Dec 26, 2011

heyy so this is weird cause i just talked to you guys and i really dont know what to say right now so i am going to tell you about yesterday, we had church at 10:30 combined with both aiken and coker springs wards and then we went over to the brooks home right after church brother brooks is older in his 60's and he works for aiken public safety so he gets to drive fire trucks and stuff ha I think and his son mike also lives there he got back from his mission in las vegas 2 years ago and is now married and has a 14 month old daughter, and so we spent the whole day at their house and we ate lucnh and played hearts with mike for a couple hours and then I skyped you guys and hen we ate dinner and played some more hearts and i won the whole game, we played 6 rounds of it haha it was fun and I actually know how to play it now. mike is really cool he is like a jared anderson from boiling springs but just younger. this ward is really cool and they seem to be very pro-active they just do things and we dont have to do much asking, but thats what it seems like so far, there are soooo many less actives on ur map it is full of orange dots so we are going to try and work with some less actives. we had christmas eve dinner at the basset's. they are very nice.

every thursday night we have basketball night and we play with the youth and they can invite their friends so that is like awesome i love it, and also friday night is movie night where we watch church movies and even ones like forever strong we just have to ask president for permission for a certain movie so that is really cool stuff. georgianna is our golden investigator and she just walked into church 3 sundays ago asking for a book of mormon and said she wanted to be baptized, her mormon friends said if you want to know its true just go to church and so she did and then she got to meet president holm at the transfer meeting cause she was in irmo and she also went to nephi books right across from the temple and got a CTR ring hahahha she is sooooo awesome, then next is mike he is a referel from a girl in our ward kami she is an awesome girl she helps out with missionary work a lot and is a convert of a year I think maybe 2 years i havent met her yet but she seems awesome. mike is cool he is a senior at south aiken high school and has been taught everything almost we just need to ask him to be baptized again and see what he says but we know that he wants to.

so something weird is that south aiken high school uses the ASU logo with the A and S inner-twined so i see it all over and it reminds me of ASU and they even use maroon and gold so its cool. but anyway ya aiken is cool they have old town aiken and then a bunch of  stores and restuarant by our apartment so there is a lot to do unlike blythewood, today we are gonna go to the huge mall right next to our apartment.

so i was gonna ask yesterday about coah moretti is he still gonna be coaching? did he say anything about the mormon.org card i had you guys give him?

is grant going to play baseball for pinnacle?

and also who has gotten back from their missions recently like tucker howe? or any other guys

um thats all i can think of right now how did grant and alli like their presents? i thought grant would like the cologn stuff

well i hope you guys have a great week and pray for me that i will be able to settle into my calling as a district leader well and that we will be able to baptize georgianna and mike. its weird being the oldest in my district and i feel like my testimony and knowledge of the gospel have grown a lot, i never thought I would be able to be at the point I am know and be able to be so patient with myself and with others of coarse i have seen the missionaries that i dont want to be like and the ones who are cool and hard working and have fun and i like being around them and i want to be like them its cool looking back on how fast i learn and how much stuff nd experience i can pack into my head in such little time and not be overwhelmed, i know that its the spirit that allows that and i want to be worhty of that always

Love Elder Harper

Dec 19, 2011

ahhhhh wooow soo yep im getting transferred, and...... you guys should be getting a letter from president holm soon saying that i have been called to be a district leader, crazy! hahaha elder reay (one of the assistants) called us  yesterday and i was like i knew it haha and all the other guys in my district new i was gonna go district leader. right after i got off the phone i was just way nervous all of a sudden cause i was like wooow im a district leader ha thats weird, but elder reay also said that he was jealous of where im going and he was one of the ones that came from augusta when it joined the mission so its either im going there or im going to someplace he has wanted to go like charleston or myrtle beach, haha iits the weirdest feeling. elder law is getting transferred also

so anyway i guess ill tell you about our week, we set an investigator on baptismal date for january 21st we havent had someone on date for a long time so it was awesome, christmas zone conference was soooo fun. it started at 7:30 am and we got trained on the new pilot program which is a new way to proselyte and it involves the members, basically we go to the members home and talk about all the stuff going around about our church in the news and stuff and then we ask them questions to get them thinking about friends they want to share the gospel with and then we have them take a pre-typed letter and they customize it to themselves and they send the letter to their friend which has a link to their mormon.org profile in it and we stop by the persons home 5 days after the letter is sent so that they know that we might be coming by. so it basically is like a referel system on steroids and president holm had this idea and sent it to salt lake and they gave us permission to pilot it and so for the next 6 months if it goes well it will be piloted in other missions and then it will go church wide and it will change missionary work forever, the reason why its cool is cause it makes it easier to mention the gospel to your friends instead of just texting them or having us stop by randomly, so thats what we got trained on and we role played it. then we had a lunch and it was really good i saw elder mcpheters and we hung out the whole time. all my favorite elders were at zone conference, my entire mtc district except the sisters elder law, douglas( who went home) elder shumway, peterson, boyd, mcpheters and thats all i can think of haha but it was fun and then we played basketball for 4 hours haha it got intense, we also had a talent show and we made a district video it was way funny and president gave us a standing ovation.

we had dinner at the christensens yesterday haha im so bummed i dont get to spend christmas with them but i got a picture with them, they are my favorite haha brother christensen reminds me of joel woodward when he is in his 40's hahaha and also when you get the picture their youngest is (A) but she wasn't in the picture but their oldest is (J) she is in the picture and she just got back from utah valley university and she looks and even acts like kassie hutchings haha she is like almost an exact copy, well kassie is one of a kind but (J) is dang close especially at first glance, it was just weird haha, i also got a picture with the mcdonalds ( the ones who know jon) they are awesome.

so i cant wait to here how ASU does against boise state i think we will play pretty well our offense is a lot like theres and our defense is fast, i really hope this new coach is good or else lisa love needs to get fired, hows ASU basketball doing? coyotes? any news on their sale yet?

crazy how kenny has music on itunes haha and alli i will be praying for you to get to go to new york.

man I have lots of junk that i have collected since i have been here and i have to throw it away, today we are going out as a district and celebrating me leaving so we are gonna go eat somewhere and go to the mall

i love you guys soo much im so thankful to have you as my family especially in the christmas season, my testimony has grown so much and i love this gospel it has blessed me so much and i dont know how i could live without the knowledge of the plan of salvation and temples and eternal families, its hard everyday when we tract and the people we talk to they just dont want it and its sad that they dont know what they are denying and i am just so grateful for the book of mormon and more truth because we have living prophet because god is the same yesterday today and forever. thank you for raising me in the gospel and being faithful

Love Elder Kelly Harper:)

Dec 12, 2011

hello this is buddy the elf, how may i help you?!!!

