#79 District activity- planting rice

Monday, January 26, 2015

Hey everyone,

This week has been awesome.  It has kind of felt like it has been more like two weeks.  We had so much happen.  P-day we had some great visits with a part member family.  It was really cool.  Brother was talking about how he is basically treasure hunting for things that the Japanese left here.  They are doing pretty good.  Tuesday I was sick and I literally just slept the whole day.  Wednesday we had zone interviews with President Tanner.  It was awesome.  I love talking to president.  He is one of the nicest people that I know. It was cool to learn that he has rebuilt some cars too.  We talked about that too.  This week the members have been helping us a lot.  We have one member who will be leaving for his mission in February so to get ready he has been going with us.  It is super cool.  We have been working a lot on trying to find new investigators.  We just took a part of an area that got closed.  We just have 4 missionaries in our ward right now instead of 6 like it used to be.  On Thursday we got to help some investigators plant some rice so we did that as a district activity.  We also had to give some sisters in our district a blessing.  We have been super busy. I love it.  I feel like the Lord guides me so much in everything that I do.  He has definitely been my support this week.  I definitely couldn't have done it without Him. I hope all is well back home.  

Love

Elder Roskelley

#78 Got to ride in a car

Monday, January 19, 2015

Hey everyone,

Hope everything is going good back home.  We are doing awesome here.  We just had a transfer day.  I got a new companion.  Elder Tyler transferred to Lapu Lapu and will end his mission there.  My new comp is Elder Amata, he is from Luzon.  He is a little bit younger than me in the mission.  He will go home in September but he has been zone leader longer than I have. This last week we introduced him to a lot of the members and taught some of the recent converts here.   We had one of our new investigators come to church.  We taught him 3 times and then he came.  It worked so well because we had a lot of help from our ward mission leader who is actually in the same high school class as him.  On Tuesday I was also able to go to the island of Camotes.  It was beautiful and I got to ride in a car.  The area that I worked in has a car assigned to it because it is so big.  I kind of felt like an American missionary for a while but it was still really hot when we got out of the car.  We got to also ride probably the slowest boat in the world.  We rode for 8 kilometers and it took 2.5 hours.  Luckily there was a lot of cool people we got to talk to. Our area is doing is great and I am loving Danao.  

Love,

Elder Roskelley

#77 Working hard

Wednesday, January 14, 2015

Hello everyone,

 I hope my email is okay today.  Let just explain why.  Yesterday morning I woke up at 3:30 in the morning so that we could catch a boat to be able to go on splits with the other missionaries that are on the other island.  We sailed 8 kilometers and it took 2.5 hours.  Talk about fun.  Then we had a normal work day.  Then this morning I did the same thing so that we could come back.  I have averaged 5 hours of sleep the last 2 nights.  Oh how I am grateful for P-day.   This last week has been awesome for us.  We have worked especially hard and found some awesome new people.  We have this one man that we are teaching that has started regularly reading in the Book of Mormon and we have only taught him three times.  On splits yesterday I met this guy that had some interesting beliefs.  He believed that Jesus Christ was just reincarnated many times after his birth and that is why religions have different name for their deities.  We get to meet some interesting people like this.  I guess you could say we get to meet a wide range of different types of people.  We have also been doing a lot of things for the zone.  We are doing great.  I love how the Lord has given us perfect principles that is followed will bring many blessings.  I am so grateful for the sacrifice of our Savior and for his grace.  It seems that I may be running on just grace power now.  I hope everything is going well back home.  I love you all.  

Love 

Elder Roskelley

  

#76 New Years

Monday, January 5, 2015

Hello everyone,

  I have been doing really good this week.  Work was a little hard with New Year’s but we still had a good week.  Monday last week we had a really good lesson with our new investigator and then we got a ton of rain.  We had actually planned to go over to the other island in our zone so that we could do splits but we had to cancel that because of the storm.  It ended up being okay anyway because on Tuesday my companion got sick, another stomach problem from the Philippines. On Wednesday we had a great lesson with a referral from one of our other investigators. They are doing good.  Then in the evening for New Years Eve we got to watch how to train you dragon 2 and played mafia with our district. We also met a guy that is named Medio Capoy.  If you translate that into cebuano it means "kind of tired." We also got some more rain.  The rest of the days it was normal missionary work and then on Sunday we had 2 investigators come to church.  This week has been amazing for relying on revelation.  I have realized how much we need revelation and how hard we need to work so that the spirit will stay with us.  I know that we will be very blessed for our obedience even if we don't immediately recognize the blessings. 

Love you all,

Elder Roskelley

Missionary power

Delicious pig rotisserie style, a specialty of the Philippines

Christmas

This is our area

#75 Splits in far area

Monday, December 29, 2014

Hello everyone. 

 I hope everyone had a wonderful Christmas.  I loved be able to Skype my family.  It made me miss them a lot and it didn't help that Elder Benjamin was going home.  We still had a pretty good week even though it was kind of hard to focus.  On Tuesday and Monday I got to go on splits.  I got to go to a really far area.  It was really fun.  Then we had our ward Christmas party.  All of the members said that the missionaries had the best talent.  We just did a little dancing for them.  It was just really fun.  It was a little hard to find sober people to teach the next day.  A lot of people were partying.  We hope that next week will be a little bit better.  sorry about the weird alignment.  I don't know how to fix it.  I am typing on a japanese/english keyboard.  

Love

Elder Roskelley

Skype for Christmas

December 25, 2014

We got to Skype when it was Christmas day in the Philippines

#74 Went to the temple

Monday, December 22, 2014

Hey everyone

Well it has been quite a week.  A couple of things happened that were really cool.  First on Tuesday I got to escort Jilbert Sagrado to the temple.  It was really cool.  He had a ton of questions and it was so nice to go back to the temple.  The last time I went was in February.  It was so refreshing.  I have noticed that my thoughts have been so much clearer.  I hope that every one can go to the temple and feel this.  On Wednesday we had some good visits.  We found out that our investigator, Jelly, has been reading and studying trying to learn about the church. And yes I am serious that her name is Jelly.  There is a lot of names here in the Philippines that I will make sure not to name my children.  This last week I also got spit on by a little kid.  We were just walking away and he just decided to be rude.  He is a kid of a part member family.  Seems like we have a good relationship with them :) Another bad thing that happened this week was that a turkey attacked me.  It was okay though, didn't leave any scars or anything.  It was actually pretty funny.  We were able to use the He is the Gift video in some of our lessons.  It was really cool for the people that have TVs.  We also got some good rain.  We had an investigator come to church.  It is the mom of the family with three kids.  Her husband was sick so we will just have to get him next week.  They are progressing really well.  We are just working with them to make sure that they have a strong testimony.  With the Christmas season everyone has seemed a little nicer.  I love the Christmas spirit.  We have seen so many amazing things.  I hope we can all remember the Savior for the whole year.

Love

Elder Roskelley

Christmas in paradise

Got some rain

Got to eat some frog, pretty good