This week has been a big learning curve...

Good Morning eddabody,

We did survive daylight savings and although we were pretty tired yesterday we made it through. So Elder Bracken got transferred to Pineville and he and everybody here wwew pretty sad that he had to leave. He got really close to everyone here (including me) and he made a big impact on all of their lives. He is doing well and though and he seems to like his new area.

This has probably been one of the tougher weeks of my mission. I am going to be pretty honest haha. I am exhausted and feel a little overwhelmed at everything that is going on. But at the same time I am feeling optimistic that everything is going to work out. My new companions name is Elder Allred. He has been on his mission for about 10 months and he is from Rock springs Wyoming. This is his 6th area and I am his 7th companion.  Elder Allred is also very genuine and his personality is not hidden by anything. Which is something that I really appreciate because when you are open it is easy to create a friendship. He also has a great testimony of the gospel and it shows in his devotion to this work. He is pretty laid back for the most part and he is open minded to different ideas. He will let you know what he is thinking and so we are able to work together in pushing the work forward. So I think in the end this will be a really good transfer for the both of us.

We also have a brand new District with two new trainees, Elder Jacildo and Sister Dixon. Elder Jacildo is most recently from California but originally from the Phillipines and he is just super exctied to be a missionary. It is really cool to see that. Sister Dixon is from Draper and she seems pretty calm and collected and ready to do her best. They have good trainers (Elder Beach and Sister Betts) that will really help them out in everything that they need to do. Sister Faulk is still here but she got a new companion from Temple Square that is from Thailand. Her name is Sister Tan. It is actually a lot longer than that, but I don't know how to spell it. We also got the Zone leaders in our District as well so we are pretty full. It will be fun to get to know them better as the transfer progresses. 

This week has been a big learning curve and it has gone by a little more slowly than previous ones. We are working hard to build up relationships with the members and it seems to be going well. We are taking baby steps that are really going to pay off in the end. The area and the people here need a lot of support and so we are going to work hard to give it to them. We met with the Beadles, The Longoria's, Sister Prescott, Brother Morris, Eurick and then did some service for Bro Richard. Bro. Richard is super big into hunting and he actually fed us some deer and wild hog meat afterwards. Pretty cool! 

Sorry this letter isn't quite as newsy, I definitely know that in the upcoming weeks there will be some good stories coming your way haha. I am also glad to hear that everything is going so well with everybody.  I really loved your thoughts on the Atonement Mom.That is an awesome talk from Elder Bednar and there is a  quote from that written in my White Hand Book. It says, "The enabling power of the Atonement strengthens us to do and be good and to serve beyond our own individual desire and natural capacity." That is powerful. Heavenly Father and our Savior will help us reach our potential and help us do things that we can't do on our own. We are so blessed to have a loving Father in Heaven. That actually brings me to a quote that I wanted to end with. It is from the talk Mountains to Climb by President Eyring and it says, "If we have faith in Jesus Christ, the hardest as well as the easiest times in life can be a blessing." I know that it is true. I love you guys so much and I want to let you know how much I appreciate your prayers and your support. It helps me so much! I love you!

Prayers and thoughts always,

Love,

Elder Debun Soper

Tomorrow is Mardi Gras...

Dear Family,

Yeah its transfer week this week and it seems like time just keeps flying by. P-day is tomorrow, but we got permission to email today or wednesday since tomorrow is Mardi Gras and everything will get shut down. Crazy stuff!! I think a lot of the missionaries are planning on going to some parades tomorrow, so that should be fun. Haha most parades are family friendly, not too much of the worldly carnivalesque stuff from New Orleans. So we should come out of it without too many disturbing images burned into our brains. ( I already have many of those stored away in my brain from over my mission haha) But it is crazy that this transfer is already coming to a close. Haley reminded me that have just a little over 9 months left. That is not very much at all! I call you guys in May and then the next time I talk to you I will be at  home and you can witness for yourself the 17 new facial hairs that I grew. Haha funny side note. A little girl asked me the other day how old I was and I told her that I was 20 and she accepted that and then she asked, with much curiosity, "So when are you going to start growing hair on your face then?" I had to laugh and say "I don't know, maybe when I grow up." But it is crazy to think that time just keeps ticking. And it seems to be going faster every single day. This has been the fastest transfer yet. And we don't know if we will be transferred yet, we will find out later today, but I do have a feeling that we will get to stay together for one more. I will probably send you a quick note later in the week to let you know what is going on.