ive been saying that so much this week haha its been stuck in my head hahaha anyway, this week was good we had exchanges with the zone leaders this week and i went with elder law. me and him had a great time on exhcanges, we went to see (L) and we went completely by the spirit on what we were gonna teach her, we had no idea what was gonna happen and we just sat down out on her porch cause we cant go in cause there is no male in the home so we had to sit outside, and we just talked to her about what has been happening with her and her life and she just is struggling with faith right now, and she is depressed cause her mom has stage 3 breast cancer and so she is haveing a hard time, so we just asked her questions trying to see what we can do to help her increase her faith and we also read some scriptures alma 32 about faith and 2nephi 32about the holy ghost and how as we read the scriptures and pray then the holy ghost will tell us all things that we should do. it was really great but she still is hesitant to set a date for baptism cause she doesnt want to be rushed into it even though she wants to be baptized again. so that was a little frustrating but we had a great lesson with her,and we have a member family the murreys who are fellowshipping her they brought her some cookies or something and became freinds a little, they were supposed to bring her to church but we couldnt get a hold of her and either could they so that was a bummer. we finished re-teaching the lessons to sister yates this week she has been less active for 10 years and hasent been to the temple in probably 12 years so now she can get her recommend so that was great.

when i was with elder law on exchanges we realized that i am at the same point in my mission that he was when he trained me, thats soo freaking crazy!! ahhhh!! its flying by

we have christmas zone conference this week on friday in lexington and all my companions will be there except elder winger, haha im a so stoked to see all of them even my whole mtc district will be there except for the sisters, i got your packages haha and i loved the huge roll of paper that was signed and stuff haha i noticed that autumn and alex wrote a bunch on it hahaha.

so something cool this week i found out that another person in my ward here in blythewood knows someone from back home, brother tyler clark who is a dentist in the army went to school in san francisco with brian harris and they had the same classes together haha i was like no way that is sooo crazy i love brother harris, and tonight we have dinner with the mcdonalds so im gonna get a picture with them cause they know jon peterson, all the cool people in this ward know all my favorite people back in AZ.

so our ward mission leader told me that ASU fired dennis erickson or he actually opted out but is noel mazzone still the offensive coordinater? and also that we are playing boise state in the vegas bowl which is cool too. anything else happen? i also heard that chris paul is playing for the lakers hahaha that is so gay

well i dont know what else to write cause i never got an email from you guys this week sooooo haha, i do like the christmas cd though its really good

oh and i found out that we can skype for christmas and probably from now on so if you guys know someone you could borrow it from we could do it cause the christensens said that we could skype at there house but that would depend on if i get transfered or not, i hope i dont though cause that would stink

well anyway i thats all i have i think so i will talk to you guys later, hope you have a great week i have all my presents sitting in a corner of the room and i cant wait to open them

Love Elder Harper:)

Dec 5, 2011

welll hello!

 

soo ya this week was good, well we didnt get to teach as many people as we had planned to cause people werent there for appointments and we had someone drop us also, sadly our coolest investigator lakyra got back from florida for thanksgiving and her mom has breast cancer and so she got back and i guess has been really depressed and so she called us and told us that she just needs to be a lone for a while so that was really a bummer, so please pray for her if you can. i guess i will talk about our investigators while im on that subject, we have a family named the johnsons who me and elder mcpheters taught the first lesson and then we have tried to see them and they are like never home we caught them last week but they werent home for the appointment we set up so we dont know yet what to do with them we will probably give them another chance before we drop them. then we have alex the really cool guy who has mormon.org bookmarked on his computer who we talked to last saturday, we havent taught him but we are calling him today because he never called us this week like he said he would. then we have Rory he is really cool and interested in a modern prophet, he is a chaplins assistant, we were going to teach him at the christensens(coolest family ever) tomorrow but sister christensens uncle died so we might not be able to do it then so thats up in the air right now, the dixons who we met a long time ago, who were really cool have not been available, so we are going to contact them after the holidays. then we have a guy named christopher who is pretty cool he is a chaplins assistant also and he is super interested and he is really cool but he has been sick so he is gonna call us when he isnt anymore, and those are our best investigators we also are finishing up teaching sister yates she is from germany and has been less active for 10 years and is preparing to go to the temple now we are teaching her the last lesson this week, we also are teaching a less active family the Mabeys in hopes that they will come back and that their 9 year old daughter will decide to be baptized. yep so thats what we are working on here in blythewood, we also just got the ward to start doing exchanges with the elders and high priests and they hopefully will start in 2 weeks maybe next week. so there is a lot of rwork to be done in the ward and its taking time hahaha.

 

we are also going to help a cool family the harms move out of the ward, bro harms is a chaplin in the army for the church and he cant proselyte at all, they are moving to el paso, texas. i will definatley friend him on facebook when i get back home, along with the christensen's.

 

this last week we had a special training meeting with president holm and his cousin brother brinley who is a former mission president and taught at BYU it was really cool he talked to us about the history of the bible and lots of deep doctrine stuff and it really helped clear up doctrines and how to tell people about them and especially when we are studying cause there is a lot fo stuff in the scriptures that i dont understand, and that missionaries dont really understand what they mean and he cleared some of it up, the meeting was only for my zone (columbia zone) and the west columbia zone so i actually got to see elder berenyi hahaha i was so stoked to see him cause i havent sen him in so long, he is a stud. i had to drive the car to building that the meeting was at in west columbia and ive decided i hate driveing in south carolina cause the people are soooo bad at driveing especially on the freeways and it doesnt help that the free ways are so badly designed hahaha so anyway, dad if you think drivers in AZ are bad, you need to come here they are worse.

 

grant: man dont even tempt me with the new batman AHHHHH!!!! i cant believe im gonna miss it and the mid night showing and all that stuff

 

the calling situation i dont know a lot about cause christmas is after transfers so i could still be here or i might not but if i am the christensens said that we could go over to their house and call from their phone, but either way i dont need a calling card thing cause we can use our cell phones but i will let you know more about that

 

haha dad i cant believe you ran over shadow ha but ya he definetly is like done, glad he is ok and you didnt spill hsi guts everywhere that would have been a sad ending " my dad ran over my cat the other day!!" hahaha jk. no we dont answer the questions from people on mormon.org and we didnt do it in the mtc which i think was new, we didnt eben work in the referel center.

 

mom i dont need you to send me a blanket im good i wear my sweats at night and we have the heat on, you can look in the package if you want just dont let grant or alli see i put a sticky not in there telling what things were for who, i havent sent anything yet for you or dad i will let you know when i do, the christmas cd you send should be ok like its not like i cant listen to a christmas song by keith urban or something dont worry

 

Grandma harper- i am getting the dear elders that you send and i am always excited to read them so yes to answer your question i do get them

 

thanks for being the best family in the world i am so glad i have you guys and i thank god every morning and night for you all, hope you have a great week

love Elder Kelly Harper:)

 

ps- the christamas devotional last night was really cool and so was the video, we watched it at the christensens house

