There Are Ups and Downs

It was great to talk to the family this last week, although it seemed all too short haha. It just made me excited to get home and show you all the pictures and tell you all the stories. It will be great. My companion didn't get to talk to his family on Christmas day, but the next day we went back to the chapel and he called them with a calling card. Then I got to wait and do nothing while he talked. So it balanced out.
It's weird to think that Phil is already home and that I'm already 5 months on my mission working on my 6th! It's just plain weird.

On Friday we got kicked out of a house. It was pretty funny actually. We were teaching this girl (who's about 30-40 yrs old) and her drunk father walks in and says "do we owe you anything?". We explained we were just missionaries. Then he said "GET OUT OF MY HOUSE!". We were a little confused. His daughter said no its fine, stay. Then the father started saying something about this is earth and heaven is heaven and asked us if we thought we were better than him. We tried reasoning but that doesn't work too well when someone is intoxicated. So we left and it made the daughter cry that her father would be so rude. That was sad.

This past Sunday we had a lot of bad bad luck. First we had to ride like 10k's just to our lunch appointment. After we rode back our 3rd,4th,and 5th ended up all being gone. Trying to find something to do we went to see Agent Mishak. He's been trying to get baptized but won't come to church and was having a hard time stopping smoking. A few weeks ago he seemed to be all done with everything and seemed so intent on coming to church. The next Sunday, no Agent. Then last week we went to help him build his cucu's nest and he wasn't there. We kept checking on him but he wasn't there! We thought he might have died (he's very old). Then on Sunday we went to see him since he didn't come to church again. This time he was drunk! It made me feel sick. We've been working so hard and then here is Agent just drunk saying he wants to get baptized and how he doesn't need to quit drinking until after he's baptized. People really turn into someone they're not when they're drunk. It's ridiculous. I can't stand it. So we set an appointment to come back when he was sober. That really brought me down though, especially being on top of everything else that went wrong yesterday....But you know... missionary work is not supposed to be easy.

On Saturday we went to see Sannah who I've told you about. She has such a strong testimony and has hardly come to church once! She lives so far from the school and she is very busy. She cried on Saturday because she feels it is so true and wants to be baptized so much and come to church every Sunday so much. It's amazing to see how in such humble and even bad circumstances (her mother and sister are very sick) she can feel so much joy, and you know it's because it's true. The church is true. Experiences like that just help me to keep going. Especially after days like yesterday. Hopefully the holidays will end soon. Then everything will be back to normal.

Thanks for all the support. You know I need it and I appreciate it so much.

Love you all
-elder robinson