Se nos Acabaron los Datos (18 Months!)

As you can tell by the title, our datos or our data has run out and this makes it a lot harder to do the work and gets pretty stressful. We can't really text anybody or call anyone through whatsapp without so it's been a pretty stressful week trying to plan out the days and week and then inviting everyone to church. But it's still been a good week being a missionary here in the Isla. 

This past week we had two intercambios with both the District Leaders to get the transfer started off. The first one we had was with the younger of the two, Elder Dixon. He's a dawg and had a really good first district council of the transfer and in his time being a missionary. We found some pretty cool people and had a very spirit guided day finding people and teaching people along the way. Then we had another one and I went with Elder Patterson who is another older district leader and we also had a pretty solid day. We were looking for quite some time but still when we are finding people anything can happen and we had some funny moments. I think the highlight of the intercambio is when I got to try Maracuya cheesecake or passionfruit cheesecake. It was fire and will be asking for more in the coming weeks. 

Also this week was officially when President and Hermana Suarez went home to Paraguay and President and Hermana Taylor came in to start running the mission. I honestly haven't had the chance to get to know the Taylors but we have Leadership council and Zone Conference. So hopefully I can get to know them better. It should be cool because they are from Draper Utah and so it should be fun to serve along another Utahn. 

Anyways, I'm pretty exhausted from last week so this is all I got for the email this week.

Miss y'all 

Elder Roper

Goodbye President and Sister Suarez

We are very excited to begin this new change here in the Guayaquil West Mission! President and Sister Taylor are the new mission leaders. We have already felt the love they have for each of the missionaries. They have been called and set apart to invite people to Christ, preach the gospel, and guide the mission. They have five children and ten grandchildren, and their eleventh will be born in two weeks. They have had a wonderful opportunity to serve as a couple in Papua New Guinea, California, and in many ways in their wards and stakes over the years! We have been praying and preparing everything for their arrival. We are very happy and ready to learn from them.

La Isla Trinitaria

Welp, I had to say goodbye to the beaches and I got sent back to the sur de Guayaguil making it a 3/3 on the mission of the zones sur de Guayaquil. 

Also means that I am back to an all Elders zone and I'm pretty excited since,in my opinion, it's a little more fun to be with all Elders and not really worry about the Hermanas in the zone. 

I'm also still zone leader here in the Estaca El Cisne so that makes it my 7th transfer being a zone leader and we will see if I go anymore after this one. 

Honestly, the work here seems a little slow right now.  We've been staying pretty busy looking for inactive members and simple trying to find the people and families to help them go to church, get to know their Savior more and be baptized. 

This next week President and Hermana Suarez finish their mission and on Thursday President and Hermana Taylor get here. It will be very interesting to see if President changes a lot of things in the mission or if he's gonna wait to change stuff around. 

My new comp is Elder Westover, he's from Idaho and has about a year on the mission. He only has 5 weeks in the sector, so we have been getting to know the sector together and been walking around the isla with a map in our hands. Seems pretty safe to me haha. 

The work seems kind of slow and seems like we are walking a ton from Cita to Cita so hopefully we can find some people en camino and cut that walking time in half. 

This past week I listened to a talk called "Hope Ya Know We Had a Hard Time" By Elder Cook in October 2008. It's pretty good and talks about diversity and trials and how we can always get through them and when we are going through a hard time we can simple let our Heavenly Father know " Hope ya know I'm having a hard time". 

I'm excited to see what potential the sector and the whole zone has here in the Isla. We'll see how it goes haha. 

Love ya all,

Elder Roper 

This Week In Pictures

 

Se Va Presidente Suarez

Well, this week was kind of President's saying goodbye week but was also one of the MOST spiritual weeks in all of my mission.  I don't think I have felt the spirit so strong and so frequent in my life... 

Anyways I'll have to go day by day with the events and miracles that happened this week. 

Tuesday - This day we had district counsel and lunch right after.  Kind of a normal day not much was happening and we were able to be guided to a couple of people who were interested and actually some very interesting questions. 

Wednesday - Today was when we had our last and final interview with President Suarez. Firstly we talked how the zone was doing and all the good stuff and then he decided to share Alma 38 and he explained it how Alma (a father at that point) was giving consejos or suggestions to one of his sons. It is Alma basically giving thanks to his son Shiblon for working hard and going through persecutions during his minsitry. It was a very cool spiritual expirience and just mentioned that he was grateful I was in the mission and grateful that he could trust me.  Safe to say I felt like a million bucks after that entrevista. 

Thursday - was a normal day of teaching and finding. It was a very hard day because everything fell through but we ended up finding some really cool people and found a woman who had previously been listening and learning with the missionaries but she never got baptized.  Then we decided to knock on her door and kind of yell to get her attention and at first she seemed she wasn't that interested, but turned out she was. We shared a quick message with her and she asked us briefly which church of all churches is the church of Jesus Christ. We also had zone conference.

Friday - we had intercambios with Anconcito or another sector in the zone and the Elder was having a hard time. In their area they have to leave at 6:30pm because the bus stops going by. They can only work from 2:30 to 6:30 but I just said screw it lets find a taxi and 8 or 8:15ish to stay out. Safe to say the whole day was slow but the last door we knocked received us and seemed really cool. Then we were going to a main road and a taxi just appeared out of nowhere and it was really cool the see the Hand of the Lord helping us.

Saturday - we had the most powerful restoration lesson. Orignallh a little teenage girl kind of wanted to fight but she got up and left and after that the Spirit was so strong in the room and when we asked the Hermana if she believed that Joseph Smith saw God the Eternal Father and Jesus Christ, she sat there for a couple of seconds and said yes. At that moment it was if the Lord himself was in the room with us and it was very hard to know what to say. Safe to say I think she will be baptized haha. 

Sunday - a potente stake conference and then blessing a house. I'm gonna be honest - I was shaking in my boots to hear why they needed the house blessed, but it was again a spiritual experience. 

After this week I know the Lord has been working with us in Santa Elena 1 and the parable from Mark 4 is very very true ❤️‍🔥❤️‍🔥❤️‍🔥

Love you guys,

Elder Roper