August 18, 2014

Wow another week has come and gone! I can't believe it has been almost a year! So crazy! This week I went on exchanges with a zone leader Elder Fiso and he is one year ahead of me on his mission, so that means today he left to go home!! It was super weird talking to him and seeing that the time is really going to come and it is super weird to think about!! So for now I am not going to! :) I am so happy to have this opportunity to learn and grow and it is kind of sad to think about it coming to an end and it being over, once this is over it is over haha once in a life time opportunity and it is already half way over, but I still have another half to take on so that is always good!

Today is move call but nothing to exciting happened, me and Elder Shelton are still staying together here in feng shan :) I got all of the packages this last week thank you so much for the candy!!! I think candy is like the best thing us missionaries can get!! haha today we are going to watch one of the movies you sent us! Thanks again! Ky thanks for the shirt that is pretty sweet! I got them on the same day so that worked out pretty sweet! I will write back to your letter today!

A couple days ago a sister thought it would be funny to test our patients.... haha they called us when we were on our way to a lesson and told us they needed their bikes in an hour and they wanted us to go get them from the hospital for them... haha well we tried calling our lesson but realized we didn’t have his number so we went to find where he lived and it was out of our area... so we called the sisters and they said it is ok just get them when we can. We went to the lesson and it went good kind of, ha, but I will talk about it in a second. After the lesson we took our bikes to the church then rode the bus to the Hospital so we could just ride their bikes home.... well we get to the Hospital and walk around for a little bit and can’t find the bikes so we ended up calling them and they laugh then say "ooops we needed our bikes so we called the other elders to go get them and it just slipped our mind to call you back.... sorry" ha then they told us there was still one bike there so if we could walk that one back that would be great.... so we got to walk the bike from the hospital to the church and it took like 20 minutes... super fun :) haha but I am still alive and got to do service for them so overall I guess it wasn’t to bad ;)

Now the lesson was with a blind guy, it was super different but I think he was faking that he was blind.... He would look around and look at stuff then he would make eye contact with us when he would talk to us and his eyes looked normal so I was really confused.... haha he definitely didn't act like a blind guy and he was wearing seeing glasses.... but it was a pretty good lesson he has different views on things and also thinks the commandments are too restrictive but he thinks we are good. We just shared our testimonies and talked with him for a while and I think he felt the spirit and we helped him! That is the best thing about a mission. You get to spend your whole day just trying to help people and bring them a happiness!

This week we got some sweet haircuts!! haha probably the most Taiwanese hair cut I have ever had, but I guess that is what you get when you tell them to just make you shuai haha oh well it is a cool experience! :) I will send pictures :)

I hope you all have a great week and stay happy! Love you

Some things I have learned in Taiwan:

-Don’t underestimate an Asian when it comes to them using their scooter as a pickup truck! :) Or as anything for that matter! They use them to mow fields here... haha

-Don’t worry about things you can’t control!

-The less you focus on time going fast the faster it goes!

-There are A LOT of crazy people in Taiwan!

-and you never fully enjoy what you have until you don't have it any more!

I want everyone to focus on what really matters this week! Love you

Love Elder Roberts

Hair cut Taiwan style

Ice cream

July 28,2014

So this weekend we got a little surprise!! On Wednesday I had my checkup for my finger and they took out the stitches and he told me everything looks good, my movement is better than most people and I probably will not need rehab, so we asked him when I can ride my bike hoping he is going to tell me earlier.... ha nope he told us that I get to wait another 8 weeks before I can ride my bike... haha so we thought for sure I was going to move into the office for a little bit. When I called on Saturday they told me I wasn't moving and they were going to give it another week and see how I was doing, me and elder Greenhalgh were super excited and thought we were going to be staying together ha boy were we wrong, about 15 minutes later the zone leaders called and told us he was moving and I was getting a new companion! What the heck that was a surprise! My new companion is Elder Shelton he is super cool I met him when I was being trained in Taiping. He is from Lehi and is super chill, before his mission he was super hipster I have been told I don’t know too much about him but I have been told he is super cool!

This week has been quite the week!! ha it started out last Monday after emailing a crazy investigator txt us saying that she was going to give her daughter to the church and commit suicide because we weren't paying enough attention to her and she felt like we didn't care about her..... We met her that Sunday and Luckily we got that taken care of and everything is ok with her but the sisters are teaching her now so we don't really have to worry about her. 

