El Fin.

NOTE FROM MOM: Next Monday Brett arrives back home. Let me know if you would like the airport and flight information. I'm emotional as I read this email... I'm happy to have him home, but I'm also feeling so many emotions as he says goodbye to the Texas/Oklahoma mission. The people there have been truly amazing... I have "met" so many people online and through my son. What a blessing this has been on so many levels - I can't even begin to explain it! We will continue to post in the future couple weeks some of the pictures and I'll have Brett write more when he gets home. Thank you for following! ~Mom

-------- Forwarded Message --------

Subject:	El Fin.
Date:	Mon, 26 Nov 2018 16:21:55 -0600
From:	Brett Hogg

Well this is it!

It snuck up on me really quick! I don't know how to feel! It was just yesterday that I realized that today was going to be my last letter home. By this time next week I'll be back in the Mil!

First things first I suppose, this week:

One of our neighbors here that lives behind us is a 19 y/o kid who we've said hi to several times and he always invites us over to talk but we just haven't had the chance, till this week! Apparently he's read a lot of other books from other religions, and talked to missionaries in the past. He's a big fan of herbal substances, and when we sat down with him, without saying anything just took out some paraphernalia and started to rolling himself some good ol' fashioned plant material, without saying anything about it lol. Eventually a friend of his pulls up, and joins us, and they start smoking it and by the end of our conversation they were a little more "enlightened" lol. They were HIGHlarious. It went well though and they accepted to read the Book of Mormon and ask God if he is there.

We also had a Book of Mormon referral come in. Turns out it was for a Marshallese lady! She talked to missionaries a long time ago, and her husband is actually a member. For reference, there like 6 people on the Marshall islands, so they've all been baptized or have talked to the missionaries before lol. Anyway, she spoke very little English and the husband spoke none. BUT we have an app that helps missionaries learn languages,and it has select words and phrases in marshallese, and using that we kind of taught the restoration! They're awesome and very patient, so it was good experience lol.

Lastly we stopped by this really old guy we knocked into a couple weeks back. He let us in and we just talk a little bit about his life and what he believes and stuff. Then his phone rings. He answers it and says "No, I'm not doing anything" then goes on to have like a 20 minute conversation over the phone while we sit there like chopped liver lol. Anyway, eventually he hangs up and we talk a tiny bit more and invite him to church. Well Sunday comes around and he actually shows up! People we've taught the doctrine of coming to church to don't even come to church. But the guy that ignored us while he took a phone call in the middle of our conversation came to church!

Oh and Thanksgiving! We ate a good thanksgiving meal with an awesome family we have here in the branch. They seriously are just the best. 

We also made some thanksgiving cards and handed them out to some people around here. Oh and we got up at 4:30am that morning to go help out at a member of the church's chicken farm! His family was all out of town and he needed help with his new brood. The chicks come in on a huge stack of trays and you just kind of toss them out onto the feed. It was extremely hot and disgusting smelling, It was quite the experience.

Our family that we were hoping would be baptized this week or next, is not :( They still will be baptized, I just won't be here for it, unfortunately. Love them though!

Well friends, this is it. No email next week, just my beautiful face, live and in person!

This has honestly been the best two years of my life. I now know that Jesus is the Christ. I know my place in the universe. I know God. I know that the Book of Mormon is the word of God. I am a disciple of Jesus Christ and this is His work.

I am going miss it all so much.

Elder Hogg

"Behold, I am a disciple of Jesus Christ, the Son of God. I have been called of him to declare his word among his people, that they might have everlasting life."

3 Nephi 5:13

Elder Lynn Beast Robbins

Here is the talk that Elder Hogg refers to - 100% Responsible.  Oh my goodness - what a great talk!! ~Sue/Mom

And here is a link to the Text of that talk:
https://speeches.byu.edu/talks/lynn-g-robbins_be-100-percent-responsible/

Power in the Word

Date:	Mon, 12 Nov 2018 15:00:28 -0600
From:	Brett Hogg

Today we had the awesome opportunity to have Elder Lynn G. Robbins of the Seventy (Luke 11) visit the mission! He spoke a lot about what he's spoke on before with Elder Holland plus some bonus features. He also talked a lot about marriage. lol. We have two more meetings with him tomorrow and Wednesday, so we drove into Dallas last night and we'll be here until then.

