Elder Jonathan Nat Hoopes

So yes i can't tell you how happy i am to have seen all the pictures from the three day walk!  That is always such an awesome event and i love that my mom was a part of it.  I loved seeing all the pictures of the family in Arizona!  I love that i will have a big family to come back to honestly!  So much fun!  Mom i am so proud of you and Julianna and i hope you know that i was thinking and praying for you all!  Mom you also look so skinny!!!! you look great! Congratulations on losing so much weight and enduring to the end.  So so so fun.  I have been telling everyone here that you were doing that this weekend.  Honestly i didn't know that it would be so difficult to say your walking to cure breast cancer in french.  So many people thought that you had cancer and that you just had to walk it off to be healed.....I love the english language and it's simplicities at times. :)  So yeah that was just so much fun seeing those pics and all of that!  Thank you for sharing that with me. 

So i am going to be honest on the missionary spectrum this week was pretty difficult.  We lost Joana and Vanessa as investigators.  We don't know exactly what happened but we are pretty sure that she went to her aunts house and had some issues.  We'll see if we can see her but she isn't answering our calls.  We also lost some other strong investigators, so now it is back to the beginning. Even though this week has been unfortunate we did have an incredible zone conference.  I think all the things that happened this week were things to make us forget about the wonderful feelings we felt there.  I will talk about that in a sec.  But yeah this week was tough.  Elder Reed and I are getting along better.  We have been hitting some rough spots and haven't quite yet found an equilibrium.  The thing is we don't dislike each other it's just were not meshing and we don't know why.  So yeah That is all the negative stuff.  Now to the super cool stuff.

So this Friday we had a Tri-Zone Conference and it was fantastic.  Elder Kopishcke from the Europe Area Presidency was there and was stellar.  He started off by saying that he didn't have a big lesson outline or anything just questions and activities.  The very first thing he had us do was write any number of questions on a piece of paper about our personal lives or about missionary work, really anything.  Then he said over this conference i promise you that if you seek and you have an open heart the spirit will reveal to you truths and will answer your questions.  Pretty bold.  So we went through the conference and after we had finished we realized that the personal questions that we had written on the pieces of paper had all been answered and that it wasn't in anything that he really said but it is moreso answers that came into our mind while he would ask other questions or would ask us just to think and take a moment to ponder.  It was revelatory to say the least and really helped me in my respective domains.  He helped us see and trust that we ourselves could understand and receive personal revelation.  I think honestly that was the first time in my life where i felt such an abundance of the spirit to where i "had no desire to do evil."  It was like i couldn't even be tempted by bad thoughts or be distracted or better effected by the people around me.  I wanted to do anything to hold onto this special feeling and do everything i could to not let it go.  I felt a desire to pray constantly and to thank heavenly father unceasingly.  It was honestly a new feeling and really it was one of the most crucial and memorable moments of my life.  I loved it so so much and that really helped us get through this week that wasn't to wonderful.

So yeah that is it for me and my week.  This is the last week of the transfer but the i know that i will be staying here until the new year.  Ha Crazy!  I get to call in like just over a month!  Nice!  I hope all is going super well back home and i hope you all know how much i love you all.  Brothers stay good and help mom and dad!

Love, Elder Hoopes

Haha i love this picture.  It's funny when they try to speak english here!