If The Way Be Full of Trail, Weary Not

Well, last week was transfers but I completely forgot to write an email, so here's one for both weeks. 

To start I got transferred out of the Isla Trinitaria and Elder Womack Solis and I are opening a sector called Playas 3. We share the sector with the zone leaders and so that makes it even more fun. Finally, I'm not a zone leader after 8 transfers - nearly a year. I am still district leader which has been more fun than being zone leader. 

My comp is Elder Womack Solis, he was born in Guatemala but raised in the Unites States. I was really worried about him the first week, he wasnt' being the most obedient, but he has become more and more obedient with the zone leaders and me talking to him. 

I am out of Guayaquil which is what I wanted.  I didn't want to be in the city - I wanted to be in the peninsula which is where I am at. It is pretty tranquilo right now, it doesn't get very hot since we are a 10 minute walk from the beach. It is beautiful here!

The work is going very good here too.  The previous Elders didnt' really leave many friends to teach, but 3 out of the little friends they left us want to be baptized and one of them was baptized this Saturday! It was one of the biggest miracles that has happened so far. We were sending messages to the friends in teaching and texts us back that she was deciding if she wanted to be baptized or not and she did. It was very cool!!!  

In my last sector where I came from, 2 friends I was teaching also got baptized!! One of them was Andrea, an online reference that actually dropped us and we had to talk to her a bit for her to listen to us again. Then Jairo was quite literally prepared by the Lord. He said yes de una coming to church. 

We should be having a baptism this next week, too. We taught Marcos yesterday and he was asking us about the temple and what he needs to do to enter so he should be seguro.

I'm very excited to be out in here in the Playa!!! It's crazy that this is kind of the beginning of the end of my mission, but I will try and stay as focused as possible. 

Miss you guys,

 

Elder Roper 

Photos From The Week

Transfer Day

Another Week in Photos

 

Two Principles for Any Economy

Welp, sorry for not writing any emails for a little bit . . .

This week was a pretty fast week, on Tuesday we had to get up and get going early since we had our consejo de lideres meeting and we had it out in the peninsula. We had to be at the office by 7am to eat breakfast and we left by 8am. Honestly it wasn't the best leadership council that we have had but I hope what we decided on can help the mission out. After that we got back around 6pm and went to work for a bit. 

The sector is still pretty slow going, Elder Loomis and I are finding like dawgs and still no one really wants to come to church after a couple of weeks. We have finally been able to find some cool people though. A couple weeks ago we baptized this little 10 year old Ruben and his grandpa just said he would be interested in learning more with us. Kind of a free member reference but he seemed pretty interested and never really has participated in the lessons until now. 

This week we had intercambios with a sector called Diamante (Diamond) . The sector is still here in the Isla Trinitaria but they have both sides of a freeway so it is pretty big.  I went with Elder Villalta from Honduras and he's an Elder that's pretty young but already has a lot of the missionary work down. We got lost for about an hour and a half in the sector but we were able to find some people that seemed pretty cool and also able to get to all the lessons that they had planned on time. 

While I was in Diamante, my comp Elder Loomis, found this really cool family that seemed really welcoming and open to learn more about Jesus Christ. We invited them to be baptized and they said that they were down but won't be able to come to church for a bit so hopefully they can progress towards baptism. I also don't think I wrote this story in an email but when we were in intercambios we had been knocking and talking to people for quite some time when at 8:30 at night we yelled into this house and exited this lady. She seemed interested and so we shared a little message and well she can't come to church since she has to work but we decided to give her a Book of Mormon. She was surprised when we gave her that Book of Mormon and ended up telling us that earlier in the week she had asked God through prayer to bring her a bible and we had answered her prayer by giving a Book of Mormon! 

I have been really trying to focus on the very little miracles that have been going on in our sector. There is quite a bit of adversity and opposition right now but every single talk I listen to that talks about adversity talks how it is simply a time to work harder but also to learn and how to be better. I have been able to see that we have been able to change some things with how we are working and teaching and Elder Loomis and I can tell a big difference in the sector. Hopefully we can get some people to church. 

This week was probably the most trunky week of my mission, I got my Myplan, my plane tickets, with college football going on but I'll try to stay focused.

Love y'all,

 

Elder Roper 

"Two Principles for Any Economy" -  Elder Dieter F. Uchtdorf

This Week's Photos