Week 95 - 9 weeks to go, Humidity is a killer!

We had a great lesson with a part-member family this week. After
praying about what we should share, we felt impressed to do the jar
analogy of putting The Lord first in our life. We put all the
materials on the table and then asked if the husband of the member
wanted to join us. We used the cool analogy that we felt prompted to
bring as an excuse to have him come in. We started asking him
questions to see where he was spiritually. Hearing this question from
my mission president yesterday at our zone conference, I asked, "are
there any questions you have that religion hasn't been able to
answer"? He responded with "why does God allow evil to happen to good
people?" We had a really good conversation about this topic and talked
to him about our next visit- teaching him the tools to use to receive
his own answers to these questions. We didn't even use the analogy,
but we had a good lesson!

We had an interesting street sweep a few days ago! I was saying it
would be cool to do some family history finding by setting up a
Christmas tree with pictures of our family on the tree, thus becoming
our family tree. I said it would be intriguing. Elder Goodson then
says jokingly, "very punny". I didn't have any idea what he was
talking about, until he explained "In'tree'guing" haha! The activity
went ok. We had a few signs up and made our family tree using a
Christmas tree from the church! I talked to a man who is agnostic, but
really just in denial. It would take God Himself to come down to this
man to get him to believe. We used the free wifi from Dunkin Donuts to
show the FamilySearch website on our iPads.

This week is a big week for any NY- 9/11. Whenever I saw the 9/11
memorial specials on tv I would always think, get over it, it was was
10 years ago. Living here, I understand why it means so much to the
people here in New York. Not only did it cause so much destruction and
kill many people, New Yorkers are very sentimental and have tender
feelings towards their individual towns. All their history of their
families are in these cities. They either risked everything they had
to come to NY and began a new life here, or were born here with
countless generations that go back to NY. It is pretty cool.

So, all is well out here in Brooklyn. The work is going very well
right now! We are finding lots of Less Active families and helping
them make the steps to go to the temple and bring back the feelings of
safety, peace, and courage the gospel brings.

Love,

Elder Hooper