Through the rest of the week we got fanged (people didn't show up) time after time after time! If all of our lessons showed up we would have double mission standards! haha The rain started to come on Tuesday for the typhoon and so Tuesday and Wednesday none of our lessons showed up so we did a lot of calling! The typhoon wasn't too bad, we were in the church whenever it was bad, luckily but it wasn't too bad in my area! There were a couple pretty big trees that got blown over and a lot of broken branches but for the most part it was pretty calm. So Wednesday we spent a lot of time calling and setting up lessons for Thursday so that we could get back on track and get our numbers back up and by the end of the day we had 11 lessons set up so we were pretty excited, until only 4 of those lessons showed up and some of the peoples reasons were because they were too tired to come.... haha by this time of the week I was just ready for the week to be over and didn’t know what else could happen..... haha well I found out :) Friday was weekly planning but we had to leave early to meet with an RC and on our way we called him and he said he was on his way, we get to the church and wait for about 30 minutes and call him again and he says "oh I decided not to come because I have some stuff a little later." What the heck! Ha why didn’t you say that earlier? We ended up quilting him into coming luckily haha then we got home and did planning super-fast so that we could lay down and rest for a little bit and take a break, haha that was nice for about 20 minutes until they started drilling on the floor above us.... haha by this time we just woke up looked at each other and just started to laugh, we didn’t know what else to do :P so we got ready and headed out early to meet with a LA, right when we got to the church that LA called and told us he wasn’t coming anymore because he was tired....  and that is pretty much how our entire week was! But it happened 20 times! 

I learned so much this week though! Elder Greenhalgh had an awesome attitude the whole time and we just had to start laughing at how terrible our week was going! I definitely learned patience and at the end of the week we had to start finding stuff to do to help pick us up at night so we started having rap battles and just stupid stuff to have fun! :) Saturday when I called to see if I was moving Elder Greenhalgh started to get bored and as I am talking to the assistance he pulled up his shirt and started to draw a face around his belly button.... haha I couldn’t help but laugh! :) Over all I would consider it a good week and good learning experience! 

Last thing is WE BAPTIZED again this week! It was super cool he was the first person I have taught from the very beginning to the end! We had a member baptize him and after he was super happy and gave the guy a big hug! It is so fun to see the change in people and how this gospel can help them! Oh one more thing to add to the week Sunday on our way to church bian txt us and said he wasn't Cumming, because he was to tired ha, but he was going to be confirmed and so we were kind of freaking out and luckily we got him to come but man this week was just awesome! :) haha 

Hope you all had a great week and if you didn't well take it and learn from it and make this week be great! :) 

Love you all!

Love Elder Roberts

July 7th 2014

Move call was this week!! I hate move call!!! haha it is so stressful because you don’t know what to plan for the next week and on top of that everyone kept saying I was going senior which I don’t feel ready yet haha and there have been a lot of things that have changed in the last week or two so I was kind of nervous haha but I didn’t so that was a relief. So me and the amazing Elder Greenhalgh are together for another move call!!! I am super excited, we have like 4 people that are looking pretty good for baptism right now so it should be a pretty good move call!!! :)

This week has been pretty exciting! We had zone conference this week and they gave us permission to use our cameras whenever we want so now you will probably be getting more pictures, before we could only use them on Monday. I have a lot to send this week to so I hope you guys enjoy them! :) And now I have pictures for most of my stories so you can see!! :)

On the 4th we went to a place called shark bite toast and got a big burger and a milk shake!! haha it wasn't quite as good as in America but for taiwan it wasnt to bad :) We also had a member give all of us American flags and we all took pictures with them and it was pretty fun especially with the Taiwanese companion in the picture haha we also found a giant snail in the church parking lot and we took pictures and one thing lead to another with a bunch of guys and we ended up getting our zone leader to lick its eye!! haha it was awesome! :) Then at the end of the day one of our Recent converts gave us this crazy chocolate from new zealand  and it was white chocolate that had lemon flavor and pop rocks in it!!! haha it was super good!! :)

This week some elders from another area called us and asked if we wanted to do a service project at a hospital with them and play games and  teach them a lesson, we of course said yes and then the day comes and we get to the hospital and the other elder call us and tell us that they are still in the area, they were supposed to have a car come pick them up but it never showed up and the lady that was in charge of it was sick so they asked us to go in and figure out if it was still happening and find out what was going on!  As we walk through the hospital and to try to find the children’s cancer place in Chinese that was fun! We finally find it and ask the people if they are having this activity and the lady looks at us really confused then goes and asks some people and everyone starts to get up and look around trying to figure out if they missed something or something like that and so we realize that they have no idea what we are talking about so we called the other elders and what ended up happening was this lady was like crazy and she just moved into their ward, she use to live in Taizhong and she scams people out of money and sets things up for missionaries that sound like really awesome opportunities for us then we show up and the people have no idea what we are talking about... haha so she didn’t have anything planned except for talking to us :P That was an interesting day kind of a bummer that we didn’t get to do that!