Thanksgiving 2011

heyyy

well we had a good week, thanksgiving was awesome and we got way to much food, we went to the christensen's in the morning and they gave us some food to eat while we were there, they are the coolest family in the ward and they have a 18 year old son wesley he is soo cool i would hang out with him after my mission. then we went to sister johnsons house for the main thanksgiving meal she is a single sister in the ward and we got to go over cause she had family come in town it was really good my favorite part was that they made a drink that is native of finland its called sima its a soda kind of its got honey, lemon juice, water and yeast in it to give it a fizz, but they cool it so it doesnt go alchoholic its sooooo good and it looks like beer but its not haha so dont freak out, they also had a bread that is from finland and its called pulla bread it is also like really delicious ha anyway i thought you might like to hear that especially since grandpa siiro just went to finland. then after them we went over to the reays to have some pie it was good to, but i was soooo bloated at the end of the day ahhhh. some cool things that happend this week though we werent able to teach nay of our investigators really but we found some cool people on is alex, we met while we were tracting at night right when the USC vs Clemson game was about to start and he was outside getting ready to go in and we talked to him and he was so excited to see us, he said he has been studying mormons so much latley because of all the publicity that people are talking about us and especially with mormon.org advertisements he said that he has mormon.org bookmarked on his computer and that he wants to sit with us sometime this week and learn everything so that was awesome. yesterday we went and we talked to a guy named chris who was like the same way just really interested and so humble and willing to hear what we have to say and not in an argumentive mindset, he said if he found out this was true that he would change his ways even if he knew it was a different belief then what he grew up believeing, so i just have had so much comfort this week because it seems like god know that i am working hard to help people come to the knowledge of the gospel and that i am being obedient and trying to do my best and he has been waiting to bless me because i needed to be tested but he also showed me glimpses of hope in the future not only for me but for this area, and it was soo cool seeing this week how the spirit was guiding me to make  certain decisions and im glad i made those decisions to go see this certain person at this certain time and place because he had a plan and because if was faithful and obedient that plan was able to be fulfilled and now we have 3 more people who are really cool and want to listen. so my testimony grew this week on the power of the guidence of the spirit and his impact. i am so thankful for that and for the gospel and for you mom and dad for believing in it and raising me in it because i see people all day every day here who werent raised in it and dont know about it and they just have no directon in life or they dont have that happiness that they could have, so thats what im thankful for.

 

we played our turkeybowl on saturday morning and lots of people showed up but no non members so that was a bummer but we played for a couple hours and we even played 2 hand touch rugby for the last 45 minutes it was sooo un and so fast i got to score the winning touchdown it it. but we are still super sore from running so much hahaha. i also talked to jordan mcdonald the guy that knows jon peterson and he said that he talked to jon about me so that was cool, i think it is so cool to have that connection with people from back home first with bro anderson in boiling springs and now bro mcdonald, i will get a picture with him cause we have dinner soon with them.

 

um i was trying to think of a christmas list and really all i could come up with is like maybe just give me a tie haha i dont really want anything or do i really need anything i mean everythig else i would want i cant use on my mission so i guess ill have a raincheck list when i get home hahaha, but yea a tie and maybe if you can find them the inception sound track and the apollo 13 soundtrack, and even the lord of the rings soundtrack.

 

oh i do have to tell you guys that i did go to walmart on black friday in the middle of the day and i got myself a garmin gps that is normally $200 for $100 and i used 46 dollars from the walmart card i got and only 60 something on my debit card so if you were wondering why i spent 60 dollars thats why and i really needed it so it was the best deal.

 

i also got your package and thanks for the turkey thing hhaha that is cool and also thank you paolaccis for the candy, today i am going to send the christmas presents in a package so be expecting that. dad i havent put really any chuck on i just dont have abs anymore but im still thin haha and im proud of it haha

 

we have christmas zone conference on the 15th so that should be fun and cant wait for all that. oh and this week we had wade security called on us 2 times for soliciting in lake carolina and so we called president holm and we gave him their information and he said he would call them about it haha so that should awesome

 

well i really am having a great time out hear and i learn so much every week and i love the gospel sooooooo much its awesome and its the full truth, hope you have a great week.

 

Love Elder Harper:)

Letter home 112111

well it is nice to here from you grandma siiro, im glad that you were able to get a lap top thats pretty cool. i hope your doing well and i cant wait to get home and see your new teeth haha, love you lots.

we had a good week, a lot of stuff happened and i hope i can remember it all cause i forgot to write it down. i guess ill just start from last monday and also ill tell you more about elder rasmussen he is soo funny hehe hes awesome, hes still brand new kinda, im his second companion. he is from preston idaho and he went to preston high school so that is cool cause thats where napoleon dynamite was filmed and also isnt that where sister thurston is from? we had dinner with the mcdonalds on monday night and brother mcdonald was talking about his job and how he works in construction, and so i told him how i worked for jon peterson and did stuff and he said "i know jon peterson" and i was like whatttt!? hes from chicago and went to byu, that jon peterson? yep we had some classes together and im friends with him on facebook so ill ask him if its the right jon peterson, but i haven't heard back from him yet so maybe you could ask jon hahaha that would be sooo crazy. Then later on in the week we were tracting in lake carolina which is like aviano but like 5 times bigger and lake carolina is no soliciting but since we arent soliciting its ok but the security people drove up to us and said you cant solicit and we were like we arent, we are prosalyting its different and we have a license to do it but then she was like no in lake carolina soliciting is anything door to door even just handing out flyers, and i told her that the church even came out to the police department and talked to them and won, but its ok cause we still go back and tract. Then we were in a different neighborhood and met a guy who is a mason and we talked about how joseph smith was a mason and also got into some pretty deep doctrine talk haha and he was cool with it he brought it up and agreed with us and we started talking about the stars and the universe and all that haha it was crazy ive never talked about that stuff with someone tracting before. Then on saturday we went to a lesson with a 28 year old lady named lakyra who is our best investigator and we taught her the plan of salvation and she told us about how her mom just got diagnosed with breast cancer and so it was awesome cause we covered so many topics and related it all back to the plan of salvation and she had lots of questions that we answered and everything made sense and she loved it all, the lesson was like an hour and a half long, she couldnt come to church though but thats ok. also later in the day we stopped by a lead named erica wineglass and invited her to church cause she said she wanted to come last week but was sick. then at church we walked into the chapel and she is sitting there with one of our members and they have already become like good friends and there daughters are the same age so it was like perfect cause we didn't have to do anything she just actually came to church. we haven't been able to get someone to church in forever, so i was soo happy. we went on exchanges with elder law and elder linford this week from 6-9 on saturday and then they are coming all day on Wednesday so gonna be sweet. we have thanksgiving lunch at 3 with a single lady from the ward who is having her family in town so she invited us to go over cause we couldn't normally go over and plus she lives super far away, ive never really met her before but it should be good, then we might go over to a cool family in our ward the reays for dinner at like 5:30 hahaha so i might feel a little bloated that night. and we are playing in the turkey bowl on saturday, they arent doing it on thursday cause nobody will be here so its all good and the other elders in our district are gonna play with us too cause their ward isnt doing one. we tried running on saturday morning but it was soo cold it was like 29 degrees and the field in front of the trailor was frosted over but elder rasmussens longs couldnt take the cold so we had to walk back. ya its been really cold and then today its like warm and humid haha the last 2 days have been humid and rainy.

bummer about ASU ahhhhhh!! are they still gonna play in the championship game? coyotes sound like they are rockin like always.

alli you sound like you did great in your concert wish i could have been there to hear you play:)

That's sooo cool to see mike robison and all that how he has just come back and how the members just rallied around him and made him welcome and offered to help him thats why i love desert ridge ward and thats what i want to try and help each ward i serve in out here be like.

haha i cant wait to see what coy looks like hahaha man that went by fast i seems like he just left

dont send a tree cause i dont have anywhere to put it or store it in the trailor so thats alright im good without one, if you want to send paper decoration that would be ok haha, yes i have heard back from mariah but not from jordan, kassie or even gaby for like a month haha, but i got a letter from courtney larsen who is a friend from the singles ward so that's cool

we dont have a target around here only walmart

im good on a blanket for now i just put on sweats during the night

i drive the car all the time now since im senior companion 

i have been able to take more pictures so ill send the memory card soon also has cool pics that you could use for the xmas card

i got a cd player in the apartment and every apartment should have one so im good, i don't need eclipse anymore i got a copy of it.

