Secretarying was pretty good this week. Had a few knew things that i hadn't done before that i needed to figure out. President LaPierre went to the hospital this week for a lung issue he had before the mission and was operated on today. He's fine now, everything went well, but had to organize some money for that one. I was trying to figure out how to make electronic payments, or bank transfers, but never really got to it. But it's going well, i think I'm actually caught up on almost everything and all the big projects i had are finished now. I just have to keep going and hope nothing else crazy comes up. But its fun, i like it. I think my new companion will come in a week or two. I'll have been with my current companion for 6 months, which is quite a long time. My companion is from Peru, and i think he is going to study afterwards. He was studying to be a dentist, but i think he's going to change.
(Liam made chipas for his International Club presentation on Argentina, he sent Ben a picture of them.) Hahahahahah Liam's chipas..... that's pretty funny. Chipa is a pretty popular thing here, there are a lot of chipas. There're people that have chipa stands, there're people that ride around on bikes and sell chipa, there're people that ride around in cars and sell chipa, there're people that walk with big baskets selling chipa, and then there're the bakeries that sell lots of chipas. They're pretty good, but there's chipa with ham and cheese which is delicious. We were trying to teach a lesson the other day and this guy comes walking by with a basket full of chipa yelling CHIPPPAAA, CHIPPPA CALIENTE, VENGA A COMPRAR CHIPA CALIENTE!!! Super loud. So that was kind of distracting. He should have made empanadas though, or mandioca, hahaha.
But yeah, the crossing the border sitauation is pretty tough. There are lots of problems with paper work and being legal, and lots of money to spend making sure it's all done. But yeah, we are trying to strengthen the branches here. I think the church is growing, maybe not very drastically like Peru, Brazil and Mexico, but it's definetely not declining. Here it's just really inconsistent. It's pretty up and down in a lot of the branches and even in some wards. The temple is kind of far away and sometimes there just isn't enough man power to push the church along, but it's doing well.
But the teaching is going pretttty welll. We have a few investigators, two couples that are pretty interested, but not really becuase they are Catholic, even though they haven't gone to church in like 10 years. But they are liking what they are learning and we are hoping they can go to the activity tomorrow and meet some of the members and get a feel of what the church is like.
We are having a lot of success with less actives though. The ones we were visiting before are now pretty active and we found a few others last week. We were trying to use the MLS, the member list, and look for peoples' houses and we couldn't find anyone on the list, but then contacting we found this lady who was kinda waiting for someone to say, "hey, go back to church!" So we had some good lessons with her and she went last week and then we were headed to her house to teach her and this guy stops us in the street and says, "hey… I've been wanting to talk to you guys, it's been about 5 years since I've gone to church and I need to go back." So we taught him the next day after he got home from work and he told us how his wife left him and took all his kids and he doesn't really know how they are doing and he's kind of lost. And then there is another guy where he is the only member of his family, his wife is super evangelical but really nice. He was having a tough time too, not really feeling lots of support, and his dad died and he and the other guy are both elders. They both had callings in the quorom when they were active, so they know quite a bit and i think with a little bit of help and support from the members they'll be good. But i think the trick is visiting the less actives with the members becuase they don't really do their visits unless you go with them and basically do it with them. So we did, and it went really well and i feel like the ward is catching on a little bit and is progressing, getting a little bit more excited about missionary work.
But thanks for everything!! Thanks for the letter and the support and i hope everyone has a great week!!!
Love, Elder Roberts
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