Gunshots and Chickens

Date:	Mon, 27 Aug 2018 11:42:09 -0500
From:	Brett Hogg

Another week! Not a super eventful week. But we are working hard and slowly about surely finding people to teach. This week we were in a neighborhood right by the place where our Bishop was shot (we stopped there too by the way, see the attached picture!).

To see the video from the police program about this event, go to THIS POST.

We met a couple neat people, even accidently knocking into an inactive member. But while we were there we heard a couple of gunshots! They sounded pretty close, I wanted to find the shells for my shell collection, but we didn't, we just went back to work. LOL Never really felt unsafe here to be honest, same with Oak Cliff.

We also had dinner with a nice Honduran family, and the wife's mother raises chickens! She said she used to have 300 she said but they die off, or get eaten by dogs, or she sells them to people. But she let us chase them and stuff. She would catch them and let us hold them and stuff lol. Their neighbor had horses that we were able to call over and pet and feed and stuff too. It was pretty neat. The one Guatemalan Elder was unimpressed lol. (I'm sorry I look like a scrub in the pictures, no one told me my shirt was like half untucked.) 

We had a lesson with the lady that came to church last week, she's really cool! She came to church again this week, and we have a family home evening with her and some members tonight! Our Guatemalan family has been working (the wife works at a school, so now that school has started she's been working a lot), so not a whole lot of news from them right now. 

Last Monday we checked out a Bass Pro Shops (one Elder loves outdoorsy stuff but they don't have them in Utah), then today we played soccer with some cool members. Our Guatemalan Elder was easily the best, it was him with Elder Wyatt and I vs. the other Elder and two members, we didn't get a pic, but it was fun. 

I think that's about it for now,

Love you all!

Elder Hogg 👨🏼‍💼📘

I Hope They Call Me on a Mission

Date:	Mon, 20 Aug 2018 09:16:42 -0500
From:	Brett Hogg

Hola Familia!

It sure has been a slow week. We had busted our buns this week, biking all over the place in the heat, knocking all kinds of doors, you name it. Didn't seem like we accomplished a whole lot, but then BAM! Sunday. Sunday started off sad because our awesome Guatemalan family didn't make it to church :( but then after church a member of the church walked over to us to introduce us to her friend that had come to church. She's a student at the members Zumba class, and asked her what church she goes to. She has been searching for something, and looking for a church to go to. They gave her the info and didn't think a whole lot of it, until Sunday, she came all by herself! So that was awesome, we love finding people that are searching for truth!! That's definitely a huge lesson I've learned on the mission, is that the Lord's blessings are almost never (at least for me) a direct result of my own efforts, but when you work hard and are obedient to what he asks you to do, he can bless you in ways you never thought. 

Just a cool little scripture I heard from another missionary, that I've been thinking about lately:

"Thus God has provided a means that man, through faith, might work mighty miracles; therefore he becometh a great benefit to his fellow beings."

Mosiah 8:18

Other than that not a whole lot else. I had the opportunity to go do a session in the temple on Thursday. That was awesome. We got to do sealings! Then we stopped in the cafeteria, becuase neither of us have ever been to a cafeteria in a temple before (Elder Adams and I, we were on exchanges). So while we were sitting there enjoying our celestial Ham sandwiches, none of their than Brother Kay Brown walks up to us. We didn't didn't know who he was but, turns out hes the guy that wrote the hymn "I hope they call me on a mission." So that was awesome. We were going to get a picture with him but he reminded us that we can't take pictures in the temple, and just as mysteriously as he appeared, he vanished. We were a little star-struck to say the least lol.

From Mom: "I Hope They Call Me on a Mission" is a children's song in the Church and one of Brett's favorite. How cool this was!  

Anyway, that's about it for this week, hope to have more exciting stories next week!

Les Quiero!

Elder Hogg

Pics: 

An awesome recent convert here made us lunch, which was ceviche, shrimp and Mojarra (whole fried fish!!!!)!!! As you all may know I'm not the biggest fan of sea food, but I did indeed partake. The actual meat inside the fish wasn't bad, just a little salt and lime and it was actually pretty good. But everyone else was eating everything, skin, EYE BALLS (as pictured below), the brain, the CRISPY TAIL THING. I was a little disgusted. But these are the memories folks! Love these people!!

Sweet family with a raccoon, Bullets, Rain!

