September 23, 2013

Sometimes weird things happen on the mission. 

So on Thursday afternoon, I was walking in the street, trying to contact some old investigators from the area book with my companion, Elder Freitas, when we got a phone call from the assistants. Which is pretty normal, being the Zone Leaders and all. They tell us that there's going to be a transfer, and I figured it would be a member of our zone that would be leaving, right? Yeaaahhh.... Nope. They then proceeded to tell me that we had to go home immediately so that Elder Freitas could pack his bags and be in Piracicaba the next day at 9 in the morning, because he was being transferred, and would be going to Pirassununga. Tudo bem. So, logically, I thought that the Zone Leader from Pirassununga would be coming to stay with me, which is Elder Russel, who is from my group. It made more sense because I knew that he wasn't getting along too well with his companion. But then Elder Shumway, the assistant, asked if I wanted to talk to my new companion. And of course, I did. So what does he do? He hands the phone to his companion, Elder Mesquita.

Now wait a minute. Elder Mesquita has 2 weeks left until his mission is over, and is currently the other AP. Buuuuuuut he is now my companion! Elder Russel ended up going to São João da Boa Vista, and Elder Albernaz (my last companion who was in São João) became the new AP! I told him that would happen! So now I have been the companion of three different APs. Elder Gade (who is the assistant in Ribeirão), Elder Albernaz, and now Elder Mesquita. I am super happy having Elder Mesquita here. I've known him since São Carlos more than a year ago, and I feel really privileged to have him as my companion. Although he'll only be here until the 4th of October, I'm really excited to work with him here.

 

Also, I drove a car this week.

 

Last night, we also had a fireside with President Canuto. He came here with Sister Canuto and the APs, and that was really cool. Elder Freitas had been planning everything, but then he got transferred, so his plans got wiped out and we went with something completely different. But it ended up really good. There were almost 100 people there (which is really good for a ward that has a frequency of 80-90) and the ward is now really excited to do missionary work. Not to mention the fact that we're going to have another set of Elders in our ward in a couple of weeks. I'm pretty excited about that.

Today I went to the doctor to talk about my hernia. He told me nothing. Absolutely nothing. Soo..... we'll just have to wait until I get home to see what we'll do about it. Like... He said some things... But it was basically everything I know and that I'm already doing. So he told me nothing. 

 

Well, I love you all! And Elder Hopper #2 only has 10 weeks left of being number two! TEN WEEKS.

-Elder Hopper #1

September 16, 2013

Hello family!

This week! We had some cool things happen! We found some good new families! I'll tell you about one.

On Thursday, we got a call from the secretaries saying that they had a reference for us. From a guy named Carlos Wizard. Who happens to be one of the richest people in Brasil. But that's beside the point. Generally, his references are junk and the person has no idea why we were sent to their house and ends up rejecting us. Buuuut we decided to try and contact this person! So we went to her house (which was way in the back of this dirt road and looked like it didn't exist), and knocked on the door. The girl's name was Gisele. We told her who we were, and she just invited us in as if she was expecting us. Turns out, she works at a place called Skill, which is a language school. And she takes English classes there as well (She works in sales). Apparently she had requested a visit from the missionaries on Wizard's site because she knew that we were generally American and therefore speak English fluently. If you could see the typos that I just made you would know that's a complete lie. Anyways. We went there, and turns out she is needing quite a bit of help spiritually, and not only with the school. She and her husband had been fighting a bit, and she had pretty much given up on God. But then we showed up and now we're going to help her and her husband! We're super excited. They also have two kids, one who is 8 and the other is 4. So we could have three baptisms here in a bit! And we're gonna go help out at the English school!

That's pretty much the exciting story for this week. I love you all and hope you all have a great week!

-Elder Hopper #1

September 9, 2013

Hello, familiares.

 

Well, it seems as if Mom has already been informed of the biggest news for this week. I got a phone call from Elder Longhurst (the executive secretary) again this morning, and he started it off saying that he had some bad news. And some good news. He then proceeded to announce the flight dates for the group of Elders that are going home with me. Aaaaand we're not going home on the 26th of November anymore. We leave São Paulo on the 2nd of December, and I'll get into the Portland airport around 11:00AM on the 3rd of December. Soooo no more Thanksgiving at home. But that's alright. I guess I can deal with that.

