My joy is full!

What a great week I’ve had!

It was tough to say goodbye to so many good people in College Station, especially since I was there for such a long time! I was able to see some of the best and most prepared people I’ve met on my mission enter into the waters of baptism. But I am bound and determined to make the next 3 months the best of my mission. We’re off to a good start so far!

I’ve been transferred into the White Oak and Sam Houston 2nd wards with my new companion, Elder Loveland. My new address is 10910 Gold Point Dr, Houston, TX 77064, apartment number 1114

White Oak is a small ward in Suburban Houston. Sam Houston 2nd, however, is not. The Sam Houston 2nd ward is a YSA ward, and its boundaries are enormous! We could cover a third of the mission if we had people in those far flung areas to teach. It includes the campus of a relatively large community college, Lone-Star College. School will start in a few weeks and I’ll begin a totally new challenge in proselyting the thousands of students on campus! What a test of courage!

Elder Loveland is from a little town just South of Portland, OR. I have another PNW companion! He’s been out for 11 months and this is his second transfer in the area. He likes rugby and being a missionary. He’s also a red-head.

This week was incredibly productive. I learned on my first day that the White Oak ward hadn’t had a baptism all year yet. Well I felt like that just wouldn’t do, and we would need to step up our efforts if the Lord was ever going to lead us to people who were prepared, so we worked our tails off this week. We saw many miracles as a result!

To start, I wanted to go get to meet as many Part-Member-Families in the area as I could in my first week, and we met a sweet family on my first night with two little girls, named Zion and Genesis. They both accepted baptismal dates!

I also got to go on exchange with Elder Ramsey up in small town Waller, TX this week to go conduct a baptismal interview. Kailei passed her interview with flying colors and will be a great member of the church! While I was there, we also got to teach two families (at once!) and set three baptismal dates, and found 7 new people (in two families!!!) who wanted to investigate the gospel! Wow!

I was also treated to fried alligator. It was good!! Genuinely tasty. Like chicken but slightly denser, less fibrous, and tougher. I think I prefer it over chicken, not that I’ll likely have that option often!

While I was gone, Elder Loveland and Elder Wiley were able to set an additional baptismal date in our area in the YSA ward with James, whom I haven’t met yet, but am excited to!

When I got back in town with Elder Loveland, we had an appointment with another part member family and were able to set two more baptismal dates, one for a soon-to-be eight year old child of record and one for a father who will be a new convert!

My heart is so full of gratitude. Never in my whole mission has my companionship been so blessed to extend the saving ordinance of baptism to so many people. What a blessing they will receive! And how blessed we are to be able to help them in their Journey!

White Oak ward has not had a baptism yet in 2018; we have four dates right now! So blessed! 

To cap it off, I found a young man named Allan almost a year ago. We found him knocking, taught him most of the lessons, and then handed him off to the YSA sisters, where he was baptized just a week or so later. We figured the YSA ward would do the best job of helping him integrate into and stay active in the church. 

Imagine my joy to see him on Sunday in church, and to learn that he has stayed fully active, and is preparing to receive the Melchizedek priesthood shortly. What’s more, he had still remembered me and my name after all this time.

My joy is full! 

Following are pictures with some of the families we had to say goodbye to in CS.

Elder Derek Troy