He Loves Us Personally!

Buenas tardes :) 

         This week was ten times better than last week! Hermana Valencia and I have clicked and have had so much fun but worked so hard :) She’s pretty much a newbie so it’s great because she does what I say ;) haha just kidding! I love it because she’s so ready to learn. She still struggles a bit with the schedule, but she’s still adjusting so I’m trying to understand and be patient with that. I just have to remember how I felt when I had 3 months and it makes it a lot easier. She is hilarious though and we have spent this week laughing :) 

         I am SO excited about one investigator. Gerardo :) He is SO ready! It’s almost too good to be true. There’s gotta be some problem.... But really. It was the best. I was inviting him to be baptized and before I could even finish the invitation he was like, "Yes! When? Tomorrow I’m busy and the day after tomorrow as well, but just tell me when." We were both in shock just like, is this really happening right now? He came to church Sunday by himself and loved it. He only stayed for 2 hours though so he needs to attend 3 more times :( But wow, it was a great week seeing him progress.

         I was thinking a lot about how we even found Gerardo. Cool story. One day we were running late to an appointment. We were supposed to be in two places at once. Jhenciano was taking us to meet his brother, and we were supposed to teach a convert at the same time. I don’t know how it happened but we just happened to have two members with us. So I decided we’d do divisions. I went with Jhenciano to visit his brother with a member and Hermana Ordoñez went to the convert. During the lesson with Jhenciano’s brother, Gerardo walked in. We invited him to listen and I remember the lesson with him was so great. He got emotional and asked us if we could visit him. I have no idea what happened but we could not find his house for like two weeks! We went to find it and they told us that they didn’t know anyone named Gerardo. We were bummed thinking he had given us the wrong address, but then one day Jhenciano was like, "Hey Gerardo wants to know why you haven’t visited him." Jhenciano took us to show us where he lived. It’s just amazing to see how God was there in every single moment. It’s not coincidence. God really does put people in our paths. 

         And remember Ana? She now has a baptismal date in November! She pretty much just has problems with her family. They’re all really Catholic. She’s scared to tell them her decision. But I know she can do it :)

         We have really been blessed this week, and I feel it came from talking with families. With Hermana Ordoñez we were contacting, but not as much as we should have been. This new transfer has brought new animos though! Last week we talked with 14 families. I thought talking with so many families would mean we would have a ton of new investigators. Nope. We only had one. But the blessings came in other ways. We had three investigators at church, which is more than I’ve seen in my time here in Ignacio Merino. We have two with a baptismal date, which is also more than we’ve had here in a while. And we had 5 with a member, which is the highest number we’ve had in this area in more than 6 weeks. We were so blessed! Maybe not in the ways we thought, but we were blessed. I remember we walked around Tuesday and Wednesday as appointments fell through and people weren’t home. We were bummed, and it wasn’t the best way to start off the transfer, but we kept going and were able to see miracles :)

         With all the contacting, of course we found some crazies haha. We were contacting a lady and some mean lady looked at us with this awful look and screamed, "Don’t change your religion!! Those Mormons have seven wives!!!" And the lady we were contacting looked at us and was like, "What did she say?" and we were just like, "Uhh... We have no idea..." haha there’s always opposition, but it was kinda funny this time :) The best part is that we keep seeing that same crazy lady like every day! Next time we’re gonna contact her ;)

         Also Mary is progressing so well! And her son Bill! They came to church Sunday. Her and four of her kids :) It was SO great! She needs to get married first, but Bill is so ready. We’re gonna see what we can do this week. Maybe there’s a matrimonio massivo coming up and she can get married for free. :) That would be great!

         Anyway, God loves us. That’s all there is to it. We will never understand how much he loves us. I’ve been able to understand this a lot more in the mission. He loves us personally :) I KNOW it! 

        And I love you all :) Hope you have the best week. See you in fiiiiive! :) 

Love,

Hermana Roper 

Never Lose Your Faith

Hellloooo! :) 

         Love the pictures Haidyn! But just so you know, those are still MY high heels. NOT yours! And all of my other stuff better be right where I left it or you’re gonna be in trouble ;) haha

         Sounds like everything’s going great in good ole Ferron :) Things are great here too. It’s definitely gotten a lot hotter this week though! We can definitely tell summer is just around the corner :( But I'll be leavin just in time to miss it so whatever :)

         We had transfers today as well. My companion got transferred to Tumbes, which is like the area that’s really out in the middle of nowhere. She'll be 6 hours away :( But I’m here with Hermana Valencia from Lima. She’s 19. This is the first time in my whole mission that I’m the older companion! But it should be fun :) She just got out of her training with Hermana Stringham so I’m excited :) New missionaries always want to work more.

