Hey family,
I am so sorry I didn't email last week. My companion and I got so busy and our p-day
just seemed to disappear and I just ran out of time but I am doing "better
than ever!" These past few weeks have just been great. We have taught some amazing lessons and have
seemed to just be happier. We are still
having hard times and some days not finding much success but we have the spirit
with us and are having fun while we work.
Last night was one of my highlights of the week. We had a lesson with Joey. He has come so far in the last few months but
has seemed to kind of Hit a Plateau. We
have been working with him tons and he is awesome. When we started he was an atheist. It's a long story but we have been helping him
recognize the lord in his life and things have been going pretty good. We
felt inspired to watch the hope of god’s light and he loved it. After talking with him and working through all
of his concerns he promised to say a prayer. I always love to kneel with
them right there and have them pray but he said no to that but said he would
after we left. Which is a Huge step. We talked about how specific questions require
specific answers. Tonight we get to go back and see what happened
but I can't wait to hear.
Prayer truly is so amazing and I have a strong testimony of
prayer and I know that prayers are answered. Sometime not always in a timeline that we
would like but they will get answered.
How awesome is that. I'm sure I
have said this before but I love prayer and use it so many times a day. It still blows my mind how often we pray. There isn't anything we do during the day that
we don't do without a prayer. I love
praying before we go into a lesson then coming back to the car and saying a
prayer of thanks for how the lesson went. Sometimes they don't always go as
planned but in the end everything works out if we let the spirit do its
job.
We did get to do some fun service this week. We got to build
the pavilions for shade for this kid in my wards eagle project. It was a good relief, I haven't gotten to do
much service in this area because we have been trying to find whenever we can. I forgot to take pics but we get to go back on
Wednesday evening and help again so I will take some next week.
So this doesn't really have anything to do with missionary
work but it is kind of a funny story that happened last night. In our little town where we live there have
been over 40 break in’s in the last 3 weeks so everyone has been a little on
edge. But everyone around here knows each other and everyone watches out for
others. So we live in a chiropractor office in the middle of a corn field
on the outskirts of town and at like 10 pm we hear this huge, loud
truck pull into our drive way (no one ever comes by our house at night, like
ever) but he had this huge light bar on top of his truck but he just kept get
closer and closer to our house and pulls up right to our front door like 10
feet from it. Then sits there for like 1
min. So we are kind of freaking out. But we are watching out of this
little window, and when he gets out of
his truck he has a Gun. He stands there
for a sec then comes and bangs on our front door! (What would you do if you
were in this situation? Ha) I'm still in my shirt and tie so I say a little
prayer in my heart and go answer the door and just say "hey buddy what's
going on?" this guy was ready to shoot me! Ha-ha but immediately realized who I was and
didn't shoot. He didn't know we were
living there and thought this chiropractor office was being broken into. He was broken into last week and lost a lot
and is still a little upset about it. So
we ended up talking with him for a little while and he just lives down the
street from us and is a way cool guy, we are kind of friends now but that was a
little scary!
Some more exciting news that we found out this weeks is that
Elder Cook and Elder Hallstrom are coming in a few weeks and we will get to
have a special meeting with them so that should be fun! The month of August is
full of meetings. I think we will be in Columbus almost every week.
For personal study this week I read some talks about Joseph
Smith and about how hard his life was and the trials he had to go through. They
were amazing and I learned so much. The
talks are titled “The path to Palmyra”
and “The Coming forth of the Book of Mormon” by Mathew Holland. This is a quote from one of the talks "it
is also true that your lives do matter to God, and your eternal potential and
that of every soul you will meet is no less grand and significant than that of
the Prophet Joseph himself. Thus, just
like our beloved Joseph, you must never give up, give in, or give out when life
in general, or missionary work in particular, gets utterly painful, confusing,
or dull. Rather, as Paul teaches, you must see that “all things
work together for good to them that love God, to them who are the called
according to his purpose” (Romans 8:28; emphasis added). Just as He did with young Joseph Smith, God
is shaping and directing you every single day to ends more glorious than you
can know!
This just gives me hope to keep going even when the days are
hard and long! Maybe it can give you some hope as well.
I love you family and am always praying for you.
Thanks for everything!
Other than that life is basically the same.
Love Elder Roper
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