I am so thankful to be serving here in Taiwan doing the lords work! It is such a blessing and is really making me someone that I will be proud to be! I and my companion Elder Greenhalgh were just talking about this earlier today about how the mission is so hard and stressful but so good! It helps you be able to prioritize and deal with stress and over all if you aren't stressed you will be happier! Ya right now it kind of sucks but at least we have the Lord with us right now to help us be able to overcome all of the trials and challenges that missionaries deal with! Everyone has stress and challenges and trials and we as missionaries go through a lot but how grateful we will be in a couple years when we are able to handle all of it and go through it with ease! Ky and Brett I am not going to lie and say a mission is easy but I will tell you that it is freaking awesome and you will learn so much from it! It will prepare you for the rest of your life! Sometimes it sucks but those sucky times make you a stronger better person and when you finish them you will look back on it and be happy that you did it! Like practicing or lifting weights while you are doing it it is hard but when you finish and see the results it was all worth it! Strive for the best and let God do the rest and you can accomplish anything!! 

Love you guys and miss you lots! Hope you had a great week and 4th and I hope you have a great week ahead!! 

Love Elder Roberts 

The missionary tan lines, the watch the fingers from holding onto your bike and the ctr ring on the finger :)

June 15 2014

Wow this week has been so crazy!!!!! So much downs and craziness!!!  To start off on Tuesday we had 8 people set up appointments and all of them said they would come the night before. Then at the end of the day we ended teaching a total of 2 lessons.....  One of the guys is supposed to be baptized this Saturday... That is not going to happen now. Because since Tuesday we haven't been able to get a hold of him and we think he has blocked our number.... really sad but it happens. Later that night we got home and got a call from our golden guy that came up to us talking about English class. He was calling us to tell us he can’t meet with us anymore because he is gay and he would not change. Kind of depressing. We had a good feeling about him but I guess now is the time.

Some other pretty sweet things happened this week.  I was going to the bathroom the other day and it was very peaceful if I do say so myself. Haha, as I was pulling the toilet paper out something started to wiggle out of my hand.... it was a little unexpected and I may or may not have squealed like a little girl ha, but as I looked down I noticed there was a nice friendly gecko on the toilet paper!!! haha he ran up the wall and just chilled for a little bit, it was quite a surprise and I thought it was pretty funny! After words I tried to catch him and I was running through the bathroom trying to catch this lizard but sadly he ran into a hole and got away! Luckily nobody came in and saw me crawling around on the floor:  haha 

This week we had a crazy lesson with an investigator!!!  Everything started off good and the lesson went good, we taught him the second lesson on the plan of salvation and it was going really good until as we were about to finish up our pei ke (the member in our lesson) said to the investigator, you smoke right? The investigator says “ya”. Then our peike says oh we have this thing called the word of wisdom! My companion and I are both like oh great.  Luckily we were able to do it smoothly and talk to him about it as he is freaking out because he has tried to quit smoking before wasn’t able to, and so we are promising blessings and telling him why and just explaining things but before we had a chance to finish our peike asks if he has a girlfriend?  The investigator  says yes and our peike says "oh well we also have this thing called the law of Chasity" that is where we cut him off and told him we will tell him about it later. It was really interesting!!! Luckily he still accepted a baptismal goal and came to church this week so fingers crossed! He is super cool! :)

Last thing I want to share is something that made my day and opened my eyes a little bit! This week we had to go up to the hospital to get some papers for sister Blickenstaff.  After, we went to a 7/11 that is connected to the hospital to fax them to her. As we were standing in line to pay I saw this little kid that was missing his arm, I started to feel kind of sad for this kid and I was thinking how he probably just barely lost his arm and how sad that was for him. They paid and as they were walking past us the kid (with his arm full of snacks and goodies) looked up at me and gave me the biggest smile I have ever seen and starred at me as he walked passed, then he dropped his drink. He picked it up his drink and looked back at me with a big smile again and ran and caught up to his mom! It made me realize that event though we might have some challenges and might be going through some struggles there are always good in our life we just have to find it and be happy like that little boy did! A smile can turn someone’s whole day completely around for the better!!! 

Love you guys so much and hope you have a good week! This week I want you to try to make someone else life like paradise! I promise it will make your week a lot better!

