Go Ed Go!

This week has been another great week! Getting lots of things done and getting lots of good work!

    This week we got a new mission nurse, Sis. Turner.  She will be working with us in the office.  She is from SLC, and in fact lives in the cove.  My Mom knew her son when they were both at Skyline.  It's a very small world. 

Our area is pretty small so we are at the point where a lot of the time we will be walking down the street and lots of people just pick up their stool and whatever they are doing and take it inside until we pass, then they come back out again. We also have lots of good friends in the area who are really excited to see us but everyone is starting to look super familiar. 

A couple weeks ago I talked about the Muslim man we were wanting to teach. We were able to teach him and it was extremely spiritual... You could just feel the spirit surrounding us. He is such a humble man and so religious. He kept telling us about how he is just waiting and wanting for someone to teach him about Jesus Christ. We were able to testify to him about the Atonement and the Book of Mormon. He didn't have much time with us. But there is no denying that he felt the spirit. He leaves for Saudi Arabia this week and we won't have time to teach him again. But luckily, I just had happened to bring my English Book of Mormon in addition to the usual Tagalog Book of Mormon that I usually carry around with me. I was able to give him the Book of Mormon and he was just grateful, and he promised me that he would read it cover to cover and would give it back to me next time he saw me, and it would be read completely. 

Ed

Ed came to church again this week! And yes, he did join the ward choir! Haha he is so cool. He was introducing himself in Priesthood opening exercises and announced to everyone kinda in the form of a testimony about how he is no longer going to be Catholic but will be a Mormon. He then said pointing to us, thanks to my 2 friends, I know what church I need to join now. Then he sat down.  Everyone in priesthood just nodded with their eyebrows raised, thinking "that's what I'm talking about". The Elders Quorum has been great for him and hopefully he's getting some friends in choir. 

Elder Monson is transferring, so we will be in a threesome for three weeks until Elder Webster is done with his office training.  This was quite unexpected but change is good. 

Great week. Great time to be on the Lord's side. Time to gather the elect from all the ends of the earth. 

Elder Roberts   

When it rains, it pours

It's been a great week here in the area! We have been working really hard in the office to get out as early as we can so we can go and teach! And we have truly been blessed and have met many cool people this week. 

View from inside the van.  Just road flooding all the time

This week, along with the rain, the blessings have been pouring from heaven! It's been the most successful week we have had in our area. We were just able to find some cool people to teach and we taught Ed again, who came to church and seemed to really enjoy to it! He is extremely involved in the Catholic church with choir and their leadership stuff. But they announced a ward choir practice for after church so we thought that would be so cool for Ed as an investigator to join the choir! That would be a great way from him to get involved. But he is such a nice man and he actually gave Elder Monson and I a necktie when we went over to visit him. Then we both wore them on Sunday when he came to church! It was a fun moment! He is about 50 and lives with his Sister and Brother. Never married worked in Japan for a long way time. He is such cool investigator and just keeps getting cooler. He agreed to be baptized in July... But he still has a long road in front him. Pray for him!

We found a family this week with 7 kids!! They in live a skinny alleyway in a humble home. When we go over to teach all the kids gather around and just stare at us with big eyes. They are cool family! Hopefully we can get some cool members to work with us to help them get to church. It's a lot easier to teach people than it is to get them to go to church, but when they do go they always love it. 

We taught Ray this week who used to be a driver for an LDS family. He was extremely impressed by the way they lived and acted. For some reason what got him the most was how polite the kids were because of Primary. Which is pretty cool. This week we are just preparing for Zone Conference next week so it shouldn't too busy but random stuff always comes up. 

We see some really humble wonderful people!

We were visiting a less active in this pic.  Just to give you an idea of how small this "house" is, I'm at one end of the house. Elder Monson is at the other end. Then he has a little mattress to my left... That's it. We went over to teach him a lesson and he had a little dinner for us! Spicy dried squid rice and little noodles. 
Love Elder Roberts 

Pig's Blood is kind of chalky

This week was transfer week and everything went really well!! It's always fun to pick up the new missionaries from the MTC and talk to them on the way to the mission home. This is a really good batch of Missionaries. My companion was feeling a little under the weather this week so we didn't get out a ton but we did get to go out last night which was nice. The mission is really going by fast!! I might be in the office 1 or 2 more transfers then I'm out!! But we will see haha. 

Yesterday was our fast Sunday and we were really excited because we had a nice dinner appointment set up for later that night. This family had a son who had just left for a mission so they have been having us more lately probably because they miss him. But they are a part member/ less active family so it's nice to go over there and build a good relationship with them. So by the time we get to their house I'm quite hungry and excited to eat. We sit down in their home and the mom pulls out dishes for the night, and I go quite pale. They pull out a kinda famous dish here in the Philippines, pig blood. It's boiled pig blood  with chunks of intestines inside and an occasional ear... and then rice. Well that was a fun surprise. Luckily I see her pull out another dish, but when I asked what it was the dad laughed and said, don't worry it's pig, so I said well what part?? He chuckled and told me it was heart, liver and the rest of the innards of the pig... Spicy... So I shoved down the pig blood and innards and luckily they had some noodles and chicken as well which helped. The blood tastes super chalky. But the dishes are actually not too bad. Here is a short video that a nice lady took of us and sent it to our Mom's

Elder Monson and I are going to work on lots of finding this week. We just are choosing a specific spot in our area and are just going to talk to everyone there! Hopefully that will help us get some new contacts. Patrick is looking forward to another lesson this week so hopefully we can help him get off work on Sunday to come to church! 

