Leadership Council

Wrestling With Comparisons

Welp, sorry mom for not writing an email on Transfer week. We do have some transfer news, we all expected that Elder Kemp was going to stay and I was going to leave but Elder Kemp ended up leaving and then I stayed and received Elder Clausen! He has 10 months now and I'm training him to be a ZL. The first 2 weeks of the transfer have been pretty fun and I know this transfer will FLY by since it's only 5 weeks! 

Well to explain the title, there's a BYU talk that explains a bit of making comparisons and how it is unfair for us to make comparisons but also something prideful for us to make comparisons. It's a very interesting talk, honestly the BYU speeches has been blowing my mind just with the stuff they talk about and how everything goes back to how Jesus Christ is THE example for us and showed us how to do EVERYTHING. I'll put the link for it in the bottom. 

Now about the work, it honestly has been pretty slow right now. We extended a baptismal date to Isaac and he will be getting baptized in June, but Enma o sea the amiga that was gonna get baptized this 31st just decided to send us a voice message and told us that she was moving and not sure when she would come back and told us not to go by the house anymore. Kind of a big blow to get that message but throughout the week I have been able to see that the Lord has been helping us little by little here in Santa Elena 1. 

For example we were walking and I decided to go down a street or a little side street where I have never gone. We ended up knocking on the last door in the street and we talked to someone that almost got baptized about 10 years ago and she told us to come by the next day. We go by the next day, she wasn't there, but we decided to go down and knock a door. We knocked or just yelled and a lady came out, after 10 minutes she gladly received a Book of Mormon and said she was gonna come to church. It was a really cool contact, then Sunday Morning at 1am she texts us saying she can't come to church haha. 

Anyways, small little things have been happening like that. We've been having some cool lessons, finding some cool people and just having cool experiences. Also we decided to visit an older lady and she tells us as we are heading out the door that she knew that we were coming to visit her because she dreamed it. That was pretty crazy too. 

It has been a cool week to be an instrument in the hands of the Lord! 

Miss you guys all, have a happy Memorial Day! 

Elder Roper 

  

Wrestling With Comparisons

A Week In Pictures

Transfer Day

72 Seasons (Weeks)

Welp...72 weeks in the mission - pretty crazy how fast it went and I know the rest will go even faster !

Anyways, not too much that went on this past week. Honestly the work has slowed down quite a bit of these past couple of weeks, Elder Kemp and I have just been trying to find the people who will go to church and progress instead of just saying they can't or any other reason why. But we have also been able to find some pretty cool inactive families to go and visit and reactivate and of course there are kids in the family who aren't members so you already know where we're headed. 

This week we also had acompañamientos from Elder Velasco who is AP right now. It was kind of weird to be with him since he was my trainer, so it was like seeing a very old friend but at the same time is a leader and someone who sets the example. It was very weird but cool to see him and be able to work with him for a day. 

Not this past Monday but last Monday we found this señora named Maria Fernanda and we had a potente first contact but we soon figured out the Elders were also teaching her about 3 months ago and didn't seem that she had a lot of interest. The Tuesday right after she had received us and after we finished the lesson we asked if she had any questions and she asked why the missionaries had been passing by so many times by her house and didnt know if that was a sign from God to follow Him. We taught this past Saturday and we explained the importance of going to church and following Jesus Christ and always rembering Him. She also accepted to be baptized!!!

It's pretty cool because the Elders about 3 months before that taught her seemed to be pretty pushy on baptism and she didnt accept the invitación but a little time later she did! 

Pretty cool to see if everyone from one of my areas or time I was there, there has always been someone ready to receive the Gospel in their lives!! 

Miss yall 

Elder Roper 

Transfer week is this week so we will see what happens👀👀

Motivation

To explain the title...Elder Kemp showed me a BYU speech that was from 1970something that talked how we as human beings can be motivated and when I was reading it, the talk that made me want to run through the cement wall... 

Anyways, this week was kind of a boring, weirdly slow, but also quick. This week we had our consejo de lideres, or our leadership council which was Wednesday. We got up at 6am at the bus station at 7, and to Guayaquil by 10. We were in Guayaquil until 4:30 or so and we were back here in Santa Elena at around 8pm so it made for a pretty long day and the worst thing was that we didn't even get out. That day was very very long and was a hard day to get through to say the least. 

Anyways . . .  working there wasn't too many miracles this week so I will just focus on our friend Enma. Enma has been in teaching for about 2 years and the Elders have taught her and always had to drop her or just let other Elders teach her in the future. Well with Elder Villanueva or my last comp she had a surgery and wasn't able to come to church and just couldn't really progress towards baptism so we decided that we would try and visit her once a week and just help her feel the spirit. Well we never really visited her until this Sunday with Elder Kemp. She has always had a hard time understanding our life on Earth and why we pass so many afflictions in our life but we were able to understand why and how everything. . . EVERYTHING we go through and will experiment in our life is according to God's will. Anyways it got to the point where we needed to share scripture and the thought came into my mind that we could share 2nd Nephi 9:20-23. This mentions the Savior's Atonement but also how we need to repent, be baptized and have Faith in His name. We both felt that our purpose is to help people make promises with The Lord through baptism and we are here to prepare them. Then she kind of blurted out -  asking if she was ready and we felt like putting a fecha for the 31st of May. She accepted but still had some doubts but I have faith that she will take the right way and follow her Savior Jesus Christ in baptism!

Aparte de eso ha sido una semana cansada pero rápida... ¡Espero que tengan una buena semana! 

Los extrano mucho

Elder Roper 

This is the motivation talk that I mentioned at the beginning of the email. Give it a read or listen y saldran edificado para tumbar una pared!

Leadership Council