Rayos!

 This picture and message were sent to Sam and Parker's email with strict instructions to not share with Mom. (I know their password!) "this place is sooooo cool - way dangerous though and people die almost every day here. We walked by this house that got shot up 2 days earlier by the mafia down here and 2 people died. It was sooo scary! DON'T SHOW OR TELL MOM!!!! I don't want her worrying about me"!!!!!!!!
     Well we had goood things and bad things happen this week. Our baptisms kind of fell through, but not to worry they are being baptised tomorrow. We had to battle with satan and destroy him first. I am way excited for tommorrow and I have faith that nothing will impede their baptism tommorrow. We are working really hard with one of our investigators that has a lot of addictions, but really she has the desire to change and overcome all of them. It is so awesome to see people change their lives like that. I am the best lizard catcher in Nayarit. The Mexicans were all amazed how good my lizard cathing abilites were. I am loving the food here! This town is famous for its shrimp! There is the comida called ceviche that is one of my favorites from Guadalajara - it is raw fish on a tostada with a bunch of other stuff, but they have it with raw shrimp here and its even better!!! I highly reccomend it. We had a huuuuuge storm the other day! All of the roads were rivers - like dangerous fast rivers and lightning was EVERYWHERE! AND SOOOOO CLOSE!!!!! There was almost no space between seeing the entire neighborhood light up and the loudest thunder I have every heard. It literally hurt my ears! I really do believe that was the loudest sound I have ever heard in my life! It was scary, but it was sooo awesome! It has rained every evening for the past 2 weeeks and I hear it is  like this until October, but I am fine with it. A huge tree was blown down and is in the middle of the street I  imagine it will be there for 4 months before it is moved. haha! I found a Bulgarian pizza restaurant here!!!! It has Bulgarian letters and everything! Don't worry Neil- I will take a picture of it for you. Saturday we got on a bus and the bus driver gave me my money back and told us that he doesn't charge missionaries. He was speaking in perfect english and he was awesome! He was born and raised in Compton, California (ya the dangerous place). But he has been living with his dad in Mexico for a couple years. But he told us a story about how he was driving his bus and in the middle of the road was a gang fight with grenades and he almost died! He had to drive the bus backwards, flooring it for a couple blocks. I told him he was batman and he laughed. Well I really do feel 100 percent safe here! I love all of the people here! I really do love every second of my mission!

No, this is not the missionaries apartment. (notice the hundreds of bullet holes all over)

Happy 4th of July!

     Today we said the Pledge of Allegiance and sang the National Anthem and it was really great! AMERICA!!!!!!!!!!! (of course all in private, we don't want any problems). Well this week was pretty good. It rained everyday and I finally bought an umbrella today! These roads turn into rivers when it rains, so my feet are white and gross and raisiny. We have 3 baptisms this week which I am pretty excited for! We are baptizing a family that actually is from San Diego and the kids speak English but the mom doesn't. The dad is in United States still. They are awesome! We had a pretty successful week this week and found a lot of people that could really use the gospel in their lives. My companion and I still don't speak English to each other, so spanish is awesome. I love our house that we have, except for the part about how it doesn't have a toilet seat! But really they are more of a luxury item rather than a necisidad. I am still getting use to the area, which is rough, but with time it will come. This place is sooooo green! The mountains are beautiful and everything! 

The beautiful views of Nayarit, my new apartment

and Elder Heath.

Transfer to Colima! I mean Nayarit!

