LIVIN ON A PRAYER

Well, it is super weird to think that I am on the downhill that this last week I completed a year on the mission, the halfway point. Looking back the time went by wayyy too fast, there were some super super slow moments, but the time is just flying by. I can honestly say that I am here because in the words of Bon Jovi I have been living on a prayer. I am grateful for a loving Heavenly Father who has been patient with me, I am grateful for the prayers of family, friends, companions, my mission president and his wife, and everyone who has helped me out. I know the Lord has sustained me through my trials and I know that I can put my confidence in him to finish my mission strong with this year I have ahead of me.

SO I feel like I have a grand purpose here in San Roque. I was looking through the Area Book we have through the old investigators and found a 15 year old girl named Gladis. She had a lot of visits from the Elders until half a year ago. I felt like we needed to follow up with her, so I told my companion that we should go find her. On the registrar we have of her there is a name of a member that knows her, so we asked the member where she lives and we found her. We got to know her and she seems pretty cool. We were asking her about her life and stuff and she told us, yeah I as living in Tulcán a little bit and I was like oh yeah what part and she is like the parque ayora. Then she was like my sister is a member there and I was like who is your sister and she is like Cristina Cordova. Holy cow, Cristina Cordova is the mom of one of my favorite families there. They are so awesome and I found her sister! I was like dang, this was meant to be. Then we were talking with the mom of Gladis to see if we could baptize her and I told her I know her daughter Cristina and her grandkids and I totally was able to gain the confidence of her. I know that the Lords plan is perfect, he had me go to Tulcán to prepare to find Gladis. I hope she can progress. 

It looks like we will be having a baptism not this Saturday but the following. We were reactivating a less active named Elena until we found out that she really isn't a member, she got baptized 20 years ago but she was never confirmed, so she is going to be getting rebaptized on the 15th. 

Elder Godoy form the 70 is coming to our mission again, not this week but the following. I hope I get to hear from him. I remember when I was able to play the violin in front of him in the stake conference in Calderon and it was one of the coolest experiences of my mission.

I love you all and hope you had a happy new years. Mallory you looked so beautiful in your wedding dress, I was sad to miss it, but I am proud of you. 

Love, Elder Roberts

 I think with the time difference I was there meditating on the volcano during Mallory's wedding

Our shower

 Me

 While we were teaching Gladis her super awesome 6 year old brother Zamiro who is special kept on putting chickens on me, on my arms, legs, shoulders, and scriptures. So I finally decided to get a picture of Zamiro and the chickens and me hahaha. he is the cutest thing ever.

 My companion is shy

 At lunch I asked if I could use the big spoon

Una Navidad BLANCA

What a great way to have a white Christmas and to end this year. We had 2 baptism's. We were able to baptize Carmen Oyagata who is the wife of a member and her son Jairo who is 8 years old. It is interesting because normally as missionaries we don't baptize 8 year olds if their parents aren't members, but with Jairos mom being recently married to a member, our leaders told us it was under us as missionaries and not under the ward to get him baptized. It was awesome seeing this family come unto Christ. 

los bautismos de Carmen y Jairo Oyagata 

It was amazing skyping with the fam. It looks like everyone is doing absolutely great. I got to talk with the man who will be my brother in law tomorrow and he seems super cool. 

It was nice being able to go back to the apartment early on Christmas, we had a rule that we had to be back at 6, so it gave us some time to study the story of Christmas and I can honestly say that I felt a special Christmas. It is really a special time of the year to enjoy the peace that comes knowing that we have a Savior of the World. Jesus Christ has been my best friend. He has suffered for my sins and has also suffered through my pains and afflictions and I can always find peace when I turn to him and I know he can help all of us out. He is the king of kings and the Lord of Lords, he is the great I am, he is the Alpha and the Omega, he is the Jehovah of the Old Testament, I testify as his representative that he lives. He died but he overcame death so sinners like you and I can have the hope of eternal life to live with our families, with Jesus, and with our Heavenly Father forever. I am so grateful for this sacred opportunity I have to represent my savior officially here in Ecuador and to help make the world a little bit better every day.

