Text from Member!

Just monkeying around.

We got this from a member.

Lois said, "I love it when the missionaries just stop by for a little conversation and a cold drink.  They have all had their picture taken with Koko.  Glad you enjoyed it."

Wazzzup!

hello everybody! this week was pretty good! 

not too much different we have just been focusing on teaching mike becasue his baptism is scheduled for this Saturday! so lots of prayers for him please!!

 

we had another miracle as well! 

so a little while ago we were walking and there was a creepy guy leaning on his car looking at his phone.  As we got closer he looked up and was like "Yo, when are ya'll gonna teach me that good word?" so right there we set up a lesson with him! Turns out his name is Rudy and he has been in and out of prison and wants to change! and he has a big ole family! super sweet!  We are pretty excited for that.

We also had a member who we haven't ever talked come up and give us a random referral which I thought was pretty cool! so the work is finally kicking! we are doing good! health, still hungry, don't know really what else to say.. 

LA

We took Mike to the temple.  He only owns super colorful Hawaiian shirts so we bought him a white one for his baptism. 

Thuggin'

HAVE FUN AT SCHOOL!!!!!!!!!!! but seriously don't waste your time.. be good, it only gets more boring.... don't try to grow up super fast, be good! Live in the moment, I don't know what else to write. The ADD is bad today.... 

K love you all bye!!! 

Elder Rollins 


Later in the day...

Hey mom guess what!?

Happy birthday!

You're the bestest mom in the entire world!

Yep!

It's ok to make mistakes!

Look how I turned out!

Elder Rollins

Did Dad remind you it was my birthday?
Yes.
I can't believe Dad had to remind you about my birthday!  Mourning!. 
Sorry... Focusing on the Lord 
Oh no you did not just try to guilt me into forgiving you?   Now you need to tell me 3 reasons why you love me!  
Sorry... Focusing 
Focusing on what? basketball?
...Yes. 


Still later in the day. 
You're patient!
You know the importance of cleaning!
You don't quit!

You're MY mother!

Week.

Well it was a week!

Pretty busy! We taught Mike a couple times and he is on track! It's good to see! Lots of fun this week especially cause I sprained my knee, don't ask I don't know how! So that means no basketball today, which means I'm upset. But that is not the end of my days of woe. oh no, no because yesterday I burned my fingers, and this is the story...

So it was a blistering hot day, and we had no dinner signed up, so I went through the day anticipating macaroni, again. well everything was going smoothly and we were having fun, finally the much anticipated hour of dinner arrived, we attempted to make it up the stairs with no delirious incidents, the heat had sucked out all my energy, we walked in and the dinner preparation began, I put the pot on the stove after filling it with water, after the noodles went in I just wanted to sleep, I stirred groggily for a little then grabbed the colander, I held it over the sink and proceeded to dump the boiling water on my middle and ring finger, neither of them were happy with me, but I survived, and a blessing in disguise I was very, very awake!

Elder Stutzman and I

That was fun, we had a bunch of good lessons, I can't remember if i mentioned it but we are teaching a less active family who are on and off about church and they are super crazy, like ask us to pick them up and drop them, and playing with scissors, but it keeps us on our toes. 

We are excited for mike! hopefully he gets baptized soon, so life is hard but good! oh, and school is starting today over here. fun fun fun! good luck to the hooligans out there!

Fire up on the hill.  We weren't allowed to go see it.  I asked.

There was an interesting challenge given by the stake president that I would like to give to you! 

The challenge is to get a copy of the book of mormon and then pick a friend or family member, then say a prayer and tell heavenly father that you will be reading this for that person, and grab a highlighter and highlight the things that you think they would need or like or whatever, and give it to them after you have read the whole thing! give it a shot!

well! the church is true! oh yessiree! it is! so share it! think of them as a real brother or sister! it helps! 

love you all!! 

Elder Rollins 

How are things going with Mike?  Great!

How was your meeting with agnostic girl? Still agnostic but agreed to keep meeting

Is there anyone else you have started teaching? No. 

Is time going fast or slow to you at this point in your mission?  Fast

How is your ward?  Good good

I met a man from our stake who grew up in that stake. Weird

How is your companion? Good, Still schooling you at basketball?  yes yeah yeah

Do you know how loved you are? Yes

Do you know how much your Father in Heaven loves you? Yes
Did you go to the doctor about your knee or just self-diagnose?  Nurse diagnosed it.
How did you hurt your knee?  Don't know.  
What did you do for p-day since you couldn't play ball?  Played the uke.
When did you remember you knew how to play the ukelele? Yesterday

Good, Bad, Fantastic!

Que pasa 

so just letting you know missions are hard! but good always overcomes bad!

First off I am pretty excited because we picked up a new investigator and he will get baptized on the 30 of August! His name is mike and he is pretty cool! He recently went to Salt lake with one of his many Mormon friends and toured around and loved it, bought lots of Utah stuff and even a CTR ring. Also a big triple combination, and he also decided to move down here, to walnut, and his friend called us and said "hey, my friend mike is moving down there in two and a half hours, and he needs your help so here is his number. Let me know how it goes!" Well I personally was pretty stunned, so the whole time it was like, uh huh, yeah ok, ok, so we left and went to his house, helped him unload while he told us all about Salt Lake City and how beautiful it was. Yeah that was pretty fun. Anyway, we set up some lessons with him and he told us that when he gets baptized he wants the friend who called us to do it! So that is fantastic! 

