HI there!

Sorry this is late. P-day and transfer day ended up being the same this past week, so I'm just winging it and writing while I'm at the Visitor Center today. How is everyone? It's been a good week. A Liberian man we're teaching came to the Visitor Center and we took him on tour and talked about bit about baptism for our third lesson. He said he wants to get baptized and we said great! We didn't even invite him to be. He said he was willing to take work off and come to church on Sunday. Sadly I won't be there. I'm going to miss Riverview a lot. It's so different and fun. Lots of strong people I just fell in love with.

Sister Williams is training in Riverview and I'm with Sister Fife in third ward. It was an exciting first day. We went to do laundry at Sister Hamilton's house. She is so nice. Third ward is a lot like Lawrence. Big shmancy houses in a lot of the area intermixed by lower income neighborhoods. And we went to two shmancies (former bishop and current YW pres) and one investigator's house. I honestly didn't know what to do with myself in a big home. The families are so nice, and they're doing their missionary work and serving their neighbors and inviting people to church and fasting and praying for missionary opportunities and fulfilling their callings and we have a dinner every day next month... so I'm still sort of trying to figure out exactly what we're there for. What we can do for them. We shall see.

Sister Fife was inspired to go see an investigator that wasn't in our plans and has been out of town forever. Her name is Edie. She was home for the first time in in a long time she said, because she's been busy. But she was a very nice woman in her thirties who has been reading and praying and eating up the Gospel. It's been amazing. She's coming to church on Sunday and she's really excited to learn more. She has a greatSpirit about her and just left a husband that sounds pretty dominating, but who knows.

She also had a rather nice mtn bike propped against the wall in her home--BMX style, with Bontrager tires and Avid brakes....soooo we've made p-day plans :-) Apparently she went to Colorado to ride with some friends a few weeks ago. This is going to be a good transfer. I feel like I'm serving in Utah in a lot of ways. Most of the 3rd ward is from there and their neighborhoods have that HIghland/Linden/Orem look to them, so I feel like this is good preparation for missionary work in my BYU world.

Thank you for the letters Mom and Dad. I like your explanations, Dad. Share your testimony too. Thanks for the update Lisa. Christian that was a cool card. You'll be a good MiSSiNry. Love you all.

HermanaRobbins.

p. s. Rick Holden came by the VC on his way to basic training for some kind of operation in Iran. He's living in Arizona now. He used to be in Riverview ward a few years ago. it was exciting to see him and take him on tour. Great great man.

To ya’ll:

This week I felt bound and determined to have some really well thought out, memorable lessons. Yesterday, after a lovely dinner of chicharron (it builds character), we played a game with the little kids. We had madel ittle coins (talents) with kid's names on them and an idea on the back for doubling it, like “draw a picture of mommy” or “Give a friend a picture of Jesus,”, and then we hid them and they had to find them. Cool huh! Heavenly Father’s idea. After that we had asked one of the ReliefSociety women to go with us to visit a less active woman who just had her baby yesterday. This sister makes good bread. Great stuff. So we went to the hospital and her Baptist boyfriend and mom were there with her and we congratulated and sang a song and I don’t think her boyfriend had any idea what a role people in the church play in your life, even as a less active member. I know he appreciated the service and the Elders are going to go and dedicate the house they just moved into this week. I think he’s going to want to learn more. Also, we made a good contact with one of the nurses who heard us singing.

It was so slow yesterday in the Visitor’s Center I FINALLY got to watch women’s conference on the computer in Elder Tedrow’s office. All the other sisters on shift gradually wandered into the front office and we all sat on the floor and watched together. I really liked Elder Uchtdorf’s invitation to ‘pick a little space and beautify’ and then see only the good of it. I felt inspired. And then yesterday evening we got to see the EMMA movie at the visitor’s center. It is so good. If you haven’t seen the Joseph Smith or the Emma movie—Do it! They are both good and they were made at the same time, so they connect really well. I like that the main purpose of it was to get all her posterity in the same room/theatre. Get them talking to each other. It was wonderful.

