novermber 24, 2014 letter

Well another week here in Oregon and it is just getting as cold as ever!! haha but while I've been out here I've found that i am really good at being cheap with money. i think in reality my mission is just getting me ready to live on my own in college and be super super cheap with my wife when we first get married and don't have any money! i can spend about 7 dollars a week and be just fine, so that is an up, but the down is that oatmeal is now flavorless and not very good! I don't know why I'm saving money, i just feel the urge to! haha I've got like 130 dollars on my mission fund card and will be getting another 120 in a week! but I guess i just feel some sort of gratification in saving money (:

So remember how i told you last time that we have started to love getting into the deep doctrine and getting as much knowledge about the church as we can, well we just went to the church library and got 4 encyclopedias on the church and it has been one of the best things ever! there is literally every possible word and thing you can talk about the Mormon church in there and its all approved by Jeffrey R Holland(: I love being able to learn and understand more things every day and also learn those things in Spanish too!

Well this week we were driving by and there was a guy on the side of the road just walking, so we decided to stop and roll down our window to talk to him! We stopped by and told him who we were and why we were here and what we were doing and everything, and he was just like, I've been waiting for this for so long. He said he had a friend that was a member of the church and that he just wanted to learn more about the church and he had no idea how to! So we ended up getting out and talking to him. It was interesting, because as I was talking to him, things were just clicking in my head and everything was just running so smoothly with him and it seemed like we had been long lost best friends! I firmly believe that he is one of the people i was really good friends with in the pre earth life and he is one of the reasons I was sent here. we gave him a Book of Mormon and let him go on his way. Turns out he shows up to church next week and we were so happy for him! I'm kind of sad that elder Perryman and I wont be the ones to get to teach him and bring him to the waters of baptism, because he is in the sister's area and not ours, but it makes me so happy to see what a little thing like stopping and talking to someone! It's awesome to see how everything works together and to know that Heavenly Father has a perfect plan for us and that he will always put the right people in the right place at the right time, We just have to make sure that we listen to the still small voice.

So we went to the park to play some basketball with some kids and teach them a lesson. We got there and we had to run to the restrooms to change our clothes into street clothes. so we were in the stalls and i had just gotten out and I hear elder Perryman in the other stall like groaning. haha I felt so bad for him, I was just like, well, that Spanish food got to him, but I hear him right after say, "Elder Romney, I need you to come in here." I was like, "we may be companions, but there is no way i am going in there!!"! hahahaha but he said, "No i cant move!" haha It turns out he wasn't using the bathroom or anything, some muscle in his back froze and he couldn't move at all. haha So he made me go in there and put on his shoes and pants. If that doesn't show that I love my companion, I don't know what will! But it turns out he just had a strained muscle for a little bit and all is good. I was slightly hoping that he would have to go to the hospital or something, because that is the only justified reason for putting on another mans pants and shoes! (;

well I'm pretty excited about two things that are coming up here pretty soon! We have the turkey bowl on Thursday and I can't wait for it! I don't think I've been this excited for football in my life. I haven't played it for almost a year since i got my surgery! but one of the assistants to the president is apparently a really good football player and he heard that i like to play football to, so he is going to drive all the way here and we are going to go against each other, so i am pretty excited about that (: And I get to be on a traveling choir for the mission! Another buddy of mine in the zone and I get to go sing with a traveling group. But I'm not sure if that is going to fall through or not with all the bad weather that is coming in, but i guess we will see about that(: 

All of my investigators are doing super good and I love to see all of the changes in there lives and how much closer they are to Christ. I honestly would do that over playing in front of 3 thousand people every Friday night. I love it.

Well, I love you guys and I can't wait to hear all about Thanksgiving from everyone! love you!! 

love,

 Elder Romney (:

On Saturday night we got a call from Brother Pister, (pronounced "Pes-ter) who is a man who works with the missionaries in the Woodburn area.  This is the third call we have received from him, telling us that he was just with Spencer, and what they had been doing. He said that Spencer is a great missionary, and is working hard, and that he is doing very well with Spanish, and that everyone loves him there (of course!).  They had been at the church that evening, attending the wedding of investigators who had been married in Mexico, but didn't have their records, so they had to get married again before they could be baptized the following day.  Brother Pister took this picture and sent it to me.  Spencer and his companion will have Thanksgiving at Brother and Sister Pister's house this week.  I asked Spencer if he got a blanket or comforter for his bed yet, and he said that Sister Pister gave them blankets. They are very sweet people who have a missionary out themselves at this time.  I'm so thankful for good and kind people who care for Spencer!

