Yet, Another One

Hola everybody!

 

So I have some exciting/crazy news: I will only be in the MTC for another 2 weeks and 3 days!! Crazy huh! Has it gone as fast for you as it has for me? Probably not... haha :) I'm excited to leave, but I will be super sad to go at the same time! I'll be sad/scared I should say, I feel like I don't know ANY Spanish, even though I know I do and I should be grateful I've been able to pick it up as well as I have because I know some people who struggle way hard with it. Someone said something way cool though about that, it was an Elder in one of our old districts. He said that once he stopped trying to learn Spanish for himself and started learning it for the people he would be teaching he was able to learn it much quicker. And I've realized that when I pray before doing language study if I pray and ask for help remembering that I'm learning it for the people of Colorado and if I pray for help in learning it, I remember a ton more of what I learn than if I don't pray... It's super cool!

 

I also just have some exciting news: Elder Scott came and spoke to us in our devotional last night and it was super good! It's the first time a member of the 12 has spoken here in like 3 or 4 months, so I was glad we were able to be here for it! When he walked into the room I felt the Spirit way strong, I had never had that happen to me before just by having someone walk in the room so it was super cool.This was his testimony: "I don't believe that Christ has a resurrected body - I KNOW He does.  I know that He atoned for our sins and that He LIVES." It was a super short testimony but it was really powerful. He also invoked upon us the Gift of Tongues, and said that it doesn't mean we don't have to study, but that if we sincerely try and have a desire than the studying will be much easier.

 

Elder Scott also said something really cool, "Don't judge yourself by what you think your potential is." I realized that we really shouldn't do that because with God we can do anything, but if we limit ourselves by not believing in ourselves we'll never reach our full potential, and we'll never reach our full potential without God. I have no idea if that makes sense, it does in my head at least... :) He also said, "Don't judge your capabilites by your past." Just because you couldn't do something in the past doesn't mean you won't be able to do it in the future. I really, really like that!

 

So we taught the first lesson (The Restoration of the Gospel) in Spanish for the first time on Saturday! It  actually went way better than I thought it would. I know that all my grammar and conjugating isn't correct, but I get across the message I want to. I always try to remebmer that because even our Colombian teacher who's been speaking English for 7 years still doesn't use correct grammar a lot, but we always (well, mostly) know what she's trying to say, so I can't get too caught up on the grammar stuff. I think what's going to be the hardest for me will be to not worry so much about remembering how to say certain words in Spanish, but just sitting back and listening to the Spirit and knowing that Heavenly Father will give me the Spanish words that I need to say, even if I don't recall at the time what they mean, I just need to say them because they're coming from the Spirit.

 

Cool conversion story of the week:

This girl got up in Relief Society and told us her conversion story. She used to live in DC and she was a devote catholic, her motto was "I was reared catholic, I am catholic and I'll die catholic." Well, along came the missionaries :) She said one day she was walking to karate class in a not so good part of DC and she saw these two little white boys (She's black so when she tells this story it's that much funnier because anything they say is funny :)) walking down this alley with big smiles on their face and she thought, "are they lost??" So she went up to them and asked them if they were lost. They said they weren't, but they had a message they would love to share with her if she had time. She said she didn't at that time, and she didn't want to invite them to her house because she didn't knwo them so she invited them to coffee (yeah, she was embarressed when they taught her about the Word of Wisdom... haha).

 

She said the first lesson in Starbucks lasted for 2 and a half hours! She kept asking question after question, not because she was interested in joining the church, but because she really was just interested in the beliefs of the religion. She said after the lesson she thought LDS people were pretty weird, but she agreed to let them teach her again. She gave them her number and went on with life. They kept calling her but she decided she really didn't want to hear anymore so she actually changed her cell phone number so they couldn't call her anymore!

