Letter 8/26/11

Dear family well I just received the package.  First thing I wanted to say is thank yo.  Thanks for the love and support you give.  The pictures are great and y'all look like you are having a blast up in the cabin.  It makes me realize how many blessing we have because our family is so united and so happy.  I'm so thankful to have y'all apart of my life.  Y'all don't change.  Well thank you for this wonderful package.  There was a lot of work that went into it thanks for everything.  Just a little more news the baptism is cancelled.  He told us that he feels like he is just doing it to make everyone happy.  We asked him if he wanted it and he said no so we are out to find the elect.  Well today after church the Elders Quorum was in charge of the linger longer so all the men brought soup and salad.  We served the whole ward.  Brother Lunts son is visiting from Utah.  He is pretty tight.  He reminds me of Mac back at home.  We are pretty tight.  This week is going to be great for one we have the car this week and for two we have a lesson with Keith Johnson.  I'm hoping and praying that he will understand and have the chance to feel the spirit.  It is a great opportunity for a family to have more blessings which is so great because family is key to being happy in the gospel.  Well I'll have to let y'all know how that goes.  I'm trying to start a new leaf and write more.  It has been hard because I usually write at night but since I've been district leader I'm taking reports so I don't have too much time so sorry.  I'll get better.  Well take care of my cabin that looks like a blast especially with boating and karaoking.  Keep safe remember your blessings Love Elder Robison

Letter 8/23/11

Hola familia, well this past week has been great.  it still had its ups and downs but more ups.  It always seems when we have our downs is when we learn how to get back up.  This week has been a great learning experience on learning how to get back up using the tools we have especially as Latter Day Saints.  It was a great learning experience to test out prayer and the Book of Mormon.  I am so grateful to have these tools in my life.  I am also grateful for the people who made it possible for me to have these resources.  Well one of the ways our Heavenly Father shows his love is through small and simple things to let you know you are loved so we have that motivation to keep moving.  One of the motivators was when Keyaundra came up to me after class on Wednesday and gave me this envelope.  She told me thank you.  I felt so much love not just from her but from our Heavenly Father.  In the envelope was her Patriarchal blessing.  I told her that it is really sacred and should only be shared with close friends and family.  She said exactly.  It felt good to know I have helped someone and she returns the favor.  This week has been great we have met with some new people and have a new potential investigator.  His name is Keith Johnson.  He has 5 kids and a wife.  Two of the kids are over 8 years old.  His wife will probably not be too interested.  She has had some bad religious problems in the past.  Her father was shot in the head by her brother because her father was a Baptist preacher.  We're focusing on Keith as of right now.  His step father referred him to us.  Both of his parents are converts for a year now and are really giving good news.  We also have set another date with Nick this next Thursday at 6 if you all want to come you are invited.  This week has been really successful.  We are hoping to get a couple baptisms in this next month so keep them in your prayers.  Thank you for everything I love y'all, be safe.  Bring in the harvest.

Letter 8/19/11

Querido familia, Pues esta semana fue magnifico.  Yo tengo un neuvas companero.  El se ama Elder Crofts.  El es mis amigo.  Elder Henriques se fue en ? oltra lado de Tennessee.  Est atranslado es meyor.  Por que tenemos el mismo problema con espaniol.  Entonus yo tengo mas confedencia en espanil.  Well this week was amazing.  I have a new companion.  It is Elder Crofts (This is his friend from Shelly who was in the MTC with him, they are great friends)  He is a good friend.  Elder Henriques left to another area in Tennessee.  This transfer is better because Elder Crofts and I have the same problem and that is spanish so I have more confidence in my spanish.  Well I have been so busy lately.  I wanted to write more and sooner but we have been really busy with things from appointments to preparing for District Meeting.  We had our District meeting today.  It went great.  Everyone participated.  We have 2 new Missionaries in the District, Elder Crofts and Sister Christiansen.  They are great.  We have the best district in the Knoxville Tennessee mission.  I let them know that.  For this transfer we set a goal for 5 baptisms.  I know we can get it and I promised the District that if we are 100% obedient we will hit those goals.  I'm excited for this transfer.  Elder Crofts and I are planning for 2.  We have Alfredo Hernandez and Nick Martin.  We are hoping for a bonus from tracting.  We have been tracting like crazy.  That seems to be helping our spanish.  Well for teaching we taught Nick Martin this week.  He was supposed to be baptized last Tuesday but we had problems with his birth mom even though she lives in Nebraska.  We are hoping for him in the next couple of weeks.  Today when we were over at his house I felt like we need to get to know him a little better and be more of a friend so we played chess with him and we won.  I don't know how we did.  Well I'm so excited for our District.  I think we are going to be more united.  I'm starting a prayer roll for our district so when I do nightly phone calls they are going to let me know what they need help with whether it is with an appointment or return appointment or just plain tracting.  We are going to pray as a District that way we are a lot stronger.  I'm thinking this will help but I need some help on how to get some of the missionaries more effective in their work or just use their time more wisely.  A set of missionaries do the exact same thing every day so be thinking what we can do for the District to help us with our goals.  Enough about that let me tell you a little bit about this week.  Well Richard we are doing a drop lesson with him this week.  He was not progressing at all.  We went Tracting the other day and had great success.  We had 6 return appointments.  They were all spanish too so it was great.  Well it sounds like y'all are having fun especially at the cabin so send pics of all things at the cabin and of the cabin.  But thanks for writing those big huge letters every week.  I really like that so thank you.  Sorry for not writing much so I'll get better but y'all have a good week and love y'all Elder Robison