november 17, 2014 letter

Wow its crazy to think how fast the time is going, pretty soon here i will be a fourth of the way through my mission and it feels like it just started. i am learning so many things out here and i am growing so fast spiritually and physically! i even have to shave every morning because it gets to long! haha i thought id just add that in, because it makes me feel pretty manly (; but i really am learning so fast and the great thing about getting a new companion is that you learn from them and the analogies that they use for people and the little things they do in there scriptures to mark them and stuff. just little stuff, but it is all really interesting and i love trying to take the best in my companion and incorporate it into myself and leave behind the things or bad habits that i don't want! i think if you saw me now, you probably wouldn't recognize me. you just get a new spirit to you that you didn't have before the mission!

speaking of growing and learning, one of the things that elder perryman and i have in common is that we are both really really interested in deep doctrine so every night we can stay up for hours just talking about the ins and outs of the book of mormon and bible and share the knowledge that we have.

so the other day we went knocking on a house in what we call "la encarseria" (not sure if that's how you spell it) but that means the prison in spanish! haha its like a little town of just 3rd world. its nuts. but for some reason i absolutly love it and want to go there all the time. so i made elder perryman go with me one night and go knock on some doors. not to say the least the people didn't look to friendly and neither did the chickens trying to peck at me, but it was fun! haha the whole time elder perryman had the phone in his hand with 911 dialed, and i thought that it was the funniest thing ever! but it was a fun experience and i cant wait to go back. we also went tracting right next to there and knocked on this house. a guy answered and because it was freezing cold he was like, hurry come in, i dont want it to be cold! so we went inside and there were 7 thirty year old hispanic men sitting at the table eating dinner. we ended up talking them and they thought it was super funny that two white guys in suits could speak spanish to them! so they let us sit down and talk to them for a while and through the course of our lesson literally 20 more guys walked in and out of the house... haha it was crazy! they were all from mexico and guatemala and were here just working on the fields and sending money home to there families. so we talked about families to them and they were so amazed by it and asked us to come back again! so we are hoping to get all of those guys baptized (lofty goal, but still possible) and we can turn our little branch into a ward (:

Yesterday night we knocked on a house of a person that we had accidentally ran into the other day and this time he let us come in and talk to him. come to find out he had 3 brain surgeries 2 heart surgeries and back surgery and is doing super good. he told us about a story that he had where god had helped him and he told us that he was positive that there was something out there that the lord needed him to do or else he wouldn't have survived that many times! we told him that he kept on surviving those surgeries to hear about our message and to help him help his family to accept it as well. the only set back is that he isn't in our area, so we have to hand him off to the sisters! but it'll be so good to see him baptized sometime soon (: 

This week was good, still a little frustrated that baptisms aren't following through like we plan, but we are just trying to help them realize the importance and that is all we can do! I love you guys and i cant wait to hear from you! Love, Elder Romney (:

By a burned house

november 10, 2014 letter

Well i don't have a bunch of time to write today, but i will just tell you a couple of stories that i had this week(: there was this girl that was standing on the side of the road, so Elder Perryman and I decided to pull up to her and give her a card. we immediately started talking and she seemed super interested in what we had to say! At the end of the conversation, i said," pues gracias por su teimpo y tenga un buen dia!" and she looks at us and says, "no se precupen, son buenos"  haha so i said, thank you you too(: haha we drove away and elder perryman starts cracking me up, because son buenos translates to mean that you guys are sexy, but a little bit more inappropriate... haha so that was an interesting thing, and we are definitely going to hand her off to the Hermanas!!

Sad day  because we found out that we have bed bugs in our house... luckily they aren't in my  bed! elder Perryman woke up and found all of these marks all over his legs and found out that he had had bed bugs for the past little while and just never noticed! luckily we were able to get an exterminator out here and get that all figured out, hopefully none of that will happen again!

This week i played a ton of sports!! i ended up playing basketball two times and soccer three times! its all because we contact into people and they want to play us in sports, and it really helps us get investigators, so we always go out with them and play something with them! well in all of this time, turns out that i am really good at soccer! i hadn't played since i was five and i just picked it up on the mission again! maybe i missed my calling in life(; but it was really fun and we ended up playing soccer with six kids and got them to listen to out message and now we have a return appointment with them, and they are all really good potential investigators! i think the lord blessed me with athletic ability not to get a scholarship, but to guys to listen to us (; 

So we had another experience with a guy that wanted to come up and bash on us! we were contacting on the street and this short white guy comes running up to us, and we thought he was a bishop at first, but then he says to our investigators, i just wanted to make sure that you weren't listening to the mormons! haha at that point we stop talking to our investigators and start talking to him and ask him to please leave, and he wouldn't. so he started ripping into us saying we had "magic underwear" and there was no proof of the book of mormon, and nothing was true. by the end of the conversation, we had literally answered every question of his with a logical answer and he finally said, "well, you were able to answer all of my questions, and they make sense... but i have to go." haha the spirit of discernment is true and it is such a big gift!!

oh and i happened to talk elder Perryman into trading me a 400 dollar tie for two of mine, so it was a good week (;

but i love you guys so much and i am so excited for all of the baptisms that we have coming up soon!!

 love elder romney!!