 

Sometime later, I think at least 6 month, she was walking down the same alley and saw two more missionaries and she said she had no idea why, but something just pushed her to run up to them and asked them if they could come teach her. They said yes and the next day they went over to her house and taught her a couple lessons. The next time they went over she made them dinner and while they were eating they asked her if she'd be baptized. She said, "I'll tell you what, let's keep eating and we'll talk about this later." So they kept eating and she kept thinking about her Grandma who had passed away a year ago. Her and her grandma made pineapple empanadas the last time she ever saw her grandma and ever since then she gets these funny little signs through pineapples and she believes its her Grandma helping her throughout life (she hadn't told the missionaries this). So a little while later while they were still eating, she asked the missionaries, "What's the firs fruit you think of?" And they both looked up at her and said, "Pineapples." and she said the missionaries both looked at each other and she was all, "Being the 19 year old boys they were they both looked at each other and thought 'that is so cool we both thought of the same fruit!'" Hahaha, but then she said I knew that wasn't a coincidence, I know that was my Grandmother giving me a sign. So I said "Ok, I'll be baptized." She said the missionaries were really confused as to what fruit had anything to do with a decision to be baptized! Haha :)

 

I love hearing people conversion's stories though because they're all something super cool like that, something that just hit them like, "Oh my heck, this is the true church!" they do those every week in Relief Society and I LOVE it! I wish they would do just a whole hour of people doing that, I always feel the Spirit so strong when they're telling their stories.

 

Well, 4-square is officially my new favorite sport!!! I am known as Black Pearl in 4-square. Yeah, it's pretty legit. Hahaha :) It's so addicting. As my 4-square buddy Elder Quirante would say, "4-square isn't a sport, it's a way of life." Hahaha I love that kid, he left on Monday and I'm so sad! It stink having missionaries leave!!

 

Our purpose as missionaries is to invite other to come unto Christ. That doesn't mean just our investigators, but it means other missionaries, our teachers, our families so this I invite all of you to give thanks to God for something new EVERY DAY. Even if it's for the birds that you heard singing, or the fact that you can hear birds, if it's the fact that the sun was out that day, anything! Just give thanks.

 

Well, I must go eat lunch and then go to the temple! I will write next week and look forward to your letters :)

I love you guys!

-Hermana Roberts.

Hola!

Hola!

 

So this week, and every week for that matter, has gone by super fast! Before we know it we're going to be leaving! I think I really will be sad when I actually leave and go to Denver, I really do love it here. I love my teachers, all the Elders and Sisters and everything else about this place!

 

So my Colombian teacher learned English because she went on her mission to the Temple Square mission, and she actually speaks really, really good English, but sometimes she totally says the wrong word or pronounces things wrong and it turns out to be hilarious. Two weeks ago we were learning about conjugating. So she kept saying, "you just have to practice congregating." And we'd say, "Hermana, it's 'conjugating'" and she'd say, "oh, ok. Conjugating." Then literally 30 seconds later she'd say congregate again. So everyone was laughing and saying we know how to congregate really well, we do it everytime we all go out in the halls, what we really need help with is conjugating! So now she says (very slowly or she messes it up) "Whenever you congregate, conjugate!" Haha she's so funny :)

 

We had a Sister in our zone who had a birthday on Saturday so Hermana Sandavol says, "Hermana Severinsen, do you want me to bring you some x for your birthday??" and we all look at each other and her really weird and she's like "what?" And I was like, "what is x??" And this other sister is all, " I don't know, but it's a common name for ecstacy!" So we all bust up laughing and Hermana Sandoval has no idea what's going on so we explain what it is and she started laughing way hard and she's all, "No, I meant to say EGGS!" Then, we were still confused because why would you want eggs for your birthday?? Turns out in Colombia it's tradition that when you go to school on your birthday they all throw raw eggs on the head of the peron who's birthday it is... I have no idea why, but it made for a good laugh in class :)

 

Hermana Johansen and I did this TE thing to better understand how to teach the second lesson and we did it with this teacher named Brother Ang. I asked him where he served his mission and he said the NY north mission and I asked him if he happened to know Jon Miller and he's like, "yeah, I love that kid!! He's the best missionary!" So I told him he was my cousin and he was like, "that is so cool! He was one of my favorite Elders!" I usually don't ask people if they know people who I know served in their area because they never do, so I thought it was funny the one time I asked he actually did know him!

 

Cool story of the week: Actually, it's kind of cool and sad, but I thought it was awesome.

