November 9 2014

Well how many people can say they spent their 21st birthday on the other side of the world playing basketball and baptizing people! On Saturday we played basketball with some investigators and of course I got hurt, jammed my hand/wrist on an Elders leg and bruised it pretty good. I still made the shot so it was ok, right dad? Then at night sister Huang got baptized and bore one of the most powerful testimonies I have ever heard from someone that just got baptized, it was really cool! She asked me to baptize her and so that was really cool. She also told me before that she wanted me to hold her under for 5 seconds, as she counted on her fingers to show me how long. haha I just laughed and said probably not. When I baptized her I found out she was serious because I had to completely lift her out of the water and stand her on her feet!!! Then, after, they through a big party for me and bought TONS of food and two cakes!!! She gave me a present, it was a light up glass picture of me her and Elder Shelton on it!! She is so crazy and awesome! My Birthday was really good!

Not too much happened this week other than that. We did have a cool experience while contacting. I am pretty sure the guy was Atheist but he was willing to listen. We started talking about prayer. He brought up "how is got supposed to answer EVERYONE'S prayers, there are probably at least 100 people that are all praying at the same time how does he answer all of them?" I have thought about that as well but the spirit put the answer in my mind at the time I needed it!!! I said "well don't you think that someone that has enough power to create the world and all of us would be able to answer someone’s simple prayer?" It hit him and he was like oh I guess he could. Then he told us he was going to talk to his girlfriend and hopefully meet with us so we will see what happens.

Sister Lin or Lin mama (the mom of the sister missionary in our district) now has a baptismal goal for the 29th of this month! SWEET!  She is so ready and is coming to church now so she should hit it as long as she doesn't get cold feet!!! What an awesome day that will be!

I hope all of you have a great week and thank you all for the packages and birthday wishes they mean so much!!! I don't think you understand how much they mean!!! They make us missionaries’ day!

Here is a quote that I read in a LIahona this week it says "Perhaps the most valuable result of all education is the ability to make yourself do the things you don’t want to do, when it ought to be done, whether you like it or not."

Love you all have a great week!

Love Elder Roberts

November 3 2014

This week we had some pretty cool lessons. First off DTM went really good it was awesome! I taught about diligence and we discussed things that have happened from talking with everyone and bore testimony of it, the spirit got super strong and then we did a practice that was so fun! We had a companionship go out of the room and picked someone to be the person that would accept then the companionship had to find the person. I also had everyone act like a special person, like a drunk person, parents, and stuff like that. The last companionship was the sister training leaders and we all acted like we were a family and the dad was the one that would accept when they would contact him we would call him over to help us and so they couldn’t really talk to him. By the end of it the sister training leaders were doing the "Kamie squat" trying not to pee their pants because they were laughing so hard! It was super fun!

This week at English class we had an awesome spiritual share. We chose to do it on Life’s purpose and the Atonement. We asked them what things helped them be happy and what things made them sad then what things they needed.  We watched a Mormon message called "what matters most" and talked a little about that then talked about putting others first and serving others. We said Christ was a perfect example of this and if you really want true happiness you could get it through following him, we watched a video on his Atonement and at the end shared more testimony and by the end almost everyone's eyes were filled with tears trying not to cry! That is the first time the spirit has ever been that strong at an English class it was so cool and really helped strengthen my testimony on the Savior! I truly Love the spirit!

We are teaching a sisters mom! She is in our district and her mom is meeting with us how weird is that!!! Sister Lin is from where I am serving but went to Taipei for school and turned her papers in up there and then got called down to the Taichung mission and her mom has investigated the church but never got baptized because of the Sabbath day and her work. She owns a fruit stand and Sundays are the busiest day of the week so it is really hard for her to not work. This Friday I was planning for her and I wasn’t really sure what to teach her and what to share so I prayed and when I finished I thought of a story that I had not ever read before but I knew it was in a liahona (I know, kind of weird but that’s the spirit haha) so I grabbed a couple Liahona's and started reading where I thought it would be. The first one had a story that was on the Sabbath but it wasn’t the right one so I grabbed the next one and found a story on working on Sunday and opening his candy store for a Holiday so I was pretty impressed but it wasn’t quite what I was looking for so I grabbed another one and this story was exactly what came to my mind when I was praying!!! It was so cool! It was exactly like Lin mama's life and story! Then in the lesson she shared an experience, last week she prayed about working on Sunday and then went to work. At work 3 people asked her about her religion and she said I guess I am Christian" and then her customers got mad at her for working on Sunday because they knew Christians don't do that! SO COOL!!! This Sunday she was at church and stayed for the whole thing! Pray for her and that she will be able to receive the blessings from keeping the Sabbath and trusting in the Lord!!!

Love you all and hope you have a great week!

Love Elder Roberts

October 26 2014

This was another awesome week!