Spencer braiding a tree

This is Spencer's mission family.  He and Elder Perryman were both trained by Elder Ashcraft (far right), who is now also training Elder Joly (far left)

november 3, 2014 letter

Well, after being with Solano for so long, he is finally home!! haha but I couldn't be more hapy and excited to have my new companion! his name is elder Perryman and he is 6 foot 4 and is one of the nicest coolest kids you'll meet ever! He and I hit it off probably within the first hour we were together and we just started to teach a bunch of people! one of the things that he told me about that he did in his past district was something called SAM's it stands for (super awkward moment, super awesome moment, and super awesome miracle) so pretty much when you go tracting you just look for those oppurtunities! haha it was one of the most fun times tracting that I have ever had! We decided that we were going to talk to literally every person that we passed, so needless to say it took us literally 2 hours just to get 300 yards away from our house. It was such a cool and fun experience, and for the most part, people accepted us and let us teach them for a little bit! just a couple of examples of SAMs that we have had so far: This one time we saw a guy riding on his bike on the side of the road, so we literally pulled up next to him, drove his speed and taught him a lesson about the gospel through the window(: haha that was super awesome. And then there was one time where we saw 2 people walking away about a hundred yards away, so we immediately pulled the car over, parked it, and jumped out of the car and ran as fast as we could to catch up with them. obviously they were a little startled but thought it was hilarious that we chased them down and they listened to us! We ended up talking to them for an hour and teaching them a huge lesson about families being together forever! And another SAM was when we met these two girls out of no where and gave them our number and told them to call us when they had read a chapter out of the book of Mormon, and they texted us that night and now they are one of our new investigators! haha but SAMs are some of the funniest things in the world, and I have probably another 20 stories, I just don't have time to write them! oh and with all these lessons we are teaching, we tied the record for the most lessons taught in a week and we got 38 lessons taught in one week!

On the 29th, we had one of the best days ever! We were able to get a family on date and now we have 10 people on date for baptism(: Ahh it makes me so happy to see their lives change and how much the gospel is starting to mean to them(: Then that night right after our lesson with the family we went to the church super late just before we had to go home, to print some stuff of for the next day, and we ended up running into a member who was really struggling with things in his life and how he was addicted to some stuff and he didn't know what to do about it! We read him Jacob 5:66 which promised him that if he replaced the bad thoughts with good thoughts, eventually his roots, or himself would completely change! It was such a cool experience just to see that he was put in our path like that! (and that has happened with so so many SAMs its crazy!)  We decided after the lesson in the car to say a "thank you prayer" just to thank heavenly father for blessing us and that guy that night. and while he was praying I got the distinct impression that the day wasn't over and that there was still someone we had to see even though it was already past curfew. Right as we had finished praying, we both looked at each other and said at like the same time that there was still someone we had to see tonight. I was thinking about it and got the distinct impression to go to the gas station right next to our house and that there would be a female at the cash register and we had to talk to her and just tell her that god is listening to her. So we got to the gas station and open the door and walk up to the counter where there was a girl just like we had gotten in the impression and we just stood there for a couple of seconds. I finally looked at her and said, I don't know why we are here, but we got the feeling to come here and tell you that god loves you. At that moment, another guy walks into the store and I get the feeling that I need to go talk to him, so I leave elder Perryman to talk to the girl and I went and talked to this guy, so we are teaching two lessons at once. Turns out the girls starts bawling and thanking us for coming over to her, and the guy was a less active and hadn't been to church for a year! So we were able to help them and that was one of the coolest things ever(:

Elder Perryman and I have literally been working non stop. we are constantly either texting someone, or talking to someone, or something! We have gotten so busy that we don't take lunch and dinner anymore and we pretty much just fast so we can talk to people! I really do love elder Perryman so much and we are able to work really well together as a team and we try to follow every impression that the spirit gives us! I've never worked at something so hard in my life as I have the past couple days, and I've worked pretty hard at football and weightlifting! It's so crazy! Some other highlights was that I got to go and translate at a doctors appointment and help set up the trunk or treating this week has been awesome and I cant wait to see what is in store for next week(:

I love you guys so much!!(:

Spencer and Elder Perryman, his new companion