#3, wow..... Miracles, Miracles, MIRACLES!‏

Bonjour Tout le monde!  Well first off thank you for your wonderful letters!  I really appreciate them!  Mom and Dad thank you for your emails!  I hope mom that my email helps clear things up for you and all your plans. Voilà  I am glad the brothers are staying busy and mom i love to hear that you are taking carson to the batting cages.  That for me just lets me relize all those moments where you guys helped me to be better and grow and it is fun to see it from another view.  Outside looking in you know.  Now i realize all that you guys did do for me, and like always i feel bad for being horrible to you guys.  But i do love hearing that Carbob, Connor and Beautiful Snoub are doing well.  By the way I really would love to get home from my mission and that same week have hunter open his call.  Time things right so that happens!  I want to be there for that!!!!!!!  Ok so i think that is it right now! I have some really cool things to share with you guys this week.

We have had an incredible week!  Blessings like none other.....  Prayers and Fasts being answered the works.  First things first.  Grettel our Cuban investigator is doing great!  I have gotten a lot better at speaking spanish thanks to her.  Dad in your letter you said that every french word you try to say sounds Spanish, for me it is the opposite haha but she understands and that is the KEY!  She is doing wonderful and WILL be baptized on the 28th.  our date for the 14th isn't going to be able to do it because of his muslim mother..... She will put him out of the house and could do worse if we puch anymore so we are going to go easy with him.  Francois our super solid invesitgator is still waiting to move out.  His Girlfriend needs to get a job so that Social Care can pay for the apartment allowing him to move out.  He i think may be baptized the 28th as well we will see.  I pray for it every night.  Arlette, she is the wife of a part member family that we have been working with super closely and patiently and SHE came to church sunday!  Why is this huge well let me tell you.  

She told us at the beginning of the transfer that she didn't want to do anything because she "couldn't believe Joseph Smith was a prophet."  So we told her she had to gain a testimony of the Book of Mormon first.  She told us no i don't like reading it, i don't ever feel inspired.  So i said oh yeah?...  I will show you inspired and i listed a ton of scriptures over time we have been reading the Book of Mormon with her and she has been making a ton of progress!  She is getting more and more inspired from reading!  I even told her to admit it and she did haha.  So our last meeting with her. She read Mosiah 2-5 the day before and when we came over she told us that she loved the reading.  She said this litterally spoke to me and told me how i need to be a better Christian.  She said the morals that are shared are the same ones that i have and i was just so touched by the scriptures.  So we capitalized on this and said Arlette why do you think this is happening?.... She said with a big smile, almost acting as if she knew the answer i wanted to hear "well it must be the word of God..."  We testified and said Arlette will you follow these feeling and prepare yourself for Baptism the 28th of July?!  She said she would pray about it.  Well then sunday she is at Church!  This is huge because she hasn't come yet since i have been here because well she didn't believe in what was being taught, BUT she came this sunday and so i said Arlette it is nice to see you here!  Did you pray like we asked you too and she said "yes" so i then asked did you as about being baptized? She said "yes" so then i said Well?..... And she said with a big smile we will talk about it more tuesday!  So i am so stoked!  She was gleaming at church and so i really hope that all is good with her and that she will be baptized the 28th! This is the beginning to many prayers and fasts being answered!

So that is huge miracle for me! Next one is literally is a Bruxelles miracle and yes it has to do with a Nigerian Brother! No relation to other "Brothers" but he will be a part of them soon.  His name is Steve and Steve came into the church for the first time wanting to know more about the Chruch and Joseph Smith and all these things.  Luckily the members found him and directed him to where he needed to go and gave him a super nice welcome!  We got to know him a little bit and we decided to talk more after Church.  so we had a rendez-vous with him afterwards and it was so awesome!  He told us how he had a feeling a little earlier on that he needed to find a Church, because he believed in God but he never went to Church.  So he started searching.  He went to Jehovah Witnesses, Protestants, Evangelicals but he didn't find anything there that he liked.  He told us he hated it because it was all about money!  So he came to our church because he remembered speaking with missionaries a long time ago.  So he came and he told us that He LOVED CHURCH!  He said in the middle of the Sacrament Meeting he had this feeling that came over him and told him that this was where he needed to stay! He then told us that he felt an emptiness filled within him.  He told us that he felt peaceful, happy and full of life.  We told him it was the spirit and he said yeah i know! Ha he will be baptized on the 28th of July as well.  He is like a mixture of Dablo (Charles) and Michel!  He is so solid and i can't wait to teach him more!  

So there you have it!  I know that is an enormous letter and my wrists are hurting but it is just so cool honestly how much the Lord is helping us here.  I really hope to see 4 baptisms on the 28th.  That would be so rad seriously!  On verra bien!  Anyway that is it for this week nothing else really just those two big miracles!  I love you guys so much an i'll talk to you soon!