Alrighty! Do I have a story for you! I don't have a lot of time, but I will try to fit everything in. Alright, so 11 o clock at night last Monday and I get a call from the assistant who tells me that I am going to COLIMA!!!!! Colima is a little itty bitty state below Jalisco. I was stoked-the beach and volcanoes with snow! So I said my good-byes to Elder Pucheta and I was off. For a little over 3 hours, I was on a bus to Colima. The scenery was absolutely amazing! There were green jungles everywhere and I sat next to a guy who spoke English better than Spanish and also Chinese. He was a man and we talked for almost the entire bus ride about the church and his life. It was weird giving a lession in English. I forgot a lot of words in English, but it was cool. So I get to Colima and I see the other Elder Roberts. Yup! Another mix up! We both got sent to the same place, same companion, same everything. So a few calls later, it turns out that I am going to NAYARIT!!! Now if you look at a map, you will see that Colima is below Jalisco and Nayarit is above. So back in the bus I went - 3 hours to Guadalajara. I talked to a girl from London which was cool. She was nice. Then in Guadalajara, I go to buy my ticket for Tepic, Nayarit and my card doesnt work! But its ok because I have the back up emergency and it didn't work either??? We tried a million times but nothing. So I said a prayer and pulled apart all my luggage looking for loose pesos. I found 196 pesos and the ticket was 205. The man looked like Edward from Twilight and he let me by 9 pesos short. My prayer was answered!  oh haha- and guess what movie they played on the bus? Twilight! haha! It was the worst! I tried to concentrate on reading the Book of Mormon and Jesus the Christ, but it was so annoying having mexican vanpires screaming in my ears! But finally I arrived in Nayarit at about 8 o'clock at night. That was over 10 hours in busses. My new comp is pretty cool! His name is Elder Heath and he has been out 6 weeks more than me and he is American. We speak the same amount of Spanish and we are both white. He kinda looks like Neil and he is from Kaysville. Really though, this area is incredible! I am in a little pueblo in the mountains surrounded by jungled mountains of green! This area is very poor here so I don't have the luxury of a lavandaria and so we have to wash our clothes by hand. This place is amazing! There are bannana trees everywhere and its sooooo green. I am trying to convince my comp to wake up at 4 with me and go hike one of these mountains. He doesn't seem too excited about it. The best thing about this place is mos defs the FIREFLIES!!!!!!!!!! When I first saw them, I freaked out! My companion's mind was blown on how excited I was. They are the coolest things ever! I had a plastic bag and we caught like 8 of them and before bed I let them loose in my room. It was a great time falling asleep with 8 little night lights going on and off. This place is a totally different culture! -different words, different hand shakes and everything. We have a lot of work to do in this area but I know we can have success if we work hard! We are both greenies so we are both learning everyday. The president told us it is a sin for us to speak to each other in English, so we just speak Spanish to each other. It's a lot harder when I know he speaks English, but we need to learn. I love this place!!!!!!! We have a small ward, but they are all way nice. This area is more dangerous so President tells us we have to be home by 8 instead of 930 so I have a lot more study time which is nice. I love the missionary work! 

Cambios!

I really do wake up everymorning loving my life! Elder Pucheta and I are working hard. He has 20 months in the mission and I will not let him die! Cambios are today, so I don't know if I will stay here another 6 weeks or head out to a new territory. Either way, I will be happy because I love it here and Elder Pucheta and I work well together. But a new place would be cool also. I will be happy either way. The other day I had to break up a fight between two 16 year old girls.  It was a mess of hair pulling and scratching and everything. I even got punched in the face but I  think that was an accident. But it all happened in the middle of contacting a person and we heard screaming and saw them going at it. There was a lot of swearing and I am sure I didn't understand a lot of what was said. 

We did a lot of contacting this week trying to find new investigators and we had some promising first lessons. We just need to do work with what we got. Hermano Raymundo(who we baptized 2 weeks ago) had a interview for his temple recommend yesterday. It was like an hour long and so Elder Pucheta and I were going crazy wondering what was going on in there?? But when he  came out,  he had the biggest smile on his face and told us he wants to serve a mission! It was one of the happiest moments of my life! He is such a man! I am so thankful for him progressing in the gospel! I LOVE BEING A MISSIONARY!!!!!!

La Cucaracha and a big rat!

