​Hey everybody hope you all had a wonderful Thanksgiving week I know I did. Here is kind of the play by play of the week.

P-day was great we played some basketball, went to a Mexican popsicle warehouse and bought a dozen popsicles and man they were good, the banana and the horchata popsicles were the best. 

Tuesday we bought some chalk and went and chalked out scriptures and quotes on a popular walking trail. We started to chalk at the metro rail benches where people wait for the train but this dude came and yelled at us so we ran away haha. We chalked our number down so hopefully someone will call us from that.

Wednesday our neighbor Rosa, a nice old Spanish lady, knocked on our door during our companion study and asked us if we liked peanut butter, and we said yes, then asked if we liked macaroni, and we warily said yes, so she said she had some food for us haha. So we headed over, and her church gave her soo muuuch food. She's just a saint and wanted to give us a lot of it. So she gave us this huge box just busting forth with food. Blessings on blessings on blessings

Thursday was Thanksgiving! We had 4 dinners scheduled at 1, 3, 5, and 6 but our 3 oclock cancelled so we just had 3 dinners. That morning we went to go watch the wards turkey bowl (missionaries aren't allowed to play 😭) but nobody was there so we went back home and studied. The food this Thanksgiving was more quantity than quality but there was a LOT of it. It's hard to beat momma's lion house rolls, and Apple yams, and stuffing, and taters, and dad's smoked turkey but the ward members sure did try by feeding us 3 dinners haha. 👍

Friday we had exchanges with our ZL elder Crim! We had a bunch of good lessons and had some Whattaburger! I was making Alfredo pasta for all of us that night and when I was straining the noodles with the lid it slipped and all of the noodles went tumbling out into the dirty sink. 😭 it was kind of funny though I just scooped them up and boiled them for a couple more minutes to kill all of the germs so we still ate them. 

Oh Saturday was Elder Lyle's birthday! We cleaned the church bought some new basketball nets for the gym, did missionary work, went and got Waffle House (which is over rated in my opinion but still fun), played some basketball with a less active family, then went over to sister Stortz house for celebrations! We had chicken Alfredo and cheese pizza and coca cola haha 🤘. 

Sunday we had church, and none of the people we are working with showed up 😔. But then we had a Light The World kick off musical devotional put on by the missionaries! It was super good, every song I wasn't in sounded amazing haha! I did one song with like 7 other Elders and about 5 of them are completely tone deff so that was pretty rough, I was literally cringing the entire song while I tried to sing louder than the tone deaf people. But everything else was great!

 I hope you all are planning on participating in the Light The World initiative!! If you don't know what it is I'll explain and you can watch the launch video on the Gospel Library app or on mormon.org. Every 25 days of December before Christmas, the church has a suggestion and a video on how you can serve somebody every day. So watch the videos and serve people!  Its making me really excited for Christmas season.

Well I think that's about it for this email it's a long one haha. Transfers are next Monday and I'll probably be getting a new companion in the same area so that's exciting.

Love you all!
Elder Robison

​Hello Friends and Family

If anyone wants to send any letters or packages to Benson over the holidays, the addresses to use are attached.

Thanks and love you all!
Kim

​Well, in way of news as you have probably already seen in my picture email, I lost my missionary nametag today in Scilla. That was eventful. Haha Also we had stake conference this week! For stake conference they usually have all of Sicilia and then Reggio Calabria meet in Catania. It's actually pretty crazy because usually they have to rent out this huge conference room in some hotel. I actually got to go to the last one 6 months ago when I was serving on the far side of Sicilia in my first city, Trapani! I was so excited for this stake conference too because I would get to see all the members from Trapani, but they changed things up this time and all the members from that half of Sicilia went to Palermo and us and the rest of Sicilia went down south to Siracusa (the conference was then broadcast from Siracusa to Palermo). Anyways though, that meant we had a very long long travel to make. Well, put in brief words we left Saturday evening. There were no more boats leaving from Reggio Calabria to Messina so after we took the bus from our house down to the train station in Reggio we then stopped by our investigator Josephine who I will talk about below. We then headed to the train station when it started pooring rain like crazy! In an effort to pack light I was wearing my suit and suitcoat and didn't bring any jacket whatsoever not to mention an umbrella. So we got so soaked! Haha Well we got on a train and road it up to Villa San Giovanni where we got on this crazy boat that in my mind would maybe resemble a mini cruiseship. On the top floor there was a bar with a bunch of tables and then there were two big sections full of just seats.There was also cool decks where you could stand outside. Then the bottom two floors were basically a two level parking garage for all the cars and even semi trucks who needed to get shuttled across. So that took us to Messina where we spent the night with the Anziani there. Long story short, there was six of us and four twin size beds and I got the crack. Haha then the next day we woke up and walked to the church in Messina where we got on a Pullman and went on a 2-3 hour bus ride down to Sircusa! All I have to say is that was the most complicated trip to stake conference I have ever had in my life. :) 