Love, Elder Hoopes

#4

Bonjour Tout le monde!

So it was so great seeing everything from the court of honor!  Congrats brothers for being eagle scouts!  You're done with scouts!!!!!!  WOOO HOOOO!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!  The decorations were fantastic and everything looked so wonderful!  I loved seeing the brothers honestly!  I don't have any real up-to-date pictures of them!  It is crazy that the next step for connor is driving and hunter is mission!  Dude i am predicting Hunter is going to Iceland!  Yes i am calling it!  In any case everything looks like it is goinng great and i am super excited to be a part of home life in a couple weeks!  As far as other things go for back home i can't think of anything else i need to comment on haha......  

SO This week was a great week honestly nothing to crazy happened.  We taught a lot of lessons and are starting to teach more in the prescense of members which is helping them build their confidence in us and stuff so yeah.  Grettel is doing super well.  She is our cuban investigator.  My spanish has been getting better and she is really progressing.  She even said how have you learned spanish so quickly and i honestly don't know how except that every time i go into a rendez-vous with her i pray alot!!!!!! It is definately the power of God and it is cool to see it in action.  It's humbling more than anything else.  As far as everyone else goes, things are going well but each one of the strongest of our amis seem to have one large obstacle stopping them from being baptized.  We are working on it.  Ummm voilà sorry there isn't more that would be interesting to all of you but it was just a normal week of work. :)

I sent mom a letter telling her about the sight-seeing and visiting after in a couple weeks. i hope she gets that soon.  I have planned most of it out i am just waiting till it gets closer to plan more precisely.  Donc voilà i hope to hear from you guys soon and we will talk later.

Elder Hoopes

Road of our Efforts

The Christ Flower

#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

#6

So hello everyone,

I will be staying and finishing my mission in Evry just to let everyone know :)  Which i think is great.  It is a great city and things are moving and going well so it'll be nice.  I don't talk about the ward hardly ever but it is the best functioning french ward that i have ever seen.  They are great and know how to do everything well!  So yeah i don't talk about them much because well i don't need too :)  Missionary work is moving.  It is best discribed as fragile.  We have to be 100 percent obedient and really do things perfectly so that we can see results here.  The Area is not a hard area at i would say it is just a mixture of a lot of different things, stress about coming home, trying to build a solid missionary base, things like that and it doesn't help that there is not a lot of support from my comp.  I have to say he is fun and does try hard it is more so that he is learning how to do everything because he never did it before.  It is like retraining but he is great just having to do a lot for him too.  I also just got called as district leader by the way.  That will great because that will really keep me busy for the next 6 weeks :)  So yeah i think that helps illustrate the situation. I really do enjoy Evry it is just different and interestingly timed in my mission experience but i am growing a lot from it.  Nothing will ever compare to how hard Cherbourg was.  That was difficult.  Mais voilà quoi.

Cool things that are going on as far as the work goes.  We have 3 real progressing amis and several others but these 3 are so close to baptism they just have big concerns that are stopping them.  One is living with his girlfriend, another lives far and has 5kids under 9 and has a tough time coming to church, the other has been baptized twice before that and is hestitant to take that next step.  So pray for them and think about them often and i know that good things will happen.  God put us here to baptize and that is what we will fight for!  Honestly it is inspiring to see what is happening in our mission as a total.  This last week we found 150 new investigators and this time last year we were only finding 55 a week!  How crazy?!  I am stoked for it and it makes me want to work even harder so that i can be a part of it!  It is so cool honestly to be a part of this mission and to have leader like we do.  When i first got in the mission it was honestly a joke.  People were so disobedient and just didn't care but now President is calling the best of the best to Train, be Zone Leaders, and District leaders and is really helping us see the possiblities that can be achieved!  I think it is so cool and i am grateful to be a part of it!

Other than that things are going well, nothing to crazy.  I can't believe that is so close to the end.  I can't wait to see you guys again.  I miss you a lot and i really am really anticipating see you.  Mom i can't wait to take you to some of the boutiques in Paris and trust me you might think oh man we will have to drive a ton..... Nothing is more beautiful than the french countryside!  Oh!  I am so excited to schare all of it with you all!  It will be great!  So yeah there is that and i think that is all. Nothing to crazy.  I love you all.  talk to you soon!

Elder Hoopes

Classic French Beauty!

The Art Quartier literally one of my favorite spot in France

The top of Mont Martre!

#7

Hello Everyone,

This week has been one of the most trying weeks of my mission.  The nice thing is that we ended up just laughing and smiling at how horrible it turned out but you know we were blessed in comparison to other missionaries in the mission so we can't complain.  We also had a super cool miracle happen in the mission to that i will share later.  All in all things are going well and the countdown for coming home unfortunately begins next week.  This is the last week of the transfer so i COULD move but i don't think i will.  If i moved i'd be shocked! So there you go.