AWWW i miss teagen soooooo much haha man, the weather today is a little warmer and its nice though i have noticed its felt a lot like az for this time of year

i cant believe that temple poster thing is almost half way full haha

well i love you guys i am doing great and have a great week continue praying, i will send the envelope with stuff in it today and answers to anymore questions in it also

love Elder Harper

Letter home 111411

November 14, 2011

So we had transfers this week and elder mcpheters got transferred to Martinez in Augusta, Georgia he is a district leader there haha he will do awesome. At transfers i saw lots of guys, elder Williams from the mtc he is now a zone leader in west columbia after only 7 months he trained and now he is a zone leader, haha that’s crazy. I also saw elder winger, he’s is training now in Summerville.  Well as you have probably been wondering my new companion is Elder Michael Rasmussen he is fresh out of his training stage so he has only been out for 3 months, so im his second companion and he is a cool guy haha he’s funny but he is also a little shy and doesn’t talk a lot, but he’s is cool we get along great no problems at all. I’m going to learn a lot from him and I am going to teach him all that I know how to do and be patient with him since he has only been out for 3 months, but I am going to try to help him be less shy and better at talking to people cause that’s the hardest thing, if you are comfortable with talking to people then everything gets better and easier.  Elder law is still my zone leader we are going on exchanges tomorrow and Wednesday, we didn’t find a lot of people this week but we did have one funny experience, elder Rasmussen and i did a lot of knocking and Saturday morning we knocked into a Jehovah’s witness and he was like telling us that the book of mormon isn’t inspired word of god and all that stuff and he was like i wont talk to you about the book of mormon but i will about the bible so we were like ok sounds good. his Jehovah’s witness new world translation changed so much from the king james, says completely different things, and he read a verse that says "all scripture is inspired of god" and then says that the book of mormon isn’t inspired of god, so were like, ok what ever but he offered to give us pamphlets. We have had lots of trouble getting in contact with our investigators, either they don’t answer the phone or return our calls or they are never home so it sooo hard to follow up and teach people a second time.

We got word from the mission about christmas packages, family and friends if they are going to send christmas packages to send them by December 1st, i cant believe it almost Christmas, hahaha time flys by so fast.

Also elder rasmussen has one of the special issue book of mormon ensigns and i was wondering if you guys could order one for me

Mom,you can send mixed berry jam that would be cool, I haven’t had that one yet, i haven’t gotten your envelope with the feathers yet so i will look out for that. me and elder mcpheters made the green chili roast stuff it was really good, but he took the crock pot with him cause he bought it so we don’t have it anymore :( oh well i can still cook other things.

Things that I might need for Christmas, ughhh well I don’t know yet ill have to make a list of some things

Dad i read a little bit of the book this week i haven’t had a lot of time at night but i will definitely read more this week.

Yah, grant I heard that the skyrim game came out it seems pretty sweet, we have a kid in our ward who is really into those games and call of duty haha, so he always tells us, i cant wait to play it when i get back, so you are varsity now? did the coach tell you that you got moved up? Why don’t you want to do pinnacle baseball? how are the cardinals and ASU doing?

I love you guys a lot and keep praying for me I love this work it’s so awesome and I when I study every morning the spirit testifies to me all the time that this is the true church of Jesus Christ

Love Elder Harper

Letter home 11711

well we found out about transfers and elder McPheters is leaving me after being together for 3 months, it feels like we haven’t been together long enough cause we felt we were going to be together another transfer at least.

So that’s the sad news, but hopefully i get a good companion and not like last time when i went from awesome companion to not so awesome companion. we had an awesome week. so last Monday we went to see a lead named derrick and he was home and let us in he is black but his wife is white and they have 3 kids that are mixed so we taught them the restoration and they loved it and the wife had a lot of questions on tithing because other churches tithing is used for paying the pastor. They asked if we had different races of people at our church and we said yes, we aren’t segregated and she was so happy to hear those things and they are so ready, so today we are going to teach them about the plan of salvation.

This week also elder law came on exchanges with me for all of Tuesday and we talked about boiling springs and he told me that he found out that Paula cash hasnt been going to our church for a while. the Andersons who bishop Timmermen knows are her home teachers so i hope that she comes back to church soon, but elder law also said that she had dinner at our ward mission leader in boling springs house recently and that went well so i really hope everything turns out ok. i wrote Wanda Scruggs a letter today cause elder law told me she started a Book of Mormon class at church so that was awesome to hear , she is so awesome and she will never sway away from the truth. i hope i get to go through the temple with her next may

I got your package and i love it, we are going to buy a roast today and put it in the crock pot with the green salsa for the last crock pot meal that elder McPheters and i will have because the crock pot is his and hes taking it with him :(

But the book is cool dad i am going to start reading it tonight after we come in while McPheters packs his stuff. and thanks for the fish oil. oh also elder law just got a new cd from Nashville tribute called work its about missionary work so maybe you could send that to me for a Christmas present, wooow its almost Christmas! haha that is so crazy, then all of a sudden its going to be my year mark in like 5 months i think, haha i dont know i lost count.

so i just looked at the pictures, haha my room is super pictured out woooow hahaha. cool so you guys got the cordons table now in our back yard, that looks good in that spot.

cool pics of the chase field stuff i would have loved to have done that. how long has elder Dennison been in the ward, why do the elders that come to az look so much older? i feel like the ones in my mission look sooo young. mom you shouldn’t stay up so long you need to go to bed earlier than 12:00

so that girl that we set on date for baptism we havent been able to get a hold of her we even went by for our appointment and she wasnt home so we are not sure what to do with her yet

well i hope you have a great day and week love you all :)

love elder harper

Letter home 103111

whatss upp

this week i have to say has been really frustrating, we haven’t been able to get a hold of the brown family at all we met with Sean the dad on like Monday and he said to come by yesterday on Sunday but he wasn’t home and that is the 3rd appointment he has not been there for. we try calling him but he doesn’t answer and his voicemail box is full and he never answers our texts. down in the south and i don’t know if its just down here or not but people are too nice to say no, or don’t come back or i don’t want to listen and so when you talk to them or teach them its cool the first time but once they realize that you will keep coming back until they tell us no then they wont even open the door or answer the phone or anything even when we knock and we know that they hear us they wont answer and they never tell us that they don’t want to meet with us anymore, or they schedule a day for us to come back and they purposely avoid us that just kills me especially when you drive a long way and use lots of miles or change your schedule to go see them. and that is all that has happened to us this whole time here in Blythewood, even with the coolest most solid investigators, they just in the blink of an eye disappear off the planet. this area is the hardest area in the mission its the least baptizing and has been for like 4 years. Last week i think i told you about how the stake here has a new stake mission plan and it is awesome we announced it to the ward yesterday and it really didn’t go the way we thought it would go, there was like nobody at church so like nobody heard about it the presentation that our first counselor put together was not great, and we even passed around a sheet for the members to sign up for us to come by and do the thing with them and out of maybe 30 people 6 signed up, haha we just were like what the heck. do they want to baptize anyone in this ward? one cool bright spot to this week was that we taught a girl who is in her 20's and she accepted to be baptized on November 26, right now she is the only person we have on date for November and we really hope she stays and gets baptized.