Mexico is great as always; a little scary at times but I know that I am safe. The food this week was really good. During one meal, my companion kept kicking my foot and looking over at the stove and I didn't know what he was doing. After dinner he told me that there was a giant rat inside the oven that kept looking out the window. I am glad I didn't see it because I really enjoyed that meal. While contacting this week, a person's door that we knocked on said that I looked like the brother of Karen Carpenter. Then he went inside and grabbed an album with his face on it. I didn't really agree that much, but I will take the compliment??? During a comida appointment with a Hermana, her kids started fighting over a toy. She looked at me and said ´´Elder hand me your belt¨! I didn't know what to do! I didn't want to be a part of a punishment! But lucky for me my companion took off his belt. And even luckier for them she gave them one more chance. I played the piano in sacrament meeting this Sunday. Yes, you heard it right! Ever since Elder Rosas left, we have had to chant hymns with out music which sounds terrible. And the organ they have here has all the hymns downloaded on the organ so I  just need to tap the keys, any keys and the song plays. But don't think its that easy because I had to still keep up with the people singing which was sooooo hard! But I looked like a man. We have the greatest Elders quorum president here. He is a young successfull lawyer man and all his lessons are incredible. At the end of all the lessons he always challenges our investigators to get baptized. We have a baptism this week with Hermano Raymundo. He is 20 years old and it has been awesome teaching him. Oh ya, this saturday we helped people move. It took under two hours and we didn't have a car or anything! I would like to see that in United States!  Well I love the opportunity I have to be a missionary! Really, everyday is an adventure and my love for the scriptures grows by the second. I can't get enough of them! I love this Gospel and I have seen it change lives!

Just had to show my little brother Dillon all of the Cars toys here. He would go crazy!

The Baptism of Hermano Raymundo

June 13, 2011

I LOVE BAPTISMS!!!!! Hermano Raymundo was baptized last Saturday and it went great!  Before the baptism he called us and asked if he could invite his girlfriend because she is interested in learning more about the church. OF COURSE!!!! So we will see where that goes. Really though, the baptism was awesome! The spirit was strong. He is starting to make friends in the church so everything is going awesome. I had a great week this week. We had zone conference and our President gave us a new goal for contacts that seems almost impossible, but I know that we can do it! So last week we were almost running everywhere, not sparing a second of time to breath, finding people and we almost reached it. This week I have faith that we will make it. In our zone conference we watched a talk by Elder Holland and before he put it on he told us it was the best talk that he has heard from him. About 12 seconds into it I knew I had heard it before! It was a recording of the talk he gave in the MTC! I was there for it! It was awesome to get to hear it again and take a new set of notes to compare to my old page of notes. He is such a powerful man! If you remember Hermano Santos, (Elder Rosas and I baptized him a month or two ago who is the manager of a fancy restaurant -like way way nice), and he invited us to eat dinner last week at his restaurant. Little did we know that we had the whole restaurant of hostesses and waiters serving us with everything you could imagine! Did I mention it was candle lit (haha)?  It was awesome! He served different types of fishes and specialty drinks. Oh ya and 4 different types of brick oven fancy pizzas. I can't even imagine what that would cost! He is such a nice guy! But even more awesome, he is a active preisthood holder! But he is way nervous about blessing the sacrament, but next week he will do it. We have a lot of work to do this week to find more investigators. I love missionary work! Please don't feel worried about me here. I know if I stay obedient and work as hard as I can, I will be safe and it has worked great so far.

Crepes!

This week was great, but pretty rough too! We worked hard this week and didn't have as much success as we would have liked. But I know that we will see success in the near future. We have one investigator that backed out of a baptism date set for last week, but we should be able to get it re-set for this week. I have faith! He is awesome Hermano Raymundo. I can see him serving a mission in a year. I made crepes and  thanks for the recipè pops! They turned out absolutely great. I am starting to eat 2 eggs a day mixed with milk, a banana, and ice - the best breakfast shake ever. My spanish is improving a lot! I am even starting to dream in Spanish  more often. This week we tracked down like a billion menos activos and recent converts trying to keep them active and ask for referencias but had little success. This next week we are going to work very hard and get a ton of new investigators. We have this one investigator that has come to church a few times but never has time to have lessons but loves church. We need to find a way to teach her! It is so hot here. Standing in the sun for longer than a minute drains you completely. I would literally pay $10 a minute for a siesta! There is one store with a/c in this town. I think we are going to stop by after emailing and soak in the beauty of that which you all take for granted!!! I really do love being a missionary here!!!! Its real great! I am so so so lucky to have this opportunity to serve the lord in this amazing work!

Elder Pucheta at the Internet Cafe!

Bautismo!!!