Have a great week everyone!! Love you

We got a perfect 12!

Kumusta po ang mga minamahal kong mga kaibigan. Napakamaganda ang linggo namin. Seguro dapat magenglish ako. oo nga pala, magandang tangahi sa inyo lahat! 

Well it's been a good week, lots of crazy things happened to us but it's been good and we have made it out alive. A huge crane fell on our power lines during an interview today, and took down our powerlines, and the generator wasn't really set up..... So we had to drive everyone over to the mission home and took some computers with us as well so we could still work a little. It was a tough day and we didn't get out to work much this week. We did get to work but we didn't get out everyday. Which can be hard, even though it's our calling here in the mission it can be tough. But I know the Lord will bless our area. 

Ed read the Book of Mormon again! He said he knows it's true but he hasn't yet prayed about it. For his conversion he will need to receive that divine confirmation. He is super involved in his choir at the Catholic church. I love teaching him, usually just because we are in the city, it's hard to get any quiet lessons. But when we teach him, it's always quiet, we just walk up some little wooden steps into his humble humid home and the spirit has really been strong! 

Ed, like the rest of our investigators, love to feed us a snack when we get there to teach. No matter if you tell them you have eaten or whatever they will almost always go and get you a soda and some crackers. Almost all of our investigators do that for us, I guess that's the ideal snack for them! Often the water is unclean so it's safer if they just give us soda anyways. 

We will probably be dropping Romy and the Gavino family this week. They just don't seem to want to change at the moment. So in the future I know they can have another chance to keep commitments and such. But they just aren't progressing anymore and seem fine at the point they are at. It's never fun to drop people you love and have the spirit with. But we need to find the people ready to come unto Christ and the people who will keep commitments. Often times people just need a little break here and when the missionaries come again they are ready. 

We got our apartment checked this week, and the President Wolcott (a member of the mission presidency) sat down after checking our apartment, and looked us and sighed, "I hate to do this Elders" shaking his head.... I'm giving you a perfect score. Haha we were so happy!! It's only happened 4 times (and it was probably sisters apartments). So they took our picture. It was a proud moment! We knew our mothers would be proud (and that they might not believe us).
Here's the email President Wolcott sent to Pres and Sis. Ostler "Sister Ostler,
Elder Roberts and Elder Monson scored a 12 today on their housing inspection. They are great servants of the Lord."

On pday we actually got to play tennis again on Saturday!! It was super fun! I really want to get back into tennis when I get home, it's just so little hassle, all the courts are free, you just need a racket and some balls. It's so fun to play tennis. 

I know that Heavenly Father is ready to bless us and mold us into people who can become like Him and dwell with Him eternally. I know that the Church is true and Heavenly Father loves us and is way more involved in the little aspects of our lives then we will ever know. 

Love you all,

Elder Roberts   

The Rain Came Down and the Floods Came Up

Hello, sorry for the no email last week, things got super busy. The rain was so strong this week it broke another one of my umbrellas. Elder Monson and I left the office and we were walking and we saw the clouds but it was too late... the rain came down and the floods came up! It's really heavy and thick rain, it was like that for about 45 minutes then was gone again. We are almost to rainy season so that should be becoming pretty common

Patrick is doing well and is still loving to read all the assignments we give him. When we went to teach him again he confessed, "Elders, I still haven't had any dreams about if the church is true or not". We're working with him to help him understand the Holy Ghost and things like that. But he is sure doing great! 

This week we went to follow up with a man who didn't really want to let in his house at all the first time. He really kept telling us how active he was in his Catholic church. We finally got into to teach him only because we told him we would just share a short message about Christ. We sure did. We used powerful passages straight from the Book of Mormon. We left him a Book of Mormon and our testimonies on the way out. We never thought when we came back this week to follow up he would be so excited to let us back in. He read our assignment, a passage from King Benjamin's sermon. He loved it. So this time we taught the restoration and he really felt the spirit. We left him another assignment and I guess we will see what happens this week. When he opened and read from the Book of Mormon he invited the spirit into his heart, that really softened him. It was like night and day. We look forward to visiting Ed again this week. 

We've been finding a lot of cockroaches in the house so we've been going crazy to track them down and kill them before they grow in numbers.

My skin matches my shirt.  Working in the office = pale face

Yep

Romy was busy with work and didn't have a chance to teach him. 

We had Makati Stake Conference here and it was a full house. . . it was so powerful.  This mission in 1975 had 20,000 members and only 2 missions and no temple.  Now we have 700,000 members, 21 missions and 2 temples.  But we still have much work to do.  To find the people prepared to hear the gospel.  It's amazing to see the growth this far, and to envision the future of the church here.

