Serving the Lord in Samoa: Beautiful Samoa!

This place is amazing! It is so beautiful and the people are so friendly. It is so dang humid though it has basically been a sweatfest for the past 24 hours. The first breath off the plane felt like I was drinking a glass of water. I was the first missionary to get through customs and when I got out some guy was like "are you lds?" So I said yes and he told me to go with him. He starts loading my bags in the car and he told me he was going to take me to the mission office and stuff he sounded legit. Then my Mission President comes up and is like "Elder, what are you doing?". It was a taxi guy trying to rip me off. Good first encounter with President though haha. President Hanneman is really cool though, he is really down to the point and doesn't mess around. He has some unique rules for the mission like the first thing we do when we wake up is read the Book of Mormon for an hour. He promised us if we devoted the first hour of everyday to God then he would be with us the next 23 hours. We also do our companion and language study throughout the day instead of in the morning. We spent the first night at the mission house, there was 15 of us Elders because some visa waiters got their visas and came with us.

The plane ride here was so long. When we were in San Francisco one of the Elders we were traveling with had his aunt who lived there bring us all In n Out. Basically the clutchest thing that has ever happened to me. My last meal in America was 2 double doubles and a shake. I was hyped. I slept most of the plane ride. New Zealand was super cool, when we were up in the air it was such a sight. Then we flew to Samoa and as we could start to see the islands I was getting SO excited. It looked beautiful from up in the air. I feel so blessed to be serving here.

My trainer is from Utah but he is full Samoan. He has been serving for 11 months and knows the language really well. I have only been with him for about 5 hours but he seems pretty cool and hard working. My first area is here in Apia. It is pretty close to the mission office/temple. We get bikes in our area which is super nice, we don't have to walk much. I also placed my first Book of Mormon today so that was cool, I am not sure if the guy understood everything I was saying in my horrible Samoan but he accepted it. We live with members in the ward in this little "house". It is actually super nice compared to most places the missionaries live in this mission.

Elder Roberts