It started off awesome and crazy and didn't stop through the whole week! The title of my email is how an old guy started a conversation with us this week while we were sitting at the park doing language study! Also I was contacting a guy and asked him to pull over but he said he didn't have time so I got his number in the middle of the intersection and then he took off.... about three hundred yards down the road a car turned right in front of him and he slammed into the side of the car....  I didn't know what to do and I still don't know what to write about it besides he should have pulled over and talked to me...

Friday we had weekly planning. Thursday they came and readied our house because it is going to be a 4 man house in two weeks. So they brought a lot of new stuff so most of our hour planning was spent taking all the new stuff for ourselves and putting it together (hehe)! The problem was we didn’t have most of the tools we needed so we had to use what we had and I ended up pounding 1 inch long nails into the back of a shelf with a dumb bell handle! Haha. Elder Ng was using a wrench! It was a pretty fun day!

Saturday I got to go to the Temple with Elder Shelton and our ward because Elder Shelton had a family that was getting sealed! It was such a cool experiences to see them get married for time and all eternity! What a great feeling to know that this life is not the end and that you will be able to spend forever with your family! The day over all was super crazy though! We got there and found out the time had been changed so we were going to miss our bus home. We had to figure out how we were going to get home. One of the bishops said he would help us so we told someone from our bus to tell the other people we weren't going to go with them, well that message never got to them because right before the sealing three people came in telling us our bus was out there waiting for us to go. The next problem was wondering if we had enough money to get home because we could only ride half way with that bishop and then we took the high speed rail the rest of the way! Luckily everything worked out and we made it home.  A lot of things worked out so that I will hopefully have enough money for the rest of the week. The day that was supposed to be about 2000 Kuai ended up being almost 4000!!! So 60 dollars to about 120!  But somehow we will still be alright to get through this week! we also only get 7000 Kuai a month.... so that shows how expensive the day was. But the Lord definitely provides when you are doing his work and I am going to be able to make it through the week! Hopefully!

On Monday we were buying groceries at about 5:30 and the sisters called saying they had a lesson at 6:30 with someone that lives in our area so they wanted us to be there so they could hand her off to us. We got there and it was a former investigator that called them and wanted to meet because she had some things happen and now she feels like she needs this gospel in her life and that it can really help her! They said they would sit down with her first and then invite us to come in in a little bit. About 20 min. later they invited us in and told us "the spirit is really strong just bear your testimony on prayer" so we sat down and that's what happened my companion started on why prayer is important and then I felt like I needed to share an experience that I recently had with prayer and God answering through scriptures then I kept going and talked about trials and how he has helped me a lot! I shared a lot that I normally wouldn't share but I felt like I needed to and it got pretty deep! I finished and things were quiet and I was kind of nervous about what I said then she just opened up and told us pretty much everything! The spirit was super strong in that lesson and I know she felt it! Her name is Gill! 

Love you guys so much and hope you have a great week! You are all in my prayers! :)

http://www.mormon.org/monica

Love Elder Roberts

October 20 2014

This week was quite the week!! First off I just want to start off with letting you know that I am a visionary man!(ha-ha) Friday night I had a dream that I was district leader and that I was doing DTM, then luckily I woke up and it was Saturday morning and I wasn't.  It was just a dream. I kind of forgot about it then Saturday night we got a call from president and he said my companion was going to be a Zone Leader in another zone and then he told me I was going to be senior over someone that came on the Island with me. I was a little nervous but thought at least I am not District leader.... I was so wrong! I got a call from the zone leaders a couple minutes later telling me that I was the district leader of the MEGA district! We have 5 companionship's in our district (that's the most in the whole mission) and we have the zone leaders and the sister training leaders in our district! So things just changed really fast! Then later I realized that I had a dream about all of this and it was super weird!

My new companion is Elder Ng!!! He is the younger brother of the other Elder Ng, my other companion.  It is super cool that I get to be companions with both of them!  He is from Provo Utah and is super nice and always happy!! He is a super positive person it is awesome I am excited for these next three weeks!

Last Monday we went and got our haircuts by an awesome member in our ward! He is super good and crazy when it comes to cutting hair and when it comes to life he is just crazy!!! haha he wears all black and his clothes are super crazy but anyway the hair cut was awesome! He uses 5 scissors at once and he only uses scissors, no buzzers for him!! It was a super nice day and we got our hair washed like 3 times for about ten minutes each time!! I felt like I was at a spa! I will send some pictures!

Sunday night we were sitting in our study room and Elder Shelton was doing an baptismal interview on me so I could  see how to do one and about half way through right when we were really feeling the spirit I leaned back in my chair and we heard a loud pop and I was on my butt.  The back of my chair broke and it scarred the crap out of both of us!!! It was super funny but now my chair is broken.