Love Elder Roberts! :)

June 8 2014

This week has been pretty sweet and pretty rough!! ha It rained almost every day, we would start off our day by getting soaking wet from the rain and then usually ending it soaking wet from sweat because the sun came out and it would get super humid!! Yesterday we were riding to church and it was raining but it was so humid it felt like we were riding through a mister! It was the weirdest thing ever!!! haha On Wednesday we had just left our house and it started to sprinkle and we decided we didn’t need to put on our rain gear and it would be fun.... haha well within the next 20 seconds you would have thought we had just got out of the swimming pool!!! haha it was so fun and felt really good actually! The roads were covered in water and in some spots the water came up to the bottom of are peddle. So as we would peddle our foot would go into the water! Everyone that we talked to asked where our rain gear was and the people here don’t like rain at all so when it rains they are really grumpy! We still tried to talk to them but I don’t think  if it was to effective because all of our tracks were soaking wet and so we couldn’t give them anything or even write down there number, but hopefully were able to cheer up their day a little bit! I mean a couple of white kids, soaked, singing me a song in the rain would cheer me up a little bit :) haha super fun day! 

Because of the rain we got fanged ALOT.... which kind of sucked!! Because nobody likes the rain nobody will go out in it!! The people here think the rain is acid rain and will make them go bald!!!  They are super funny but they will sometimes call you and say they can’t come and if you ask why they act like you are stupid and say "because it’s raining outside!!!"

Not too much happened this week but the normal missionary stuff. Sunday was pretty sweet though we had 3 investigators come and 2 of them were just kind of random. One of them was someone we hadn't even met. He was one of the other Elders Investigators and then they found out he lives in our area so they gave him to us at church!! He is super cool. The other one we couldn’t get ahold of towards the end of the week so we thought he wasn’t going to come. Then he showed up and told us he had been in taipei for the last couple days!  He is probably getting baptized next week or the week after! Keep him in your prayers! :) Then we had the guy that came up to us like 2 weeks ago looking for the English class. He is doing really good but he is talking to his Christian friends and other ministers and they are telling him not to read the book of Mormon and that we are bad and stuff. So hopefully he can get a testimony quick!

That was pretty much our week! Just working hard and trying to have fun while doing it, which is working out pretty good! Elder Greenhalgh is awesome and I am learning so much from him, he is helping the work be super fun! This week I also had my first fresh mango, it was so good I actually had a couple hahah but I will try to send you pictures of one we ate last night!! :) So good! Hope you guys have a great week!!1 Love you lots! I’ll just enjoy myself here in paradise!!! :)

Love Elder Roberts!!!! 

June 1, 2014

This week has been super fun and crazy!! Ha we got the most lessons I have gotten my entire mission for a week! Elder Greenhalgh is super awesome and he reminds me a lot of Elder Gish! So he is pretty much just a stud all around! ha This week end we were contacting on the way home and we were messing around having fun but still working hard and we pulled up to this guy on a scooter at a light and I started talking to him and I told him I was from Africa.... haha he looked at me kind of confused and asked aren't people from there black? you don't have black skin then I said south Africa and he believed me haha then I said hey this is my friend he is from England, as I was pointing to Elder Greenhalgh and so he starts talking in an accent and the guy asked what part and he said London it was super funny the guy ended up adding and is going to meet with us! He is a super cool guy, his name was Eric!

On our way to email today we had a little accident ha we were going down this bridge and Elder Greenhalgh turned and looked back to see if there were any cars or scooters coming and he kind of went over a little bit and hit the edge of the bridge and ended up wiping out pretty bad! His arm got super torn up, he scratched his chin a little bit, he tore his shirt, pants and bike seat and his front break got kind of broke.... poor guy but it was kind of funny but really crazy! It looked like he hit his face hard from my point of view but I guess he didn't too bad, luckily!!! His arm and knuckles are all scraped up though it looks pretty gnarly!!! haha

This week we met this super cool guy.  We were standing out in front of the church and he came up to us on Tuesday night and was looking for the English class and so we told him it was Wednesday night and then started to talk to him and he ended up living in our area and set up a time to meet with us on Thursday. Thursday we sat down with him and had a sweet lesson with him, we shared Moroni 10:3-5 with him and at the end of the lesson he said when we read that he had a weird feeling and it was kind of scary.... at first he said it was a sad feeling so we started to ask questions about it and were trying to figure out if it was good or bad, he ended up saying it was a good feeling but it made him feel like he wanted to cry, so we told him that is the spirit. He set up another time to meet with us on Tuesday and kept saying thank you! Then later that night just after we finished planning our phone rings and it was him, he sounded kind of sad at first but then he asked if the Book of Mormon we gave him was his and if he could write in it and take note, after he told us when he was looking at our pictures of our families he could tell that we were all so happy and he wanted that and he felt super happy and good tonight when he met with us! He thanked us again and then we hung up!! It was super cool seeing the spirit work on someone so quickly and so strongly, hopefully we will be able to continue helping him and teaching him so he can be baptized!!!

