Monday, April 16, 2012

April 12, 2012 Email Letter from the DR MTC

April 12, 2012
Saludos!
Esta semana fue bien. Nosotros continuamos a aprender y enseñar mucho y es un buen tiempo y tenemos mucho divertido. Fuimos al campo misional ayer y teniamos intercambios (exchanges) con los misioneros en el oeste mision. fui al San Geronimo y fui con Elder Tyler de California él tiene veinte meses in la mision, el español de el es muy bien. Tenía la oportunidad a dar mí testimonio a tres o cuatro personas en lecciones cual muy bien. No estoy muy bien a hablar español o entender español pero pienso que sí puedo entender las lecciones pero cuando fue mí oportunidad a hablar no sé que decir....
I hope my spanish isn't horrendous....I'm still learning and it is difficult for me to put together sentences longer than a couple words. Don't scrutinize too much...
What I said was that yesterday we were able to go out to the west mission on exchanges with the missionaries there. We drove out to San Geronimo (don't ask me where that is cause I don't know). I went Tracting with Elder Tyler and we were in a more "rich" area. All the houses had gates and fences so we would holler from the sidewalk "saludos" or "Buenas" which is just to say hello. The people would come to the door and we'd introduce ourselves from the sidewalk and ask if they wanted to listen to what we had to say. It was very hot and I sweated a lot....I don't think I got sunburned though! It's a miracle! We were able to teach an old Investigator that Elder Tyler had and we shared some scriptures and asked if he'd be baptized and he said he would then we asked if he would come to church and he said he couldn't because he has some sleeping disorder where he doesn't get to sleep until 3 in the morning.....Apparently that is the stigma (right word? I'm going with it): the people say yes to everything but don't really do it. It's pretty annoying. So we're not supposed to read to much into if they say yes to baptism. We taught a couple others and when I say we I mean Elder Tyler. I didn't understand very well what was going on most of the time but I think I could follow the lesson more or less. He would turn to me and I'd give him a blank stare and I didn't know what to say so he'd continue. He was nice and pretty cool. The last person we taught I finally got to talk a little bit and I shared James 1:5 and the First Vision account from memory and bore my testimony of how we can all know if the church is true if we pray. I felt good about it but don't know if anything will come of it because his wife is a pastor for another church.....regardless a good experience.
On Sunday we had the mission presidents from: the Puerto Rico mission, Haiti mission, West Indies mission, and Jamaica mission here and they talked to us along with their wives about the ressurection of Christ and the President from the Jamaica mission told a story that really illustrates it well: Philip was a little boy in sunday school and he was slightly handicapped. The other kids would make fun of him now and again and the teacher was usually pretty good at correcting them and helping Philip. On Easter Sunday the teacher gave all the little kids a big plastic egg (the kind pantihose come in haha) and told them to go outside and find something that represented new life and all the little kids went out and found different things. when they came back and the teacher was opening the eggs there was a butterfly, a flower, some grass.....when she opened Philips it was empty and of course the other kids laughed and the teacher was trying to explain that Philip just hadn't understood the activity but as she was trying to explain Philip was tugging on her skirt saying "It's empty, It's empty!" and then the teacher realized that Philip had brought back the best thing to represent the Ressurection of our Lord and Savior Jesus Christ: an empty egg representing the empty tomb. A few months later Philip passed away and the little sunday school class went to view their friend, as they left they placed a plastic egg in the casket next to him and his mother saw it and opened it just to be sure, yes it was empty. When He told this story I was beside myself. It's so touching and brings my focus back to Easter and it's true meaning. Share this story with all you meet and help others come closer to Christ. Every member a missionary.
Later on Sunday President Glazier gave a great 2 hour devotional on the last 24 hours of Christ's life and it was great. It's always a struggle because we are the minority now and he speaks in spanish and translates as he goes for us gringos. Spanish has gotten much harder: Grammar stinks in all languages....
Other than the Presidents coming and exchanges it was an average week in the life of Elder Robinson. We did teach a lesson on Chastity for the first time which went really well mostly because our investigator (keep in mind this is our teacher acting) was already keeping the law of Chastity. It'll be really fun to teach that one to someone who maybe has issues with it....
We have taught the Latinos for practice and it's been pretty rough: we don't understand them very well and speaking is still hard. the really surprising part is that the Hermanas are really immature and ruthless (did I talk about this last week?) oh well any ways the hermanas have torn apart the north American missionaries that have taught them: They flat out told Elder Montgomery and Elder Midgley that they taught the lesson wrong. They laughed out loud at Elder Jewkes and Elder Larsen for their pronunciation. And the way it works is that one companionship teaches the others acting as investigators and aparently when Elder Jewkes and Elder Larsen taught them they thought they chose to be too difficult as investigators and decided when it was their turn to be investigators they would be mormon haters. in my opion they need to grow up. They obviously don't understand their purpose as missionaries let alone the purpose fo the practice activity.
It's been good. I've still not received any physical mail or the package but I am ever hopeful. I need more stamps but I may just need to find a place to buy them here because it seem that if you try to mail me some I may never get them.....
Elder Relf and I are working well together and having fun. We pray after every lesson we teach to thank our Father in Heaven for granting us the words to say and the ability to speak and the spirit He grants to us in our lessons Alma 29:9.
Well that's the update, I've been slacking on pictures lately I need to take some more. Did you get my letter with the sd card in it? It had like 300 pictures on it....
it's good to hear everyone is doing great and that Katie is there. i'm so proud of Noah for sticking (pun intended) with lacrosse, It's not easy and the first few games are always difficult. Keep it up and don't give up! keep practicing! i know you can do it. Send me a picture.
Claire got braces? wahoooooo. so how do  you feel about them? I know were excited before and now you're excited that after they are off you will have better teeth but how do you feel right now?
It sounds like progress is always being made on the house which I'm always happy and anxious to hear about. Send me some pictures! dad's new office, my old room, the pictures all arranged on the wall, the basement. Is the basement all clear now?
I love the temple mom. We go every week and I only get to go one more time for the duration of my mission, i am going to miss it. We went today and we did initiatories and a session and it's always interesting because it's in two languages. we have little translators which is nice. But for a couple of the names I did for initiatory they did in spanish and they talk so fast and it's hard to really know what's going on..... The temple is the best and I love to go and I will go every week when I get back home.
In the words of porky the pig: "that's all folks"
Elder Robinson

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