Hello Everyone!
This week has been pretty eventful! Saturday specifically. No one can say that missions are boring, I'm still in a little bit of shock from what happened, I really feel like I was in a movie! So here's the story...We got up in the morning and were out the door at 6:30 to go running like usual. We were going to go running around a park that's about 40 ft from our apartment complex. So we're just walking over there when a cop car pulls up behind us. They asked us if we'd seen a green car with one of the headlights out with a bunch of Mexicans in it, apparently they had been 'causing trouble'. So we told them no and asked if it was safe to run around the park. He told us we were fine and drove away. Not 5 seconds later, this car that they were describing peels around the corner onto summerfield st. and was being chased by 3 cop cars! They were going probably 80 miles an hour and crashed onto this lawn no more than 10 ft from us across the street!! They then proceeded to flip around and back onto the road and started driving around the caldasac. At this point we were running for our lives back to our apartment. When we were almost in the ONLY ENTRANCE to the apartment, this car came back around and tried to turn into the complex but slammed into a tree instead, the cop slamming into the back of him, both almost hitting us in the process!! The driver hopped over into the passenger side and started sprinting into the complex with a bunch of cops chasing after him. One of the Lady cops started screaming and dropping the f-bomb saying, "Put your hands up or I'm gonna shoot you!!". At this point sister Clawson and I were in the process of having a heart attack, being in the middle of all of this. So there was one kid sitting in this car with his hands up, and the cops managed to grab the other one and drag him out kicking and screaming, while me and Sister Clawson were sneaking around behind the cops in an attempt to get to the Elder's apartment. All the while more and more cops are showing up until eventually we had 30 plus cop cars on our street. So finally we get to the gate and the Elder's happened to see us there and let us in thankfully. By this time we were both bawling and the elders were just kind of like, "sorry, we wish we could give you guys hugs!" But they ended up bringing us donuts later :) SCARIEST EXPERIENCE OF MY LIFE!!!! I now have a testimony that God protects his missionaries though :) And it makes a pretty good story, good journal entry that day, haha. Although I don't trust cops anymore, the member that we went to dinner with last night showed up the news report on what happened. We are now going to invest in some pepper spray :)
Anyway, the baptism later on that day was great though :) Kathy had been having so much anxiety about it over the week, but once she came up out of the water she was absolutely glowing! She has really bad anxiety and depression, and I'd never heard her say that she was happy before, but when we asked her how she felt afterward, she said that she felt so good and happy :) Sister Clawson and I were in tears (again, haha). It was really cool, Sister Clawson's old companion, Sister Beach got to skype in, and Kathy was so bummed that she wasn't going to be there to sing for her baptism, that sister Beach sang to her over skype. :) It was awesome, It really made Kathy's day. It's amazing what we can do with technology nowadays!
I love being on a mission, but i've never felt how real the adversary is before this, he's really hitting hard right now! But that's okay, because it just means good things to come :) I've never really noticed up until now the difference that being set apart as a missionary makes in how you feel the Holy Ghost. it really is like a warm blanket that is just constantly with us, and it's terrifying to be in a situation where the spirit just leaves. There were several times this week with certain basher's where I was convinced that they were possessed. Like full on, New testament Jesus casts out evil spirits possessed. It's a strange feeling to try and wrestle to keep the spirit around. It literally feels like you're just hanging on for dear life, but these experiences have really strengthened my testimony of the truthfulness of this gospel and the importance of the work that we're doing as missionaries. it's so amazing to see the difference that it makes in people's lives, like Kathy's. The greatest thing to see is when member's really get involved in the missionary work themselves. I love the feeling that comes from walking into certain member's homes, and you can just feel that they are doing everything they can to follow the example of the savior, and It really helps me to see how I want to live the rest of my life :)
By the way, Happy birthday everyone that is having a birthday in October! :) Have so much fun at the Halloween party!! I will be there in Spirit. Just imagine me dressed up as an Elder, that's what I'm going to be for Halloween :)
Love you all! Have an awesome week! Be safe!
