December 2, 2013

Dear family and loved ones,

 

As Elder Kevin once said,

"We're going home."

 

PEACE.

 

-Elder Hopper #1

November 25, 2013

Hello family!

Much like Elder Hopper #2, I had a very uneventful week. However, I had a cool experience on Saturday night. 

There's an Elder here named Elder Black, from Utah. He is a executive secretary right now with Elder Wilson, another good friend of mine. He plays piano incredibly well, and I thoroughly enjoy listening to him play, even when he's just messing around. On Saturday, Elder Black and Elder Wilson had a baptism in our chapel, so we had to go open it up for them and we hung around to watch it. The assistants also tagged along, and after the baptism we all stayed around talking. Then Elder Black decided to play piano, which lead to all of us singing hymns. It was really nice to be able to sing a bit in a group of people who know how to sing. After we sang a bit, Elder Black played a rendition of "If You Could Hie to Kolob" and "Come Thou Fount." I felt the spirit really strong while he was playing, and had a bit of time to just reflect. It's been a while since I've been able to do that. I realized how easy it is for us to become ungrateful for everything that we have. We have soooo many blessings that we don't even realize sometimes. We are such a blessed people! 

Well, I've got a week left. The end came fast. Next week I might email, I might not. I still haven't decided. We'll spend some time here in Piracicaba then probably take a taxi out to São Paulo to catch our flight at 11:35 PM... Gotta love red-eye flights!

I love you all! Have a great week! See you next Tuesday!

November 18, 2013

Helllooo everyone! 

This week was rather uneventful. However, I arrived in my new area, with Elder Farias. We are now in Piracicaba 2nd ward. I thought that I was going to be junior companion, but when we got here, I found out that I am still a district leader. My whole purpose here is to train my companion to be a district leader, actually. We got here together, and once again there was no work in the area. We have to find all new people and try to get the work started again. There aren't even any records in the area book since September... So this week we just went after old investigators and a couple of referrals we got from the mission office. Hopefully this next week we can have a bit more success!!

So President transferred my who group to Piracicaba to be able to make the whole going home thing easier. So this is the first time I'm in a zone with Elder Welch (my companion from the MTC) and Elder Russel (another from my group) and second time with Elder Marler. I really didn't have much of a chance to get to know the Elders from my group, and finally at the end I do. Interesting how that works. 

Well, not much else has happened this week. I'll try to do something more exciting next week so I can tell you guys all about it. 

I love you all! Have a great week!

-Elder Hopper #1

November 11, 2013

Hello family!

 

This week, was reaaallly exciting!

 

We did absolutely nothing.

 

Both me and my companion have been sick since last Tuesday and have been unable to work full-force since then. We are getting better, taking some medicine, and trying to rest it off, but it's a slow process. 

 

So that family I told you guys about last week; Maria, Jonathan, and Rosana, They decided to not be baptized this week. They felt like they didn't have enough time to prepare and they kept missing appointments and marking for other days. So with that moleza combined with our sickness, we were unable to get them baptized this week. A sad ending, but hopefully Elder Galleguillos can get them back.

 

Remember Everton that I told you guys about two weeks ago? He went to church this week! He tried to sleep through it and not come with us, but we made his dad wake him up.

 

This week we have transfers, and I'm leaving the area. I'm not sure where I'm going yet, or with who, or what I will be, but I'm pretty sure I'll be junior companion. Not because I did something wrong, but because my group is leaving in the middle of the next transfer, so it's just easier to do that with us than keep us as ZL. I'll find out later today where I will go and all that. I'll only stay there for three weeks....

 

I love you all and hope you have a great week!

 

Love,

Elder Hopper #1

November 6, 2013

Heeeeellllo everyone!

 

I officially had my last conselho de liderança on my mission. Looks like next transfer (which comes up here in a week) I'll be put down to junior companion to be able to simplify the transfer, since I'll be going home in the middle of it. Which means I get to work and not worry about leadership responsibilities for the last three weeks of my mission!

 

This week we had a couple of good things happen. The other Elders who live with us baptized, which is really good for them. They're both very new on the mission and were kind of discouraged when they got here, but these two baptisms helped them, and the ward, out a ton. We also marked three baptisms for this weekend, but we'll see if they go through. We'll need prayers in our direction! It's a great family that had been taught about a year ago but they had problems with police and the law and junk. So now they're all good to go and want to be baptized! They're names are Maria, Rosana, and Jonathan. 

