Week 14

This week was interesting. So many meetings and service, but it was awesome! In Gilbert, there are opportunities to do service, but if you ask, usually they'll say no. But this past week we got around 12 hours of service! Not a lot for other missions, but a good amount for us. 

We also had a great Thanksgiving! We had it at a family's house named the Lindsey's. We talked for a while and discussed Light the World! Someone in our ward also brought us to a Sushi place! It was amazing. これすしはおしいですよ! I'm not really a Camaro person, but he drove us in his Camaro SS 6 speed. It was pretty fun. He's been to Japan several times and he said it was a solid Sushi place. Nothing crazy, but a solid medium tasting Sushi. And covid! A missionary in our house got it! We're not sure how and where, but he's vaccinated. Thankfully we don't have to stay in the house for 10 days, just him, sadly. He and his companion won't have fun though sitting at home all day. I think they'll be trying to do lots of studies . Ssince he's isolating in his room, we're allowed to still leave. Crazy stuff! And shout out to my Uncle Sheldon, he's let me know that Japan will be closed for a month because of the new variant, Omicron. They could be still closed longer. But it doesn't really phase me, I was thinking 3-6 months anyway. 

An area update. We're 4 weeks into our transfer here. We haven't taught a lesson. Everyone we have in our Areabook, is gone and too busy. We decided to shift our focus. So far it's working very well! We ask every family (the Spirit dictates, so there have been times that we don't) to pray about their neighbors and friends and come up with 1 name in 3 days. We missionaries will then follow up and talk about how praying went and who they thought of. The idea is, is that it involves members in almost every step. They pray, we work with them, they see that they're part of the work, just as much as us. It'll be great! We've asked around 4 people so far and we'll be following up in 2 days! 

Last week we had an awesome experience! It was around 7:00pm and I had a language call that night. We decided we had time for one more person to visit and give a short message (member visit). We felt good about this family, but they were not there. Then another family, again, not there. We did it a third time! Again, no one. We're like, "We guess we're going home". We go down the street and see this guy and his wife trying to take a fridge off their truck. We stopped and helped! His name is Lorenzo and we talked for a solid 30 min! He talked about his life story and we talked about mission and church! He mentioned he hasn't been able to come to his church in a while and at the end, Elder Bodily asked him to come and he said he would! We got his number and we texted him the info and address. He didn't come yesterday as we talked to him Saturday night. So next week, we have our fingers crossed! 

We also have an incredible stake! Awesome stake presidency and high councilors. Every week we meet with Brother Dennison. He's probably the most talented piano player I've meet in person. He played for us his arrangement of "Teach Me To Walk In The Light" and it took him a year to write it! Wow! We also have a great stake president named President Tinker and every Month we have Tinker Time. We go over to his house and have an amazing breakfast and a big correlation meeting with the missionaries in the stake. What a great man! At the end we got a stocking and he gave us fifty bucks and candy :). It's funny several people have given us money to pay for things, but we really don't need it, so it might be tipped or donated to something. Maybe Light the World! It's also nice to have the fifty extra dollars for haircuts :).

But yeah, Japan might be in a year, or 4 months. Either way, I'm excited to be here! And feel free to email me any questions or cool experiences! I can respond on Mondays :). Love you guys!

みなさんあいしています！

ロバートソン長老 

On Thanksgiving I also went to a memeber's house to make snowflakes for a local nursing home.

Week 13

I have brought this point up in my emails, but people feed you so much here! I'm already a bit bigger, so the amount of calories being feed to me hasn't affected me, but some other missionaries gain soo much weight. And about the grandma :). So we had a gray dot in our system (showing someone who had been meeting with the missionaries) and we decided to visit. She opened the door and gave us a surprised/confused look and let us in! We had dinner and got to know them and then we helped her move some things in her basement. She has a lot going on. Basement was flooded, redoing rooms, just tons of things to do. At the end we're talking about religion a bit and she brings up some points and we lovingly affirm truth and then "correct" her. She also was like, "Make sure you read the Bible, so you see that your church is wrong!", and it was pretty funny because she said it in the most lovingly way possible. We did end on a good note however :). I think it confuses a lot of people because we actually agree with what they mostly say, but we just have additional points, so it confuses them. Great lesson about love! We can all love each other even when we disagree. 

This week we actually got the opportunity to set up Light the World in Gilbert! We set up the Light the World giving machines and got training on them! So we'll be doing shifts the next couple months which will be awesome! You can buy stuff from the machines like food for a day for a person, or a goat for someone in another country. Stuff like that.

Our area where we're in is pretty dead :(. Everyone "knows" us and most people reject us right when we get there (anywhere). We've been trying to love the people and just honestly get to know them and be their friends. We've met lots of cool people and it's awesome, but whenever we bring up the Gospel, they immediately shut us down. They basically put up this mental wall and we're just machines. We've been trying to show people that we're people just like them and just trying to share our faith in Christ and sharing messages about Him. 

