Week 69

Hello!

I'm sticking around for another transfer! My companion's getting the boot, so I'll get my new companion tomorrow. I already have a pretty good idea who it's going to be!

This week was pretty good. I went on an exchange with my district leader, Elder Barrick. We were in the same room at the MTC long ago! We played some basketball with people, gave a few church tours, and talked to everyone we saw about the gospel. It was fun!

Nothing really out of the box happened this week, so I'll just share with you some of my insights from my studies... Actually that's not true, we stopped a mugging on Saturday! But that's a story for another day :)

You know, a lot of the time I've thought of the redeeming power of the Atonement and the enabling power as two separate ideas. But really, they are complementary. Through redemption, our sins are washed away, but that's not enough. Through the enabling power, we are able to accomplish good works that we otherwise wouldn't be able to accomplish on our own. Elder Bednar gave a really good talk about this. Here's a quote from it:

"As you and I come to understand and employ the enabling power of the Atonement in our personal lives, we will pray and seek for strength to change our circumstances, rather than praying for our circumstances to be changed. We will become agents who 'act' rather than objects that are 'acted upon'."

Love you all!
Elder Robb

 The District

 The Fountain

 Red Square

Husky Statue

Week 68

Helloooo Everyone!!

What a great week! Let me start with the less important, but still noteworthy events...

We got pizza THREE nights this week! This ward knows how to make me happy! We truly did fit the stereotype of missionaries having bottomless stomachs, the members were impressed! Ward trust: earned.

This week our district leader asked each companionship to focus on a certain topic from a list of four that Elder Echo Hawk emphasized in his mission tour. The list included faith, unity, obedience, and expecting miracles. My companion and I were given the latter. As we were expecting miracles, the heavens were opened (literally, we got SOAKED!!) but the real miracle was later Saturday night, when out of the blue, an old investigator called us and told us that he and his girlfriend want to start meeting with us! Woohoo!

This week I read a great scripture from Mosiah chapter 1: "our brethren, the Lamanites, know nothing concerning these things, or even do not believe them when they are taught them, because of the traditions of their fathers, which are not correct." From this verse, I came to the conclusion that parents are important! That's doctrine!! I'm so glad I had great parents who raised me the right way. I wasn't the perfect kid, but my parents were patient with me and helped me to become a better person. They raised me to have faith in God, and that has made all the difference in my life.

Love!
Elder Robb

Week 67

Heyo! 

This week was a lot of fun! Man, UW football is killing it right now! I think it's because of the spirit that we bring to the campus, they owe us big time. 

We're making progress here, even though it's a little slower than we'd like. We met with a less-active member who we are going to try to help come back to church. Right now she just wants to come to all the fun activities, she said church is "boring". On the plus side, she did ask us to re-teach her all the lessons. After we teach her, she'll be begging to come back to church! 

We've established a good relationship with this ward! Even though we don't have a ton of people that they can help us teach, some have asked to come out to Red Square and go finding with us, pretty neat! We're also getting the ward really involved with helping us teach the new member lessons to "A", fun stuff!

Washington Seattle Mission with Elder Hawk

This week we had a zone conference, Elder Echo Hawk of the Seventy came and visited our mission. He said that we are the greatest and most organized mission he's ever been to, and he's visited many! 

The late and great prophet Joseph Smith once said: "happiness is the object and design of our existence." This is true! I feel happiness all the time, even when I don't see success every day, and that's because true happiness is not based on our circumstances, but on our focus in life. 

Love you all! 

Elder Robb

Here's some picture's from Pike's Place last P-day!

This is the gum wall that they recently pressure washed to clean.  

Week 66

Hey everyone!

It was a great week! Boy, I loved watching General Conference this weekend. It's my favorite weekend of the year. It's essentially superbowl weekend for us Mormons! That's what I call it at least.

This week was crazy busy at the campus. School started on Wednesday, so there were so many more people there. There was the "Dawg Daze" event on Red Square from Wednesday-Friday. All the clubs from the school set up booths and the square was a super popular place! We got so many phone numbers and people to follow-up with! On Friday was the UW/Stanford game, ESPN was here, the students were all hyped, oh man, it was nuts.

On Saturday after the Priesthood session was A's baptism! So many people showed up to support her and it was just a sweet experience. She was so happy that she cried! :)

Now we just have a big focus on finding people! The struggle is that the 2nd ward gets all the Chinese investigators! So this week we found a handful of solid people to teach, but we had to give them all away because they are Chinese! It's okay though, I promise you all that we will find some new people to teach this week... hold me to it!

