Week of October 13th

It is great to hear from you all every week

Sounds like the wedding went well - i saw a few of the pictures that mom sent me. Karene sent me a picasso thing i'll open up afterwards. but so you know i can only go on the church websites.

well the week went ok. we had 7 member lessons last week and that is really solid. definitely happy about that. though our street contacting has been really bad - a lot for me because i am not an outside of comfort zone or talk to strangers person. but i've learned a lot this week (i hope). had quite a few realizations and i hope i really learned from them. We got one new investigator this week - a graduated kid, he seemed pretty receptive, and has a couple friends really helping him (one was there at the lesson) who are LDS (or about to be baptized).

Thanks for the letter, Caitlyn. yes it is pretty hot here! but not too much more than in boise - it gets up to the 100s sometimes. it's just a normal temp at 100. luckily we are at the time where it is cooling down now. the nights/mornings feel so nice.

sorry mom, we were in a hurry out the door and i forgot to bring my camera and someone else's computer cord so that i could email some pictures. i sent some a few days ago in the mail so you'll get a hardcopy of some pictures. i hope that will be enough if you need them before next week. i didn't want to have to deal with sending a CD either so i guess you'll just have to use the scanner.

this might be a short email though because i'm a little lazy today. i think i'm starting to have a cold - my throat doesn't feel quite 100%

oh thanks for the package though mom - we already ate almost all of the cookies. and the pumpkinbread just has escaped attention i think they'res still half of it left.

well it is going well on bikes. tell you what with our 7 wards we cover, the farthest one out (avalon) is our 3rd busiest so i sleep pretty well at night, i'll just say that.

had a good experience i'd like to share before i close: (which reminds me, thanks for all of the forwarding of the other eagle guys!)

We were visiting this family on wednesday. and the WML (ward mission leader) is a great guy, really been helping get a hold of this family. anyways the father was baptized and knows a lot but hasn't been in a long time to church. i think he was baptized by foster parents or something - just a temporary family and then was taken in by some catholics (just some background). anyways he has the nicest wife and some kids. we were there and not to sure (elder howell and I) what we were going to teach. i was a little out of it and wasn't thinking too much really. elder howell did this lesson with ether 12:6 and faith called the faith-o-meter. it involves a tea bag lit on fire and it's pretty cool, we do it with a lot of less-active, recent converts, or part member families. so he did that and then i just shared 3 BOM stories (nephi & brass plates, Ammon, 2 thou stripling) and how they used their faith in action, to actually do something. their faith was active. and i used that to teach that point and then the WML closed it off pretty well and we left them 2 ne31 and i felt like that was exactly what they needed (whether they listened or not) and done in a great way. Elder howell didn't know what was going to happen in the discussion. and when i was looking up the scriptures i had no clue about how this would tie in(i was a little out of it) and then WML just capped it off. great lesson on how if we're led by the spirit even if we can't see the end from the beginning, things can work together better than so much planning would have. once again 2 ne 4 nephi led by the spirit not knowing what he'd do (that's the scrip i shared about the story). it's funny how that idea (faith will = action) was taught to everyone there - it was for the family but i learned something about/from it too. cool beans! well i love you all!

Elder Hoopes