The church has produced a new manual (came out about 6 months ago) on how to cope with stress during missionary life. It is really good and has a lot of great ideas for physical, emotion, social and spiritual stresses. It is called "Adjusting to missionary life" They did a really good job with it. I also really appreciated your insights from that Elder Cook talk about bondage. I think sometimes that is the reason that we are or we get stressed out. When we feel unbalanced or we are neglecting important parts of our life, it can be stressful. It is important to always have the spirit with us and rely on the Lord because he will help us and he will comfort us.

I just wanted to respond really quickly to your testimony that you gave in church yesterday Dad. I am excited to read it in this upcoming letter, but I thought you would be interested to hear this. The area 70, Elder Bluth (Arrested Development) had a big meeting with all of the Stake Presidencies and missionary leadership through out Louisiana and they came up with goals to be able to coordinate the work. The Zone Leaders told me that one thing that Elder Bluth and the General Authorities want to see in the South is an increase in activity among the African Americans. Either it be through baptisms or reactivation. I remember you asking me if that announcement may have made made an impact and it is happening. Pretty cool.

It is just good to hear that things are going well right now. You guys are having fun with friends, you are enjoying being with family and the stresses of life have seemed to subside just a little bit. I am happy knowing that you are happy.

This has been a good week. We have been with the Freebairn's a lot and that is a good thing! We did service with them this week by helping them clean up their back yard. The guy they bought the house from had just put a cement slab in and left the huge mound of dirt just sitting in the back yard. We helped them shovel it and redistribute it around the yard. That was a lot of fun and we found a lot of cool treasures including: an old coffee thermos full of nasty water, a bungee cord, a lot of worms, a few lizards, 1 live toad, 1 dead toad and a nest of  3 baby moles. Haha I will send you some pictures. I really love that family a lot and we are so grateful to have him as our branch mission leader and Sister Freebairn in the young women's presidency, they do such a good job. We are blessed!

One family in the ward has a little business where they drive people down to the gulf for offshore work and we helped them this week move their office to their home. Their grandson is here and his name is Donny ( he is 19) and he is a funny funny guy. While everybody was at the other office packing stuff up we had the chance to hang out with Donny.  He is "good" at everything and he loves to demonstrate it for people. He can sing, dance, play instruments and does martial arts. He showed Elder Bracken how to do the "figure 4 leg lock" and some  other martial arts move. He also taught us how to do the wave through our body. He is actually a pretty nice guy when you get to know him and Elder Bracken and I enjoy being around him. But imagine how Taylor and I used to dance, that is pretty similar to what Elder Bracken and I were doing with Donny this week haha.

Two of our investigators, T. and H., came to church this week! I am not sure if I have told you about them. They are Eurick's neighbors and they are good friends with Eurick. Both T. and H. are really down to earth and spiritual people. They are very open minded and their faith is strong in Christ. It was so cool to have them at church and see everybody just welcome them right in and accept them into the branch family. They seemed to like it and said they want to come back.

Doing service as missionaries can be a lot of different things. For example it can be manual labor like moving furniture or doing yard work, but sometimes you get to walk peoples dogs and give them baths. Haha we did that this week for Patrick and it was cool to see how much that meant to him. I am not sure if I told you, but he has been put into a nursing home in Lafayette now and it has been hard for him. He is doing well, especially because he got the go ahead from the first presidency to go to the temple before he has been a member for a year. We are so excited for him!

To end I will share one cool story that happened this week. We went to go see C. and sadly that day she wasn't feeling up for meeting with us. I remembered that there was one boy that we met in that neighborhood earlier that said he wanted us to come by to meet his family, but I could not remember where he lived. I thought I remembered which building it was and there was a door that seemed like the one so we went for it. A girl about 15 answered the door and she seemed really excited to see us. We recognized her from the first time that we met with C. Her name is A. and she invited us to come in, she said that "Papa" was home and so that meant we could come in (cause there was a male) it turns out Papa is her cousin that is also 15 haha. We ended up having a really spiritual conversation with them and during the lesson her other brother C. came in who is 17, her Mom, got back from work and her other cousin , D. got home too.  We'll see them again soon.

I know that Heavenly Father loves us, we see it everyday. I know that he is our literal Father and he knows us perfectly. He cares for us so individually and he knows exactly what we need. What an awesome thing to know. He loves us a lot and I am so grateful that we have the opportunity to share that love with these people that we are meeting here in Louisiana. We are happy and things are good.

I love you guys!

Love,

Elder Devin Soper

We have had a lot of cool finding miracles this week ...

Hey Eddabody,

Thanks for sending your ward conference talk Dad. It was down to earth and easy to understand which is something that people appreciate. It reminded me of a Conference talk in which they elaborate or a single scripture and help us to understand the deeper meaning behind the text by using personal stories and real life application.I also thought that was perfect how you added the repentance step in the conversion process. Hear, Remember, Understand, Repent, Act, Become. It was really cool how you talked about how becoming is not an end goal but a continuing process. I just like how the word becoming implies that it is a process, that it is something that you must work for and towards. I thought it was a great talk. 