I finally got to go to church this week, it was awesome. I understood nothing. All of the meetings including ward council were in Kichuwa........I haven't felt this way since like my first month on the mission where I didn't understand anything in church. We confirmed Jairo a member of the church and I participated in the confirmation and the ordinance was in Spanish and then the blessing in kichuwa and I was like well I have no clue what is going on, but that is the miracle of this church. It doesn't matter what language it is, if it is English, or a really ancient language that only exists in certain cities in Ecuador, the gospel is the same. The church is the same. Jesus Christ is the same. I hope you all had a wonderful week. I am so excited for Mallory, I cant believe she is getting married tomorrow. I am sad I will be missing her wedding, but I know this is where I need to be right now. Mallory, congrats, and good luck! and Junior, take care of my sister! 

Love,

Elder Roberts

 Getting ready to open presents with the companion ( I gave him a yarn ball and some of my other presents)

 Aftermath of opening presents

How we celebrate baptisms

Ward Christmas activity

We helped this wawki put the pig in the oven

Pig

Everyone's house has one of these cuy ( guinea pig pens)

This decided to crawl up my companions scriptures during a lesson 

FELIZ NAVIDAD ÑAÑOS

Ok, so this week was going great until Saturday night. I started feeling super sick and started throwing up. We called it a day and went back to the house early and I was throwing up super hardcore and I started freaking out. After 2 hours of only throwing up I went to the emergency room and suffered there. Fun way to wake up the mission President at almost the middle of the night to tell him you are in the e.r.....I found out I had a bad stomach infection. I was pretty bummed out because I was super sick and I wasn't able to go to church yesterday. But I am starting to feel a little bit better. 

Holy cow, San Roque es la mama! It is pretty hilly here, but I am not walking up and down mountains all day, I am walking up and down a volcano all day. el volcán Imbabura. It is kind of hard for my leg, but I wouldn't have it any other way. 

My sector is so crazy. It is awesome. There are a ton of people in my sector that literally don't speak any Spanish. It is actually kind of hard. We want to talk to people in the street and stuff but they don't understand us. haha. There is like one latino family we are teaching, but they don't like going to church because they don't understand what's going on. 

The church is sooo strong here. Otavalo really isn't super big, but there are 2 stakes here and I think they are going to put a 3rd one in combined with Ibarra sometime in February. The members here are super strong. They are hard to baptize but when they commit they commit and stay strong in the church. We went on divisions this week and I am new to my sector and stuff so I was like ok lets talk to that family in the street. Every contact I have had in the street so far has been members.....lol. But it is awesome how strong the church is here. It is awesome. I love Otavalo, I just hate being sick. It is the worst. We are going to have a white Christmas. We are going to have at least 2 baptisms this Saturday. I hope you all have a great week and remember the birth of our Savior, the King of Kings. I share my testimony that he is the Son of God and he has come here to save us from ourselves. 

Love,

Elder Roberts

 Pictures from our Zones Christmas lunch at the mission home from last week.

SAN ROGUE, OTAVALO

Ok, so today was changes, I was super sad to leave Tulcan, as always it was super hard to say goodbye to everyone and leave behind four and a half months of memories and work, but I am so stoked to be here in Otavalo, I have been hoping my whole mission I would be here and I am finally here. I am with Elder Quispe from Peru, he seems really cool. Here the streets are just filled with Indians in their cool indigenous clothes, all the guys have ponytails, and my companion tells me that all of the church meetings including the sacrament and ward council are in Kichuwa. I will finally be able to put the little Kichuwa I know in use! I am so pumped!

For those of you who haven't been following my blog much, when Spencer W. Kimball came to Ecuador he said that the Otavalians have the purest lamanite blood out of any other group of people in the world. They dress differently. All of the men have ponytails including in the church, for example some of my past wards have had priesthood leaders with ponytails. The missionaries that leave from Otavalo also have permission to keep their ponytails, we have one in our mission. They speak a different language, and the culture is different, and I have had a special interest in them my whole mission and I am super stoked to be here.