So this week was pretty great! we have had a lot more success than I think we thought we would, but hey I'm ok with that, also we had another miracle where we were walking and down the sidewalk there was somebody staring at us, and when we got a little closer, they ran, so that was weird but then when we got to about where they were there was a girl standing there, holding a book that said Christ on it, pacing back and forth obviously nervous we said hello and she said "HEY" and we both have learned that when someone does that, you should stop, so we stopped and she said that she had some questions, come to find out, her name is Gwendolyn and she is atheist, so we had a good  conversation with her and she said yes to meeting with us! oh yeah. it was great! 

also one of our investigators bore his testimony in class that the church was true and that he wanted to get baptized, now all he has to do is change his living situation and we can dunk him like Jordan. or be washed clean of all of his sins, if you want to get technical, so we are super excited for him! 

On our way to zone conference.

Another fantastic experience was we were eating dinner and I went to the bathroom, the end.

ok just kidding I just thought that was a weird way to start the story, anyway I saw a scale in the corner so I got on and it said 195 pounds, I nearly fainted, I was freaking out, so the next members house we went too I headed straight to the bathroom and sure enough, a dreaded scale, I approached warily, waiting for the horrendous numbers to jump out at me, I got on and was happy to see that I had lost fifteen pounds in less than a day, the only side effects of the broken scale weight loss program is your blood pressure goes up! so besides the scare I am completely healthy! aren't our bodies great!

Weekly planning was rough. 

so in Elder Merrill the youngers' email I laughed at the dog story, and then karma got me. we were walking past a fence and as usual a chihuahua started barking, truthfully I have prayed that we could get some mercy and have those high pitched annoying dogs be silenced, but I'm not daniel, so we endure, and then we realize that we have to get past this tiny devil to get to the door, great, now I have been bitten and attacked by these pests, but I decided that if this thing even came close, I was going to punt the thing into the next lawn, so we get the gate open and I put my hand on the gate, the chihuahua freaks out and goes ballistic and I'm ready to kick it I turn the handle and hear a deafening bark, and a straight up bear comes around the corner and up to the gate. with plenty of wailing and gnashing of teeth, so after I picked my heart up off the floor, we decided for the want of still having our legs to just leave a note and come back later. good thing. 

We often find ourselves talking about the most random things for instance a few of them:

the height of clouds

types of feet 

elephants

weightlifting bars

ping pong 

socks

and so on... Thank you ADD

 

in fact at one point I said something admittedly random, but I was able to trace it back to the original conversation and elder Stutzman said "you really do have ADD don't you" ouch..... but its ok I'm over it. 

Well the church is true! still! even though the people in it may not be! 

Love you all! 

don't waste your time on stupid things! 

Madruga Scorpion

hello! 

hope everybody had a fantastic week! my week was hot! 

so here it is!

on Monday we played some ball, all day, and then went out and worked it was hot.

"I'm tired."

Tuesday was hot as well we even got to wait for a bus for an hour and a half! that was major exciting we taught gore, he looooves movies and video games, everything we say he has a movie or a video game that he talks about! but hey he is still loved! 

on Wednesday we got aa member referral and taught them, they are very nice but very quiet and don't like to pray, especially in public, so that's fun, also we met a Jehovahs Witness guy, that was a long conversation, so yeah, that is that, we also went contacting at a park and played basketball of course, (basically we look for as many ways as possible to use basketball) and we played these guys who weren't the greatest basketball players, after we beat them the third time and they still hadn't scored nobody would play us, so we just chatted with them. they thought we were the guys from the missionary video. i didn't say no. so it was a good day!

Thursday was district meeting so the lesson plans are on a cycle so we had heard the lesson like 8 times, but we still tried to learn! it is kind if fun to know most of the answers though, there is a new missionary in our district so he thinks we all know what we are doing, we fooled him good. we ate lunch with the district too, we eat out too much, but we have members who have apples so I eat lots of those.

Friday we planned, it took a long time because we get really distracted, our closing prayer was just an apology. but that is about all that happened. oh well. 

Saturday we were on exchange, we walked for four hours because nobody is home now that school is about to start everyone is going on vacation. so we got baked. but that's ok! 

Sunday always feels like the hottest day, probably because we are in suits, but we tried to visit some people and brought the sacrament to some old ward members. it was like being at home. except a lot further apart,and no car. 

so that's is it.  I have a funny video that I will send shortly. it was horrible.

well, guess that brings us to the part where I tell you the church is true! because it is! don't get mad at the church because somebody there hurt your feelings, that is just an excuse! so just go do what you are supposed to! forget yourself and put your shoulder to the wheel! Love you all! 

o be wise, what can I say more??

name that scripture!! 

Love you all!!

Elder Rollins 

Do you write in your journal?   Yes, but not as much as I should.

Do you use your other camera at all? Yes

How do you afford to eat out so much? Gift cards and members

When did you feel the spirit this week? Teaching gore about the atonement and the plan of salvation 

What did you do to serve this week?  Helped a lady bring in her garbage 

What is your favorite thing about your new area? Good members 

What is your favorite thing about your companion? We get along no problem 

What is a Madruga Scorpion? It is a really hot pepper, 

So are you saying it is really hot there?  You know that the 80's are not that hot right?  It's hot ok....

Do you have air conditioning in your apartment? Not in our room.