God be with you til' we E-mail again,
Elder Robb

 We are tourists!  We found the troll bridge!!

 Red Square with the red sun beatin' on it.

Red Square at sunset.

Week 65

Hey everyone!

I'm tired and sick but I feel so good! This week we worked our butts off! Serving on the campus gives you such a great sense of accomplishment. We talk to everyone and it's just been really fun. The students are really cool, a couple of them even let us ride their longboards around Red Square for a bit!

Everything's going super well with "A" too! We finished teaching her, got her interviewed and all ready to go for her baptism this Saturday! Woohoo!

 Green Lake and Mission 5K

Today we had a mission 5k at Green Lake! With J-dawgs cooked by Pres! It was sweet! We sat down by the lake and talked about the nature of God and how significant that is. I remember last winter when Elder Johnson of the 70 came and talked about that. He challenged us all to pray to have confirmed (or re-confirmed I suppose) the different things we talked about. I remember the next morning praying about it, and then feeling like I should go back and read some of my notes from earlier in my mission. (Probably because E. Johnson had told us not to take notes in that meeting, because "you never go back and read them anyways", so that was already on my mind.) The very first thing I read was "God loves you more than you can imagine." That was such a quick answer for me. I know that that's true.

I love you all! Here's some pictures of my new area!

Elder Robb

Week 64

HELLOOOO EVERYONE!!

Well, thanks to everyone who wished me a happy birthday this past week! The big 2-0... Two decades down, eight more to go (at least). Anyways, this week was pretty good! I got transferred to SYSA 3rd!

Saturday we loaded 900 packages to send over to refugees in Greece, that was an awesome service project! I'll try to get the group pic to send to you all!

We're teaching one super awesome girl named "A". A member introduced her to us and we've had a good number of lessons with her this week. She's going to be baptized on October 1st after Priesthood Session, and she's so stoked! She says that everything that we've been teaching her just makes so much sense, it's all clicking. It's been a lot of fun!

Well, since I’m one year older (and wiser too), let me impart some of my wisdom to you all. Just to preface what I'm about to say, I know that life's not always easy, BUT sometimes I think we make it harder than it needs to be. I recently read 2 Nephi 4, where Nephi gets all bummed out because he's not perfect. I love when he gives himself a little wake-up call in verse 26: "I have seen the condescension of the Lord unto the children of men [he has] visited men in so much mercy, why should my heart weep?" Good question! Christ came to atone for our sins! Yeah, feel Godly sorrow and remorse for your sins, but don't linger in sorrow. REPENT and move forward!

Love you all!
Elder Robb

Week 63

Hey everyone!

Well, transfer calls came last night and I'm already gettin' the boot! It was fun while it lasted. Next transfer I'll be in Seattle North Zone, aka downtown. I'm excited because I like change, but I'm sad because up there you have to pay for laundry! It's the worst!

So a couple of weeks ago we were walking down 1st Ave and a guy got off the bus and called us over to him! He told us he was an inactive member and that we should look up his records and give him a visit sometime! Well his records weren't in our ward list, so that was kind of weird at first. Luckily he gave us his address. Anyways I went over this week with a member on splits and we had a solid lesson! We found out he's not even a member, he just thinks he is because he came to church a lot as a young kid, but he was never baptized. He's at a point in life where he feels ready to make changes, but he told us he'll be happy if he can even get into "level 1 heaven" (his words) after all he's done in his life. That's when we threw DOWN about the atonement!! Yeah, God's seen what we've all done, but he also sees what we can become!

Other than that, just normal missionary activities. I went to roundtable (pizza buffet) and had 24.5 slices! Another day of the week we went and did service at the food bank. They gave us some old sandwiches to take home. I ate one and felt pretty rotten afterwards!

Also worth noting is that the M's came to church this week! Their re-activation has been this transfer's miracle. It was just so cool how we bumped into them and how eager they were to come back. We gave them a picture of the Seattle Temple to hang up in their room, because they are now working towards being sealed in the temple.

This week I started over reading the Book of Mormon again, and this time around I'm marking every time there's really straight-forward doctrine. Here's a great doctrine in 1 Nephi 17: "And he loveth those who will have him to be their God." I might not know a lot of things, but I do know that God loves us. That is doctrine, it tastes sweet!

I love you all!!!!
Elder Robb