North Charleston!..pretty cool

Monday, November 26, 2012

Heyyy

 Well your probably wanting the news on where I got transferred to, looks like dad is the winner cause I’m in North Charleston baby!. its pretty cool down here i love it, unfortunately our area doesn’t cover, like historical Charleston, but its close enough to where we can get permission to go there if we want and we have a senior couple that can take us, we also get free dry cleaning when ever we want so that’s sweet, and we live with the Spanish elders who are also the zone leaders in a 4 pack apartment, it’s way fun cause they will just say random spanish words and me and my companion will try to talk Spanish and it doesn’t make any sense. Oh yeah, so my new companion is Elder Lee, again hahaha there are 2 Lee's in our mission I got both of them back to back this one is Micheal Lee, he just got done being trained and he is such a cool guy to work with haha i love him and he loves the gospel and has a great desire to share it, it makes it so much easier when you have a great companion and i don’t see us having any problems, cause he is just so laid back, but also very obedient so its gonna be great, he is from Springville, Utah. I love the ward here its so awesome we have so many cool members who just want to do missionary work and they try to make it apart of their life every day. I was so impressed at church, especially the ward leadership, they just want to share the gospel and they look for ways to do it. The bishop is cool, he had us over for Thanksgiving and I got to know him very well, he actually served his mission in our mission a long time ago. He’s a little older than dad, so around that time haha i don’t know, also I met one of the counselors and he is awesome bro Albright and his wife they love sharing the gospel, he said that he just wishes he could retire now so that they can go do their 10 years of being senior missionaries. We are baptizing a 16 year old girl this saturday named (S) she is awesome and is the friend of a member so I’m way excited. We also have some other cool people that we have on date and are progressing, the (M) family, (L), and (T). (T) is really cool we found her my first night here she was an old lead and she let us in right away she is in her early 20's and is pregnant, when we asked her what she thinks about Joseph Smith she said she totally believes it is true, haha I was like no way we haven’t even taught her like anything and she already believes it, that’s awesome she is on date for dec15. I love this area already and I’m glad I will get to finish my mission here.

 We played in the turkey bowl and I have been really sore all week, I haven’t played football since last thanksgiving.

 YAAAA  ASU!! winner winner, thats so funny that the guy put up ASU banners in the Dahls trees hahaha I would have loved to do that. 

 That’s so cool to hear that Marissa is going to san diego, I’m proud she decided to go. Hopefully when Madison goes I’ll be able to see her before she leaves. 

 Grant looks like a beast on the field especially wrestling john, grant you need to continue to live in the weight room until next football season thats how you will get looked at big time and give you lots of advantage.

It was great to hear from you guys I’m excited to be on my mission.

I still don’t have my debit card yet but hopefully it gets here today and I got your package good. 

Love Elder Harper:)

Transfers

Monday, November 19, 2012

Hey there y'all,

 So the big news is I am leaving Marion after 6 months haha, I’ve been here a long time, but I feels like it went faster then when I was in Aiken, so Elder Lee will be training a new missionary these next 3 months, that’s cool I’m excited for him and he has been wanting to do that, I think he will be a great trainer and his trainee will be lucky to have him. So here’s an update on our week,

 I went on exchanges in Conway on Tuesday with elder Denny and we did a lot of work on the coastal carolina campus, setting up flyers and talking to people about the intro to Mormonism. They do that there every once in a while, its a way cool idea and they also set up a stand in the campus court yard and try to talk to as many students as they can. We had lots of cool things happen, we only planned to be there for 30 minutes but stayed for 3 hours because we kept meeting people and they would ask us what we believe and who we are, it was awesome. We even found a less active girl who moved down and was going to college at CCU but couldn’t find the church anywhere and Elder Denny was prompted to hold the door open for a group of students and we ran into her. She said that she saw the elders a week ago and couldn’t talk to them and thought she would never see them again but because we were there she found us. We also went to a frozen yogurt place that Elder Denny and I met this girl that works there named Darien, my first time I went to Conway, and she has slowly gotten more interested in the book of mormon and what we believe. She’s from upstate New York and hopefully she will continue to read the book. We also had a cool miracle, we had a guy move into our area from the conway area named (J) and he has been thinking about baptism, he was gonna get baptized like 5 months ago but something happened and it didn’t happen and so now he is getting baptized on Nov 24. Elder Lee and I gave talks in sacrament meeting yesterday. It was great we talked about the things that we learned from our meeting with Elder Bednar. So I’m sad I am leaving, but I am kind of glad to go to a new area, it’s hard to spend 6 months here because it is so small. (S) is doing good, we haven’t been able to teach her this week though, and she didn’t come to church because her grandpa went to the hospital and she went with him but she said she has been reading and she has lots of questions. Ooooh, haha we also have recently met these 3 mexican guys in a small mexican community, everyone is from veracruz for some reason, but there 3 guys, one is (O), and his 2 uncles (L) and (J). We went and taught them and then after they fed us real authentic mexican food, this ain’t the american stuff either, we had cow tongue tacos and tamales. Haha, i know the tongue sounds gross but it is soooo good, tastes just like beef, we should have some when i get home. 