One last thing, this week I was reading in Moses one and it was talking about how there is so much more to the gospel that we don't even know about, so I came up with this example :) The gospel is a lot like the ocean, a lot of people here stuff about it and some is bad and some is good for example all the storms and sharks and crazy stuff that can happen in the ocean or how beautiful it is and how fun it is to play in and all the stuff you can do in it! There are a lot of people that just hear about the storms and the boats sinking and the shark attacks and so they are afraid of it and never get to enjoy the ocean for what it is. There are also the people who go and play on the beach and swim and get to enjoy it and they learn to love it but then they hear about the sharks and they run away and never come back or they are just content with staying in the shallow water and enjoying that part but it isn’t until you really go in and explore (or study) that you really find out what is down there and how amazing everything is and how pretty it is. It could completely change your view on the ocean (or life) but even the people that know the very most about it still don’t know everything there is so much out there that has been unexplored! There is so much in the gospel that we don't know about but what we do have we need to study and learn and take it in and enjoy it so that it can be a blessing in our life! I know this church is true and that it can bless everyone, sometimes it is hard and times get rough but if we put our trust in the lord he will help us get through it a lot easier than we could by ourselves! Our trials are just to help us grow and be stronger, learn from them! 

Love you guys hope you all have a great week in the mountains!! JUST ANOTHER WEEK IN PARADISE!!! 

Love Elder Roberts :)

April 6th 2014

Wow another week has already come and gone!!! So crazy!! This week was pretty good, we decided to drop a lot of our investigators because they weren't improving and weren't really wanting to move on so as for he is going to be left alone for a little while.... Sad but he wouldn't read and wouldn't do anything we asked him so we decided to let him do his thing for a little while and hopefully he comes back around! Eric is doing alright he still hasn't come to church though but we are making slow progress with him. But we dropped pretty much all of our investigators so now we only have one progressing  but we found a lot this week and so things should start looking better for us here in gang shan. As for me being sore at night I don’t think I have really ever been sore ha just my arms from lifting every now and then. But my bed is pretty comfortable :) As for knocking on doors a lot of people open the door and see we are white and get scared then look at our name tag and all of a sudden they are super busy.... haha and then the door is shut it is fun though trying to keep the door open in the most polite way we can.  But we do most of our finding by street contacting it is super easy because everyone rides scooters so you just pull up to them and talk to them but a lot of the time with that you get a hand and them saying they have no time instead of a door but then you say kindly " but sir the light is still red :) haha then you tell them what you have to say.  A mission is super humbling though that’s for sure but it is so fun to!! Just the challenge of it, there is always something you can do better at!

Saturday was a super awesome day!!! Our entire day was just service pretty much!! So Saturday was a Taiwan holiday and it is called grave sweeping day haha so everyone goes and cleans graves and worship their ancestors (they call it bye bye here)  it is kind of weird but pretty interesting! So we left the house at 7:30 and went and cleaned graves until about 12. I got to see Elder Washburn again and spent most of the time talking with him it was super nice to see him! He is a stud! Then we went straight from that to a members house and helped pull weeds and helped them move into their new house... kind of. I say kind of because they hired movers to help them and they were so ridiculous!! haha like we all just stood and watched with our mouths open, it was like a circus act!!! One guy moved a two piece dresser thing by himself.... but he took both pieces at the same time!!!!! When we saw him trying to pick up the first one we thought no way just because how awkward it would be and it was big!!! But then he got it up on his head and shoulders and turned around to pick up the bottom piece and he carried both of them into the house!!! So crazy I wish I would have gotten pictures, you would not believe it!!! We thought maybe it wasn’t very heavy until it took 3 of us to pick of the top piece of the dresser thing.... and that was balanced on his head!!! Then they were carrying 3 of these boxes that it took 2 of us to carry one.... haha we just stood there and watched because we were kind of embarrassed as you can imagine! It was so amazing!

One last happy note about this week was we finally got a baptismal goal!!! This is the first baptismal goal our side of gang shan has had since December.... kind of sad but happy we finally got one!! haha hopefully we can keep helping him progress!! And a couple people I was teaching in my last areas got baptized last month!!! So happy for them!!!

Scripture for the week 1 Nephi 7:12 I know this is true! If you have enough faith anything is possible with god!!

Love you guys lots and just hope you all watch out for grandpa I heard he likes to hit people in the face with 2x4's ;)  don’t want your nose to end up like Daves!!! :)

JUST ANOTHER DAY IN PARADISE!!

Love Elder Roberts :)