Lead, Kindly Light (11/9/2010)

So, I transferred late Tuesday night into the great city of Meridian, Idaho! It has around 50,000 people and is one of the wealthier areas of Idaho. I love it here. It's like Star. I know we didn't live in a rich neighborhood or anything, but being around people who are in the upper middle class is just more my thing. Probably why I wasn't called to Argentina. (Also, I don't know if you guys know the company Scentsy, but the owner/founder lives in one of our wards and is an AWESOME fellowship-er. He brought a whole family to church on Sunday!)

Elder Landeen is from Sandy, Utah (Like Elder Henao!) and was initially called to serve in Mongolia. Since then, the communists took over and told the church they'd have to pay to have visas for missionaries over there. Of course, the Church won't be subject to extortion, so they had to pull out all non-Mongolian missionaries. Elder Landeen came out July 8th, 2009, which may sound like a familiar date since it's the day I came out! We get along really well. Probably better than any other companion I've had. He's definitely a good friend already, like Elders Henao and Arnoczky are. We live with the Bearss family (pronounced like the alcoholic beverage) in Garden City, a small suburb of Meridian...which is a suburb of Boise...it's complicated haha.

So, as some of you may or may not know, I was recently called to be a Zone Leader. That means I'm now in charge, along with Elder Landeen, of about 25 missionaries serving from Meridian all the way to McCall, Idaho, about 2-3 hours north. We attend all of their District Meetings and help them out whenever they require assistance, while STILL keeping missionary work going in our own Stake. We cover five wards right now. I am also serving as the District Leader of the Eagle District, which means I have to provide a two-hour training meeting every week for those Elders and Sister, like I did in Twin Falls.

Being at 16 months is weird. To me, it's the last pure month before home starts seeming close. 17 months seems too close to 18 months, which means I only have 6 months. Haha, that sounds really stupid, but it makes sense in my head. 16 months is also the two-thirds mark of the mission, for those of you who aren't gifted in math, but it still doesn't seem like I've been out that long. It's funny, today Elder Landeen and I were talking to some Elders from our zone we were driving somewhere and they were talking about how strange it was going to be to have Christmas away from home. It hit us that this would be our second, and thereby last, Christmas on the mission. That was a weird feeling.

We also have had Elder Begg, a good friend of mine that I served around in Rupert, serving with us for a few days before he gets the Big Transfer. He'll be reassigned to his home in Odessa, FL. It's funny, I met him when I was but 3 months old in Rupert and now he's going home. There's certainly an odd vibe about him as he's excited/sad/nervous about going home. I feel that way in tiny bits from time to time, knowing that this is all going to end in 8 months. I'm excited, of course, to be reunited with friends and family once again, but seeing the change that the Gospel of Jesus Christ brings to people's lives on a daily basis is an experience comparable to almost nothing else. It is truly a privilege to be called of God to serve Him and help others see the goodness He has in store for them. It brings to mind one of my new favorite scriptures from the Old Testament: Nahum 1:7. "The Lord is good, a strong hold in the day of trouble; and he knoweth them that trust in him."

I know the Lord DOES know those that trust in Him. In the analogy of a great friend, if we'll be trust in Him, have faith, hope and charity, and let Him drive the motorcycle while we sit in the sidecar, we can never go wrong. He will direct us into paths of righteousness and happiness. This much I know.

Until next time, my friends,

ZL Hops

Letter 9/21/10 - Food Service

Hello Folks,

So, a few weeks ago, I went to the Twin Falls County Fair. Scratch that. A few weeks ago I WORKED the Twin Falls County Fair. There's a local restaurant called Papa Kelsey's that sells subs and pizzas and they had a stand at the fair. Because the Kelsey family houses a pair of the missionaries, we all agreed to work for free during the week.

Thus was my introduction to the food service industry.

We arrived around 9 in the morning, ready to work. I'll admit, I was a bit apprehensive to be working in food services, as I never had previously done so. Nevertheless, I was willing and ready to do whatever it took to do my best and make the Kelsey family name continue to shine in the Twin Falls community. Plus, if I'm ever going to live in New York, I'm going to have to learn how to work in food. That's literally a requirement to live there.

Upon arrival, Alec Baldwin greeted us and told us the responsibilities we would be in charge of. We could either work in the kitchen or register. I didn't really feel like being in charge of money, math and standing in one place, so I said I'd man the kitchen. Alec said that would be a good idea (Ok, so it wasn't REALLY Alec Baldiwin, it was one of the Kelsey Sons, but he looks JUST like him!)

