Letter 4/12/11

Family, well this week has been really interesting.  I can't remember where I left off with the last letter.  I can't remember if I told you about Anthony & Debra, if not they have their baptism date for the 30th of this month.  Let me catch you up on the whole gang here.  Melissa Bond is on her 7th day of not smoking.  She is awesome.  She looks forward for us to come over and teach her.  She loves the Book of Mormon and wants us to explain every little bit of it which is good.  We then have good old Hurbert.  We finally were able to start to teach him again.  He has been really busy with Dr. visits and the whole 9 yards.  We gave him the Gospel Principles book.  We did not expect him to read 3/4 of it in 2 weeks.  he really loves to learn more and more.  He still wants to be baptized but he is still waiting for his brother to get a car so he can come to our church.  We figured out why he is so giving to his brother when he needs a ride to church.  He told us his brother was in jail and this is the first time he has been to church in his whole life.  We have Terry, she wants to be baptized so so bad but even when she gets this divorce all cleared up and done her boyfriend won't marry her.  We told her she is going to have to find somewhere else to live to get baptized.  She told us she is planning on moving out and she is trying to find a job to be able to live somewhere else.  She is way dedicated.  We found a couple more investigators.  Debra, Anthony, Suzzy and Andrea.  Suzzy is from the Dominican Republic.  She is black and only speaks spanish.  We just got back from her house.  Her mom was there and she listened more than Suzzy did.  We committed them to read the Book of Mormon.  Suzzy was so so her daughter liked it and wants to read it and Suzzy's mom is wanting to read it as well.  We then have Andrea.  I'm not for sure if I told you about her or not.  She is a really nice hispanic girl that has a baby and a husband.  She told us in her prayer that she has been waiting for a chance.  She started to cry and thanked us for everything.  She is really a good girl but we have not been able to go back because when we left she told us it would be a couple weeks till she could see us again because she will be busy.  We were out tracting for 5 hours the other day and found a girl that wanted us to come back.  We came back the next day and she had her dog outside that was a pretty big dog and a pretty good watch dog.  That dang dog would not let us step foot on her property. We tried to make friends with it but it almost attacked Johnson.  He took his bag off so it would bite his bag so here I am running back to the bikes while he is getting pushed back by this dog.  I was laughing my head off because he was scared to death.  Johnson has something about him that the dogs don't like.  All the dogs down here are crazy.  Every single house has at least 2 dogs or a whole bunch of chickens.  Last night we went over to Brother Cox to have dinner.  He is the ward mission leader.  He is awesome.  He loves hunting just as much as I do so basically we talked about guns and deer all night.  That made my night.  That is about it for the week.  I saw on email that we got the farm.  I'm betting dad is thinking where he is going to put his airstrip so he can fly up every day.  The reason I read my email this week is because my weekly letter has not went into President for the past 2 weeks so he called and told me to go do it again.  It makes me mad because I wrote some pretty long letters but when I pushed submit he never gets them.  I don't know what is up.  It sounds like everything is going well.  Did Kaden get a new pickup yet and if not just keep mine I'll buy it when I get back but if he has a new one just tell him I will take it over when I get back.  Y'all have a good week.  Thank you for everything you do.  Be safe Love Elder Robison

