Back to the Grind

September 25, 2017

How’s it going everyone?

      This week has been a pretty good one. Sadly we haven’t been able to do much more service after the hurricane. Most everybody has their yards picked up already and everybody we offer help to declines it. I was surprised how fast everything got picked up. Now there are just tons of huge piles of tree branches and stuff in front of everyone’s house waiting to get picked up. There were a lot of members from within our mission that went down to Naples this weekend as well as last to help with recovery efforts there. They got hit pretty bad down there so there is a lot to be done. We only had sacrament meeting yesterday due to most of the members being there to help. We got power back to the church building on Tuesday when we were there having district meeting. So at least we are back up and running!

      This week we have just been hitting the pavement all day everyday. We have knocked so many doors this week, and it has paid off! We only get maybe one or two people a day that will listen to our message. So we are having a bit of a slow start, but we are getting there. We have really been trying to get to know the members. We have been visiting them in homes and sharing messages with them and inviting them to use social media to share the gospel. We will see how it goes! We did get an awesome referral this week from church headquarters. His name is Ricardo and he met missionaries in Orlando at a funeral that he took someone to. They taught him a little bit about the restoration. So we called him and set up a time to come by Sunday before church. He was super excited to see us. He knows the Bible very well and he said that he is excited to read the Book of Mormon. He just wants to take it all in! He said he will read about 3/4 of the Book of Mormon by Tuesday and he will call us haha. He loves to read. So it will be interesting, I’m excited to work with him. 

      General conference is this weekend! I feel like we just had the last one a month ago. I’m looking forward to it though. Conference is the only time that you can sit for hours and watch tv as a missionary. It’s a nice little break from walking around in the heat all day, and we get to hear from our prophet, apostles and other leaders which is a blessing. I hope you all watch it and get something out of it. I encourage you all to come to conference with a question in mind and listen to the speakers. You will find your answer and you will feel like that talk was just for you! It works, I’ve done it. So yeah, that’s about all this week. 

      Shout out to my mom who had a birthday this week! I love you mom! 

  Well I really hope y’all have a great week and enjoy conference. Thank you all for your support and for praying for the people down here affected by the storm. They feel the Love! Love you all. 

Pics- Palm tree with cactus looking plant growing over it

Someone’s boarded up house haha

Sunny and raining, that’s Florida! 

A turtle we found while tracting, he was hungry!

September 18th, 2017 (In the Aftermath)

    This has been one crazy week. Since I didn't get to email a lot last week I'll write more about what we did to prepare and what not. The week before the hurricane hit was pretty crazy too. Our mission President told us to get everything ready just in case we had to evacuate. So I already had my 72 hour kit and everything, but my
companion Elder Kennelly didn't so we went out on Tuesday to get everything he needed. Well it was a pretty hard task because all of the water and canned goods at the stores was gone. The shelves were pretty bare. We ended up finding a store that still had some left though. Then we went to fill up on gas because we needed to have a full tank. Well that was a pretty hard task too because all of the gas stations were either closed because they've run out of gas, or they had a line going all the way down the street. So we had to wait in a
line for about 45 min just to get some gas, but we got it so that was great. Our leaders told us to avoid using the car this week so we could keep gas in the tank. So we were biking around on Friday in Tarpon Springs trying to contact people and going to our lessons and such when a cop stopped us on our bikes and told us we had to leave. We thought it would be for soliciting or something, but she said that the city was under evacuation for the hurricane. So we ended up biking home. Then we got a call from one of our zone leaders telling us that we were going to evacuate Saturday morning, which was the next day. So we made sure we had everything ready and prepared the apartment. They had us move everything away from the windows and off the floor about 2
feet. So we had everything all ready to go. We left Saturday morning to go to the Odessa stake center which is about 15 miles inland from our apartment. As we were driving I noticed everyone's houses. They were all boarded up around the windows and had sand bags in front of the doors and garage. This hurricane is the biggest ever recorded in the Atlantic, so it was good that everybody prepared well. We eventually got to the Stake center and got settled in to our different rooms. They had us keep busy while we were there. We cleaned the whole building, had district and zone meetings, had study time, and we even got to watch movies and eat popcorn. We all had to sleep on the floor, which wasn't the most comfortable, but I'm glad that we were able to
be in a safe building. The worst of the storm hit Sunday night. It was a category 2 when it hit us. So it could have been a lot worse, but there was still a substantial amount of damage. We left on Monday afternoon to go back to our apartments. The Clearwater Elders came with us because their apartment was still out of power. We were blessed and had power in our apartment. We didn't have any damage to our apartment either so that was another blessing. President Cooper told us to serve as much as we can so that's exactly what we did. We
got in our service clothes and went out to serve!
     It has been so much fun to serve people in the aftermath of the hurricane. We have had a few scheduled service opportunities, but we've also just been offering help to everyone we see and it's paid off! We have helped so many people this week. Mainly cleaning up branches that have fallen, raking leaves and moving sand bags. We were able to help cut down a huge tree that fell on our Stake Presidents home. Luckily there wasn't too much damage to his house, just a couple holes. There were a lot of us there so it went by pretty quickly. I'll send pictures of all this as well. As we drove around to give service we saw a lot of damage around the area. There were tons of trees snapped or fallen over, fences blown down and torn apart, billboards blown down, tons of business signs destroyed, cars smashed by trees, power lines torn down, building torn up and so on. It was pretty crazy. Everyone we helped was so grateful. It felt good. I'm glad that we were able to show our faith by what we were doing. Yesterday was the first full day that I wore a white shirt and tie. We have just been serving non-stop all week. I love it! I'm sure we will have many more opportunities in the coming weeks as well. Sadly we weren't able to have church yesterday because the building is still out of power. Many places still  don't have power, but it's slowly getting back to normal. We dropped off the Clearwater Elders yesterday because they finally got power back to their apartment.
     On a lighter note, we are going back this week to see a lady we helped clean up her yard. She was so thankful and wondered why we were so passionate. We told her it was because of what we believed in, she
was curious as to what we believed in so we told her a little bit and set up a time to come back and share more. It was so cool! Even though the storm caused damage, we are finding opportunities to meet and teach people as we serve. It's been great. Well, I hope that you all are doing great. Thank you all so much for sending your prayers to the people down here that were affected by the storm. It's helped a ton. I'm looking forward to continue serving the community in any way we can. I love you all!! Have an amazing week!

