I got a new companion...

Hey everyone!

So I really don't have too much to report on this week. I got a new companion, Elder Smiley, and he is awesome! He is from Savannah, Georgia, been on his mission for about 17 months and he is just a good guy. I am not sure how I have been blessed with such great companions, but I feel really grateful. One thing about Elder Smiley and I is that we are able to talk. For some reason we can have meaningful conversations really about anything that is going on. That has been really fun and we have "nerded" out a lot about superheroes and Power Rangers. (By the way, he told me that they are planning on making a reboot Power Rangers movie. Haha I am so excited) We have had a crazy week with just getting everything settled and finding how we work here on LSU together. But it has been good, a little slow (like normal), but good. :)

Me and Elder Smiley

I am the District Leader again and I am actually really grateful for that. It is giving me something to think about and keep my brain working and focusing on missionary work. It has been a lot of fun too working with the missionaries in our District. I never thought I was going to be a leader again in the mission and so I am excited to try out some fun ideas and really be a missionary for the missionaries. We have an awesome district too and we are all already friends. That is a huge blessing and I think a testimony of how well the transfer is going to go. 

Yesterday was probably the best day of missionary work that I have had for a long time here. After Church we were able to have a lesson with M., a member from the ward and he and Elder Smiley hit it off right away. We were just able to talk to him about how things are going and it was a really rewarding visit. Then we had a stake Priesthood meeting were I had a tough time keeping my eyes open...oops. But it was still good and we were able to go out with a member for a few hours after that and search for some less-active people. We weren't able to find any, but we went and visited a member of the ward and had an awesome visit. We all talked about how we could improve the missionary work here at LSU and I think we came up with some good ideas. Well first of all Elder Smiley has already brainstormed some really inspired ideas on how to understand the work here and cater to the needs of college students and other single adults. So this other conversation was a continuation of that. We thought of maybe the idea of members and missionaries offering to help people with homework. We may not know what we are doing, but there are members in the ward that do and we might open up the institute for a safe and helpful place to do school work. We also talked about how we are successful in missionary work as long as we brightens someones day. It is better to be motivated by a desire to simply help people and then maybe (and probably) the subject of religion might come up. For example, there is this group of people that we have become friends with over the course of two transfers here and recently two of the them asked us if they could come to church with us sometime. How cool is that!

That sounds like it was a really cool Sunday School about goal planning. And yeah that is fine with me that you were able to use some of my planners. Haha I don't think that is very dumb thing to say. I also think that Heavenly Father wants us to have goals and in a way (when they are righteous goals) He accepts those and they become His for us as well. There is a cool quote by M. Russell Ballard from PMG that says, 

“I am so thoroughly convinced that if we don’t set goals in our life and learn how to master the techniques of living to reach our goals, we can reach a ripe old age and look back on our life only to see that we reached but a small part of our full potential. When one learns to master the principles of setting a goal, he will then be able to make a great difference in the results he attains in this life.

The LSU vs. Alabama game was absolutely crazy... there were so many people there and they were living it up. It is a fun atmosphere, but it is kind of overwhelming at the same time. We ran into quite a few members from different states and it was fun to have that connection with them. We ended up eating at 3 different tailgates too haha everybody we knew, but still kinda funny that we just hopped around. It was fun though.

I hope you guys have a great week and I am getting more and more excited to see yall again. Happy Birthday again Dad and I hope your week isn't too crazy busy. I love you guys so much!

Prayers and thoughts always,

Elder Devin Soper