Week 82: Posadas, Argentina

Yeah i was just realizing today that I'll have had a third of my mission in the office. I´m not sure if that's a good thing or a bad thing... but its been pretty good up until now. It's just a really different experience and there are ups and downs. But I´m enjoying it. Hopefully I´ll survive till May. I think once my replacement comes and I´ll have to be showing him how everything works and how to do everything things will pick up and it´ll be fun. 

But dang.... I´m missing March madness. That is kind of a bummer, but i guess there will be a lot more in the future to watch. And BYU already lost... It is always hard when we go to the Migrations Office because they always have soccer on, on a TV on the wall, or this one less active family when we go to their house they always have soccer playing on their TV... I always said that i would never start thinking about what i'll do after the mission until i get to my last day, but its actually harder than i thought it would be haha. I´m still pretty focused and I'm continuing to try to stay focused, but i think I'm going to be watching and playing a lot of soccer this summer.

These past few weeks we have been trying to use the member list to look for less actives that are willing to come back to church and also for investigators to be able to teach. There are a lot of people that have moved away.. so we are actually helping the ward update their list a little bit because we have found a lot of people that don´t live here anymore. It's funny because we went and looked for a house and we found it, but the lady there said she had never heard of the family that we were looking for.  So we asked her if we could teach her instead and she was actually pretty cool, and we had a good lesson. But there are also other people that aren't so cool. We were looking for this one lady and we went and asked at the house if she lived there and she said no and then we asked her neighbor if he knew the lady we were looking for and he said that it was the lady that told us no..... so i guess she might have had a bad experience in the past. 

Also, something cool that happened was on Sunday.  We took all the young single adults from the ward and decided to go out and visit the other young adults that aren't active.  So we did divisones with them and there were actually quite a few that came and we visited quite a few people, we only had 2 hours, but we got a lot in and almost everyone that we planned on visiting was home-that was really good, and i think all the young adults had a really good experience.  And now they are pretty excited to go out and do it again and help all the 110 young single adults that are on the list come back to church.... But it was pretty fun, and sometimes it is fun to work with people that are more your age and interact with them. One of the less actives that is now coming back to church since January received the Melchizedek Priesthood last Sunday, that was cool and he is pretty excited about the church and everything. Also, Pepe the one kid that we have been working with, and the members are doing most of the work with him, is our ward mission leader and he is getting ready to send his papers in to go on the mission. He is pretty excited as well and he´s just a really cool guy all around. 

Sometimes in the office there really isn´t a whole lot to write about because i mean i could say that i went to the bank yesterday and today and made a deposit, and took out some money, and then i was trying to get everything ready for next months rent payments, and making sure everything was in line, and then i went to Paraguay to take out some guarnies to be able to reimburse people that come from Paraguay, and lots of exciting stuff like that, but it really isn´t all that exciting. I actually do have to drive the truck a lot, mostly just to the bank and to do office stuff, buy stuff, pay for things, and then drive to our area and then back home.  I think I´ve got the stick shift down now, haha, i don´t really ever stall it anymore, so that's a pretty big improvement. But i am pretty excited for conference next week and then there are transfers, so should be fun.  Anyway, thanks for everything and thanks for writing meee. Have a great week everyone!!

I included a picture of my best friend: the calculator.

love, Elder Roberts

Week 81: Posadas, Argentina

Sounds like everything is pretty well back home.  I guess it's a fun time of year when everyone is starting to feel the spring weather and school is coming to an end. Here it's still pretty hot, but i can kind of feel a little bit of a temperature drop.  It's not as bad as it used to be, I think in April it´ll start getting nicer. 

Anyway i´m pretty sure i´m going to be here in the office until mid May and then i'll be able to leave for my last transfer into the field, so i still have a little more time here in the office. It's cool to be here, but after a while i feel like it's more my job and sometimes it's hard to feel like a missionary.  I realize i really need to make an effort to get things done in the office, and also do missionary work whenever i can- in the bank, on the train and everywhere, or else the missionary spirit kind of goes away. My companion and everyone else in the office are really cool though, and we all get along pretty well which helps a lot. I think the time definitely goes by a lot faster  that way. I've been in the office 6 months, and by the time i leave i'll have been here for almost 8 and a half... which is a lot, but I'm happy i'll get a little time in the field. 

