A good week! (Frisco)

Subject:	A good week!
Date:	Mon, 25 Jun 2018 19:25:33 -0500
From:	Brett Hogg

Well fam yet another week here in Frisco! We have new people we are teaching, one being the Ecuadorian lady we helped move a couple weeks ago. We also contacted and set up return appointment with a nice Filipino guy! We also started teaching a super nice lady, who was a referral from her brother in Florida. His daughter is serving a mission in Chicago and he was talking to his sister and she had a lot of questions. She's a neat lady. 

Then we were also teaching this other girl. She is a friend of one of the young women here in the ward. They are in a Bible study group together at school. She said she wanted to talk to missionaries. She's 16 and is like hardcore Baptist, and we're not sure if she really has a desire to know more or just wants to Bible-Bash, but either way we only testify truth! We'll keep you posted!

Other than that, it hasn't been too exciting. We did eat with an Indian we have here in the ward. They made us masala? It's like a potato, mustard seed mash, and it isn't half bad! You eat it with what is essentially a big crépe. Awesome family! The Dad isn't a member but comes every week, and takes the daughters to seminary every morning. He doesn't want to join he says because he has to do a hindu ritual every year to honor his parents. It's all pretty interesting. Frisco is like little India, we are trying to figure out how to bring them the Gospel because they're not very interested in Christianity at the moment haha.

Anyway, love you guys!

Elder Hogg

Found some cows while riding home after biking all day in the Texas summer.

They weren't that interested in the Gospel. 

Frisco/north Dallas area is kind of funny because it's used to all be farmland and then it suddenly exploded, then you get a lot of ranches that refuse to sell out, so there's random farm in the middle of a bunch of housing developments and office buildings.  haha

Elder Hogg trying to give a cow a Book of Mormon. 

He (She) isn't interested...

Not a whole lot new this week.

Subject:	Not a whole lot new this week.
Date:	Mon, 18 Jun 2018 14:00:26 -0500
From:	Brett Hogg

It's been a slow one fam. Elder Tornow has been sick lately, so we haven't been able to go do a whole lot. We were able to go out to Oak Point which is Northwest of us, to help out some other missionaries. One of the people we stopped by was an inactive mormon guy whos family were all not members. He let us in we chatted, he said he hasn't been to church in years, and then we asked if he has been reading the Book of Mormon at all. He told us about some job insecurity he's had lately, and that he actually just started reading the Doctrine & Covenants, of all things. He was like "you guys need to understand something: every time I start reading the scriptures and praying again, the missionaries show up." He explained that he said to his wife "watch the missionaries will be coming over soon" then bada bing! bada boom, WE show up! It was awesome. So that was cool. The missionaries over there have a return appointment with him soon so we'll see what happens. 

We do have a good long term investigator. His wife is a member, and missionaries have been teaching him for nearly a year and half. He's awesome. He's read through the entire Book of Mormon, the Pearl of Great Price and almost the Doctrine & Covenants, but is having trouble committing to be baptized. We originally had a whole thing set up to teach him in the temple but it didn't work out, BUT he still went and were able to get the Temple President to meet him. They wound up talking for like half an hour! So that was awesome. We have a lesson with him on Tuesday, so we will see how it went. 

Otherwise not a whole lot else. 

Hope everything is going well back home!

Love y'all!

Elder Hõgg

I don't have any pictures from this week, but I do have this.

I'm staying in Frisco!

Subject:	I'm staying in Frisco!
Date:	Mon, 11 Jun 2018 17:05:35 -0500
From:	Brett Hogg <brett.hogg@myldsmail.net>
To:	Susan J. Hogg <shogg@wi.rr.com>, Sue <sueh@wi.rr.com>

And I'm staying with Elder Tornow!!

First of all thank you for the socks! They're perfect!!

Second if you could turn your attention to the picture bellow of Elder Tornow's homemade tandem bicycle. Now you might be wondering, "why is Elder Tornow riding a homemade tandem bicycle?" Wellllll, it all started with a communist revolution in nicaragua. Turns out, the Nicaraguan President does not like when people protest his government, so he kills them instead. So the church pulled all the missionaries out, and we got one for a couple days! Originally, we borrowed a bike for him from a member. After two days and a complicated network of rides, we wound up having to bike home without our Nicaraguan friend, leaving an extra bike. Elder Tornow, a future robotics engineer, rigged up this beautiful towing system for this extra bike. I was more than a little impressed!!!

