Monday, March 26, 2012

Email 03/26/12

Family,

This past week has been pretty good. We did get to set up a day to go to the temple open house with the Salmeron family on April 14th. One of the kids won't be going but otherwise it will be really sweet. I am pretty stoked. We even got Miguel Sr to go to church Sunday. He didn't realize that I translate sacrament meeting (he didn't believe me when I told him) so he was pretty happy. Good testimony meeting so he liked it and wants to come more. Exciting. Almost as exciting as the 7 nonmembers we had show up at church yesterday. 4 of them were from the local university. They were in a religion class and their professor wanted them to go to a church they have never been or know about so they came to our little branch. It was pretty sweet. At least one of them was really interested. He was like "I feel more comfortable here than my own congregation." So we'll see how things go. The other nonmembers included a nice couple. One of them was a former member but she wants to be baptized now and her husband too so we are looking forward to working with them again. So things are doing pretty good here. Looking forward to the next couple weeks. We have been inviting lots of people to the temple open house and it is filling up really fast. They said they already have like 60,000 reservations or something. So crazy. Hopefully I get to be in the cultural event. Still wont know for awhile. The weather here has been really good. Warm and feels great. Really sweet to just sit outside and talk to people. I decided that I would update my long list of new food I've tried on my mission. I can't believe I even touched some of this food.
chinese food (general suh & stuff) - really weird tasting sauce and not a big fan, pepper steak is good.
meatballs - disgusting
pasta - not a fan
Lasagna - the worst dinner of my life, especially the veggie lasagna
fried pork steak - pretty good
pie (reeses) - okay
meatloaf - pretty bad
mexican bean & something mix - pretty gross
lots of weird salads - horrible
pie in general - i usually barf down
cow tongue - I cant believe I put this in my mouth. I could still taste the taste buds.
fajita - good as long as it is meat, lettuce, and tortilla, not this guca junk
heated fish sticks - a lot better than frozen fish sticks
cholula hot sauce - AMAZING ON EVERYTHING
mexican rice with veggies - really good as long as no carrots
pupusas - not too bad
peppermint candy ice cream - an abomination
mexican candy - not a fan
So that was a few more things that I tried. Definitely different than my tyson chicken strips. Keep praying that I will continue to bear these foods ppl keep feeding me.
Love ya'll
Elder Roe

Monday, March 19, 2012

Email 03/19/12

Family,

This past week was pretty good. On Tuesday we had a zone conference in Independence with like 5 other zones. pretty big bc the speaker was Elder David F Evans of the 70. He is also the executive director of the mission department. Elder Evans talked a lot about having a good desire to serve. Pointed out that our desire has to be within God's will, and our actions have to reflect our desire. Pretty sweet. He had us read Alma 17-42 b4 we met with him which talks a lot about missionary work and how to serve and be the most "successful" on our missions. Then Elder Evans talked about finding, how to ask for referrals, how to use the temple open house in KC to start conversations. Really good. Our mission as a whole is very excited and pumped for the temple in Kansas City. We are inviting ppl like crazy to attend the open house and go to the visitors center in Independence. The whole month of April will be a busy one for us missionaries in inviting and attending the open house with people. We should be going with this really cool spanish part member family that wants to go with us. The Salmeron family. Pretty sweet family. Only one of the 3 sons is a member and the parents aren't members either. We helped the whole family paint these apartments he owns & they love the missionaries. So hopefully the temple open house can boost their interest in the church and can progress. We also really want to take the Haro family who is a really cool investigating family. We are setting up a fellowship with them so we can all go as a big group to the open house. To help boost the excitement, Sister Keyes, the mission mom, bought all the missionaries a little pin to put on our suits with the Kansas City temple on it. Pretty sweet. The weather here has been rather warm that its too hot to have jackets on. The temple cultural event is like in the beginning of May which we should be going. At the very end, they will start with 1 deacon singing "We'll bring the world his truth" (army of helaman), then progress thru all the different quorums and groups of YM/YW til they get to like 150 missionaries led by President Keyes and Sister Keyes. Should be pretty sweet and hopefully I am close enough to go and be there. That would be pretty sweet. Not all of the missionaries will be able to go, only those that are close enough. President Monson is supposed to be the 1 dedicating it so it should be sweet to see him there. Then the dedication is on May 6th so that will be a first for me. Pretty exciting.
Thanks for everything. Hope all is well.
Love
Elder Roe

Monday, March 12, 2012

Email 03/12/12

Family,

All is pretty well here. We finally got to meet Bro. Eilers (part-member family). He is pretty cool. He is the head football coach here in Marshall but he says that the team is pretty bad. We talked a lot about football. Pretty funny bc he actually has video of apopka playing us from a couple years ago. Anyways, Jay is a pretty cool guy and we have been talking a lot with the kid who isn't baptized. Hopefully that goes somewhere here soon. We haven't had a whole lot of success in seeing the spanish people this past week. It was really good though this past sunday in translating. That went pretty good. I didn't have any spanish notes so it was all on the fly but worked out alright. Pretty funny to see Bro Boehner. He took us out to Applebees so that was fun. Saturday morning we went to play soccer with some other missionaries and a bunch of members and a few investigators from another area but that was really fun to fellowship with them by playing soccer. I told the spanish member who took us that I was a soccer champion and could do rainbow kicks, scorpion, etc bc he is really good but he quickly found out that I was just joking. Good week though. We get to have a zone conference tomorrow with a member of the 70 Elder Evans I think so that should be pretty sweet. Thanks for all you do.
Love
Elder Roe


Picture of Elder Roe's district




Elder Roe.....Tebowing in his apartment

Monday, March 5, 2012

Email 03/05/12

Family,

Transfers was Thursday, but no changes here. I am still with Elder Decker in Marshall. This past week was actually not too bad. We did get a snow day but didn't last more than a couple hours. It is starting to get kinda warm again here. We did here about all the crazy weather and everything in the Midwest. Everything has been fine here so far. There was a couple days that we were expecting to have tornado's here but nothing thank goodness. We finally got into contact again with the spanish family that I had met with. Got to meet the husband this time which was really good. Jose and Mercedes are a really nice couple with 3 kids. They speak all spanish so it was up to me to translate for Elder Decker and to take the lesson by myself. It was really good though. They were really happy to see us and I re-established the missionary trust again. Not sure where things will go anytime soon but I am really hoping that I can get them to church bc they already know a few of the members. They were really grateful that we could stop by and look forward to more times for us to come over. We also had like this random couple show up at church.... friends of some less-active ppl. We met them and they really enjoyed church and gave them a book of mormon and everything. They started reading it already so I think that they will be good family to follow up with later. We also had a spanish lady come that is a member we have been trying to get into contact with. That was pretty sweet sunday. I translated yesterday and it went better. Testimony meeting so I know my vocab for that pretty good. Not bad week. Good to hear all is well back home.
Love you guys.
Elder Roe