We had an appointment last Tuesday with a Haitian named Antoine. SisterJeffrey, the one I talked about last time, went with us. It was really neat. He’s very smart and almost a citizen. English is his third language. Haiti only has four little branches on LDS.org. I looked because his whole family is still there. But surprisingly this man has met several members there and here. Still he didn’t realize this was a Christian church and he was excited to hear that news. It made me think of a scripture. "Wherefore, I, Lehi, prophesy according to the workings ofthe Spirit which is in me, that there shall none come into this land save they shall be brought by the hand of the Lord" (2 Nephi 1:6). There’s so many miracles that take place in people's lives and so many people that we have these meetings with and so I just assume, okay, The Lord needs this person to accept the Gospel now. But divine or not, people have agency and they need preparation. Antoine first met a bishop, then he talked to some inexperienced missionaries that didn’t give him very good info, then he met a member on a boat, then he met the Elders, then we went over and he missed our first meeting, and we finally got to teach him last weekand he realized we’re Christian, but has trouble seeing a need foranother testament of Christ. He’s so open-hearted. I feel like if he comes to church, he’ll feel the Spirit and it will make sense. But jumping from “Oh, you’re Christian,” to “I want to be a member” is a pretty big step. We’ll do our best to help him make it. But he might need more time to soak that in and look around at other churches. But when he’s ready to accept something else, he’ll be found again. Maybe by missionaries going through the area book or missionaries on the street or a member coworker. But the Lord knows where he is at and what he needs.

I had a neat experience in the referral center last week making calls. 7 calls, no answers. So I got up and left. But putting my referral cards back, there was an old business card in the bottom of the box. I called it out of curiousity and the person I called wasn’t a member! She’d come in last February and wasn’t ready for missionaries, but had given the sister her card, but now work was bad and she was wondering about what ‘eternal life’ really means, so I asked her again and this time, she was ready to have the missionaries over! So neat! Then one of the people I called previously called me back. He also said he would meet with themissionaries! I told Sister Williams, and she had called him before and invited him to read the Book of Mormon, because he just had one on the shelf, and he’s said, ‘Sure,’ but wasn’t up for missionaries. She called again and followed up and he still hadn’t read. She had a ton of cards and delegated this one to me, so I just called and asked if he’d read and he said, “Sort of” and he said he’d seen missionaries around, but never had like a sit down meeting. I asked if I could send them to answer his questions about the Book of Mormon and he said yes! So neat! If you want me to call anyone in the referral center lemme know.

So, I’ll end on that note. Love you all. Church is true. Thanks for the letters Lisa and Mom and Carollos and Christian!

From: me.

Hna. Deb in action at the Visitors Center, with some family friends.

Hello Family,

How is everyone doing today? It’s a lovely day here in Independence. Fall is a nice time of year to be in the Midwest. It’s the only nice time of year to be in the Midwest. The leaves are changing and I’ve taken a lot of nonmember tours just visiting town, seeing the sites.

We went to visit a less-active lady in the ward about to have a baby to see how she was doing. She was gone, but her dad was there and he talked to us. He used to be in the bishopric of one of the wards, but had been offended years ago. Every time I’ve seen him, he kind of just brushed us off. Last time were there he played solitaire in the corner while we taught and took off his hat when we prayed, but didn’t participate at all. But yesterday he opened the door and told us his life story. It was pretty amazing. He’s the only Hispanic I’ve heard of that was given the priesthood, before it was given to everyone else. He’s from kind of a unique tribe. He’s seen a lot of miracles. And he did have good reason to be offended about what happened to him, but he’s still so mad about it. And it was years and years ago. He gave us some old visitor center postcards from 1982.

