Leadership Council

The Island Boys

Another week down in the Isla Trinitaria and Elder Westover and I are now "Island Boys" since we remembered the trend before the mission haha. 

Anyways, a pretty good week for us. This past week was the Fiestas de Guayaquil or basically equivalent to 4th of July for Guayaquil so you all know that people were drunk and blasting fireworks until 12 am. It just helped us find quite a bit of people and we were able to find some cool people.  At the end of the week we were also able to extend 2 baptismal dates!

The one hermano is named Luis and was from a contact knocking doors and he said he really wanted to change and wanted to prepare for baptism, so he is on date for the 24th! Then we have a friend named Vicente that has been going to church every single week for a while now but is a taxi driver and so the taxi drivers have to grind their job just to make some money. Anyways we were finally able to teach him after church and gracias a la hoja " La senda de los convenios" he accepted the invitation to be baptized. 

Recently the APs have given us this page or little laminated paper with a picture with the senda or the covenant path. Then it explains the baptismal covenant and on the back has a calendar with the things our amigos need to do to prepare for baptism. It has helped a lot with our friends to get an idea that baptism is simply opening the door to the blessings of heaven and not the final point. 

As a mission we have seen a big mejora in people being baptized and I think 100 people got baptized as a mission in the month of July which has never happened in my time here in the mission. It should be pretty good as a mission in the month of August. 

Anyways that's all, I hit 19 months on the mission and am closing in on less than 100 days left on the mission. Time has flown past.

Miss you all,

Elder Roper 

The Will and Power of the Lord

Welp, sorry for not writing emails for the past couple of weeks, we have had some busy p days and has been hard to find time to get the email out. 

4 Weeks into the 7 week transfer and we are doing pretty good. We were able to actually have people come to church which has been a struggle these past couple of weeks and we have been trying to invite everyone to church and those who listen to us to baptism. This has been a newish look from President Taylor, but we simply achieve our missionary purpose better by inviting ALL to church and to baptism. It's been interesting to see the growth in the mission. 

Also, something that is very interesting in this sector or just the Isla Trinitaria is that there is an energy or something here that is not anywhere else in Guayaquil. We went to the suburbio or just a little northern and it just felt a lot more peaceful and a better vibe and then coming back to the Isla was just kind of a weird energy to it. It's a very weird vibe and you have to be here to feel it haha. Although it is cool because as missionaries or even members of Christ's church we can share so much light which the people and see people's faces light up even when we just say buenas tardes or invite them to church. 

President Taylor has really focused on the power of our calling. He has helped me realize that in our sectors, especially in mine, we carry a very strong and powerful spirit that the people recognize from us being the Lord's servant. We had interviews with him and he simply explained that Elder Westover and I are the only ones that can truly share the Gospel of Jesus Christ and the only ones that can invite people to be baptized and receive a remission of their sins. It was a very good interview. We read 1 Nephi 18 where Nephi gets tied up on the boat and he had realized that this wasn't the first time Nephi was tied up. Nephi was writing this looking back on it and probably thought in that moment that the bands were going to be loosed immediately how they had been before. But in verse 11 I think it mentions that the Lord let Nephi be tied up to show the Will and Power of the Lord. Something very interesting to apply to our own lives. 

Anyway, that's all for this week, it has been a busy week and a busy p day playing soccer in the hot sun in the surburbio. I got to see a couple of older buddies in the mission and even my trainer who's a dawg. 

Have a great 24th of July for me!

Love you guys!

Elder Roper

Another Week In Photos

 

This Week In Photos

Multi-Zone Conference