As I said we stopped by our investigator Josephine Saturday evening. It was the only face to face contact we were able to have all week with her and it was pretty short too, but she had a spare minute at her store so we asked her about the Book of Mormon. She said she hadn't read it so we decided to explain it a bit more. Her day also had been really crazy so she hadn't even eaten lunch yet. So she sat down and started eating a sandwich while we bore our testimonies and promised her that reading the Book of Mormon would bless her life. It was so short and sweet, but the spirit was there and afterward she said she would read it! It was just such a cool moment of success. It felt so good to do that. It was just testimony to me that teaching and lessons can just be so simple, but if we have the spirit it will be effective and we will get the job done. When we walked into the store she didn't really care much for the Book of Mormon and had vagely attempted to read it, but then when we walked out she agreed happily to read it and thanked us for coming by. 

Well, that is all for this week. Love you, Anziano Stucki.

​Well this was a very unproductive week which was pretty frustrating. My poor companion has had a cough for like the last 3 months and this week on Thursday it got a lot worse and He was down for the count for 3 days basically. So Thursday all day he slept and I read my scriptures/slept/ate half a pan of brownies. Then Friday I ate the other half of the brownies. Then Saturday we got a call from the 2nd counselor in the bishopric asking if one of us wanted to give a talk on Sunday, and my trainer, being the good guy he is, volunteered me. So Saturday I got to prepare my talk while my companion slept. 

All this sitting around this week was really starting to frustrate me so last night I made us skip the YCA face to face and dinner and we went out teaching as many people that we could before 9:00 so that was nice. 

We had a really good lesson earlier thjs week with this less active family we have been working with for awhile! We asked if they had a desire to build their testimonies and they said yes, so we asked them why they wanted to and they said they know it will make them happier and because they want to be together forever. so we helped them recognise that they already had a testimony they just need to keep watering their little seeds by reading the BoM and going to church. And their whole family came to church this sunday!! So that was awesome!

Gerald Williams (our recent convert) was supposed to get ordained as a priest this Sunday but he didn't show for some reason so that blows. Hopefully next week.

Oh before church started this homeless guy walked in with his wife yelling gibberish and just going off about the most random stuff. So we walked over to talk to him and man that guy was completely bonkers. It was actually really sad he had obviously been on the streets for awhile and he was just completely mental so after he had talked at us for a little bit we went and sat back down and thankfully he just left right before the meeting started. So that was fun. 

While a lot of you back home had the chance to listen to Elder Bednar this Sunday my ward got to hear from me, so really who drew the short stick?... just kidding but my talk I feel like went OK, I wish I was a better speaker but I tried to focus on what I felt the ward needed so hopefully someone was touched by it. I'll screenshot my notes for it so any of you can read it if you want. 

Oh last P-day this family that fed us dinner called after us as we were leaving and said that they had some basketball shoes they wanted to give us! So that was cool I got some free cholo Jordan's and we went and played with some Asian guys at this park it was really fun. Everyone here likes to sag their pants really low, in fact most people wear an extra pair of shorts under their pants so they can sag them lower. So we took a pic of me and Elder Lyle ballin like cholos.

This investigator family we are teaching has a ping pong table in their garage so we got to play ping pong for awhile with them so that was fun! 

Well the work is slow but it's moving! This thanksgiving we have 2 dinners scheduled for right now so that will be great 😄 love you all!
Hope your doing great!

Elder Robison

​Hey everybody hope you are all doing well! This last week was pretty uneventful, our teaching pool is pretty small so we tried to find more investigators this past week but we ended the week with 0 new investigators. So that's kind of a bummer. We had a district training this last week that instructed us to find new investigators through less actives and members. So basically all week we have been stopping by members homes and inviting them to church and asking for referrals or service or something. Because of that we have been fed a LOT, but no referrals. But it's all good I'm just glad to be here. 

Guess who We found today at HEB while I was looking for frozen burritos? Yeah you guessed it! Satan himself! The same slippery serpent that we found while at Golden Corral a few weeks ago. I still don't know his name but this guy proceeded to give us the same shpeal today that he gave us weeks back. I honestly feel so bad for people who have been led so far from the truth and hope and pray that doesn't happen to any of you guys. 

I've met a lot of members of the church down here in Broadway that you would not think are members if you passed them in the street. So a lesson I've learned is not to be quick to judge people by their appearance. 

Sorry this email is short and boring but that's all I got for you guys! I love you all and hope you have a good week!

Elder Robison 

Here are some old pics and one of what our P day consists of today.