Well, that’s crazy to hear that Madison is going on a mission.

No i can’t think of anything I really need, you really don’t need to send anything to me, especially gifts, I can wait till I get home for them

Sorry not a lot

Love Elder Harper :) 

Crazy Week

Monday, November 12, 2012

Heyyy

 Woow lots of new things to talk about so, yes first off we have our senior couple the Bowmans now full time in our area and they came to our District meeting on Tuesday. Wednesday we were so anxious to find out who won the election and when we went to the library and right on the front page we saw President Obama’s face and we were like AWW MAN! It really is such a bummer, especially when you serve here in a place that has such bad unemployment and people struggle, ughh its ridiculous, all we can do now is hope that congress makes good decisions. We went to the Allens house that night and he loves politics, hahaha he was so mad about what happened. We went and taught one of his friends named (B) who is a stout Methodist  and has told us "I’m not gonna change" but he invites us back so we are gonna go through all the lessons and hopefully something will hit him. We also this week found this really cool lady named (D) who is related to some of our other investigators we taught her the restoration and she just loved all of it and when we asked her what she thought about it all she said "it must be the truth" then the next day we went by with the Bowmans and taught her friend (F) the restoration and she also liked it. They didn’t come to church unfortunately cause she was up all night doing something, (S) didn’t come either cause her grandpa got sick and she had to go see him early in the morning, but we had (M) one of our youth, has brought his friend (D) who’s 17, to church 3 weeks in a row and we are gonna teach (D) tonight, I’m excited cause he is way cool and his mom doesn’t mind him coming to our church just as long as he’s in church.

Of course you heard from President Holm that my wallet got stolen, but also they took my backpack which had my wallet and camera in it and they took my GPS that I bought last year haha so I have like nothing. so pretty much we were in a really bad area probably the area most known for break ins and killings, or whatever and we were teaching (S) and I had forgot to lock the car (which I normally do remember to) and we were there for about an hour and we left at 7:30 and all my stuff was gone, and no elder lee didn’t have anything stolen except for his bag of 3 musketeer bars which he is still mad about hahaha, jk. The next morning we went back and walked around the whole place and found my backpack in a trash can with my camera still in it, and some random things that were in my bag, we found down the road where the person obviously walked. So we pretty much know where they live but there is no way to be able to get my wallet or gps unless they pawn it off and we get the police to get it from the pawn shops. Also in my wallet was my school ID's, my temple recommend, and my eagle scout award card and I think the RX card but I don’t remember what it was and also  I had about 100 dollars of cash in there that I had saved up.

Then, haha that same night that that happened at about 11:30 right outside our door we had 11 shots that were fired by one of our next door neighbors friends and we had the sheriff and a couple other cops come knocking on the door with their M-16's and full gear on, hah that was scary, luckily nobody got hurt and they arrested both of the guys and they got evicted.

Is channing frye still on the suns or dudley?

Well that’s pretty much all i have, thanks for all the info

Love Elder Harper

ps. zack looks soo different.

Pictures from Senior Couples Blog

Kelly and companion Elder Lee on the left facing each other.