So, he lead me back into the little trailer/kitchen thing and introduced me to Lincoln, which was the giant sandwich oven. I will, from this point on, refer to it as Lincoln. So, my job was to assemble each sub, feed it to Lincoln and then wrap it in foil afterwards. Then, I would mark the foil as to what sandwich I had made. The code was as follows:

P = Pizza Sub
H/C = Ham and Cheese
T = Turkey
3M = Three Meat
IC = Italian Combo

After each wrapper was marked, I would then put a smiley face at the end, because everyone needs a smile. We also made little personal pizzas; cheese pepperoni and combos. Here are some photos of me and Lincoln tearing it up:


A tradition I started once we started getting a good flow of customers was that everytime we'd get a sale, when the register "binged" we would all yell "HEY!" at the top of our lungs. It made working seem a little more fun. Also, we were allowed to have free food and drinks the whole time we worked. Nothing better. By the time 5 o'clock rolled around and our shift ended, I was a bit bummed. It had been fun working the Papa Kelsey's stand and I eally didn't want to go. It seemed odd to me that I had so much fun doing what other people wouldn't do unless they got paid. But hey, now I know what food service is like, and you know what?

I can't wait to do it again.


Yours in pizza subs,

DL Hops

Nuh-VAH-duh

Dearest People In the Normal World,

Recently, I have done some fun things. I went to Nevada, learned to play pinochle and tried my hand at the food service industry. Over the next three weeks, I will explain these things, one event at a time.

So, one lazy Friday afternoon, Elder Mitchell and I had nothing doing. We had contacted most of the people we had set to see, and most people were out of town on account of the Twin Falls Fair in Filer, ID. (Yes, the Twin Falls Fair is not in Twin Falls. See also: Raleigh, NC Temple) Twin was empty I mean, it was DEAD. No cars or anything ANYWHERE. Labor Day and the Fair made the townspeople disappear faster than folks do on the Twilight Zone. So, we called the other Elders serving in Twin (Elder Wall and Elder Gossling) and invited them to join us in going to lunch.

In Jackpot, Nevada.

Jackpot is somewhat of Mission legend, in that it is the southernmost part of the mission and the only part of our mission in Nevada. It just so happens to be in my district, too. Missionaries often speak of Jackpot and how it is an oasis in the midst of the desert. Only an elect few have been there, according to the stories, and if you are fortunate enough to go, you won't be disappointed. So they say.

I'm here to tell you what Jackpot is REALLY like.

We drove about an hour and saw literally nothing, except a rad Camero and a horse staring into a house, which was pretty funny/creepy. I've included photos for reference. Enjoy.

But, when I say we saw nothing, I mean it. I even got Elder Wall to be a second witness to the lack of interesting things on the way to Nevada. Here is his opinion:

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From:Matthew David Wall matthew.wall@myldsmail.net
To:Mike Hopkins mike.hopkins@myldsmail.net

Date: Tue, Sep 7, 2010 at 4:21 PM

"the drive to jackpot neveda sucked. there was nothing to look at other than a champed up camero from the 80s. and jackpot was pretty wack. nothing to do there unless you gamble... and even that doesnt seem like too much fun to do there"

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It is the tiniest town ever. Ok, maybe not ever, but still. And it's so isolated from everything else that if you were to go to GoogleMaps, type in Jackpot, NV and then click "Find Nearby..." Google would laugh at you. It's hardly an oasis. It's an oasis in the way spilling your water bottle in the middle of the Sahara is an oasis.
But, we finally got there and went to the Four Jacks Casino, where the missionaries get food for free. YEAH. Gratís! We got to the state line and got pictures and then went to the Four Jacks, which was located in what looked like (and practically was) a strip mall. Ok, maybe I'm the only one who expected this but, the name of this town is Jackpot. To me, that means all it's about is casinos. Which is true. But these casinos are PATHETIC. I mean, the arcade in the back of a Cici's Pizza showed this place up. We get there and the waitress comes up and it is soon made very clear that she knows next to no English. She goes in the back to get someone who does and the smallest, meanest Hispanic I've ever seen in a greasy beater and asks, very abrasively I might add, what we want. We tell him food. He snarls and goes back to the kitchen. We sit around for about 10 minutes and start to wonder if we're ever going to have our orders taken. The waitress finally shows up and we order. I got a buffalo burger (♫Buffalo burger.♪.in my belly.♪.talking 'bout the buffalo burger.♫.in Jackpot Nevada♫ (Little Bob Marley throwback there.)) and it was actually pretty good.
Elder Wall and I then went to go to the bathroom, and when we went to wash our hands, the soap dispensers didn't work because someone had removed the handles of them. On our way out of the bathroom, a sketchy guy passed us and in his hands were the handles for the soap. Go figure.

We all got up and left, and as we did, I snapped a picture of the interior of the Four Jacks. This is it in all it's glory. One tiny little room. Although they did have my favorite machine "Betty the Yetti" (Yes, Yeti with two "Ts") for only a penny. WHAT A STEAL!

Well, moral of the story: don't go to Jackpot. People will tell you it's a hit, but it's really a bust.