Letter 4/5/11 & pictures

 Hey family, well this week was great.  It starts off with P-day last Monday.  All of the Elders in our District wanted to invite people from the ward, Young Women and Young Men, to come play basketball down at the rec center.  A couple spanish people came then a whole bunch of cholos (gangsters) walked in and thought they were like Labron James and Colby Bryant.  We challenged them for a couple games of 4 on 4.  It was me, Kryling, Hedgecock and some black dude that was there before we got there.  Again they were some straight up thugs.  We started playing and it was not very clean because they told us it was prison rules.  Basically you could foul whenever you wanted.  That was good because really the only thing I do good is foul.  We won the first game by 5 points and then lost the second by 3 so we did alright.  I was elbowed in the face and my nose is still pretty sore but I'm OK.  It was a very good P-day plus that black kid gave his address so we could go teach him because he says he has demons that talk to him through dogs so that just means that Dalton has really good drugs down here or something.  Tuesday, well today was an awesome day because as a Zone we went to the Stake Center to listen to Chad Lewis.  He is a professional NFL football player.  He played for the Philadelphia Eagles.  He is a very good guy.  He told us about the time before his mission he came home and his dad had a stroke.  His dad should have been dead but his brother gave him a blessing in the hospital that said his time is not done.  The doctor had to pinch off his blood vessels in his brain in order to get the clot.  This meant his whole left side of his body is paralyzed but his dad still walks today while every doctor tells him that it is a miracle.  He talked about his mission and all the things he did and gave us all very good advice.  After his talk I went and got a picture with him and we talked for a little bit.  He told me good luck and that I'm a great missionary.  I think he told everyone that so nothing too special.  After the Zone meeting we went to Sister De La Cruz house.  She feeds us every Tuesday and she helps me with my spanish.  I taught her a lesson out of my scriptures and I said every word right in spanish.  She said I'm getting better.  I don't feel that much progression though so I guess more patience.  The next couple of days we went to this trailer park to go tracting.  We hit the gold mine.  We had tons of return appointments.  We taught the first lesson to two older people their names are Anthony and Debra.  They loved it and we are going to drop off some Books of Mormons to them.  They just might be ready.  After that we went home and waited a couple of minutes for Brother Lunt to come and pick us up for dinner.  We have dinner every Thursday night and then he goes on team up's with us.  We have so many progressing investigators but they all have serious problems that we can not get them in the water yet so it's going to take some time.  Everything seems to be going smooth so far.  That's enough about me let me hear about all the news from home.  How close is the farming out there.  Have we got any new tractors or trucks or any cool farm equipment.  I noticed in some of the pictures you sent awhile back that there was a new Case MX235 I think is what it was so keep me updated.  I'm doing good so don't worry.  Have a good week.  Be safe. Love Elder Robison  P.S.  hey go to LDS.org and go through the videos and John Bagley has his planes and it is mostly about the Mormon Mustang. 

Greeny dinner because I'm a new missionary

Ely & Mariluz

Ely & Mariluz with his parents

Elder Johnson, Maria, and me

Maria and her daughters

trailer park, little mexico

ME

Some tower in the forest

Sister Maines, me, Hedgecock, Johnson, Kryling

The forest of a little town

The forest and rolling hills

Sister Maines

Awesome lake that we swam in ha j/k

Elder Johnson (my comp)

Me (Elder Robison)

Our sand temple that I made.  The sand was just like the ocean's.

Elder Hedgecock, he never ever smiles

Elder Kryling

Elder Kryling

Moth that was on the church

Our study area in our apartment

Our apartment

Letter 3/31/11....finally

Dear family, my week started out pretty darn slow.  We first were supposed to go teach Eric.  He is a less active, recent convert.  We made arrangements to have a young woman Spanish girl there to kind of lure him in a little more.  He cancelled and we did not have much to do so I told Elder Johnson lets go tracting.  He wanted to just sit and visit with the sister, so I finally got him to focus so we could go knock a few doors in this apartment complex.  He kind of complained because he claimed he knocked there 3 months ago.  We knocked them anyway and received 3 return appointment.  That was good then we went back to go study because we were supposed to teach Eric during our study time.  After we were done studying and eating we went tracting again.  We hit 2 return appointments and 1 lesson.  The Devil loves to ruin the lesson with either a phone call or baby crying or just something.  Well in this case we were teaching 2, 20 year old and there mom was sitting in the kitchen.  One of the 20 year old loves reading about history and religion so we thought she was definitely getting baptized, she really liked it and as soon as we were about to commit them to read The Book of Mormon the mother comes over, looks at our pamphlets and grabs them out of her kids hands and throws them in our lap and tells us to leave.  We left and it really upset me a little bit so then we decided to go back the next day.  We gave them a Book of Mormon, so we will see what happens there.  Later that night we had dinner at the Lunt family.  They are new and moved in the same time I got here.  They fed us really good and gave us food to go.  They have a son out on his mission.  He is in the Atlanta Georgia mission so basically his parents moved to his mission because of work opportunities.  Next Day...... Well today we had to have the Zone leaders come down to interview Maria at the church.  We did not have the car this week so we had to peddle there.  It's 4.1 miles uphill.  Half way there Elder Johnson got a flat so brother Harvy came and picked us up.  It was a long day.  The next day we had District Meeting with the Zone leader.  After that we had lunch at Pollo El Legre.  They smoke a whole chicken with beans and rice.  It was the best  mexican yet.  I ate so much, I forgot that we had a dinner appointment with the Garcias so I was really full that night.  For the rest of that day we tracted and we came home to get ready for bed.  Before we went i our apartment I told Elder Johnson we needed to say hi to our neighbor.  She is the one with 2 little kids.  She thought she had cancer about 2 weeks ago and I gave her a blessing.  We just stopped to see how she was doing and how the test went.  The doctor told her there are no problems and she looks really healthy.  When I heard that news I knew Heavenly Father had answered that blessing and helped her out.  She is taking the discussions and she already feels peace through the Book of Mormon.  She is an amazing person.  Saturday was Maris, Ely and Mariluz baptism.  Well Maria did not know who to choose to baptise her between me and Johnson so we flipped a coin and Johnson won.  After the baptism while Maria was getting dressed I had to give a lesson in spanish to her whole family.  I'm not for sure if I made much sense but one of her daughters wanted a Book of Mormon so that was good.  Then we had Ely and Mariluz.  I was a witness for all the baptisms today and Maria had to do it again.  Ely's dad baptised both of them so today was an awesome day.  Sunday, today was ward conference and the Stake President kind of chewed the Bishopric out for not helping us missionaries out.  He talked the missionaries up like we were gold.  That was really nice because the people in the English ward don't care to much about us.  Most of them do I still like the ward they are all good people.  It sounds like everything is going good back at home so you all be good and follow the spirit with your decisions.  Elder Robison

