Senior Companion=More Service Opportunities, Interesting Companion, Baptism

6/27/2016

Well changes are only one time but I am the senior companion now they made that clear in the changes. It isn't too much different for me as I am still serving my companion and leading the sector. Senior companion just means more service opportunities and to help your companion more. He does seem interesting and funny. He is a little different from some of my other companions. Unfortunately his last district leader was dying (missionary speak for going home soon) and wasn't the best example to say so I will have to work out a few of those bugs. Also he has an interesting teaching style. He seemed to have some things memorized like saying did you understand the three principles of something required for baptism in a practice and I went huh? He said you know the three things required for a baptism to be right and I was like uh going to church listening to missionaries and doing the compromisos. He's like no authority lots of water. I am like huh interesting I guess you can teach that but you don't need to teach that all the time. I hope to help him with his teaching skills. He seems to need help with that and contacts. He does seem to not know some things about the mission but that's ok I guess.

With the changes which were not yesterday but the week before they combined the sectors together and so now I am running two sectors. Not the most fun as it is the whole ward basically. It will take some work. We did have a baptism though as the other Elders left someone progressing. We still have to adjust to running two sectors and it could take some work.

Last week was great for us and we did see some more progress. Our hope is that we can get some people progressing now. We still have many people with quite the list of troubles and problems. Some fun with that. We still have to get Pedro in church. Martha might not be married. So we will see.

We have had a lot of appointments with new people fall so we are still struggling with that. I have seen many miracles here and many blessings of obedience. We had a particularly rough day but we did have a miracle in an appointment where we got an investigator to promise to do something hard and drop part of his business to be baptized. We have great hope with him.

Love you all,
Elder Throop

Photos to come as today we went to a museum that is an historical museum where they got independence here. I got some photos of that and the baptism.

View of the city in the rain

One Year Mark, Burning a Shirt (not one Mom bought!!), Changes, Senior Companion

6/20/2016

Well that sounds like no fun with that trip you had I hope you enjoy the strawberry jam though. Sounds great with the scout camps and I hope everyone has fun with those especially with Daniel and the trek. I really enjoyed trek when I went and also the SVU missionary camp. Of course it was only one week which really is not that much time.

Well for my one year mark that was a lot of fun. We went to this place that had a deal on pizza. It was good pizza but quite honestly nothing really gets close to the states unless it is super pricy. They do have papa johns and dominos here but it costs a lot but those are good pizzas. I did get pizza that day. What we did in the evening is we went to the other elders house to the top and burnt the shirt on a wire. It burnt surprisingly well. I did enjoy it.

And now for changes. My companion left going to Chillogallo which is in Quito. He is district leader over there. The other two elders in our ward got pulled out so they closed that sector. I do have a new companion now. His name is Elder Hernandez and he is from Mexico. So now I can confirm which words are not so great in Mexico. It is a little funny how he reacts but he seems like a great guy. He was a visa waiter in mexico a change and then got trained here. He just left his training. So, me and him are here running the whole ward now.We hope to work well with members this change. I figure after this change I could leave this sector easily. The changes were pretty crazy mission wide and I can imagine the culture will change a lot here in the mission.

So yeah, I do have some photos of everything to send you. This should be a neat change. The other elders did leave a program so we can help those people out. We also have to work with our program and possibly clean it up a bit.

Love you all,

Elder Throop


Mom's Note:
Apparently, the tradition in the mission field for the guys is to burn one of their shirts at their one-year mark.  When Tyler mentioned this to me before, I  wasn't thrilled with that idea and I kinda requested that he not burn one of the shirts I bought special for him that I took time to write his name in with fabric pens.  He told me later that he found a shirt in one of the apartments that had been left by another Elder and he would burn that instead.  That made me a lot happier. 

Lighting the Shirt

A little more fire

Burning well

New Comp Elder Hernandez

Random selfie at church

Better Week, New Investigators, French is Forgotten, New Ward Mission Leader

6/13/2016

Well last week went a little better with all of our appointments. We actually found some new investigators last week we just forgot to invite them to baptism which is one thing we will have to do this week.

With the foreign language I do worry as I can't remember diddly squat from French. It is because I am more than a year out of practice. I still can read French I believe and read it outloud. I can't write well. When does SVU start by the way? I mean it still is a bit in the future but then again things go super fast.

Yeah the ward is definitely heading in a better direction. Our ward mission leader is now a new guy but he is super smart. He moved here recently and we helped him out with some service. This guy works on the desk in the offices and is very smart. He is a psychologist and basically has handbook 2 memorized as well as handbook 1(he was an ex bishop) This guy is helping a lot with the ward. We hope in the next week we can teach members and get them to come with us.

We did have a good week with members present and we hope to improve that. I do plan on celebrating my year mark this Friday. I have a shirt I found in another house and we hope to have some pizza. So I will have some photos from that. We also have changes this next sunday so that will be fun to see what happens. My companion is likely to head out to somewhere else.

Love you all and have fun.

Elder Throop

Lots of Walking, Investigator Still a No-Show, Taking the Phone For A Swim-Not A Good Idea

6/6/2016

Yeah that sounds like great fun with the zoo and all those camps you are having. I did enjoy today as we got to actually have a zone activity as they have been cracking down a little on the rules for different things. So we got to play some basketball, soccer, and volleyball which was fun. The zone leaders mentioned the importance of having daily contact if possible with all the investigators we are working with but at the very least with those who have a baptismal date. This last week actually was one of the harder weeks for us as we had 3 days in a row with appointments falling.

