Anyway, this week has been a fun week. We took an entire day to go to visit some former investigators and some potential investigators in Murpheysboro, which we had about 35 names and addresses to visit. This consisted of about 7 hours of walking, 50% of the names found/moved, and 6 future appointments, which was an extremely successful outcome! We cut our Former investigators from Murpheysboro in half, which is fantastic! One thing I noticed about Murphey is that for the most part, it is the ONLY city in Southern Illinois that has any logic as to how it's streets are layed out. It's not like Utah, where the house numbers make sense based on the block distance and the grid system, but because their main North and South streets are called 1st, 2nd, 3rd, etc, you can tell which block numbers are where going East and West, and if you count the cross streets leading North and South, you can figure out approximately where the house numbers are North and South. Carbondale, and pretty much every other city here has just street names, and you never know where each block number starts. It's extremely confusing, but I've pretty much become a master navigator, and could pretty much get you anywhere in any of these towns, without a GPS I might add ;)
Anyway, we currently are teaching a member who was a Less-Active member for an extremely long time till just recently. He has asked for us to teach him the missionary lessons again, because he knows God has been reaching out to him, especially lately. He told us about a recent miracle that happened to him, that has really made him understand why he needs the Gospel and why it is so important to do the things we are commanded. He has had a house up on the market for about 8 years, and has really struggled to sell it, that entire time. This has been a huge stress to him, and has left him feeling like he has no option as far as what he is going to do about the house. For the first time in a very long time, just in the last couple weeks, he payed his tithing. At the end of that week, he received a bid for his house and is currently in the process of finalizing the sell now. Call it coincidence if you want, but I know that this was his miracle to understand how important God's commandments are, and that it is a privilege to do the things we are asked by our Father in Heaven, and he will bless us for it. Anyway, I thought it was cool. The lesson we taught was amazing, and we committed him to read and pray every day to receive that reconfirmation of how true this Gospel is.
We also taught Shenika this week. One of the things that Elder Bassett and I feel needed to happen with Shenika, is that someone her age, who she can relate to, needs to join us in teaching. The Torgesson family was perfect!!! Both Brother and Sister Torgesson are return Missionaries. Brother Torgesson went to Italy(actually there are three or four people in the ward who served in Italy), and Sister Torgesson served in Argentina, and since they are both young, starting a new family, with their cute 1 year old daughter, we felt they were the perfect family to join us. We taught Shenika the Gospel, which we originally planned to teach the first 3 principles in the lesson as we normally would, and the rest out of 2 Nephi 31. As we got into the lesson, the spirit prompted several instances of commitments for Shenika, which lead down a different path in the lesson. One of the commitments we gave was praying twice every day, personally, and once with her daughter Jayda, using the pattern that is in the pamphlets we gave her; And in each one of these prayers, we invited her to always ask at least one question about the truthfulness of what she is learning, of what she is reading, or whatever else she wants to know, because this is the only path that can be taken to really find the real truth and to know what path God has prepared for us. She accepted, as well as accepting a baptism date for next month! After, she said the closing prayer, where she did ask that she know if the things we taught are true. It was great! The spirit was extremely strong and powerful, and Brother and Sister Torgesson were absolutely amazing! Like, I have never had members teach principles as well as they had...it was amazing!
Anyway, that was our week in a nutshell! I love all of you! :) I hope you are all doing well! Keep writing me, because I love hearing from all of you who read this! I really do!
Anyway, until next week :)
Elder Tyler Robinson
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| The booth we set up last Thursday. I really like the Book of Mormon display that we were able to do, and honestly, I think it looks pretty good :) Reminds me of the Visitor Center at the Salt Lake City Temple, where they have their Book of Mormon displays, with all the different languages that it has been translated in. |
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| My bedside...I don't think that it would surprise anyone :) |
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| Picture of our area...It's hard to get one that really demonstrates how big it is, but the biggest town(Carbondale) is that condensed piece in the center right of the map. All the yellow is what we cover in our area. |
Anyway, sorry that there is nothing exciting. As I keep saying, Carbondale does not have anything real exciting within it's city bounds, and going outside the city is harder to do on P-Days, because we are trying to get everything prepared for the week(cleaning, shopping, laundry, etc), plus taking the time to write home, which I have really held up as something very important to do every week, leaves not much time to do anything else. We are going to go take some pictures today, and we also discussed with President Bartholomew(Ward mission leader) about going hiking somewhere next week. Anyway, more pictures to come :)
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