Kelly and Trees

20 years old in 20 degree weather

ya so when we woke up this morning we checked the weather and it said it was 18 degrees outside and we looked in the parking lot and there was ice on all the cars. Haha it was freezing and its the coldest it has been all winter, the weather here is weird. so this week was pretty sweet on tuesday at our District meeting I read them all the part in your email last week dad where you talked about how far I am in my mission and how it feels to be out this long and afterward elder wilcock who is going home in a month said "thanks for reading that I really need it" I knew it was going to inspire our district and we needed some inspiration and we doubled the numbers we had this week in every catagory as a district combined, and I know it is because we have some experience and hard working elders in our district now and we had more faith and focused on hitting our goals, we had a goal for 9 people at church as a district and we got 7 which was way better then last week, even though me and elder north were the only ones to not have someone at church. Anyways we had a great week and elder law was so happy on the phone last night he was like "what did you do man? whatever it is keep doing it" ya it made me happy too. we also had a sweet lesson with a less active on wednesday after coordination and we brought our RM assistant ward mission leader went with us (he is also the stake presidents son and he is super cool, reminds me of dylan) and the less active invited his 2 friends over for the lesson cause they had questions about deep doctrine stuff mostly hahah it was fun, we all learned lots of stuff the one friend jason who had most of the questions and the other miriam who was agirl just kind of listened the whole time but Robert who is the less active started having epiphany's during the lesson and was teaching his friend haha it was so cool and Robert has been studyin and praying and has received answers to his prayers its really cool to see him progress, tonight we are teaching them all again tonight the restoration so that should be awesome since jason said that all his questions revolved around why there are so many church's on the earth haha we were like well we will tell you next time haha so ya it was really cool.

so ya I got your package I havent opened any presents yet but I am gonna open some today and some tomorrow, i also found out the President Holm is coming to my district meeting on wednsday and is gonna take some time to speak haha talk about being nervous and not wanting to mess up haha im exctied but also just kind of nervous ha it will be great though. so I will probably get a picture with president for my birthday wearing my tie that im supposed to wear I will wear it both days.

ya today we are going to go to firehouse subs for lunch, its like the best sub place they have such good hot subs

WHATTTTT!!!!! ALIESE IS GETTING MARRIED :O oh my gosh that was totally un expected woooow, I dont know what to think haha all my friends are getting married and so fast, i wonder whos gonna be next?

Alli dont worry about the songs you are playing, just play your best and western theme isnt bad its cool, I miss you a lot and i will get to talk to you soon in may.

also something cool i found out one of our ward missionaries bro brian dougall he was on the food channel challenge and won for his chocolate cake desert look him up on the website and also i need grandma harpers info so i can give ti to sister wheatley who knows grandma from high school 

well ya thats all for this week it was good and I still cant beleive aliese is getting married haha that blows my mind, thinking I went to homecomeing with her haha.

well have a great week I lvoe you guys and thanks for the birthday package its gonna be a great 20th in the mission field 

love Elder Kelly Harper

ps- tell lindsey and aliese i say congradulations :)

Elder Harper in Blythwood, South Carolina - Dec 2011

Letter home 2/6/12

Febuary 6, 2012

Switcherooo!

So yes transfers happened this week and we got elder seaver from orem, utah as elder kerr's new companion and they also came out together in the MTC and stayed in the same room so they know each other very well and love it, next elder wilcock is elder taetakua's new companion, elder wilcock is on his last transfer, he goes home in 6 weeks and he is from Arizona I think and is really cool.  He just got released as a zone leader in Greenville, he is funny too. I love our district now, we have some good strength and experience that is going to really help us. Elder seaver  cant bike because of medical stuff so we now have 2 cars and we got the chevy malibu from myrtle beach, but we only have 600 miles this month cause it will be sold next month so we will have to bike a little bit. I also found out that elder seaver is friends with a girl who knows elizabeth cracroft , ha so that was kinda cool. So yesterday we had a crazy day we got a call in the morning and we had to skip PEC  to go give a lady a blessing in the hospital who just moved to our ward.  We went to see her and she knew a lot about the church and told us she served a mission in Argentina and we gave her a blessing cause she had some huge thing on the side of her head. Later she kept calling us to get phone numbers of people in the ward and then we found out that she had checked herself out of the hospital and was going to the aiken ward at 1pm. Later we went to see our bishop and his wife said that he had taken the lady to university hospital in augusta and that they found out that she isn’t a member and that she was scamming us, and looking back on when we were visiting her, it didn’t really feel right and I didn’t feel the spirit there with her and now I know why, so ya that was weird. But the good thing that happened yesterday is that we did have an investigator come to church and he loved it, and we are teaching him on Thursday so that’s sweet. We also taught a less active 21 year old who our assistant Ward Mission Leader ( who got back from his mission last year) grew up with and he went with us right after church. Robert, who is the less active said that he prayed about the questions he had and said he got an answer and it made sense to him and we talked about a lot of confusing doctrines mostly on the plan of salvation but he loved it all and we all learned a lot. so ya its been good.

