Jewish Traveler

We traveled up to a small branch this week for exchanges. We had to hop on a shuttle and weaved our way up through the mountains and next to the coast for a few hours. Up in the mountains it's really thick jungle and was raining really hard. As we wandered through the mountains in the shuttle, it turns out the lady sitting behind me is from Israel and is a backpacking tourist here for about a month. I had to turn around in my seat to teach her and to talk to her but there reached a point in the journey when I just kind of looked around thinking about how weird that I was up in the mountains and it's raining really hard and I'm teaching a Jew about the Book of Mormon... But she was really nice and committed to read the Book of Mormon that we gave her. 

When up in the city of Roxas we had a really good time. We walked on the beach to go some fishermans house to try and help reactivate the father. The Roxas branch has really great faith... We saw lots of members selling food or other things to save up as much money as they could so that they could make the journey down to Puerto for District conference (or for us, Stake conference). I just loved feeling their faith and thought to myself, before my mission would I dedicate this much time and effort to attend and work this hard to save up money to hear my church leaders speak at stake conference? It was a blessing for me to be up their with the those faithful saints. Lots of rice fields and Carabao chillin in the mud. We  taught and ate with a recent convert family looking forward to going to the temple next year...  

The kids up there got a little crazy... Most of them have never seen blue eyes in their lives and lots of them still think I'm wearing blue contacts haha. 

We had a great Zone conference and we are starting a new thing where we are pushing for all recent converts to go do baptisms for the dead... It's a big  blessing for their family members and apparently is amazing for retention. 

Turns out Fred Pelayo from my last area in the city got baptized!! I'm sure he is now happily paying his tithing, he was always looking forward to that so much haha. But I was very happy to hear that. 

Yesterday we called at a house to see if anyone was home, and a man came out and we thought we were going to get blown off like we had been all day but this man let us in... He is actually really well off as well. But we saw right away he was a man of great faith... really strong faith haha. He got really heated with us about The Book of Mormon.... He had just never thought there could be something like that... Another Testament of Jesus Christ. He is a faithful Baptist member, but was almost shaking and yelling wondering if what we were telling him was true. Could there really be prophets in another land? Is the Bible not complete enough?  What does that mean if the Book of Mormon is true...? Does God really talk through Prophets in other lands?  We opened with him to Ezekiel 37, and did all we could to testify of it's truthfulness. At the end my companion said we want you to have this and to read the introduction... He got kinda mad and said I can't know it's true by reading the introduction... I need to read the whole thing. We smiled and hoped he really will read it and pray... 

I know he can do it!! It's up to him now... I pray he will do it. We have been finding good people lately and working our hardest.
Sorry I can't upload pictures, my computer isn't letting me for some reason.  It's too bad because I have some great ones from the Roxas City and with members,  maybe next week. . . 

I know the Book of Mormon is true. 

Love,

Elder Roberts 

Island Hopping on P-day

Hello! We got permission to go Island hopping!!!!! Crazy right?? It's the first time that's anyone's  gotten permission... SO our whole apartment will go plus the Elders serving in Puerto proper... IT will be the best!! Yeah we interact all the time with the elders in our apartment, in the morning and at night and they are all super funny. Here are the Elders in the apartment... 
We played beach volleyball, chess, Rugby, and had a buffet then went back on the boat back to Puerto :) had a great time!! 

We went on exchanges this week with our district leader... Went well!! This is Elder Brisken's last transfer... He's from Texas and goes home in just a few short weeks... 

This is the area Honda Bay

Who remembers the caterpillar from last week?? He's a new creature now!!

**Also, I need Porters help on this. We found this spider and we THINK it's the venomous infamous Banana 

spider... We aren't aloud of look up stuff online so please ask Porter if he thinks this is it! We fed this guy a 

cockroach and he ate it haha. Anyways tell Porter it's a slow spider and had a HUGE beautiful web... So 

hopefully someone can help us identify what this is... It's crazy ugly** Let me know if he needs anymore

 information on it... 

This is Elder Addurru, a senior couple Elder that we all love... We tell him he look like President Hinckley... eheh. 

He was baptized here in the Philippines when he was young, one of the first baptisms, then moved to California, 

and now is back here to serve a mission in Palawan... We love the Addurrus! 

I'm in the best mission. . .

Hello everyone!  I'm glad to hear Regional Conference was so inspiring.  Thanks for sharing what you had learned from it.  I'm glad the message from Elder Ballard was great!! It does sound really simple but just simply living the gospel is what we all need. We have a lot of less actives in my area who seem to believe that keeping the commandments is out of their hands, whenever it comes to work or lack of money, or to come to church, but keeping the commandments is ALWAYS a choice. We will always have our agency.  We will be taking a 5 hour bumpy bus ride up to the top of Palawan to a really remote place next week to check on a small branch of Tatay. They have had great growth and have beautiful baptisms in the ocean. I can't wait and I will send pictures, but it's not until next week still. Sorry so short, much missionary work makes Elder Roberts have very condensed computer time.  You all asked last week if we do a lot of service projects, we do a big project once a week.  I feel so lucky to be here, I just feel like I'm in the best mission, in the best area, just everything has been amazing so far. Missions are so hard but I feel great joy from it. Thank you for your prayers, I love you,

Elder Roberts

pretty huge catepillar

My companion is muy guapo.

Spider Fights

It's been good to get some nice heat this week. It usually rains in the earlier afternoon then heats up... It's been feeling pretty nice. Awesome week. Lots of fun surprises. We found a less active family this week that got offended. But they have 7 kids.... We are really trying to help them get to the temple now, they just got pretty offended. 

We also found some random less actives from the early 2000s who wanted us to give them blessings, we found this old man hauling wood to his house with his grandson, we gave him a blessing before he headed back down into the southern of Palawan. But we are now teaching his daughter who is staying here. 

We had a great service project this week to a house of a less active... We mostly just "weeded" out all the shrubbery... and the kids and Elder Brisken attacking a bees nest haha... 

Attack of the bee nest

PS. The less active came to church.
I got to go to Manila this week for a few days and that was fun... I got to work in Pasay.... It's just choas.... Lots of Markets and covered in people, felt good to come back to Palawan and relax and get fresh air. 

My companion is super cool... He's really really funny and is pretty laid back but like to get stuff done if that makes sense. I'll do some exchanges this week after our zone meeting. Yeah the membership is great here!! Very powerful!  

We had some spider fun in our apartment this week haha.  It's very popular here.  We caught them and tried
to get them to fight.  Pero ayaw nila.  We caught them and put them into containers. . . They are starting to
infiltrate the apartment. . . they are so dang fast too.

Yes.. oh my heavens it feels amazing to be out in the field... and to be in Palawan... People are a lot more open and nice here in Palawan!! We ran out of gasoline and it was fast sunday and we had to break our fast and eat somehow someway, so here's to inventive cooking.

Well I love you, tell the family I love them!! 

Love Elder Roberts