Love,
Sister Lesser
Mom:
Aw, cute puppies! are those the frenchie/oldies? That's too bad that Andrew got an infection. That actually happens more often than you would think. There's quite a bit of missionaries in our mission who went to South America and then had to come back because of medical issues. It's alright though, he did what he was supposed to there and now he's going to where God needs him to be :)
I'm so jealous that you get to go to Grandpa's Halloween party! Have lots of fun :) I'm sure that mandee's costumes look great, and I would really appreciate pictures and stuff :)
Hope that you guys are having an awesome week! How are dad and Tyson? have they shot anything? Tell daddy to send me jerky please :) Also, whenever you send a package, will you please include my black coat that I got for Christmas and the tan one that looks similar to it? If there's not room that's fine. It's starting to heat up again, but the last week has felt so good! Nice and cool :) well, I hope that you have a great week! don't get too overwhelmed with all of the sewing. And I'm sorry for not practicing piano all of those years.
Love you!
Mandee:
When does the play start?! I think I've asked you that question in every e-mail for the last couple of months. I bet you guys will do awesome :) I'm glad that you are having so much fun in school :) Grandma Nanna sent me some pictures of Brie going to homecoming! It was so crazy, I can't believe you guys are that old! Don't date til you're 16, I'm serious! Anyway, have an awesome week, work hard, and read your scriptures and say your prayers everyday. I promise it will make a difference in how your week goes :)
Kari:
Thanks so much for the package! I love the holiday packages that you send :) It's really cutsied up our apartment! It was an elder's apartment not too long ago, and it definitely looks like one, so it's been nice to have cute decorations up :) It sounds like you guys have been having lots of fun, just staying really busy! I can't believe that Kaden graduates this year! (In all honesty I still can't believe that I'm graduated!) But he'll make an awesome missionary :) Serving a mission really does make you a better person and change your perspectives on things if you let it! I know that I'm a completely different person because of it! I'm glad that your talk went well!
How is everything else going? Do you have any fun trips coming up? You had a birthday last week right? Happy belated birthday!
Love you!
Grandma Nanna:
Haha! Thanks for the pictures! I can't believe that Brie is old enough to go to homecoming, that's so crazy!! They all still seem so little to me, my mom keeps telling me how Mandee has started driving and it's freaking me out! She's just not old enough!! Haha, Stryker's picture!! That just seems like a picture of a normal day in the Lesser/Hoppe house :) haha. How is everything going? Is grandpa still hunting?
Have a great week, Love you!
Grandma Bowcutt:
I'm so glad that you guys made it back safely and that you were able to have a good time with Daniel, Tayler, and Daren. :) How are you remodeling the upstairs bedrooms? What are they going to look like now? Have you guys gotten more used to being off your missions? Just think, now you can take that trip to the great wall of China that grandpa wanted to do! :) haha.
I love you guys, hope you have a great week!
Hi Dad!!
I hear that you're back up hunting again, so you probably won't get this letter for a while, but thanks for your letter last week! I didn't get it in time to write back, but we can read e-mails throughout mondays. I was so happy to hear from you :) One of the recent converts in this area, Bill, really likes hunting to, so I get to talk to him about sitting in trees and shootin' stuff and what not :) haha. We'll have to go hunting when I get back! Also, If you happen to shoot something this time, I would really appreciate some jerky. teriyaki flavor. yum :) How did Tyson do on the dear hunt? Is he shooting better? Mandee sent me a picture a couple weeks ago of his poor bruised arm! Poor kid.
Vacaville is quite a bit different than Dixon. A little more dangerous, a lot more people, and a lot more places to go shopping :) yay! Not that I have the funds for that, but they have lots of really good stores to come back to after the mission :) It's fun, but all of the solid investigators got baptized in the few weeks before I got here, so we've been doing quite a bit of finding.