Date:	Mon, 13 Aug 2018 15:06:47 -0500
From:	Brett Hogg

Hola familia!

The awesome Guatemalan family I told you about last week, came to church! It was awesome! The husband hasn't been to any church in years, because he thinks they're all corrupt basically. And the wife just threw her back out the week before, but they came! And I think they liked it! They didn't sing the hymns (I think because they can't read particularly well), until the last one, and the husband sorted thumbing through the hymnal and was trying follow along and sing a little bit, it was awesome! They're an awesome couple. And when we stopped by on Saturday they showed us their pet Racoon! I didn't get a picture, but next time I'll get one. He was just holding it and everything! They let it walk around the house and they say it uses a litterbox like a cat haha.

Saturday we helped at a funeral, were I translated (spanish to english) with the the little headphone things, but only one person was actually using it lol (it was a pretty small funeral). I did alright. The biggest problem was the scriptures. They would read them off so fast that I couldn't look them up to read in english, and scripture spanish is a little harder to translate live. Sometimes they would just say "and the scriptures say..." and not even give a reference! Lol, So I have some work to do to get good at translating. And make sure that if you're ever going to give a talk, tell the translated what scriptures you're going to use before hand! 

Also after the funeral we biked really far, all the way to the part of our area that butts up against downtown. It had been raining all day, but once we got over there it started coming down harder, and the sun went down. So we had a looooong and scary bike ride back to the Apartment in the dark while it was raining on major streets. We couldn't really see what was in front of us partially because our glasses were super wet and our lights didn't do much. The puddles were scary because you couldn't tell how deep they were or if there were pot holes or rocks at the bottom. I did fall once because of this huge crack in the road I didn't see, but I was alright. Then I almost got hit by a car pulling out of a parking lot. It sure was an adventure! We got home and we were completely wet, from head to toe. A bunch of stuff in my backpack was ruined even. haha. 

Anyway, not much else this week. And unfortunately we never met the Mexican nun :/

Love y'all!

Also! Our bishop got shot here in this area a couple years back! It happened just down the street from where our Guatemalan family lives, and we bike there quite often! It was actually on TV, if you YouTube Police Women of Dallas, it's an episode with a black lady cop, it's at a tire shop, with a guy that was shot five times, idk what the video is called exactly. But you can see his son putting his hands on his head to give him a blessing in the video. (See video link below! NOTE FROM MOM: Where is my son living?? Scary!)

Saturday about 5:00pm vs Saturday about 9:00pm:

Here is the clip from that episode Brett mentions.. Apparently that man that was shot is Brett's current Bishop in Mesquite.

Rio Trinidad week 2

Subject:	Rio Trinidad week 2
Date:	Mon, 6 Aug 2018 12:58:53 -0500
From:	Brett Hogg

Hola Fam!

This week met a cool family. We were biking by their home and he came out and was like "hey where're you going?!" So we stopped and talked to them, they said they talked to missionaries a while back, so we set up a time to go back again. Turns out, about 20 years ago, they had a young son get here from Guatemala (they came over first, then sent for the one kid later) and he (and his sister, but she never came over for some reason, the story is a little confusing) had been baptized! Shortly after missionaries knocked on their door and they invited them in, and they wound up getting really close to those specific missionaries for a while. They would play with their kids and eat with them all the time, even gave her a blessing while she was in the hospital with a pregnancy that wasn't going well. But, they were never baptized, so we have started teaching them now and they are super nice and have been reading a little bit from the Book of Mormon!

This one time we were stopping by to visit them, but they have like, four dogs inside a gate around their house. So we were standing outside this gate and called them, well he wasn't home, she was, but had fallen asleep. Their neighbors were outside however so we asked if we could teach them, a really nice hispanic baptist lady. Her name is Dora! Hopefully she'll progress toward baptism!

We also knocked into a family, we only talked to the girl, but apparently they have an aunt in town from Mexico and she's a Nun! She said she should be there when we come back, so hopefully I'll have a story about a lesson we had with a Mexican nun for you guys next week.

Everyone here is so open and usually willing to listen to a message about Jesucristo, finding people that are willing to take baptism seriously however is another story. But I love it here, an awesome place to end a mission for sure.

Love y'all!

Elder Hogg

Contacting every creature....Also we stopped by a Christian books and gift store here, and they had Christian board games, one of which featured apostasy right on the cover!