Elder Bodily and I decided on something. We're radically changing how we go about doing the Work in this area. Through members! We usually do that anyway. Without members, you're very disadvantaged. But specifically for this ward, we'll need to do a lot of member work. Asking members who to stop by, have members bring a friend to every dinner appointment, invite friends, etc. We also are going to put a lot more effort into Ward Council and just getting things rolling. Our Mission President told us a cool statistic. If the Ward Council gives us a referral, 1 out 5 people will accept the Restored Gospel. When missionaries do work, just by ourselves the numbers go way down. It's up to the members. The Ward Council gets together with a list of names and as a group they pray about it and ponder it for a couple of days. (The Ward Council is a group of people who are over different organizations in our ward aka local congregation.) Then they pray about it again in Ward Council and they get a name that everyone agrees one and then they refer it to us! So super cool, we really want to implement it.

I can't believe it, but tomorrow I will be out for 3 months! I don't know how this week is week 13, but hopefully at the end I have 104 emails :). It's crazy, but I'm loving it! Lots of hard work and honestly lots of self-improvement. It's crazy how much you notice when your serving a mission! My companion is pretty awesome and a great worker, Elder Bodily. He's from Vernal, Utah, and he was a farmer boy, so he's a very hard worker. 

Japan news! So I don't have any updates really, but Japan opened up their Visa process, I mentioned that last week, but I just talked to some people in my ward and they served missions in Japan and I got to learn lots of cool and scary things about there! Not actually scary, just mainly hard. 

Something my companion and I have been focusing on this past week is 3rd Nephi 18:24. It's Jesus Christ when He's talking to the people in America and He talks about how as people we need to hold up our light and that light needs to be Christ. Christ is the Light and Life of the World. So something to think about is,

What do I hold up?

It can be sports, popular social standing, anything. But if we want lasting happiness, we need to hold up Christ as the object we hold. 

Love you guys! Have a great week!

(We're eating すし tonight!)

まてね みなさん！ 私はあなたがたをあいしています！ 

ロバトーソン長老

Week 12

What a week! We have an awesome area, lots of great members and it's great getting to know them in our wards. Thankfully we have only two wards. Many other missionaries have more wards than that, so that is an awesome blessing. 

So this past week was the first full week after transfers. And we have learned some valuable lessons. BE AWARE OF YOUR TIME! And for my companion Elder Bodily and I, Facebook thankfully isn't an issue, but man, sometimes dinners and contacts with older folks can get super long. BE BOLD! We've been bad about getting to the whole point of my "we're here, to share the Gospel"! We're finding our conversations are just surface level and we don't get to know them. It also doesn't help we are on bikes and going to appointments, so it's not very natural to speed by someone and turn around and start talking to them. Don't get we wrong, we still have great contacts with non-members, here and there, but we're just finding, the "meh" conversations are happening, more and more. 

We have a good amount of people to work with, but the problem is SO many people are busy right now. We knock on their door and there's no one home. And there's a lot of factors, but just a lot of missing people. The members are amazing, but missionary work is hard and sometimes it's not the most fun. Missionary work in the wards is still awesome, but could be better. 

Funny story, we were at a dinner and it was great. Great lesson and great food :). We ended and I went to the restroom. I came back out and Elder Bodily and I said bye and we left. Outisde, my companion just started busting. Apparently the wife and the husband exchanged some words and were cursing at each other and apparently they didn't know Elder Bodily was behind them. Oops :). But don't get the wrong idea, they're great members and they're getting a bit old. But they were honestly awesome :). P-day was fun and we get around $63 dollars for 2 weeks. I usually got eggs, milk, cereal, yogurt, bread, apples and bananas, etc. I got some eggnog this morning, which was fun :). 

They did not lie about gaining weight! Yes obviously I can refuse food. But it makes the members feel nice and it's a great way to gain their trust, by eating their food and saying how good it is, because it is! So yes, I can reject, but I usually don't. Haha, we'll be playing basketball this week every morning :). And I heard some good news from a couple sources! Apparently Japan is opening up the Visa process! (correct me if I'm wrong) and the US is opening to foriegners! I would love to type more, but we got a dinner to go to. :)

みなさんをあいしていますよ！

ロバートソン長老

Week 11

Haha, this is so weird with me being at my mission a week earlier :). I keep saying my last transfer whenever someone asks, but this is my first transfer, but I still was here last transfer.... Anyway, it's confusing, but awesome! 

Transfers rolled out last week and we were in Florence. Florence is in the most southern zone of the Gilbert Mission. But my companion Elder Bodily and I got transferred up to the most Northern zone, bluewashed an area (where Elders take over a ward that Sisters were previously serving in) and to put a cherry on top, blank areabook! No whiteboard, nothing. Meaning: we had no information on people the previous missionaries were meeting with and had to start from scratch. Thankfully we met with the ward missionary leaders (we cover two wards) and now we have some things we can work on. But it's crazy, there hasn't been any progress for 1-2 months in this area, because the past Sisters, one got her visa to Brazil and the other one died (mission lingo for she finished her mission, don't freak out :) ). But now we can get these lessons going and get some progress! 