Letter 3/17/11

Dear Family

How is everything back at home.  It sounds like y'all are doing well.  Everything is good over here.  I just got in from tracting, good luck but no luck.  The good luck is that we are glad to be here today because we just were chased by a huge "lassie" dog and I about got bit.  My companion said that is the closest he has been attacked before.  O by the way he has been here 9 months.  Just so you know cause you were asking.  This week has really flew by it feels just like yesterday that it was p-day so that is good.  You guys letter was good last week.  It helped a lot.  Thank you guys for the fasting and praying.  Well let me start you out with my week.  it started off by teaching Hurbert Slayton.  We taught him the Plan of Salvation.  His eyes lit up when he read in his own bible that there are 3 heavens.  He really liked it.  I expounded that we have to be baptized by someone holding the correct authority to be able to live with our Father in Heaven.  After the lesson we went back to the apartment to get ready to go move this woman in our English ward.  We go to get in the car and I immediately was sick to my stomach because the back seat of their car was filled with dog hair and not only that it smelled like a horse was still in there.  I rolled down the window and kind of stuck my head out and tried not to make it to obvious.  Well we get to their house 20 minutes later.  I was so excited to get out of the car but as soon as I walked in their house I wanted to get back in the car.  I had never in my life seen anything like it.  They wanted all the heavy stuff moved out before they had to take the truck back.  We started with something.  I had no clue what it was but it was heavy.  Then all the furniture which had dog hair all over it.  Then we moved all their shelves then on to the piano.  It weighed more than a car.  We started on our way.  We picked it up and then my companion could not go very far he had to take breaks every 2 inches after the piano we cleaned out their chest freezer.  My heck I will probably never do that again.  They had some old food in there it mad me almost throw up.  We picked it up and there was black junk all over the bottom that was sticky.  Well we went and unloaded the truck and went home.  It took us 4 hours and basically revised our tracting day.  After that we had a dinner appointment with the Garcias.  The Garcias made us chicken, potatoes, and rice.  It was so so good.  They lived in the rich part of town with all the big, big houses.  One hour after that we had another dinner appointment because we couldn't cancel.  That night I was really stuffed but stuffed with the best mexican food yet.  We then went home and went to bed.  The next day Brother McKinney picked us up to go teach Hurburt again.  We basically focused on baptism so then I asked him if he would be baptized by someone holding the Priesthood authority.  He said yes.  We were way excited to hear that but the only problem is that the investigators need to attend church twice before baptism and Hurburt can never come because he takes his handicapped brother to his church.  We are trying to figure out a solution to solve the problem.  Later that night we went and taught Maria about temples and to fill out some baptism papers.  She fed us turkey burgers.  I liked them a lot she is an amazing lady.  The next day we received a referral from a lady clear in the middle of nowhere.  We got there and she is one of the biggest ladies I've seen since I've been here.  She only has a couple of teeth but she wants to know about the church so we have a new investigator.  Later on that night we had another dinner appointment with the Garcia family, well one of the Garcia families.  It was one of those appointments where I had to force it down.  Well lets just say I don't like hard boiled eggs and cold chicken with cold corn, beans, peas and some other stuff I didn't know what it was.  I'm thankful for the people who prepare it though.  They are really nice and look up to the missionaries.  This family needs all the help and blessings they can get because their son is dying in Mexico and so they keep feeding us for the blessings.  We got a call right after by the mission leader.  He told us that we have another appointment with the Garcia's on Friday so it is kind of a win lose situation because I want to see them again but I'm nervous about what we are eating next week.  That is about most of my week so I will have to leave it at that.  It sounds like everyone is doing pretty good back at home.  Give me more info on how the cabin is and if I have any nieces or nephews coming as well.  Keep in touch.  Everything is great out here so be safe and have fun Love Elder Robison
PS,  We just got back from the jail because the other missionary needed us to go with them to teach one of the inmates there. 

