Elder Jackson J. Roper: It's Been A Heck of A Week!

Shoot I’m tired – ha! It’s been a heck of a week! Full of work, stress, tiredness and Christmas is right around the corner as well . . . it’s been good though!

So where do I begin? If you didn’t get the other email, I’ll be skyping home on Wednesday morning at 11 o clock pacific time . . . that should be around noon back home . . . I’m looking forward to seeing you!

Being District Leader is definitely a lot harder than I ever thought it would be! There is a lot of pressure on my back to motivate the other 4 elders is the district and keep my own area moving. I went to a training for district leader' on Friday and I was overwhelmed. According to the area presidency here in Mexico, Mexico is in a crisis. As a country we aren’t baptizing, finding, or retaining. So the Area Presidency has set norms for all the missions in Mexico that we are to baptize every week from now on. So one of my main responsibilities is to make sure all the elders in my district are finding a bunch of people every week so they can have the chance to set dates everyday and baptize every week. It’s definitely a lot of pressure because the zone leaders are on my back, but it’s keeping me motivated to work harder. I can’t decide if I like it or hate it because I get home at night dead tired but I guess that’s how it should be right?? I talk with the zone leaders every Thursday and Sunday to report the numbers. It’s stressful but I know I will grow like never before. Then we have our district meetings every Tuesday morning. President Carreon shared this scripture with us on Friday - Joshua 1:5-7. It’s really helped me out and kept my vision where it needs to be. I feel the confidence of the Lord and President Carreon now that I'm district leader.

This ward that I am in right now is amazing! All of the members are giving referrals, even the investigators are giving us referrals. So we are plenty busy! We aren’t even going to have a full Pday today because we have so many appointments. I don’t even feel like it Christmas because we are so busy thinking and doing other things. Probably a good thing though so I don’t get feeling homesick. We have 10 dates in between this week and the rest of January. Some will for sure get baptized and others won’t. We are doing our best to help them progress and be baptized someday!

Funny story from Tuesday morning - we went to find a referral that the Stake President gave us. He works in a little shop that makes big calendars. There was a book full of examples of the calendars so we started looking through it. There were pictures of various places around the world that are cool and stuff like that. So the man finally gets in the room and right as he gets in the room I turn the page in the book. I hadn’t seen the page yet when the man tells me, Elder what are you looking at?? Ha I had turned to page to lingerie models....hahahahah talk about the wrong place and the wrong time. We all got a good laugh out of it and man I was embarrassed hahahah. Later that same night we got invited to a birthday party of an investigator. So we went even though we didn’t know anyone. They gave us food and they just happened to give us Menudo....Menudo is cow stomach...tasty right? The Mexicans here love it. I hadn’t tried it yet so I decided to give it a shot and I just about threw up. It was like chewing gum that tasted like throw up...hahahahahahahhahah so I hurried and passed my plate over to my companion and he finished the food. It was seriously the grossest thing I have eaten in my life!

I haven’t gotten any more cards or packages. I probably wont get them until January either but oh well. Thanks for sending the Christmas card though. Next year I should be home to help deliver and eat cupcakes :) Crazy to think how fast the time has gone...

Well, I hope you all have a very Merry Christmas . . . I’ll see you on Wednesday!! :)

Love you!

Elder Roper