12/17/2012

Bowling with the district.

Bowling with the district.

Niki's kids :)

The arrow head Don made me out of Flint! :)

The arrow head Don made me out of Flint! :)

The arrow head Don made me out of Flint! :)

The arrow head Don made me out of Flint! :)

Just proof of how much of a goof ball Elder Payne is

Bowling with the district.

Bowling with the district.

Bowling with the district.

Bowling with the district.

Bowling with the district.

Bowling with the district.

Bowling with the district.

Bowling with the district.

Bowling with the district.

Adrian and Andrew Barron! They will be baptized sometime in the first 2 months of next year! They were awesome. at the time they were playing Ninja

Adrian and Andrew Barron! They will be baptized sometime in the first 2 months of next year! They were awesome. at the time they were playing Ninja

Adrian and Andrew Barron! They will be baptized sometime in the first 2 months of next year! They were awesome. at the time they were playing Ninja

Bowling with the district.

Bowling with the district.

Bowling with the district.

Bowling with the district.

Well, as I predicted...it's a small town :) It's actually quite nice here...Just the right amount of everything(stores and restaraunts and such), and very laid back people. It's kind of out of everything.

 

So, I guess there are a couple things to share...First, we have one baptismal date for a lady I haven't met yet named Corey. Her member boyfriend's grandpa passed away this morning, which is why we haven't met with them yet, but we are definitely planning to this week. Danny, her boyfriend, is super involved with us, so we should see some good progress with her.

 

We also have another member who referred his friend to us, named Victoria. She camed to church and loved it...I'm super happy that she was able to see first hand! We will start teaching her probably this week!

 

As for the branch, it is very much, a branch, but it is nearly the size of my YSA ward at home, so who knows...maybe we can see it turn into a ward after some hard work :)

 

When I got here, my companion(Elder Boeumier-Pronounced Bow-Me-Yay), notified me that I was singing Silent Night with him on Sunday in front of the branch...well it happened and probably should be grateful that it was at least not recorded :) It was fun though...I also gave like a 5 min talk or something at the end of the meeting.

 

If that's not enough singing, I also went caroling with the branch that night. We had about 20 in our group. We stopped at an investigator's house, named Connie, Danny & Tiffany, and they thought it was so cool and joined us for the next stop and then enjoyed the Christmas party with us at the meetinghouse. It was awesome! They have been investigating the church for a long time...since Elder Barta and Watkins were here which was a little more then a year. Elder Watkins actually told me a little about their family when I was on exchanges with him in Mexico 6 months ago haha. Kinda cool :)

 

It's going to be fun this week...We have a party tonight, a party on Thursday, one on Saturday and of course Christmas Eve and Christmas :) The time is just flying by...My one year mark is this year!!!!! Also, side note, Shauna and I reached our 2 1/2 year mark on the 10th of this month! That's pretty exciting :)

 

I can't think of anything else :S I love you all! Have a Merry Christmas!!!!! I probably won't email till mid week next week! Some of you I will get to talk to on Christmas!!! Never forget,

 

"To find the true meaning of the Spirit of Christmas, you need on drop the last syllabol, and it becomes the Spirit of Christ" - Thomas S. Monson.

 

As you give gifts you excercise charity and true love, and become a prototype of Christ, and as you recieve you excercise humility and meekness and prototype mankind in receiving the greatest gift that has been given, which is the atonement. Look for Christ this Christmas, and you will find Love, Joy, Family, and the Atonement. I know that is very true...no matter the situation! In the Name of Jesus Christ. Amen

 

Remember to check out Mormon.org/Christmas...watch the videos, get the music, read the articles!

 

Love always,

Elder Tyler Robinson

12/10/2012

More Journey to Bethlehem pictures

I cut off the tip of my thumb on accident while flint napping with Don. Nice huh! :)

The flint that I turned into an ugly arrow head(I'm not very good yet haha)

The flint that I turned into an ugly arrow head(I'm not very good yet haha)

The flint that I turned into an ugly arrow head(I'm not very good yet haha)

The flint that I turned into an ugly arrow head(I'm not very good yet haha)

My Guitar :)

Our first fire in the apartment

Shelves we made for Don

Shelves we made for Don

800 lb Rock Saws that we moved into the storage shed

800 lb Rock Saws that we moved into the storage shed

Ugly Reindeer sweeters we made :)

 District picture

Frozen Hot Chocolate with Carmel(SOOO GOOD!!)