Letter 3/11/11

Well a very good week we have 3 baptism dates all on the 26th of this month.  Let me tell you a little bit about them.  We have Ely & Mariluz.  They are both hispanic and are ready for baptism so all we have left to teach them are a couple questions for baptism and then put them in the water.  We then have Maria.  She lives at home by herself but has 3 daughters.  She has a very strong testimony of the Book of Mormon.  She reads it very much.  She is a more special investigator to me because she is so humble and can cook very well.  She made us a fresh flower drink, I can't remember what it is called but it is pretty good.  She has worked at Walmart for 7 years and is the most wealthy person we have taught yet.  She lives in a big old house by herself.  She will be in the water on the 26th as well.  We have started tracting quite a bit.  We tracted 2 projects in 2 days and wow those people are really mean and just twisted but we had 7 return appointments so we returned to those appointments but only one let us in and they only reason we got in is because of the teenage boy.  We started teaching him and then after a while his parents showed up.  At first they acted irritated but then we started talking about Christ and we were just talking about the differences of our religion as we tied it in with the restoration.  It came time to leave and I noticed that he had a guitar on his wall.  I asked him if he played.  He said yes but it was out of tune.  Elder Johnson tuned it in for him and his whole personality just changed.  We started having a good time because he was good and Elder Johnson was good so their whole family enjoyed it and they decided that it would be OK for us to come back over.  A very cool story happened for one of my mistakes.  Well I emailed the President wrong the first week so he texted us and told us to go do it again.  We left from tracting immediately and went to the library.  As we were walking in a black lady was yelling for us to come over so we went and she had already talked with some other missionaries before.  She was way interested so we made an appointment to visit her and when we did she understood everything and committed to a soft commitment baptism.  It's so weird how those things worked so we texted President and told him he is an inspired man.  On Thursday we had zone training for the whole day.  We just did a whole bunch of role plays and it turned out that I was always teaching the President or he was always in our group so it was a little nerve racking but fun at the same time.  Pretty much I still don't know spanish but I'm not too worried about it anymore cause hopefully time will just take over and I'll eventually just know it.  For P-day today we get all our shopping in and then went to the church to play ball with the other Elders and Sisters.  After ball we went and played tennis.  I figured out just how bad I am at both of these sports.  We had fun.  We had 2 return appointments at 6:00 and 6:30.  We headed over on our bikes and they both were cancelled on us.  On our way back we decided to take a short cut across the grass.  Bad idea, because we both were soaked in mud and water so we came home to change and now I'm writing this letter.  We are waiting for a member to come pick us up to go teach Ely & Meriluz so that is it and you all have a good week.  Be safe and love Elder Robison

Phone call from Dalton Georgia

Yesterday when I got home from church I was working on dinner.  I got a call on my cell phone with a 716 area code so I answered and there was a little southern voice on the other end.  She asked if I was Sister Robison I told her yes.  She said this is Sister Anderson and I just fed your son a "greenie" meal.  She said when she gets new missionaries in her area she loves to fix a greenie meal.  She makes everything green for them.  She said he was a wonderful young man and is going to make a very good missionary.  I talked to her for a little bit asking about her family.  She has 6 kids, her oldest daughter died a few years ago most of them live close she has a daughter in Utah and two sons who are 27 and 29 still living at home.  She is a grandmother and great grandmother.  She lives in the Dalton East area so that is the area Brenan is in.  While we were talking she said well one of them is back at the door.  It was Brenan of course he had forgotten his camera.  I told her he would forget his head if it wasn't attached.  She said he was smiling from ear to ear.  I told her to tell him hi for me.  What a great thing to get to hear from people who are taking care of my missionary.  He looks happy and good.  Her son emailed me these pictures.  I so appreciate them.

