Email 05/07/12

Family, This past week has been pretty sweet. We had a few really good lessons with spanish investigators. The Haro family is doing okay but really are going to push for them to read the Book of Mormon. We invited them for baptism and the husband wants to but wants to wait to do it with his wife, who needs some more time to read and pray. We did make progress so we now know how we can help both of them progress together. Then we had a great lesson with the Schildmeiers. Brother S had a lot of questions and he is really interested. We have to wait to hear from Salt Lake on when they can be baptized since sister S had her name removed but we should be able to baptize them both by the end of the month. We are excited for them and they have perfect fellowship into the ward. As for this past weekend, it was amazing. Friday, Elder Perez was in Independence for a meeting so I went with Elder Ofa from Hawaii into his area and had a blast. Really good time there. Then Saturday was the Cultural Celebration. It was awesome. We practiced for awhile then drove to Olathe so Elder Perez can confer the priesthood to one of his recent converts who is about to go on his mission. Pretty cool. Then we went back to hang out with the missionaries (all 200 of us came) and practice more. Then the actual event. It was so cool. 3,000 youth from the temple district all singing, dancing, cheering, etc in front of President Monson, and Elders Walker and Hallstrom from the 70. It was so neat. Then at the very end they had a missionary melody of "I want to be a missionary now" They had all the youth singing. Then in the middle of the area, they split up and opened the way for all us missionaries to walk thru. All the youth went to bended knee, and all the audience (around 10,000 total) stood to cheer and clap us in as we sang "We'll bring the world his truth (Army of Helaman)" It was so awesome. Once we stopped and were singing, we look up and we are singing directly to the prophet who is standing up to see us all. It was an amazing experience and really cool to sing for him. The whole time there, as we were walking around, people come up to give us a hug or high-five or just clap and cheer when they see the missionaries. It was really neat. We didn't get home til really late then had to wake up early again to go to the stake center an hour away to see the temple dedication. It was really awesome. President Monson was really funny. Elder Holland showed up for it all too, which was sweet. Already 27 marriages set to be in the temple the very first day tomorrow. So crazy. So now we are able to go to the temple sometime as long as we try to get a ride. It was really a great experience the past couple days. We have traveled like 500 miles the past 4 days but it has been really cool. At the dedication President Monson actually said "We got a taste of heaven at the cultural celebration last night" That was pretty sweet. I was really hoping for a conference with President Monson for all the missionaries but that didn't happen. He was supposed to talk to us and have a picture/shake our hands thing before the event but he was too busy. We did notice tho that he had a little boot on his foot and is walking a little slower/harder for him. His wife wasn't there because she was too sick as well. But we pray they will be okay. So this week has been really busy but awesome times. I really enjoyed it. Hopefully we are able to get a dvd copy of the celebration. Thanks for everything Love Elder Roe