This week we got stood up by 14 times.  That is the most that i have ever had in one week in my mission.  I don't know why that happened but even confirming the day of or a night in advance couldn't prevent the falling through of rendez-vous.  I don't know what it was but it pushed me to really reflect a lot on the church and what it is in my life.  We got to go to a 7th day adventist church this week as well and that opened my eyes to their religion/version of Christianity.  It was fun we sang and hooted and hollered Amens the whole time and we prayed a ton and stuff like that.  It was fun but it was missing something.  The week before we also went to a catholic mess, it's just next to our house, to see what that is like and i felt the same lacking.  All in all they were lacking the Spirit.  Now i don't want to sound like i am hating on other religions but honestly, I know that every person can feel the Spirit of God when talking and thinking about Jesus but without the constant companionship we can never feel complete.  Even though it was great seeing a lot of people who believed in Christ, the thought kept coming to my mind, they have now idea what they are missing.  This is what compelled me to think about the church so much.  Why is it that everyone in France/ the world Hates us?  We are not weird, we don't do anything bad to people, frankly our religion is so chill compared to others!  The media i feel is one of the WORST influences on the church and unfortunately people are dumb enough to hear everything that comes out of the television.  People have no idea who we are.  When we were at church sunday i really tried to focus on my feelings and i was so calm and at peace.  I needed that.  The Spirit was so strong.  I don't know why it was stronger than usual but i knew that it was good you know.  There is a verb in French that goes, faire le clown, meaning to act like a clown or in a nonsensical way.  One investigator told us It's different in your church, you are very modest, polite, and you don't faire le cown.  I loved that and i know it is true.  I love our church because not only do we show a reverance towards sacred things, but we are also very complete.  I feel like i can find any answer through the gospel and the more and more i study the more and more i find that you really can.  That is how i know that it is true, along with the testimony that i have already aquired. Also i love that the church doesn't participate in any type of war against other Christian faiths. I feel like the people that hate us the most are our own Christian brothers, and i am so glad that i belong to a church who could care less about what people say about them because we know who it is we represent more than any other Christian faith. I love the people in other christian churches but there is no church on the earth except our that will get you closer to Christ.  That is why i love the Church, that is also why i ramble sorry..... hahaha

The cool miracle that happened this week in the mission was this.  Last week was the first week of the year in which our mission didn't have a baptism planned for the weekend.  Also we are really doing very well in comparison to where we were at this time last year.  So president asked that the whole mission to pray and to ask all those ready for baptism to be baptized on the Weekend.  We were all a little surprised but we all looked over our potentials and did the best we could to find people.  The zone leaders then asked each companionship to find a quite place and to kneel and pray that people would get baptized that weekend.  So we did that and this morning we found out that the mission had 5 baptisms this weekend!  How cool huh?!  Unfortunately we didn't have a baptism but the prayers were heard!  How cool. I was super happy when i saw that!  Our mission is doing really well as of late and i see it only getting better and better!

Anyway so that was the week a bit.  I love you all and am so grateful for you!  LOVE,

Elder Hoopes

WET

#8

Alors j'ai seulement 8 lettres qui me reste.  WOW! Only 8 of these left!  Crazy huh!?  Well all good things have to come to an end.  But i will for 8 more weeks just work it.  I am doing well.  This week i got extremely fatigued.  Like honestly i was mentally, physically, and emotionally drained and so i took it slower so that i could give my mind some rest.  I was getting pretty burned out from doing so much so right now we are going to do things a BIT differently so that all goes by a little smoother.  But other than that the week was good.  We had Elder Texiera and his Wife came down for the mission tour and that was nice. Unfortunately i didn't find it the most ravishing.  I went in with questions that never got answered mostly due to a lack of time and a something coming up to where he couldn't stay the entire time.  But whatever. I talked with Elder Nelson, one of my best buds bout the stuff and he helped me see some of the answers which was nice.  I was able to see him, Elder Awerkamp, Elder Gubbay, and a lot of my other buddies from around the mission.  It turned out to be good in all but it's true i wasn't super inspired....  I think that happpens from time to time.  But you know there were a lot of good things that were said in anycase. 

So this week wasn't to crazy i honestly don't have a ton to write home about.  We do have some people that are progressing toward baptism but it is taking a bit of time.  More news on them to follow in the future.  However there is a fun story that happened while we were walking the other day.  We passed this Arab couple holding a 2 year old baby who was crying, crying, crying.  Then as we got closer she looked at us stopped crying immediately and said to her parents Yasu or Jesus in Arab.  Then her parents smiled and said yes yes sweetie. How fun is that.  I don't know what it was.  We didn't even say anything to the kid but somehow she recognized Jesus in us even from being in a muslim home.  Interesting. Children have a special connection with things like that.  