Letter from Dalton Georgia

Dear family
Wow, I can't believe it is actually here.  For those of you who didn't catch it in the email I'm in Dalton East there are two areas in Dalton.  The west and East.  The boarder of these to areas is like night and day.  On the East side it's mostly mexicans and on the west it's mostly hillbilly's.  Hopefully I get some spanish in before I leave Dalton.  I first got here and thought no way I couldn't believe I was here because you drive down main street and all you see are mexican shops all over.  Everything is in spanish.  Right out front of the apartment are a whole bunch of trees and in the trees are these huge fat squirrels.  There are hundreds of them.  My first week hear we did not have a car because we switch every week because the Elders that were here before totaled our car so we share so that is a pain.  Our first week we were on foot or by members driving us.  My companion is a good guy he is from Utah.  He is 22 years old and has his spanish down pretty good for 9 months.  He knew a lot before he came on a mission.  The thing I don't like about him is that I think we could use our time more wisely.  He just seems like he doesn't want to tract very much so he makes our plans up to the members to take us to lessons which I wish we would go tracting for the first little while till we get so many investigators that we don't have to tract and we can just go to lesson to lesson without wasting a minute.  I don't know.  I'm not much help without knowing spanish first.  The thing I like about my companion is that if I ask for help he helps me.  In all seriousness it feels like since I've been out here I've gotten dumber with my spanish so I don't know what is going on.  I need to figure something out quick.  Yesterday we had a return appointment and the family is very interested but they just want to do some homework about the Book of Mormon first.  My week has been frustrating but good at the same time.  The members here are really nice.  They are really just not very smart.  I could say everyone here are a few short of some brain cells.  I've learned more southern talk than spanish so far.  Last week we went to another church on Wednesday to see what they do.  We walked in and it was like Blink 182 concert with people singing a Christian song about Jesus.  I was so amazed how many crazy churches are really like that down here.  The preacher gets up and actually teaches some true doctrine but he kept saying he didn't know why this and why that.  He said God doesn't want us to study that he just wants us to read a couple versus of Bible and you are saved which is sad because a lot of people believe that down here.  So guys it is pretty interesting down here.  This last Sunday we went to church at 7:30 and had a meeting and then went to Sacrament at 9:30 for the spanish ward then after that we had an english ward to go to.  The 1st Counselor came and told me that I would give a couple words about me.  Well when he introduced my name he said Robinson instead of Robison well I tried making a joke about that no one can say my name but because they aren't to bright or don't get my sense of humor nobody got it and it made me look like I corrected him in a rude way.  I talked to him after and me and him are pretty good friends now.  The next day was P Day nothing to exciting just took the car into the shop for it to get new brakes.  While we were waiting we went over to a pawn shop across the road and played guitars.  My companion is really good.  But that's about it, today was a pretty good work day.  It is Tuesday today we went and had 3 lessons with some people mostly hispanic.  We then stopped by the projects just to knock doors.  It has it's up s and downs.  The first 10 doors people usually just had an excuse or some would cuss and tell us were to go but we had 5 doors today that were return appointments so that is good.  The problem is that I can't even do a door contact in spanish.  It ticks me off to where I just want to punch something so bad.  It really feels like this language will never come, but the last door was mine.  It was a black man who could not hear very well.  I went in and started talking about sport and everything about old Arthur.  He is 82 years old and we started talking about church he believes in all of them he said.  I asked him if he had heard of the Book of Mormon.  He told me yes and that he loves that book.  Well it turns out he had one right there on his table.  It was all worn out and marked up so we are going back Friday to start lessons.  He is a very nice man that needs the gospel very bad.  Do you guys remember the man in the temple that said everyone over here has a gap between their teeth well he is kind of right but everyone is just missing teeth or they rot out so that is pretty much Dalton East.  Keep writing.  I love you all and miss y'all  Love Elder Robison