So something funny that happened last night, we just switched our apartment around so all our beds are in the living room and our study desks are in separate rooms so we can have better studies and last night at about 5am  my bed had been shifted a little from me moving around and I fell off and the mattress flipped up and fell on me, hahahaha! Elder seaver who is next to me started laughing but tried to hold it in and after we all had gotten up and said prayers later he couldn’t stop laughing, haha it was funny.  I also hit my head on elder norths wooden bed frame. The pizza was good and it lasted us a couple days cause we didn’t eat it all that night but ya thanks for that and the pizza was right on time too.

hahaha ALL HAIL ZEE NEW YORK GIANTS!!  haha i knew they would win

Ya dad, I have come to that point on my mission that you are talking about, where lots of things back home don’t matter and I just want to focus and get the work done and is a lot more fun now, then it was before cause I have learned so much, and I’m not still trying to memorize what the first lesson says, but I am trying to focus on what I can do to find more investigators and be as productive and effective as possible, its been good.

Ya mom I bought a new bike seat cause the other one i had was just the original trek bike seat that was as old as the bike and the seat cover was not working I got sick of it so i bought a new seat and now after I have used it for a couple days I dont like the new one I bought so im going to return it and get a different one that I know is comfortable haha sorry for the confusion, and when I took off the old seat I saw that it was really messed up and bent.

dad you need to come to south carolina and drive, you will find out the drivers are 10 times worse here.

mom if you need to send some pictures of my mission with people that you dont know so I can write names on the back of the pictures for you, you can do that and ill send them back. 

mom just send my birthday box to the mission address,  the banana bread was really good it made me so happy

oh my gosh kevin and seth and taylor????!!!! What! haha I was not expecting that at all kevin is getting married fast. and I don’t think I know brenda strong. but you should send me a picture of them or something.

ooh i just had the idea of you guys getting a in-n-out burger and sending it to me but I don’t know if that would actually work and i kind of want to do the whole 2 years without an in-n-out burger so don’t do anything that was just an idea haha.

well hope you guys have a great week we are doing great and I cant wait to get a letter from this mysterious girl that kristan is setting me up with haha anyway thanks for being the best family ever ha and only!

 love you guys

Love Elder Harper

Letter home 1/30/12

well this week was pretty jam packed. we had interviews on tuesday with president holm and some good trainings from the assistants and president. he told us he was one of the people that helped develop the missionary planner and how it is designed for us to fit more into our day then before and help us be more effective  missionaries then they were like 8 to 10 years ago.  He also told us if you have any regrets or feel like you haven’t been your best, or you messed up that we need to draw a line in the sand, and from today on you be the best missionary and be the best you can be and don’t worry about the past, don’t carry yesterdays problems into today and that really inspired me cause I sometimes feel like I have to be perfect as a missionary and if I am not baptizing as many people, that I am not being a good missionary. its hard sometimes not to beat yourself up and feel bad especially when i know i am not being disobedient and now as a district leader I am accountable for the whole district and lots of stuff gets put on my shoulders so it has been hard the past couple weeks especially since the other elders who are in our apartment haven’t been getting along and they are both very young. So ya its been a rough 6 weeks in some ways but hopefully this next transfer we will get some elders who have some experience and can help me out.  I do love elder dixon he is a great guy and really wants to work hard, but yes we got transfer calls and elder dixon is leaving he has been here for 6 months I’m going to miss him and also elder olsen who is in north augusta is also leaving after being there for 6 months and they were mtc companions I am really going to miss elder olsen he is like the only one that likes sports haha so I could relate to him and talk about it, and he is a great missionary he is gonna be a leader soon, but elder north and I are staying.

