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?

Letter Home Aug 22 2011

 

Hey so I guess you can tell from the heading that I'm in Blythewood, it is east of Columbia but I'm basically right in Columbia. my companions name is Elder Cameron McPheters he is soo cool haha he is just what I needed, he is always laughing and we have fun together all the time, he is from Rexburg Idaho and he’s been out for 8 months. Our area is the problem area in our mission. It’s had so many problems with the police and stuff telling missionaries they can’t proselyte and stuff. it is a great area just the one problem is since its a super rich area nobody is outside walking around and knocking isn’t very effective here cause nobody is home during the day and when they are they don’t even give us a chance to talk. But we have found 2 people who are interested and that’s all that our teaching pool is haha, there hasn’t been a baptism here in 9 months, we hope to turn that around. So all we really do is go to member’s homes and work through them we are just trying to build the trust in the members and develop a friendship with them so that they will give us referrals, because that is the only way we will baptize someone here. Also elder law is my zone leader now haha how awesome is that and we are going on exchanges on Wednesday!

I’m also in a car now so that is nice, we live in a big trailer in the back of the woods on a long dirt road I have my own bathroom, its pretty cool. And the car gets super dirty all the time cause of the dirt road. I’m pretty happy and excited.

Sorry I sent the stuff in a bigger box then necessary that’s the one we have and I just wanted to get it off. and I spent 60$ on my mission card because that’s how much groceries we bought or more like elder winger bought, cause the week before the cashier got confused and paid our groceries all on his card (we usually split the price in-half) so I said that next week I would do it all on my card, and he decided he wanted to buy a lot of groceries. I got grandpas box of jam that’s so cool me and elder McPheters are going to eat it all. I’m glad Alli like her present I thought it was a cool little pin.

Grant: hahaha you laid a kid out?!! that’s sweet, see hard work pays off, if you can keep it up and continue to work hard they will start you and you can thrive especially with your size and power just make sure you go out every day and out-work everybody, perfect practice makes perfect performance. Varsity is the goal. :)

Oh and grandma Harper, Washington DC is so cool I can’t wait to come home on the same day as you hahaha that is so funny

I have some pictures I’m going to attach one is of my old zone on pday, the rest are of me and elder McPheters

Well I love you guys, I can’t wait for this awesome time with elder McPheters, your prayers are definitely helping and I always need them.

Letter Home Aug 15 2011

hey fabulous family 

so i had a great week this week. we were able to teach (name) the guy who came to church last week, we have taught him 3 times and he has read all of 1 nephi and some of 2 nephi and he has lots of interesting and good questions haha hes funny too he always talks about political controversies  like all the obama stuff and how the government is spraying chemicals on us hahahaha i think its hilarious, after one of our lessons we had told him that we can only listen to certain music and he said oh than you will like this and he played us a song from a contempary christian band called "The Afters and the album is called "light up the sky " it was a good song. anyway that was just a side note, um we really didnt find any new people this week we had lots of people drop us and lots of appointments fell through which meant a lot of biking, we did have lots of interesting people talk to us though. one day we went up to talk to this lady on her porch and a guy who was probably related to her comes up to us and says " your going to hell and so is your church and all that false doctrine you preach every day so leave" and i hadnt even said anything to him except hello that made me pretty mad and i just rode off and waved at him then later this week we stopped to talk to a guy on the sidewalk and he couldnt talk so he used one of thos vibrating throat things haha idk what it is but he puts it up to his throat and starts cussing at us haha and that is the first person who has cussed at me and he cant even talk, so that again made me mad haha ya lots of mean people this week for some reason. also we taught a lady who wants to be a morturist like one of those people that works at mortuarys ha she was kinda creepy too.

ohh ya i almost forgot... im getting transfered! i do know i wont be training cause they wouldnt send me into a new area and train at the same time. so ive been packing all morning hhaha and i have some stuff im gonna send home that i dont use like some clothes that i will never wear. i also got a gel seat from a member that they never use so they gave it to me but who knows i might want a new one so ill let you know if it works. i cant look at the pictures that you put on the memory card the camera wont let me it says empty card.