Letter 8/8/11

Dear family, well I decided to write a little bit before we head out to Sister Burns again.  She is the lady that fed us some of the best southern food I have ever eaten so I'm excited as of right now.  This past week has been great, I can't remember if I told you but we had 18 people as a district to church.  It has been great to see them there.  Nine of those people were our investigators so we are really happy.  We have had great success with Alfredo.  We are now going to start to teach his wife.  We talked to her after church.  She said she really enjoyed it she also said her daughter is looking for a new church.  We are hoping for a chain reaction with them.  Hopefully we can get them to the font as soon as possible.  They need it.  We also have a new investigator his name is Nick.  He is 17 years old and is a nephew to sister Annette Martin.  She is taking care of him.  I want to see him baptized before I leave or at least I think I'm leaving.  I've been here 6 months so I would think I'm leaving but who knows.  I kind of want to leave to go experience the mission a little bit at the same time I want to stay because I like this area a lot.  I love the people here especially the ward members here so it will be hard to leave.  I have really gotten to know a lot of people.  Well it has been a couple days I forgot to send this letter so I have a little more information.  Lets start off with Nick Martin he is 17 years old.  His grandma is a less active member that we have not visited for awhile so we just stopped to say hi.  We started talking to Nick for a little while.  I asked him if he had ever been baptized before.  He said no so we immediately started teaching him and then this last Sunday he came to church.  We gave him a hard commitment for baptism and he accepted.  August 9th at 6:00 he will be baptized.  We are excited and thankful.  Well it has already been another great start for this week.  We have a date and it seems like everyone wants to feed us because they think one of us is leaving.  There is a good chance it is me.  We have a dinner appointment every night until we are transferred.  Last night we had the Griggs they are a great family.  They have 4 boys and the oldest is 10 years old.  For the spiritual thought we made and played jeopardy.  They liked it and wanted us to come back over this Friday but we have Sister Burns and she is the best cook in the state so we told them we probably couldn't make it.  Since everyone is feeding us I put some pounds on and so has Elder Henriquez so this isn't good but I will just have to start to skip dessert.  C-ya all later you guys have a good week.  Well it is good to hear that I am going to be an uncle (Matt and Kandice)  Congrats on that so you guys better teach it my name at least so it will kind of know me a little bit. 
Love Elder Robison

Letter 7/22/11

Dear family, well another week already.  This one went by fast.  This week has been great, well lets get right in about our investigators.  Richard, we met with him twice this week.  He really remembers everything we teach him.  We read the Book of Mormon to him because he can't read and understand at the same time so we started him in 1 Nephi chapter 4.  We did that to grab his attention.  He liked it, loved the part were Nephi is commanded to cut off Labans head.  He wanted us to stay but we had to leave but before we left we had him pray.  He said he has never prayed before.  We taught him he said after the prayer he has never felt like that before.  That mad us very happy to hear.  We then went to Charline and Don Long.  They were doing horrible.  They lost one of their puppies and a close friend so they were really stressed out about that.  We asked if we could teach them to see if that would make them feel better but they didn't want to because they were sad.  While we were there Don's mom came over and talked to us.  Her husband is a preacher so that don't help any.  On Thursday night the Zone leaders came down and trained me on District meeting stuff. Elder Sexton & Pratt.  They are way cool cats.  We went on an exchange so me and Elder Sexton stayed here and Pratt and Henriquez went to Cleveland Tennessee.  It was great.  I like exchanges they are a really great help to learn how other missionaries do it.  There were a couple things I learned that helped me out a lot.  It has been great.  This P-day we just got back from Chattanooga Park from a zone activity.  We rode with the Zone Leaders down there.  We played frisbee.  Elder Crofts was also down there so we hung out as well.  That was my week it was great.  Well it sounds like y'all are doing great.  Be safe and remember why we are here.  Love Elder Robison

