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?