We did so much contacting and walking. We got 5 people in church but our progressing investigator didn't show again which was disappointing. We will have to work with him. This last week we had an accident where I accidently dropped the phone in the toilet. I was wearing a sweater and I so though I put it in my shirt pocket but noooooooo. So we were in the dark for awhile. Fortunately the zone leaders are letting us borrow a phone until we can get a new one. Water damage is too much even for our almost indestructible phones.

I do enjoy it with my companion. His sense of humor is a little different but he still is amusing. He is a hard worker and everything. I am indeed excited for the year mark it is the 17th which is crazy. We already have some things planned for what we will do. I recently had exchanges with another Elder in his training. Elder Waldie wanted to go with the district leader which is slightly irregular to have a senior companion go with the district leader but our district leader got it approved. I got to help the guy a bit. It was rather funny as he was very slow at spanish and many times would be like your turn so it was a little fun. He was a little hesitant to talk to people as he doesn't know how to speak so well. That was fun.

I hope everything goes well for you guys and that you enjoy your week.

Love you all.

Elder Throop

Money Delays from Memorial Day, More Rules-Less Activites, Ward Mission Leader Released

5/30/2016

That sounds like a lot of fun with the zoo. I hope you enjoy your day. I didn't remember when memorial day was but we found out as we had been expecting to receive our money that we get normally but it got delayed which was unfortunate. We found out it was memorial day and that had caused the delays. Not too bad for me but also a dinner appointment we had fell as well as the person is working which might mean a longer day for us.

Today we had no activities. They have been really hammering down on activities and emphasizing the rules on activities like crazy so it is harder for the leaders to get permission. So this morning we only played sports as an early morning exercise before studying which is allowed.

This last week was a lot of us visiting members trying to help them gain confidence in us and also encouraging them to fulfill their callings (we did that in a subtle way) in ward council we actually got more results as we mentioned a form that they need to use which explains a lot of their duties. We hope next week they actually bring those forms and we might see more results. Our ward mission leader also got released as he wasn't helping too much and also had family troubles. Apparently he didn't want to do anything more in his calling. We still don't have a ward mission leader but they plan on calling someone who should help things start moving.

Our investigator that was doing well has randomly disappeared these last few weekends. We will have to see what happened. I am not sure what happened.

Well I hope you guys do well. Have fun with everything!

Elder Throop

Rough Week, No-Show Appointments, Fortify the Members

5/23/2016

Well we only had the zone conference.  The multi stake conference was not apparently real which was weird as it looked real. This sector is still going hard with the ward. We had one of the roughest weeks with members helping us so far as we had 14 lessons but members were only present in 3 lessons. We invite,call, etc and just nothing so far. Unfortunately we feel it might require the help of our mission president as I was giving the information to our district leader and he mentioned that we really need more priesthood keys to get anything more done. We talked to the Elders Quorum President about the things going on and he said a lot of members lack faith and he would like the members faith fortified.. The only problem with that is we don't have enough time as that is the entire ward he wants strengthened and we just can't do that on our own. One big problem is the economic crisis has hurt people a lot here. The members now have longer hours and less pay and he explained many people worry about losing work . Also many here are now independent workers so they have to take advantage of work opportunities. So we are fighting against a lot. They know we are working but they have a great fear. We might see some results but right now our big objective is work a lot with fortifying the ward.

The investigator that was doing well didn't show up in church as he had a family problem so it makes sense why he didn´t show. We will have a family home evening with him and the bishop tonight. We have to reput the fecha and get him in church this sunday. Just a lot of work here.

The zone conference we had was great and they were mentioning some of the reasons why members don't help us. Quite honestly I felt parts didn't apply to us our 4 other elders as there are two particularly bad wards here with the missionary work. The other ward the one were the district leader is at has nothing too much as they walk a lot. They were mentioning we need to be specific in our reports (which we try to do now) and a few other things. The big problem is that there is no organization here and they make assignments but nothing gets done.  So we are trying our best but the members know very clearly we are working hard yet they just sometimes don't want to work with us. Many excuses are made or the members don't show when we can plan to go with them.

Today we went to the basilica so I got several photos which I will send you. Last week we visited a few members and we are trying to find more people that can progress and help others progress. Some need to get married. I hope you guys do well.

Enjoy summer vacation.

Elder Throop

Here's pics from another trip to the Basilica

Looking north

Looking South

I promise I didn't take the rock

Slow Ward Progress, But Working Hard

5/16/2016

This last week went pretty well starting the change off. Unfortunately we still are struggling a bit trying to get the ward to progress. The ward is veeeeeeery slowly progressing. But we try. We do have good news as we have someone progressing to baptism now. We finally got the guy in church and he accepted a baptismal date for the Fourth of June. He is really great and one of his children is 9 and is a girl and the other is 7  a boy. He has a slight word of wisdom problem (with smoking) but we already put goals on him and plans for him to get over his addiction. He is very cool.

The ward council barely gave us time to talk about things that need to get done here. Still they seemed interested to hear about progressing investigators. We talked with our district leader of what we need to do and he said that we really need to get a lot of appointments with members to teach them about their duty in leadership. We plan on getting one appointment per day which is somewhat high but it is in order to get work done. We will start with the ward mission leader as he is the one that lack helping us. We hope to talk to the bishop at some point (many bishops here never receive capacitation-ie training) and yeah the other leaders. Apparently there is going to be another multi-stake conference which is unusual as the last one was just last transfer. So we are working hard with the members. We do have a zone conference this week which should be fun and we should be hearing from our mission president some important things.

I am doing well with my companion.  Our great hope is to improve the ward this change because we feel the reason there were no changes really is to save this ward. We are working hard and we will have to see how we can keep finding news and helping people progress. today we had no activities but we did play basketball as a district in the morning (not an official activity however)  We are just trying real hard to get things going well here.

Elder Throop