WEEK 61

Hello Family!

How is everybody? I guess you all heard about the typhoon that hit down south and let me tell you it was crazy up here! It rained so hard the bottom of my pants got wet. I'm just glad I'm ok, with no umbrella I would have had a wet shirt haha. But while we were in zone conference with elder Nielson the area president, he was texting a lot. Turns out he was texting the Quorum of the Twelve preparing for the typhoon to hit. Organizing relief and talking to the mission presidents down there all while giving us a zone conference. Pretty impressive multitasking. He gave a great Zone Conference though! Sister Rahlf talked about devotion and if we are more devoted and have more desire then the work will go better for us and it will be more exciting. When devotion is first, discipline and obedience naturally follow. President Rahlf shared Luke 2: 8-14 and talked about the amazing experience that must have been to announce the birth of Christ. As missionaried we have the amazing opportunity to announce the Atonement of Christ and the opportunity to live with our families forever! He also talked about the glory of god shining round about, and that if we try to be more like Christ as missionaries then the glory of god will shine round about and affect our investigators and they will feel the truthfulness of this gospel. They didn't talk for a long time. Sister Nielson talked about companions and compared them to inlaws. She was a funny speaker and talked about her sons while they were on their missions and compared the inlaws to having their own way to do things when her family had their own way and she really had to work hard to love her sons and daughter in laws haha. She gave a few questions for us to ask ourselves: 1. Can we be someone who will not criticize our companions and 2. What is the lord trying to teach us through our companions? Sometimes the most annoying thing about our companions is the thing that the lord is trying to teach us and bless us with.

Elder Nielson talked about the process of revelation comparing it to 1 Nephi 11-14. He said that the first step to revelation is to ask a question. "what desirest thou?" Asking questions opens the heavens. Every part of the restoration happened because someone (mostly Joseph Smith) had a question to ask. He said that in meetings he has had with the Quorum of the Twelve and the First Presidency, that they spend a lot of time coming up with an Inspired Inquiry. The question they are going to ask the lord. I find it interesting that they pray to know what they are going to ask later. Second, we need to look. We need to see that we are receiving revelation. Alma 17: 2-3 is a good scripture on where to look. We need to pray, read the scriptures, fast, go to church and act on what we receive. revelation usually doesn't come until we act Christ says in John 7:17 that we won't know his doctrine until we act on it and try it. D&C 138: 1-11 is a good example of the process with Joseph Fielding Smith and asking where is his son (its not in there but Nielson gave us the background) and his acting. The third step, "what beholdest thou?" we need to write down what our revelation is what we are receiving and ask if there is anything more we can receive and ask follow up questions to the first one. God does not force revelation upon us and what we receive is up to us and if we have faith, usually god will give us more than what we ask for. Then he connected this pattern of revelation to our investigators. As missionaries, our goal is to help people open the heavens to themselves and help them receive revelation. Through the Holy Ghost, prayer, the BoM, church they can recieve revelation and PMG is the guide for us to help us know what we need to do to help investigators receive the revelation and open the heavens. Elder Nielson used the phrase "open the heavens" a lot. Then later after a lunch break he talked about the responsibility we have to establish the church. Not just baptize investigators and then get transferred. We are to work with new members and less actives. In our mission there are about thirty thousand members total and about twenty three thousand are less active. So yeah we have a lot of work to do as missionaries. The members are supposed to do home teaching but the stake president a few weeks ago told us missionaries that we need to do our home teaching. Yeah we are working with him too. It was a great Zone Conference and I really learned a lot from Elder Nielson. He hinted that next year we might get an apostle here in the Cauayan Mission. Hopefully it will be before June haha. Well that was the Zone Conference and we have interviews with President this week. Good stuff!  Hope everyone is doing great!

Mahal Ko Kayo!

Elder Robertson

NOTE

Nov 11, 2013
The Philippines typhoon hit quite a bit south of where Conner is and barely affected him.  He said "the cuffs of his pants got a little wet".  Please keep the Filipino people in your prayers.

WEEK 60

Hello Family!