Sister Huang is doing really good she is still reading and doing everything we ask her to, she is even keeping the Sabbath day holy and she loves to buy stuff so it is pretty awesome. She will probably get baptized in 2 or 3 weeks she just needs to come to church! This week we asked her to pray and truly repent and ask for Gods help to feel forgiven, the next time we met with her we asked her how it was and she told us she got her answer! She prayed and then flipped to the back of the book of Mormon to a random page in ether and started to read! The chapter she read was on repentance and she had marked almost every verse! God really does answer your prayers and will help you if you have faith in him and truly search he will give you an answer!

This week I had a special opportunity to give a sister in our district a blessing! She asked for a blessing of comfort because she is going home soon and is feeling really nervous. When I was starting the blessing I had no idea what to say and so I just started to talk, a few words into I stopped and my mind was filled with things to say and all I had to do was open my mouth and figure out how to make it all make sense! The spirit was so strong and we all left the room holding back tears! The power of the priesthood is amazing and I am so grateful to be able to have it in my life and to be able to use it to serve God!

I love you all and hope you have a great week!

Love Elder Roberts!

October 12 2014

This week was full of crazy good stuff!!! On Tuesday we had our zone training meeting and it was awesome! It was on following the spirit but I think what made it the best was when I walked in an Elder that I haven’t seen since my 3rd move call says to me holly crap you have lost a lot of weight! You look so lean and in shape. But we have been working out pretty hard the last couple months and it is paying off I guess. I am still skinny but I feel good! I ran a mile in 5:46 this last week and felt like I could have pushed myself harder.

We are still meeting with sister Huang and she is still doing awesome! She gave us some sweet ties last time we met with her so that was awesome! We taught her the law of Chasity this week to.  She is still super excited to get baptized and came to conference this week! Hopefully she can hit her goal on the 1st!

Conference was so good!!! But it was way to short! Time went so fast, and before I knew it we were on the last session. It is weird what sticks out to missionaries that didn't stick out to me before. It is so awesome that we have a living prophet today that is receiving revelation and can share with us to improve our lives and help us be happy!

Last night we had an awesome experience while contacting. We started contacting at 8 and had to be home by 9 so we didn't have much time and so we just headed out trying to follow the spirit I contacted this kid and at first I was a little iffy about it because he looked like a punk kid. Since I got a knife pulled on me I have been kind of nervous but I did it anyway. I pulled up to him and he was pulling a cigarette out of his bag. I asked him a few questions and got to know him then asked if he believed in God, he said no so I started to tell him that I know there is a god and he loves us and in the middle of a sentence I just felt like I needed to stop and so I asked him why he didn't believe.  He said because God has never helped him. I just sat there for a little bit and then started to testify a little bit but that isn't what I needed to say so mid-sentence I stopped and asked him if he had ever prayed and I think that is what really got him, he said no and I told him through prayer we can talk with God and feel his love! I got his number and asked when is a good time to meet he said tomorrow! At first I tried to get it on another day and I said we will call him and set up a time but once again the spirit said nope you need to meet with him tomorrow! So I set him up for today!  He seemed kind of down and like he really needs something in his life! The spirit guided that whole contact, it felt awesome! Then we started to go down a road but felt like that was the wrong way so we turned around and went down another road, at an intersection I saw a guy on the opposite side sitting on his scooter, about halfway through the intersection I turned so we could go talk to him, I almost hit my companion I turned so fast!  We got to the guy and he just got up and walked away. He just went over to his dog so we decided to wait for him to come back. He finally comes back and just rejects us. I was kind of confused but felt there was a reason, we turned around and there was a couple getting ready to go jogging and they were awesome! The contact started with them being really friendly but they said “we have met with a lot of churches before so it’s ok" and by the end they told us if we didn’t call them by the end of the week they would call us! It was a super good day!

Love you guys and hope you have a great week!!! 

Love Elder Roberts

October 5, 2014

This week was a pretty interesting week! On Monday we went to a sweet restaurant with one of our RC's (recent convert). The restaurant was on the beach and looked out over the ocean it was super cool, I will send pictures. We also had a Muslim come up and contact us and he started to tell us how we aren't true because Jesus was a Jew and Jews don't eat pork and so Jesus didn't eat pork and we eat pork so how could we be true. It was interesting. We shared some scriptures and by the end we almost got him to take a Book of Mormon! Then after him we went to get on the subway and there was a drunk guy with a bunch of security guards and he kept smacking his helmet on the floor and walls and he was going crazy! That was pretty interesting as well! We had a good lesson with one of our RC's, she is super crazy and said that she doesn't think she has felt the spirit. Recently we have been watching the movies about Jesus' life and we were on the one when he was crucified and when they finished she had tears running down her cheeks and was definitely feeling the spirit!! It truly is amazing what he did for us and how lucky we are to be able to follow after him and receive forgiveness!!! He went through a lot for us don't waist it!

