a day in the life of a missionary

Wow what a crazy week, life is pretty great on a mission, and this week was definitely not an exception. Here are some highlights: 

We started playing basketball every morning with the other Beaumont elders and wow is it hard to make buckets at 6:30 in the morning. All motor functions are impaired that early in the morning but as we keep doing it, I can feel myself being more awake morning after morning. So that's cool 😎 maybe this will be the key to losing the Texas 30 😅

We had a really good institute lesson on Temple Clothing (we are studying Exodus) and it answered so many questions I had. It's so cool to learn about the traveling tabernacle and law of Moses and stuff. It all makes so much sense when you've been through the temple and it makes me want to go every week. I wish I was as smart as the institute teacher, it's so cool how knowledgeable he is about the gospel. And he gets PAID to be knowledgeable about the gospel. I want to do that. 

We were tracting out an apartment complex and just being rejected right and left; then, we knocked on the next door and a nice 20ish year old lady opened the door and smiled at us! She smiled at us! That just doesn't happen. Anyway we talked to her and gave her our shpeal about how something wonderful happened and it will bring great joy and direction into her life and how we would love to come in and share it with her and she let us in! Her and her boyfriend and there 9 month old baby sat down with us and we shared the message of the restoration with them. It was so perfect, they were asking really great questions and we answered all of them. They committed to read and pray about it and as of today they have read EVERYDAY since then! That's better than some members haha, so it's exciting hopefully they will accept the spirit and agree that the Book of Mormon is true. 

OH we got to serve at a food tasting event thingy. We served church peanut butter and apples. It was good publicity for the church. 

I was able to go on an exchange back to Silsbee this week. It was fun to be back and see some old faces again. Brother Whitt received the Melchizedek Priesthood this last Sunday and his granddaughter Sadie is going to be baptized on the 15th of September. They are such great people. 

We had the opportunity to go to the Mission Presidents Fireside this Sunday with some of our YSA homies 🤘 it was sweet we got to ride to Kingwood in this gnarly ram 1500, it was the 5.7 and was straight piped and had a chip in it, man it was a nice truck. But the fireside was nicer than the truck haha. This couple spoke about their conversion which was really powerful. The husband was born and raised in a Catholic family and went to catholic seminary to become a priest. But he always had some questions and some doubts that filled his mind. Then one day there good family friends gave them a missionary referral card and told him to call them for the answers. I think you know what happened after that. 😊 Plus I got to see a bunch of my friends there and see how they are doing. 

We also had a meeting with President Hewlett and all the Ward mission leaders from the Beaumont Stake and man that was an interesting experience. It's crazy how oblivious people are about the programs and the responsibilities of members and missionaries. The Beaumont Stake has some pretty bad preconceived notions about missionaries and looks at us as a huge burden while we are actually trying our best to bless them. When one missionary is bad it makes a bad name for all missionaries. So tomorrow at Zone Conference me and Elder Abbott get to give an 80 minute segment on how we can effectively build the trust of the wards and the members. Hopefully it all comes together pretty well. 

OH also did I mention that my companion Elder Abbott goes him at the end of this transfer and it's been a struggle to get his mind off of going home. He's doing my plan right now. Wreck me 😣

I thought I'd give some of you a taste of an average day in the life of a missionary. 
My average day goes something like this for those who may wonder. Wake up at 6:30 and roll out of bed onto my knees. Struggle to get up and put work out clothes on. We then either just go for a walk or go play basketball or something. Come back, eat cereal or eggs or a smoothie or something. Shower, shave, put on proselyting clothes. Then we get to study the Scriptures for an hour. Then we plan out what we are going to do that day for 30 minutes. We usually try and visit some LA members from 10-12 but usually just end up tracting instead. By 10 o clock it's about 90 degrees and 90 percent humidity so we are sweating buckets by lunch time. We come back at 12 and eat lunch for 30 minutes, then we do Companionship study for an hour. We usually call some Companionship in our zone around then to try and help them with something they struggle with. Then we go back out and usually have a lesson or two scheduled from 2-4 but if not, it's visiting LA or former investigators or tracting. Sometime between 4-9 we have dinner for an hour and there is usually some YSA activity we get to go to like institute or FHE or ultimate Frisbee or something at 7. We are back home by 9 and evaluate our day, report a bunch of numbers to the AP's and call all the District leaders to see how the zone is doing. THE mission has a LOT of Google sheets that we fill out every night. It's seriously like a business, everything is so organized and we all have to be in sync or else President will think we are struggling. Then we go to bed at 10:30 and start it all over again. There's a taste of a day in the life of a missionary.

Well your welcome mom for the long email 😘 love you all! Have a good week! 

Elder Robison