Email 02/25/13

Family, It has been a crazy week. Good beginning then we heard news of a big snow storm on Thursday. I woke up at 6:30 and it was fine and clear out then by 9am it was pounded. Came really fast and took everyone by suprise. We went out in the blizzard like storm to help some cars stuck around 1pm then got a ride with a cop to a members house where we stayed all day stranded. We weren't able to drive for 2 days. The roads were horrible and not cleared til 2 days after the storm. Bad but kinda fun to be in. Friday we spent time shoveling driveways and stuff. Then Saturday morning, we had interviews with the mission president. We found out that our mission will be split. We are the largest mission in the world (regarding number of missionaries) from what I understand and the split will happen when I go home. So I won't be affected by the mission change, but cool to see that missionaries will have their mission changed and that our mission is doing really good and needs to be split into two. It will be the Missouri Independence Mission and Kansas Wichita Mission. Crazy bc I served some time in Wichita so cool that they will get their own mission now. We don't know boundaries yet but President Keyes will be talking with the prophet and mission department next week or 2 and find out the boundaries. We guess that Wichita Mission will be the whole state of Kansas. Crazy news. Then we found out that we get another snow storm tonight, just as bad as what we had last week. Probably another foot of snow or so. So, we are trying hard to stay warm and bundle down for the next couple days. Thanks for everything. Love Elder Roe

Email 02/04/13

Family, We had transfers this past week. Elder Manoa was transferred home to California. So sad to see him leave but he had an awesome 2 years and excited for him to finish his mission. My new companion is Elder Christiansen. He has been out for around 6 months or so. Good missionary. Excited to work. We are doing good stuff here in Marshall. I love the people here and we are working hard with baptisms on the horizon. The Micronesian family is moving toward their date for the 23rd. They have really been progressing great. They need to get married and so they are going to talk to the branch president on a day to get married here soon. I am so excited for them. It will be a huge step for them. They are reading the scriptures and feeling really progressive and motivated to do good. We are also working with a 8 year old that wants to get baptized. Her grandma is a member but parents arent. She comes to church every week and is great. We are working to move her baptism sooner so we dont hold her back from what she wants. A spanish family we are working with is going okay. We are going to work with them to have FHE at their house every week. THat would be great and think they would draw closer as a family as a result. I am really enjoying my mission and loving my time here in Marshall. I have been here in total about 9 months and it is great. Hope all is well. Thanks for everything! Love Elder Roe

Email 01/21/13

Family, This has been a pretty good week. We have been working hard. We have walked a lot everywhere we go to see more people and save miles. It has been very cold here but we are trying our best to stay warm. Marshall is doing pretty good. We have people to teach and they are doing better. We are going to have to move back the baptismal date for the Micronesian family. They have been struggling, but we are working a lot with their friend who is a member of the church to continue to see them and work toward a new goal for them to be baptized. Another spanish family we are working with is doing really good too. Lots of good stuff coming up in this area. I am really excited about it all. Spanish is improving and helping out those we are teaching. My companion is going home in less than 2 weeks but he is still really hard working. We are doing great together and I am excited for him to have a good last part of his mission. Exciting. Not much happening other than lost of busy work and trying hard. This week we have a zone conference with Elder Eduardo Gaverret. He is in the first quorum of the 70. So we are excited for that. Should be pretty sweet. Thanks for everything! Love Elder Roe

Email 01/14/13

Hey, This has been a pretty good week. We have been working hard on some people that are close to getting baptized. We had a little setback when we got a decent cold snap and lots of ice and little snow that they cancelled church yesterday. Pretty crazy that they cancelled church and funny to explain to investigators that they didn't need to worry about coming to church because it was cancelled. So we are working hard on these people that we have and it is going good. The Micronesian family is doing pretty good and doing better. We are also working hard on this spanish part member family that is doing better and working toward a baptism. My companion and I are doing good stuff here. It was a slower week with lots of meetings and me with the flu but good week overall. I am doing good here in Marshall and loving it more and more. Not a whole lot going on other than the really cold weather and ice. Thanks for everything. Love Elder Roe

Email 01/07/13

Hey, This has been a busy week. We had a lot of driving. I had to go to Warrensburg, which is like 60+ miles away to do a baptismal interview in spanish. I am the only district leader around that speaks spanish so I had to drive out there to do the interview in spanish and translate for the missionaries there. It was pretty cool though. My spanish has improved a lot. I am struggling speaking in english now but I know the word in spanish. Very flip-flopped lol. I have been speaking spanish a lot more recently so that is really fun. Only way that I have improved is to spend as much time as I can on speaking it and being around it all the time. We were able to get another person with a baptismal date. A young 8 yr old whose parents aren't members but her grandma is and she wants to get baptized. I remember her when I was first here when she turned 8 and she came up to us and told us that she wanted to get baptized so it is really cool to be back in Marshall and get to see that it will happen. It won't be for a couple months because she is going to school in Kansas City and living with her mom for awhile but she will be back to get baptized here in Marshall. The Micronesian family that we have on baptismal date are doing really good as well. They have some problems with smoking and stuff so we had an awesome lesson yesterday and the committed to give it all up. We are really excited for them. Very cool to hear them pray in Chuukese and still feel the spirit. Pretty neat stuff. Nothing much other than being really busy and trying to stay warm. Doing really great here. Thanks for everything. Love Elder Roe

Email 12/17/12

Family, We had a pretty good week this past week. We have been teaching this Micronesian family for a little bit and we were able to bring a member with us to teach them and they clicked really good. We had an awesome lesson about the importance of faith and baptism and committed them to be baptized on February 2nd. We had been a little worried because they don't know a whole lot of english but they have been understanding a lot better than I thought and doing really good. They speak Chuukese which is kinda cool and we are working to have materials in Chuukese in case they don't understand things but they have understood really good thus far. We also had a Christmas party/dinner at the branch and it was really sweet. We had lots of people there and they had a great time. Good food too. Crazy how fast Christmas is coming up. Time is flying. Not a whole lot happening tho this close to Christmas. Thanks for everything. Love Elder Roe

Email 12/10/12

Family, The weather has made a big change and is freezing. No snow, just freezing wind. Didn't help with my cold, but it is all good now. We had a busy week. I was a little behind with me being sick and it took a bit to recover but lots of visits. One of our investigators that had a baptismal date, we found out, is having a concern with reading the Book of Mormon and praying. That is something I have gotten a lot better at recently to answer questions and focus everything on the Book of Mormon and helping people read it. So we have been visiting lots of people and simply just reading the scriptures with them. It has been really fun. I really like reading the scriptures. I have also recently done bible quizzes with people. It is kinda funny because I don't know the bible very well but we have lots of fun quizzing people on basic bible questions on the life of Christ, it being Christmas season. In general conference, there was a stat saying that members of the church know more about the bible than any other group of people. It's true. But it is really fun having casual talks about the bible and letting people know that we read the bible as well. Really fun. We are working to stay warm in the cold but we are doing good. Thanks for all you do. Love Elder Roe