Fort Bragg/Fayetteville - Week 8

Hey everyone! 

Elder Hardy and I are having a blast! Last week was pretty hectic with Christmas, but it was a lot of fun. 

I got to go on exchanges with Elder Sheely on Wednesday and then I got to be with Elder Medrano for a couple hours on Thursday. 

Holidays partially exist in the mission, we typically just work through them. We still had things to do on Christmas but the Spirit that came in was extra special. It has been awesome to see how much more open people are during Christmas time. 

Sorry I don't really have a whole to say this week. Love y'all!

Love,

Elder Harper

Fort Bragg/Fayetteville - Week 7

Hey y'all! Merry Christmas!!!

This last week was a crazy week. We had transfers last Tuesday. Elder Kiddle got transferred and now I have a new companion, Elder Hardy.  He is from Pleasant Grove, Utah.  He is a blast! We get along really well and both of our sights are set on becoming the best people we can be. He goes home in 5 weeks, so we are set on making them count.

Wednesday we did exchanges. I was with Elder Jenks here in our area. We had a great time. We went on a Bro date to Olive Garden with some gift cards we had been given. The waitress asked us if we wanted some wine!

 Thursday was a good ol' work day. We ate a dog biscuit, just for the heck of it. I do not recommend it!!! They taste like cardboard and not the good kind!

Friday we had a leadership training meeting in Raleigh which took the majority of our day. I also started to get kinda sickish with a sore throat, pretty sure it had nothing to do with the dog biscuit.

Sundays we spend at the church pretty much all day because we cover two wards. Sunday night we went to see the Volavolas. They are Fijian, and they had this weird looking thing on their wall, turns out it's a whale's tooth. In Fiji when a man wants to marry a girl it is tradition to give the father a whale's tooth as a symbol of engagement (Mom tell Steve he needs a whale's tooth)! Then We had a coordination meeting with our ward mission leader and those are way too much fun. I'm shocked we get anything done. Because of my sore throat, my voice dropped what sounds like an octave, which made me sound like a smoker. Brother Ralston gave me some drugs and now I am doing better. I still sound like a smoker though.

Love y'all! Have a great week!

Love,
Elder Harper

Merry Christmas from Elder Harper and Elder Hardy!

Fort Bragg/Fayetteville - Week 6

Hey everyone!

So last week was a lot of fun! We had a lot of stuff going on. We had a Zone meeting Wednesday. It was way good! Can't really remember what we talked about right now but I do remember the Spirit was super powerful.

I was with Elder Smith in his area which is coincidently our area so we weren't to far from home. Quick miracle story from exchange. I was with Elder Smith in his area and we found ourselves with spare time to tract at 8:30. I asked Elder Smith what our goal was in for the time we had and he said 2 new investigators, I'll be honest I thought we could only find one, but We put some faith into it and we went out and found a man in 2 minutes and taught him a 20 min restoration lesson. Then we only had a few minutes to find another person. So we started knocking doors with lights on hoping that was more likely to result in someone being home. At 8:59 we were running to the next door. We knocked and no one answered. Feeling deflated we started walking back to the apartment. Luckily we were only a minute walk from the apartment. Half way back we saw a man sitting outside so we talked to him, taught him a brief restoration lesson. So we found our two. It's crazy what faith can do.

Then on Friday we had a Tri-Zone Christmas Zone Conference. There was a story there that was shared that was super powerful. There was a lady that spoke named Nicole. She has a special needs son that had a lot of problems when he was born. The doctors said he would never be able to walk or do anything a normal kid would do because of the position his neck was in. She went on to explain all the trials they have been through and how they have overcome them. One trial was her son needed to develop his neck strength to balance himself, so that he could walk.  The way to do that was to crawl around on the floor, but it was super painful for him to crawl. So Nicole spent a month crawling around the apartment trying to get him to follow her so that he could get the strength needed to walk.

That story made me think a lot of our Savior Jesus Christ and all that he does to come down to our level to lift us up to a higher level.

Well that was last week. Love y'all!

Love,
Elder Harper

Fort Bragg/Fayetteville - Week 5

Hey Y'all!

Last week was way fun! On Tuesday I got to go on exchange with Elder Ben Pope, which was a blast! It feels like not too long ago we were sitting in chemistry class together, now we are both on missions in the same place, crazy stuff!

We found a really nice Spanish couple. Elder Pope taught them the Restoration because he is Spanish speaking. I got to use my high school Spanish to share my simple testimony. It was an awesome lesson.

After dinner we went to stop by a less active. He is a single father or at least he was. We showed up and he and his new wife had just got home that morning. They needed help unloading a
U-haul, so we spent some time doing that.

Afterwards, at 8:30 we had some spare time so we knocked on doors and found a new investigator! It was an awesome lesson. He was asking lots of questions about what is our purpose in life. He is also an interrogator in the Army.

We had so many people cancel appointments last week, so we ended up with a lot of gaps in our schedule. It was amazing to see how we were guided to where the Lord needed us to be.  It was very easy to see that with Elder Pope, he is awesome!

I gotta go but I hope y'all have a great week!

Love,
Elder Harper