Monday, September 12, 2011

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

Wednesday, September 7, 2011

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

Monday, September 5, 2011

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?