Yesterday was the Primary Program, it has been the first Primary Program that I have seen in my whole mission and it was super awesome. It was the cutest little thing in the world. I ended up getting to play violin which was super awesome. Romel wasn't able to get baptized, but I know that I could help bring him unto Christ and hopefully this week or the next I will be getting a picture of him wearing white. 

Four and a half months in Tulcan without baptizing made me kind of sad, but I know I worked hard and I did what the Lord needed me to do there. There are so many ways to help bring others unto Christ, whether it is reactivating less actives, getting future investigators ready for the next missionaries, strengthening the branch, helping the city become more receptive to the missionary work. I can look back with happiness for my time in Tulcan.

Not really anything interesting to say, I am hoping you are all getting ready for Christmas. have a great week. 

Love,

Elder Roberts

 Me with my friend from the hardware store

 The primary

Elder Veliz and I 

 Carina our investigator

mis amigas 

 The rest of the pictures are me saying good by to my friends in Tulcan

EXTRANO COMIDA DE MI PAIS

So, this week we had the opportunity to go down to Quito to go to the mission house and have a Christmas lunch/dinner with President and Sister Richardson and it was amazing. I loved it. I could feel a special spirit there of Christmas. My mission President and his wife are the best, they are so loving and have helped me a ton and Sister Richardson knows how to cook. The food was so good. I have gotten so sick of eating plates of rice and beans every day for lunch. It was awesome eating turkey, yams, mashed potatoes, salad, brownies, ice cream, it made me trunky for American food lol. In other news our lunch this Thursday will be chicken and I have been the one selected to kill the chicken, should be fun. 

I was super sad to read about what happened in Lakeville with the Nerf War. That made me terribly sad to know that 2 kids from my High School died this past week in that tragic accident. I don't understand everything at all about why Heavenly Father gives us some of the trials we have,but I testify he lives and that his plan for us is a plan for happiness that we can have the peace and hope that we are going to be eternal families and live forever with our Heavenly Father if we love him and keep his commandments. I pray that Lakeville can rise up from this and that Christ can shower his mercy and grace upon those families affected.

Not much happened this week. We weren't able to baptize Romel, but it is looking very promising that this Saturday he is going to get baptized. I am going to pray my soul out for him that he can be ready. We have changes next Sunday and I think I am going to leave and I would love to see Romel get baptized before I go. He is such a stud! This less active that I helped reactivate in my time here received the priesthood last week and he didn't have a white shirt or a tie, so he got a white shirt and I gave him one of my best ties and I saw him bless the sacrament yesterday and it was awesome. I almost started crying when I saw him hand the tray to his son. I hope this family can go to the temple soon to be sealed for time and eternity. I love the rewarding moments of being a missionary. It is such a blessing for me to be here. I hope you all have a good week and are enjoying this Christmas season.

Oh and my sister is getting married soon asdlkfjaslñdfkjasodifuas dpfasdfklajsdfasjdfaslñdfjkasdflkjasdfljasdfa. that is all I know what to say. 

Love,

Elder Roberts

Me from Presidents house looking over Quito

 Me with Pres.and Sis. Richardson

Chillin with Elder Jeffery and Elder Whetten on the bus

Dios ama a TODOS sus hujos

SO this week I had a toooonnnnn of crazy experiences with drunk people. It is interesting how they just come up to us because we are missionaries and just start unloading all of their problems and there is nothing we can do to help them because they are drunk. We had a guy named Dante tell us he was Satan and he tried following us back to the house and we had to like do laps around the city for him to not follow us and finally he ran into a group of other drunk people and got distracted there and we left.