Another fun thing that happened is Kevin's little brother Bryan got baptized in Brussels this weekend! And guess who baptized him??? Kevin!  Kevin was able to baptize his little bro.  That made me so happy talking to Elder Petersen about that.  Talking to him in general was fantastic!  He is such a great guy.  Apparently a couple of the brothers are having difficulties but it's ok.  Their choices you know but Andrew, Dablo, Michel, Kevin, and now Bryan are doing excellent.  Carlos apparently according to Dablo is "drinking a little and is hanging out with chicks." He is just caught up in little antics but he'll learn.  Hanging out with chicks lol of Dablo!  I still can't wait to see them soon!  I love those guys so much!  Ummmm so yeah brussels is just the best still.

I Want to make sure that connor knows i am thinking about him and WISH him a super happy birthday!  Joyeux Anniversaire!!!!  Also tell laura congratulations on having the twins how fun!!!!!  They are adorable i said to you earlier mom!  Well i love you all and i hope that all is going well back home!  See you soon!

Elder Hoopes

p.s  This week it rained harder than any other week before.

# 9‏

Well hello everyone!  First off it is great to hear that everything back home is going nice and smoothly.  It is also nice to see the House repainted!  It looks super nice and connor and carson make two really good old timers!  REally though it is always nice hearing from everyone back home.  So this week was an interesting one i must say.  We had some cool success and saw a lot of really cool things however, we met two really interesting people.  We'll talk about that later. But on a fun note i am the lowest weight that i have been since Senior year.  I am at 196lbs right now!  I've shredded weight here in Evry!  I have just eaten a ton of fruits and veggies Carbs if any early in the day and LOTS of protein throughout the day not eating much if at all after 5!  So it is cool.  My goal is Between 180 and 190 so we'll see how that goes.  And another fun thing yesterday there was a group of 25 spaniards who came to the Chapel.  They were members of the church in the South of Spain but in anycase i was able to speak with them and communicate totally in Spanish!  How tight?!  And now i am going to try to learn a little bit in Japonese!  Haha a member wants to teach me!  So i said YEAH!  Ummmmm other random things before i tell you the funny people we met.....I don't think so if i remember i'll write it later.  

So anyway this week we met a man who was part of a secret magic society cult of which i won't say.  BUT HE was one of the head men in it, he said he got to the point where with enough initiation and time and other disclosed practices he became "Master."  He watched the Joseph Smith prophet of the Resoration video on youtube and got really interested to learn more and so we are now currently teaching him.  We will see what happens but he was interesting.  He was Really nice and super funny, total normal guy too.  He studied to be a pastor, saw the flaws in the bible, turned to other churches, didn't find what he wanted so he turned to the world of sorcery and stuff.  He is a nice guy and got out of that stuff but i still feel he is holding onto a lot of the things he learned out of obligation.  So voilà.  

Next man we met.  He came to our rendez-vous and the minute he came in we felt something.....different but continued anyway.  He came to us and told us that he wanted to really better his spiritual life and he said that more than anything he wants to find out who he really is.  After a little bit of talking he came out and told us that he believes that he is the "Second son of man."  Yes you got that right.  He told us that he was basically the new Jesus on the earth.  He didn't claim to be "THE Son of God" but he did say that at his birth he was born with a glowing light around him and that he disconected himself from the ambilical chord of his mother in the womb before he was born.  Apparently also Japanese doctors delivered him......don't know why that is relivant.  I don't think i have ever been so direct, bold, and crushing as i was at that moment.  The poor guy.  We asked if he was scitsophrenic (if that is how you spell it), if he did hard drugs and all that stuff, because he told us he did hear things in his head all the time.  I wasn't rude but i definately wanted to know how he found this to be true and he just said that he had meditated on it and that was all.  I then proceded to site scripture after scripture and he said well yeah but i don't believe that.  I said to him that he could not at all make such a claim if he didn't even know the scriptures, what they are, what they represent, and who they come from.  We told him that he could be believe what he wanted but not to say another word about it until he had read the scriptures.  So voilà.  Our second interesting man.  He takes the trophy for most interesting person i have ever taught.

So yeah there you go.  That was our interesting people report for the week.  The week itself was long and trunky i must say but at the same time we worked hard and still found 5 new investigators and taught more than last week.  So we are making some really good progress!  But yeah that is about it! still am working on getting that package!  They never even came even after i coordinated with them!  so i will give them a piece of my mind!  It's to bad dad can't call HAHA!  Anyway i love you all so much!  This week Elder Texeira of the 70 will be coming and so i will have cool things for you next week.  I love you all so much!

Elder Hoopes

Lady Bug Riding!  It's the mascot of the department. HAHA

Me and Elder Collett