Tuesday, June 19, 2012

Letter home June 18, 2012


Hey there everyone

So this week was good, nobody came to church for us this week, we had a couple committed and then cancel in the morning and we had others that we couldn’t get a hold of. Something interesting that happened on Saturday morning the day of the baptism we got a call at about 7:30 while I was in the shower and elder Cranford told me that someone who just moved into the ward is in the hospital and needs a blessing so we had to meet a member at the church at 8. Background story: so the day before on Friday we had to go to Florence and as we were driving around, I saw the lady that me and elder north went to see and give a blessing to in aiken who we found out later was not a member and was faking everything so that she could get free rides from members and medical care and she does it from city to city and somehow she made it out to Florence I was like wow I’ve seen her before and as we were driving to go give the lady a blessing I thought of her and how ironic it would be if this is the same lady, we got there and walked into the room at the hospital and it was THE SAME LADY with the big tumor thing on the side of her head, hahaha oh she had no idea it was me and that I called her bluff before we got there she tried telling the same story haha she thought she fooled all of us and after we gave her a blessing I told the member who is in the branch presidency and we told the doctor and told the branch president that she was faking. We had to give another lady a blessing who actually was a member who happened to be at the same hospital and as we walked by the other lady we could see that she was mad that they knew that she was faking it. So that’s my interesting story of the week.

We have been trying to set up appointments with our immediate investigators and they either have been busy or never answer the phone so it was a tough week but it was still good we went out with our branch mission leader brother Allen who is awesome and loves golf, he kind of reminds me of Grandpa Harper but he talks more and always so the phrase "I'm tellin ya" when he starts a sentence or story hahaha its funny. the baptism went well. it was so cool cause when she came out of the water she smiled and was so happy, she is a very different lady but she is very nice and humble, she isn’t so clean either, ha we went over for her interview and while the 4 of us were at her house she fed me and elder Cranford spaghetti haha and you could tell it didn’t look so sanitary, it didn’t have any flavor to it but I still ate it to be nice, its probably the closest i'll ever get to food in places like Peru, elder Cranford couldn’t do it so he gave it to the other elders companion who gladly, without fear, chowed it down haha.

Oh dad how is ASU doing in the college world series and any updates?

Yes mom I got the journal, I think it’s pretty cool and you did a great job.

I don’t think I am in the picture that the Berry's have of the trailer cause I don’t remember ever taking a picture like that but who knows

Maybe if you have any of your jam you could send me one of them elder Cranford likes homemade stuff and yes I'm pretty sure it takes and extra day to forward it to me in Marion, we do have some fast-food stuff but I really don’t know what all we have I know pizza hut and Zaxbys for sure, its a big spread out area.

Elder Law is an assistant he is in a 3 pack companionship that president is having them on a special assignment but technically they are also assistants so we have 5 assistants elder Williams, Isrealsen are the initial ones then law, Olsen, and riddle are the 3 pack, and me and elder law will be going with Wanda Scruggs to the temple on June 22 for her endowment I'm so excited.
Elder McPheters is not a district leader

And I have not gone to Myrtle Beach yet and probably wont unless there is a meeting in the building or for something special

Well I think that is all that I have to talk about since I can’t think of anything else right now
Love Elder Harper :)

Tuesday, June 12, 2012

Monday, June 11, 2011


 
Wooooo so, first i have to apologize for not saying happy birthday to you mom, even though its 2 weeks late, so happy birthday!