 

So me and my companion must've ate something bad on Monday, because we're both sick... We're hoping to be able to work this last week we have guaranteed together, but we're spending a looooot of time in the bathroom recently. So hopefully we'll get better soon so we can work and stop wasting our time in the bathroom! 

 

That's about all the exciting stuff I got for this week... Lack of interesting things to talk about because of the time I have on the mission... less than 4 weeks left? Interesting, neh?

 

And as The Potato says, "Give full order peace love power."

 

I love you all!

-Elder Hopper #1

October 28, 2013

Hello everyone!

 

This week was pretty good for us. We had a good amount of success, but it'll be building for the next couple of weeks. We've finally figured out how to work well in this city. Every place has it's own difficulties, and here it's been finding good people to teach. We've decided to follow the apostles' advice (go figure) to keep the chapel open. So what we did the majority of this week, was we sat in front of the church, inviting people to come in and visit, just to see what the chapel is like. Most of the people we talk to accept, and then we have the chance to show them around while talking about our beliefs. It's rare for the people to not allow us to get their address to go to their houses. So this week we'll spend a good amount of time going to the houses of these people and all that good stuff.

 

We also are going to a couple of English schools in the area to help out and to find some people that are willing to hear the gospel. This last week, we met a guy named Everton at one of the classes who is really cool. We went to his house on Saturday to talk to him a bit and invite him to an activity at the church that night. He accepted to go to the activity and liked it a lot. He goes to the quadrangular church, which I'm pretty sure is the four square church in the States, and lives with a pastor from a Baptist church. Interesting combination. But he seems really interested in the gospel and wanted to come to church on Sunday but had already promised someone else that he would help them out with their car. So we'll invite him this week! He seems pretty promising.

 

That's all I got this week! Hope you all have a good one! 5 weeks left!

 

Love you all!

-Elder Hopper #1

October 21, 2013

Hello family!

 

This week was another roller-coaster of emotions, and looks like it won't be the last. Let's start with Maria.

 

Well, you all remember the story I told last week. We were ready to leave Maria and never teach her again. But we decided to try again with her. So we went to her house on Tuesday and invited her to a Family Home Evening with her son and his wife the next day. We went, and it was all great. We had a good time and we were all happy. On the way home, (a member gave us and her a ride home) we were talking about baptism and how she felt terrible that she hadn't been baptized last Saturday. Then she told us to to mark her baptism for Saturday. So we did! We visited her again on Friday and she was all excited to be baptized and all. Then on Saturday, we got a call from her while we were helping out at an English school. She didn't want to be baptized anymore. Her mom was having health problems and she had to bring her to the hospital, and Maria had been asking people if she should be baptized or not... And they obviously said no. So we went to the hospital. When we got there, Maria's mom was about to get let out already, so we waited for them, and planned to get Maria a ride home and talk to her in the car. We had parked the car in front of the church because it's close to the hospital, so we went there with Maria. We stood outside of the church just talking to her for a while about everything, and she got mad at us (we really didn't do anything to make her mad) and started walking away. She didn't even want a ride home anymore. So she stormed off and we sat there... and tried to figure out what had just happened. Well, we still don't know. But we went inside the church to drown our sorrows in the chocolate cake we had made for her. Which turned out pretty good, by the way. So we aren't going to go back to Maria's house anymore. We'll wait for her to call us.

 

We had a good experience, too! On Thursday we had a multi-zone conference. For part of the conference, President Canuto wanted to do a live practice. So the zone leaders (us) had to go out and find some people to teach! We went out and walked around a park a bit, talking with everyone there, but everyone was on lunch break about to go back to work. But then we talked to a guy named Caio. He was also on lunch break, and had 5 minutes to be back to work. We told him we would only need him for about 20 minutes, and he said, "I have to go back to work... but something is telling me I need to go with you guys." So he went with us! He ended up being about an hour late for work, but it was a really good experience for us and for him. He is really ready to hear the gospel. The bummer is that he doesn't live in our area... Or even the stake. So we won't hear about how it goes with him until a lot later. But it was a great experience!

 

Well, that's the exciting stuff for this week. I hope you all have a great week this week! I love you all!

 

-Elder Hopper #1