us out to boba. Do you know what boba is? It's basically tapioca balls that Koreans put in drinks because they just love it. It's not the boba balls from Yogurtland though. These ones are black and huge. Anywho we talked with E and she is just going through a rough time right now. We stopped by the De Leon family to read with them. When we knocked on the door the husband seemed very passionate that we were not going to come in, just the way his posture and attitude were, but then the mom invited us in. She then brought us a plate of beans, eggs, and potatoes. We showed them a Mormon message and invited them to the mothers day dinner activity that we were going to have on Saturday. When we got back to the apartment, Elder B and I had a good little heart to heart, bro time type thing, laughing, joking, type stuff, so that was good.

Thursday we had interviews with President W. I figured that this was going to be my last interview with him, so I thought of some questions that I could ask him during the interview. It was such an intense interview. I am so glad he is my mission president. I just can't really explain how amazing he is, just because he's that awesome. I then talked with Sister W and she asked me about school, so when I told her that everything was taken care of she was like "phew!" So that was good. The Zone leaders inspected our bikes during interviews and I'm missing a couple reflectors, but those arent super important, I have good lights and that what is important. Apparently our bag is also suppose to have a "safety belt" on it, like a belt that attaches around our waste so that the bag doesn't move around, but that was really weird so I didn't pay much attention to it. After interviews we had weekly planning. After that we went to the Bs house and talked with them. The Hermana gave us some chocolate milk and some cookies, and loaded us up with snacks and soaps, I guess we smell bad 😷 haha just kidding. We then had dinner with the V family. They are super cool. They are a really nice family and they made us pastel aztecas, which is basically a enchilada type dish. Afterwards we went over to visit someone called L. She's been taught a lot and has gone through a lot, thankfully (HUGE blessing) was that her fellowshipper was already there and so when we shared a scripture with her, it was a spiritual experience. 

Friday we decided to go to a part of our area that has never been contacted around before, and we found out why. In our area that we work in there is a very high population of Latinos, and Koreans, well in the other part of our area, there isn't. The houses are HUGE and everyone is white and Asian. I seriously felt like I was biking through Draper almost, it was so crazy. We talked to a couple people and then we went to go and see S. We had planned a lesson that would fit her and we decided to invite her to be baptized on the 5th of June. When we were talking with her she immediately accepted baptism and was a little shocked that the date was a little farther out. We were so excited because she is just so chill! We then went to go and have dinner with the C's. They bought us pizza so that was nice. We talked with them about their work and some crazy stuff that is going on. Their dog Benji was just having a good ole time. We also asked them to share their testimonies with us because Hermano C's brother was there. It was a good time. After that we went over to see E and E. E again ditched us so we ended up talking to E. We are trying so hard to help both of them stay active. E is doing really good, it's E that we are worried about. Afterwards we stopped by L to try and set a baptismal date with their whole family. Unfortunately only L was home so we couldn't enter the house. We talked to her for a bit and then Hermana C came. We shared a video and talked a little more and then left for the apartment. 

Saturday was a disappointing day. It started out alright though. We had ZTM and we have A LOT of sisters in the Zone, it's so weird. I also noticed how many times people my age use the word "like". I remember everyone joking about it before, but I just heard it way too often and so I kinda chuckled to myself and promised to get better at not having to use the word "like". We biked back to the apartment to only have time to change out of our suits to go to an investigator named A. Now man did we walk into a trap. We walked in and we see A's wife and child cleaning and their grandchildren running around as well. A pulls out seats for us and then starts to talk vaguely about some problems that 'a guy he knows' has. His daughter and grandkids leave to go and do the laundry when his wife makes a huge scene. She tells us that she wants to tell us what family troubles are going on. Basically he over exaggerates at everything and she is the self righteous one. He uses drugs and talks abusively to her and she is rude back. They wanted us to take sides. The entire time I just sat there listening and thinking of what to say, Elder B did the same. It was really intense because they kept cutting each other off and the mom would play videos of A yelling and what not. We sat there for a little bit, thought, kept sitting there, and then finally we spoke. We spoke about the Atonement of Jesus Christ and what he did for us, how amazing and beautiful the Atonement is. We also talked about forgiveness, but then they just went off on each other on how the other needs to forgive and blah blah blah. They were both threatening a divorcement and it was just really awkward for us. We then listened a little more and then the wife asked us if there is anything in the church that counsels married couples and helps them... Of course! We talked about it, gave them a card, told them to visit the website and invited them to church, said a prayer, and then left. It was so intense. 

Sunday was just sad.. Except for the call;) nobody showed up to church and there was a lot of drama at church. I need to feel more of a Christlike love for some people lets just put it that way. You would assume that the talks were about mothers right? Nope. One of the members who is very into family history went up and chastised everyone about not doing family history. He was very passionate, to the point that he said that the Bible and the Book of Mormon are only used for us to have our genealogy. 😔 Then in priesthood the guy went super crazy like off of Dragon Ball Z and was screaming at everyone about... Tithing. He was not letting anyone talk and he went over 15 minutes... Ugh. Well the call was super nice, sorry I didn't sing for you all, next time;) the family we were with then gave us tacos and we taught them about Enos and 'mighty prayer'. We then went straight to dinner (I know, it was awful) and there they were also face timing their daughter. It was pretty sad because their daughter cried at the end of their call.

I am also going to the Hollywood sign today so I will probably not be on later, but hey, I'm actually doing something cool for PDay!

Well, this week will be packed full of awesomeness, I just know it. I hope you all have an amazing week!

Love,

Elder Roberts