ya we get transfer calls this Saturday, but we really are thinking that me and elder mcpheters stay together everyone in our district thinks so and elder law and linford our zone leaders think so too, plus it would be best if we were together at least one more transfer.  we have so much fun together haha sometimes we will just have times when we will get in a air freshener fight in the trailer or one time he took my bed apart and took all the covers an off and so i did the same to his bed haha we just have so much fun together and try to make every minute fun even when we might be having the worst, most frustrating day ever, ive learned a lot in my studies like today i was reading in alma about Ammon and king Limoni and then i just looked at the footnotes and learned about the godhead in john 20:16 its a cool scripture and proves the trinity wrong.   

man that stinks that grant lost his last game of the year but did he get to play a lot? i love that story of our mascot punching the brophy one, that is someting that i would totally do if i was there. grant what ever you do in the spring whether its track or baseball make sure you continue to work hard and put your full effort into it just like in football, you made so much progress and you thrived in the spotlight that can be a constant as you work hard in practice every day. thats sweet that halo4 comes out right after i get home, i cant wait to hang out with you a lot for the 2 years before you leave on your mission and alli also.

well i love you guys so much pray for me and elder mcpheters to be together longer and that we will have success

love elder kelly harper

Letter home Oct 24, 2011

heyyyy there yall

Sooo we had a pretty crazy week lots of stuff happened I’ll just tell you the important stuff. i guess the highlight of the week was getting to go golfing with our wards elders quorum, we were able to go because an eternal investigator bob sebire who is in our ward went. He loves golf and it was cool we told them we were gonna go,  but on friday the day before the golf outing we found out it was gonna cost 80 dollars to play and we were like woow we dont have 80 dollars so at dinner that night elder mcpheters and elder ellermen (we were on exchanges) went to the sebires house for dinner and they told bob why we would not be able to go golfing and he said "oh ill just pay for you guys", I was soo suprised that he would just spend 80 dollars on us and we even got to drive our own cart, not as many people showed up as we hoped but there was enough for a team of 3 and a team of 4 we weren’t on bobs team but we were able to talk to him quite a bit but weren’t able to get anything out of him about why he was not baptized, we had president mayo on our team and he is in the stake presidency, we asked him why bob hasn’t been baptized, but he said he has no idea. i played pretty well for the first time in 10 months. I was a little rusty but I had a couple great drives and shots, bro packer let us use his clubs and he has some nice clubs he had a nike sasquatch driver and nike hybrid club and some nice irons haha, so we were pretty spoiled. We got lots of pics and videos so it was good, the weather was also very nice and the course was cool lots of trees. This week we have been working with 2 investigator families yolanda robinson and her daughter brianna who are on date for november 12 and the brown family who are on date for the same date. We taught yolanda and her daughter the restoration with bro reay, a cool member, but friday she called us and told us that her sister in utah said not to continue meeting with us and so she might not want to meet with us anymore, so we are waiting to hear back from her, that was very disappointing cause she is soo cool and so solid. Then we had an appointment with the brown family on friday and they werent there for the appointment, and we havent been able to get a hold of them so we have no idea what is going on with them. We hope we can meet with them and teach them again. I got to go on exchanges with elder ultra in ridgeway, on friday that was cool since he was in my mtc district.  Its been cool seeing how much we have grown from then.

This week also, the stake has brought out their stake mission plan, and it is the columbia stake member harvest. So basically next week, us and the bishopric are going to teach and announce this in a combined 3rd hour next sunday and then we are going to send around a sign up sheet for the members to sign up for us to go over to their house so we can go over and excite them about missionary work and tell them the focus ( success is the invitation to her the gospel whether the person accepts or rejects it, its all about the invitation) INVITATION= SUCCESSFUL MISSIONARY WORK. I think it is something cool that every stake should do. So we will do that and then have each family make a list of people they are acquainted with and then pick from that list, who they should invite and then we set up a return appointment and get referrals. There is a lot more to it but that’s basically a short version. We are super excited for it because we need lots of referrals.

ha-ha i love hearing about how grant slammed the qb into the ground ahaha thats soooo awesome grant keep working hard and gettting better

well i got to go i had a short time on here again i will write a letter though to talk more i love you guys so much

Love elder harper

ps those are some awesome pictures and dad you need to get perfect push ups, grant too they are so awesome and they work great

Letter home - 10/17/11

helllo

 

so we had an exciteing week, on tuesday we had a training with president holm on working with members and ward leadership better it was really awesome, and president holm and all the stake presidents in the mission want to have each ward have 5-10 ward missionaries atleast our ward has 0 hahaha its sad cause we have lots of really cool young members, and preist age guys. we also went to help a lady this week who we found last week her name is ella and i think i told you her story but we went t help her organize her stuff for a yard sale so we went over and her garage was open and it was just pilled up with junk and clothes and just stuff ughh, she is an extreme pack rat, and then she asked us to bring something in her house and she has sio much stuff in there that she doesnt even need and her kitchen is just full of junk and stuff and it smelled realy bad she has lots of money which is part of the problem so she buys more she needs and just throughs it around, that made me a little sick but it was good for us to help her cause she definitely needed it. on thursday our zone was able to go to the temple to do an endowment session it was so awesome to be able to go and do that. Then on saturday we went on exchanges with our zone leaders elder law and elder linford again and we only were with them for 4 hours so we didnt have a lot of time. I went with elder linford and we didnt get much done because we went knocking doors for an hour to start off the day and when we got back to the car we saw that someone had backed into the zone leaders brand new 2012 chevy malibu that they got like 5 weeks ago and they crushed the front driver side bumper and light, i wish i had a picture. Elder law and elder mcpheters found a sweet family and were able to put them on baptismal date for november 12, we celebrated at sonic afterwards. then that night we were able to find 8 new investigators on our own so on saturday alone we found 12 new investigators and 14 all together this week, we led the zone in new investigators this week which hasnt happend here in a long time.

 

 

 

at nephi bookstore i got a multi colored pencil thing it is really awesome for scripture marking and like every elder has one

the coyotes already started that was fast, do they have a new owner yet? or are they moving next year?

bummer about the dbacks but atleast they are better then they were last year. i heard about the ASU/Oregon game, ha i cant believe we cant ever beat them

well my time on here was a little short this week but i will answer your questions in a letter, i love you guys all and hope you have another great week

 

love elder harper:)

