Pictures

Brenan finally sent more pictures but most of them are from Dalton so they were a while ago

The front yard of our Pleasant Ridge home in Tennessee

Pleasant Ridge house

Pleasant Ridge

Pleasant Ridge yard

Our District and zone leaders in Dalton Georgia

Crofts, we love our mexican bakery

Brother Valdez and his daughter Anna

Jerry Scriver

Our district

helping a member put up sheetrock

Waking Crofts up

Brother Mathews at the Halloween trunk or treat

Dalton Georgia trunk or treat

walking to a dinner appointment

One of my favorite families The Rodriguez family (Luisa's brother)

Halloween my district

 The Joseph Standing memorial is in Dalton Georgia.  Joseph Standing was a mormon missionary who was killed in the 1800's.  A mob stopped him and his companion and then shot Joseph in the head. 

Joseph Standing memorial

Joseph Standing memorial park

Our District and zone leaders at the Joseph Standing memorial

Letter 1/6/12

Dear family well a lot of things have went on since I've last talked too y'all.  Well we are now trying to figure all of our baptisms out.  I will tell you the changes in the program here.  Our next baptism is going to be Jeff.  He stopped smoking but 3 days later started up again so we cancelled his date for the 5th and moved it to the 14th.  He is having a hard time quitting.  Thomas he was supposed to be baptized on the 30th of December but he went to the hospital the night before so we are changing his date but have not been able to see him.  Hopefully today.  Yvonne she is starting to get cold feet so we have slowed it down with her.  She did not come to church last week so we cancelled her date.   So a lot has happened this week.  We are trying to bring it together with all of them.  I wish we could focus on 1 but we have to focus on all 4 of them so it gets frustrating sometimes.  For this next month I would at least like to see 3 of them in the water.  Gloria would love to but it's hard to get her to church.  We are also going to see her today.  She is a sweet lady and I would do anything to help her get in the right steps for baptism.  Well this is pretty much our stressful week but the table is about to turn hopefully.  I will keep you in touch on everyone to see where they are at next week.  You all have a good safe week.  Love Elder Robison

Letter 12/24/11

Dear friends & family, Well I have received all of your letters and the first thing I would like to say is thank you for everything.  Those letters have such a great spirit to them, also such great memories with each one of you.  it has been a true blessing to have all of y'all a part of my life.  Well it is now midnight and after I have read those letters the spirit is to strong to sleep it off.  I feel the love of Christ letting me know that we will truly be together forever and eternity.  I know this because of the gospel we have.  It is a true blessing.  It's hard to explain with words the only word that can explain this wonderful gospel is that it is true.  I know this because of the spirit that testifies so strong.  This mission has been such a great honor for me.  I have learned a lot.  I have met such wonderful people.  People that have changed my life but not only mine but generations to come.  Thank you so, so much.  I love each and everyone of you. 

Well the mission is going great.  It seems the work has been going smooth.  The smoothest it's ever been.  We have 4 with a date.  We have been keeping daily contact with each of them.  They seem to be doing great.  We are excited to see some growth in this area.  It has been progressing quick.  We were looking at the books for our ward and branch and there has not been a single baptism in 9 months.  It shows that fasting and prayer truly work and makes miracles.  The mission as well has jumped up in numbers by 4 times the amount that it usually has.  President Irion has been a great blessing.  He has a lot of faith and knowledge in knowing that this mission is going to grow faster and faster.  I'm grateful to be apart of it.  Thank you once again for all you do.  You all have a Merry Christmas and I love each one of y'all.  Elder Robison

