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