Letter home - 10/10/11

wassss uppp

 

ya we had a great week we had a really big focus on door teaching in our district development meeting, and so we decided to really put it into action. so when ever we got a chance to teach someone on their door step we did it and we ended up getting 16 other lessons this week and 8 new investigators. we also met a lady when i went on exchanges with elder law on thursday we met ella she is really cool and really ready to hear the gospel, her husband died a couple years ago and then a year later her only son died and then she got in a couple car accidents and now she has like no faith at all in jesus christ, and feels sad and depressed all the time cause she doenst know why god would make her go through so much bad stuff and why he would take away her only son. the whol time me and elder law were just so amazed and she talked to us for about an hour and we didnt say a word the whole time, she just told us the whole story so we are hoping to meet with her to teach her, she gave us the wrong phone number but we are stopping by as much as we can. we also taught kim this week we found her beause of our door teaching and she let us come back and we taught her a full first lesson, she didnt accept a baptism date but she is reading the book of mormon and we have a return appointment with her on tuesday. elder ultra from my mtc district is now in my district he is our district leader elder ellermens companion, and elder berenyi is training in another zone. this week we bought a blender to make smoothies and elder mcpheters bought a crock pot with his money hahahaha so now we can make some sweet food. when we bought the blender we just bought the cheap walmart brand one and we put all the stuff in it to make a smoothie and the motor dies in like 5 minutes haha i was like what the heck, so we took it back and they gave us our money back and we got a good oster one for 20 bucks. on sunday we had a musical fireside that we have been putting together for 3 months and it went awesome president and sister holm came and presidnet holm spoke and had all the missionaries come up to the stand and say our missionary purpose quote. earlier while we were waiting in our trailor for our ward mission leader to pick us up for the fireside the zone leaders and president and sister holm made a suprise visit to our trailor and sister holm did an inspection ahaha we freaked cause our trailor was a little messy but not bad but she was really checking for cleanliness just to see if our washer and dryer work and if our smoke alarms work and also if we had good beds haha which we dont, my bed is as hard a s arock and elder mcpheters beds springs are so broken that it sinks in the middle and you cant get off it easily haha so that was fun. oh one cool thing is that president holm and the stake president had a meeting with our zone leaders and they want each ward in our stake to have 5 to 10 ward missionaries, ur ward right now has 0 but we have a ward mission leader  and an assistant wml and we really need some ward missionaries. dad we are getting some more training on how to work with members better from from president holm on tuesday so i cant wait.

 

sooo ya exciting stuff this week, glad to hear your trip to up north was fun. haha i like the picture with kelly richardson haha thats funny.

 

alli to answer your question i miss you a lot too, and we dont go to the trunk or treat things i dont think, but on halloween we have to go in at 6 cause we have lock down but me and elder mcpheters are going to be missionaries for halloween we bought a cheap pink tie at tj maxx and we are going to wear it on halloween.

 

so i finally sent the memory card today so it is in the mail and on its way. did grant have a game this week? and any news on the dbacks? i heard at church that ASU beat utah haha one of the youth was complaining that the utes lost and i asked him who they played and he said ASU and i was like yeaaaa! haha.

 

eric went to conference thats pretty sick i want to go so bad, how is eric doing does he have a girlfriend or anything haha, what are his plans?

 

hey dad what are you doing to the truck grant said you were gonna put a lift on it, are you putting any rims on it yet, if not you have to show me some pics before you put any on,

have you guys sold moms car yet? how is teagen doing have you found out why she is scratching so much?

 

well i have been reading a lot in the book of mormon, and im in alma 4 i think, its really i just finished mosiah and its just a lot of fighting and people spieing on each other haha, i actually cant think of stories now that i can actually put everything together unlike before when i didnt know the story about nephi and the plates of laban. it just strengthens my testimony when i think about how amazing the gospel is and that joseph smith did restore the church and priesthood on the earth. im so glad to have been born into the church.

love you guys so much, (ohh hey could you see how eric camp is doing and try encouraging him to go on a mission)

 

love Elder Harper :)

Letter home - 10/3/11

hey it was great to here from you guys, i loved the letter from dylan and the pictures of him hahaha still the same old funny guy he always is. also the ASU pictures are SICK i love the uniforms haha ahh i miss football. haha speaking of football. before the priesthood session on saturday night we went to a mexican resturant with the priesthood in our ward and the elders quorum paid for our meal it was good, but also in the resturant the USC vs. Auburn game was on and the whole place was filled with USC fans and all the guys in priesthood were freaking out cause USC was just falling apart at the end, so ya i actually got to watch football for like 30 minutes haha it was cool and that will probably never happen again on my mission. this week we had a rough week findng, we did a lot of knocking on doors but we have been trying to focus on seeing members and one night we went to a member and sat down with them and just talked a little bit and she gave us a referel to see her friend who wants us to answer questions for her about the church and stuff so we are gonna try and see her tomorrow, then while we were knocking in there neighborhood we met a lady who had met with missionaries 15 years ago but she said she would love to meet with us again so we are seeing her on thursday. on tuesday we had to be in a 3 pack with our district leader cause his companion got sent home so my backpack was in the backseat of our car with my camera in it and when we dropped him off with the zone leaders elder law and caldwell he accidently grabbed my backpack  and and brought it with him so its been in the zone leaders car all last week and i will get it back on thursday so i will send the memory card when i get it back haha sorry for making you wait so long.

 

i loved general conference a lot especially the talk by tad r. callister on the book of mormon and why it is important, and there was another talk i liked but i cant remember which one it was. i took a lot of notes thats for sure, we usually get a copy of the ensign each month for our companionship but if you could send me my own of the conference one that would be sweet.

 

grant bummer on your loss but keep up the good work and now that they are giving you more oppurtunitys to play just work your hardest and take advantage of those oppurtunities, hey you should play baseball, its either high school baseball or track cause they are at the same time as each other, it would be awesome for you to get on the high school baseball team.

 

i did get grampas letter he also sent me chocolate haha lots of it, and i also did get one from bishop and the bro avey

 

dad i got to get you in shape when i get home, well actually i have to get both of us in shape, cause no matter how hard i work out it still really isnt much, but elder mcpheters has the perfect push ups and so i started do ing those, so we run one day and then do perfect push ups the next. those things work great they are just hard in the begining. well i will try and write a better email next week i got to go but i love the gospel so much and i know that it can bless so many peoples lives if they only just exercise their faith a little bit and read the book of mormon and pray. im so glad that almost our whole family has the gospel in there lives and i want so bad for my freinds who dont have it, to have it but it will just take time and hopefully one day they will accept it. I love missionary work and i wish all the members of the church had the same love as we do, especially me and dylan.  i love reading your letters

 

love Elder Harper

Letter home - 9/26/11

yayyyy!

 

me and elder mcpheters are staying together in blythewood, we are really happy that we are staying together for another month and a half, we hope we can get some good work going here and hopefully a baptism, but we firs have to get some solid investigators to teach, we have one right now but shes still slow in progress and weve only met with her twice and we are meeting again today. this week was really frustrating for us, we had the assistants come out and work with us to help us and we got a lot of appointments from that but every appointment we had fell through and the people werent there or just decided not to answer the door. thats something that frustrates me is that people are home and you know they are home but they just dont answer the door even after you ring the door bell and knock 2 times. But we did get a cool lead who we are seeing today its a young mom maybe 20 years old with 2 young kids and she said she is really interested so, pray for us that it will go well. we have a guy in our ward named Bob Sebire he is an eternigator (eternal investigator) of like 30 years, he is basically mormon, he is active with his whole family who are members and he has a testimony of the book of mormon and joseph smith, he has even taught elders quorum. and we cant seem to figure out why he hasnt decided to get baptized, plus his wife wont let us ask him if he wants to get baptized cause she doesnt want to push him. its really hard cause all the mission leadership knows about him and they are always asking why hasnt he gotten baptized and we have no idea and his wife wont let us ask him so we really dont know what to do with him, thats just one of the problems that we are facing here.

 

thats cool the im a mormon is advertising in phoenix for 6 months, have you guys made a mormon.org profile? and when is kirks video supposed to be put up on mormon.org?

