Week 69

Korea Town // Episode 2 - Act 2

Monday was pday. As you know we have to bike to our lovely R's, and I felt a little adventurous. I bought some things that I might never have bought before, and hopefully I will take pictures with it so you have proof. I had bought ramen (selling our souls in missionary language), lunch meat, cheese, pickles, pretzels, hummus, cereal, and milk. Yes I bought pretzels and hummus for my "snack food" for the week, it was a bad idea cause my stomach hurt ALL WEEK...NO MAKING FUN! 😑😑😑 we walked back to the apartment and that took a bit. We took a little ciesta in the apartment as we waited for Elder H and T to come pick us up to go the the science center. It is a really cool place on the USC campus, right by the rose gardens and all the other museums. I feel like if I wasn't a missionary it would be fun to check out, maybe with a better group. There was a place that showed a real life surgery from a video, it was a surgery on a lung... 😷😰😰, I don't think I will ever go medical, yikes. We left and my companion was a little upset because he was interested in the stuff, but I wasn't too much into it. We left and went to go and eat Chik Fil-A, that's why on the card it says I went there. I payed for Elder B because he paid for me one time at Korean BBQ, I owed him. I don't know but for some reason my stomach just really hurts whenever I eat fast food, so I don't think I will be going there anytime soon. We got back to the apartment and both of us didn't feel so good, so we watched a couple videos a took a pday nap, really lame, I know. We went to go contacting because unfortunately both of the set appointments fell through. We talked to a good amount of people and actually had a street lesson with this guy named J L, hopefully we will be able to meet with him again. We stopped by to see C A, he is a teenager. His mom worked on Sunday so they didn't come to church. They live right around the corner from us so we stopped in to see how they were doing. I made a deal with him. I made him a deal that he has to read 2 pages in the Book of Mormon every day and I do my morning exercises, cause I have been slacking a lot lately. We made all the little rewards and stuff, I have to buy him a candy bar if he reads more days than I workout, and he has to come to mutual if I workout more days than he reads (he hates going to mutual). 

Tuesday we had an extra companionship study on the blessings of baptism, super cool stuff. Basically it's the scriptural blessing around in Mosiah 18:8-10 and there are 4 specific blessings... Let's see if you can find them. Now I didn't say ONLY 4, but there are 4 really big blessings. After that we went to go and see C C. She is the older lady with the prosthetic leg. She was having a bad day because the following day she had to go to the doctors for another appointment. She was happy towards the end because she got a call saying that she was going to get a new prosthetic leg next week that she would be able to go to church with. Oh my goodness her smile was just so big, it's adorable. She is this really older Latina lady who looks almost Asian and always says "mmhmmm" so it's pretty funny to be around her. A lot of the appointments canceled from that day, and we talked to a lot of people. We were able to have another street lesson (we call these lessons miracle lessons) and so that was really nice. It's always nice to actually have a good conversation with someone on the street and they are interested.

Wednesday we started out visiting J, or Junior. He is the older brother of the B family, and it's really interesting their whole family situation. We talked to them about expectations as missionaries and as members of missionary visits, what should happen in a lesson and stuff. Basically it was our way of saying, please stay off your phones and quit playing video games when we are over. They always get so interested into the lessons and then they never follow through with their commitments... So frustrating sometimes. We then went to go and see the C's and they are just so awesome. They are working on family history right now and they are really excited. The only problem is that they can't figure out how to get onto the website and everything (man I wish I learned how to do more of that when I was younger). They have strong testimonies of the commandments, they are just so cool. Dad, you should definitely tell the youth, in a nonchalant way, that family history is crucial in missionary work. I wish I would have paid more attention to how to do it, because now I can't help my investigators who are preparing to go to the temple. They also gave us pizza so that was nice. We then went to go and see a former investigator named J. We arrived a little early, but we didn't think that would matter. We decided to say a prayer that she would be there and we climbed the stairs. We knocked, and no answer. There was a man standing outside the window by the railing and Elder B was like "we should go talk to this guy" so we did. His name is S and he is an older gentleman. He always was saying stuff like "amen" or "Gloria a Dios" at anything we would say. We tried to explain the restoration to him and when the part came of "the priesthood power to be baptized is only found in Christ's true church" he was like "well that's good! I'm already baptized" and it's like (face palm) you don't get it bro. We set a return appointment with because he was really nice and asked us when we would come back. When we ended the prayer with S, low and behold J and her family showed up! Sl is the neighbor so we were standing right there when she came in. It was such a tender mercy. We were a little short on time and so she asked if we could come back another day, we shared a short message, and planned to come back the same day for S, because they are neighbors. 

