february 24, 2015 letter

Dear Family:

Sorry I wasn't able to email the other day, we had a huge meeting with all of the mission together about the new missionary technology that is coming in. This was a huge event because it was the first time in the missions history that the whole entire mission got together. We had one of the seventy come and speak to us and someone in the presidency at the provo mtc come and talk to us and it was one of the coolest experiences ever. The way that they explained it is basicall going to change everything about missionary work. if I were to explain it in any way it would be like preach my gospel coming out. They basically said to us to forget everything we thought we knew about missionary work because it was going to be different now. One of the missionaries stood up and said "I came out on my mission to get away from technology, I don't like this whole Idea" and the 70 looked at him and said, "well get out of the 90's son, you're in 2015."  He said that with the new advancement in technology that we could get into any home. because a lot of times people are gone, or lessons get cancled or something like that, but with their cellphone they're always home. He said it will get us into homes that we've never been able to. We will be able to Skype, get member presents through Skype. teach through facebook and a bunch of other things. He told us that the work is going from "hastening the work, to turning it into hyperspeed." he said that this work is literally going to skyrocket and we are going to begin having 3 times the lessons that we've been able to have in the past. 

There was a video that the church made just a little while ago about Christmas and it had 34 million views on it and over 34,000 people requested to see missionaries online after seeing the video. the church is putting in ridiculous amounts of money and time into videos and blogs and all of these other things because it is having such wild success. And you know those pamphlets that they came out with about 15 or so years ago of the restoration and plan of salvation and everything? Now those are all online and they are interactive with built in videos, and its something that members and investigators can download on there electronics. I personally think that's brilliant to get into people because when we hand them a pamphlet they don't ever really have any interest in reading it and just get on their phone... so why not put it on there phone?!  he basically said that the Lord is going to hasten this work ridiculously fast and that numbers in everything are going to begin to skyrocket and that the church is going to basically take over the internet haha. It was one of the craziest things I've ever been in! He said that what they are doing now is revolutionary to missionary work and that our mission along with a couple of others are the ones to start it. They hope to eventually get ipads to all 88,000 missionaries and then they will keep them and continue to do missionary work once they have left the mission field through their ipads. One of the things that I loved that president samulien said is that "the Lord isn't waiting for so many earthquakes or so many wars or disasters to happen before the second coming, that he is waiting for the missionaries and the mission work to be completed." and now as you can see in the past couple of years the age has changed, the number of missionaries has doubled, and now they are going to take over the internet! haha the work is going from being hastened, to hurdling down a cliff. We've been told repeatedly as missionaries that we have to get ready for what is coming, because we will be the ones raising our kids through the second coming and we will have to help lead it. I had so much more I wanted to talk about but I don't have time. but I bear you my testimony that the Lord is hastening his work faster than we can imagine, and the time for him to come is not far off. The Lord is preparing the world for His coming.

I love you all!  

Love, Elder Romney (:

february 16, 2015 letter

So this week was pretty fun! finally for the first time in like a month and a half it stopped raining and it is so gorgeous outside!! ahh i love it. But its kind of sad because with this kind of weather, it feels like i should be putting on my glove and getting ready for a baseball game, but i still am in love with the weather none the less(: 

The other day we were driving down the road past the graveyard, and I saw these three guys working on the graveyard and I got the prompting to go and talk to them, We went and parked the car and in the pouring rain got out and went and talked to these guys who then went inside the building. They told us that we could come in and we talked to them for a little while. Two of them are getting ready to become  priests and were doing service work, and the other is the owner of the graveyard. We told them that we would come back another day and help them do service. so we went back this last Tuesday and it was way cool to be able to do service at the graveyard. Our job was to scrape all of the moss off of the pillars because here in Oregon the moss grows on literally everything! We found it to actually be a super good proselytizing tool because we were on Front St. where there is the biggest population of Hispanics and so we were able to talk to all of them that passed by. Then there was one that passed by and we said hi to him and asked him if we could give him a pamphlet and he just started to bawl. We asked him what was wrong and he ushered us slowly over to where his friend had just been buried and then he was telling us about how his 18 year old son had just died in Tijuana Mexico and how he was going through such a hard time. It was so amazing to tell him that this life wasn't the end and that there is so much that is after this life and he just kept bawling, so we gave him a hug, prayed with him and told him we would come and see him soon. We are super excited to be able to go and meet up with him soon!