Our area has lots of kids, and it's fun now because we have been here long enough in the area that all the kids know us and love to run up and give a high five and stuff like that. Their school will be starting up in June I think but it's been fun to get to know them. 

I know that the Book of Mormon is the word of God. It gives more protection, guidance, comfort, and counsel then we even realize.

Elder Roberts 

Happy Mother's Day

Hello everyone. The Church is True. 

This week was nuts. We had a ton of stuff going on. We started teaching Romeo this week, he lives right next to Julius, haha Romeo and Julius......

Romeo is really interesting. We met him when he was pretty drunk because it was some holiday but we told him we would come back. We came back a different day and taught him a really powerful lesson. He is a worker on the Santos (saints). Back in the day when the Spanish were here they brought Catholicism here and they made lots of statues of saints and of Mary and Jesus and Baby Jesus. Anyways, they have these antique statues from the 1600s, of course the paint gets cracked and they get old. Romeo's job is to repaint and restore them, it takes him several months just to get one statue back into it's original glory. So he is obviously very catholic but he has a good friend who is Mormon and that has really helped him to be open to our message! His wife really tries to ignore us as of right now, but in her right time, she will come join us I'm sure. In my first few areas we had a really hard time getting fathers/men to listen to our message, but in this area, we seem to be teaching almost all fathers with a few exceptions. 

We met Jesus and Mary this week, at first they were super rude to us. He kept telling us, do you think we will change from Catholic, my name is Jesus, and my wifes name is Mary... We nodded and said okay okay trying to calm him down. But every night we walk past them and they look super excited to see us. Now they give us free gulaman (sea weed drink) from their store and asked us for a Book of Mormon. He told us, sorry Elders I only had time for the introduction, I promise I will keep reading more...  We said that would be great! He doesn't want us to teach him but if he keeps reading the Book of Mormon the Spirit will soften his heart, I have seen it before and I know they can do it! Jesus is really cool though, he was a professional chef in England for a while, and he and his wife just moved back, they are probably in their 30s. 

Well on Saturday it was my companions birthday! We went to an Indian restaurant and then I surprised him setting up a deal so that we could go play tennis at the mission home, which was super fun. President and Sister Ostler were really nice to let us go play. They live in a super nice Village so it's always fun to go there. President actually said "You know you can come more often than just a birthday right?" So we were excited to hear that.

We met this really interesting man in our area, the only thing is, he is Muslim from Pakistan. We aren't allowed to teach him without permission from our Mission President. We went to go visit the man but he was praying. But we saw him again and still is really cool. We will see what happens, we have lots of rules regarding that, just for our safety and his. 

In the office we still drive around everywhere with random problems and stuff like that. Today is election today and so hopefully things aren't too crazy today. 

Happy Mothers day to the Mothers.   It was so great talking to everyone on Mother's Day.  Here's a pic of me getting ready to set up for Skype.

The Book of Mormon is the word of God, and miracles are rolling across the earth. It's a great time to be a member of the church!  

Love Elder Roberts 

Great Week

This week has been crazy. But lots of fun. We have been working with this family. The Robles family, the mom is less active, but the dad is very less active. We have really been trying to get the mom to come to church and she came! Also their son got baptized this saturday and the mom came again on Sunday! The Senior couple knows the dad so they came to the baptism as well. We are really close with them and we are going to their house this week for my companions birthday. 

We also taught Nanay Archy again this week! Nanay just means mother, she told us to call her mom, when we come over she always feeds us. She is super cool.  She fed us so much, just lots of fish cooked in unique ways.

When it's this small do you even bother taking the head off?

It's so yummy. Which was actually really nice because we forgot to buy food for dinner this fast Sunday. She really enjoys our message, we are working hard to help people understand the nature of the Godhead here. Because almost everyone here believes in God, they are willing to hear about Him. But they are often really confused to the actual nature of the Godhead. Many think Jesus is the Father, the Holy Ghost is a woman, the Godhead is everywhere and nowhere, that Jesus isn't Jehovah, that it's okay to worship Holy people. You would be surprised what we run into. It is so crazy that people can be so confused as to what is so universally simple. 

This week we also taught great lessons to all sorts of different people, we are finding lots of new investigators! 

Elections are next week so things are crazy here. They drive big vans through the streets playing music, there are millions of posters, and really loud rallies all the time. Sometimes we are walking around and people think we are campaigning for a president. Romy is still doing great, he still is always just in his boxers when we teach him, but we are really exhorting him to read the Book of Mormon. 

Patrick is a very visionary man (so are soo many of the Filipinos), he has had lots of visions in his life so we thought he would enjoy the tree of life. and he sure did! He read the whole thing a couple times and loved it! Now we just need him to come to church.

One word.  Heat.

There are still lots of crazy cats here, they are lurking everywhere. Our mission President also adjusted the morning schedule due to the heat, studies are now in the afternoon, so outside in the morning, studies in the afternoon, and then out working again. 

The church is true! 

Elder Roberts