We also saw a couple tender mercies this week. One, we didn't have dinner one night, and we were thinking of calling this one family that always helps us out. We decided against it even though he's told us to always call him and not to feel bad when we do, but lately we have called him for a lot of rides,  and we were feeling lazy and didn't want to bike all the way to his house, but just then, the moment we were saying, "Nahh..." the phone rang. It was him! His wife told him to call us because she had a feeling that we needed something. You could say that her missionary senses were tingling. Needless to say, we did not starve that night. Two, as we were biking on a sweltering, Texas day, a member stopped us and handed us two ice cold gatorades. Immediately following this tender mercy, a mexican man named Heriberto waved us down and asked if we had something that he could read. He told us that he is in the Dallas area for work, painting. In Mexico, he is a firefighter and is taking the lessons, recognized us, and was excited to see that I spoke Spanish. We gave him a pamphlet, the Libro De Mormon, got his contact info, and bid him adieu. 

Investigator wise, things are chugging along very slowly. But! We had a huge breakthrough with a part member family. They are middle-aged but newly married. He is a proud Jesuit Catholic, and she is a completely active Mormon. For the sake of his kids and the blended family dynamic, she didn't want the missionaries and everyone else hounding him and pressuring him to get baptized. In the mean time he goes to church sometimes with her, and love the the missionaries, they just haven't shared a formal message. But this week, we didn't really know that, so we went by and pretty much just asked if we could teach him. He said sure why not, he basically said we're not going to baptize him, but he's open to listen. She got emotional and said that this felt like the right time for him to take the lessons and everything, it was awesome. So we taught him a couple days later and he liked it, still a very proud Jesuit, but it was still a really good breakthrough I think. And they made us grilled cheeses! I've never gone over there and didn't eat haha.

Anyway,

That's about it, love yall!

Elder Hogg 👱🏾‍♂️

Also I went on exchanges with the other Frisco elders and their apartment is just down the street from the Dallas Major league soccer team, F.C. Dallas', stadium. 

Also a novelty No Soliciting sign a man aggressively pointed to before slamming the door on us lol.

Adventures and Biking in Frisco...

Date:	Mon, 4 Jun 2018 16:32:47 -0500
From:	Brett Hogg

Hola familia! 

Not a very eventful week, but we had some decent stuff going on. We started the week by heading on over to Sherman, TX, after a mission meeting, for some exchanges. It was pretty neat. I got try out my rusty Spanish again! A member up there invited their mexican friend to listen to the missionaries! So I got to try out my Spanish, the member (a white guy who served in Argentina) translated everything else. The guy could understand English, mostly. Then the next morning we went to the Grayson County museum! The owner lady is an investigator, and the missionaries go and help out around a Frontier Village they have like painting and spraying hornets and such. The village is kind of like Old World Wisconsin, with like real original log cabins and stuff. 

Then today we got to go trail biking with this awesome member in one of the wards here. He took us out to this trail and it was pretty sketchy at some points! Like really steep and dodging between trees and things. I even crashed once! It wasn't bad though, I just hit a tree kinda, but I wasn't going too fast, just a little scrape on my arm. About half way through the trail it started downpouring! The trail got all muddy and we were slipping all around. And everything was sticking to the tires and we were soaking wet, and muddy. It was awesome! We didn't finish the trail, but he took us to In-N-out burger and then to do our shopping. This is the same guy that picked us up when Elder Tornow's bike self destructed, and then he and another member have been working on it to fix it. He's the best!

We also had a one or two good lessons, nothing major, mostly entern-agators haha. Love the people here, hopefully we can find more that want to listen.

Love you guys!

Elder Hogg

Pictures: We were also talking to someone in their door and this storm started rolling in. We looked up and saw a big flowed that started to swirl and funnel, it was wild! We booked it to a local Burger King to take shelter, so we didn't get destroyed by it.