Maní

Well, this has been a great week getting to know the sector. Even though I only have a week with Elder Miranda, I already feel like we are best friends and we are getting along super well and seeing a ton of miracles. 

Last Thursday our mamita  wasn't there, so we had to go eat out at a restaurant and I got like fried chicken with french fries.  I have eaten that so many times here in Ecuador and they never put in peanuts, but for some reason this restaurant put like a peanut sauce on the chicken which I didn't realize until about 5 minutes into eating it. Holy cow, I have never had such a bad allergic reaction in all the times I have eaten peanuts in the mission. My mouth was soooo swollen and I had a hard time breathing. I took my epi pen but it didn't seem to make much of a difference. Anyways, I tried calling the nurse and she didn't answer, then I tried calling the mission President, didn't answer, the mission Presidents wife, didn't answer and I was dying, so finally I called the assistants and they answered and they were with the nurses and the nurse from Argentina was like yeah go buy this medicine and rest and I was like I need to go to a hospital because I am dying and she was like the mission only accepts the main hospital in Quito, you will have to come here, even tho it is like 2 hours away and I was like, if I don't get to a hospital in like 10 minutes I am going to die, and then she passed the phone to the new nurse and she was like, yeah go to the nearest hospital as fast as you can and we will meet you there. 

We ran to the hospital and there were a ton of people in line in the emergency room but they bumped me up to number one and the doctors put an oxygen mask on me within seconds of getting there and then injected me with stuff and I got better............fun stuff

Well, what I didn't realize when I first got here is that a good chunk of my sector here in Yaruqui is the famous El Quinche, where a huge catholic church is located where the Pope Fransisco came and all of that jazz. It is super beautiful, but this sector is sooooo catholic, the people here are so closed and I have never been so rejected in my whole mission. it is defs an interesting experience. 

Well yesterday was super cool. Our Mission President came to church with us. I love President Murphy, he came to church here in the branch and it was super cool.  He helped us out a ton and got to know some of our investigators.  It was kind of a surprise having him there and right before the sacrament the counselor in the branch presidency was like hey Elder Roberts can you give the 2nd talk and I was like sure. I think most missionaries would be nervous to give a talk right on spot and especially do so in front of the mission President, but I was totally fine and I thought it was a pretty good talk.

The church is so true, I have no doubt about it. It makes me so sad to see how many people don't accept the truth. So many people that think their purpose in life is to have fun or make money.  It is sad to see people I love in bad paths that are contrary to the commandments of God. I know this Gospel is so important, it means everything. Jesus Christ means everything in my life. It is sad to see so much confusion in the world regarding Jesus, I know that today Thomas S. Monson is a prophet of God and that he reveals to us the true doctrines regarding our Savior Jesus Christ. I so testify as one of his representatives in his sacred name Amen. 

Elder Roberts

 I ate Peanuts this week and almost died, no big deal

 Elder Phipps and I are mutual friends of Kyle Madsen

 I tried to get a pic with the volcano in the background but it didn't turn out that well

YARUQUI

Well the truth is I don't have much time online, I wasn't really able to write yesterday because I spent the whole day traveling from Quininde to Yaruqui. It was so hard to leave Quininde behind, I had so many unforgettable experiences there and I had grown to love the people so much. Yesterday in the morning I said goodbye to some of my favorite people there and I left Quininde in tears, but I am happy to be here in Yaruqui it seems like a cool place.

I am here with Elder Miranda he is 19 years old and is from La Paz Bolivia. He recently completed 6 months on the mission and he seems like a great missionary and I am excited to work with him. I am not sure if it is cold here in la sierra or if it was just super hot in the coast, but I am freezing here and I have a little bit of a cold. I can already feel the difference in the altitude, the air is a lot thinner here, the sector here has a little bit of hills too but not anything like my last sector. 

In my short time here we have already had a super cool experience. Last night we were contacting and after our first 4 contacts told us to leave them alone we found a 16 year old boy named Marco who I swear is going to be a golden investigator. He believes in God but hasn't attended any type of church because he doesn't know which one is right and why they all teach different things. We were able to teach him the restoration and as my companion shared the first vision, tears were streaming down Marcos face and the spirit was so strong there. He is so excited to get baptized and to learn more. He accepted a baptismal date for the 17th of September and we are going to visit him today and probs like every day until his baptism, but he is cool. There are a lot of people with potential here.

I am in a branch. The church here meets in a casa capilla, in a house. So that will be a fun experience and the branch president actually isn't from here he is from Cumbya, but is assigned to come here to be the branch president so that might be hard since he lives a little ways away. I am happy to be here and I love the mission. I am now with my twelfth companion in my 6th sector, my 3rd companion from Bolivia and my second companion from La Paz. I guess one day I will have to visit Bolivia to meet up with all of my old companions hahaha. 

