Elder Jacob Hope's Mission

Yo,
What up family? How’s it going? First off I’m pretty upset to hear the cowboys fell short, again. I kind of Hope Atlanta take’s it.... anyway. That’s crazy that Taylor and Justin are home already. I’m pretty jealous that JC is going to Big Sky That is by far the best/coolest place I have been boarding and I know that she is going to love it and have a lot of fun. Have her take a lot of pics so she can send some my way when she gets home, also JC be safe! About my card I don’t have it with me right now so I can’t check to see when it expires, but I’m pretty sure it doesn’t expire until 2013. I’ll make a note to check and then I’ll pass the info to you.
This week has been pretty good, Elder Flores and I get along pretty well and he’s a cool kid. He’s about five feet five inches so he’s kinds short, and has a broken collar bone (I sent you a letter explaining how last week so be looking for it) but he likes to work hard so that’s good. I have to help him a lot with things like washing clothes and all that but it’s alright. Service is good and he’s teaching me a lot so I need to pay him back somehow. Teaching wise we were able to find and meet with our investigators, however a lot of their progress is pretty slow.... we don’t have anyone with dates to be baptized but were going to try to place a date this week so I hope she accepts. We have been doing a lot of contacting again with little success... we have also been asking members like crazy if they know of anyone we can teach but we always get the same excuse that they don’t know anyone or talk to anyone other than those in the church so ya. Hopefully we will be able to find someone or family that will receive us.
The other day we were walking in the central and a guy started yelling at me in English asking if I spoke English and was like hey man talk to me, I miss English so I did. We talked for a bit and after a while I asked where he was from. He told me the name of the city but I forgot, somewhere around Texas on the border. He also told me that his city was famous for growing weed and that I should check it out.... he then said that he has been sober for three years and I told him that’s good and supported him in his decision of quitting. He then told me he was about to go "get money" and that his hummer was parked over there across the street. He pointed it out to me and as I looked I noticed that his "Hummer" was actually a bike chained to a pole. So after that’s I was like alright man I let you go and we left to meet with a less active member that lived two streets down from where we were. When we got to the member we realized that she wasn’t there so we started to do a little planning on what we could do next. As we were standing there I could hear this guy and his friends not too far behind us which wasn’t bad or anything, but it was getting dark, and his friends were drunk. SO I was like El Flores lets go dude. We started down this little street when I head one of his friends yell hey you wait. We turned around and the guys were running towards us, or I should say trying to he was pretty drunk. As he got closer he started point at the street and yelling "who’s the crazy one here?" in my head I was thinking.. "you are man calm down" he was acting really weird and it didn’t feel to safe, there weren’t very many people on the street just us, his friends and a few other people. I looked over to the guy I was talking to a few minutes earlier and lo and behold he was taking some puffs of weed.... I was like dude you aren’t sober. After a couple mins the drunk finally left us alone so we were able to leave. All in all it was a learning experience.
I do have some good news, Eddi and Luis have been coming to church every Sunday and Luis mom is actually the women we are going to place the baptism date with she comes to church and we have been teaching her for a bit. For some reason she just won’t commit to a date but I have a feeling she will this week. Oh and Eddi has actually asked how the papers work to serve a mission and that it’s something he would like to do.... ISN’T THAT AWESOME!!! I hope he keeps it as his goal and works towards it. Were always telling how cool missions are and how much you can learn from them.
I didn’t write down notes throughout the week on what to tell you guys so I’m out of things to write. Other than that I better go, but I just want you all to know that I know this church is true. I know that Joseph Smith was called a prophet by god and that he translated the Book of Mormon. We are so lucky to have all that we have in our life. I now know why everyone here wants to live in the states. Dad your right we need to speak up and share the gospel. Take the time and help those that you see in need. I promise you that if you sacrifice a little bit of your time to help those who are having a hard time or need help that the lord will make it rain blessing. I’m so thankful for you all and the support you have given me. I love you all so much and I hope and pray for your safety. I hope you have a good week and that all is well. Share the happiness that we receive from the gospel to those who haven’t yet received it.
LOVE ELDER HOPE II