Welcome to November! My how time flies.. This week was interesting. We had a typhoon come through here. It was rainy with rain. I have golfed in stronger winds and it rained pretty hard but not exactly what I thought a typhoon was. It was only a number 2 though. I guess a number 4 or 5 would be crazy. Other than that we spent a lot of time finding. We went to a birthday party for a members kid and talked to this one lady and her sister. They said that the missionaries have visited them before but were wondering why they stopped coming. So we set up an appointment for the next day and were all excited to teach them and everything but they live in the sisters area. We actually taught them once then gave the referral to the sisters. I was so excited to cause they were really interested and had a lot of questions. We are trying to help part member families get the courage to ask the nonmembers if we can share with the family members but so far no success. However, we do get Elder Nielsen the Area President in our zone conference this thursday so that is exciting. He will come up on wednesday and the members will have a devotional with him that we get to go to and then a zone conference on Thursday. I am excited for that look forward to learning from him.

This week I watched a thing by Elder Bednar called Act in Doctrine. It is a DVD where he answers questions based on his book by the same title. It was amazing! He talked about the Character of Christ. It was very instructive because the Character of Christ turns outward from the natural man to bless and serve others. The Character of Christ does not think about self but solely on others. He mentioned a few attributes of the character of Christ including observing, listening and patience. He used examples from the life of christ where he would observe and listen rather than speak right away. He used the example of when Peter cut the guards ear off in the Garden of Gethsemane and even then Christ healed the man and Elder Bednar admitted that he would have been thinking about himself than blessing others because Christ had just come out of the suffering and was just betrayed by one of the chosen twelve and was going off to a gruesome death. He never said "Why me?" or "Why can't you give me a break?" He was focused on blessing others until the end. Then Elder Bednar gave a challenge to pray with faith to see where we are on the Character of Christ to see us as we really are and then when we do see ourselves on the scale to work on our weakness. The longer I am out here in the field the more I find I need to work on stuff. Also the Character of Christ does not focus on "I" so one more thing to work on. Bless and lift others. I hope he gives a conference talk on the Character of Christ cause it is such a good topic. Anyways that is what I learned this week. I am gonna try to listen and observe more during lessons and not focus so much on the content but the person that I am trying to help. Thanks for all your support!

Mahal Ko Kayo!

Elder Robertson

 

 

Week 59

October 27, 2013

Hello Family!

How is everyone! Things are going good here in the Philippines. Still hot but it is kinda cooling down. I don't sweat at night with my fan. We had transfers this week and the meeting started late and so nothing happened until about 7 and the meeting was supposed to start at 2. what a nightmare. Then on friday we had a ward activity from about 3 until 8, there were all sorts of games and like a minute to win it kind of competion put on by yours truly. I killed it, I was the hit of the activity. Duck duck goose was the hit of the whole party, a simple game but they loved it. They are planning to have another activity at christmas time. I prolly won't be here though. I will be transferred at the beginning of december. Still have six weeks to enjoy it here though. We are still in the finding stages, we have a few people who may be interested so hopefully they will turn out this week. It was a busy week with transfers and the activity and we had stake conference all saturday and sunday. But I am looking forward to getting back at it this week. The area president will visit our mission next week so looking forward to listening to him in a zone conference. That's about it for this week. I promise to have more next week.

Love, Elder Robertson

Elder Sogari, Zone Leaders, Conner

These are the Sisters Conner and Elder Sogari serve with in the ward

Week 58

October 20, 2013

TO GRANDPA: Well gramps, I did it. I hope you are happy cause you won. I ate balut. And let me tell you, it was nasty!! It was like eating a hard boiled egg that was crunchy and hairy. The taste was like salt but the texture killed me. It was the worst thing ever. My comp ate it and threw up all night but I held it down so there was a little bird in me for a while. There were 9 of us at a dinner appointment.....9! and most of us hadn't tried it yet so they bought a whole bunch and so we all ate it. I took video but I can't get it to fit on the email so you'll have to watch the video when I get home. So there, I am andrew Zimmerman now haha. I also had cow tongue this week too. That was really chewy meat, tasted good just took forever to chew. So I hope you are happy haha.

 

Hello Family!

