Email letter dated September 19, 2012 "Another Week"

September 19, 2012
 

Dear Family,

Elder Yépez and I are working hard. We have 2 baptisms scheduled for the 29 so that is really good. We have several investigators that are falling a little bit: not coming to church, not reading......It´s difficult to see this happen. It´s also hard to have investigators that all they need to do is get married and then they can get baptized. It´s quite frustrating.

I read the miracle of forgiveness. It truly is a miracle.

We had stake conference on Saturday and Sunday and it was good. I didn´t understand much of what was said but I feel it was good. The days go by quickly when you teach a lot. 

Recently it has been unbearably hot in the mornings and then has dumped rain in the afternoons. I am so thankful for the rain.

I don´t have a lot to say today..........

I would send a picture but for whatever reason this computer doesn´t like me.

I´m glad to hear everyone is doing well and that little savanna is healthy happy and growing. I´m so stinking happy Dad´s job is something he enjoys. FINALLY! 

Noah way to go on the bike ride and the lacrosse game. Have your lacrosse skills improved? are you practicing? how´s junior high?

On Monday I got a letter from Claire, Katie, Bishop Berry, and 2 from Nikelle. I feel so loved and cared for by my family.

One of the baptisms we have scheduled is Rody, he is 12 and can´t really read and kinda thinks and acts like he´s 8. I feel unsure if we should baptize him mostly because he has very little support on the homefront. His mom hasn´t shown much interest in the church at all and the guy that lives in his house (I don´t think it´s his dad or step dad) is some leader of a church I´ve never even heard of. He has a testimony and he has the desire to be baptized but if we baptize him are we setting him up to fail and sentencing ourselves and him to condemnation? I found myself asking the question Do I see him on a mission in 7 years? and I honestly don´t know how to answer the question....I have prayed and I need to pray a lot more to know what to do. I will probably fast as well. I need help on this one.

The work goes on and so does the heat.

Elder Robinson

Email letter dated Sept. 12, 2012 "Sorry it's a short one"

  Dear Family,

This week has been good. Today is P-day santiago so time is even shorter than usual p-days. So much to do! We went to the monument in Santiago and to Price Smart (the mecca of all missionaries when they get the chance to go to Santiago, I think it is owned by wal mart and it{s basically a costco). We went to the new mission office which is awesome we hung around the office for a little while because they have air conditioning and the office elders are cool.

We have a lot of investigators that have investigated the church for a long time and it is coming to the point where they either need to act and do all that is necessary to join with Gods church or we will have to stop going by to teach them. Leaving investigators is always a painful process because I want them to accept the gospel so bad and not jsut be hearers of the word but doers. There are way too many people in the world that like to just sit and listen to the word of God but when it comes to acting it seems impossible for them. Praying hard to know what to do.

Everyone needs to read the miracle of forgiveness. I am reading it right now and it is an amazing book that helps one self analyze and see the areas they need to change in a very loving comprehensive way. 

Spanish is still hard but I am working on it every day (not like i have much of a choice)

Is everything crazy back home? shool, work, new baby, just back from the cruise......craziness.

Well like i said its a short one and for that i am sorry. I am sending letters I promise!

Elder Robinson

Email letter dated September 5, 2012 "Baby!"

September 5, 2012

holy smokes I´m an uncle. and Katies a mom and Gabes a dad and Mom you and dad Are grandparents!!!!!!!!! holy smokes!!!!!!!!

man do I feel silly now for the letter I sat down and wrote today to Katie. haha I´ll send it anyways. you can read it to savanna. What a great name by the way. Good choice! Wow katie you did it! you now have an angel sent straight from the presence of God the Father in your arms and in your home. how cool is that?! 4 and a half weeks early though. she was ready to get out of there huh? haha. i can´t tell you how happy I am. I look forward to meeting this little person in about a year and a half. Our family is growing. Thanks for the pictures mom Katie and Gabe, you done good. She is beautiful! I love new born babies, so small and cute and gentle. 

here things are rainy. i was unaware a hurricane passed through here. I knew that it is hurricane season right now and that it rained a bunch when it supposedly came through but where i am nothing really happened. 

These last couple months have been nuts: school started, alaskan cruise, new baby, new job! All amazing miracles from our dear Heavenly Father. 

It´s raining pretty hard right now, I have a feeling we´re going to get wet.......

Some things about Las Antillas that I´ve not yet told you: The house we have is really nice and is on the second floor which helps for air circulation and it´s not quite as hot, the house has a more open kitchen than the house in San Francisco which is nice and you sweat quite as much, it has 2 bathrooms which is nice because we each have our own space. The only real problem is that the water pressure stinks so showering out of a bucket has become a daily practice but you have to be sure to fill your bucket up every morning after you shower because if you forget you won´t have any water to shower that night if you want to because we usually don´t have water at night. We almost always have power, occasionally, like today, the power will go out for maybe an hour and then will come back. There have been some real power outages that we´ve needed to have the local power jimmy rigger hook us up with some power for the night because it´s almost impossible to sleep in this country without a fan because it is so dang hot!

Spanish is hard, life is good, the Gospel is true.

