September 5th - New Companion

Elder Thomas "Old Companion" & Elder Roberts at Pablo & Julia's house

Good afternoon from Argy. Skies are blue and weather is getting better, wahoo!

I have a new compañero. Elder Thomas was transferred to Paujo. I don't think he was too happy bout the transfer haha. He liked this area and he was telling me how we're still in the same zone. It's like 3 hrs away and right next to the area where he began lol.
So I dropped off my comp at 1 am Monday morning, today and then like at the same time my new comp was getting off the bus. So for a moment there you could say i had 2 comps lol. Went to sleep bout 2, but I'm feeling good today. Not too tired. My new comp is Elder Stewart from Simi Valley, California. He's a positive dude like me, I love it!  He always says how he loves the mish and he likes to work to. We both have the same attitude on workin as hard as we can, be as perfectly obedient as we can, etc. So its awesome!
He's been out for 9 or 9 and a half months already. Not that much time considering having to learn the language, but he speaks good and says he wants to improve in it. It was funny Elder Thomas had quite a few Latin comps and so he was so happy to speak english lol. With Elder Stewart we both want to speak more spanish thru out the day and I told him that i want to be more involved in the lessons, so he will help me with that.
Yeah, last night we were at Pablo and Julias house to say goodbye for my comp. She took some pics and had some from my very 1st Saturday here with the big group (im pretty sure she sent that to you). Pablo served his mish in Wash DC, so he knows english but he speaks to me in Espñ (Espn :p) he has a book ¨the missionary´s little quote book¨ and it has great quotes from lds leaders and famous people. I love it. I may borrow it one day. Good people. Pablo said I have a good Espñ accent so thats pretty good.

Elder Thomas & Elder Roberts with Julia & Pablo

Oh it was sweet yesterday, Melanie 18yr old, showd up to church and so that was great! (If an investigator doesn't show up to church then they aren't considered progressing so its big that we get our inv to church.) She came to sacrament. We arrived like 20 min before church and I was playing the piano before anyone was really there and i was playing, ¨Come Thou Font.¨ Don't ask me how I did it hahaha. It was crazy, I just put the sound of the song to the keys and played the little part, ¨come thou fount...many blessings¨ to there so like 10 sec of it. It was crazy!! Sometimes after sacrament, our first meeting, or before, people go and play songs on the piano and most time they aren't church songs lol. I guess its normal here though.

We could possibly baptize Melanie this Sat or next. As missionaries they want us to try to have our investigators be baptized from someone in the ward/branch, whatever, so they can develop friendships in the ward and stuff. So investigators don't get linked to the missionaries without making friends in the ward. I may get the privilege to baptize her cuz my comp is new and she may just pick me cuz I've been here longer. idk. And it doesn't really matter who baptizes her to me, I just want her to be baptized! She wants to. It was just getting her to church. Sabina y Nelson didn't show up to church and weren't at home when we were going to teach them yesterday. Both of them are only able to meet with us cuz he works and is tired during the week. We have a new investigator named Alicia. She told us she wanted to get baptized in the 1st lesson, but she didn't show up to church and we really thought she would show up. She's about low 50s, skinny lady.

I've seen some FIBA Bball on a tv in wal mart and i didn't stop :) Even though I saw Grieves Vasquez and Al Horford. My comp, Elder Thomas, stopped - but I kept walking. I'm proud of myself hahaha. And we saw it in some old ladies house when she opened the door. That old lady is named Santo, which mean Holy lol. We taught her from outside her houses for like 45 min. Then at the end of the lesson we asked her if she needed any help, service, etc. She was like can you buy me some batteries and she handed my comp a $100 dollar Peso bill, whatever they call it, hahaha. We were like, "what?" We couldn't believe this lady trusted us with her money just to buy batteries after meeting with her for like 40 min. We bought her batteries and gave her the exact change haha. She didn't have much interest in the church. A few days later we told her to read the Book of Mormon on her trip to Chile to see her kid.

I was in top of a roof the other day talking to a, sort of, investigator, who is actually way catholic. He said he got back from a trip to Spain to do some every 3 year thing with catholic youth and the pope haha. But on his house it reminded me of those Bourne Ultimatum movies where he jumps like house to house. That would be way fun to run on top of houses!

Now that I have a month in here and I have a feel of the culture, everything isn't weird anymore. And I can kinda understand people. I'm going to turn up my Español studies like crazy. I'm going into Derrick Rose, Michael Jordan, Kobe offseason mode, but with espñ. I'm kinda getting sick of not being able to speak. It's like hanging out with some friends and not being able to talk. So I'm going to turn into a nerd from now on. It's been hard to get in language studies some days cuz we normally study at 11 to 12 and sometimes you have to leave like at 11:30 for lunches and you have district meeting at 10:30 on Tues til 12, so sometimes its hard to squeeze in lang time. But I'm going into crazy mode. I want to learn it soo bad! I just need to open my mouth more and go nerd style.

I love it when people talk to me, so if you ever have a foreigner missionary over for dinner or something, even if they don't know eng, just talk to them. They'll like it cuz sometimes members ask thru my comp's questions to me haha. And you want people to talk to you not thru someone else. I love the people who talk to me. I love the people here, they're pretty funny and happy. There's this young couple who just got baptized by Elder Thomas and his comp before me, and there names are Max 24 y Yamila 19. They have a kid Valentino who is 1. Yamila is probably my favorite person to talk to. She talks so fast and is animated, like uses her hands and stuff and rolls her R´s sweet.


Thanks Traci for that email about the language steps.
Gooo UTES! I have decided I'm a River fan, because they're Red, white and black. Repping the U til i die. It doesn't feel like college football time here. I was like, oh yeah CFB starts wow awesome. Listen to some Kyle F. Gunther hahah.
Ron Artest is a Capo (which means like the man in Espñ here) haha.
We don't have a dryer here, we just hang our clothes up.

Thanks Grandparents for the emails each week. I love them, they're great!

Thanks for the Love and Prayers. Keep prayin 4 me and espñ. It'll come.
Love Elder Reginald G. Roberts