#5

Wow..... any way so i thought i would start of by telling mom how long her letter was holy cow!  I won't be able to answer all of those questions now so i will send you a hand letter tonight!  :)  But as touching some of the things!  I think it is so great to here about hunter's papers, Congratulations to Connor for becoming a priest, and the whole thing at Farnsworth is crazy!  That is just crazy!  Thank you for signing we up for classes already and thank you for the advice for BYU.  I still want to come home, do MCC, then go elsewhere after the semester.  I feel i need to come back to arizona first.  So yeah also i think it is fun that you saw Ean!  I miss that kid a lot!  ummmm what else....I do don't know oh YES!!!! RAQUEL HAD HERE BABY!  She had him all the way back on May 29th but they finally had some time to themselves and wrote me :)  Her name is issaya and she is super cute!  I sent a picture!  they are doing so good and i am so happy to hear from them!

So voilà i am short on time so i will relate two awesome experiences with you guys!

So this last week we set two baptismal dates! One with a young man named Ibrihim, who comes from the Ivory Coast and is 19!  The kid is awesome and wants to become a Christian.  He will be baptized on the 14th of July!  It was great because we have worked through a lot of people trying to find someone who would be ready for baptism and voilà!  So now the next one is crazy cool!  So i told you that i was learning spanish and i even told dad that we would be teaching an all spanish lesson.  So yeah i have been learning spanish and it's been kinda random but i have been trying and finally here in Evry comes the niece of a member who is from Cuba and will be spending the summer and maybe longer here in France.  I tried talking to her in my broken spanish and i didn't make a ton of sense but i tried my best and we became friends haha.  So Then last sunday we felt the spiritual impression to go ask her if she wanted to take the missionary lessons with us.  She agreed and said yes :)  Well so that meant i had to learn how to speak better spanish.  Luckily her aunt was there to translate if i needed help with things.  So we get there and we start talking and we tell her why we are there and everything and about 20 minutes into we start to get on the subject of Baptism.  She lives in Cuba and will probably never have the chance to ever meet the church again and she says, "i want to be baptized...." Tears filled her eyes and started in mine but i didn't cry cuz i'm so tough!.....;) But she said i need to do that so my problems will be solved and i said well gretyl if they aren't solved will you regret your decision to be baptized and she told me, "No.  What better way to plea your case before the Lord, than to say that you have already committed to follow him by baptism." I was convinced!  HA she accepted to be baptized the 28th of July my 2 year mark as a missionary!  So yeah there is the story!  She is so great and it is wonderful to see how the Lord gave me the gift of tongues to be able to speak at least a level in which the spirit could bear testimony!  It was awesome!

Donc Voilà c'est tout pour moi maintenant!  I think that is it because i am short of time but thank you again for everything that you do and i will write you soon mom!  I love you!

Elder Hoopes