Last weekend Hermana Johansen and I were sitting outside of a classroom with Hermana Royle and we were waiting for Hermana Severinsen to get out of a meeting and these two other Sisters came up and sat across from us so Hermana Royle and I started talking to them. We asked them where they were from and the one, her name was Hermana Panoveistongo or something like that, and she said she was from Hawaii and she's tongan, so I asked her if she came to the MTC there or if she had lived somewhere else before. She said she lived in Oregon for three years and was going to school there and she said something about her being baptized there. So I said, "Oh, are you a convert?" She said, "Yeah, I got baptized three years ago!" so we talked about that for a little bit and then I asked her if any of her family had joined the church and she got this super serious look on her face and was like, "No, in the Tongan culture you do not change your religion. Ever. I flew home from Oregon to tell my family that I was getting baptized into this church and I was beat, literally beat, because I was changing religions. My family was really upset with me, but they just don't understand it at all." We kept talking about it for a little while and she said that she has written her family every week for the last 9 weeks and hasn't heard back from them once. They're that upset with her about it.

 

We were talking more and she said that her Grandpa had died last week and in Tongan culture there's very specific things that the oldest grandchild (she's the oldest) does at the funeral and it's very disrespectful if you aren't there to do it. So her mom actually called the MTC to talk to her and told her that her Grandpa died and her mom was totally expecting her to come home because she was supposed to the things the oldest grandchild was supposed to do. She told her mom that she wasn't coming home because she knew she'd never come back if she went home and she said her mom was furious with her and the rest of her family is super ticked at her too. But she said she hopes eventually they'll realize that maybe there is something super important about the work she's doing here since she wouldn't give that up to be with her family and go to her Grandpa's funeral.

 

I just thought it was insane that she was physically beaten and that her family won't even email her or write her letters because they're so upset, but she said, "Even though all that's happening, I'm still way happier than I was before I was a member of this church." I think it's amazing when people have such hard things to go through to become a member of the church and yet they still go through with it. I think it helps them appreciate it even more actually.

 

Today we are getting 10 new Elders in one district! That's huge and the classrooms here are tiny. We have 6 people in our district and we all barely comfortably fit into our classroom. I love getting new Elders, it's always so fun to meet them all :) I hope we get some new Sisters before we leave!! We'll probably get some the last week or two before we leave, which isn't very long to have with them, but we may not even get any at all!

 

I wasn't very prepared with writing down things during the week that I wanted to talk about in my email, so that's why this is so short... Haha, next week I'll be better! It's hard to remember throughout the week because we have so much to do and so little time to do it! I've printed off a bunch of conference talks that I want to re-read and every day I'm like, "I'm going to read this during personal study!" But then something comes up and I never get to do it! Seriously, the last week that's what happens everyday!

 

Spanish is coming along well. I REALLY wish I knew English grammar better because that seriously would make Spanish grammar much easier! They're like today we're going to talk about preterit regulars and irregulars. And I think, "I have no idea what preterit means, and how can words be regular or irregular? They're just words..." But luckily Hermana Johansen is freakishly good at grammar AND Spanish so she helps me out a ton, even though she gets frustrated with me sometimes :) I figure I'm just helping her learn how to be more patient... haha :)

 

One of the Elders in our zone said something really cool last week, he said that once he started learning Spanish for his investigators and not for himself, than that's when he was able to learn and understand Spanish a lot more. And I notice that, when I pray before language study and ask Heavenly Father to help me stay focused on the fact that I'm doing this for investigators I learn a lot more during my study!

 

Funny story, but it has to be super quick because I don't have much time! We pray A TON in the MTC, like  you have no idea how much. And we switch off between companions whose turn it is. The other day Hna J. said whose turn? I said, "I don't know, we haven't prayed FOREVER... like hours!" Hahaha it was hilarious!

 

Oh my crap, I have to go!

I love you all!

Buenos Dias!

Hello everyone!

 

I can't believe I've been here for a month already -- it's crazy! I'm half way done with my time here, and in some ways I'm glad and in some ways I'm sad. But I'm sure by the time my last two weeks come around I'll be WAY ready to get out of here and go out in the field!

