I went back to college and am serving on LSU campus haha...

Good Morning!

Photo that one of Natalie Soper's friends took of Devin at the LSU institute

So I never thought I would be serving in this area, but I am excited. I went back to college and am serving on LSU campus haha. It is definitely different than any other area that I have served in first because the proselyting rules are different and then second, everybody is our same age. It has been a huge transition because Elder White and I got doubled in to open the area for Elders, so we didn't have much to go off to get our head above water. But that has been kind of fun starting from scratch and just working hard. But you are right, becuase I have a good companion the whole experience will be positive no matter what happens. There are a pair of LSU sister that know what is going on though, so that has been a tender mercy to work with them. And we work withe YSA ward really closely and they definitely have it figured out in terms of fellowshipping and being examples of Christ.  But so far we have done a lot of walking, sweating and talking to anyone that we can. 

Elder White is a good guy. He has been out on his mission for about 17 months and he is from Thatcher Arizona. He has a funny sense of humor and is a hard worker. I lucked out again with companions and I think we are going to see a lot of cool miracles this transfer. We kinda feel like we are re-learning how to do missionary work. It has required us to be creative in the ways that we contact and especially gets us out of our comfort zone. And this has only been in the first few days! School just barely started today and so there are tons of people walking around Campus, I'll let you know how that goes and keep a count of how many weird looks that we get. The second day we got here we were waiting for some of the YSA's  on the big fields by the student building and we saw this guy doing a bunch of back flips and karate kid moves. Well lucky for us Elder White did some gymnastics/hardcore parkour back home and so we decided to go talk to him. He taught Elder White a few new things and they just talked about how to do some of the tricks. So for the next 30 minutes he and Jared (the guy) were doing tricks out in the field. We got his info and he said that we could come back to hang out with him. Right before we left to he asked what we were doing (those are the magic words, because if somebody asks what we are doing we are aloud to share.) So we just told him a little bit about what we do as missionaries and quickly bore our testimonies. It was a cool experience. 

Yeah it feels weird, but has been a blessing to be a district leader again. My personal studies have been a lot more focused and I remembered how much I love being able to be more involved with missionaries on a personal level. If you ever have any fun ideas that I could use for meetings that would be awesome. I just want everybody to be able to look back on this transfer and remember that they were happy and loved their missions. Hey could y'all send me some funny cheesy jokes to use haha? A little somthin somthin to break the ice. 

Yeah I hope that everything continues to run smoothly transitioning from the summer to the full school, soccer, work schedule. I am going to make a predicition...Taylor will be voted class clown. Now we will wait haha. Dad do you remember a Kristina Gibby? She graduated from the humanities program at BYU and she is here at LSU doing her PhD in Comparative Literature. She came up to us yesterday and was talking about how she knew you and she also knows Auntie Kare. Haha small world huh? Little tender mercy right there. 

Well I am going to share two more cool stories. So Elder White and I got here on the first day and we had no idea what we should do. The sisters called us and said that the Ward was having a temple trip that night and we were invited. So we were able to go do an endowment session and that in it self was a blessing to be able to start the transfer off with that. I love the temple and the feeling of peace that it brings. It is a break from the stresses of the world and it is a reminder of what is really important in this life. After the temple we were driving home with some of the members, Zach and Stefan or "Zefan" for short and we asked if we could stop by Walmart to pick up a few things. Oh I forgot to tell you that my other dream came true, we are in a bike area! We get to walk, bike and ride the bus everywhere we go. I have wanted to be in an area like that my entire mission and I got all three in one. But zefan took us to walmart and we put the essentials in the cart, frosted mini-wheats, milk, eggs, toilet paper etc. When we got to the check out Stefan started taking the stuff out of our cart and said "Well we aren't too good about feeding yall here in the singles ward, but we can buy you cereal!" He bought our groceries for us. That was a miracle mostly because of just knowing that we already had a friend in the ward. 

The next day we were walking to Walmart to get a few more things and as we were walking back a guy stopped us in the parking lot and told us that he knew we had limited funds and asked if he could buy us lunch. He gave us a ride back to our apartment and then took us out to get a burrito. His name was Adam and he is a PhD student here at LSU. He isn't a member but he said that he really respects that we sacrifice to share what we believe. He isn't a religious guy, but he just asked all about our missions. That was a sweet miracle that we weren't expecting. It just grew my testimony in the fact that Heavenly Father knows the details of our lives. He loves us so much and he sends people to answer our prayers.

I love you guys so much and I hope you have a great week. 

Prayers and Thoughts always,

Elder Soper