Sorry it is so short not too much happened this week except for a lot of finding!!!! Hope you guys have a great week! Love you!

Love Elder Roberts

September 28 2014

This week was a pretty crazy week we saw the lord helping us so much!

At the begging of the week it was kind of sad, we had about 4 people that are really awesome that we are teaching right now and they all live in the same area, well this week we found out that that little corner is not our area. So we had to refer two of them to the other missionaries. Bummer for us but good for the missionaries in that area. The other two are just barely in our area. They live on the dividing line!

One of the people that we had to refer is so cool. Her name is Sister Lin. I started teaching her when we were on splits 3 out of the 4 times.  So I have really been the one teaching her and I am pretty close and she is definitely getting baptized on November 1st but when she first met us she told us she lived in our area... turns out that is just her set address but right now she is living somewhere else and it is kind of far from us. So we had to refer her. It was super sad but we met with her on Saturday and she took us out to dinner after we told her. She took us to a buffet!! She is awesome, hopefully I am still around to go to her baptism!

Then yesterday, Sunday, we had a super cool experience with one of our investigators. Her name is sister Huang or her English name is Lain and we met with her for the first time on Tuesday. She is super hyper and crazy!!! But super nice and she always brings us drinks and stuff. On Tuesday we taught her the plan of salvation and gave her a book of Mormon and asked her to read every day for 10 minutes and we would call and see where she was throughout the week! Well we ended up meeting with her on Sunday and asked her where she was at in the Book of Mormon. She flips open the book in the middle and says about here. My companion and I both look at each other and she keeps flipping through and turns to Alma 10 and says oh right here!! We about pooped our pants. Now we need to try and figure out how to teach someone that actually did what we asked. So we start asking questions like wow you read that far by only reading 10 minutes a day? Her response "well like 10 or 30... Maybe an hour.... I DONT KNOW I was just reading it!" We start flipping through and she has sticky notes with questions to ask us and has marked all the way through, from the introduction to Alma! As we went through our lesson we would bring things up and she would talk about how she read about that and then finish the story! It was crazy I have never had an investigator read more than like a page let alone half the Book of Mormon in less than a week! We ended up giving her a baptismal goal and committing her to the word of wisdom and she accepted and is going to get baptized on the 1st of November, as long as she comes to church!!! haha She also said while she was reading she just started to cry and wasn’t sure why but it felt good and she felt peaceful and just kept reading, She read Alma 8:14-15.

This week was awesome and we saw a lot of miracles but I don’t have much time so here they are really fast:

We contacted one guy on the road that first completely denied us and as we talked to him and talked about why our church was different by the end of the contact he asked us for our number and gave us his number and told us in 2 weeks he is going to call us to learn more!

We had a guy show up at church that Elder Greenhalgh contacted clear back in February but he was too busy and now has time to hear about the gospel!

And transfers were this week and me and Elder Shelton are staying together to experience more baptisms and miracles together!

I love you all and hope you have a great week!

Love Elder Roberts

September 21, 2014

This week was a pretty good week! We had zone conference and it is always nice to hear from the mission president! The topic was on our first lesson and how to teach a good first lesson but you probably don’t want to hear too much about that so I won’t talk about it too much.  The main point of it was to ask questions and find their need before you start teaching, once you find their need then you can truly teach them and not just teach a lesson! After the conference was over my companion had a District leaders meeting and so I was outside with other missionaries waiting for him and sister Blickenstaff came and asked me and him to help her teach a lesson in a couple minutes because president had to do interviews. It was a pretty cool experience but kind of weird but I got a free dinner out of it so I won’t complain too much.

This week we had a pretty cool experience with the "he" family. The son passed his interview and so he is ready to be baptized and really wants to but we have been trying to get the dad ready so he could baptize him. They were less active. They have been coming to church the last couple of weeks but the dad hasn’t had an interview with the bishop yet so we started to think that he probably will not be able to get baptized this week.  Next week is transfers and I am probably moving so I was kind of sad but it is better that they wait a little bit and have his dad baptize him. I think it would mean more to the family, but last night they called us and said they talked to the bishop and the bishop said the dad can baptize him!! So this week we will be having another baptism and bringing a family back into the church!!! Families are amazing and make doing this work worth it!

This week we also had another baptism and it was awesome of course! It was sister lee and her daughter! We got a call Friday night from our ward mission leader saying that tomorrow there is supposed to be a typhoon so we should probably cancel the baptism ha we said, we will see tomorrow and let him know! We woke up and the sun was out and it was a pretty nice day so we told him we were still going to have it! In the afternoon it started to rain a little bit and he called us trying to get it canceled again we said ha, we are not even wearing our rain gear because it was raining so little!!! So we told him no and he just told us it was going to rain really hard tonight....  luckily it didn’t and we were still able to have the baptism!! After the baptism we were told that there was no church tomorrow because of the typhoon. Then when we got home we got a call from the zone leaders saying not to go out until told otherwise. So Sunday was a long day of calling former investigators and organizing our apartment! So much fun NOT!!! haha The Typhoon was pretty pathetic to!! It was just like a normal rainy day in Taiwan nothing to great!