 

i cant wait for general conference, its gonna be awesome, and i definitely need some answers to my prayers cause god has been testing me a lot the past 5 months and i need some relief. thanks a lot for the package that made me happy. it has been raining a lot here, its rained all week on and off and downtown columbia had bad floods yesterday kinda crazy.

cool that the dbacks are solid on the payoffs and i heard that ASU won yesterday from a member haha i was so excited.

 

i hope teagen is alright i will pray for her, but maybe taking her to the vet is the best idea cause they know the best about what to do and what is wrong with her.

 

i have been trying to get more pictures taken of the area before i send the memory card but  i will send it this week for sure. 

 

Grant- got a big game against mountain view this week, make sure you really prepare for them cause they are always really good and if you can have a break out game against them, people will start noticing your talent and ablility even more.

 

keep praying for me and that we will have success in our area here in blythewood and that people will be opne to hearing us teach them the gospel, i love you guys a lot and love hearing from you and it was cool to hear from dylan hahaha he is so funny.

 

love Elder Harper

Letter home - 9/12/11

heyyy

so this week was crazy and it was really cool, me and elder law went on exchanges again and while we were working we found a family to teach for me and elder mcpheters. so the next day we went back and it is this family of 4 the parents who arent married :( and then 2 little kids under 6 years old, the little boy whos name is champ is way funny haha while we were teaching he started pulling my arm and trying to show me something and then he got a halo cd and started trhowing it around the room and then the 6 year old girl turned on the xbox and started playing a game and the champ then turned on the vacuum so it got super loud as we are trying to teach these people about the restoration and the first vision but some how the parents didnt get distracted at all the paid attention to us and they heard it all, we werent eble to set them on date for baptism cause it was to crazy but they both got a book of mormon and they are reading it hopefully we have an appointment with them again this week. On thursday we had a special zone conference in lexington, Elder Paul B. Pieper of the seventy came and spoke to us for 5 hours, he gave us a training on  how to teach people not lessons or in other words teaching people according to their needs not just following the same lesson plan the whole time. that was really cool i got to shake his hand and he also talked about in order for our investigators and us to understand and be converted we have to study the doctrine, then the principles and then apply them. so we had a good week.

 

yes mom i do write in my journal, but this week i didnt get to write like at all so i compiled the week into one entry, thanks for getting mariahs address thats awesome and ya if you get kassie's that would be awesome also.

 

grant thats sweet that you almost got a sack/safety, see when you put in the hard work in practice it shows in the games, your getting better and better every time. the cardinals sound like they are just killing it, was the game against carolina a pre season or regular. how did ASU do against missouri?

 

i miss running long miles, we run a mile and a half every day but it still doesnt do anything haha im so just out of shape and my arms have like no muscle any more im trying to find the best way to work out my upper body then just push ups, the pull up bar wont work in out trailor cause there is nothing for it hang on.

 

im excited for grandma thats cool that she got to meet her companion already.

 

hope you guys have a great week ill try and take some pictures of the area and some videos and send my memory card.

 

love you guys

Elder Harper

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Letter from home - 9/5

heyy there

so we had an interesting week, still in a big finding process. for a long time this area is where lazy missionaries have been sent to, and so we are working to help revive it and make it one of the most producing areas, so its gonna take a while for that to happen but we are trying to put a plan in place and the way to go is through the members i this ward because like i said before nobody is home during the day. we have lots of members dinners, and we have been following up on commitments left by the stake,  to invite someone to church, to give out a book of mormon and to baptize someone in a year, for each family in the ward and one family the christensins who have a 17 year old son who is really excited to go on his mission and he is a senior this year, he wants to go out on exchanges with us every Saturday night to do whatever whether its knocking or teaching. and then on Sunday he gave us 2 referrals who he got them both to come to seminary and they came haha then we also got an appointment set up with a real interested girl who is 16 and friends with a member, she comes to seminary every morning and she is getting her own quad. We are teaching her at a members home with our zone leaders law and caldwell. that was really the only exciting thing that’s happened work wise.  we are very happy and we do have a lot of optimism for this area and ward, its hard sometimes cause you’ll get so close to maybe having a solid investigator but then they never answer the phone or the door but we don’t dwell on that we have been working our buts off and doing all we can to improve the area.

we do run every morning only a mile and a half, on pdays there isn’t really much we can do around here, we have a small area and there isn’t much really to do. we don’t even have a goodwill in our area, that’s how small it is which stinks cause there is no where to find cheap cool ties, everything here is really rich and expensive.

There is no rule on videos we can take them and elder mcpeheters loves taking videos, elder winger was just stuck on his old mission rules still and couldn’t get over the not so strictness of our mission.

I actually haven’t gotten any letters from friends in ide say at least a month, the only ones who write me other then family are Cameron, aliese, and gaby (the girl i met at pvcc). What is kassie hutchings address isn’t she in Utah now maybe you could get both addresses for me, I think elder mcpheters knows a girl from Arizona that might be friends with kassie. 

I love how the dbacks are doing awesome, I knew they would do great this year, and I knew Ian Kennedy was sweet, how about the new pitcher they got at the end of last year who was lights out? 

Dang max hall was gonna be good, but Kevin kold sounds like he is awesome, is he working with the offense well ?

Any news on the coyotes?

I cant wait to here about how oswieler and burfict do against missouri

Well I got to go we are eating lunch now so, let me know how the week goes. I love the pictures

Love you guy’s im having a great time with everything and with elder mcpheters haha he’s awesome

Love Elder Harper

Letter Home Aug 29 2011

heyyy there family

So I have been having a lot of fun with elder mcpheters, we’ve been working hard and we have just had a blast doing it. like I told you last week this area is hard, because nobody is home during the day so its impossible to find people by knocking but non of the members are home either so knocking is really all we can do because we only have a few leads but they never answer either and so its really hard. We usually end up knocking anyway casue that’s all that we can do. But when we do have member dinners and when members are home we have been leaving them with commitments to invite there friends to church and to be there fellowshipper cause that is the only way to find people in this area. last night was cool we had a member dinner and the family has a son and 2 daughters and the daughters are 15 and 17 so we knew that they had friends to work on, at first they were shy about talking to us but while we ate we started to break down the barrier by talking about them and asking them what they do and so we mad them laugh and then they started to open up and it wasn’t so awkward anymore and they ended up giving us 4 referred and they are going to work on those people and get them to church hopefully, so its cool how we just talked to them and became friends and then they trusted us and talked to us about their friends. ya but its been hard cause we have so many appointments fall threw and we can never get a hold of people haha Saturday kinda stank, everything bad that could have happened, did and then our phone died at like 7pm so we didn’t have a phone. Just been having lot of disappointments lately with people, but ive been able to make it fun and not so bad because me and elder mcpheters just laugh and make it fun even though it might stink. I have some pictures the one with us and the guns is at a members house he works for the fbi and he let us look at his guns and pose with them that is a real m-4 and a real pistol haha they have so many guns so we had a little fun. me and elder law went on exchanges together when we had a blitz in our area it was fun he let me vent to him the whole time, we had fun together and he slept over with us the night before

 So where are the olivers moving to?

we didn’t get hit by the hurricane, it ended up missing us and if you didn’t know there was a hurricane passing by you never would have known cause the temperature didn’t change at all and we didn’t even get any rain, it just stayed the same, we were hoping to get  some crazy wind and rain but we got nothing.