A picture I took at the ward party...I circled Sister Carpenter; She is so funny!

Elder Payne and I walking to the Journey to Bethlehem Nativity scene

Pictures from the Journey to Bethlehem Nativity at Harvester Christian Church. It was a lot of fun :)

I'm sure everyone is excited to hear the big news! I am leaving Weldon Spring on Wednesday. I'm going to Waterloo, Illinois which is a small city in the O'Fallon stake. It will be my first branch, and I will serve there through Christmas and New Years. I'm going to be senior companion and nothing else for the first time. It will be nice to be just a normal missionary for a while :)

Anyway, Elder Hoffman is sticking around here. He is going to be District Leader Buddy again. Most of the district is changing except the sisters...they are sticking around for another transfer. E. Luke is going to his dream location, Marceline, and E. Eells is going to Spanish 2.

This week has been a crazy week. We only had 3 total lessons, but we did have a lot of opportunities to do a lot of really great things. First, I did 3  baptismal interviews this week. Amie Helms, Chris Walkenhorst, and Kelly Meegan. Chris and Kelly have a date for 12/22/12 in St Peters, and Amie was baptized on Saturday(which was awesome! We went and it was just wonderful!). We also had a Christmas party at the ward. On top of that, we were invited to a Non-Denominational group's Nativity scene that they did this weekend. It was a lot of fun and we took a bunch of pictures :)

It's been really great to see Weldon Spring go from nothing, to what it is now...I was so happy to be able to serve here! Last week, our area was reported as the Highlight area of the Zone. That was really cool to hear because we have some rough weeks trying to get things moving here and our work has paid off as blessings begin to pour out and I think Elder Hoffman and his new companion are going to see a lot of miracles real soon :)

Lastly, because I want to send some photos, I just wanted to say that my first area(Carbondale) has seen so much success this year(exceeding it's goals) that they are opening Carbondale 2, so there will now be 4 missionaries in Carbondale again! We started it from scratch and it's so cool to hear that it has really continued to pick up and carry so much success! What an honor to be one of God's tools for them :)

Anyway, I love you all! Have a great week! Remember, my address is going to change so write to the mission office until I get a new address! 

Elder Tyler Robinson

12/3/2012

Hey everyone! Just another great week all taken care of! :)

So first and foremost, Adrian and Andrew don't have a baptism date anymore...They are progressing great, but we need to work with Adrianna a little bit before we will be able to progress them that far.

This week, we walked away with 8 lessons, with a member with us to teach, which is quite the feat here. Some of that specifically is because of Part-Member families, but we did try to invite members to even those lessons.

On Wednesday, we taught Nick Leapley the Plan of Salvation, and it seemed to answer a lot of questions for him. He is doing really well, and I really feel he just keeps opening up more about what he wants to understand and what he wants to know.

We also taught Cindy this week, and spent some time with Jillian and Jessica. I am super grateful for the opportunity to play as a pillar in their life right now...They are in some really hard times :( They lost the condo they were planning on moving into, so not only has Cindy got her self in a bad spot with the bank that is financing her house now, but now she has no where to go if it forecloses...Really hard situation We are doing our best to bring Christ into their life.

We also helped Don get some things done, and we had a great conversation with him about the Gospel. We talked about him getting married, and he has come to the conclusion that he could be baptized in 32 days if he can get the divorce finalized. That would be cool to hear about...We are kind of working side by side with the Hazelwood elders to help him make that goal. He really wants to but he was tricked into the Jehovah's Witness' so he doesn't want that to happen again, so he is playing very safe.

We also did a lot of service. We helped build 2 walls in a basement, and we helped build some wooden shelves for a storage unit. As well as a lot of moving :) It was fun and busy and hard work :)

Next week is Transfer calls. We will most likely have some sort of change but at this point, we have no idea who's leaving and who's not, so we will find out by next week.

Today, I am interviewing someone that the St. Charles Sisters have been working with for baptism this weekend! I'm super excited! She sounds great :) We are also doing some district activities today, which is going to be a lot of fun!

I hope you all have a wonderful week! I challenge all of you to check out the Christmas Devotional on LDS.org. It was awesome! We watched it at the Raubach home yesterday :) The talks were really good...I felt a strong emphasis on the fact that Christ, family, love, joy, are the reasons to celebrate Christmas. Don't get caught up in the purchasing of gifts or the hustle and bustle of this and that, but use this time to bring your focus more towards Christ and use the gifts in which he has given you, to bless those around you! I know that this Christmas season is going to be a remarkable one for me, partly because I don't have to think about the commercial side of Christmas at all, but rather the wonderful simplicity and beauty of Christ and his birth. It's wonderful!