This week was a pretty good week, time is going fast!! I hope you are all enjoying all the little things in life! Love you all and have a great week! :)

Love Elder Roberts

September 14 2014

This week was pretty interesting, we had lots of miracles happen and we are hopefully going to have a good week! The last couple of weeks have been pretty slow and a lot of people have been not showing up for their scheduled lessons. So we have spent a lot of time out on the roads trying to find people to teach! One day we were heading to the church and ended taking a way that we had never taken before and we found this guy that is so prepared!!! Hopefully we can meet with him this week! We gave him the first lesson pamphlet and before we had left he was reading through it! He has read the bible and feels like there is more that he needs to learn.... WELL we can help!!!  

So every morning we wake up and go right out the door to work out. We go to a school that has a full track right by our house and there are always old people there doing their stretching. But one day this week we were running and every two laps we would stop and do pushups and sit ups and one of the crazy ladies came over and started to talk to us in Taiwanese and we told her we don’t speak Taiwanese but we speak mandarin.... haha she didn’t care she kept yelling at us in this crazy language and then all of a sudden this 60 or 70 year old lady gets down and starts doing pushups with us!!!! haha what the heck  she was crazy so I finished my pushups and stuff and got up and started running well I guess once I left she was looking at my companions form and she touched his butt..... haha The old people are so crazy here!!!

Last Monday our awesome RC took us to a water fall.  It was pretty awesome! I will send pictures of that.  Then we went to visit another one of our RC's and he gave us fresh sugar cane!! It was pretty good but really weird to eat!

This week we had some pretty cool experiences! Last night my companion felt like we needed to go tracting on a road that he saw earlier that week, we both were kind of hesitant because it isn’t the most effective method out here but we decided to do it anyway and while tracting we didn't have much success but decided to go across the street and call the APR, when we were leaving a mom and son self-contacted us and they were awesome!! We got there number and they are super excited to meet! The blessings of listening to the spirit!

This week we have two baptisms!!! We are baptizing sister lee and her daughter!  It should be an awesome day, I have been working with them from the very start and at first they were really iffy it is amazing to see how the gospel can change someone and bless their lives!!

I love you all and hope you have a great week!! 

Love Elder Roberts

Wow.... I am back on the computer! It feels like I was just finishing emailing you guys and now I am back! A lot happened this week, so last Monday we went to the Chen family’s house and for dinner we had Pizza :) yummy ha-ha but it wasn’t American pizza it was Taiwanese pizza, how do I know this, because it had squid legs on it!! Ha-ha but it was pretty good... ha-ha I guess that is one way I have changed :) I can’t wait for my mom’s cooking now!!! Ha-ha Then after we ate we shared about the spirit and having the spirit in your house, it was a pretty good lesson! Their family is so cute I will try to send a picture of them if my companion will send it! :)

This week we had a baptism and it was awesome! She was so happy after and you could just feel it coming from her it was such a good feeling! 

The other day we went to dinner with one of our RC's and he took us to this Tai place and it was pretty spicy! ha-ha Me and Jimmy ordered the least spicy you could get and E. Shelton got a little spicier than we did and I am really happy I didn’t get spicy!!!! Ha-ha He likes spicy and he was dying!! His face was pale white and he was sweating like crazy and me and jimmy were just laughing at him, Jimmy just had this smile and giggle like you idiot I tried to tell you but you didn’t listen and he was just really enjoying it :) Jimmy is probably one of my favorite people I have met here in Taiwan! :) So cool and nice!

This week we got a referral to go visit a less active family of 5 (two little girls 5 and 3 and a boy that is 9) from our Ward Mission Leader, and so we called them up and it was seriously perfect timing! They had just got back from a trip to America and most of their time was spent in Utah and when we got over there to visit them they told us about their trip, of course, ha but they told us that they went to Temple square and saw the Temple and they felt the spirit while they were there and wanted that back! Well luckily for them we can help! Ha-ha we visited with them for a little bit then pulled out a picture of Christ and the little 5 year old girls says that’s Christ he was resurrected!! And we said ya he was and then her face goes kind of serious and she says “I don’t believe that" ha-ha it was so cute!!! So our whole lesson was on Christ and how he was resurrected! Little Taiwanese girls are the cutest!! Ha-ha I hope now she believes that he was resurrected :) Then yesterday at church we were outside calling our investigators to come to church and they all came walking in!! It was so cool seeing them and we are going over to their house again tomorrow! :) Families are awesome!