Kelly, (with back facing), Elder Bednar,(center) Prsident Holm, and Elder Lee and Sister Holm

92nd Birthday Party

Harper  Rd. with Elder Lee

King of the Army Tank

Fish Taco Time

November 5, 2012

Monday, November 5, 2012

Wow awesome week,

 All except that I’m still a little sick we had a good week. I called the mission doctor and he gave me some stuff for bacterial sinusitis so I have been taking an antibiotic and its working really well so it should be gone in a couple days i hope. Well the biggest news is that we had an awesome 3 hours with Elder David A. Bednar, it was like the most spiritual meeting I’ve been in and will probably never be in the presence of an apostle of the lord in that small of a group again (192 missionaries plus 5 stake people) he dictated the whole meeting off of questions and the answers we were told to read 2 talks he has given.  He first asked what we learned and what the pattern was of the learning and how we need to be that way with our investigators, how too often we think of them as objects that we act upon rather than agents who have the opportunity to act, I wanted to to ask a question but couldn’t think of one good enough to ask. Then at the end he bore his apostolic witness of Jesus Christ and heavenly father and left an apostolic blessing on the mission and each of us individually that if we are faithful, our mission will affect us for good so much more than we can imagine. It was freaking AWESOME! and i shook his hand and I mentioned he had visited our stake a couple weeks ago, which he remembered. We also had a cool experience yesterday.  One of our investigators sons got in a serious car accident where he broke both legs and also his femur in one and we went to Florence to give him a blessing, it was a pretty cool experience.  Earlier in the week we helped another person in the family that we are teaching, when she got in a wreck, not as serious but we happened to be driving past right after it happened and were able to help and call 911, cause they had no phone and it was in a remote area.

Those pictures of grant in the varsity uniform are sweet, do they only have the P on one side of the helmet?

Bummer to hear about Nash, why is everyone in lockouts? It is so annoying.

ASU needs a couple big time players to put them on the map

That’s so cool to hear about parker and how he was needed for them to win and that the Wynn boy won his division.

Haha,  thats way cool that she knows who Jackson is, a little bit, yes he is going to gilbert chandler community college right now.

Way cool to hear that Marissa Capareda is going on a mission and maybe Kara!

Ya, the average submits for missions each week used to be 700 and now its almost 4000 each week

Well that’s all I have this week  I am going to print out your emails and answer any Q's I missed

Love Elder Harper:)

Monday, October 28, 2012

Hey everyone

 Man this week has been a roller coaster, so last week we were kinda tied down cause Elder Lee was sick with a cold and then on tuesday night I started to get one also and we stayed in all day wednesday and I slept all day cause I felt awful and then we tried to do as much work as we could but it was very limited and I still have a stuffy nose as of right now but I feel good. So an update on some investigators, that lady that i told you about last week her name is( R) and it was a pretty cool story about how she said she had a dream about us coming and teaching her and she probably did have one who knows but we went over for the third time and actually went inside and tried to go over what we taught her before and she couldn’t remember anything that we told her 2 minutes before. She kept thinking we were Jehovah Witnesses or that we were apart of them and then she’d be like "Oh your not" and then forget that we said that 2 minutes later. She has some serious memory problems, so we were like well this isn’t going anywhere so we stopped teaching her cause it would be impossible for her to actually keep commitments, but we think we were sent there for her to learn and accept it in the spirit world. We also got in contact with a family we found a long time ago when elder cranford was here, a girl named (S) and brother (N) and their mom (J).  (S) and (N) are in their early 20's and we taught them the restoration and plan of salvation it was great and (S) actually came to church and she liked it a lot. We also taught a kid named (K) he is 20 and lives in like one of the only rich neighborhoods in Marion. He lives next to the (C) family( awesome members) and we have taught him a couple times. He really likes it and says he would not rule out joining, the only problem would probably be his mom. She doesn’t like us very much but she likes the (C) family so we hope to teach him at their home sometime. So, that’s kinda how the week went.

 Haha bummed to hear about the painting of the house, wish I could help repaint. I can totally see dad getting upset.

Grant got picked for varsity!!!! That’s stinkin AWESOME!!! I’m excited to hear how he does in the playoffs, take pictures of him in the varsity uniform please with helmet on and everything. Grant this is your time to impress and shine with the varsity squad

I will send the memory card today. Too bad about the pizza, but yeah we went to a Mexican restaurant and I also got your package okay.

Well gotta go love you

Love,

 Elder Harper :)