I had dinner this week with the wheatleys sister wheatley (kathleen) knows grandma harper and i am gonna give her grandmas info and kathleen also knows grandma smith.

we just found out that another police officer was killed this week and that is the second time in 6 weeks and they haven’t had a cop killed in almost 50 years and they have had 2 in a month so that is the big news here. We had a broadcast from salt lake for stake conference this week and elder Gonzalez and elder Ballard spoke which was really cool and it was only for the 48 stakes in Georgia, Florida and South Carolina it was cool, then after someone asked us to give a blessing to his wife in the parking lot but she was in the van and didn’t feel like getting out so we had to get in the back of the van and stand bent over as we gave her the blessing haha I have never done one like that before but it was cool.

i saw the picture of elder dennison and i swear all the missionaries that come to our ward always look older then the ones that are in my mission and i dont know why maybe cause they are always bigger and taller, that’s cool now that we have 3 in the ward and they are visa waiters. So the sad news is elder boyd who i served with up in boiling springs who knows lindsey blaser is going home also and also elder nelson who was my zone leader there and trained elder law is going home so its a sad week for me:(

so dad to answer some questions our teaching pool has been a little small we had a bunch of cool people that we found but one who was Rose has been in the hospital for a while and we don’t know what happened to her if she is ok or not, then another guy bryant has been working and is never home and Isiah who we put on date didn’t come to church cause he had  lots of pressure from his dad who doesn’t agree with us and so we stopped by at night yesterday and got him to still come to an appointment on thursday so we need some new people to teach. Georgiana has been doing great in boiling springs.

 Everything has been going good i lately have been thinking about how long i have been out and can’t believe it’s been this long it will be a year in about 6 weeks and I have so little time left i want to be the best i can. Also i hope grant will take my challenge at reading the book of mormon at least 2 times before i get home and to read it like a book so he can understand it, cause I would have loved it if i had done that but I just didn’t know, and you guys especially dad should try to help the missionaries as much as possible cause being a missionary is hard, so ask them how you can help them and the work will progress even faster and also offer to have lessons at our house that also is a blessing when members offer to have investigators over, so that’s a little tid bit of info for you guys and grant should go out with the elders as much as possible when he is a priest. How is tanner doing? 

sorry i don’t have much more to say but i kind of wrote a lot hahaha but I will talk to you guys later, thanks for the memory card and pad

hope you guys have a great week

Love Elder Harper :)

Letter home 1/23/12

ya soo it has been pretty cold this week and also it has rained like 5 days in a row this week ahahaha i dont know where it all comes from, i had exchanges on tuesday with elder isrealsen who is elder laws companion and also ZL he is a cool guy loves baseball and he kinda looks like dylan but just with blonde hair, he has the same thick glasses that dylan has right now. hes cool but hes one of those guys who kinda can be a little fake sometimes and im just like why do you have to act fake, just be yourself. we also this week found lots of cool people one lady we knocked into cause the less active next door wasnt home and we knocked on her trailer and she asked us to sit on her porch and she was super humble and open, she is about in her mid 60's and she kinda reminds me of wanda scruggs and she also has some health problems but she talks like her and stuff ha i thought it was weird, she was supposed to come to church but she ended up in the hospital so she couldnt come and that was a bummer cause she really wanted to come. also something crazy that happened on wednsday night, the aiken elders, elder dixon and elder kerr went to contact a media referral and it was about a 30 minute drive away and they went to a way sketchy place in the back of the woods to a trailer and went inside and talked to this guy who is missing his leg and his toes on the other and they were their for like an hour and a half and he kept telling them all this controversial stuff and about how he hates jews and stuff and how he hates interracial marriage and kept telling them that the bible says that interracial marriage is the worst sin and then later on as they were driving back with the member couple that took them to his house, the wife told them that they just talked to August Kreis the leader of the Arian nation aka ( neo-nazis and kkk and all those people) and that he was on the jerry springer show and got kicked off for offending jerry springer and then they realized who they had just spent an hour and a half with and they got super scared and freaked out hahaha so ya thats the craziest story i have heard on my mission and this guy lives 30 minutes away from aiken south carolina  hahaha. then friday i was pretty sick and i had some sort of stomach virus i threw up and stayed in all day haha not fun, but then on saturday we helped a family in our ward move into their house and it was raining while we were doing it haha then after that we went to the stake center and helped out with the missionary training experience for the youth, president holm spoke at it and a couple of the companionships got to help out in the classes that they had, it was cool getting to teach the youth about missionary work and how to be missionaries now while they are in school, and thats pretty much how the week went. 