We had our zone conference this week which was pretty good, we are still talking a lot about how the area presidency wants us to be doing missionary work and the new plan they have to hasten the work. We talked about goals, which was really cool actually.  President was saying that sometimes we have accomplishments and we are pretty happy about them, so the next week or the next month we look and we say, "Well we had this many charlas (discussions), lets say 10, and so this week we are going to have 13!"  But that is basically just taking a number out of the air. We have two focuses, number of baptisms and the number of attendance at church. He told us to have goals that are reasonable and that are reachable, but not just based on past goals or accomplishments. Also, to set a goal to have a certain number of attendance at church, like 100. That's pretty much impossible for us to control due to the weather and because there are always people that come infrequently, and there are lots of obstacles. But instead, we can take the average attendance from the last month, maybe 90, and put it up to 95, and then our goal is 5.  We can pick 5 less actives, or 3 less actives, and two people that are going to get baptized, and they are our contribution to the attendance. If the rest of the people, or less or more, come that's fine, but we need to focus on bringing our part of the goal as a whole in.  I don't know if i explained that really well, but it was really good.

My companion and i were also talking about if there is such thing as coincidence, or if everything is planned and everything is influenced by God. I think most things are planned out by Heavenly Father.  For a person like a  medic driving as a car who helps a person that crashed near by is probably divine influence, not just a coincidence, because it has the purpose of saving that person's life.  But if someone else and I come to the office with the same tie on, that doesn't really have any influence on anything, so it's more just a coincidence. But that was just something interesting that i was thinking about this week. 

Anyway there weren't really too many exciting things this week because i was sick again Monday and Tuesday, but I'm all better now.  And yesterday was our zone conference. There is a new family in Lavalle from Spain that seem super awesome.  We helped them move today to their new house; they had been renting here for about a month.  They are cool, and they invited us to eat asado next week for helping them move, which I'm pretty excited for. 

Anyway, thanks for everything and the for the letter, hope everything is going well back home and that everyone has a great week!

Love, Elder Roberts

Week 80:Posadas, Argentina

This week has been pretty good. A little more relaxing, except for a few crazy things that happened, but we were able to get back on a normal sleep schedule and get out to our area a little more. We were trying to find some more people to teach, but with not much luck. A large part of our area is one of the poorest and most dangerous parts of Posadas and the other parts of our area aren´t too much different, but a little safer. I think we might start sharing part of the hermanas' areas just so we can go there at night to work. So there are tons of people, but most of them are pretty hard to teach, I can't complain because there are a lot of nice people, but they just aren't too prepared to receive the gospel. I feel like there are times in my mission where i had too many people to teach and we almost didn't have time to do it all, and then other times where it seems like there is no one... haha but I've definitely learned to just keep going at it even though there's not much to work with. 

We had our activity last Friday which went pretty well, i think about 40 or 50 people showed up but it was pretty fun. There were some games for the adults and my companion and i tryed to entertain all the kids by playing a fishing game where they throw the line behind the chalkboard and we tape a piece of candy on the end, and duck duck goose. And then another member and I cooked hot dogs on the grill. The guy that brought his grill was kinda mad.  He was like what?! Hot dogs?! Why are you putting hot dogs on the grill?! That won't work, that's really weird... haha it was pretty funny, but then he liked them... They are more of a sausage people, well its called Churiso (spelling)? its kinda like a brawtwurst and they put it on bread and put sauce on it, it's pretty popular in the street vendors. But they all liked the hot dogs on the grill. 

We also had stake conference last Sunday which was pretty cool, it was cool to see everyone from Tacuari-including a few people we had taught before, but it turned out pretty well. The chapel was completely filled as was the overflow and the stage, we watched it in the office on the computer.

Anyway, this week was pretty easy going, but the next two weeks we have zone conferences and then after that is the big leader conference and then after that is transfers then general conference. Elder Oaks is going to Resistencia and we may get to watch the broadcast... which would be pretty awesome. Well it would be cool to go down there, it's like 5 hours from Posadas, but i don't think we could get everyone from the whole mission there haha.. So hopefully we get to see that. 