The other day, one of the members said that they were sick and called us to get a blessing. When we went over there, I began to explain to him how  a blessing worked since his is a recent convert, and this was his first time getting a blessing. I began to explain and was trying to say that we are just going to put a little drop on your head first. well... what i really said was "solamente voy a poner un gatito sobre su cabeza" which comes out to mean "we are just going to put a little cat on your head" hahaha the word cat is gato, and the word drop is gota... haha so that was a huge difference. I'm pretty sure that for a second there he thought we were going to do some kind of crazy voodoo witchcraft thing (; haha So that was a good little laugh(: 

For Valentines Day we were able to make a bunch of different cookies and go and give them to all of the members and it was so fun to serve them and see their smiles over such a small little thing (: And we taught another family and put them on date for the 1st of march, so we are super super excited for them!!!(: 

We also went to Silver Falls again this morning and I'll attach some more photos of that(: 

I love you all! (: Love, Elder Romney (:

FHE

This is how we do studies when it is nice outside! Sitting on the edge was a little trippy!

What i wake up to every morning out my window right next to my bed (:

Going to Silver Falls!

This is probably my favorite elder in the mission. His name is Elder Ansuras and he is from California. We just hung out the whole time!

A selfie with our entire zone for zone p day (:

A selfie with our entire zone for zone p day (:

In a cave behind the waterfall(:

More pics of the waterall!

This pic reminds me of when Brian would get thrown up in the air!

The beautiful waterfall (:

Our whole zone.

february 9, 2015 letter

Dear family:

Well this week has been another pretty good week!  Sadly there is absolutley no sushine at all. I havnet seen the sun in a couple of weeks and am beginnign to wonder what the sun looks like! But its a good thing I have this awesome jacket from Brian because i'ts saved me like  a thousand times!  Thanks again, Brian!

We had a really spiritual experience this week. Remember the lady that pretended to be a jehovas witness and started yelling at me the first time that I knocked a house here, and she was really just a member? Yeah, she passed away on Tuesday. She and I grew super close while I was out here and I was always the one that she would call if she needed help translating or needed help at the doctors. It was bound to happen soon because she was so weak and fragile, but it all kind of hit us by surprise when she ended up in the hospital and had a stroke and passed away a couple days later. I had the opportunity to go and talk with  her husband the day after and it was so sad to see how heart broken he was. He was always the life of the party when we went over and would hug us and greet us and tell us how much he loved us, but this time he sat there solemnly and quietly listening to us. I felt so bad and just wanted to take away all the pain that he had! We had an awesome funeral service at the church and almost all of the branch came. She was really such an amazing little woman. President Pister told us about how, on her last day, before she had her stroke in the hospital, she made him come over to her hospital bed and out of her gown she pulled out a tithing slip and gave it to him. I wanted to cry when he told us that story. She had so much faith that even when she was dirt poor and obviously couldn't pay all her bills, she gave her tithing to the lord to let Him know how much she loved Him. That example will always have an impression on my heart and I will remember her faithfulness to the church for the rest of my life. She was the first person I met on my mission and the first person to actually leave, so it was a little heartbreaking! But the branch pulled together really well and are helping Sebastian cope with the loss of his wife.

I don't have too much time to write, but it was a good week and we were able to see a lot of success! We are finally starting to see the fruits of our labors and I'm loving it! It's been tough on the mission so far being a planter of seeds in the hearts of men, but I'll do what the Lord wants me to do, whether that Be planting or harvesting. 

Oh and I also traded one of my ties for a sweet watch, a hoodie and a really nice pillow! I don't know how i got that deal, but I was more than wiling to take it!

 I love you Guys!!!!

 Love, Elder Romney (:

Elder Carbajal passed out (fell asleep) during language study (:

At a little party we had at the church on saturday. it was so much fun!!

In a poncho!

february 2, 2015 letter

Well this week was probably one of the funniest and craziest weeks i've ever had. This morning we had to move and it literally took us about 6 hours to move everything across to our new apt. It was so nice. I'll have to send some pictures of what it looks like. it was just a fun experience all together. 