 

Other than that, not a whole ton happened this week. Just more knocking doors, teaching people, the usually. Although, on Sunday there was an activity for the YSA group in the ward. Just before it started, we talked to the YSA leaders and they told us to go talk to a couple of inactive members just down the street from them and so we did! Only of them was home, whose name is Jackson. So we get to talking to him, and turns out he has a ton of problems... But he wants to change! So we took him to the activity, which his mom only let him go to because he was going and would come back with us, and he was talking about how he wants to come back to church, go to the temple, bring some friends to church with him, and all that stuff. It was really cool to see that in spite of his problems, he still has a testimony of the church and believes it's true and knows that the church is the right place for him to be. We're really excited to start working with him and help him to get back on the right track.

 

For this week, that's about all the cool stuff. We're preparing to have a fireside here with the mission president in a couple of weeks, and that should be really good. We're trying to get the members here to work a little more with us, just as the Prophet wants them to. It's just that difficult part of teaching an old dog new tricks. But it'll work! And we'll have more success here!

 

Oh, and I have a doctor's appointment set for the 23rd of this month to get my hernia checked out. We'll see what they say!

 

I love you all! Have a great week!

-Elder Hopper #1

September 4, 2013

Hello family!

It looks like the other Elder Hopper and I are falling into the same trend. I have almost nothing exciting to say to you all today.

But, I do have something kind of exciting I guess. Last Thursday (almost a week ago... this week went by fast), I got the trunkiest phone call of my mission. The executive secretary, Elder Longhurst, called and asked what airport I wanted to fly into. Obviously, I said the Portland airport. Then he told me the date that they were buying the tickets for. You wanna know? Cool. I'll tell you, then. They bought them for the 26th of November. So, I'll be home the day before Thanksgiving. Pretty cool, huh?

This week I basically got acquainted with me area. My new companion, Elder Freitas, is from Maceió, Alagoas. He's got basically the same amount of time on the mission as me, he'll actually go home two weeks before me, on the 12th of November. Our area, which I'm pretty sure I said was Nova Dessa last week but is actually Nova Odessa, is pretty cool. It's just outside of Campinas, and we have the whole city to ourselves. The ward seems to function pretty well; we've already done a couple of divisions and other visits with some ward leaders. I'm pretty excited to be working here. 

So, I'm sending a couple of pictures. The first one is of a Volkswagen Bus that someone decided to shorten. I liked it.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

The second one is of a Honda Civic. You guys have to find the error.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

The third is when I took a quick trip to New York this week. Or rather, they're building a huge market in a neighboring area, and it's apparently an American store. I dunno.

Hope you all have a great week! I love you all!

-Elder Hopper #1
 

August 26, 2013

Hello family!

This week we had another baptism!!!1 Wooooo!!!!!! Tadeu Henrique was baptized on Saturday morning (it's really weird having a baptism in the morning...) and confirmed on Sunday! We called him through the week a couple of times to see how he was doing and all, and it was interesting how everything unfolded. Henrique was actually hit by a car on Thursday morning... Satan really didn't want him to be baptized. But he went to the hospital, got all bandaged up, and then Saturday came to São João and was baptized anyways! Take that, Satan!

We also had transfers this week. Or rather, we have them tomorrow. Aaaaaaaaaaaaand I was transferred. Where to? I still don't know. But I should know in a bit. I'll let you guys know in a week what happened. I'm feeling Piracicaba. But that's just me.

And the other big news is about when I'm coming home..... And I feel bad telling all of you, so I'll go ahead and write it in Portuguese and pretend that you guys don't have translators. It makes me feel better thinking that you guys won't understand what I'm saying.

 

Bom. Essa quinta-feira eu recebi uma ligação dos secretário executivos da missão. Na verdade, foi o Elder Black. Ele é bem legal. Ele falou para mim que tem duas datas de embarque da missão no final do ano. Uma será no dia 12 de novembro, e a outra no dia 2 de janeiro... E então ele perguntou se eu tenho qualquer compromisso em casa no final do ano, até janeiro. E falei que não, porque realmente não tenho. Só que eu gostaria de estar em casa para o natal. Mas aquilo não é compromisso. Elder Black falou que provavelmente eu vou embora no dia 2 de janeiro... então... Eu não vou estar em casa para natal, nem o ano novo. 

