September 10, 2012

Hello family!

This week was the end of our transfer! Aaaaaand nothing happened! In our whole zone! We actually only had one elder leave, Elder Edwards (he's from Oregon, about an hour North of Coos Bay). His companion, Elder Teuscher (he's from Vancouver), is receiving a new elder and will be training!

So first off, so that I don't forget later on, I just want to say happy birthday to my wonderful mother! Happy Birthday on Wednesday, Mom! I love you! Thanks for everything that you do for me and for being such an awesome mother to me! I really don't know where I'd be without you! Especially considering that without you I wouldn't have been born...

This week in church Elder Stewart and I gave talks along with one of the members of our ward, Irmão Franz. I talked about tithing, Elder Stewart talked about Joseph Smith, and Franz talked about missionary work. Kind of unrelated topics, but it's what the ward needed. I was given 5 minutes to talk, but I got up there and started talking about the tithing thing, and ended up not stopping until 15 minutes later... My bad. My companion had to cut his talk a little short because of me. Oh well! Later, the bishop talked about how this was the first sacrament meeting of the whole year that he felt the spirit from the beginning to the end. It's awesome how we can bring the spirit into the lives of the people here. And like it says in 2 Nephi 33:1, when we speak with the spirit, the spirit will lift our words to the hearts of the people! It then goes on to talk about the people that will still reject the message... But that's beside the point. 

So today I was studying with Elder Stewart about America. I'm not entirely sure how we stumbled onto this topic, but it was good. We read in Doctrine and Covenants 101:80 where it talks about the Constitution of the United States. It says that God himself wrote the Constitution through the hands of the creators of the USA. It's interesting how they were inspired so much to write exactly what they did, and it makes me think of the constitution almost as scripture. We are so blessed to be able to live in a country with so many freedoms and with so much pride for our country. On Friday Brasil had their independence day, but nobody really celebrated. It made me miss the 4th of Julys that we have had back home and the pride that the American people has. We are so blessed with our country!

Well that's pretty much my week. I love you all!

-Elder Hopper #1