I have two crazy stories. I don't know if I told you this or not, but we started tracting on Front St, which is literally one of the craziest places. It feels like a third world county mixed with Compton haha. Elder Carbajal and I were walking down it the other day because he hadn't seen it yet and we just call it the little mexico. We were walking down the street and we met this English guy who was either mentally insane or on more drugs than a body can handle, because we started talking to him and he told us about how the train (which passes by front st.) has to be plugged into a toaster and in order to get it back out you have to unplug it and then you have to find the three O's in the week and use them to get through it and lay in the water bed to change into a woman, and many other crazy things. haha I've never tried so hard not to laugh in my entire life. Just yesterday when we were tracting we ran into him and he told me about how sad he was that the seahawks lost the superbowl and how he had to go and cry for an hour to feel better because his ancestors in Alaska died but that it was okay because they play 41 games in heaven even though they play 32 down here. haha I was trying so hard not to crack up while he was talking to us. Then he started talking about the O's again and how they turn into 1 hundred dollar bills and how he would give me 2 members of his team to help out. Haha it was probably so bad, but i just started to go along with him and was like "oh yeah yeah, so you have to get two B's to get a C and then you can ride the train to get where you need to go, but that costs one player right?" and he was like " oh you're so right, but you also have to lose another so you would lose three" and i was like," hmmhmm you would lose it all and the game would be over".  We literally went on with a conversation for ten minutes that made no sense to anyone and Elder Carbajal just stood off to the side looking thoroughly confused.

My other story that I have about Front St. is that the other day we met this Hispanic who was homeless in the back ally ways of the stores and we decided to go and talk to him. We went there and he started yelling at us about how he hated all religion, and he proceeded to tell us how he hated everything about organizations. It started to get pretty heated on his part and we just kind of stood there politely and listened to what he had to say. But then he looked at me and he started speaking to me and for some reason i couldn't understand him, but then I realized what he was saying was "so if i pulled a knife out on you, what would you do, would you fight back or just let yourself die?" haha so at that point i was pretty rattled and ready to start fighting this guy or run!  He lifted up his jacket and you could see that he had a knife on him so i got freaked out. haha so i just talked to him calmly and told him that we had to go. We calmed him down and he seemed a little bit nicer to us, but we definitely didn't want to run into him again. Well.... haha just the other night, guess who we saw walking down Front St. again.... the same guy. He was with another guy who we had met the other day that had just gotten out of the hospital for getting into a fight and for being on drugs. and there really wasn't anywhere to turn so we just kept walking. We tried to walk past but they saw us and there was no doing that, so we just tried to be as charmful as we possibly could and as nice as we could to him. The conversation turned into how he was hungry and how he needed money to get food and he started like interrogating us on how much we ha
d ate. We told him we'd eaten only once that day which was true because we literally had no time to stop and eat anything. Then he started to get mad and was like give us some money! You are supposed to help the poor!  We really didn't have any money on us at the time so we told him that he couldn't, so he looked right at me and said, "well... if you're not going to give me any money then..." and at this point he was reaching into his pocket and in my head i'm thinking, oh well here we go, we're about to get into a fight or something. He is reaching into his pocket and he pulls out a miniature pistol, and i think, oh crap... and the visions of pawn stars goes running through my head and how they had one of the miniature pistols on it, and i remember the statistics that they had on it and how it may not kill you but would do serious damage, so I'm staring down the tiny barrel of a gun and seeing what seemed to be the bullets, and thinking well I'm either going to die or i'm going to be a vegetable, but here we go! So he sits there shaking it at me while i squint my eyes and get ready to see the bullets flying at my head, and as I'm backing up flinching, he's like "wow, calm down i'm just kidding, its a lighter" and he shows me that it was a lighter that looked like a tiny gun. Talk about an adrenaline rusher! I was really ready to get shot and go to the spirit world, but luckily the guy wasn't serious about it. i just told him we had to go, but he said that next time he sees us, we better bring some money. so yeah... that was my story for the week. I thought I was going to die. but i was so ready for it (; jk, I would have run or something. 

Along with that  we had an awesome leadership meeting and interviews that were so good and raised our morale and helped us so much spiritually and physically! It's crazy work out here and you meet crazy people every day, but I wouldn't trade it for anything and I love it. 

I love you all soo much! Love, Elder Romney(:

Our washer and drier shakes so bad that we can lay on it and get a massage (

Me, getting my hair cut by one of the sisters investigators(:

Some sweet apts. that we found the other day (:

This is Abuelita, the only lady in the entire mission we can hug. She is the sweetest lady in the entire world (:  She took us out to Denny's one morning....it was the best!