So about two weeks my mom asked if people feed us very much and up to that point we hadn’t really got very much food or anything and so that is what I told her ha-ha but the last couple weeks we have been getting food from people like every day!! Our fridge is full!!! (It is a really small fridge) but it is still full!! ha-ha so last night when we were riding home we were talking about it and I told him it is because my mom has been praying for us since I told her that ;) ha-ha kind of joking but kind of serious then today my mom wrote about how she has been praying that we have enough food and that people will do little acts of kindness for us.... ha-ha well prayers are answered!!! So if all of you would keep praying that all of our meals will be prepared for us that would be awesome!! ;) Ha-ha just kidding but the people are awesome here and I really do know that prayers are answered if you have faith!

I love all of you and hope you have a great week! 

Spicy food

Jimmie

Love Elder Roberts

One year down, One year to go.

Wow one year has come and gone and I am still doing the same thing... but I have gotten better at it and helped a lot more people than when I started!!  This week has been pretty amazing with lots of miracles and finding and teaching FAMILIES!!! We found 3 families this last week and they are awesome and super interested in learning more about this gospel!!! One family we met one on Monday.  They told us how they had been to our church before and loved the feeling they had while they were there but haven’t been for a long time and so they want to feel that again! Then they invited us to eat dinner with them tonight!! haha ya they are Golden! ;) Then we met with a second family. We only met with the mom because the dad was at work but she was super excited to learn and had so many questions about why there are so many Christian churches and stuff like that that we didn’t even get to teach the lesson but hopefully we can go back over when her husband is there and teach them both together! Then the third family was set up by a missionary in our district and it was only supposed to be a dad then he showed up and had his wife and son!!! So many miracles this week! We were constantly getting referrals from other missionaries and then it ended up being a family!

On Monday my companion also was trying to make himself get sick and decided to drink an old, kind of like Gatorade, but it is Taiwan’s sports drink. He left the bottle in our room for a couple days and Monday night we got home and he was really thirsty and grabbed that bottle, he got a huge mouth full of the drink when he realized it was full of mold..... haha all I heard was "uh oh I am going to be sick...." then he started to dry heave!!! haha he was in the bathroom for about ten minutes throwing up and so I think he got all of it out of his body! haha pretty funny.  The next day his throat was really sore from throwing up! haha We checked all of our bottles before we drink them now.

Wednesday during English proselyting we started talking to this guy that was going into an ice cream shop and when he came out he had three extra ice creams, one for each of us elders!! Things like this happened multiple times this week and it was awesome!!!  We should be getting a baptism this Saturday!!  She has an interview today at 2:30 and if she passes hopefully we can talk president into letting her get baptized this Saturday! Pray for her, she is awesome!!!

 Last night we had an awesome chance to go see Kuha'o, the blind kid from Hawaii that plays the piano, he has a Mormon message and it was super cool! It was at our church, he has been here in Taiwan for about a week just touring around doing shows and he just happened to come to our church building, it was cool watching him live! There were also a lot of people there from my old areas and they all came up to me and said hi and they said they missed me.... ha I didn’t think anyone would really remember me because I could barely talk to them and so I just sat there quiet most of the times when I saw them but there was one kid from Zuo Ying, my second area, that came up and talked to me before the show and told me thank you because when I met him he was super less active and then something I did while I was serving there in those two weeks helped him change and now he is getting ready for a mission!! It was so amazing to see the change in him and felt so good knowing that I helped him! I didn’t know it at the time but it helped him go from not wanting anything to do with the church to wanting to go on a mission and I thought I didn’t even do anything there! Just goes to show how you always need to be watching what you are doing and always be worthy of the spirit, I am pretty sure it wasn’t anything I said because I couldn’t really say much at that time but something I did really helped him and made him come back! Watch what you do this week because you never know who is watching and always be doing what is right, it will affect people that you didn’t even know were watching!!

I love you all and hope you have a great week!!! :) JUST ANOTHER DAY IN PARADISE! :)

Love Elder Roberts

July 13, 2014

Wow this week has been pretty fun!! haha so much has happened! We are hopefully going to have a baptism this Saturday! It is an 11 year old boy. On Sunday we called his mom to see what time they wanted to do the baptism and she said she didn’t want to let him get baptized anymore because at church somebody said something to her and it made her mad and she felt like the ward wasn’t going to welcome him in.... but after talking to her for about 30 minutes she decided to ask the boy and then let us know. Well he said yes and is super excited for it so hopefully everything goes well and we will be able to baptize this stud!  Then our other baptism pushed it off one more week because he doesn’t feel quite ready and we weren’t able to finish teaching him all the lessons before the interview so next Saturday we will hopefully be able to get him into the water as well! He is super cool and we have taught him the commandments and he was willing to change, he is a stud!

