Troy Family Tales: Monuments of Missionary Moronity

Hello friends and family!

Here is Elder Derek Troy’s latest letter. The first part of the letter is an explanation about a picture he sent last week. It appeared that he was destroying some boat. Apparently he was. Gah. Anyway, he proceeds to tell us why they felt the need to end the ugly boat.

He is preparing to be transferred very soon to another part of Houston, Texas. He isn’t sure where yet. If you have any letters, you may want to hold them for another week. Otherwise, his email is the best place to send communication for now.

As always, thank you for supporting our son. He feels your prayers on his behalf!

We love you all.

JD & Terri

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The picture I sent last week was a screen shot of a video where I wrecked this huge plastic boat with a Nalgene bottle.

Missionaries have this annoying habit of scratching their names on everything in sight. I’ll attach a picture of my desk as evidence. They're just frantic to be remembered for some reason. Maybe it’s because our time in each area is relatively short?

Anyway, some missionaries bought this huge boat as a result (missionary apartments are also full of trash like this) and everybody writes their names on it in sharpie when they go through the apartment. The Elders in the apartment across the street inherited it and got sick of it, and ditched it at our apartment. We definitely didn’t want it and decided to wreck it for a stress reliever on P-Day. It is an idol to missionary idiocy; a monument to missionary moronity. This Chinese junk (a type of east asian boat) was a pile of junk (a type of garbage collected by Elders) and we were so satisfied to destroy it. I've attached screen shots from the clip of its disintegration.

Regarding the missionary work: It’s awesome.

Elder Mattson felt prompted to extend another baptismal date to Dustin during a lesson. I’m not so certain he was ready but now we're committed so we're going in guns blazing. Our last lesson with him also went really well and we both felt confident in moving his date even closer, but this last week hasn’t gone so well for him.

He didn’t keep his commitment to come to church Sunday unfortunately. He needs to come to prove that he's repenting to be baptized. He also didn’t keep our last appointment. He’s very ready but behaving flakily lately. We're all a little worried about him.

We’ve been visiting Dustin's roommate, Derek, in the hospital lately. He chain smoked himself into the hospital and may die if he continues to refuse blood transfusions. He suited up for the NFL chargers at one point in his life but ended up being homeless for what I understand to be about a decade and now seems completely lost.

Visiting the sick makes me feel like a real missionary, and admire all of the years of service Thomas S. Monson rendered before his calling as president of the church. As I study his life of service my testimony of his divine calling has been strengthened. He lived a life of extraordinary humility.

The week we're looking ahead to is something of a drop week. We’ll be ending work with a dozen or so investigators. It will be tough to drop people we care about but will free up time and energy to focus on people who are willing to act. Faith is a principle of action.

I hope everyone is doing well in WA, UT, and elsewhere!

This is the last week you can send a letter to the mission office. Any mail after the 3rd or so needs to be held until I can send out my new address after transfers. I’m most likely moving but have no idea where yet.

Thanks for all of your support!

Elder Derek Troy