         This week though... Was just not our week. "Hay semanas buenas... Y hay semanas peores." The bed bugs came back with a bang! We spent half of the week cleaning and washing clothes. I have never hand washed so many clothes in my life! Okay wait... Let's be honest. I’ve never hand washed clothes in my life haha. That’s probably why I have blisters! But nobody has washers so we boiled water to wash our clothes. Mom.... I will never complain about having to hang up or wash clothes. And if I do you have permission to beat me. But anyway... This time, instead of us spraying raid all over the room, some guy came with his cool equipment and sprayed down the room. But we couldn’t go in for like 2 days so we were homeless again :( And it was sad because it just happened to be Hermana Ordoñez’s birthday lol. So she spent her birthday cleaning and washing clothes... But we did have fun too :) 

         Anyway, besides the bed bugs, it was still a bummer week. Nobody wanted us :( It was kinda discouraging. We would walk up to people to contact them and they would seriously just look at us with a look like, "What the heck do you want?" and walk away 
:( I mean, sometimes that happens. But this week it happened allllll week! And all of our appointments kept falling through and ahhhh! Frustrating. But we also have seen miracles, like always! :) 

         Jhenciano came to church again! :) And he loved it :) He’s mostly having problems with his family. They are all in a different church and they hate us. So they’re kinda discouraging him. But we're tryin to help him out. He even stayed all three hours Sunday! It was really a miracle. 

          We also started teaching Jhenciano’s nephew, Geraldo. He’s 30ish and is just the perfect investigator. Almost too good to be true! He was just like, "I want to change, but I just need some help." Hey hey hey! We can help! We can help! :) We'll see how it goes with him :) He’s single though so we won’t have any problems with him having to get married. That’s always a bonus :) 

         Ana is also another investigator that we have that’s really great. She had a baptismal date before, but then broke up with her boyfriend and was sad, so she disappeared for a while. But she’s good now and called us up and is ready to go :) She’s 20 and just great. Her mom also hates us though.... Moody moms. Gotta love em.

         There’s also a less active family we’re teaching (they’re the ones where that guy died in the lesson...They finally accepted us!) The Facundo Family. There’s 7 kids. And the mom and dad are separated. But Saturday we had the first lesson with everyone :) It was so great. The kids are the cutest kids ever! We sang "I am a child of God" and it was so cute to hear all of them just screaming at the top of their lungs, "Soy un hijo de Dios!!" :) It was the best. Tender mercies :)

         I was also reading this week in the Book of Mormon in Alma when him and Amulek are preaching to the people and are just rejected.  I know it wasn’t a coincidence that I just happened to be reading that part in the Book of Mormon this week. It helped me a lot. There are days (or weeks) where nobody wants us, but hey, at least I’m not getting beaten and starved for preaching the Gospel. Alma and Amulek gave up everything! And they never lost their faith. They kept going :) and they had success :) We can have success here, too. I just know it. We can’t get down. We've gotta keep going. If we are bummed, how are we supposed to tell people that our message is one of happiness?? We've just gotta stay positive and see the little miracles :)

         I’m excited for this transfer. Can’t believe it’s my last one, but I’m grateful that I get to stay here in Ignacio Merino :) We’re gonna have a great transfer. I just know it!

         Hope you all have a great week :) See you in 6 weeeeeeeeks! Love you all SO much!

Love,

Hermana Roper

God And His Easy Plan

Hellooooo! :) 

         Who’s a happy girl because she got to see conference? ME! It was great :) And I got to see it in English for the first time in tooooo long. That was the greatest :) Pretty much here only the missionaries show up and the members only come on Sunday morning, but it was still fun. 

Wow I learned so much though! I left my notes in our room, but I remember my favorite talk was one about spiritual confidence from a guy that I can’t remember how to say his name. Jorg or something? But wow. He spoke very boldly. It was just great. It made me think a lot about the changes I need to make and who I want to be. 

         I don’t remember who said it, but someone said that God will never make us into something we don’t choose to become. LOVED that. He’s not going to make decisions for us. But He will help us become who He knows we can be. We just need to do something so He at least has somethin to work with. I just loved conference! I remember when I thought it was boring....

         Okay for the first time this transfer we had an investigator at church! haha he came to conference Sunday. His name is Genciano. That was great :) He’s an older man, to put it nicely, and when I got here I wanted to stop visiting him, but I’m glad we didn’t. He’s comin around. Slowly, but surely :) 

         We are also teaching a new family. Mary Agurto. She’s the neighbor of some less actives we´re trying to rescue and is SO amazing. I won’t lie. Walkin into her house I was SO humbled. It stinks beyond belief because of the animals running around, and I was scared to sit on her couch after all the bed bugs we´ve had, but the spirit I felt in that humble home can’t even be described. We´re teaching her, her 15 year old son, Bill, and her other two daughters that are 12 and 7.  Her husband won’t come out, but we´ll see this week. They love what we are teaching, but her and her husband aren’t married. And money will obviously be an issue. But I know God knows what He´s doing and He knows how they can do it. 