Happily yours,

DL Hops

Letter - 8/24/2010

Helloooo people of Earth!

I feel like I haven't written in five evers! I am now in Twin Falls, Idaho, the largest city in Idaho's Magic Valley region. Sadly, there are no warlocks, trolls or any other magical things around. Just farms, oh and an IHOP! You know that if there's an IHOP nearby, I'm happy. Things have been really great. We live with a family named the Vippermans along with their daughter and son-in-law Ari and Derek as well as THEIR son, Brody. It is a fantastic place to live and I absolutely love it. It's fun to have people around to talk to in the morning or when we come in at night.

We've been biking a lot lately; actually, every day since I got here. Our car is in the shop. One of the missionaries who was here before me thought it would be a good idea to throw the car in park going 30. Yeah, brilliant, I know. So we've been biking anywhere between 12-20 miles a day, which I LOVE, because now I don't have to worry quite as much about what I eat since we're burning the calories. Yay, clear conscience! Also, one of my Zone Leaders was a Fitness major (or whatever major you would be in to be a personal trainer) and is making me a workout plan that requires no weights or anything, since I have none. I don't know about everyone else, but for me, the combination of eating right and doing some kind of exercise really makes me feel 100%. It doesn't mean I'm going to be ripped or anything (I mean, this is ME we're talking about) but you just feel better about yourself overall. You should try it.

So, apart from biking and also learning all sorts of songs for the uke, hings have been really busy. I'm now a District Leader, which sounds a lot more important than it really is (apart from the fact that I now have the sweet nickname of DL Hops.) I'm in charge of a weekly two hour meeting for my district, which consists of four companionships. Essentially, I just try and teach them how to be better missionaries after doing a lot of study on the same subject myself. Kind of weird, since I don't feel like I should be telling ANYone ANYthing about how to be better.

We've been meeting with a lot of different families and pretty much every hour of the day is filled with helping people overcome all sorts of personal problems such as alcoholism, family disagreements, loneliness, unemployment and a plethora of other things through Jesus Christ. It never ceases to amaze me how people's problems can be solved when and if they swallow their pride and ask for help from God and Jesus Christ. The way I always put it to people is like this: God is sitting up there with a giant, Santa-like bag full of blessings, just waiting for us to ask Him for help so he can give them to us. It may not necessarily be exactly like that, but I know that God is perfect and He is our loving Heavenly Father, and if He's perfect, then He loves us with a perfect love. All of us. Equally. He only wants what is best for us. I know that, and I know that you can know it as well if you sincerely pray and ask Him for help. He'll be there every time.

Ok, enough soapboxing for now, I hope everyone is doing well. I also (for any of you who I haven't already talked to about it) started writing part of the book I've always wanted to write. I typed up a synopsis, but it's really hard to explain exactly what I want on a page or two. that's why I'll be writing a book and not an essay or short story. But, I'm pretty excited about the whole thing. I've always been scared to try and write a book because it seems so daunting, but I'm going to do it to prove to myself that I can. See you on the New York Times Best Seller list haha

Lastly, if you've written me a letter recently and I haven't gotten back to you, please forgive me I'm trying to find time to write, so know I haven't forgotten about you, I'm just super busy. That's a poor excuse, but an excuse nonetheless.

Thanks for all your support!

Consistently yours,

DL Hops

Baptism by Fire

We had a crazy thing happen this past weekend. We had a baptism. That's not the crazy part though. We went about two hours before hand, as we often do, to fill the font before the actual baptism. So, most font controls have four parts: a handle controlling water flow to the font, two other handles controlling the ratio of hot and cold water and a gauge telling you how hot the water is. The thing about the font we used this past weekend is that it DID have the water flow control valve, but did NOT have controls for the temperature. It did however, have the gauge to show us the temperature.


So, Elder Kraus, who was with me at the time, and I start filling the font and go to set up chairs, returning about 10 minutes later to check on everything. Steam pours out of the door as we open the font entrance and we know something's wrong. I run in and check the gauge.


105. Not good.

I run into the kitchen in the church, looking for bags of ice that so often frequent the freezers of the church, only to find a half-empty bag mocking me, the ripped plastic forming some sort of sadistic grin knowing it will be on no service. I threw it in anyway.

Upon return to the kitchen, I found a large (I mean LARGE) pot that Elder Kraus and I immediately began filling with cold tap water with pitchers, since it didn't fit in the sink. Once full, we dumped it in the font, making lovely wakes and quite a ruckus. We looked at one another, grinned, high-fived and ran back to the kitchen. Sadly, we realized the pitcher-fill method was far too slow, so we set about finding a more effective way to move water to pot. Elder Kraus picked up a nearby cafeteria-style tray and angled it as to redirect the water into the large metal container we had used. It worked...but was very messy. Being missionaries, we would only settle for effectiveness, plus we needed something to where we could "Set it and forget it" so we could finish setting up chairs.

