Design Problem

Somehow I messed up on publishing these in order. His letter this week is below the week before. Just keep looking

Monday, October 8, 2012

Well hey there everybody,

      Wow general conference was awesome probably the best part of the week, not that the week was bad but just not as good as conference haha. One thing that was cool this week is that since our district of us and the Conway elders hit our district baptismal goal for September, we got to go have dinner at the mission home with president and sister Holm and the assistants, that was really cool and then president gave us a little training about how to have happiness and how in order to have happiness you can’t just focus on happiness, it starts first with a vision and then so forth there are things you need to do in between vision and happiness that help you achieve happiness, and of coarse the gospel is a part of it. The rest of the week, other then that was okay haha nothing really awesome happened. We had lots of people who said they were gonna come to the church and watch conference but they didn’t come so that was a big bummer but i guess you can only invite people and can’t force them to come even though some times you really want to cause you know its gonna help them so much, that’s probably the hardest thing about Marion is finding people who will actually do what they say they will. We find so many cool people who are interested but they don’t really have too much real intent beyond the interest.  I think its mostly because most of them have been living here for so long they have tunnel vision and they can’t see that there is so much more out there for them, cause honestly if I grew up here in Marion my whole life I would feel the same way, that this is all there is, and there is so much bad stuff here which makes it worse.  It depresses me sometimes, but on the more positive side of things, transfers! So when we were at the mission home president talked to Elder Lee and I in his office and told us we would be together another transfer so that was exciting news and elder Denny will be training a new missionary next transfer so elder Brinkerhoff is leaving.

My favorite talk of all of conference was probably elder Bednars talk on how we can have a strong testimony and still not be converted, but those who have only a testimony can fall away from the church, but those who have a testimony and are converted will not fall away.  Believe it or not I heard the talk that elder Holland gave, it was very similar to one he gave in the mtc, we have that one on video that president Holm gave all the companionship's to be able to watch, so that was cool.

Well dad looks like you did a little better than last year, and I still hold the record from 2 years ago with 3:40 for the marathon, cause scott wynn only got 3:45.

 No, I’m good on a suit for now I’m using my black one that i used last year. It’s not too torn up, but it will be by the time I come home, so we will have to go suit shopping when I get back. Yes, sign me up for St. George.

Well I don’t know what else to write haha, oh yeah we haven’t really done much on p-days lately then just be lazy in the apartment, but I want to go play basketball at the church today so we will do that, there really isn’t anything to do here haha, and I haven’t gotten to many letters lately but I did get a couple from Gaby a couple weeks ago.

So that’s all I have for you guys this week.

Love Elder Harper:)

Monday, October 22, 2012

Hey everyone

 So something cool,  President Holm announced on our monthly mission conference call that Elder Bednar is visiting our mission on Nov 7 hahah that’s AWESOME, I’m so excited. For some reason he has become my favorite apostle and I honestly think he'll be the prophet soon. So that’s cool, he came to your stake conference and now he’s coming to my mission, I’ll try and get a picture with him!

(the guy next to me is using the scriptures on LDS.org haha and I just gave him a card from mormon.org)

So this week was really up and really down.  Elder lee got sick on Wednesday and was super contagious so we stayed in all day and then we worked on Thursday, and then Friday he was feeling worse so we stayed in till 4 when we went down to Aynor to have coordination and dinner with bro Allen our mission leader and we went out with him for the rest of the night, and then we also met this lady who told us that she had a dream and a man came to her and told her that 2 men would come and teach her about the truth haha that was crazy and so we taught her the restoration and then we went back and found out she has memory issues so were gonna have to work with that, but its a pretty cool story to tell.

 So I didn’t tell you guys last week but elder seaver is my new zone leader hahaha him and elder  abankwa, the black elder from Ghana.  Man, I was pretty excited when I heard that and I saw him at stake conference yesterday and gave him a big hug, its so weird to think he’s my zone leader but he will be a great one.

Hahaha I love grants costume that’s stinkin awesome.

Bummer that the Cards lost but they are better then before, who is RB other then beanie wells?

I hope we can throw a beat down on Oregon, let me know what happens

 Yes just send me a note in the mail on who would be the best to vote for all the other people cause, haha I have no idea on any of this stuff

hey dad for the pizza the only place I know is pizza hut in marion  and you can do it on Wednesday so have them drop it off at 5.

Well that’s all I have this week. Sorry not as much as I would like to write just short on time

Love Elder Harper :)