This week we sat down with an investigator, he is the one that has been smoking 1 or 2 cigarettes a day and just won’t quit... so this week we let him have it ha we shared Mormon 5: 22-24. He just keeps making up excuses and won’t change! It is so hard because he knows A LOT about the gospel and knows that it is true but doesn't have the faith to quit and rely on God! He says he knows God can do anything but when it comes to him quitting smoking he says there is no way! So we told him that he is mocking god and he wouldn’t accept that but we just testified and told him that god can help him but he needs to believe and until then he is mocking god. Then he told us he doesn’t care about his salvation he just wants to have peace and happiness now and the telestial kingdom is good enough for him..... ha so frustrating. Oh well he will get what he deserves and only god can judge him.

So now what all of you what to hear about, the Hospital! haha so Thursday morning we woke up and did our normal exercise and stuff then came home and I wanted to put my initial on the lid because all the missionaries have the same bottle and I didn't want to lose it so I looked for a marker and I couldn’t find one then I saw my knife on my desk and figured that would do the job... haha well it did but it cut a little more than I was hoping for! Ha it slipped off the lid and in between the hand that was holding the bottle and cut my finger, I hurried and grabbed some tissues and covered it and went and got it taken care of. We wrapped it up and I showered and got ready for the day and we headed off to the hospital. On our way we stopped by some other elder’s apt. to give them some medicine because they were sick and then we went to the Hospital. We got there at about 9:30 and checked in and they sent us to a trauma doctor and we waited for about 20 minutes then called us back and they asked me what happened and I just said I cut my finger.... ha then they grab it and start ripping the band aid off... it hurt pretty bad then they tore the gauze off a little bit and it opened up my finger again and the doctor kind of jumped back in his chair and said " oh my..... That is deep you can’t be here. I can’t fix that! You need to go to the ER and get stitches! You probably cut a tendon or something..." ha well that’s not exactly what I wanted to here and now I am just pissed because they were ripping at my finger and now my mind is like oh great that’s a doctor and he was freaking out!!! haha so we get to the ER and they call me back and look at it then have me wait in the waiting room. then a doctor comes up to me and looks at it and starts poking at it with a Q-tip and then he opens it up and starts digging around in it. Mind you I am still standing in the waiting room and not numb..... haha I started to get a little light headed and sick and had to sit down! It was crazy they kept telling me to move it and it wouldn’t move at all then they would poke and tell me to move it and surprisingly it still wouldn’t move.... haha wow amazing but then they went and got another doctor and...... Same thing haha they would poke and pinch it and tell me to move it. Well I started to get a little frustrated from the pain and multiple doctors telling me to do the same thing that was not possible for me to do and on top of that do you know how frustrating it is to use like every muscle in your body just to move your finger and it still won’t move and then the doctor looks at you like you are stupid and then makes a fist and says " just do this' hmmmmmm haha they ended up telling me I needed surgery and would stay in the hospital for 2 or three days..... Ha ya right it’s my finger I am not staying in the hospital for a couple days because of my finger!!! They had me change my clothes and gave me a bed that was in the hall by the waiting room..... haha and I sat in the bed for about three hours until they came and talked to me and took me to a room. Then we did a lot of waiting and talking and all the nurses would come in and flirt with us.... ha we were by the desk to and so we could hear everything they would say and they kept talking about the shuai guy in the room and the would say but he is only 20.... haha kind of funny I don’t think they knew we could understand as much as we did :) while we were waiting the guy next to me pooped his pants so that was a pretty sweet surprise and air freshener.... haha then at 10 pm they finally came in and told me it was time haha Right before I was going in they started asking me all these questions and a member that came and stayed to help with communication said "well maybe if you are lucky they will circumcise you while they are at it, well you probably are already so never mind" then all of the nurses that are pulling my bed start to laugh.... haha so for the next ten minutes all of them joked about that... then I got taken into the room and ky is right it is cold in there!!! haha but I was in a room full of girls laughing at me and talking about me which was super weird!!! ha then one put some oxygen on my and told me are you ready to go to sleep. ha well the next thing I knew I was looking at my hand with this huge cast thing on it.... ha I came out of the recovery room at 1 in the morning and the first question Frank (the member) asks is how are you feeling down there.... haha at least they thought it was funny! :) we stayed there the night and left the next day at 2pm when I told them I was leaving all of the nurses started talking about who gets to help me change into my clothes.... haha luckily I was able to do it by myself :) such a good memory! Except now I can’t ride a bike for a month.... should be fun

I love all of you guys hope you have a great week! 

Love Elder Roberts

Sexy tan line and a thumbs up all the way from the Taiwan hospital.

July 20, 2014

Our little buddy was able to get baptized this week!! It was super cool and he was super happy, it is such a good feeling being able to help these people start their way to eternal life! Our buddy should be getting baptized this week as well! He passed his interview and is set up for Saturday morning! He will be the first person I have taught from the very beginning until the end so I am pretty excited for him!