September 11, 2017 Irma

Hey everyone! So I don't have much time and I have to be brief due to
wifi connection. As some of you may know we just got hit by hurricane
Irma. The worst of the storm hit last night between 10 and 2. It was a
catagory 4 when it first hit Florida, but when it hit us it was down
to about a 2 or a 1. So before any of his happened they evacuated us
to the Odessa stake center and we have all been camping out here since
Saturday. They had us bring 72 hour kits and a bunch of other stuff.
We have all been safe and are doing fine. We might be able to go back
home today, depending on how bad the flooding and debris is. It's been
a crazy week. Our city is in a major flooding zone so it was a
mandatory evacuation. Earlier in the week we were getting ready and
all the water at all the stores was gone and all the canned goods. The
shelves were pretty empty. All of the gas stations were closing as
well because they were out of gas. A lot of people left the state. All
in all we're okay though. I'll write more next week. Thank you all for
your prayers and support. Now we get to do some service! I'm excited.
Well, I love you all! Have an awesome week everyone.

mission president updates on Hurricane Irma

September 9, 2017

Dear Friends,

Just sending a quick update to let you know that all of the missionaries have arrived safely at their assigned safe havens. All are in good spirits and we've completed our first order of business -- a thorough cleaning of the buildings so that we have a clean living environment. We thought you might enjoy seeing a quick snapshot of these great missionaries!

We're also monitoring the storm's progress, as I'm sure you are. Irma appears to be advancing more slowly than expected, so Sunday evening and night will likely be the stormiest weather. More later ...

President and Sister Cooper

 the veracity of, and find peace and strength in, President Monson’s oft-repeated declaration – “When we’re on the Lord’s errand, we’re entitled to the Lord’s help.” We testify of the truthfulness of the Prophet’s promise, and hope you will also find peace in knowing of the courage and faith and optimism of your/our great missionaries of the Florida Tampa Mission.
We’ve also been touched as we’ve felt of the love and kindness of those around us in the communities of the Tampa Bay Area. Their good hearts shine forth as offers to assist abound here in this great part of the country. These gracious attributes of the people make us proud and grateful to be in the service of the Lord here.
The storm appears to be advancing at a little slower pace than previously forecast. We now expect the center of the storm to reach the Tampa latitudes on Sunday evening. Nonetheless, we plan to have all missionaries report to the safe haven shelters tomorrow (Saturday) mid-day. The shelters are in relatively central locations in the Mission, away from the coastal storm surge areas. We will find strength in the Lord together in the shelters over the next couple of days. After counseling with the stake presidents, we will also be blessed to hold sacrament meetings on Sunday. These are defining times for the missionaries. But they are also special occasions – gifts – that will become lifelong memories for all of the missionaries.
We feel of your love, support and prayers – thank you. On behalf of all these inspiring missionaries, we express our gratitude and love for all of you and for our Savior and Redeemer, Jesus Christ. May His grace and loving kindness be with us all.
Warm regards,
President and Sister Cooper

September 4, 2017

What's up people?!

    I've had a good week this week. We have been doing a lot of finding and have been having a lot of member lessons. We were actually able to eat with a couple of member families this week so that was nice. We invited them to share the gospel through social media, they loved the idea! So we will follow up with them on what they shared. We have an investigator named Phillip who the Sisters gave to us, I think I told you about him last week. We met with him twice this week and had really good lessons! He likes to think abstract and out of the box so he wanders a lot during the lessons, but he has had a hard time feeling worthy to pray. After our second lesson with him he said that after 15 lessons with missionaries he finally gets it. He realized that through praying he can be able to reach his higher goals. He committed to pray every night! So that was cool, we had a little break through with him.

    We have had quite a few people invite us back to their home to share a lesson with them this week, but when we went back almost all of them fell through. So that was a bummer. It also rained a ton this week. It rains every day usually for just a couple hours, but there were a for days where it was off and on all day. One of the roads we drove on was flooded. The water was up to our car doors! That's just normal around here though. The members said it floods here a lot.

    Elder Kennelly and I are doing good. We get along pretty well. He is from Sugar City Idaho. It's right next to Rexburg. It's a really small town. So he is used to the cold too haha. He has been out for about 10 months. He's a really good missionary, he knows what he is doing. There's a lot I could learn from him. We also have zone conference this week! I'm super excited for it. It's always good to see other missionaries that I haven't seen in a while. We're also getting flu shots haha. Speaking of sickness, I've been sick all week. I think it's just a cold. It started out with a sore throat then I was congested and now I have a cough. I'm getting better though. So yeah, that's pretty much what happened this week. It's been a little hard opening a new area, but we're pushing through it. I hope you all have a great week! Love and miss you all!

Ps: here's my address if anyone needs it.

1734 Kueka dr.
Apt. #305
Trinity, FL 34655

Pics:
1. The flooded road we drove through
2. A puzzle we just finished
3. A cool looking truck we saw this week
4. Elder Kennelly and I in our apartment!