I love you all!

Elder Tyler Stephen Robinson

11/26/2012

Hey everyone! I hope everyone had a great Thanksgiving!!! I personally wrote out a bunch of things I'm Thankful for, many of them being some of you reading this now! I love you and thank you so much for your love for me and the great support you offer!

I personally had a great holiday. Even though it was a day off of proselyting, our day was full, top to bottom! We kicked the day off with the Turkey Bowl Football, which was a lot of fun...even though we lost by 63 points :) We visited the Hunter's, the Mckinnis' and Finnegan's, before dinner. We then started the dinner rush with the Alcala family, then the Wilkerson family, then the Wheeler family, and ended it with the Rimington family. We had 4 dinners! Haha It was interesting and not as bad as it sounds, but I can officially say that I had 7 different pieces of pie! It was great, and we also played our first card game on the mission. It was called Bang! which was a lot of fun! I won :) 

We also had exchanges this week. I once again played the part of a Spanish missionary for 2 days. With Elder Olson, it pretty much was all Spanish! With Elder Eells there were some people who spoke English that we taught. Nonetheless it was different and a lot of fun!  

While I was gone, E. Hoffman set 2 baptismal dates with Adrian and Andrew Barron, which is fantastic. Our district now has 5 baptismal dates for December, which are all very solid. We are very excited! 

This week is going to be a fantastic week! It is so wonderful to be able to recognize the grateful spirit that comes during Thanksgiving time. We are very excited to see the Christmas spirit come in and take over this next month! It is definitely a most wonderful time of the year!

I love you all so very much! Have a wonderful week this week! Remember the Lord in all things! 

Elder Tyler Robinson

11/19/2012

The first 3 pictures are pictures of E. Hoffman's camera, which zooms into the face when it captures it...It looks funny so we took pictures :)

 The next 3 are of the beautiful Subaru Legacy that we are driving! It's awesome!

It's been a rough week this week! Well actually, that's not a good way to describe it. It's been a great week, with some bumps in the road! 

I guess the biggest bump was that we both got sick on Friday. I'm still not sure what we had, but it definitely hit us, Elder Hoffman more then I, enough to keep us in for a day :( On top of that, Saturday, Elder Luke got sick, and Elder Hoffman, who still felt sick, decided he would stay with Elder Luke, and I went with Elder Payne to work in St Peters. In a normal week, this would have only been a small hinderence, but this week we had Mission Conference that took our whole day on Tuesday, and Stake Conference that took part of our day Sunday. None the less, we championed over it all and turned some pretty good success this week. 

Our biggest excitement is our lesson we had with Adrian and Andrew. They are 11 years old and have gone through all the lessons before and had a baptismal date with their mom, but their mom decided last minute, that she did not want to be baptized and kept them from being baptized as well. She has officially given us permission to teach them again, and they are awesome! Holy cow! Super smart kids, and know the purpose of the Gospel. We have another lesson on Tuesday, and we are thinking seriously to set a date with them. They came to stake conference and enjoyed it, although it was probably a little long for them to sit in the situation they were in...nonetheless they want to keep coming :) It's so great!! :D

Niki is of course, doing great! We taught a lesson, and her husband listened in. It was good for him and I know that he is becoming more and more prepared to hear it for himself. We are trying to find a better way to teach the New Member lessons that would be geared for someone who is listening in, not a member, and for someone who is a member and is learning more. It's a hard balance, but we'll find it :)

Lastly, the Leapley's are doing great! We taught a great lesson on Wednesday! Nick is asking good questions and is connecting a lot of good principles, but it is very slow. We did come up with a plan, and he is involved in what his progress will be, which I assume is a good first step...Better then us telling him how to progress. He'll get there :)

Mission Conference and Stake Conference were both awesome! Elder Choi was amazing and we had a great time with him! We also had a great experience in a New Member session of stake conference. All the people who were baptized this year were pulled into a room with everyone who is planning on becoming a new member, and we discussed that commitment of being baptized. It was really great!

Anyway...We are looking forward to a wonderful week, and I hope everyone else is too! I love you all! Have a wonderful Thanksgiving! I am so thankful for all of you who are willing to read about what I'm doing and especially to those who are writing me! I pray for you all and I sure do love you! Have a great week!

Elder Tyler Robinson