Letter 12/19/11

Family, Well a lot has gone on this last couple of weeks.  The work is still going forward.  It seems the whole mission is tearing it up.  We had 10 baptisms last week and everyone keeps committing.  This is cool to be a part of.  Well for Harwood & I we are doing great.  We have Jeff for the 5th of January.  He still seems to be struggling with the Word of Wisdom.   Her is slowing down though and we gave him a blessing.  He said during the blessing his chest felt heavy and full.  We are praying everything will work out and he will make it for his date.  We also found a new lady.  Her name is ivan.  She is a black lady and she is really nice and enjoys our message.  We have taught her about 4 times now and I committed her for baptism.  Her date is for Friday the 13th of January.  I don't think she has too many concerns.  Ivan would be a great one for the church.  She has a family of 5 kids and I think 2 of them are over the age of eight.  We are going to go back and focus on her kids.  It would be awesome if we could baptise a whole family.  So pray for them because they are going to need comfort.  They will be one of a very few black people to go to church.  We are also still working with Gloria.  She had a date for the 21st of this month but we had to cancel because she did not come to church.  We are waiting to set a date for her until after Christmas.  She seems to be very busy right now.  She knows it's true.  She tells us every time we go over there.  Everything is going well here and time is flying so I guess I will talk to y'all in a couple of weeks so have your questions ready.  Have a good week Love Elder Robison

Letter 12/10/11

Dear fam, well great week.  Vivian was baptized December 3, 2011 at 4:30.  What a great day.  It feels good to feel success.  She is a great lady and will be a strong member for these latter day's.  Well I had the pleasure to do the ordinance for Vivian.  She asked me to do it.  A lot of people came and the other missionaries had helped us out.  This ward is awesome they are great fellow-shippers especially to those that are not in the church.  Bishop Rose is a stud.  He is all about missionary work.  He was a great missionary.  He set records or he claims haha j/k.  He has a very good personality that makes people laugh.  My companion and I have asked for a blessing from the Bishop so we can serve him the best way possible.  The work is really going down here.(I think down means good) We have 2 more investigators with a date.  They are legit bur have a couple minor problems with some things. We are taking care of it though.  It is so weird because the time has really picked up down here.  I feel like all I do is go to bed because the days go by so quick.  We sometimes don't get all the stuff done for the day that we planned but that is a good thing.  These past 2 weeks we have received so many referrals from members, other missionaries, and the MTC.  We found a couple legit people that have great interest.  We are really being blessed it seems like someone always has his hand in the work.  Well some fun things this week.  We actually went over to Inez's house and had some good mexican food.  Inez has a friend that is a great cook.  I made the good old salsa thanks to Kendall.  They wrote down the recipe.  We had a great time.  Jim went with us.  He is a character.  We were late going to the broadcast fireside.  We were going 95 in a 40 to get to it.  I really enjoyed it.  I felt like I was with Doug Holm for a bit.  haha.  Well I love this new area and time has flown so fast.  I'm excited to talk to y'all next week.  I might only get 30 minutes to talk but we'll see.  So enjoy the holiday's and don't forget Elder Robison!


part of Alli's letter
this has been an awesome time here in Knoxville. We have been doing more stuff as a district. It's awesome because everyone helps each other and our baptism rate has went up double. We have been tearing it up. We finally had a baptism Vivian Strouk. She was so excited to get baptized. It took alot of work but definitely worth it. She asked me to baptize her and to tell you the truth it made my day because she told me I was a big part in it. I tried not to tear up but the mission makes you soft. But I think I was a little softy before the mission anyway. We have been working hard to get 2 baptisms every month so we have 2 more dates with Gloria and Jeff. Gloria she knows its true but just is kind of busy especially with her little great grandson he is autistic.

Well this is a funny story. We were on an exchange last week and I was with Elder Galaway. We went over to Glorias and the autistic kid looked at galaway and went over and touched his face and called him an ugly alien. I could not stop laughing. Galaway's face went bright Red. Galaway is a pretty tight kid though. We've had some fun. He wants to come and work for my dad while he goes to school out there. But we will see.