This week has been pretty eventful! Saturday specifically. No one can say that missions are boring, I'm still in a little bit of shock from what happened, I really feel like I was in a movie! So here's the story...We got up in the morning and were out the door at 6:30 to go running like usual. We were going to go running around a park that's about 40 ft from our apartment complex. So we're just walking over there when a cop car pulls up behind us. They asked us if we'd seen a green car with one of the headlights out with a bunch of Mexicans in it, apparently they had been 'causing trouble'. So we told them no and asked if it was safe to run around the park. He told us we were fine and drove away. Not 5 seconds later, this car that they were describing peels around the corner onto summerfield st. and was being chased by 3 cop cars! They were going probably 80 miles an hour and crashed onto this lawn no more than 10 ft from us across the street!! They then proceeded to flip around and back onto the road and started driving around the caldasac. At this point we were running for our lives back to our apartment. When we were almost in the ONLY ENTRANCE to the apartment, this car came back around and tried to turn into the complex but slammed into a tree instead, the cop slamming into the back of him, both almost hitting us in the process!! The driver hopped over into the passenger side and started sprinting into the complex with a bunch of cops chasing after him. One of the Lady cops started screaming and dropping the f-bomb saying, "Put your hands up or I'm gonna shoot you!!". At this point sister Clawson and I were in the process of having a heart attack, being in the middle of all of this. So there was one kid sitting in this car with his hands up, and the cops managed to grab the other one and drag him out kicking and screaming, while me and Sister Clawson were sneaking around behind the cops in an attempt to get to the Elder's apartment. All the while more and more cops are showing up until eventually we had 30 plus cop cars on our street. So finally we get to the gate and the Elder's happened to see us there and let us in thankfully. By this time we were both bawling and the elders were just kind of like, "sorry, we wish we could give you guys hugs!" But they ended up bringing us donuts later :) SCARIEST EXPERIENCE OF MY LIFE!!!! I now have a testimony that God protects his missionaries though :) And it makes a pretty good story, good journal entry that day, haha. Although I don't trust cops anymore, the member that we went to dinner with last night showed up the news report on what happened. We are now going to invest in some pepper spray :)
Anyway, the baptism later on that day was great though :) Kathy had been having so much anxiety about it over the week, but once she came up out of the water she was absolutely glowing! She has really bad anxiety and depression, and I'd never heard her say that she was happy before, but when we asked her how she felt afterward, she said that she felt so good and happy :) Sister Clawson and I were in tears (again, haha). It was really cool, Sister Clawson's old companion, Sister Beach got to skype in, and Kathy was so bummed that she wasn't going to be there to sing for her baptism, that sister Beach sang to her over skype. :) It was awesome, It really made Kathy's day. It's amazing what we can do with technology nowadays!
I love being on a mission, but i've never felt how real the adversary is before this, he's really hitting hard right now! But that's okay, because it just means good things to come :) I've never really noticed up until now the difference that being set apart as a missionary makes in how you feel the Holy Ghost. it really is like a warm blanket that is just constantly with us, and it's terrifying to be in a situation where the spirit just leaves. There were several times this week with certain basher's where I was convinced that they were possessed. Like full on, New testament Jesus casts out evil spirits possessed. It's a strange feeling to try and wrestle to keep the spirit around. It literally feels like you're just hanging on for dear life, but these experiences have really strengthened my testimony of the truthfulness of this gospel and the importance of the work that we're doing as missionaries. it's so amazing to see the difference that it makes in people's lives, like Kathy's. The greatest thing to see is when member's really get involved in the missionary work themselves. I love the feeling that comes from walking into certain member's homes, and you can just feel that they are doing everything they can to follow the example of the savior, and It really helps me to see how I want to live the rest of my life :)
By the way, Happy birthday everyone that is having a birthday in October! :) Have so much fun at the Halloween party!! I will be there in Spirit. Just imagine me dressed up as an Elder, that's what I'm going to be for Halloween :)
Love you all! Have an awesome week! Be safe!