The Baptism of Hermana Nancy

 What a great week to be a missionary!!! The baptism of Hermana Nancy went fantastic! Teaching her has been awesome! We contacted her sister who was a menos activo. She was visiting her mom like a month and a half ago and their whole family was inactive. We started talking with them and having family home evenings and then we started teaching one of her daughters( hermana nancy) who is like 30 years old and is awesome. At first she was firm on her catholic beliefs and didn’t really want to hear anything. But the spirit works miracles and after a few lessons we set a date for her baptism. But then her boyfriend told her if she got baptized, he would never marry her. It was rough and she bailed out of the date we set for her. Then Elder Pucheta and I went to see her and we told her to pray and ask God if she needed to be baptized. The next lesson we had with her, she had the biggest, brightest smile on her face and said she wanted to be baptized and that she knew that she needed to be baptized. It was soooooooooooo great! At church yesterday, it was one of the best sacrament meetings in my life! It was way powerful!  We had 3 investigators come and I know that they all felt the spirit because it was sooo strong! Hermana Nancy wanted me to confirm her and give her the gift of the Holy Ghost. So of course I had to do it. I was very nervous but it went really good! We went to Mcdonalds this morning – the first time in 5 months having a Mcdonalds breakfast and I loved it so very much. Oh ya, and this week I made peach cobbler in a frying pan and it was sabrosisimo!!!  I had a greeaat week! Spanish is still hard but every day I get better. We ordered pizza Saturday night. It wasn’t that great but we poured hunts 3 cheese sauce on it and it made it better. If any of you have any awesome recipes for cooking in a frying pan, send em my way por favor! Well my testimony of this wonderful Gospel grew so much this week! It really does change lives! There is no place I would rather be or no other thing I would rather be doing right now! I love teaching and I love learning about our savior so much!

GATITO!

Saying goodbye to Elder Rosas!

Mexico is reeeaaal great! My old comp, Elder Rosas, is playing on the beach right now in Mansanio, which is like 4 hours away. And my new companion is Elder Pucheta! Mexicano chaparito! He is awesome! He doesn't speak any English so I am learning Spanish like crazy speaking it all day. The Lord really has blessed me lately because I can understand pretty much everything he says to me and if I can't understand a word, he is able to explain it to me in Spanish. So it is awesome! This week was waaaaaay hard but great. Now that Elder Rosas is gone, I am in charge of this area so I have to set up all the appointments and plan for the whole day to make sure we don't waste a second of time. It was a little stressful but we were blessed. We have a servicio bautismo tonight which I cannot wait for! I love baptisms! I love being a missionary! This week at the walmart we found probably one of the greatest discoveries of mankind! They had CAP'N CRUNCH!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! We of course bought 7 boxes, and of course they were expensive, but worth every peso! Oh how I missed that taste! But any avid cap'n cruch consumer knows what happens when you eat too much of that wonderful product.  My mouth still hurts a little bit, but I am almost better. While getting ready the other day our neighbors blasted a CCR album.  That was a nice tender mercy! We taught a lesson in a house with a dog head mounted on the wall. That was different! Oh ya, I  literally grabbed a tiger by the tail! There was a truck and the tiger's tail was sticking through the bars and I grabbed it! It was a good moment in my life. We did a lot of tracting this week and we have a lot more to do this week but I have faith that we will find new investigators that will want to change their lives. We rescued a kitten last night! It was stuck in a deep hole and Elder Brown saved it! it is literally like 2 days old. It is so small! We didn't know what to do with it last night, so we obviously had to let it spend the night with us and fed it spaghetti sauce and milk. It is awesome but we are trying to find someone who will take it. We found a new investigator who is 20 years old and is learning english and is way interested in the gospel! We are going to try to help him set a baptism date next week. Well I love this work and I love the gospel! I know that the Book of Mormon is true. Whenever I testify of it, I feel the spirit so strong! I love you all!

My new Companion, Elder Pucheta

My District

Happy Mother's Day!

Sunday, May 8th we were able to call Tyler in Mexico! We absolutely loved talking to him and hearing his voice. He sounded great! For my Mother's Day present, as requested, he sent me several pictures. It is so fun to see his world!

 Tyler is still Tyler!