I told him we missed him. Sister Williams talked about her dad feeling the same way some time ago and how that affected her family. I mentioned Martin Harris telling the missionaries that went to go see him, “I didn’t leave the church, the church left me.” And how he didn’t rejoin till he was elderly. The man said he used to mow the cemetery where OliverCowdery is buried. He was claiming he’ll be active when he goes back to the Dominican Republic, but it’s already almost too late. All his kids have gone less active. The younger ones are living with people. It’s sad. And I feel so annoyed every time I see his wife go to church alone. I read a scripture in Ezekiel yesterday. “Again, when a man doth turn from his righteousness and commit iniquity, and I lay a stumblingblock before him, he shall die: because thou hast not given him warning, he shall die in his sin, and his righteousness which he hath done shall not be remembered; but his blood will I require at thine hand” (3:20). And I thought about that conversation, wondering what it’s going to take for him to remember. He told us he’d just lost his job, and I think that might have been why he felt ready to really talk to us for the first time. I think part of what makes missions such a great learning experience as well as reading the scriptures, is that there are many examples of what NOT to do. #1, Apostasy=Waste of Time.

We also taught two other families this week that are so cute and know they need to go to church, but just don’t . They know it doesn’t make sense and they have good desires. They’ve been to the temple. They know exactly why they should go. They just don’t understand anymore. People just forget what the Spirit feels like. It’s the craziest thing. So we do our best to love them and bring the Spirit to them, but they’ll really feel it again when they start doing something. A lady who hasn’t come t ochurch in forever and a day who used to be a Relief Society president came to church last Sunday…sooo good. We’ve taught her family several times and the Bishopric has visited them, even though they live far out of the boundaries. That was really exciting.

Yesterday, everything sort of fell through and we had a sister in the stake Relief Society, Sis Jeffrey, as our teamup. She’s another one of those people I just want to be more like. She’s African American with her own style of doing things, but very classy and super funny. But I’m not sure if I could sure survive what she’s gone through: Fire, Divorce, Cancer, Poverty, stillborns, and big callings during some of these things. When a less-active member we went to see wasn’t home, we walked across the street to talk to some youth hanging on the playground. It was a Wednesday afternoon and these young men, looked pretty tough, but she wanted to know why they weren’t in school. And she told them a story about what having baggy pants Really means and gave them all the ‘mom look’. After the mini-thugs were traumatized by our beautiful teamup in her relief society presidency clothes, we played good cop and told them where they could find answers to their life questions and handed the mormon.org cards. It was a very memorable experience. Eleanor Roosevelt said, “Beautiful young people are a chance of nature. Beautiful old people are a work of art.”

Love you all, Hermana Deb

Dear familia!

I love you mucho! I'm excited for this next week. We're going to the art museum today and Liberty Jail with some investigators tonight and 5th branch is putting on a musical fireside that we can hopefully get some of our members into.

It's been a good week. Things are picking up. I didn't die. I got a blessing. Conference was Great! \We had investigators there that really felt the Spirit on Sunday and we invited their little family to be baptized yesterday evening. We didn't get a yes or no, but it sounds like she's going to work towards Nov 1st. So that's really exciting. And I think the best part of that lesson was how she really talked. She's very shy, but she finally really talked about why she wanted to study the church and the things she has questions about. I hope she really prays. We invited her to.

I also succeeded in losing my planner yesterday. Sigh. I keep my brain in there. It's like how Dumbledore pulls the memories our of his head and puts them in a basin, so he can sort through them better. That's my planner. Normally, I sit here in the library, say a prayer and then flip through my planner to pick which lessons/experiences I want to share. I'm plannerless and so can only remember yesterday.

A goal I've had this transfer is expressing love for people. Really showing them I care, giving them a hug, making eye contact, telling them“I love you.” It's hard. I didn't think it would be. I'm pretty friendly as it is, but I feel out of character if I don't wrap warm fuzzies in sarcasm. Megan, you'd be so proud, I'm working on sounding sincere. So to my family and close friends...
I love you.

Thank you for showing me so much support and being my example. This is Christ's church and His gospel. The way to return to our Heavenly Father again. I know that's true.

Love,
Hermana Deb