A cool moment we had this past week was during night contacting. So we felt inspired after a prayer to visit a particular family. It was weird because on our map, their address was XXX but on the map it showed it to be YYY. My companion felt to go to the address written in, so that's where we went. We got there and knocked and..... nothing. We went to the other contacts beside them and still nothing. Afterwards when we were talking, we both voiced basically the same thing in our head. "Why did we feel good about coming to this family? Why did we feel good to go to a door and have it not be opened?" A couple minutes later we decided to visit a family that was up on the next street. We felt good about him and went and he answered! Due to circumstances in his life, he hasn't held a calling for the past several years and has been home for the past year. He's basically very sick and you can't tell unless he tells you. But we knew we were there to cheer him up. He's a strong member, we didn't go and teach him, we didn't go and got him to be baptized. We were there because God knew that this Brother needed someone to talk to. After a while into our conversation he asked, "Did the Stake President send you?" We said no, he thought we were joking at first :). Then he asked again, differently, "Did the Bishop send you?" And again we said no. And that was a tender mercy for him and us. An angel didn't appear to him and give him words of comfort. God sent two 18 year old missionaries and that was what he need. Very humbling to see that even though we are imperfect and by ourselves we are a stumbling block for God's work, God still uses us to answer our people's prayers. I know that we went to his house for a purpose and that was to simply cheer him up. Awesome experience!

My Japanese is still ok :)! Thankfully I have Sisters in my mission that were in the same Japanese District as me in the MTC and my mission President is going to let us video call to practice Japanese. I think I've said this already, but hearing it again won't kill you :). 

Also in my ward there's a cool brother who speaks Japanese and a sister from Japan. So I'll be getting some good SYL from them :). Arizona is great and I've been loving it. Two Elders from my District, Elder Rahm and Wixom, had some photos from their mission and man I thought I was going to cry. Don't get me wrong, I love Arizona and the people here, buuuut, there's something left to be desired with the endless dirt, rocks, and cactuses. But there is beauty in all things and I won't deny, the sunsets here are spectacular. But man, the pictures they sent, wooo! They were good pictures. Anyway, I got a dinner in 34 minutes and I need to shower. Ahhhh! 

Bye!!! P.S. sorry if this email is bouncing everywhere with ideas/topics, lots of thoughts to gather :).

みなさんをあいしています

ロバートソン長老

Week 10

1st Day in the Field

So yes I lied, I haven't even been on my mission for even 5 hours! But alot has happened. 

Some Highlights

1. Flight plans were scrambled

2. Met my new companions, Elder Bodily and Elder Brewer!

3. Met my mission President and his amazing wife, the Wrights! 

This morning I woke up at 3:30am and got to the Shenandoah Local Airport and said bye to my family :(. But, we were all happy :). Apparently the plane was broken when the pilots got there this morning, so it was an hour delay. I rerouted and called Church Travel people. But in like twenty minutes they got the plane to work and fixed the issue and hurried us on there. So I made it to my original flight. There were weird complications with my ticket, but I got on. Instead of getting there at 5pm (rerouted flight), I got there at 1:30ish. Thankfully, before my last flight I emailed my Mission President and Wife and they were able to leave right away and pick me up! We went to the Mission office and had Chick-fil-A and we talked together and then I met my new companions and filed out some paperwork. We went to Walmart and Walgreens and then we got home. Because of the housing situation in Gilbert, we have a house :). There's our trio and another companionship. It's been pretty fun. The other Elders are Elder Vargas and Rojas. But things have been going good for the short time I've been here. From now on since my P-days are on Mondays, when I do my Week 11 email, it will be about week 10, or I don't know how, but I'll make it work. 

ロバートソン長老

1st Week in the Field

So this is the actual week 10! Quick recap, we've had several lessons, great street contacts, and had some interesting experiences. We've eaten shrimp to Peruvian to good old burgers. We've had some cool experiences while street contacting. We went on exchanges and some guy was arguing with us from his garage and we talked for a bit and left. But that night went much better and we found a cool guy and we talked for 10-15 minutes. We handed him a Book of Mormon and a Plan of Salvation pamphlet!

So the days aren't as crazy as I was imagining, but it's still a busy schedule. My Japanese practice has been going well and I've been getting around an hour a day. I've also enjoyed the awesome members here and meeting them. It's also been awesome starting with a trio for just a week. I got a good headstart on things and my companions 

Elder Bodily and Brewer were amazing. We had a great time and even though we only had a week, it was great. We also had a really clean house and great roommates. So yesterday and today were trainings. It was cool to see two sisters from my MTC district here, and President Wright has been really supportive of us video calling to speak Nihongo, so that's been nice. 

Today was transfers and for my first week I was in Florence. Now I'm all the way in the northern eastern zone. So I was in the most southern of the mission and now in the complete opposite. Our new house is a bit rough...some elders just don't know how to live by themselves. Hopefully we can clean up and get the house better. 

There's also 6 elders in this house, so I think we'll all get along, and if we do it should be fun. But we've had some amazing spiritual experiences with members and friends we've met. There's so much to say, but there's a lot happening. I'm here in Gilbert so I'm going to give my best, but I'm still praying for Japan to open up. But before then, I'm working here. It's a great time to improve my teaching and progress the Work of Salvation in Arizona! I really do love it here--it's awesome . Love you guys! 

ロバートソン長老