June 10, 2013 Yes yes yes!

Ahhhh family!!! There is NOTHING better than being a missionary!!!!  Gosh I just love it so much!!  This week was absolutely fantastic!!!!!!  We were able to meet with our investigator every single day this week.  That was awesome.  She really is progressing a lot.  She's been so prepared it's wonderful. 

This week we got to go on a split with 2 of the most experienced missionaries in the mission.  It was so awesome!  President gave them a special assigment (this is both of their last transfers) to travel the entire mission and go on a split with every companionship of Elders.  I loved it so much!  I learned tons!  Elder Rasmussen was with me and he met with me and our investigator.  He is such an incredible teacher.  I think I learned more than our investigator listen to him teach.  Pretty much the whole lesson I just sat there in awe listening and watching.  I want to be like that some day.  He is also a master at contacting.  It was so fun to go with him.. He could get anyone to stop and talk to him.  The key:  he was talking WITH people and not TO people.  He started by just asking them random questions waiting for what he calls the "green light" where he could take the opportunity to testify of a principle relating to what they were saying.  Its like what Elder Holland says in PMG that when we actually listen to what they are saying, we will always be able to find a priciple of the restored gospel about which we can bear testimony.  Elder Rasmussen is amazing at it.  I LOVED working with him.

Funny story as a result of his contacting skills.  There was the guy sitting off the side of the road on some bench thing and Elder Rasmussen called to him from the street then we started walking up to him which turned out to be a her.  She was waiting for someone to come pick her up and take her to the hospital because she was going to be having a baby that day!  In just a few hours she would be a new mom.  Elder Rasmussen of course, knowing that he wouldn't be there, told her that we would come by the hosptial tonight and bring her flowers (totally a Russian thing to do. They LOVE giving flowers - there's a flowershop or 2 on every corner) and congratulate her.  Since Elder Rasmussen left after dinner, that responsibility fell on me..  great.  But we did it cause she said in kinda a challenging tone that she's be waiting for us so of course, I couldn't not go.  That night I went to the flower shop and bought some flowers and went to the hospital and called her only to find out she wasn't there cause the hospital wouldn't take her.  She hadn't bought the stuff she needed (required by the hospital) yet in order to have the baby.  But I told her I still wanted to give her the flowers, so we met her at a store kinda nearby and gave her the flowers and a Proclamation to the family thing and told her to call and let us know how everything goes.  She called the next day and wanted us to by the stuff that she stil needed for her, but when I told her that we couldn't she became angry and hung up on us... sour ending to what could have been really awesome, but in the end, at least she got the flowers!  Hopefully she'll call us sometime in the future and want to meet, not just try and get money from us.  Interesting experience though.

Then yesterday was mission conference!  It was supposed to be with Elder Ballard, but at the very last minute his plane landed in London instead of St. Pete's cause someone in the Russian visa office in San Fran messed up and stamped the wrong date on his visa and they wouldn't let him into the country.  They tried to do everything they could to negotiate  (his visa was approved for the 13th or something instead of the 10th, but they wouldn't let him in.  But back up plan was our area president and his wife who I LOVE.  She is the one who did the whole House of Israel thing back in March, so we got to listen to her speak again.  This time she spoke about the Devil.  Holy cow it was so awesome!  Just a few things she said that I loved.

Satan tries to destroy us in 4 different ways

1. With direct tempation using our appetites and passions, pride and vanity, and power and riches. (See Matt chpt 3)

2. Deception.  He counterfeits every part of God's plan.  Keep in mind a counterfeit is not the opposite.  For example, the opposite of white is black, but a conterfeit of white is like cream, or off-white.  Some parts of God's plan that satan tries to counterfeit are :

God's plan - Satan's counterfeit

faith  - superstition

love - lust

priesthood - priestcraft

patriarchs - psychics

Sacred covenants - secret combinations

chastity - celibacy

law of consecration - socialism/communism

marriage - cohabitation

eternal progression - reincarnation

get the idea?.. the interesting thing is that there is one part of God's plan that Satan cannot find and counterfeit for and that is peace.  There is no counterfeit for peace.  Hence the scripture "there is no peace for the wicked"

3. Contention.  He is a master at this, especially sibling contention (he has lots of personal experience in that category).   I love the quote from Joseph Smith "The devil flatters us when we are feeding on the faults of others" 

He also provides contention with jealousy and spreads contention in the church (his number 1 target P.S. is the house of Israel) by very effectively revealing to us the shortcomings in our leaders... Beware of this one!

4.  The last way he tries to destroy us if we don't fall for any of this is by using discouragement. 

So interesting.  I LOVED the meeting yesterday even though Elder Ballard couldn't make it.  SO awesome!  Satan is crafty, but just remember "Satan trembles when he sees, the weakest saint upon his knees"

I hope you guys have a great week - I love you all!

Elder Robison

PS sorry it was a novel this week