But happy birthday Emma! Is she 18 now?! That's really crazy, the time is flying by pretty fast. Have a great week!!!

Love, elder Roberts

Week 79: Posadas, Argentina

Well, I'm pretty tired. These past two weeks have been super busy and they´ve really flown by super fast. My new companion is doing well, he is the President´s secretary. I'll probably get a new companion to train and replace me either this month or the beginning of April, I´m not really sure yet. The work is going pretty well.  This past week has been tough, most of our appointments fell through.  We have just been trying to look for new people and pick the less active members that really want to progress and then work with them. A lot of them were really nice, but just weren´t really fulfilling their commitments, so we decided to try to use our time differently and look for new people.

Snow sounds pretty cool right now, it's not too hot here actually, and its already March, so i think it may start to cool down a little. That's fun though that Liam is going to go to Germany as well.  

This weekend is stake conference- which is fun, it's nice to change things up a little and listen to new people and see all the people i met in Tacuari. I think Elder Oaks is coming to talk to the Resistencia Mission which is the one right next to us, but i don't think he's coming here. 

The office is going pretty well, but i feel like the longer I'm here the more stuff i figure out that i need to do. This week I've been pretty swamped and there are new things that i need to be doing as well that i haven't gotten to, kinda weird they trusted a 19 year old with this job, but I'm going to try my best. It's fun though, I'm learning to be organized and to be a perfectionist and to follow through with things. There are times where I'm tempted to leave things at the bare minimum possible, or to just do exactly what's asked and not anything more, but i think it's best to go up and beyond and do things the best possible. even though it hasn't been asked of me to do it like that. 

I´m also learning that being converted is hard, and even harder is helping other people to be converted to the gospel. It really does require a really constant effort and unless you are really trying and doing your best it isn't really possible. Sometimes whenever someone has a good spiritual experience i expect them to keep going and take off and just be ready and willing to change and follow the church and everything, but then if they don´t do their part afterwards the just fall and they are back where they started. But it´s really cool when people have good experiences and then do their part and change and progress a lot. 

But thanks for the letter and everything you do. Have a great week!!!!!

Week 78: Posadas, Argentina

Sorry mom, but I don't really have a lot of time to write and i'm pretty exhausted and can't really even remember anything really excited that happened this past week... just transfers and running all over the place doing stuff. Thanks for the email, update, and for getting a bunch of ties for me. I'm sure the people here will appreicate them. Thanks!! love you!!

Elder Roberts

Week 77: Posadas, Argentina

Hmm, about the BYU housing, i guess you can go ahead and start looking into it. But i was talking to the Sister in my zone and she told me that off campus is definitely better than on campus. And that at BYU there are some good housing places. She said Belmont was good, but it was like 15 minutes from campus and that King Henry was good as well. I guess you could start looking into it and the prices and stuff and what looks good, and next week you can let me know what you find and we can make a decision. 

That´s really cool about the guy that is going to get baptized Saturday. We are teaching a guy right now named Carmelo that is pretty interested and has gone to church twice, and he is really good friends with a member. So we´ll see what happens with him in the next few weeks. We are still in the process of finding a few more people to teach.  We have a few references, but it's really hard to find them and teach them with our schedule and their schedule. But everything is going pretty well.

The other day we took the member list of all the members that live in our area, and there are a lot.  We were praying to see which people we could go visit.  There was a partial member family that we had visited before and  had talked to their oldest son who said he works on Sundays.  He also had said that neither his brother nor his mom got baptized just because they didn't really want to. But this time we found the dad sitting outside by himself and he invited us in to talk.  He´s been a member for about 23 years and said that he hasn´t been to church for 20 years and he said that his life wasn´t going too great.  He said that the economic situation was pretty tough and that he had put a goal to get a little closer to God this year and start to change, but that since New Year´s he hasn´t been able to that-there was something that was always holding him back. And Wednesday morning he said he got up really early to pray and think about life and what was going on and he said he was praying to find the way to change and to get a little closer to God.  That same day we drove by their house looking and we said, "Ahh but we already visited them," but we said, "Well let's go see if they´re interested and if they´ve changed."  We had a super good lesson talking to the dad, and i think he liked it a lot. We read in Enos 1:4-5 and i think that really got to him and he applied it to his life. So that was a pretty cool experience.

