Sáenz Peña

I love Sáenz Peña. Its really cool. This area is awesome. It´s kinda big, but its great. Elder Regan is super fun. The city is super cool. We are in the down town area and essentially have the whole half of the city. So we travel by bus and walk a lot, I think this has been the area where I have walked the most. I finally cut my hair this last week. After 4 and a half months of not cutting the top, I cut it. I didn´t do to bad. I think... Our neighbors are our zone leaders, so we all jog down to the park and play basketball every other morning as well. Its super fun. And as this last week goes, we have hit a pancake crave. So we have made pancakes, A LOT! its great! Its just awesome.

So we have a member of the branch who was recently baptized. Her name is Romina Zanatta. She has a son named Lauri and he wasn´t baptized but he comes to church with her all the time. Well this Sunday was my first sunday in the branch and he comes rolling up like a boss to church in a Darth Vader t-shirt. So I thought to my self, I should ask him about starwars. So I struck up a conversation and he turned out to love Star Wars. Him and I are pretty chill friends now. And on the topic of Star Wars...We work literally in the down town area and we walked by this shop and the had these vintage Star Wars comic books that were super cheap and written in Spanish. They were super cool. 

This week we have baptisms planned and we will see if they go through. I´m super excited to be serving here and hope that my little friend can progress. 

I honestly love serving. Its super hard, but totally worth it.

Elder Hoopes

Transfers and a Baptism

This week was very great. We had transfers and had another baptism. I returned to the province of Chaco and I am in the city of Saenz Peña. I´m super excited to be here. While I was in my last area before clorinda, Campo largpo, we visited Saenz Peña all the time. Now I´m here and super excited. I got a new companion. He is named Elder Regan. He is super chill. Unfortunately I can´t attach any pictures because we haven´t taken any yet. But I´m excited to work here. The pension is really nice as well. 

This week we had three bautismos in the zone. One of the people that got baptized was kinda our investigator. She is named Yanina and she is 14 years old. She lives in our area and is super cool. But she can´t really focus with us when we teach so we let the sister misioneras teach her. So technically she is the hermanas investigadora but I got the privilege to baptize her. And we taught her a lot before we handed her off to the hermanas so it is kinda like we taught her. haha Anyway it was super cool week. 

Honestly I´m sad that I got transfered out but at the same time I´m excited to work here. Its a nice area. I´m excited to see what happens in the this transfer.

Have a great week.

Elder Hoopes

Carnival/Valentine's

The wonderful week of Carnival. This week was a very interesting week. This week we traveled down to Formosa capital for Multizona with all the missionaries in the province and it was super good. We talked so much of Christ´s sacrifice for us and how we literally have the responsibility to help the people come to know and to utilize the Atonement of Jesus Christ. It was so good. The spirit was super strong and helped me come to feel and understand the love of Christ. It was fun. 

On top of all that it was Carnival this weekend.  Carnival is essentially Marti Gras where everyone just parties and dances in the street. So we had to go to our pension early the last three nights. It was so hard to sleep because it was really crazy. Then to top it off, there was Valentine´s day. Which, like me, gets forgotten. hahaha But like always, I´m doing great. I´m happy, healthy, and working. 

In terms of work, things are progressing. Our friend Javier is getting there. He likes to read in the Book of Mormon but he just can´t make it to church. I´m a little worried because transfers is this week and I don´t want to leave him but I might be transfered, I don´t know. But we are doing great. 

This week turned out to be a great. Feliz Dia de San Valentin. 

<3

Elder Hoopes

Saludos otra vez

This week was super great!!! We had a baptism! We baptised our friend Eduardo. The way we actually found Eduardo was pretty cool. Elder Willard (my last companion) and I had been walking down the street and saying hi to people like always when we waved hi to this old man on a bike. This old man ended up stopping and talking to us and gave us his directions. Well we passed by and started to teach the family. We never were able to teach the old man but we ended up teaching Eduardo. He is super cool. It was super fun to teach him as well. He would read everything we would give him. He read and re read and studied the pamphlets we gave him. He is super smart and just wants to be good. Eduardo is pretty cool.

We also got to empty the fount and fill it up again for the baptism but this time we broke four buckets. It was super annoying. But we did it in like 8 hours. It was great. We also had divisions this week. It´s always fun being able to look at Asuncion, paraguay. 

We had something pretty sad this week happen to us. We had been walking down the street and found this little ball. So we would kick it back and forth between the two of us while walking in the streets. This was a great contacting tool because everyone wanted to come talk to the two gringos passing the small ball in the street. Well my companion and I were getting pretty good with it and we had been talking to a lot of people because of it. Well this little boy and little girl, probably 3 and 4 years old came up to us to give us a high five. So we gave boy a high five and the little girl sees our ball and picks it up and says "hey look a little ball!" then runs off with our ball..... It was pretty sad because we lost our ball that we had found. But now a little girl has our ball. hahahah It actually wasn´t sad just really funny. This little girl just comes and steals our ball and runs away. But its all right.

Anyway this week was great. My cooking skills are really heating up (metaphorically and literally... like I might have burnt some food.) haha but I´m doing well. Have a great week.

Elder Hoopes  

Saludos de Argentina

This week was great like always. The two biggest highlights of this week were the two service projects we did. The first was very exhausting. We moved like dirt, concrete and bricks in the heat of the day. It was very hard. But the other thing we did that was super fun was to clean out the bautismal font. We got to empty it by hand and fill it up again. It was so much fun. The baptism was one of the people from the set of hermanas in the area. This Saturday we are planning to clean and fill up the font again. This time with one of our investigators. We are really excited if all goes well. We are super excited. His name is Eduardo. He is 19 and super cool. He reads everything we give him and he has been coming to church and all the activities. So we are super excited for him. 

We have another family that we have been teaching and there names are Javier and Gabi. Javier loves American music. He really likes Eninem. The other day He wrote his testimony in the back of the Libro de Mormon. He is super cool. He loves the scripture guide in the back of the book and he just wants to be the best father.

The week has been pretty good. The weather has been great. It hasn´t been as hot as the last few weeks and its been quite tolerable. My companion and I have been cooking alot and have been getting a lot better. haha. Its awesome!!!!! I love it here. Time is flying and I just really am doing good. 

Hope you all are happy. The decision to be happy is always ours. It doesn´t matter what the circumstances are, circumstances merely dictate our actions and responses, but not our attitudes. so choose to be happy. This is my nice little pick-me-up thought of the week. haha

Sincerely 

Elder Hoopes