I have definitely felt the same thing with guitar that you have felt with painting. I have noticed that the times that it happens too seem to be very overwhelming and stressful times in my life. That sense of flow and satisfaction in a hobby or skill I think allows your mind to unwind and let go of a lot of unnecessary worrying (which I am prone to). There were times at BYU that the only thing I could think about and wanted to do was sit down on the guitar and just pluck out some tunes for a couple hours. There have also been times on my mission that I have wanted to do that too haha, and I have played my guitar during breaks and sometimes that is when I receive some good revelation. My mind seems to open up. I am very grateful that I have been able to play it on my mission.  I think it is normal and that desire is pretty essential and increasing our ability in our talents. I guess the challenge is just not to be consumed haha. 

I have been getting pretty sore lately with playing basketball in the hood, riding bikes on exchanges and doing a lot of service. I actually just rode the Elder's bike that was there. It worked really well. And on P-days we usually go to the Library, email for awhile and then get together with all of the missionaries in Lafayette and go play dodgeball, basketball and volleyball at the church in Lafayette. There are about 5 sets of missionaries so 20 of us and then sometimes New Iberia comes up. We have a lot of fun. We are really lucky cause we live right by a target and so when we need something we just go during one of our breaks and pick it up. This is a fun zone because it is a lot smaller and you get to know everybody.

We haven't met with that Spanish family again yet, they had to cancel this week, but they want us to come back. Sister Freebairn is actually from Mexico and so it is really helpful to have her there cause she can speak Spanish when we can't. Elder Bracken took Spanish through high school and he likes to joke that the only thing he remembers how to say is "Can I please go to the bathroom?" Pretty funny. 

We have had a lot of cool finding miracles this week and they keep happening. Elder Jones and I went on an exchange and one night we wrote down about 25 names of former investigators and potential investigators...the next day we were blessed with two media referrals exactly where we were planning on working. We were able to contact both of them , C. and L.,  and we got return appointments with both. C. has two really cute little girls.  We were also able to talk to 3 or 4 more people in one of the neighborhoods and pass out some Book of Mormons and Bibles. When I got back with Elder Bracken we made a goal to make 1 new friend everyday. The next day we made 5. We talked to a traveling fire performer named Billy from Massachusetts who had a couple Mormon friends and he gladly accepted a Book of Mormon. We walked around Opelousas and we met S., J. and K. (who stopped us cause they thought we were "two pretty cute white boys), they all want us to come back and teach them more about the Book of Mormon.They actually met with missionaries before and have a couple pamphlets.  We then went to a little wing shack and we started talking to the owner named Mario. We got to know him and he actually gave us extra food for free. He got these homemade hot terriyaki wings and they were super good.  We gave him a Book of Mormon and he told us to come back. We are definitely blessed when we simply open our mouth. We had another miracle this morning. Before we came off to email we stopped by the apartment office and the woman, V. , that works there started asking us a question and then she said "never mind." We told her she could ask us and then she said "well the more I read the Bible I am realizing to truly be saved we need to be baptized and I was wondering if you guys could help me." I think we had to stop ourselves from laughing because we just couldn't believe it. We set up an appointment and we are going to come talk to her at the office on Wednesday. We are being blessed!! And we even made a new friend today already.

We also had a really good lesson with T. about the Book of Mormon this week and he committed to reading it and praying about it. He is a good guy and he just has a natural desire to come closer to God. The transfer is coming to a close and I just hope that Elder Bracken and I can stay together for one more. We are becoming great friends and we are seeing a lot of miracles. I love being a district leader too because you get to talk to the other missionaries, get to know them and get strength and revelation from them. The missionaries in our district are doing really well right now and we are just all happy. It is so much fun.

I still have a lot to work on, but I found a cool scripture that brings me a lot of comfort. D & C 123 :17 says

 Therefore, dearly beloved brethren, let us cheerfully do all things that lie in our power; and then may we stand still, with the utmost assurance, to see the salvation of God, and for his arm to be revealed.

It reminds me of that quote you sent me a long time ago Dad. We just have to do our best, even if it is imperfect and we can be happy, with "the utmost assurance" in knowing that Heavenly Father will take care of the rest. I know that is true. I also love how it says we should do it "cheerfully." Being happy is way better than sad, worried or stressed and Heavenly Father wants us to be happy in this life more than anything. We are pretty happy. 

I love you guys so much and thank you for your support.

Prayers and Thoughts always

Love,

Elder Devin Soper