How is every one this week?  And speaking of pumpkins, I eat squash now like its nothing haha. I'm on a roll. Kelci emailed me today and asked me why I don't have more to email cause she has so much to say. I guess I just take a lot of the little miracles for granted. I can't say how many times I have had a random thought pop into my head. Whether it is something to say in a lesson or a push to talk to this person. Just little things like that happen everyday but only if I am in tune to listen and willing to act. I watched a DVD by Elder Holland from his new book (I borrowed it from an elder) and he said about spiritual promptings that if we listen to promptings then we will get more and the reverse for if we don't listen. So I am praying to have more promptings and asking for help from him to help me recognize them when they come and I am trying to follow them and be more willing them to follow them. It's hard though. But Holland also said that salvation is not an easy experience. We all have to struggle and our struggles will go through a little of Gethsemane and go up to Calvary but he was very adamant about the fact that when we suffer we always need to remember that god loves us and is there for us. The scriptures are there to help us because every story in there is about suffering. So taking that view of the scriptures can help with problems too! I also learned when he was talking about families and wayward children that when the parents keep their covenants that the blessings of staying true to those covenants can pass to the children. He talked about vicarious blessings and all that good stuff and so parents keeping temple covenants can bless the children. That is true and it was reinforcing to read about mom's experience at the temple. We have been really blessed to now have two missionaries and a tight family. I hear all about less active siblings and others going off the deep end and realize we are blessed to not have that. I guess bball and golf help too. Gives us a hobby and something to do rather than get into trouble. The area is good, we went tracting this week a lot and were able to teach a couple people. Hopefully they turn out to be some good investigators. Transfers are this week but I am staying here with Elder Sogari so I will get to have thanksgiving here! Fun stuff. Well thats about it for this week! Have a good week everyone!  Mahal Ko Kayo!

Elder Robertson

Week 57

October 13, 2013

Hello Family!

Ok so reading Kelci's email from her first week she is a way better missionary than me. I don't write that much. Sounds like she is doing good though. Getting the "first transfer" missionary look out. I can see it on all the new missionaries. They have just this shocked look about them. They just don't expect the mission to be what it is. But it is good to try new things. I can't remember who said it in conference but change is good! Very true (as long as it is for the better)! Conference was great! I learned a lot from it. Some of my favorite quotes/talks were Elder Bednars about tithing. President Uchtdorf and his Come, and Join Us. The talk that was about basketball where he said it takes Determination, Perseverance and Self-discipline to play basketball at a high level (the new theme for my life). President Monsons talk about Home teaching which could just as easily apply to missionary work if we change home teaching for missionary work. I can't wait to go back and study the talks more in depth. This week was a weak week work wise (lots of W's haha). We had to go to Ilagan to get fingerprinted to renew our visas and then we had to babysit a missionary at the hospital on thursday cause they were sick and then saturday and sunday were conference so not much work was done this last week. I am ready to get back at it this week. Hope everything is going well!

Mahal Ko Kayo!

Elder Robertson

Week 56

NOTE:  Sister Rahlf (mission president's wife) said to send Christmas packages for missionaries by the end of October.

Hello Family!

How is everyone this week! How is good ol Tri-Cities doing? Still hot here.  Not much happened this week. We tracted a lot. The teaching pool is taking a hit now since the area split. I don't know what else to do other than tract and share with members and ask referrals. There aren't many members in my area though so that plan is almost done with. We should have a couple baptisms in November though. One is the nephew of the bishop here. He is living with them while at school and knows he should get baptized just doesn't quite want to commit yet. The other is a 13 year old kid of a less active who is returning. We are trying to get that whole family to come back and the wife of her other kid to start listening too. Other than that not much else is happening. There is a new rule here that foreigners have to get finger printed every three months so we have to go to Ilagan on wednesday to do that. Transfers are a few weeks away and I get to watch conference this weekend. thats about it! My personal study has been reading a chapter of the book of mormon and then the New Testament along with Jesus the Christ. James E. Talmage really does go into depth about the life of Christ. In my reading i've noticed that although Christ did all those miracles the people still would not accept him because after hundreds of years of the same things in the law of moses they were scared to change because change is hard and more was expected of them. How it is in our lives. Sometimes we are scared of change even if the change is for the best. Christ offers us change. the change of putting off the natural man and becoming a saint. People are scared of that. I've learned that submitting myself to his will and changing little by little day by day can really add up. A new mormon message I watched by Elder Christoffersen that talks about daily bread is great. It is a three part series and is really applicable. Line upon line day by day we can put off the natural man and become a saint. Its the exact same thing as working at sports. Practicing everyday to us may seem pointless cause we don't get much better but little by little day by day we do get better. Then after a while we see just how far we have come. Can't wait to apply this lesson when I get home. Christ will help us every day if we allow him to by doing the little things we should every day (reading the scriptures and praying.) I have learned so many lessons on my mission and am still learning. I got the muddy buddy package this week. I love those things haha. That's about it for this week!

Mahal Ko Kayo!

Elder Robertson