Love,
Sister Lesser
Mom:
Aw, cute puppies! are those the frenchie/oldies? That's too bad that Andrew got an infection. That actually happens more often than you would think. There's quite a bit of missionaries in our mission who went to South America and then had to come back because of medical issues. It's alright though, he did what he was supposed to there and now he's going to where God needs him to be :)
I'm so jealous that you get to go to Grandpa's Halloween party! Have lots of fun :) I'm sure that mandee's costumes look great, and I would really appreciate pictures and stuff :)
Hope that you guys are having an awesome week! How are dad and Tyson? have they shot anything? Tell daddy to send me jerky please :) Also, whenever you send a package, will you please include my black coat that I got for Christmas and the tan one that looks similar to it? If there's not room that's fine. It's starting to heat up again, but the last week has felt so good! Nice and cool :) well, I hope that you have a great week! don't get too overwhelmed with all of the sewing. And I'm sorry for not practicing piano all of those years.
Love you!
Mandee:
When does the play start?! I think I've asked you that question in every e-mail for the last couple of months. I bet you guys will do awesome :) I'm glad that you are having so much fun in school :) Grandma Nanna sent me some pictures of Brie going to homecoming! It was so crazy, I can't believe you guys are that old! Don't date til you're 16, I'm serious! Anyway, have an awesome week, work hard, and read your scriptures and say your prayers everyday. I promise it will make a difference in how your week goes :)
Kari:
Thanks so much for the package! I love the holiday packages that you send :) It's really cutsied up our apartment! It was an elder's apartment not too long ago, and it definitely looks like one, so it's been nice to have cute decorations up :) It sounds like you guys have been having lots of fun, just staying really busy! I can't believe that Kaden graduates this year! (In all honesty I still can't believe that I'm graduated!) But he'll make an awesome missionary :) Serving a mission really does make you a better person and change your perspectives on things if you let it! I know that I'm a completely different person because of it! I'm glad that your talk went well!
How is everything else going? Do you have any fun trips coming up? You had a birthday last week right? Happy belated birthday!
Love you!
Grandma Nanna:
Haha! Thanks for the pictures! I can't believe that Brie is old enough to go to homecoming, that's so crazy!! They all still seem so little to me, my mom keeps telling me how Mandee has started driving and it's freaking me out! She's just not old enough!! Haha, Stryker's picture!! That just seems like a picture of a normal day in the Lesser/Hoppe house :) haha. How is everything going? Is grandpa still hunting?
Have a great week, Love you!
Grandma Bowcutt:
I'm so glad that you guys made it back safely and that you were able to have a good time with Daniel, Tayler, and Daren. :) How are you remodeling the upstairs bedrooms? What are they going to look like now? Have you guys gotten more used to being off your missions? Just think, now you can take that trip to the great wall of China that grandpa wanted to do! :) haha.
I love you guys, hope you have a great week!
Hi Dad!!
I hear that you're back up hunting again, so you probably won't get this letter for a while, but thanks for your letter last week! I didn't get it in time to write back, but we can read e-mails throughout mondays. I was so happy to hear from you :) One of the recent converts in this area, Bill, really likes hunting to, so I get to talk to him about sitting in trees and shootin' stuff and what not :) haha. We'll have to go hunting when I get back! Also, If you happen to shoot something this time, I would really appreciate some jerky. teriyaki flavor. yum :) How did Tyson do on the dear hunt? Is he shooting better? Mandee sent me a picture a couple weeks ago of his poor bruised arm! Poor kid.
Vacaville is quite a bit different than Dixon. A little more dangerous, a lot more people, and a lot more places to go shopping :) yay! Not that I have the funds for that, but they have lots of really good stores to come back to after the mission :) It's fun, but all of the solid investigators got baptized in the few weeks before I got here, so we've been doing quite a bit of finding.
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