 

I have good news... I'm getting baptized! Hahaha the investigator that I've been playing for some Sisters decided to get baptized. It was way funny though because they've taught me like 3 lessons I think and they asked me in the last lesson to be baptized and I said yes and couldn't stop smiling! It's seriously more exciting than when I got baptized for real! The Spirit just makes you feel so good when you make that decision, and it made me wish I could remember more about my own baptism!

 

We had this speaker come on Sunday and his name is Vai Sikahema (I think that's how you spell it) and he gave a way awesome talk! He used to be a professional NFL player and now he's a sports news guy for NBC in Philly I think, but his talk was about how when he went on his mission he and his companion went to buy tennis balls one day and the owner of the shop they went to was this guy who was like 25 and it was a family run business. So they guy says, "I've never met two men with the same first name of Elder." And Vai, thinking the guy was just being smart with him, said "Well, if you had any sense you'd let us come to your house and teach you about how that's not a name, it's a title!" And the man says, "OK, how about Thursday?"

 

Haha, so they went over to the man's, Bob is his name, house on Thursday and started teaching him about the gospel. They taught him three lessons and then Bob's wife decided she didn't like that he was being taught in their home so she said they couldn't do it there anymore. So Bob told them the ONLY other time and place they could teach  him was Thursday morning at 6:30 in his shop, before work started. For three months they taught him in his shop and then he decided to be baptized! But his wife didn't want anything to do with the church and she didn't want their two little girls involved either, so basically his wife told him if he got baptized she'd leave him. Bob was actually at the devotional with Vai on Sunday so they were both telling this story together. When Bob started talking about his decision to still get baptized he started crying and said that it was one of the hardest things he'd ever heard, but he HAD to get baptized because he knew it was true.

 

They didn't explain the time between his baptism and 20 years later, but Vai lost contact with them once his mission was over and then 20 years later he found their number and called them and Bob's wife answered the phone and Vai told her who  he was and he was shocked to find that she was so pleased to hear from him! He said that she was so happy and started talking about the temple and he said he just sat there on the phone crying and asked, "Laraine, have you been to the temple?" And she said she had, she got baptized a year ago and their whole family went through the temple and got sealed. Vai said he cried like a little baby, but he was just SO happy for them! And now because of Vai their two children are married in the temple and their children are sealed to them. I thought it was INCREDIBLE that it took Bob's wife 20 years to soften her heart and be baptized into the church, but what's more amazing is that Bob never gave up on her! It's amazing how slow and sometimes how quick people are to hear the message of the church, but once they do it bring so much peace and joy into their lives! Vai told us to go find OUR Bob Dohl and go change people's lives!

 

General Conference was really good! I'm not going to lie, I slept through a lot of the first two sessions, but I think I stayed awake the WHOLE time for the last two! It was really hard to not be able to get up and move around when I got tired like I do at home, so I fell asleep :) But here are some of my favorite things from conference:

Elder Bednar's talk about receiving revelation was super good! The thing that stuck out most to be was that you shouldn't overlook the simpleness of receiving revelation! Sometimes I think people don't think they receive answers to their prayers because they don't get this AMAZING answer thrown into their face, but they forgot that it's through peace, joy, long-suffering and feelings of love that we receive answers. It's not going to be this super powerful answer everytime, sometimes it's just feeling good about a choice you just made.

I also really liked in Elder Uchtdorf's talked he quoted St. Francis of Assisi and said, "Preach the gospel at all times, and if necessary, use words." I thought that was super powerful because it's so true, really the best way to preach the gospel is through your example. We had another speaker come last night and he told this story of a boy in the Dominican Republic I think and he was on a soccer team and he noticed everyday these two men would walk by and they were ALWAYS happy! They always had a smile on their face, so one day he asked one of his soccer buddies what he thought made those two men happy all the time. His buddy happened to be LDS so he introduced him tot he missionaries and they taught him and he was baptized. Pretty soon his other soccer buddies started to notice how happy he was all the time and they asked him why. He also introduced them to the missionaries :) Because of him being baptized and his buddies noticing a difference, three other men got baptized and all served missions. Now think about how many people THEY baptized on their missions and it's mind blowing how quickly that adds up! If those two original missionaries hadn't always been happy though, that soccer player may have never paid attention to them and wondered what it was them made them so happy.

