Cortes de Luz (Pray for Rain)

Welp this week there were power cuts or outages since there hasn't been any rain, so they have been cutting water and power throughout this week. For us it would go out from 12am-4am then 3pm to 8pm. So because of the outages we have to go back to the house around 7 pm every single night so we did not get much time to work in the área this week. 

This week there were still a couple of miracles! We have been teaching a joven naves Isaac, we contacted or found all of his family but they aren't that interested, but he has been reading the Book or Mormón and saying his prayers. We gave him the invitación to pray about Joseph Smith and he said he recieved his answer that Joseph was a prophet of God. It was pretty awesome to hear that he was able to have an answer to his questions. Sadly, he didn't come to church and really no one did this week but he has the desire to come and see what the Church of Jesus Christ is all about. 

Then, this week we left with the president of Relief Society to do visits Thursday morning and get to know the inactive members more. We also finally got the inactivo member list to all the ward, there are quite a bit of partial member familias that we are going to work with this week. Hopefully we can find some familias that are interested to learn because honestly there isn't much going on in the sector. 

We also had zone conference this past week and usually president will machete or get on us about something, but he has completely changed these last couple of transfers and lightened up a lot. His presentación is how we should be finding, not just to teach and to baptize. It was very interesting y tengo ganas a tocar todos las puertas que veo. 

The other Elders in the ward has a baptism! The hermana had been listening the Elders for quite some time and had a hard time with some of the commandments, but after some time she was ready for baptism. 

On to the next week!

Elder Roper 

Multi Zone Conference

Zone Garcia Salado, Zone Juan Montalvo and Zone Puerto Liza met to be strengthened spiritually.  We received inspired messaged from our leaders.  

 

Ojos Marrones

Welp another week down in Union Civica 2. Gonna be honest -  the work right now is pretty slow. We can find people and been finding a lot of people but the thing is, is just finding them again the next time were in the área. 

There are still miracles going on though!

So we had an intercambio with Ekfer Luna and Elder Luna who finishes this transfer. I went to Elder Menloves sector to let him lead and something is weird is that was his first intercambio of his mission. But Elder Luna and Elder De León found a joven that accepted the invitación to be baptized. We didn't put a date on since we just recently found him but he wants to change and we're here to help him.

Sadly this last week no one came to church either the morning before we went and did visits with the bishopric to get to know our área more and more. We ended up visiting a lot of inactive familias that we can get back to being active and finding more people through them which will help us. 

To finish up this week, we did some service for our mission leader. We ended up breaking down one of his walls in his house. It was pretty fun and kind of crazy to see how easy it is to break a wall down in the houses here. There was a bunch of dust every where, but it was fun.

Nothing much really going on here in Union Civica 2, so that's it for this week!

Miss all you guys

Elder Roper

Pon Tu Hombro a la Lid

Welp, we definitely put our shoulders to the wheel this week. I think this is the most tired I have felt on the mission but we have seen quite a bit of miracles this past week.

To start this week we literalmente just knocked doors all week. We visited some members so we could sit down. But we knocked doors and ended finding 20 people who accepted another visit for us to come back. Whether they will be there not, we'll see this week. 

Another miracle we saw is that we had 2 people show up to church! The Elders here in the past have been working with two young women that have an aunt as a member. They have been taught since June and hopefully if all goes well will he baptized in October. So hopefully all goes well and they will keep preparing themselves for bautismo.

I also got sick Thursday got the normal gripe in Ecuador and Saturday asked for a blessing from one of the Elders we live with and woke up the next morning feeling tons better and keep feeling better every morning so hopefully I can get over this cold pretty quick thanks to the Priesthood Blessing. 

Tomorrow we have interviews with President which will be very interesting, so we'll see how that goes. 

Love and miss all you guys 

Elder Roper 

Union Civica 2

Well,  I'm going to try and keep this brief since I don't have much time, but as you can tell I'm opening a sector and so that is going well. We found two people on Sunday, so we now have two people to teach. We are pretty much starting from scratch here. The members are open to helping us. We had a ward council and they flat out told us that they were here to help us and help with what we needed. 

I was also called up to be District Leader... so that's pretty exciting!  I'm grateful that we can now take the phone out so we don't get lost in the area, haha. We have seen quite a bit of miracles.

I'm just going to share one really quick . . . it was a miracle just getting to the house. We didn't really know how to get there. So we just asked Elders that know the house and wrote directions down. We ended up calling the executive secretary where we were at. He was in the sector a couple of months ago so he knows the house and where it's at.  We had to use the taxi driver's phone since our phone wasn't activated yet. Just a couple of miracles back to back. 

That's all for this week. I'll have to write a bit more next week. I'm ready to see all the miracles that we will see in the sector and in the district!

Miss you guys

Elder Roper 

(I miss college football so much)

Corinthians (Proctors)

Another week in La Toma, another week of miracles...

Well, starting off like I wrote in the last email, we got to hear from Elder Bendar and it was pretty, pretty cool to be there and hear from him. He didn't quite yell at us or machete us, but he just basically did a big Q&A. He asked us questions and we responded then took a time to hear from us and our questions that we had. It was really cool and interesting to hear how simple the Gospel and Plan of Salvation really is for all of us. There were some really good questions that the missionaries asked him and he responded to them really simple and clearly.  He understands and really knows the Gospel. 

So now moving on to some of the new people that we have found this past week. This past Friday we found Xavier who is 19 years old and we just found him knocking doors and he asked us about the church and we told him where it was and when it started. I personally didn't have much faith or just thought it was another person telling us that they would show up to church and never show up but he actually came. It was pretty cool to see him at church because I never really actually expected him to show up.  

Then another miracle we had at church is that we went to pick up another joven who was 14 years old that wanted to go to church and didn't want to go alone to church. So we told him that we would pick him up so he didn't have to go alone. I again didn't have much faith that he would be home and ready to go. But I was proved wrong and he was ready and waiting for us to come to church. I'm grateful that there are a lot of youth that want to help and get to know the new investigators. 

This next week is Transfers, I'm 90% sure that I will be staying in La Toma to keep working with the ward and keep helping them progress and grow. I really want to stay here another transfer just to be here with the members and help our friends keep progressing. 

Nothing much else happened this week, hope everyone is having a good Labor Day!

Miss all you guys!

Elder Roper