Just to let all of you know in case you were wondering, I am still pretty cool..... haha I don’t know if you have noticed in the pictures my sleeves are rolled up a little bit and everyone would always tease me about showing off my guns but it was really because it isn’t as hot!! ha and is a lot more comfortable! But lately I have been noticing and guess what.... everyone is doing it now!! haha even the zone leaders started to do it!! haha so it made me feel pretty cool. Still being an example. haha 

Kind of a downer though I looked at my bike and from sitting outside at the hospital my bike grips melted..... haha it is too hot here!! :) But on the bright side I don’t have to worry about it for another couple weeks because I can’t ride it :) hahahahahahahaha.............. Speaking of that we have been walking a lot!! It is kind of fun but kind of sucks and takes forever to get anywhere! Last night we decided to contact to the church and about 2 hours later we made it.... ha we talked to some pretty awesome people on the way!

Awkward moment of the week, during English class we were talking about the plan of salvation for our spiritual share and a lady asked where her beautiful sister is, and she asked if she was the moon... ha we just answered and said we will get to that in a second haha then after class she came up to us and asked the same thing.... so we start explaining everything and after we went through everything again she said but what about the beautiful sister with blond hair.... haha so that sister missionary that Kaylee said I should marry when I get back with long blond hair, she was in my area and I guess the lady was asking where she went and said did she MOVE not is she the moon..... haha so that was kind of awkward but it is funny to think about now.

So this week was good! Lots of walking and it seemed to rain every day when we were about to go out so that was sweet :) haha but one day it started pouring rain and we got on the bus and the when we got off about ten minutes later the water was up to the bottom of the car doors parked on the side of the road.... it was crazy! So much rain the rain drops completely covered the road because it was coming down so fast and hard! There is a typhoon coming on Wednesday and Thursday so that should be fun to!! :)

Love you guy’s hope you guys have a great week and enjoy your fingers!!! You don't realize how important they are until you can’t really use one! :) 

Love Elder Roberts

August 4, 2014

Wow another week is already gone! Time is really flying now I feel like I am just waking up and it is time to head home and then I am waking up again it is a never ending cycle that has lots of surprises in-between! 

This week has been a pretty good week! We have seen a lot of miracles and my new companion is awesome! On Tuesday morning we were out walking the streets talking to people and we had been walking for about an hour when some ladies/girls yelled hello to us. haha so we went over and talked to them, they ended up inviting us in to their barber shop place and told us to sit down. We ended up staying there for about an hour and they fed us lunch and asked a lot of questions about the gospel and were super nice! We taught them how to pray and told them why we were here. They told us they were going to come to English class, they were super cool and nice! Then later in the week we met with the little kid we baptized and he has changed so much!! My companion kept telling me how baptism changes little kids and he has had some stinkers that have got baptized and after they are nice and really well behaved! Well I saw this happen with him! We sat down with him for about 45 min. and usually it is only like 10 minutes that we have his attention. For the whole 45 min. he sat reverently and listened to us and at least acted like he was paying attention! haha It was really awesome to see the change in him and I hope he can keep becoming better because he will be getting the priesthood in less than a year!

For some reason this week we have been getting a lot of compliments! haha I think it is because my companion is so shuai because I have never gotten this many compliments! First the girls invite us into their place and feed us food and ask us a billion questions, then we had a bunch of people self-contact us, one we were standing on the corner and this guy and girl pulled up and started off by saying wow you guys are so handsome.... haha kind of weird but Asians are weird so what can you do :) There was also a huge gas explosion right down the road from our apartment on Thursday night!!! The road is completely torn apart and like 26 people were killed! so ya it has been a pretty fun week and I haven't even told you the craziest part! :)

On Friday we had just finished planning and our phone rings and it is president..... uh oh haha no I thought he was just calling to see how my finger was and so I answered it and that is what he asked me but then he asked if elder Shelton was there and I said ya one sec but he told me just to put it on speaker.... then I knew something was going to happen.... he asked him if he was getting used to the area sense he had only been there like 5 days haha and then told me I was going to come up to the mission home for about a week with another elder that is sick and work around the office.... I just started laughing and was in shock! I thought I was staying there for sure because it is hard enough to learn an area in 6 weeks let alone 5 days! Then I asked when I was leaving and he says tomorrow morning..... ha so That night I got to pack all of my stuff and now I am in the mission home and have been here all weekend following the office elders around doing all the things that they don't want to do :) haha it has been pretty fun though and sister Blickenstaff has been making us food so that is pretty awesome! :) I am learning a lot though and it is pretty fun hanging out will all the people here in Taizhong! I also get to see the Legendary Elder Gish like every day because he is a zone leader up here! :) He is awesome and such a stud!

This week has been fun and interesting and I can't wait to see what the next week has in store! Love you guys and hope you have a great week!

~Love Elder Roberts