It's been another great week in the MTC filled with learning and spiritual experiences. I had the opportunity to give my first blessing of peace and comfort this week to Sister Pomee, who again is from Tonga. She apparently is just very stressed out about the language and is worried that she is having trouble learning it, so she requested I give her a blessing. I would probably say that was the greatest highlight of my week. The spirit was just so strong, and I felt like all of my words were lead by the spirit. The only problem is that her name is crazy long. It took me like 15 seconds to say it. I know I totally slaughtered it but I tried my best! haha. She was very greatful and said she felt a great peace afterwords.
This week we have had two devotionals as we do every week. One on Sunday and one on Tuesday. Our Sunday speaker was President Allen who is basically the president of everything missionary. He works very closely with the quorum of the twelve, and he was actually a very funny speaker, and powerful. We actually had to watch this devotional in an overflow room in a different building because there are just too many missionaries here, but in the beginning he had missionaries stand up if they had done-so and so or if they were from so and so, and one of the questions that he asked is, "Stand up if you have had to air out your pants because the food is way too good", or something like that. He was basically referring to having really bad gas. So, Elder Chapman stands up, the only missionary to stand up. He looks around, sees nobody else is standing and yells, quite loudly, "You all are LIARS!" I laughed so hard. He's kind of ridiculous and funny that way.
Our Tuesday speaker was President Martino of the seventy. He has had a lot of callings dealing with missionaries, so he was very qualified to speak to us. He was amazing. I was way up in the very back corner of the gym for that one, but I still felt a connection to what he had to say. I came out feeling very uplifted. I sang in the choir for that devotional too. It's kind of nice that Elder Chapman likes going to choir. Anyways, we sang Jesus, Once of Humble Birth, which song, I never really liked, but I really like it now! Wow, there's a missionary practicing on the piano of the other side of this wall. He's playing We'll Bring the World his truth, and it sounds really good. Anyway, I love singing with 500 other missionaries. What a powerful experience.
After that devotional I watched the J. Smith movie. I haven't seen it in a while, but again it was awesome. I am working right now on memorizing the JSH first vision verses right now in Ilonggo. It's pretty awesome. I can't wait till I get to skype you guys, so I can speak to you in Ilonggo! I'm not very good right now, but it's still pretty cool. It's unbelievable how much I have learned in three weeks.
This week we got an Ilonggo Bible! I am super excited because now I can share verses in the Bible in our lessons. Before we only had Ang Libro ni Mormon. They don't have the Doktrina kag mga Pakigsa-ad in Ilonggo though which makes me pretty sad haha. As far as Ilonggo goes, there's only one other mission that I know that they learn Ilonggo as their main language. It's the Bacolod mission which is just east of ours, which I believe is the one right next to Jocelyn's. I am pretty scared though because we have three teachers, and they all went to Iloilo. And they each know 4 dialects from their mission. It's ridiculous. Why can't they just speak one language?!
This week our district was assigned to host the new missionaries coming in on Wednesday which is basically where you greet them at the curb and help them carry in the luggage and take them around and get their new stuff and to find their rooms. I was pretty excited to do that, but at our orientation meeting for that, an officer came in and said that he needed 3 fill-ins to help direct traffic, and it turned out that I got to be one of those people. It was pretty basic my job was just to basically direct cars where to park along the curb, it was still pretty exciting. Some of it made me get a little emotional when there's like families just sobbing and all of the little siblings are giving the missionary hugs and stuff. Anyways, it was really nice to do something different. It turns out that our district is assigned to host again next Wednesday and also to host on Monday for the Senior Missionaries coming in. The senior missionaries are kind of mysterious because you know they're here, but you never see them, except at meals and at devotionals. haha. I seriously have never seen one outside of those two spots. So, anyways, I'm pretty pumped to do some hosting next week. I'll tell you guys about a little miracle this week. So, Elder Staples mom sent him fresh garden salsa, which was delicious, except that there was a lot of it, and we had to eat it all that night, otherwise it would go bad, so Elder Staple invites pretty much everyone on our floor for a salsa party in our room. So one missionary had the bowl of salsa in one hand, and apparently another missionary thought that the one holding the salsa had farted, so he slapped his butt, really hard, therefore causing the missionary to holding the salsa to drop it, spilling it all over the carpet. The two missionaries wiped it all up, but we still had a quite large spot of carpet with salsa juice all over it. It gave off quite the odor too. Not necessarily a bad odor, but a strong one. So I just rubbed a bunch of laundry soap on it to try and cancel out the smell, and plus I figured it's soap, it can't be bad for the carpet. Anyways, as you can probably tell, we had a mess on our hands. Turns out, the next day, the staff did a deep clean of the all the carpets in our building. What timing! I couldn't believe it. Elder Staples walks in and sees that they are cleaning the carpets and jokingly says, "That's it. The gospel is true."
BTW the Elders in our district are going to Iloilo and the Sisters to Bacolod.
I loved the pictures you sent me. I miss you guys a ton and I just want you to know I'm working as hard as I can!
Tell Chloe I love her letters and they make me so happy!
Elder Robertson
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