Elder Tanner Roberts: April 2016

4/4

My companion and I are doing super well right now. We have a good amount of investigators that are progressing and we had lots of people attend the General Conference this week. We found a Spaniard who called to us from his balcony and asked if we wanted to visit him. Of course we said yes. He came to 2 sessions of conference and is loving everything about the church and the Book of Mormon and all that good stuff. He is super cool. We have a couple of other good families we're working with too, so we'll see how that goes.

4/11

This week we had a meeting with President Riggins on Monday and Tuesday so we were in Guayaquil again. We went to the temple on Tuesday and we had our meeting in the house of President, which was cool. We had a taco bar that was super delicious!

We were only in our sector from Wednesday to Sunday, but we had another really good week. We have been working super hard in finding new investigators, and now we have a ton of people to teach, so we were running back and forth from appointment to appointment. We didn't find very many new people this week, but we do have plans to find more investigators.

The other elders in Triunfo had a baptism of someone who got baptized15 years ago, but her records got lost. That happens quite a bit here in Ecuador, and especially in the pueblitos.

4/17 Earthquake Update

I'm not sure if you've heard about the earthquake here in Ecuador, but I wanted to let you know everything is fine here in Triunfo. We felt it, but all is good. A family we're teaching actually recently moved here from one of the places that got hit hardest - Manabi. They have family affected by the earthquake, so that's very sad. But don't worry about me, we're fine!

4/18

This week was pretty interesting. Our zone had interviews with President on Tuesday. All the missionaries came in the morning for lunch, and instead of sending them back home between the meeting and interviews, we found them lunch with the members here in El Triunfo. We had to call just about everybody to find lunch for 8 missionaries!

From there we had intercambios on Friday. I went with Elder Llanque to the other side of Triunfo. We had a pretty good day, we found a couple of new people to teach, which is what they needed most. They had people they were teaching who weren't progressing, so we found them some new people to visit.

On Saturday we did a service project in La Troncal. I didn't have my camera, but I'm working on getting some pictures. We cleaned up a park that was in pretty bad shape. That was a pretty good service project and we are hoping it will raise the interest of the people to see what these crazy gringos are doing in their country. It's interesting that right now in the mission there are a ton of latinos coming and not many gringos, but in our zone we have a majority gringos.

The service project was in the morning and in the afternoon we had a reunion in the church. While we were there that's when the earthquake came. Some of the members started to freak out, but I actually crossed the room to look at the baptismal font that was ready for a baptism that night. The earthquake made pretty awesome waves in the font. It was a good sized earthquake and we definitely felt it, but I haven't seen any damage here in El Triunfo.

The rest of the mission also felt it, and some felt it a lot more than us, but as far as I know we didn't receive much damage in the mission. I do know an old bridge fell down in Guayquil.

On Sunday church reuniones were cancelled in a lot of places in Ecuador, including the majority of the mission, but here in El Triunfo we were far enough away that we still had church. We actually had a District Conference and watched a transmission from the area, so that was interesting. That night we had an activity in the church. That was fun. We're trying to do more activities than we've done in the past. We had a couple of new investigators in church on Sunday and also a couple in the activity that night, so that was good. Have a great week!

4/25

We had a pretty good week this week. President Riggins decided to give a small little visit. He came to do some interviews and see how the branch was doing. We had been visiting pretty much all week, running around from one house to another, and on Sunday we saw awesome results. I saw my attendance most big (that was a super Spanish wording) of all my mission at 175! That was cool, especially because this is just a rama and my first three sectors were wards. The attendance here in Triunfo is normally around 140 so we were feeling pretty crammed in the church, and they had to bless the sacrament twice because they ran out of water!

We have a couple of really awesome families that are progressing. La Familia DiLorenzo was one of the first families here in Triunfo. They even have a street named after them. Everyone knows them here, so when they came to church for the first time a couple of weeks ago all the members were like, WHAT! Who brought them?

We also have a familiy where the dad got baptized in Babahoyo about 27 years ago and then he lost the church. He didn't even know there was one here in Triunfo. When he moved here from Babahoyo the church was in construccion, so when he searched for one he didn't find it.

This week out of nowhere there was also a ton of rain. We went to La Troncal to visit on Wednesday, and we met a TON of new people there. Oh, and this week there was an announcement that in June we're going to have an apostle visit us, so that's awesome! It will be right before my companion goes home. Cambios passed by this last week without a call from the asistantes, so it is possible that I finish my mission here in El Triunfo! We're not sure yet, but it is possible.

This is Josue. He was serving in his mission in Peru, but had to come back for some knee problems he was having, but he's already got a goal to get back to the mission in about a month. He's a super good kid.