But this week i actually did get a new companion, but he wasn´t really that new.  The four secretaries all live together and the Material's Secretary is one of them; he just got here about a month and a half ago.   What happened is is that he got changed from Material's Secretary to President's Secretary, so now he is my companion... haha. So i already know him really well. He´s Elder Collins from Saint George, Utah, and he's pretty cool. We get along pretty well, so it should be fun. But there are changes next week, so it´s time to get really busy.  Changes are at the end of the month which makes my job really crazy because i have to change the whole system before the month ends to make sure all the money gets to the right people in their new areas. So it should be fun. 

That is true though that a lot of people like to ask the weird questions about the church and always want to know about polygamy or other controversial things. That happens a lot here.  We went to a store to buy soda for lunch and they guy was reading a Bible, which was really surprising because that doesn't happen a lot.  But we started talking to him and he immediately started to try to argue with us. He started talking about a lot of weird false doctrine and said that we go around and teach people false doctrines.  We kinda just walked away and left him be. Usually we find people that know too much and have interpreted the Bible the way they want to, or we find people that don´t know anything at all about the Bible. One lady told us, "My parents taught me not to read the Bible too much because it makes you go crazy…" Haha. All kinds of interesting people. Anyway, thanks for the update and have a great week!!

Love, Elder Roberts

Week 76: Posadas, Argentina

Helloooo, first of all, happy birthday to Nathan before i forget.. what did you guys do for his birthday? Tell him I'll have to give him a present when i get home. 

That's cool that grandad is getting really into genealogy.  I think here a few people are catching on to the family history thing. I guess its really hard if you don't have a computer at home, but my companion who is the only member in his family did quite a bit of work by himself before his mission. I´m still not too sure how to do it, but I'll have to have grand mom teach me this summer. It would nice to learn. Is there still a lot to do on dad's side? Well i guess there is always a lot to do, but i feel like grand mom and grandad got pretty far on it. 

This week was a pretty good week except the health part. I got really sun burnt and starting peeling... and then I got another ingrown toenail and then got a really bad flu and felt like throwing up.  It started the other night and in the morning i went and did some paperwork in the migrations office and went to the zone meeting.  Then after that i was feeling really bad and went to bed and slept in the office so that my companion could do his job.  After that I went home and slept for like 30 hours... and didn't eat anything for 2 days. But now i feel a lot better. I think it was just like a 48 stomach virus, also I think the water made me sick because i drank some sketchy water the other evening. But i feel totally fine now, i actually feel better than before, i think the resting helped a lot. 

But the reason I got sun burnt is because we had our open house car wash at the chapel which was interesting. We had a few youth go out to the streets and hold signs while we were on the basketball court washing cars and while we washed the cars we invited people to go inside the church and see what it was about.  A few members and the Sisters were there giving a tour and explaining to them what we believe.  In 3 hours i think we washed about 20 cars and about 15 of them stayed and talked and went to the church, while others kinda just came and dropped their car off and then walked away to the supermarket in front of the church to buy stuff.... i guess they didn't want to see the church, ha ha, but it was still fun. But i kinda forgot to put sunscreen on. But it was fun, it was a different way to try and do things and we got a few addresses to go visit people even though none of them lived in our area... but it still worked pretty well I think. I think my new companion is coming this Sunday so that should be exciting, and all the possibilities are missionaries that i know that i get along with really well so I'm excited. It sometimes is hard to find a replacement in the office due to needing a missionary that speaks Spanish well and that has at least 8 months or more left in the mission so that they can serve a reasonable amount of time in the office and still leave at the end to finish their missions normally. 

I´ve come to learn that February is definitely the hottest month of the year, but luckily it's the shortest. Hopefully its not too cold up there. I hope everyone has a great week and that Nathan has a great birthday!

Love, Elder Roberts