Elder Hayden Roper: Another Week In The Books!

Another week in the books hahah. This week was crazy. We didn’t get to teach a lot mostly because we’ve been slammed with work in the offices. Elder Newell and the APs have been doing transfer stuff and Elder Macz and I have been pretty busy searching for new houses for missionaries and signing contracts and all that good stuff. On top of that, on Wednesda,y Elder Fallabela of the Area Presidency asked for a report that has all the stats of baptisms in the year of 2018, BUT. He wanted to know of that number, how many were referrals and how many of those people were found by the missionaries themselves. And he wanted it by Friday. Thursday night we called almost every missionary in the mission and asked about their converts. We got home at 10:40 pm. Awesome, right?

This week my strong box was acting up again, but this time they determined that it wasn’t fixable, SOOOOO they called a specialist, and they destroyed the box. Literally. It took almost all day.

And then the next day they brought a new box for us, one a little bit less expensive a little more practical as well for us.

The old box is currently outside haha. It weighs tooo much for anyone just to swing by and take it, so it might be here for a while.

They also made the new announcement this week that missionaries will be able to call home more frequently. I find that very interesting. I personally feel like that would distract missionaries more than help them focus, but I guess that the Brethren feel otherwise. Very blessed to be in the offices during this time to have free internet, and internet that as above average than the internet cafes here in the city. We will have to coordinate when and how and why hahah. Probably on Dad's birthday. We'll see hahahh. I'm not sure how much I wanna do it, it’s not that I don’t wanna see you guys, it's just that I know how hard it was to refocus after Christmas hahah. We shall see. The mission is all for it.

This week I got pretty ahead on my work, even though weve been pretty slammed. While the other guys are busy, I don’t have much to do, and can't leave alone. So I just did all the stuff that I would do during week 6 of the transfer hahaha.

Our Atheist guy and his son came to church last week, we picked them up and they decided that they wanted to go for a walk. So we went walking to church with them. They loved it and told us that they would expect our next visit Tuesday night. We went, and taught lesson 1. And they loved it. We set the next appointment for Thursday but that’s when all hell broke loose with Elder Falabellas request. We stopped by last night, and only the son was there. We talked to him and he said that they really were bummed that we never visited them. That’s always the worst, but we're gonna go visit them today.

This here is a part of a talk that I found in my studies this week. I quite enjoyed it.

“Alma also prophesied that “he shall go forth, suffering pains and afflictions and temptations of every kind; and … he will take upon him the pains and the sicknesses of his people. …

“That his bowels may be filled with mercy, … that he may know according to the flesh how to succor his people according to their infirmities.”

Late one night lying in a hospital bed, this time as a patient and not as a physician, I read those verses over and over again. I pondered: “How is it done? For whom? What is required to qualify? Is it like forgiveness of sin? Do we have to earn His love and help?” As I pondered, I came to understand that during His mortal life Christ chose to experience pains and afflictions in order to understand us. Perhaps we also need to experience the depths of mortality inorder to understand Him and our eternal purposes.”

- Kent F. Richards, April 2011

This week, we found a ………. Bakery that has…………….. DOUGHNUTS. They're not the same, like Dunford's or anything, but they get the job done. They're great!