 

I also really like President Monson's stories about temples and about that Brazilian (I think) group that traveled 7 DAYS to get to a temple, there and back!! That made me feel really selfish for not wanting drive 25 minutes to a temple. People in other places who don't have such close access to the temple are so excited when they go, but we totally take them for granted and sometimes think of it more as a drag than a blessing. I made a goal to go at least twice a month to the temple when I get home, but preferrably every week!

 

I loved Elder Christofferson's talk and he said to say to Heavenly Father, "Thank you, Heavenly Father, for loving me enough to give me chastisement and trials in my life so I can learn and grow."

 

Elder Oaks, for them 70 not the 12 :), spoke to us last night and he gave a way awesome talk about the Spirit and relying on it. He told this story of this man he met once who used to be an atheist and this man said he used to prove to anyone and everyone that God didn't exist. Then one night he had a dream, and Christ came to him in his dream and said that in 2 days 2 missionaries would come to his door. One would be African and one would be American and that he neeeded to listen to them. The atheist thought it was weird and continued his days. Two days later he got a knock on the door and the very same missionaries Christ told him would come were standing on his doorstep. He let them in and was later baptized. I know some people could just think of this as a coincidence or that it could even just be made up, and it could be, but I promise you by the Spirit that I felt while he was telling this story that it was true. The Spirit was SO strong when he was telling this story, it was amazing!

 

We sang in choir yesterday I Marvel at the Miracle, and you ALL should go listen to it, it's an awesome song. The 3rd verse is my favorite, it says: "I pled with God to shed His grace and take away my sin. He did and yet I turned away and stumbles once again. At last I knelt before His throne and offered up my sould. He wept, then gave it back to me, renewed and washed and whole." It might not sound that powerful just reading it, but it's so amazing when you're listening to it being sung. Seriously, go listen to it.

 

I absoultely love all the Elders in our zone! We got a trio (three companions in one companionship) and their very first week one of them got super, super sick and had to stay up in his room all day for 4 days, then the other one tore his ACL and then the other one broke his camera! They are the cursed Trio we've decided :) But we love them and we seriously love ALL the Elders in our zone, they always keeps things fun and interesting :)

 

Me and Hna Johansen (my companion) are having two of our investigators get baptized!! Like I said, even though it's fake, it's still super exciting :) It's insane how much you can feel the Spirit here, all day and every day, but I love it!

 

I got a picture of Mike and me before he left yeserday so I'll have to send it to you guys!

My time is up!!!

I love you all very much and I can't wait for the day when I come home and get to see you all again :)

 

Con mucho amor,

 

Hermana Roberts.

Semana Tres (Week 3)

Hola mi familia y amigos!

 

I can't believe I've already been here for three weeks!! It feels like I've only been here for like  week. It's pretty crazy -- a third of my time here is already over!!! I'm sure by the time week 6 or 7, probably even 5, I will be dying to get out of here though :)

 

We got a new district last week and it's a distric of 7 Elders, we didn't get ANY sisters which made me sad :( But the Elders are super cool and way nice. They're all so happy all the time and they always make sure to say, "Hola, Hermanas!" They're all really good kids so it's fun to have them here with us! I don't think we're getting a new district this week, but hopefully next week we'll get some more hermanas. Next week we have a district leaving and I'm way sad because two of my favorite Elders are in that district!

 

Here is my cool experience of the week:

To give some background to make these story that much cooler, me and my companion, Hermana Johansen, have been having a really hard time asking good questions to our investigators and getting them to understand the importance of the gospel and how it applies to them, personally, in their every day life. I haven't been too frustrated about it, but I definitely have really been wanting to improve, but Hermana Johansen gets super frustrated when we get feedback from the people we teach and they tell us stuff to improve on. I try to get her to understand that we're not just all the sudden going to know how to teach and the best way to teach, that it takes practice and it takes 100% relying on the Holy Ghost to guide you in what principles you teach, what questions you should ask, what experiences you should share. So anyways, we've been having a really hard time with teaching 100% by the Spirit and a lot of that is because we make these detailed lesson plans of exactly what scriptures we want to share, exactly what questions we want to ask and exactly what experiences to share - which is good, you have to have a plan or else you'll just fail - but we try to stick to our plan TOO much and we don't rely on the Spirit enough.