October 1, 2012

Hey there everyone,

Well we didn’t have anyone show up for church this week again it was kind of a bummer, really though I have gotten used to it cause most of my mission has been people not coming to church for whatever reason and it has been very humbling experience and also teaches me that sometimes no matter how badly you want to help people you can’t force them to do anything no matter how hard you want to, I just hope they realize what they are missing inside. We had a rough week, lots of appointments fell through for whatever reason, people always say oh I forgot or I had to go somewhere haha, but I don’t know, you wish they would let you know or tell you if they really aren’t interested in listening, but I guess all I can do is keep trying until we find the person who is willing to do things to change. We did find a lady named (J), i think I told you guys about her, she is really cool but she dropped us on wednesday she said in a text that she will contact us if she wants us to come teach her, haha it just breaks your heart when you meet someone so ready and they say not now, so hopefully she will change her mind soon. We did find a couple people, especially a mexican family they are cool, the daughters of the family speak great english and they are both married but live on the same street and the dad is okay with english but the mom speaks no english we were hoping they would come to church but they didn’t. Oh well, we are gonna try and teach them this week and they told us that they are catholic by inheritance and they aren’t practicing so that makes it easier. (S) mom also kind of had a freak out on us cause we went by last sunday morning to wake him up for church and she didn’t think that was okay, so she told us not to come by anymore, but hopefully that was just a short thing, but we are just giving them time. We have (L) and another guy (M) on baptism date for oct 27, so we are excited to see them progress. we found this cool guy named (P) he is in his 30's and is wanting to change his life which he already has started, he used to deal drugs and had lots of money from it but then realized it didn’t bring him lasting happiness so he stopped, but then he has since lost a lot because of no income, he has a strong desire to change though so I hope we can teach him this week and get him to come watch general conference.

We watch conference at the church building, I’m so excited for it I cant wait. We also are gonna be having an apostle come to the mission in October I believe and rumors are its Elder Bednar, so that would be pretty cool.

Man, its crazy to think coy is married haha, I never thought he would get married this fast. Tell him congrats for me.

Dylan is gonna be taking in some good mula at the bank.

Mom I thought you had a hand held video camera? and do the coaches video tape the games on the top of the commentator box on the stadium? 

I heard about the cardinals win streak, that’s so awesome, an investigator had it on at there house and they showed the highlights when we walked in so I saw a little bit of it haha I’m so glad kolb is good. Bummed about hockey lockout.

Keep working hard Grant don’t give up, show the coaches you deserve to start at DE.

Your awesome Alli!

Well that’s all I got for this week

Hope you have a great week

Love Elder Harper:) 

Baptism Week

September 24, 2012

Woooow, yeah so we had a great ending to a good week, (C) and (D) were baptized Saturday by their 19 year old brother (M). haha it took a couple times for each of them to get it right but they did, and I confirmed (C) and elder lee confirmed (D) and what was even cooler is on Saturday we had an investigator named (J) come to the baptism we had only met her the night before and we taught her the restoration and then invited her to the baptism so she came and she loved it and then afterwards we taught her the plan of salvation with the senior couple in our area the Bowman’s. She stayed up until 4am reading the book of mormon after we taught her the first time haha that’s cool. She didn’t come to church cause i think she felt a little overwhelmed cause have given her a lot of information in only 2 days and committed her to baptism so she told us that she was going to read and pray and let the spirit guide her on what to do, but hopefully we will be able to teach her on friday. we have been finding so many cool people lately and its so cool this area has been so prepared and people are just coming out and are so accepting to the things we teach, they might not all get baptized but they are open minded. Elder Lee and I are getting along great haha, we have such a good time together. It’s crazy to see how the time is going by and it goes so fast.

Well that is a great story to hear from coach moretti and yes i would be glad to help coach when I get back.

So mom i don’t think I will need another white shirt so don’t worry about it cause suit season starts right after conference anyway, so I wont really be wearing that many short sleeves.

Alli that’s a sweet cart wheel you did there, now you have to do a back flip!

I’m glad to hear brennan boyle is doing good, tell him I say hi.

That’s all I got for you guys

Love Elder Harper

Some new Pics!.

A fun random picture found on the Senior Couple's Missionary Blog.

Tranfer Day with Elder Harper on the right. His new companion to the left of him, Elder Lee. To the left of Elder Lee, is one of his former companions, Elder Stever.

                                      

Monday, September 17, 2012

Monday, September 17, 2012

Hey man its been a crazy week, hahaha

Yeah so last monday we got a flat tire, I think i told you guys about that but we had our little doughnut tire on for the day haha and we got it fixed on tuesday morning. Tuesday was crazy we were trying to find people to go to a fireside with president holm they are doing one every other month now but we couldn’t find anyone so that night we biked around Marion and went to a street to knock and the first door we knocked on we talked to this lady named (D) she is really nice and she said that she usually talks to missionaries but tells them to leave, cause they are too pushy or something and so we were glad that she hadn’t already told us to leave but we had a great conversation with her and she said she would read the book of mormon and pamphlet we gave her so we are excited to see what happens. We had interviews on Wednesday, it was great to  hang out with elder williams and elder isrealsen who are still the AP's and we also taught (C) and (D)who are the youngest boys of a part member family who has started coming back to church and they are being baptized this saturday the 22 which is way exciting. On thursday we got a call from (S) mom telling us to go talk to (S) cause something had happened at school so long story short we went over talked about it and also read the scriptures of the stripling warriors and he got pumped up about baptism and wants to go on a mission. So the next morning we got a voicemail from his mom telling us basically since we didn’t call her back and tell her what we talked about she didn’t want us talking to him or her or go to their house anymore and we were like "what the heck!!" NO!! but we found out that she was over reacting to us because (S) had run away and they couldn’t find him but last night after wondering where he had gone we found him walking down the street with help from his little brother so that was a relief and we put him on date for sep 29 to be baptized. We also had a birthday dinner at a pizza place with an older lady member who just turned 92 years old haha awesome.

Well that’s cool to hear about grant and sad about Eli getting hurt that’s the worst.

Man ASU LOST! They spanked missou last year, is the new QB Kelly pretty good? What year is he? freshmen?

Cool to hear about dylan.

love elder harper:)