Week 78

Korea Town Episode III (Blasted Heat) Scene 5

Monday was a crazy pday. We had a lot of stuff to do and not a lot of time to do it. Elder D got a hair cut at a different place, but it was down the street and for the same 10$ price so it was alright, I need to get my haircut as well. It was a really interesting pday because it is really hard to do stuff in this area on pday. It comes down to the fact that we don't have a car, biking is super sketchy on pdays, and so we have to find a companionship of elders to go drive us to wherever we want to go and at the same time convince them that they want to go to the place as well. We actually were with the Wilshere elders and planned to do something really fun, but it was taking too long and so we didn't finish during the pday time. We visited W C and his family and talked about reading in the Book of Mormon. It has been getting really rough for me in this area visiting the same people over and over again because they finally started to progress, but then they stop. For example W. He was reading every day and eventually came to church. BUT because his mom has to provide for his family and now he is 16 and old enough to work, he got a job. Well that job makes him work on Sunday's and because his mom also works on Sunday's (the reason why she is less active) he doesn't see any problem working on Sunday's either. It is then even tougher because the mom hasn't been reading in the Book of Mormon and she has a lot of questions about everything related to the gospel basically. We also visited with the D L family, the ones that aren't members, and their son just returned home from his mission. He lives in Guatemala with his sister because his parents came to the US when he was on the mission. The showed us some shirts that they made and then wore for when he returned home. (Idea maybe?) anywho, it was a little interesting because whenever something good happens in their lives the seem really committed to do stuff like go to church and to go to the VC, but this week none of that happened unfortunately. 

Tuesday I went on an exchange with Elder A. He is such a cool missionary. It was his first exchange (he is a greenie) and he is awesome. He is from Taylorsville, Utah and he is Mexican. We had a lot of fun on the exchange. One of the guys that we stopped to talk to we asked him "what makes you happy?" And the guy became super serious and told us how everything is going wrong in his life. The man was recently separated from his wife, lost his job, doesn't have a car... Just terrible things. We told him about the Book of Mormon and how it will help him, so we got his information down and sent it out as a referral. The exchange was really short because they had NMO 2 (which is just a specific meeting for the newbies) and that ended around 2. Plus we had to be at the church around 6:30 so the exchange was really only for 4 hours of the day. It was still pretty good though. We were able to read with the A family and they are doing good. I just hope that slowly C likes going to mutual and seminary so that way he will be completely involved in church stuff! We had correlation so we biked to the church and that was nice. Hermana C made us hamburgers and fries and brought a drink for us to eat before correlation, I don't think this whole 6 months to sexy thing is going to work AT ALL, so I'm just gonna toss it out the window ahaha. Correlation was good, except for the fact that there is drama in the ward and it just stinks when there is drama in stuff... Ugh!

Wednesday was pretty fun. During companionship study Elder A and I decided to eat popcorn and watch the best soap opera ever... The District 2. That was fun and then we switched back to be with our normal companions. We visited with M and P with J D and that was a good lesson, they actually talked less than they usually do. It was a weird lesson though. P is having a lot of problems with her health and she was telling us how much she has faith in God and how he can heal her from her sickness. We both thought about giving her a blessing, but for some reason it didn't happen. It was really weird and we tried to talk about it after the lesson, but we couldn't figure out why it didn't actually happen. We ended the night visiting with M B and talking to him about the Atonement. We also talked to him about Joseph Smith and he had a lot of questions about his life and everything, so we thought that it would be a good idea for us next week to bring the movie of The Prophet of the Restoration to watch with him, we will see how things go I guess :) 

Thursday we had district meeting and that was alright. Our district was given 2 more companionships and so now it's not just our ward that is the district. I went on exchanges with Elder W in his area and it was alright. We taught this really old man who really wants to read in the Book of Mormon, but doesn't understand the importance of being baptized by someone holding the priesthood authority of God. We also visited with their baptismal date named E and it was awesome. E is super prepared and really exited to be baptized. We then had dinner with O M and her daughter Iris, and Iris's friend. It was really nice cause the dinner was good and also the friend of Iris wanted to talk with us about missionary work and it was really good. We then asked the friend to see if she wanted to keep visiting with us and she said yes! Hopefully everything goes good for them. We then ended of the night visiting with this guy who took us in his truck home to our apartment. We also had a lot of street convos that ended alright. There were a lot of people that wanted to bible bash with us, but we told them that all we want to do is to help them fortify their faith in Christ. It was an interesting day to be honest and it was really nice to leave the area, sometimes you just need it.

