Baptism

Hey yall!!

First off, thank you pops for that awesome letter you sent me!! I
loved your explanation on being converted. Reading through the book of
mormon this time, I've been paying special attention to the prophets
and how their eternal perspective helps them teach. Its amazing to see
Nephi's faith in action. I know that as we teach our investigators the
principles of the gospel, the Lord will help them with their faith if
they're willing to act on it. Your sky diving analogy was pretty
funny. Luckily basically all the people we teach here accept the
existence of God so that makes it nice haha. I hope for more letters
like that from ya dad. that was super cool.

Just for yall's info, I got 8 letters and 3 packages last week!!! what
a blessing!! Thank you all for being so supportive :) It helps
sooooooo much. Gma Buck, those cookies were delicious! Joe and jules,
I love that efy album. Hil, thanks for gettin that cd in for me. And
mom, I got the strawberry jam safe and sound. I had the best pb&j yet
here on the mission last week :D Ok so some things I would like for
march... I'm almost finished with my first journal so if you could
send of the next that would be fantastic. Also, It would be nice to
have a 4 gig flash drive. Cuz we do alot of stuff in the clerks office
and i'd like to be able to save the data. Thank you so much!!

So. About last week. On Sunday (the 19th) Angel got baptized :) We'd
had a date set for a couple weeks so I'm so glad he was able to make
the step. It was such an awesome experience! And now, his older sister
wants to get baptized too!! But she goes to school in upstate new york
so we will hafta figure that out. They both have such strong
testimonies of God's church on the earth. Last week overall was just
awesome. I've been fearlessing a lot of people. (missionary term for
starting a conversation with a random person). There are so many
people willing to listen to the gospel here in Bushwick. We have quite
a bit of potential. I know the Lord has been blessing this area soooo
much lately. It hasn't seen a lot of luck over the past while so I
really hope all this turns into something great for the branch. We
plan to visit a few new people this week so I'm really excited.

So one quick funny story. We were on the train headed to the other
elder's pad and I decided to fearless this one couple. They were super
nice and we had a good conversation going about the book of mormon.
The woman seemed very interested so I got her information. Her name
was Maria Peralta. After setting a time to go see them, Elder lewis
and I had to get off the train. Then I realized her name sounded
really really familiar. So we look in the area book (The binder that
contains all the information about the area of proselyting) and it
turns out that she had been taught by the missionaries in my area over
a year ago but they lost contact because she went to the Dominican
Republic for six months. So this random lady I decided to talk to had
already had an awesome experience with the gospel and is now very open
to us teaching her. I know that this is no coincidence. I really hope
that she feels the power of the gospel of Jesus Christ as we teach her
this week. I'm really excited.

Well, its about time to go but thank you so much for allllllll that
you all do for me. Thank you for the support and love. Hope to hear
from you all soon!! :)

Love, Elder Hogge