Oh Portuguese

Well I have a had a great week. I would say the highlight of my week was calling out to the Brazil MTC. It was super funny. No, I don´t know Portuguese, that is what made it so funny. I had to call because I was looking for someone. Since I do not know Portuguese I had to talk in Spanish. Well to complicate the situation the brazilian didn´t know Spanish either. It was a fun conversation to have. So I asked them for someone who knew Spanish or English and he told me, "I don´t know Spanish" BUT IN ENGLISH... It was super funny.

Anyway this week has been pretty awesome. I do a lot of the same work everyday and its just fun. I like being in the office and being close to president and having "the-in." But I´m doing great and Me and one of the assistents have started working out hard core and It´s awesome. Anyway I´m super happy here. 

I love you all.

So in order From left to right. Elder Stout, financial Secretary the next two are leaving monday from the office. The taller Elder Bess, he is the old financial secretary. The one in the blue is my position. Elder Jenson. Elder Tippetts is in the Capitan America shirt and he is the Housing secretary. Then me, then one of the assistants, Elder Dangelo. He is from Mesa. The first three on the left are my companions. They all love starwars. They are great companions

The Office Life

It is kinda good that I`m in th office becaus ethis last week I`ve been a little sick. It is just a cold and nothing to worry about but being in the office has helped a lot with getting better. 

It`s really different being in the office. For one thing, all of my work is online. Which is super different than walking and proselyting everywhere. I`m also living with 7 other elders. And we have elders pass through for legal stuffas well,  so somnetimes we  have 10 or more sleeping with us as well.  I`m currently in a companionship of 4 elders. Literally the computer says the four of us are companions and its super funny. 

Its fun being in the office and workiong though. For example, during this last week another mission in Ecaudor called me asking about travel information for one of our sister missionaries. Well after talking to the other Elder over the phone. I found out that he was a companion to one of my friends in that mission. It was pretty cool. It is just being fun being in the center of the mission and being able to see all the weird and cool things in the mission. 

Some fun things I get to do:

 

When some one gets robbed, I report it to the church headquarters. But the fun part is I can access all the church files and look up all the accidents,everywhere in the world. It is actually super funny because I can see all sorts of things. A lot of stuff happens in the Mesa Temple. Usually some one falling or something like that. 

We also get to call and verify when phones are robbed. Its like prank calling but way more fun. When we tell the person its a robbed number, its so hilarious because we get all sort of responses. 

I also get to hear what is happing with contracts and water bills. For example some missionaries didn´t have power for 5 days because they didn´t pay the bills but didn´t tell us till like the 3rd day. We also had a pension catch on fire. It is just super weird what happens. 

Its just super fun because we get to know everything and do everything. This is just a fun snippet of what I do. 

I still have a week left until I transfers. I´m actually super scared for transfers cause I have to organize all the transfers for all the misionaries moving. Like new ones flying in, missonaries leaving, and then the bus schedule for all missionaries moving to different areas. Its a huge, real life sudoko with people and argentine bus system. 

I love you all and hope you all have a great week. 

The Office

Well this week I had a pretty big change. First and foremost, I got transferred to the mission office. President Franco called me on Sunday night, then by monday morning I was in the office. My new position is the Secretary to the President. It sounds all big and glorious but really i´m just a flight agent. I´ll be organizing all the transfers and movement of missionaries with in the mission and I organize all the new missionaries and missionaries leaving as well. Other than that, I´ll do other miscellaneous tasks but that will be the majority if my work. Its pretty fun. 

I honestly was kinda sad to leave Saenz Pena because well, I had just learned the area and we were teaching some great people.  I was sad because we had gotten pretty close with Guido. But he is super cool.We were teaching a young man named Guido. He is awesome. He was reading and studying a lot. We would leave him with reading assignments and then when we would get back he would have questions for us. So the only hiccup that he had was a smoking problem. But through many prayers and a lot of faith he overcame the smoking addiction. He is awesome. I probably spent the majority my mornings while in Saenz Peña teaching him. Seeing that it was a hour walk to his house and a hour back.

I am nervous because literally I have no clue what the secretary´s job was but now i´m okay. It will be a great learning experience. I'm looking forward to it. 

Have an awesome week  I´ll be writing on fridays now.

Elder Hoopes

The office elders in Subway!

Thanks to my Mesa Aspen Ward Beehives for the hugs!

With Guido

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