Elder Jonathan Bryan Hooper: Week 50, With a new transfer and a new companion comes a great responsibility! plus pics

Happy Monday everyone! We had a really good week here in Staten Island. I will be staying here for at least another 6 weeks, but Elder Tuiaki is leaving me! Nooo! I am going to miss him so much. We have had a lot of fun together these past 4 months. So on Wednesday, the week before transfers, the mission president makes calls if you will be a trainer. That whole day we both were freaking out whenever the phone would ring since we both felt that one of us was getting a call. So as we both were freaking out, Elder Tuiaki starts playing ring tones and pretending to answer the phone and say "Hello this is Elder Tuiaki. Oh, President, I am doing good how are you? Oh you want Elder Hooper?" kind of stuff all day! It was pretty funny. Then at 8:30pm that night as we were driving home, the phone rings and Elder Tuiaki is like, "uh oh". He shows me the phone and it says President Calderwood. We both just start freaking out. He answers it and puts it on speaker phone and President says "The Lord wants you to be a trainer!" and Elder Tuiaki says "Wait you mean for Elder Hooper?" and President is all like, no for you! and Elder Tuiaki was going crazy and screaming since he was so excited and President and myself were busting up laughing! It was fun. He then told elder Tuiaki to come to the meeting the next morning and he says to make sure to bring Elder Hooper with you too. So that hinted that I was going to be told something as well, but I didn't really think much of it until at the meeting President Calderwood says that he wants to meet with me. He called me to be the district leader here! I am very excited for this opportunity to learn and help my district! it is going to be a blast!

So we had a really cool experience with prayer a few days ago. There was a man pulled over on the freeway taking up a lane and we pulled in front of him to see if he needed some help. His car broke down so we agreed to help him get it off the freeway. We took out car off the freeway and walked back on to help push Ramos' car off the freeway. We were unsuccessful unfortunately since this huge hill we were attempting to go up was too much for me and my Tongan buddy haha! I told Ramos that the only thing that we could do now, is to pray. So we hopped in his car and I prayed with all the faith I could get out of myself. Immediately after I said "please just help us get the car off the freeway so we can diagnose the problem safer" we hear a knock on the window and it is a police officer that said, put your car in neutral and I will push you off the freeway! He took his car and pushed us off! It was so cool! Ramos also was just feeling so blessed that day and it was just an amazing experience.

Donald, the awesome Sri Lankan man we met a while ago is doing really well. He has a baptismal date for November 17th! He came to our Ward's primary program (which was so good!) and he loved it. We taught him again this morning, yes on our P-Day so Elder Tuiaki could see him one last time. I met a man from Turkey at the ferry earlier last week and we were able to teach him at the church with a member and the other Elders in my district set us up a member present lesson with an awesome young man too! It was a good week!

We will be adjusting our lemonade stand to some hot chocolate stand at the ferry this week as it is super cold! Having a car is nice since we can turn on the heater :D. We are going to be at Stop&Shop this week to promote our blood drive we are doing on November 9th. It is going to be a good activity we hope. We also will be promoting Family History some more and Bishop wants to put an add for our FH center since we are going to be there and open it up in the mornings now as well! There are lots of fun activities happening!

I am sorry there isn't a whole lots of details in this letter. The computers in the library are cutting our time short! Gotta go carve come pumpkins!

Love,
Elder Hooper

Happy Halloween!

Holding hands at the rockaways ( an area hit hard from Sandy)