Letter 7/16/11

Dear family, well this week went by fast even though we were on bikes.  We ran into some interesting people on the door this week.  We had done quite a bit of tracting this week.  Well we are still tracting the outside part of town and seem to be doing a lot better because not very many missionaries tract out of town very much.  There are a lot of people that have never talked to us but have seen us on our bikes.  We give them the fill in on what and why what we do.  They seem to be more interested.  The first guy we met thought he knew me and it was funny because I've never seen him before in my life.  I went along with it.  It turns out that he wants us to come back so we are going to teach him as soon as he gets back from his trip.  The next guy is a little crazy.  We started talking to him on his porch.  He was telling us that Satan was buried by his house.  He had a whole bunch of crazy ideas.  We invited him to church he said he was coming.  The next guy we tracted into was Richard.  He is a young guy that just verily was released from jail.  He is covered in tattoos from head to toe.  He was really nice and immediately wanted to learn more.  We taught him.  We are still teaching him so we are hoping to prepare him for baptism some time in the near future.  Well President came over to our apartment at 10:30 Saturday morning so we could meet him and get him caught up on everything.  He is a really good guy.  While Henriquez was being interviewed by President.  I was being interviewed by Sister Irion.  We talked about my family and her family.  We also talked about experiences on my mission so far.  I chose to talk about Maria and Keyaundra.  I was interviewed by President next.  It went really well.  I felt like I was in a doctor office.  He still has doc talk.  He is a really good guy we just talked about the mission and he was committing the whole mission with obedience.  I committed yes.  I'm excited to work with him.  Sunday came around.  We went to church then went to Sister Griggs family.  She has 4 boys and their just little guys so for the lesson I committed them to be missionaries.  I gave them the first restoration pamphlet and told them they need to study it then teach their friends.  They are supposed to report to us next time.  Well the next day is P-day.  We played tennis and basketball and during basketball Dalton West got a call from President Irion.  President told them that Phippen was leaving to Knoxville which is a bummer.  He is going to be a zone leader.  As soon as he was off the phone then ours rang and President told me that I was going to be a District leader.  I will still be staying here so that is good.  That was some pretty shocking news.  I really like Phippen he was probably one of my favorite missionaries so it's a little lame.  So this week has been a little crazy.  Well it sounds like everything is great back at home so that is good.  Keep on doing good and take it easy.  Elder Robison

Letter 7/9/11

Dear family hey y'all at home it sounds like you guy's are doing great and the spuds are all tucked in for the year.  Well I hope the weather out there starts to cooperate.  It sounds like the spuds are going to be small without some heat.  The weather over here has not been to bad it is just too hot outside but good thing we have the car this week with the air conditioning.  We still have to work in the heat though.  We decided this week we were going to go tracting on the outside of town because we figured they have never been knocked before.  Well we asked them if they had ever talked to guys like us before.  Some have but most had not so it was good because we talked to like 3 people that had very much interest.  We taught a lady named Shanon.  She has 7 kids the oldest is 16 so we have a great opportunity to help them and teach them.  We have a return appointment with them.  We also taught a lesson to a guy named Gary.  He is a little rougher.  He had never heard of us beofre so he is interested in us.  This week has been good the only down fall is the 4th and the rec center is closed so we won't be able to play with the brothers so that is a bummer.  Instead of that we are going out to Brother Shinocks to ride llamas.  We are pretty stoked for that.  The Shinocks are great and will be out to BYUI for their sons graduation.  Maybe y'all will have to say hi.  They will be down in December.  Keyaundra is doing great and still progressing.  She is looking forward to getting her patriarchial blessing pretty soon.  Her over all goal is to go to the temple.  She has even hinted on a mission so she is great and living life to the fullest.  Well it has been a great time and time seems to be flying but days can get pretty long.  Well sorry this is short but I want to get some sleep so y'all will have to have a good week and be safe so peace Elder Robison
PS I was wondering when you and dad were going on a mission.  It seems to be asked more frequent lately and Kaden is old enough to take care of himself.  Just wondering?