Well the big news is i got transferred to Marion, SC its right next to Florence and a little ways inland from the beach so its still the closest I’ve ever gotten to the coast so far hopefully i will get the chance to be on the coast before i leave but also elder mcpheters got transferred to north myrtle beach so he is on the beach, me and him just keep getting moved around together hahaha i love it. My companion is elder cranford he is from Jacksonville, Florida, and he talks like a southern boy. He played football and he is a pretty big guy, he reminds me of grant a little bit except grant doesn’t have red hair, he has been out a little over 7 months. President is trying something new with us I’m the district leader but elder cranford is the senior companion, its different because normally I would be both since I’m DL but i think this way it puts the load on both elders instead of all on one. Well marion is a branch with about 60 active members. It’s a big area and its cool cause when you get closer to the beach it gets really flat which is unlike everywhere else I’ve been. We have absolutely no hills in our area you can see the road for miles and its a swamp down here with lots of open fields and lots and lots of CORN hahaha i haven’t seen so much corn in my life i feel like I’m in Iowa, it doesn’t feel like most of south Carolina, but its a lot more humid down here, than in aiken or boiling springs. We have some really cool members although the average age of the branch is about 63 and we have like no active youth and one family makes up the primary 4 kids. President harvey is the branch president and he is awesome he is so motivated to get things moving. So about the investigators, we have Kathy, she is in her 40s and is getting baptized this saturday the 16th of june she is super cool we have a couple other really cool people and i think we will have a couple more baptisms this month: nick, betty  (maybe her husband willy, he loved church), antonio he is 21 and he loves basketball. oh by the way Marion is mostly black community, so almost everyone we find will be black or super country redneck hahaha. 

so dad you are crazy i need to teach you how to climb barb wire fences cause you can’t seem to do that right hahaha   

mom i did tell the barrys hi for you and told them that you love their blog, when we had zone conference the same week.

there is a lady in my branch who is 94 and got baptized when she was 10 by Legrand R Richards when he served in marion, cool stuff.

grant have fun at efy, make the most of it. I only went once and wish I had gone more cause it was fun. Also keep getting in the weight room, the pain pays off when you get to the game and the coaches will start on varsity the guys who put in more time in the off season and who work 10 time harder then anyone else if they see you doing that in the weight room and on the practice field they will favor you during game time, I’m going to change my favorite prefontaine quote for you
" I don’t play the game to see who’s better, I play to see who has more gutts" there is a guy in my new area named derrick weatherford he was an all star defensive back for Tennessee and won them a national championship in 1966 or 67 i cant remember he could have gone pro but hurt his knee when he was tackling a guy, he said he got letters from the cowboys and steelers. Love ya bud, work harder then anyone else!

Wow alli looks so much older now it’s crazy to think about and crazy to think i have less then 9 months left.
Great note from kody, im glad tanner is reading the letters.

Well that’s all the time i got, so i will have to go, have a great week
Love Elder Harper 

Wednesday, June 6, 2012

Leaving beautiful/historical Aiken





Monday, June 4, 2012


Hey there!!

Well i got news on thursday night, the day after transfers that I am being assigned to be a district leader again.  Elder Riddle who is one of our assistants called me and told me and also said that i will be leaving obviously, that was a sad night. I was like wow I’m actually leaving, I’ve been here in aiken for a long time and now I only have 9 months left. So i was pretty surprised I was called to be a DLL again haha, I wasn’t really expecting that but I guess president thinks that I learned before and I can be better now and handle it better and that I have  those qualities to lead a district better then last time and he has trust and confidence in me. That night I got the call was the same night I was reading the letter that Seth Avey sent me and i liked that a lot.  I love the story of his mission that he told me about how the whole mission baptized 2 people because they had faith and put it in to action, and the lord blessed them. I also thought about how its not always like, that the lord doesn’t always bless us with those 2 people, sometimes i wish he would so that I would feel like I’m getting rewarded, for my efforts but the lord does what he thinks is best for us at the right time sometimes he puts off those blessings till close to the end and sometimes earlier.
   So just an update on how the week went Matthew and Brittany who we found out were moving to Louisiana actually are back here for 3 weeks cause Matthew has to prepare for his GED test and then they will go back so that gives elder stever time to teach them with his new companion before they leave again and hopefully prepare them more for the missionaries in Louisiana if it gets that far. we went on a day exchange with Elder Riddle (the riddler) on monday night and tuesday and we had a great 2 lessons with this guy we met named jerome, they were so spiritual and jerome felt the spirit for sure but his parents who he is taking care of don’t really agree with teaching him even though he’s in his 30's so hopefully we can talk to him more and help him make is own right decision. So really upsetting news, maryann  the lady who was really awesome and wanted to come to church dropped us! we went to her house and there was a note on the door and it said "LDS elders don’t come back anymore" basically and didn’t say why, so that’s what’s been bugging us this week since we don’t know what happened cause she loved everything about us, it also could be her daughter that wrote the note cause she doesn’t like us at all. We had zone conference in Augusta on Wednesday.  It was great,  the theme was repentance and just moving and giving up the things that distract our mind from the work we read the "4th missionary"  talk and they gave each of us one to study it was great.