 

So they do these things called TRC and basically it's just an opportunity for you to practice teaching (even though 90% of the time that's what we're doing anyways! HAha :)) But for the TRC they have volunteers from the outside world come in and just volunteer to be an investigator. Last week there weren't enough volunteers so we just taught some of the Elders in our disctrict but they didn't really take it seriously so it ended up being lame. But this week Hermana Johansen and I had an actual volunteer. When we pretend to be investigators though, we ARE investigators. We're not just missionaries pretending to be investigators, so you feel the way investigators would feel, you think the way real investigators think and you ask questions that real investigators would teach. It's really like you're teaching an real investigator and that's how we take it.

 

You know absolutely nothing about the volunteer as a person, you only know their information as the "investigator" Our investigator was Maria and her and her husband had seen a Joseph Smith show on TV last week and they were unsure about modern day prophets and they were afraid that anyone could claim to be a prophet. So our task was to teach her and her husband more about Joseph Smith and help her know how she could find out for herself that Joseph Smith was a true prophet.

 

So we started just by getting to know more about her and her family, what their religious background was, and then we asked her about her concern of latter day prophets. So this time as we started teaching the lesson I set my notebook aside and tried to not be worried about following the plan EXACTLY how we had laid it out, I just set it aside and referred to it when I needed different scripture references. So we're teaching her and I don't know that she had felt the Spirit, as the investigator, a ton, but she had a little bit. We had already had her read like 4 scriptures and next we wanted to read Joseph Smith's first vision. I was about to read it because I felt like we had already had her read too many scriptures, but I was about to read it I just had this thought that I should have her read it. So I asked her if she could read it and after she read it she just smiled and I asked her what feelings or thoughts she had while she was reading it, and she just smiled again and said, "I have goosebumps all over me! I feel really good, what is it?" So I explained that it was the Holy Ghost and that He testifies of truth. When we get that feeling that's confirming that what we're reading is true.

 

We continued teaching and the Spirit was soooo unbelievably strong and we asked her to pray, right there and this with us, if she would pray to know if everything that we had taught her today was true. We asked her if she got the answer that waht we taught was true, would she be baptized. She said if she received that answer she would be! So we had her pray and she started crying so much and smiling so much and then after the prayer I asked her, "Will you follow the example of Jesus Christ by being baptized by someone holding the Priesthood Authority of God?" And she immediately says, "yes!" And then she kept crying and we ended our lesson with her praying and she kept crying all through that. So once we were done and she was out of character she was like "I LITERALLY couldn't say no when you asked me to be baptized! It's like there was literally something that pushed me to say yes and I felt the Spirit so strong that I just had to say yes!" It was so awesome to have that experience and it made me exciting to teach more! 

 

Sometimes I get so sick of teaching because that's what we do 90% of the time, but I realized that if I teach 100% by the Spirit and if I invite others to come unto Christ then teaching is fun and exciting! It feels SO good to have that feeling of knowing that you helped someone come closer to Christ. Even though she's just a "fake" investigator, it affects the volunteers life and it's a good feeling know that you helped someone. I just need to keep teaching and learn to rely solely upon the Spirit to guide me through our lessons.

 

Well, that took forever to write, but it was my favorite thing that happened this week!

 

I have turned into Dad since being here -- I literally fall asleep in every single meeting that we have! I'm so tired all day, but I can do ok if I'm talkin to people and moving around, but once I have to be quiet and sit down I fall asleep and I don't even realize it... I don't know how I'm going to make it through General Conference this weekend! Luckily they put the conference talks on LDS.org so I can print off the ones I accidentally sleep through :)

 

Well, I have to go to lunch and then we're off to the temple (I also fall asleep during the session every time...haha)

Keep writing me letters - they make my day!!

 

I love all of you SOOOOOOOOOO much! :)

 

-Hermana Roberts