so the arsenal jersey is sweet, and grant no i will always win at PGR sorry haha, i am the master at that game, but i will still play you and give you a chance. It was great to hear about you bearing your testimony at youth conference, now you need to read the book of mormon all the way through by the time i get home, that is my challenge to you and you could even read it 2 or 3 times be for e i come back, that is my goal to i want to read it 3 times before i come home and so i think it would be good for you cause i never really read it that much before i left so take some time instead of reading the cat books and read the book of mormon it will help so much and increase your testimony of the gospel.

ya you guys could totally order pizza for us but i dont know when cause our nights are kinda crammed but maybe next week, transfer calls are on saturday and elder dixon has been here for 6 months so he probably will be leaving but we keep telling him that hes gonna stay haha you guys should get a picture with elder dennison if possible, elder north will probably be staying cause this is only his second transfer here.

i know the videos are pretty funny, some of them probably cut out the sound cause i kept zooming in and out but we had a great district in blythewood it was fun, elder mears cracks me up.

i dont need any stamps or envelopes im good, but ya being a district leader has been good, kinda frustrating at times cause you have to help your other elders with their investigators when you really know nothing about them and you hope that your district will listen to you and take your advice but they dont sometimes and its hard but ive tried to not worry about it and just let them do there own thing and just try to be an example to them cause all of them are under 6 months and are pretty inexperienced so they dont really know a lot but its going well

well i got to go so i will talk to you guys later but for my birthday i dont really want much cause I really dont want a lot of stuff so you guys could send snacks and stuff though like moms banana bread and zucchini bread ha i cant spell that, and also some more differin stuff and also some red scripture marking led refills for my multi color pencil, you can get those at deseret book

well i am doing great love you guys

Love Elder Harper:)

Letter home 1/16/12

Yes, we have officially moved georgianna out of the ward and she now in boiling springs, which is a bummer but is still pretty cool though, she was so thankful that we helped her move she had a lot of stuff and got it all in the u-haul, what is funny is that the u-haul had an Arizona license plate on it hahaha i thought that was weird/cool. We got to call the elders in Boiling Springs and tell them about her and they helped her move into her apartment.

This week we had lots of trouble trying to get in contact with investigators, they were never home and wouldn’t answer the phone, one in particular is mike. He has been taught everything so hopefully we can contact him again. Ha ,ohh man, so in church on sunday i gave a 5 minute talk on youth and missionary work and it went very well and when we stood up to sing the music before the 3rd speaker, a member runs up the isle and screams "bishop stop, someone is having a seizer (I cant spell that) haha but apparently this old guy had gotten up and was walking out and just lost consciousness and fell it was kind of awkward cause there was an abrupt stop to the music and they got him out to the foyer and we went on with the program. I guess kinda like when the timmerman boy fainted in church one time.

We also contacted a referral we got from the new pilot program we are doing and she is really cool she wants to read the book of mormon and wants to know more about us. Its been freeezzing cold when biking this week haha we never realize how cold it is and than i don’t bring gloves so I always am riding in like 35 degrees weather without gloves or tissues haha I need to get better at putting gloves on. Oh, georgianna got me and elder north ties for a gift because she is leaving and i got a cool blue and gold tie I was like wow sick tie. I did get a letter from Courtney this week and found out that Kevin and Lauren aren’t dating anymore cause Lauren moved to California so ya.

I can’t think of what else happened this week..... oh ya me and elder north were witnesses at a secret wedding hahaha our ward clerk was getting married and wanted to keep it a secret and so the bishop married them and since they had no witnesses they called us haha it was pretty cool.

Man, you guys are going to lake knoll without me? that’s mean, haha but, ya that would be cool.

yep i got the movie all good and we did have movie night but nobody showed up :( its been really lame lately i don’t know why, haha, and we did have basketball night but we weren’t there we were teaching Georgiana a new member lesson so the aiken elders went.

we do usually eat with all 4 of us in the apartment we have had our fridge packed with leftovers so we haven’t had to really cook much but we haven’t had too many dinner appointments lately but its ok, we had a member couple have us over 3 nights in a row and they took us to five guys on Tuesday, haha I have never had that happen before.

Lindsey possibly getting married!! well i do have to say its about time, she couldn’t get through BYU without it, haha well send me pictures when the engagement happens.

well i need to go but it was a good week, we are going to a part members home tonight and inviting him to be baptized during FHE so well see what happens, i have a feeling he will say yes though ha.

Love you guys!

Love Elder Harper:)