Thursday was just weird. Because we have sister missionaries in the zone, and in the district that work at the VC, we have our district meetings in Thursday, rather than Friday. This time it was ZTM and so we just receive training from our leaders. It was really weird because there are an even amount of sisters and elders... Not cool. The ZTM was good and we have a lot of new goals as a zone, to help us improve as missionaries and as disciples of Christ. Basically this whole transfer is on charity, and having charity for everyone. Charity really does affect a missionary and those that they come in contact with. Charity has helped our companionship be more bold in inviting people to make and keep commitments. The ZTM was good also because our ZLs are some pretty funny guys, so that makes everything just more relaxed. We finally were able to see M B. His father has had a lot of trials with health, and this is really either going to make or break the faith of M. We taught him about the Plan of Salvation and it was a very intense lesson. We invited him to be baptized and he.... Wasn't too sure. We fear that maybe he might soon become an eternal investigator, which would be sad. We are hoping to get him on family history, you know, try and bank on that whole "spirit of Elijah" type thing. It was a good ending to a really rough day though. 

Friday we had planned to go and see the B family, but they were a little bit busy, so instead we started our weekly planning. We then had planned to go and see J and S back to back. We went in to J's house and omg she was prepared! She pulled out her Book of Mormon and was asking us a bunch of questions. It was really good. We taught the Restoration and invited her to be baptized... She accepted! She has a baptismal date for the 10th of July and she is ready to progress. She told us that Sunday would be a little bit busy for her, so she wouldn't know if she could come that time. She was really excited though, asked a lot of good questions, and we set up times to come back, it was awesome. We then went to go and see S and he was drunk. He had been watching a soccer game and el aprovechó de la taquilla les digo. It was a complete different experience from J, but he still kept saying all the amens and Gloria a Dios and stuff. We invited him to read the pamphlet for more info before we came back. We then saw and visited W. His mom brought us pizza - meat lovers - and we talked about how he is doing and everything. He is slowly progressing and his brother too, just sometimes people don't progress as fast as we want them too ya know?

Saturday was just rough. We started out with apartment inspections, which we got 100 on, woo! But they didn't give us any treats like all the others do so that was sad. We then went to go and see E. She has literally gone awol. We tried to find out where she has been and she was like "I know I need to go to church" she's just one of those people that you know gets it, but she doesn't act, or isn't acting right at least. We went back to the apartment for lunch and every single one of our set appointments canceled. S even dropped us! She said that she doesn't want to be baptized anymore and that she doesn't want to meet with us... It was sad. We ended up walking the full length of our area because half of our area we never go into, because it's full of rich housing. We literally had a competition counting how many BMWs and Mercedes cars there were. We felt the need to go there because neither of us had been before, so we kinda felt that we were neglecting part of our area, but then we realized that our area is where the fruit is, so right now we need to focus on the people who are progressing! 

Sunday we had a meeting with the Bishop at 8:00, like always. That was good. Church was good, yup. We had a miracle happen when a member in our area invited a friend to come to church. We introduced ourselves and he stayed for the last 2 hours. That was nice. After church we had to go back to the apartment to grab a missionary bike to give to a member because the missionary is finishing his mission. So we walked clear from our apartment to the church which took about 30 minutes... Service? After that we had a lunch with the Rs and that was good, they gave us red velvet cake for the dessert. We decided to walk around because we were going to see E and ask her why she didn't come to church. She wasn't home so we decided to go and talk to the D L family. They were home and had invited friends over. We explained our purpose as missionaries and at one point I got a little 😑 because we explained that the role of a missionary is to help people make the covenant of baptism, and the random friend was all like "that's good! Keep going!"... Bro, you need to be baptized...?? It was a little, ugh. It was nice that we were able to find them though. We went back to our bikes and we found out that M's father passed away. He is going back to El Salvador for the funeral and hopefully when he comes back his faith will increase, or he will be at a point that we could start to teach him. We went to go and see C, the teen I made the deal with, and I lost the deal, just because I didn't exercise every morning like I should've. Saturday morning we actually spent cleaning for the inspection so, that's what got me. He said he would come out with us in splits on Monday so that was cool.

Love,

Elder Roberts