Message I received from Luisa

Hope you are doing great! I also hope your missionary is doing great to!!! Its pretty cool to see an old member come back to church who was inactive because he was in the world, but when I asked him what made him decide to come back and have that desire to make things right with the Lord and serve his mission he said Elder Robison gave me a blessing. Your son has been doing great work! He started coming back I think right before your son left...I believe...he has been making those steps to be able to go on his mission. he is very excited but i was really curious on what made him come back so I asked him and that is when he told me Elder Robison had given him a blessing

Letter 12/1/11

Dear family, this week has been great.  Well to start everything off we had a bi-zone conference.  Where 2 of our zones got together and an area seventy came.  His name was Elder Haleck.  He was a very good speaker and gave everyone that boost of energy everyone needed.  It was a great day.  Well our companionship is on fire right now.  We have been reaching our goals and stretching out and getting baptism dates.  Jeff is still on for his date he is doing solid.  He just needs to quit smoking.  We have also been teaching this older lady, Gloria, she is a sweet heart.  Well when we go over there her friend Vivian is there.  She is a nice lady as well.  Gloria cancelled on us one day for good reasons so we decided to call up Vivian.  She told us to come on over.  We went over there with a member.  Elder Harwood went on a split with another member so it was Guest and I.  We taught her the Plan of Salvation.  She loved it.  Well she asked some questions about the priesthood.  She asked if other churches had the priesthood.  Well the member told her boldly that the other churches did not have the Priesthood.  He also told her they were false.  Well her face looked shocked so I explained it to her nicely then committed her for December 10th.  She accepted and was so excited.  She has told everyone and she can't wait for church.  We are excited for her.  We had lunch with her today.  We are going over to Sister Brown's to have lunch and a lesson.  Well everything is going great over here and the work pressing forward.  Everyone keep praying for Vivian.  She will get baptized.  We found out today that Elder Guest is leaving this Wednesday.  He is a great Elder.  I'm going to miss him not being around.  Well tonight was interesting we went over too a less active house to teach them a short lesson.  They offered us a drink.  This drink was made out of pineapple skin.  Well we drank it and after we all left we felt a little funny.  We think there was a little alcohol in it.  It must have fermented or something.

This has been a great time up here in Pleasant Ridge the people are great and willing to work.  The people we live with are great help as well.  The Nichol's took us out to dinner tonight.  We had a great time.  We went to a Chinese buffet.  They are close friends with the owners there.  Sister Nichol's is so sweet.  She knows a whole bunch of languages.  Her first language is Chinese.  She spoke it quite a bit tonight.  She also is helping us with our diet's she uses a lot of nut's, herbs, and a whole bunch of Chinese food.  I'm excited to try this out.  She also makes a lot of tea.  She showed us the stuff that is good for you.

Well I just looked in this tablet and found this letter I forgot to send so I figured I will keep writing.  Some more events that have went on this past week.  Well we moved Vivian's date up to November 30th.  She is excited and ready.  She went with us to a baptism tonight.  She really enjoyed it and felt the spirit.  The spirit was strong and great.  We have also been working with Vivian's friend Gloria.  She is the old 75 year old lady who is a sweet heart but really busy with her autistic grandson so I understand.  She will be getting prepared for baptism soon.  The field is white and ready to harvest so the work is still moving along.  We'll y'all take it easy and love y'all.  Elder Robison

PS I forgot to tell you about Thanksgiving.  It was great we went over to Jim Reynolds ex wife house.  She is a great cook.  It was the best food I've ever had for Thanksgiving.  I was so full leaving there and then 2 hours later we had another appointment with the Richmans.  It was a great day.

Alli's letter
Well this week has been so awesome!!:)  I will first start off with all the good churchy stuff.  Well we had a great Turkey day.  We had an all day Pday which was sweet because we woke up and went and played in the turkey bowl.  There was about 60-80 people there so we had 7 on 7 per team.  Well my team kicked trash.  I had 10 touchdowns.  We ended up losing our last game because the other team recruited people off another team.  So we lost by 2 touch downs.  Than for the rest of that day we went to a members house which she was an excellent cook.  I over ate.  Then after that whole night we went over the the other elders apartment and played cards there was 4 sets of Elders and 1 set of sisters.  We had a lot of fun.