Any sports updates? Who is gonna be QB for the cardinals? Did pinnacle varsity get new uniforms? did jv get new ones also?

Maybe you could send me Mariah Michaels’s address either from Duncan or someone, but she might be at BYU Idaho. And also could you look at that Christian cd I told you about last week or the week before.

Any way send me anything in the package haha I don’t know what, but im having a great time and I love it here I can’t wait till we can find someone who is really interested and I know that we will. I love you guys keep praying for me.

Love Elder Harper

ps. any news Dylan?

Letter Home Aug 22 2011

 

Hey so I guess you can tell from the heading that I'm in Blythewood, it is east of Columbia but I'm basically right in Columbia. my companions name is Elder Cameron McPheters he is soo cool haha he is just what I needed, he is always laughing and we have fun together all the time, he is from Rexburg Idaho and he’s been out for 8 months. Our area is the problem area in our mission. It’s had so many problems with the police and stuff telling missionaries they can’t proselyte and stuff. it is a great area just the one problem is since its a super rich area nobody is outside walking around and knocking isn’t very effective here cause nobody is home during the day and when they are they don’t even give us a chance to talk. But we have found 2 people who are interested and that’s all that our teaching pool is haha, there hasn’t been a baptism here in 9 months, we hope to turn that around. So all we really do is go to member’s homes and work through them we are just trying to build the trust in the members and develop a friendship with them so that they will give us referrals, because that is the only way we will baptize someone here. Also elder law is my zone leader now haha how awesome is that and we are going on exchanges on Wednesday!

I’m also in a car now so that is nice, we live in a big trailer in the back of the woods on a long dirt road I have my own bathroom, its pretty cool. And the car gets super dirty all the time cause of the dirt road. I’m pretty happy and excited.

Sorry I sent the stuff in a bigger box then necessary that’s the one we have and I just wanted to get it off. and I spent 60$ on my mission card because that’s how much groceries we bought or more like elder winger bought, cause the week before the cashier got confused and paid our groceries all on his card (we usually split the price in-half) so I said that next week I would do it all on my card, and he decided he wanted to buy a lot of groceries. I got grandpas box of jam that’s so cool me and elder McPheters are going to eat it all. I’m glad Alli like her present I thought it was a cool little pin.

Grant: hahaha you laid a kid out?!! that’s sweet, see hard work pays off, if you can keep it up and continue to work hard they will start you and you can thrive especially with your size and power just make sure you go out every day and out-work everybody, perfect practice makes perfect performance. Varsity is the goal. :)

Oh and grandma Harper, Washington DC is so cool I can’t wait to come home on the same day as you hahaha that is so funny

I have some pictures I’m going to attach one is of my old zone on pday, the rest are of me and elder McPheters

Well I love you guys, I can’t wait for this awesome time with elder McPheters, your prayers are definitely helping and I always need them.

Letter Home Aug 15 2011

hey fabulous family 

so i had a great week this week. we were able to teach (name) the guy who came to church last week, we have taught him 3 times and he has read all of 1 nephi and some of 2 nephi and he has lots of interesting and good questions haha hes funny too he always talks about political controversies  like all the obama stuff and how the government is spraying chemicals on us hahahaha i think its hilarious, after one of our lessons we had told him that we can only listen to certain music and he said oh than you will like this and he played us a song from a contempary christian band called "The Afters and the album is called "light up the sky " it was a good song. anyway that was just a side note, um we really didnt find any new people this week we had lots of people drop us and lots of appointments fell through which meant a lot of biking, we did have lots of interesting people talk to us though. one day we went up to talk to this lady on her porch and a guy who was probably related to her comes up to us and says " your going to hell and so is your church and all that false doctrine you preach every day so leave" and i hadnt even said anything to him except hello that made me pretty mad and i just rode off and waved at him then later this week we stopped to talk to a guy on the sidewalk and he couldnt talk so he used one of thos vibrating throat things haha idk what it is but he puts it up to his throat and starts cussing at us haha and that is the first person who has cussed at me and he cant even talk, so that again made me mad haha ya lots of mean people this week for some reason. also we taught a lady who wants to be a morturist like one of those people that works at mortuarys ha she was kinda creepy too.

ohh ya i almost forgot... im getting transfered! i do know i wont be training cause they wouldnt send me into a new area and train at the same time. so ive been packing all morning hhaha and i have some stuff im gonna send home that i dont use like some clothes that i will never wear. i also got a gel seat from a member that they never use so they gave it to me but who knows i might want a new one so ill let you know if it works. i cant look at the pictures that you put on the memory card the camera wont let me it says empty card.

i will try to find something for alli its hard but i try when i have time, i loved the box that i got it was awesome thank you and im glad that dad loved the cheerwine and the tangy carolina sauce i dont know were im gtting transfered to until wednsday so ill let you know next monday but i think im going to charlston area

well i got to go i love you all and i cant wait tohave a new experience in a new area with diferent companion, who know maybe ill be biking still haha. i love you all and im glad to have you as my family

love Elder Harper

Letter Home Aug 8 2011

Hey there family

I was exhausted this week! we did a lot of biking and it was really really humid so I was sweating nonstop we have been finding a lot of people but mostly dropping them cause they don’t keep commitments and so we cant waste our time with them. we did get to see (name) this week though, we sat down with him at his office and went over kind of the restoration and what he expects to get out of us teaching him, h wants more study material so we hope we can teach him more this week. mom you were asking about (name) the girl that I baptized, she isn’t doing so well we haven’t been able to see her in a long time, she was doing fine until after she went to girls camp and she just got a bad impression somehow of some of the girls and then her mom anti-d her pretty bad and the mom also kicked the grandma out of the house who was living there with them and is a member of the Spanish branch, she was the main good influence on her but now that she isn’t around her it doesn’t help. We have tried to stop by but she isn’t very receptive, she is glad to see us but just not wanting to talk so there is nothing more we can do than just hope and let her home teachers and the youth keep trying. We haven’t had anybody come to church for a long time but yesterday we had a guy come to church who we had contacted earlier in the week. When we first talked to him he asked a lot of questions and had never heard of our church and so we answered them and we talked about like gay marriage and drinking and stuff like that and he just told us that he didn’t think gay marriage was bad so basically at that point we knew we couldn’t teach him and he wasn’t ready so we gave him a card with the church address on it and invited him but he said ok and I wasn’t expecting anything to happen plus id completely forgot about him, but he came to church and stayed the whole time and said he wants to join the church so we are going to try our best to teach him and help him progress so that was probably the most interesting thing that happened this week.

thanks for the package. could you send me some David Osmond music and josh groben and maybe the meet joe black, and also a copy of the apollo 13 soundtrack I love the instrumental stuff on that one, also if you find any cool polyester ties send them cause polyester is the best for sweat cause they don’t get ruined.

got a card from grandpa sirro and he sent me a $100 Wal-Mart gift card hahaha that made me feel so special, and I even got a little teary eyed cause that day I was having a hard day and I was so tired

we have zone  conference tomorrow so that should be good.

Grant for football season work hard and do your absolute best to be the best on the field every day and it will pay off I know I had to go through the same in track and xc

I love you guys so much also could you send some of the pictures on the email in the next package please

Love elder Harper :)