Friday was the end of the exchange with Elder W and we switched back. When we got back to the apartment we started weekly planning to set goals and stuff, talk about things as a companionship.. Etc. We then went out to go and contact a couple referrals that we received earlier that day and none of them were home. We got a call from the D L's asking if we wanted to be picked up by them for dinner, that way we didn't have to bike there and leave early cause they would just take us home at night, so of course we said yes. I really like the D L family, they are so hilarious. We had a fun dinner and drive with them and it was really cool cause we showed a 4 minute video about the Plan of Salvation and their baby son B was watching it the entire time! We noticed that he was watching it, and so did his parents. I didn't realize how much of an impact it would have on them that he actually payed attention to the video, but P (the mom) just loved the fact that he loved the video.

Saturday was an alright day. We didn't have too many lessons planned, but we had some people in mind that we went to go and visit. We did have a set appointment with M and P set up though, so we asked Hermana C if she could come with us. We went to go and visit this guy named A and he is super hard to understand. He is very old, super buff, from Mexico, and slurs his words... So really rough. Even Elder D says that it is hard for him to understand the guy. We stopped by to share a quick scripture with him and to plan to stop by next week because he is really busy. We then tried to go and see M and P, but for some reason they weren't home, so that was weird. We visited with Samuel and his roommates (ugh) and it was just really weird. S has been reading in the Book of Mormon and he read the part where it is the Testimony of the Prophet Joseph Smith, and so he remembered a lot of details about it and it was nice to see the start of such a small testimony, really nice. His (insert whatever word here) roommate was just a (insert another word here) during the lesson saying that S needs to tell him when people come over, and that S doesn't understand the things of God. Good thing we focused on Samuel during the lesson, but we did jab at the guy with a comment like this to S "there might be some people that have read the scriptures many times in their lives, but have never felt the Spirit. That is what we want you to feel in your life, the Spirit." We then taught about the Spirit and how it testifies of truth and bore testimony that we are the only church that has the Spirit. S agreed, but then the next day didn't come to church... UGH! We also stopped by this guy named B. It was really crazy cause basically what it came down to is that B believes that God would have a living day prophet on the earth today who has the authority of God... !!!! Anywho there was a (insert word here) member of another religion who was basically stopping us from having a lesson... Ridiculous. I will have to tell you more about that later. We also had a dinner that the Bishop gave to all of us in the ward, so that was pretty good.

Sunday was interesting because a lot of stuff was just an awful train wreck. Our High Priest Group Leader invited 2 friends to church and someone was trying to talk to them during sacrament meeting to tell them everything that was going on, and they decided to be sarcastic back to the person. Then you have the other Elders who are just having crazy success with investigators coming to church and E, who is getting baptized next week, handing out invitations for his baptism... Why? It has been REALLY hard in this area because it seems that nothing good has happened since I have been here. It was then even more rough when all of our appointments canceled again and even our dinner appointment. (Sassy voice) the member who was going to feed us was so nice and left a gift card to a fast food place so that we could go out and eat... But we couldn't cause it was Sunday. Thankfully when we stopped by the A the Hermana made her version of a breakfast burrito for us and it was really good. We watched some Mormon messages with them and she shared part of her life's story, I might tell y'all about that later (just remind me of M and being a husband and I'll remember it).

Next week is transfers so place a guess as to what is going to happen! 

Love,

Elder Roberts

(Elder Roberts got this shirt last week)