         Sujail on the other hand is just bugging us. She will not do ANYTHING. She wants to go to church, but doesn’t wake up. She wants to read, but doesn’t have time. She wants to go to the temple, but needs to be baptized, but she can’t get baptized because she doesn’t read and doesn’t go to church! Can you see the problem?? Man. Women! But we´ll see what happens this week. It’s just frustrating. We know the Gospel brings happiness, but why are we so darn lazy sometimes? God has made His plan as easy as I think He possibly could. He wants us to succeed. But we have to do our part :) What Sujail needs is a trial to bring her closer to God :) 

         One last thing before I run out of time. Thank you SO much mom and dad for all you’ve done. Conference really made me realize just how blessed I have been my whole life. You two have raised us in a home filled with LOVE. I’ve never questioned the love you have for us. You have taught us all the things we need to do, and you have always been there. I know it hasn’t been easy to raise us three brats, but you made it look like a piece of cake. Thank you SO much! I always knew my family was the best, but being here in a place where a loving family is so rare, I now KNOW without a doubt, my family is the best. Love you both sooo much :)

         Well, it’s been a good week :) Hope you all have a great week! Talk to you next week and see you in seven! woot woot :) Love you all! 

Love,

Hermana Roper 

We Have To Be Obedient

Hey everyone! 

         It’s been a good week once again :) it was fast one! The weeks are flying! Aaaaand p.s. I got the keyboard that types random a’s again... Deal with it.

         We're working so hard trying to find people that are prepared. This has been one of my hardest areas as far as baptizing goes. They just aren’t progressing like they have before. I don’t know if it's because I’m in a rich area or what, but man sometimes it’s frustrating walking around in the heat all day as appointment after appointment falls through. But this week we’ve been truly blessed. 

         I don’t know if I’ve told you but the ward just doesn’t work too much with us. But that has changed this week :) we had a member with us EVERY day this week! It was super hard. We were calling a million and one sisters every night but we did it :) Little by little we're gonna gain their confidence I just know it! 

         We also were able to find SEVEN families! We have appointments with them this week. We really were able to see miracles. I’m not sure they all will progress, but it was great. President said we need to talk to EVERY family and because we have been obedient, we are seeing miracles :) man, it was great. 

         One lesson that really sticks out was with a family that I forgot their names haha. We've been teaching the kids and the dad never ever wants anything to do with us. We started our fast this Saturday and went to teach his kids and he accepted us and LOVED it. Talk about God immediately answering our prayer! We both came out of the lesson like WOW. God answers prayers. This whole fasting thing isn’t all that bad of an idea haha.

         We were also finally able to find the Leyton family. They're so great. Mary just has doubts about the Book of Mormon. But she hasn’t done her part and actually read and she knows it. So she was like, Okay Hermanas I’m gonna actually read and I’m gonna do what you say and pray about it. Next time you come I hope to have an answer. :) yay! Daniel was only worried because he can’t actually kneel to pray because of the accident he had. If that’s his only doubt or problem we’re good to go :)

         This week was also my last multizone conference in the mission :( I LOVE multizone conference! But man I was bummed it would be my last one. There’s lots of sisters goin home at the same time and we all had to share our last testimony and WOW! My testimony has grown. All of our testimonies have! I remember when we all got here last year scared out of our minds and not understanding a single word haha. Hermana Petersen was there too, so it was good to end with the companion I started the whole journey out with :) But really. The mission changes people. 

        We talked a lot about the Holy Ghost in the conference. President and Hermana Rowley have the best way of teaching .I learned so much! I’ve never really thought about it, but President talked about how the Holy Ghost is actually a God. It’s true though! Having the spirit is SO important. We also talked about the reasons why we don’t have the spirit sometimes and the biggest reason is disobedience. We HAVE to be obedient if we want the Holy Ghost to help us. If we’re obedient the Holy Ghost will guide us simply because we’re doing what is right. Lots of the times we won’t even notice we are being guided by the spirit. But we have to put ourselves in environments where the spirit can dwell. Wow, it was just great :) 

         Well that was my week :) Can’t believe this transfer is almost over! But it is what it is. Time flies. You think I’d learn that by now...

Hope you all have a great week! I know I'll have a great week because I get to watch conference! Woo woo! :) Love you all sooooo much! See you SOON.

Love,

Hermana Roper