Tudo isso é um pouco triste, mas saibam que o Senhor tem um propósito por tudo. Com certeza Ele tem planos para tudo isso e lembra que o homem não pode compreender todas as coisas que o Senhor compreende! 

Well, enough Portuguese. I'll send a couple pictures this week of random junk. One is a house that has two addresses... Not sure how that works. The other picture is with the Bishop from the ward here, Bispo Lucien, and his wife and kid, Suellen and Luan. Then I'll try to send pictures of the baptism this week as well. But those will come later.

 

I love you all! Have a great week!

-Elder Hopper #1

August 19, 2013

Hello família!!!

This week was great! We had two baptisms! I know that we had said there would be three, but something happened and he wasn't baptized. But he will be next week! So this week Claudineia and Hugo were baptized on Saturday and confirmed on Sunday. It was a pretty great week.

What happened with the other guy... His name is Henrique. I don't know if I said that last week or not. Well, we called his girlfriend who is a member of our ward, and asked her how we would schedule the interview and baptism and all that this week, but when we did that, she said that Henrique knew nothing about the baptism! So we got Henrique's number and called and talked to him a bit. Turns out that when we said that 17th, he thought we meant the 17th of next month! (Which is September, by the way. That came really fast.) So we talked to him a bit, and he agreed to the 24th of this month, which is this Saturday. It'll be the first baptism in the morning that I've ever taken part in. It'll be at 10:30AM Saturday morning. Weird. But it'll be great!

 

Not much else happened this week, wee spent a lot of our time in divisions with other areas because of various problems and interviews and such. But It was a good week.

 

I'm super tired right now because we just went up the mountain in Poços again (yes, for a third time), and this time we basically ran up, sat up there for an hour or two, then ran down. And it had rained the night before, so the trail was reeeeaaaaalllly slippery. So I fell. Only once, though. It didn't hurt too much. Plus I got a monkey to climb on my shoulder! He was nice and fluffy. It'd be cool to have a pet monkey.

Anyways, I hope you all have a great week! I'll try to send some pictures if my companion gets them to me quick. 

I love you all!

 

-Elder Hopper #1

August 12, 2013

Hello family!

One thing that I have noticed lately is that time is flying by really fast. Like so fast that I don't even know what to update you guys on this week. 

Most of this week was sacrificed in favor of the other areas. We had interviews in Poços de Caldas and Espírito Santo do Pinhal, two other cities, so we traveled quite a bit. But we were still able to see a bit of success in our area. We are teaching a family that is a mom and two kids (one of which is 11 years old, the other 7), and it's going really well. The mom's name is Claudineia, and the kids are Hugo and Mayara. They went to church last week and loved it. This Sunday they weren't able to go because of problems with their dad and the fact that it's Father's Day here (Happy Father's Day again, Dad!). We marked their baptisms for this Saturday and they're pretty excited about it! The only problem is that Claudineia drinks coffee still. But I don't think that'll be much of a problem because after we taught them about the Word of Wisdom, the kids started being really quite... annoying about the coffee and won't let her drink anymore. 

Well that was weird. There's a key right under the delete key on this keyboard that turns the computer off. Learned that one the hard way.

We are also working with a guy named Henrique who is the boyfriend of a member here. He's a really cool guy and always has searched for a place like the church of Jesus Christ. The only problem is that he's only here on the weekends and lives in a city called São Sebastião da Grama. Which is about 45 minutes away from our city. He's already gone to church 3 or 4 times now, and really likes it. So we finally were able to teach him on Saturday, and he accepted everything. He says that he feels like God is calling him to be a part of the Church of Jesus Christ. So he'll be baptized on Saturday, too! We had to teach almost everything to him Saturday and Sunday, since he'll only be back here next Saturday (the day of the baptism), but it went well!

Also, I'm emailing a little bit early this week because we had to come to a different city so that my companion could have a medical exam. The bus left our city at 6:30AM. So we had to wake up at 4:30AM. Plus we ended up getting to sleep late last night because of some... difficulties that we had. But we resolved everything and now it's okay! We got something like 4-5 hours of sleep last night. So today we get to spend our P-Day in Pirassununga, a city where we know nothing and nobody! Woooo!!

Have a great week! Next week I'll try to send pictures to you all! I love you all!

-Elder Hopper #1

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