   So dad I heard you bought a sweet road bike well looks like im gonna have to use it also to prepare for my triatholon.
 pretty cool pictures of grant looks way cool, so duncan looks pretty ripped and man I can believe how he is feeling right now having to keep waiting for the mission call just tell him to be patient

Love you guys
Have a great week
Elder Harper

Tuesday, June 5, 2012

Monday, May 28, 2012


Man we had a tough week, we went from like 9 investigators to 3 in a couple days cause some people dropped us and we dropped a couple because they weren’t keeping commitments, its the worst when you have to drop investigators because you know what they need to do and either they won’t answer the phone or they won’t keep commitments. we had marlaina who was the really cool girl who moved from Tucson, Arizona, she has been going through a lot of stuff and told us that she can’t do this right now. We haven't been able to contact ashley but we went to her door at like 8:30 at night and she peeked through the blinds and texted us and said she had company over so we text her back and said we can’t  keep coming by if you aren’t going to show up at appointments and she never responded. So its been pretty rough, cause we really did the best we could with what happened and we biked a lot this week so finding extra time to tract was harder. With the BRP thing we are doing where the members send letters to nonmember and less active friends it has been really hard to get the members to actually sit down and write their letters that they commit to write and we keep following up with them but they still don’t do them and we got a letter from an awesome family the mcarthurs he is the second counselor in the bishopric and he and his wife are awesome they have like 5 kids all under 7 years old haha but they are awesome. sister mcarthur got a us a letter so we are gonna send it off tomorrow. We have a really awesome lady named MaryAnn  and she is still doing good her health kind of keeps her from doing much physical stuff but we went over and saw her and gave her a book of mormon finally and she promised she will read it, we tried to get her to church yesterday but she really doubts in her health she wants to come but since she never knows how she is gonna feel the next day she just says I'll suprise you so we need to get a member over with us to help give her some confidence  and pick her up for church.  I really feel if she comes to church that she will want to be baptized for sure, haha she told us that her daughter found out that we were coming over and her daughter got mad at her and anti-d her but she said i don’t care what you think, I know this is what  want to do and I am going to listen to them so that was cool to hear. We also last sunday went to go see a member and apparently the address was wrong but the door we knocked on opened and the guy invited us back and so we took a young man with us who is preparing to go on his mission and he took us out to see this guy again his name is brandon and we taught brandon and gave him a reading assignment and so our next appointment we went back with john who is the young man and brandon said he and his girlfreind who he lives with read the assigned chapter and also read 6 other random chapters and he kept telling us about other stuff and we were like wait how do you know that cause that was not in the chapter we assigned, so that was really sweet to find out they just liked what they were reading so they decided to read more  they are pretty cool an hopefully they have read more when we go back on wednesday.  
                                                 
I was talking to elder law and found out that wanda is going through the temple soon we don’t know when yet but she will be going before he goes home so I’m excited to go do that with her and she moved out of her smelly trailer and into the country somewhere but still in the boiling springs ward boundaries and I also found out the georrianna  who i baptized here moved out of boiling springs and she is now in Gilbert, SC which is the area that elder seaver is serving in right now  think she is living with her parents.

well super SAD to here about the coyotes mannnnn!! i was really hoping they would win this year, man its always someone who cheap shots our teams the spurs, red wings and now the kings.

well thats all the time I have this week so I hope you guys have a great  week and yeah dad you keep buying the elders lunch,  I would do the same if i was back home.
Love Elder Harper :)

 Wall drawing at the Basketball court, and an interesting food place!

 The one year buring of the tie and shirt.