I was able to help out someone with a history of being drunk this week. We went to the rehab clinic where Romel is at and they received some new people. There is a new man probably 40 years old there who has a super messed up face, he is all cross eyed and stuff because of his drinking. My companion and I shared a message with like the 50 people there and afterword's we went to know this new guy better. I felt so sad for him seeing how drinking cost him so many things. He told us thanks for our message and he seemed sincere. He then told us that he knows he is a child of God. This simple phrase penetrated me. It was one of the most spiritual experiences I had on this mission. This man with many problems knows his true identity of a child of a loving Heavenly Father. I know Heavenly Father loves all of his children without exception perfectly. It doesn't matter what we have done in our past. What matters is who we are now and who we are becoming. I know God loves this man a lot and I am happy to be here a little longer to work with him.

Speaking of the rehab center, Romel went to church and had his baptismal interview.......and HE PASSED!!!!!!!!! If things work out he could be getting baptized this Saturday. What a miracle! I hope he can get baptized so bad, I have seen him turn his life around. He understands what the Atonement is and what it means. Please Pray for Romel Argoti that he can enter the baptismal font this Saturday. 

I didn't realize it was Thanksgiving until the end of the zone meeting we had in Ibarra this Thursday when a new missionary was like happy Thanksgiving. I was like holy cow its already Thanksgiving. this Friday we are going to go to Quito to have Christmas lunch with President and Hermana Richardson as a zone, so that should be awesome.

I hope you all had a great and amazing week. It is good to hear from you all. Enjoy the cold while I am here in the Ecuadorian sun. hahaha

Love,

Elder Roberts

 Me with la familia Solano

Elder Veliz attacked me

Pablo

  I am in a beautiful mission

 It took me an hour to walk here after taking an hour bus from the middle of nowhere

There is a big volcano in those clouds

Caminamos en Calor o Lluvia

Well, this week was great. It is cloudy here basically every day, but this week it was raining super hardcore. On Friday the rain just poured down like no tomorrow as we were contacting in a part of our sector on the outskirts of the middle of nowhere. My companion was like lets go back to the house there is nothing to do and I was like, hey the people will feel more sympathetic for us. 10 minutes later as we were just soaked in the cold rain and walking down a muddy swampy street this guy waved us down who was like working under a tarp painting a door. We walked over there and he let us chill under his tarp gave us some herbal tea and bread and then we explained what we were doing. We ended up teaching him lesson one. It was pretty sick.

There is this older man that has a little hardware store by our house and he lived in New Jersey for a year and always wants to speak English with me ( even though I don´t understand anything he says). Anyways we were talking with him and then we talked about religion and then we taught part of lesson one focusing on the apostasy hardcore and he is convinced Joseph Smith was called to be a Prophet.

This returned missionary that lives by our house is always making out in the street with his girlfriend as we are walking back to our house in the night and we walked by and they said hey elders and we were like hey when can we teach you about God and she said tomorrow. We went with him and his girlfriend the next day and she now has a testimony that the Book of Mormon is true and is progressing for Baptism. 

I played the Violin this week in Church. It was awesome, I played Come Thou Fount. I started low and super slow and it was peaceful and then I tried to mimic the actual song that when the men come in it is super strong, so I did a cool key change a lot more stronger and it was amazing. I felt the spirit super strong. I am so glad I can share my talents with the people here in Ecuador because quite frankly violins don´t exist down here, there aren´t pianists here in the church, music isn´t the same at all here, I think the Lord has helped me share the Gospel in a unique way. I am so excited to get back and play my viola. yay.

I love the mission. I love all of you, I would love to hear how you are all doing. If you haven´t written me, repent and do it. I miss you all, but the mission is going by waayyy too fast and I am going to take advantage of every minute I have representing Jesus Christ our Savior and King in this beautiful country.

Love,

Elder Roberts

me in front of the University of the province Carchi

 I guess you could say I am addicted to avocado

Elder Jeffery, my best bud on the mission

My priesthood line of authority in Spanish

So we had a pioneer recognition activity in Ecuador, the church this year is celebrating fifty years in Ecuador here. All of the members here in Tulcan that have 30 years or more years as members got a certificate at a ceremony this past Saturday ( which I also played the violin for). I played Come Come ye Saints.