May 9, 2011 letter from Tyler

FELIZ DIA DE LAS MADRES!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! Well it was really great talking to you guys yesterday. I really enjoyed that. Changes are tonight and most likely I will stay in this area and Elder Rosas will be transferred. But you never know?? This week was a great one! One of our investigators was baptized and it went really well. We will hopefully have another one this week. We have to work really hard this next week because we need new investigators and a lot of them!!  The weather is really hot and it kills me!  I am looking more like a  Mexican every day. I can't wait for the rainy season! We had our first killer thunder storm and I have never seen anything like it! The best thing happened the other night. These two drunk ladies got in a full on fight in front of our house and their sons had to go break them apart.  There was a lot of yelling and the cops ended up showing up. We, of course were seated at our window for the entire thing! Nothing better than some Mexican top ramen while watching two 50 year olds fight. A dog bit me the other day. My body is starting to adjust to the food down here, slowly but surely (even though I have had some serious battles). I really wish I had more time to study!  It is so hard to fit both Spanish and gospel study into my study time,  but I have to make it work! Well I love you all! I love this church and I know that it is true! I am so thankful to be a missionary here in Mexico! Love you!

Too many tacos!

Tyler making a basketball net. So far, any b-ball rims have not had any nets.  

Mexico is great and I am loving the weather, even though it is starting to get really really hot!  They say the hottest month of the year is May because after May, the rainy season hits and it rains for days upon days. I really am stoked for the rain. It has only sprinkled here once. Ha- my mission president sent us an email to stay out of the rain this week because the radiation in Japan evaporated up and is headed our way. I'll probably get super powers or something from it. This week was pretty rough because last Monday night I ate over 15 tacos for dinner, and they were all delicious, but the next morning I regretted everything! I was in the worst pain for the rest of the week. I don't want to go into details, but it was bad!!!!!!! Jeremiah 4:19-21 about sums it up. We have a new investigator this week who found us instead of us finding him. He went online and researched the church and wants to know more and more. He is golden! He is such an awesome guy, the only problem is he works like 24/ 7, so the only chance we have to give lessons to him is on his breaks at work. He works at this way fancy restaurant downtown and he lets us have what ever we want on the menu.  I went with shrimp tacos, which were delicious!  I love more than anything the opportunity I have every morning to study the scriptures and I really wish I had more than one hour a day for study. I keep forgetting to mention this in my emails, but I pretty much eat a snowcone every single day! They are great, but not as good as a good old American, totally artificial flavored snowcones! They are all naturally flavored, so I'm pretty sure dad would like them a lot. This week was a little rough we had to drop a lot of investigators because they were not progressing, last Saturday was bad. We were finally seeing some progress with one of our investigators and we went to his house and instantly we felt the worst spirit in the world. I wanted to throw up, it was so strong. Out of this room walks one of his long time friends who was a Jehovas Witness, who made a real big mess of things. So we left.

My companion was able to baptise this lady this week and it was awesome! I  love baptisms so much! It was great. 

I remember Grandpa Roberts always asking me how many girls have tried to kiss me, when we would go to his house. Well in Mexico, that is how people say hello- one of those kiss on the cheeks thingys. The awkward part is that as a missionary, you can't do that.  So Grandpa, I have to reject a lot of kisses and honestly like 50 girls tried to kiss me this week. We have an awesome investigator who will hopefully get baptized this week. He went to church with us and he loved it, even though some crazy guy pretty much gave his talk on our Heavenly Mother, which is definitely  a no no for any occassion or topic I can think of, but it didnt cause alot of problems. Well I am out of time. I love you all! I love being a missionary! This church is true! Isaiah 41:10 kept me going this week. When you are down, I  reccomend it.

love Elder Roberts

General Conference in Mexico!

That is a messy apartment!