i will try to find something for alli its hard but i try when i have time, i loved the box that i got it was awesome thank you and im glad that dad loved the cheerwine and the tangy carolina sauce i dont know were im gtting transfered to until wednsday so ill let you know next monday but i think im going to charlston area

well i got to go i love you all and i cant wait tohave a new experience in a new area with diferent companion, who know maybe ill be biking still haha. i love you all and im glad to have you as my family

love Elder Harper

Letter Home Aug 8 2011

Hey there family

I was exhausted this week! we did a lot of biking and it was really really humid so I was sweating nonstop we have been finding a lot of people but mostly dropping them cause they don’t keep commitments and so we cant waste our time with them. we did get to see (name) this week though, we sat down with him at his office and went over kind of the restoration and what he expects to get out of us teaching him, h wants more study material so we hope we can teach him more this week. mom you were asking about (name) the girl that I baptized, she isn’t doing so well we haven’t been able to see her in a long time, she was doing fine until after she went to girls camp and she just got a bad impression somehow of some of the girls and then her mom anti-d her pretty bad and the mom also kicked the grandma out of the house who was living there with them and is a member of the Spanish branch, she was the main good influence on her but now that she isn’t around her it doesn’t help. We have tried to stop by but she isn’t very receptive, she is glad to see us but just not wanting to talk so there is nothing more we can do than just hope and let her home teachers and the youth keep trying. We haven’t had anybody come to church for a long time but yesterday we had a guy come to church who we had contacted earlier in the week. When we first talked to him he asked a lot of questions and had never heard of our church and so we answered them and we talked about like gay marriage and drinking and stuff like that and he just told us that he didn’t think gay marriage was bad so basically at that point we knew we couldn’t teach him and he wasn’t ready so we gave him a card with the church address on it and invited him but he said ok and I wasn’t expecting anything to happen plus id completely forgot about him, but he came to church and stayed the whole time and said he wants to join the church so we are going to try our best to teach him and help him progress so that was probably the most interesting thing that happened this week.

thanks for the package. could you send me some David Osmond music and josh groben and maybe the meet joe black, and also a copy of the apollo 13 soundtrack I love the instrumental stuff on that one, also if you find any cool polyester ties send them cause polyester is the best for sweat cause they don’t get ruined.

got a card from grandpa sirro and he sent me a $100 Wal-Mart gift card hahaha that made me feel so special, and I even got a little teary eyed cause that day I was having a hard day and I was so tired

we have zone  conference tomorrow so that should be good.

Grant for football season work hard and do your absolute best to be the best on the field every day and it will pay off I know I had to go through the same in track and xc

I love you guys so much also could you send some of the pictures on the email in the next package please

Love elder Harper :)

Letter home - August 1, 2011

Hey guys

First of all thanks mom and dad for the personal letters you guys sent me that really helped I think I read both of them like 50 times this week. Ya we have had a crazy week this morning we had the termite guy come to our apartment and he is going to be there all day to take care of our termite problem. Then earlier this week, the 3 apartments next door to us got broken into in 2 days, I guess the guy came back the next day to break into the other 2 apartments so we were being super careful about making sure everything was locked up. But nothing happened to us so I know that heavenly father was watching out for me because I a being faithful and obedient in doing his work that’s what he does he protests us when we are doing what we are supposed to be doing. I crashed on my bike again this week, well it wasn’t my fault. I signaled to elder winger that we were turning and apparently he wasn’t watching so he just ran right into me and we crashed in the middle of the street, haha man I got a little mad. We have dropped a couple of investigators cause they aren’t progressing and aren’t keeping commitments but we had dinner with a part member family and the wife has grown up Baptist but the husband is the only one who is a member and they let us teach them about the Restoration and the wife was very interested and had lots of questions about families being forever and stuff and so she said she would be open to coming to church and so we hope to teach them again soon. But that’s all that was good that really happened or that was exciting. But even in the lesson with them I wanted to read from the restoration pamphlet because I thought it would help the wife to understand better and elder winger thought that it was stupid and that it is not used for teaching and we got in an argument after we got home about it, haha. Other then that it was a good week. In my scripture reading im in mosiah 2 and I love verse's 40-41 that talks about enduring to the end and if we endure to the end we will live in eternal never ending happiness.

I spent a lot of money lately on my bike so sorry if the costs seem high, I had to change both my tires this week they were way worn down and they were warping and I had to change both tubes in them also haha not fun, I've spent so much money on tires and tubes on my bike its ridiculous. And I did by some more tea tree shampoo and conditioner so but other then that I haven’t really spent much on anything.

I did print your email last week and I’m going to start printing them because it’s hard for me to get through them all the way. Dad it would be best if you could send those byu talks I have a binder to put them in already. And ya just send more music the stuff I requested in my last letter, snacks would be good like cliff bars and stuff, haha why did you send me another Chap Stick thing hahahah now I have like 5 of them, anyway.

Any sports news I heard something about the dbacks trades from a member any new sports news

Grant I can’t wait to hear about football and stuff go out there and work you’re hardest and you will have so much fun, never give up

Alli how are you doing are you excited for school? Summer went by so fast.

well I hope you guys have a great week I pray for guys every night and keep me in your prayers, I love you guys so much and I’m trying my best

Love Elder Harper