Atop the fridge rested a utility drawer for the freezer. I snatched it up and rested it on an upturned bowl on top of the tray and it cascaded down the drawer into the bucket nearly flawlessly. Nearly. Residual water sprayed on the floor, but not enough to reformulate a plan, so we rushed back to the room to set up the chairs. We arrived back in the kitchen just in time to stop the pot from overflowing, took it to the font, heaved it in (it was very heavy) made a wake, grinned, high fived and went back to set it up again.
It then dawned upon me to use the mass amount of pitchers in the church kitchen's arsenal to make giant ice cubes (ok, they weren't cubes, they were pitcher-shaped, but what else am I supposed to call them?) to chuck in the font as a last ditch cooling effort. We stuffed 7 pitchers in the freezer and began the long process of fill, heave, wake, grin, high five, repeat.

Finally, an hour and a half later, the font was filled by 105 degree water and cold tap water via my and Elder Kraus' heaving. Becky (the young lady we were baptizing) shows up just as we're removing the pitchers from the freezer to add the ice. She looked at us, 50% shocked, 50% frightened and 100% confused and asked "just what we thought we were doing." We looked at Becky, looked at one another, then, with Kraus' solemn comment "It's for your own good," we let fall the ice into the font.

It took less than five minutes to melt.

Letter - 6/22/10

Hello Blog Readers!

So, some crazy things have happened since I last wrote. I now have a new companion, Elder Eging, who is ALSO from Ohio. Elder Arnoczky went to Middleton. He's a big boy now. They grow up so fast! But I'm confident in him and it's been interesting to see him learn the ropes and how much he's grown.

Ok, so on to the big news. First of all, I went over to Emmett, ID with Elder Kraus for a day and the people who fed us dinners fed us quite a delicacy in these parts. They're known as Rocky Mountain Oysters. If you don't know what they are, Google it or something. Do that now. Ok, are you done? Yeah, hopefully you still respect me. They tasted...interesting. Not really what you expect, but then again what DO you expect when you go to eat something like that? I will say this though: they were a lot smaller than I pictured them. haha So gross. But hey, I have a cool story now, eh?

We also had three people get baptized the weekend before last. It was a dad and two of his kids. The Pollock family. Jason (dad), Breanna (Daughter) and Jalen (Son). It was a really powerful experience to see a family join together in the Gospel like that. It's experiences like this that help me remember why I came out on a mission. For those of you who don't know (and hopefully I haven't mentioned this before) my parents are converts to the Church. One day, some missionaries knocked on the door a few months after my parents were married and my Mom answered and let them talk to her about the Gospel. I know that my life has been better because the Gospel was in it. I don't know (nor really, do I want to) where I'd be without the Church in my life. I realize a little more now the changes people have to make as a family in order to come closer unto the Savior and it's really inspiring to see them all do it together.

Much thanks to everyone who sends me letters or packages or e-mails. It means a lot to know that you're thinking about me, because I know that I think about you all quite a bit. Never forget how much Heavenly Father and Christ love each of us!!


Don't Eat Rocky Mountain Oysters,

Elder Hops

Letter - 6/1/2010

Hey everyone!

Elder Arnoczky and I are doing very well! It's his second week here and things are going great. We get along really well and I couldn't ask for a better son! We joke around a ton, work hard and have fun. We both have started a new diet: 700 calories only before dinner. We figure that's a pretty good number since we're trying to stay under 1500 calories a day, and we never know what we'll be getting from the members for dinner. We also run 3 miles a day - one in the morning, two at night. It's a good thing to do and always helps us feel healthier and is a good habit to get in to.

Side note: Pictures are on the way as soon as I can get the photo CD made and sent off!

In other news, things are warming up around here, much to my dismay. You all probably know I am not the biggest fan of hot weather. But, at least it's a dry heat, right? Eh...right. Our car's air conditioning is not really working either, so being in a car isn't much of a help in the war on heat.

A pretty crazy thing is happening in July. Our Mission President, President Yardley, is going home and we will be getting a new one, President Cannon. A mission president is the man who is more or less in charge of all the missionaries in the area. Through prayer, he is inspired to decide where each missionary will be transferred to in the mission and what companion they will have. It will be a sad day when President Yardley leaves. He truly is a wonderful man, as well as his wife, Sister Yardley. They served in their positions for three years. So, essentially, I will have one mission president for the first half of my mission and a different one for the second half. Kind of sad, kind of exciting.

Well, not much very new things going on. Oh! Except that there is a family here who we've been working with that it's been fantastic to see how they've grown together in the Gospel as they've learned about it. I spoke a little in my last letter about families and how important they are for us and to our Heavenly Father.

-Elder Hops