Well another great week in sunny mexico! I have the greatest missionary tan-line ever! It's starting to get hot down here and I am starting to get used to sweating a lot! Conference was INCREDIBLE!!!!  There are a lot of college students down here that speak English, so they had a room with conference in English. It was full of all the English speaking missionaries.  I really did love conference soooo much!  Henry B. Eyring did great with every talk and  Uchtdorf(i know its spelled wrong) blew me away as always!  And of course the Prophet was amazing! I got to be at every single session including the Priesthood session. We even had some investigators come to conference, which was cool. Conference was broadcast at the stake center so everyone in the stake went to all the sessions and it was absolutely packed! Since some people walked a couple miles to watch conference, most people brought food to eat in between sessions. It was the greatest feast!  Any kind of mexican food you wanted and it was there! And of course the loving people- the mexicans-  they are always sharing and making the missionaries eat with them. I had way too much food!  That is just how mexicans are! They are awesome!  For instance, I met this lady at the laundromat and she just shared here tuna on crackers with me.  I don't know her but she gave my companion and I a couple of crackers with tuna. She wasn't even a member. She was just an awesome Mexican lady!  By the way, a guy tried to mug me last week and I was getting ready to go nacho libre on him but then some awesome mexican gangster with a huge Jesus tatoo on his shoulder pushed him away and yelled at him. Then he shook our hands and we left unharmed.  It was prety awesome.  oh ya with the whole earthquake in Japan is very sad. I remembered in the mtc like 2 weeks before I left the mtc, they got 70 new missionaries going to Japan. Kind of odd, right? If you missed conference watch them on the internet or something because every single talk was incredible!  Jeffrey R. Holland is the man!  I love you all and miss you a ton! tell my friends to email me but I will have to write them back. I will take more pictures next week! Love you and we have a baptism this week!

My District!

Nights in Mexico are always fun!   50% of the people you see are totally plastered about this time. The funny thing is most of the drunk people I talk to know pretty good english. Of course its a lot of slang and swears,  but its english- kind of.  This week was pretty rough finding new investigators,  but we worked hard and I know the lord will bless us. I am starting to understand so much more!  The nights are a little scary but we are usually in before 9:30.  It's kind of weird because it is already at the end of my first change in Mexico(transfer).  I am pretty sure I will be with my comp for the next change and I am 100% fine with that because he is awesome!  He is a freakin genius!  He knows english, french, and spanish. He is fun to talk to about deep doctirine and the history channel and stuff.  I am loving this place and the food is alll soooooo goooood!  I had tacos de tripa for the first time last week and they were great (oh ya that is cow intestines fried) and it is on the list of my favorite food here. 

Baptism of Hermana Celestina

 I dont know if you can tell by this picture, but the Dad is a Mexican Lloyd, like almost exactly!

Hermana Celestina was finally baptised and it was awesome. She was found by my companion a few days before I got here so I have pretty much been with her from the beginning. She is so nice and is going to be really strong in the church. Celestina was our last real progressing investigator and we had to go on a search for more investigators this week and we prayed and fasted that we would find the elected people of Mexico that needed and would want to hear the gospel.  And sure enough, one right after another, we found 11 new investigators and I have faith that they will all progress. It is amazing how prayer works! 

Huge Pinatas in Mexico!

The Guadalajara Temple is Awesome!

Welcome to Mexico!

I do not even know how to put into words how to describe this place. I arrived with a nice warm welcome from my Mission President and his wife. The speak absolutely no English. All of the rumors I have heard about the great food, green eyes, and crazy drivers are all true! The first day in Mexico was great, but kinda boring at first. President gave a huge orientation, of course in all Spanish, so I understood a good 20 percent of the rules and everything. Then we met our companions. I could not have asked for a better companion!  He is a native Mexican, but knows some English, so he can explain some things to me that I do not know. The people are great and I love them all.  The buses.... the only way I can explain this to you is imagine the Indiana Jones ride in Disneyland and standing up going probably 8 times as fast with 70 people crammed into it. My personal bubble is constantly invaded, But I am getting use to it. 

First apartment in Zapopan, Jalisco, Mexico

  I really do love the people here. They love all of us missionaries and feed us at almost every meal. The food is amazing, but my testimony of prayer has grown exceedingly. I have eaten the most unclean food  I could imagine. I have watched them pour me a glass of milk and have seen chunks roll into my cup. But they mixed some kind of chocolate powder in it, so it tasted great! I have eaten meat that does not taste like cow, chicken or anything I have ever tasted, but I have yet to be sick at all. I feel great! and I know that it is because we bless every meal we eat.  I am loving this place! 

 I have seen the happiest people here,  in the most humble houses and circumstances, and they are the best.  I love getting to teach this gospel each and everyday.