Hello hello!
This week... can I whine about the weather some more to start?? haha It's been over a hundred degrees here not including the humidity! We're dying as the weather is getting hotter but we've continued to see miracles. This week we've been working with a few investigators who aren't progressing too rapidly. We had a few investigators at our ward picnic today and hope that they will start exercising more faith and start acting on commitments. Pray that they will start progressing for us. Also this week on the weird side, I ate "squid rice". Try to picture twenty squid legs that are about six inches long in a pile of rice. Never done that before but definitely an interesting first. So there's that!
This week a member called us and asked for help with fixing her house. She said it should take about an hour. We thought it would be pretty simple but showed up and found that the house was destroyed. Completely destroyed. No walls, doors, cement... nothing. She invited us to clean up the trash because she was too afraid of what was in there. She had bought it and was planning to rebuild and resell it. So in that case, we said okay and started working in our church clothes. We were pretty dirty to say the least. We worked for over three hours in the heat and as we got done, I couldn't help but think of how we can build our foundation on Jesus Christ so we will never fall.
A few years ago, my little sister got a doll house that was huge. I was asked to build it by my parents for her as quickly as I could. It took me nearly eight months to build the entire thing from the ground up. Starting with the foundation, I built, painted, and patiently went at it piece by piece, day after day. As I was getting closer to being done, there was one problem that loomed on me. I had to put these small, wood shingles on piece after piece. There were hundreds! I would glue them on and wait for them to dry... well what I thought to be dry before touching and seeing if they were. If I moved them, I had to restart the pieces. Finally, after a long time, it was finished, and I felt like I learned a valuable lesson.
Building our own personal mansion starts with a strong foundation in Christ. It comes through primary answers... reading, praying, going to church. There are no shortcuts. There are no easy ways. I've learned that to make our foundation strong, we must realize that the places worth going and the things worth getting often require the long road. I learned that building our foundation requires patience. Never is anything worthwhile built in ease. And we must always remember that there can be no weak places in anything we're doing. When we seek to work around things, or cheat ourselves in effort, our foundation will be weakened until our foundation will eventually fall. In order to overcome these natural processes of weathering, and battering of the adversary, we must rely on Christ and His saving grace and Atonement. We must hear and listen to His voice. He will always guide us through as we prepare to live in the mansion of our Father.
I'm so grateful to be a missionary. This is the best time of my mission because I'm not content with where I am. I'm so grateful to grow and progress and improve because Christ is so patient and loving of us. So grateful for that. I know He is our Savior. I am a witness of His love and share it each and every day with the Korean people. How grateful I am to be involved in so great a work.
I love you all and miss you all so much. I am always so amazed by the constant support. Love you all so dearly. Thanks for everything. Can't wait for next week!
Elder Roper
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