Tuesday, May 6, 2014

Week 77, #miracles and This weeks funny

Happy Mother's Day to all the moms in my life, especially my mom, the best mom of all! I am looking forward to skyping you on Sunday! The weather is finally warm! It has been in the upper 60s. I am sure that that is cold for everyone in AZ. We sure did have a miraculous week this last week.

After our weekly basketball activity, we taught a young man named Asa.

This guy is a stud and a really good example to me. He has a lot of faith and I was super excited to teach him the restored gospel. It went really well and he said he would be baptized when he feels this is true. So we taught the Joseph family again this evening and they are just great (names changed). They fed us some delicious food and we had a good lesson with them. We were just super bold with them. They have been taught by missionaries for years! Their daughters are members, but they aren't. They are not married so they weren't able to get baptized. I said, so tell us some spiritual experiences you have had (I was trying to test the ice a bit and see where their testimonies were). The father immediately said, we know the church is true and the scriptures are true. At first I was a bit nervous, because I thought he was basically saying "yes, we know you are just trying to see where we are at". After some talk about the spirit I was praying and felt the only option I had was to just be straight forward with them. I said, "Bro and Sis Joseph, we need you in the church. We need you (Sis Joseph) in Relief Society, and you (Bro Joseph) in the elders quorum. The Lord needs you. We need you to be baptized. I know that you know that we are here to help you be baptized, so what is the next step for you?" They also gave a straight forward answer. We need to get married they said. They told us they will in July when their daughter is back in town! It was cool! Being loving and bold is what we must do! I am excited for them. After we taught them, we went over to the church to teach Michael and Tiffany. This was an awesome lesson! We talked about the Doctrine of Christ and they understood it well. Elder Nugent asked them to be baptized and they said they were thinking about it throughout the week and May 25th, the date we originally set, since this was Tiffany's birthday too! I then said you will need to get married as well. They said can we do it on the same day? I was like of course!! It was awesome. They got all excited and were cute together! A marriage and baptism on the same day!! That will be amazing. The Lord is blessing us so much. I feel honored to be able to be apart of this work. We are also teaching with President Calderwood at another awesome family's hours this week. Future bishop there!

We had an amazing Mission Leader's Council last Thursday and I learned a ton. Today has changed my life! We the most powerful Mission Leader Council ever. President Calderwood's prayer was the most powerful prayer I have ever heard. He addressed God with much respect, calling Him, omniscient, Man of Holiness, Father, etc. He sincerely thanked him for the blessings he had received, then told him the things that the mission has been doing, like the 5/5/5 goals to help The Lord reach His vision for His children. Then he asked him for the blessings we needed. The spirit in that room was undeniable. I honestly felt that God himself was standing in our midst. I learned how important prayer is and how sincere it needs to be to truly communicate with God! It was one of those prayers in the scriptures where it says the things were too sacred to write haha! It changed the way I pray I for sure.

I sure do love my mission! So many miracles and just lots of awesome stuff. I know that this church is true. When we repent we are forgiven in "real time". As we participate in ordinances and make covenants we can be cleansed. Love you guys!

Elder Hooper

So we had a nasty rain storm the other day and of course being a missionary you just get soaked. I decided to put my shoes in the oven to dry them out. 385 degrees and 10min later, my companion looks at the oven and says "well it is working since you can see the steam coming from the oven!" I go and look and see that it is definitely not steam, it is dark smoke. I open the oven and the smoke goes everywhere and you can see for yourself what happened! Thankfully I put my shoes on the top rack knowing that the bottom would melt them, but my poor companion had to suffer the consequence!


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