Elder Robinson

Email letter dated August 29, 2012 "Transfer 4"

August 29, 2012

Dear Family,

This is my fourth transfer in the mission field and i feel great! Today was transfers and Elder Jensen has returned to puerto plata to finish his mission and my new companion is Elder Yepez who is also finishing his mission this transfer which is crazy to think about that I know people that are finishing the mission and going home. Elder Yepez is Dominican and doesn´t know english. He knows a few words to help me out when I´m really lost but not a lot. So I am counting on learning a lot of spanish this transfer. We´ve only been together for about 7 hours and I think I´ve said the word ¨what¨ about a thousand times. I´m so slow at understanding I almost need everything to be said twice......

Last Saturday Franklin was Baptized in San Francisco, Elder Johnson Baptized him. I´m so happy to hear about all the progress that is continuing to happen there and the people that I taught are getting baptized!!!!! They are having another baptism there this Saturday that is a girl that I started teaching with Elder Johnson. She is the cousin or neice of Sis. Luna (the mom of enmanuel Luna, my first baptism). 

Things are good. 

Because Elder Yepez is finishing here in Las Antillas I will be here for this transfer and at least one more in this area. I am scared of the idea that I might train a new missionary here in about 3 months.......It´s totally possible. Elder Relf, my companion in the mtc here in the D.R. is training right now and we just barely completed 6 months in the mission. I don´t feel like I´m ready to train a new missionary because I still don´t know spanish very well at all and I need to have more experience and knowldege. 

Mom thank you for Justice´s email address I really hope that he emails me back. 

We have several investigators that are progressing and doing well. I feel like this is the area of couples that need to get married civily to get baptized. We have 3 couples that are working on getting married so they can be baptized. We already had one success with Rosa and her husband and now we´re hoping for Cristino and his wife, Jonathan and Yanelkis, and Alexandra and Papito.

That´s the latest update.....I can´t really think of anything else to say......

So I´ll end it like this

I Love You

Elder Robinson

email letter dated August 22, 2012

August 22, 2012

Dear Family,

Thanks for the update.

We had the baptism of Carolina and Rosa on Saturday. it was really good there were a ton of people there. Elder Jensen performed the baptisms. I gave a short talk on the holy ghost.  

Today I have 6 months in the mission. It´s really crazy to think that it´s already a fourth of the way over. Time really does go quickly....Also in San Francisco Oscar was Baptized on Saturday! I was so freaking stoked to hear he was baptized!!!!! And Franklin will be baptized this saturday if all goes according to plan. I´m so happy for them. 

I hope the cruise goes well and everyone has fun. 

We had multi zone conference with President and Sis Douglas and Sis douglas talked about gratitude and all the benefits there are for just being grateful. She told us a statistic that said that if you don´t smoke you will add approximately 6 years to your life span and if you are happy as a result of being grateful you add approximately 9 years to your life span so that is interesting. She also shared a study about a group of people that wrote in a gratitude journal everyday: 

1. write 5 things everyday that you are thankful for. Be specific

2. write why you are thankful for each thing. Be specific.

3. do it for 30 days

And the results from the study were this: All the people experienced more happiness in life, their relationships improved with their family and all around them, depression in all it´s forms was nowhere to be found, and even for 6 months after the study and after stopping doing the gratitude journal these people continued to see these results in their lives. Pretty interesting. I started my gratitude journal and it is good to be grateful for things. 

Pres Douglas shared this crazy story from his mission: as a farely new missionary he got a call from the mission president and he told Pres Douglas that he wanted him to go to an area of the mission where the 4 missionaries there were being very disobedient: going to the movies, not wearing missionary attire, playing basketball all day, and really never going out to preach. So Pres Douglas went to go straighten things out. When he got to the area they were playing basketball but it was okay because it was p day so he played with them and when it was 5 he told his companion that they were leaving to go to work. But his comp told him that it was monday night and no one is ever home on monday nights so they should just stay and play basketball. But pres douglas said. I came here to be a missionary not play basketball, I am going to work. So they left and ended up visiting several of the members in the branch and he was able to meet the branch president. Later in the week his companion told him they needed to practice basketball because they would be playing in a tournament on Friday. Pres Douglas called the mission Pres. to see if they could practice and participate in the tournament. The pres. told them they could participate in the tournament but could not practice during the week. Friday rolled around and they went to go to the tournament but when they got there nobody was there. They waited for a while to see if anyone would show up but no one came. So Pres. Douglas said let´s go to work. They left and got into a taxi and as they were driving a military vehicle ploughed into the taxi ejecting two of the missionaries from the car one other flew to the front of the vehicle smashing his head into the windshield and Pres Douglas came out of the crash without a scratch. The taxi driver seeing what appeared to be 2 dead americans ran away knowing that he would probably get blamed since the other vehicle involved was a military vehicle. Pres Douglas administered blessings to the injured missionaries and a bus and a car drove up and the missionaries were taken to a clinic where they were given nothing more than morphine for the pain. Pres douglas left the clinic and went to get the branch president he had met just 4 days earlier. He came and they both administered more blessings and then the branch president walked the 100 kilometers to the mission home to get the president because all the phones shut off after 10. he got there at about 5:30 but no one was awake so he waited until they woke up and he got back to the clinic with the mission president 2 ambulances and 4 doctors at around 10 a.m. all the missionaries lived and one or two returned to the mission to finish honorably and the rest did not. A very powerful story about obedience. Pres Douglas is called of God and is a good man.

We are working hard and having fun to. We made peanut butter bars yesterday and they turned out pretty good.

It´s been another good week

Elder Robinson