I hope you all have a great week,

Love, Elder Roberts

Me and Elder Delgado 

 Last district meeting

Elder Delgado and I  

la cota diga

Well this last week honestly has been pretty average. Nothing super crazy to report on. One thing that is making me super sad is that this is week 6 of the change so next week we have changes and there is a good possibility that I am going to go. I have grown to love Quininde a ton, the place, the people, my companion, and it is going to be really hard to leave it all behind. I am pretty sure whatever next sector I have will be my last sector in my mission. I am excited to see what happens, but I am going to be devastated to leave Quininde.  Changes have easily always been the hardest part of the mission. 

Well Saturday night we had a ward activity called Una Noche en Hawaii, or a Night in Hawaii and it was absolutely terrible.  The only people there to run it were my companion, the ward mission leader, the relief society president, and myself and then like nobody else was there even tho all of the organizations were in charge and we had a mountain of investigators there and there wasn't like any activity set up. Anyways I learned a lot of patience that night. I was so stressed out that we had people there and there wasn't an activity. We had to change things up we were able to unlock the office get the tv out and see a dvd of the church and I think it turned out to be an ok experience for our investigators.

Church was super chill yesterday. We have been giving capacitations to the members all of the Sunday mornings at 7 in the morning for the past 3 weeks on how to better their teachings and how to participate in a lesson and things like that and that ended up being our last class that we are going to teach. The classes have been fun, I like teaching. 

on Friday a member of the bishopric who is super awesome accompanied us the whole day and we were able to find like 3 new families, none of them came to church but they are all pretty solid and we have some good visits lined up for this next week.

Well that is pretty much all I have to report on this week, I am going to give it my all this week and we will see what happens.

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

Elder Roberts

 Up high.

 Cesar being stupid

 Familia Nazareno

 Its really a man.

 Mateo

 Messing with Cesar

 Smallest banana

 Youth of Israel

ODIO LOS INSECTOS

Well this last week was filled with a lot of great experiences. Things are going good here in the coast, but we have change in 2 weeks and I think my time here in Quininde is going to come to an end and then I am going to get to know a new sector. So yesterday as it was testimony meeting I decided to share my testimony. I love this place so much, it surely is going to be hard leaving whenever it is time to leave.

Everyone here says you shouldn't eat food in bed because where there are crumbs there are ants. Anyways, I have never really eaten anything in bed.....until this week. I just ate some like sugary bread and I woke up in the middle of night in a ton of pain and realized there were a ton of ants in my bed biting my legs........But now it is a lot better, but still it was pretty irritating the whole day.

SO yesterday we went to a new mamita for lunch. I advised the mamita ahead of time that I am allergic to peanuts and as we walked in the house there was this beautiful looking crab. I was so excited to eat crab. Anyways, as I got closer to the food I smelled peanuts. And I asked if there were peanuts in the food and the mamita felt so bad, she was like I am sooo sorry I totally forgot. So she made me a fried egg and put it on top a mountain of rice and I was there eating a fried egg with rice while everyone else broke their fast eating really good looking crab........It reminds me of a time when  I was little and I was being disobedient in the house and dad made banana blue berry pancakes and  the whole family ate pancakes while I was only allowed to eat cereal....but life goes on. 

This week I went on divisions with one of the zone leaders, Elder Pereira from Guatemala. We had a great day we were able to dedicate a lot of time just to contacting and looking for new people and in the evening just as the sun was setting we found this super cool family that lives on the bank on one of the rivers here. Anyways, we were getting to know them and we taught them the restoration and the spirit was there and the sun was setting on the river and I was just in paradise I didn't think it could get any better in missionary life than what I was living. Anyways we finished the lesson and the whole atmosphere of the visit changed. The dad told us to get off of his land and never come back that he didn't want to see us there and that we dont have permission to talk with anyone from his family.......he is like, yeah we are catholic here and we dont want to have anything to do with you.......so that was fun....

I think the highlight of my week this last week was giving a very special priesthood blessing.  The hermanas are teaching the familia Quiñonez. they are all recent converts and recently rescued less actives. Anyways, living there is a great great grandma. This sister is 116 years old. I didn't know it was possible for people to live that long, but she is the oldest looking person I have ever seen in my life. For the last 8 years she hasn't been able to walk and just passes the day laying down and suffering on a pretty bad couch. She is super sad and desanimated and she just wants to die already to not live the lifestyle she is living. Well I went there with Elder Pereira and with a member of the bishopric and we gave her a priesthood blessing that she had asked for. It was the first time in her long life that she had received a priesthood blessing and we asked her who she would like to give the blessing and she asked me to do it. I was super nervous, I was thinking, what do I say to a 116 year old lady, but I definitely felt a strong spirit in that blessing and I think she really appreciated it. After we finished blessing her, the other members of that family, there were 6 generations there, told us that in their whole lives they had never received a priesthood blessing besides when they were confirmed members of the church and they asked us to give them blessing. There were a lot of them, but one by one we blessed every one of them, we took turns blessing and the spirit was there. A lot of us left that visit with tears. I truly felt like a disciple of Christ in that visit doing what he would of done. I thought of his ministry when he blessed the children one by one and I am blessed that I could have such a special experience.

The missionary work is going well here. We are having a harder time than we were thinking it would be to get la familia Cagua to progress, but we are praying for them and we are looking for others who the Lord has had prepared to be baptized. We are working so hard and even though I may not finish my time here in Quininde with a mountain of baptisms, I feel like I am completing my mission here. 

I love you all and want to thank you for your love and support. I love getting your emails and seeing how you are all doing and I hope you all have a great week.  I know this church is true without a doubt, and this knowledge means everything to me. 

Love, Elder Roberts

My shoes are dying

 I love patakones! (Here in Ecuador there are green platanos called verde and patakones are like fried green bananas, it is a typical food here in the coast. We eat them like every day and they are super easy and cheap to make.)

 Eating the largest patakones I have eaten in my life in heaven

 This kid is evil, but I love him!

 Playing with a lizzard

 Still playing with a lizzard

 Eating patakones with Elder Pereira

 La familia Chimbo with el famoso Walter Chimbo

My companion and I partying in a mototaxi 

Debilidades

Well this week was filled with crazy experiences. One of such was a visit we had with some recent converts. My companion and I were seated outside and the sister we were visiting has two little kids who are 4 years old and 2 years old and during the closing prayer we started hearing water pouring on the ground and I opened my eyes and the 4 year old was peeing on me. All over my pants and shoe and my companion had his eyes opened and we were both in shock and the mom just kept on praying and had no clue what was going on. Needless to say I made a quick stop to the house afterwords and quickly took a small shower and changed clothes. I hate children......just kidding, but I don't like it when they pee on me either.

There was a baptism this week of one of the sisters converts, La Hermana Savi, I baptized her and it was cool because after the baptism the two sisters and the two of us elders were singing a special musical number and during the musical number the lights went out in the whole city and including in the chapel and everyone attending the baptism was freaking out and we just kept on singing the hymn hahaha.

Last Monday night we were teaching one of the Familia Caguas and there were two small earthquakes and the second one was a little stronger but it wasn't really that strong but the whole Familia Cagua was freaking out and like ran out of their house and we had to like convince them to come back in to finish the lesson......#earthquakeproblems

Well we are seeing a lot of miracles in our sector, I don't think we are going to have baptism this weekend but the upcoming weekend it is very possible that some of the Caguas could be getting baptized. My companion and I have had a ton of success with them and we are having a lot of success getting the less actives to come back to the fold.

I wanted to write a little bit today about weaknesses. I like a verse in Ether 12 and I am going to copy it here in English

 27 And if men come unto me I will show unto them their weakness.  I give unto men weakness that they may be humble; and my grace is sufficient for all men that humble themselves before me; for if they humble themselves before me, and have faith in me, then will I make weak things become strong unto them. 

I really like this verse because the mission has taught me that I have a ton of weaknesses but that doesn't mean that we have to be helpless and that our weaknesses always have to be weaknesses it means our weaknesses can be strengths. For anyone that knows me well knows that I love to talk, I like talking a lot. I love giving talks in front of people. but in the mission I have learned how to be a listener and how to let other people speak. 

A weakness that my companion and I have been seeing was the assistance at church we were doing everything that we could to get our investigators to come to church and for weeks and weeks nobody came and then the miracles came. I know that Heavenly Father listened to our prayers and that he showered miracles from the Heavens because the last couple of weeks including yesterday we have been able to get everyone to come to church. 

I know this church is true. I am excited to work hard and be obedient and see what miracles this week has in store. I love being a missionary and I love and appreciate all of you. I am going to give these last 5 months my all. I love Ecuador and I love representing my savior Jesus Christ. I know he is real and that he lives and that means everything for me. 

p.s. I am super sorry because I had a TON  of super cool pictures to send to all of you, but my memory card got a virus or something and like isn't working anymore and this is the only picture I could save and I am super sad because I had a ton of really cool pictures, but I will try to get the memory card situation figured out and get some cool pictures for next week. Here is my companion and I eating ice cream with our convert Cesar, he is super cool, he is getting ready for the mission.

Love, Elder Roberts

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