This week we had a lesson set up with this awesome guy who we are teaching (and his wife, but his wife was out of town), they are the same ones that came to church on Sunday! We'll we were talking about what we should talk about with them, and we pray about what we should teach that day before we plan and stuff, but nothing really felt right. We decided we'd go in and just see if he had any question or anything, just go with the flow, but maybe talk about temples. 

When we get there we see the Book of Mormon open on the table on his porch next to his ashtrays and vape machine. He invites us in and says, I don't know what you were thinking of talking about, but I was thinking we'd talk about Alma. Sounds good to us! We had sent him Alma 32:21-43 as kind of a daily scripture text we send. We sit down and he reads off Alma 32:21-29. He tells us that the parable of faith, and praying to know if something is real, is something he's used to teach "nonbelievers" a lot before, but it frankly never occurred to him that he would be on the other side of it! He felt like it was God speaking to him, telling him that he doesn't need to know if EVERYTHING is true to move forward with what he does know is true, and be baptized! 

He said it has been a while since he's felt God speak to him through the Word, and that it was pretty exciting for him to experience it again. We were speechless! It was awesome. He still wants to learn more but is looking forward to being baptized in December! How awesome is that! This is so big for him, and means so much! For me it just grows my testimony of the Book of Mormon and truthfulness of the Holy Ghost, and the Restoration. It was an awesome experience and I felt the spirit just being there!

On top of some cool marshallese people we are teaching we are also now teaching am awesome Guamese lady! She's married to a lost sheep (someone who is a member of the church but inactive and doesn't have records here in the area). We stumbled across him while we were stopping by another marshallese family (a lot of them live in the same area(s)), we offered him a pass-along card and he was like I used to go make visits with the Elders back in Hawaii. Sweet! So we go by them and it turns out his wife had taken the lessons back in Guam but never got baptized, but her brother did. So, now we're teaching her again! They said they want their family to be close to God again, and they want to go find a church! We left them a Book of Mormon the first time we met them, with the introduction to read. When we went back she had already read up to Chapter 12! Neat family, I'm excited for them.

We're also able to start teaching an agnostic man who tends to lean towards what seems to be a nors pagan religion. Well the other day he said that he's starting to feel like we were put in his life for a reason and that maybe this is the path for him. So that's pretty neat!

Anyway, that's about it from the front lines. The mission sure is the best, feelin the spirit, knowing God. Anyway, love yall!

Elder Hogg

Milagros (Miracles!)

Subject:	Milagros
Date:	Mon, 5 Nov 2018 12:31:19 -0600
From:	Brett Hogg

Hola family!

This awesome family we have been teaching just continues to be awesome. First of all we've been worried sick about teaching then the Word of Wisdom, on account of the fact that every time we go over there they have several vape things on the coffee table and end tables, and outside have two big ashtrays with cigarette butts and cigars. The Lord had prepared them however. The lesson before they were asking a couple little questions and dietary restrictions came up and we gave them a tiny primer for the WoW, and they seemed to really accept it. Then when we came back to talk about it some more, he just said yep, that makes sense. Turns out he's been trying to quit for the last year, and has pretty much kicked the nicotine! We were so relieved, it feels so great to see people willing to keep commandment, because that's really where their teeth can really sink into the gospel, really live it. THEN on top of that, the Lord had heard ours and everyone else's cries, they FINALLY made it to church!! Before the mission I never really appreciated the sacrament as much as I do now. When I looked over and saw this sweet family take the sacrament I was filled with the spirit. I was so happy for them! I imagine that's a tiny sliver of how the Lord feels when he watches us worthily take the sacrament. Keep the families here in your prayers!

We were also able to go spend a night with the Elders in the Barn again! When it was dark out we were hanging out on their little balcony thing and stargazing. It was pretty neat. They live kind of in the middle of no where, so you could see sooo many stars. We even saw several shooting stars. You could even see, even if faintly, the Milky Way, it was awesome. While in their area we contacted a random guy who was outside smoking and playing crazy music from his car. He said he almost went on a mission himself! Turns out he joined the church in his youth down in Louisiana. He said he just kind of got distracted, and has a family now, but he is down to meet with missionaries again and get back on track. Miracles!

Another weird thing this week, we ran into an RLDS person! She's not active in it anymore, nor has been for a while it sounded like. Apparently she joined when she was living in Missouri. It was interesting, but we only chatted for a minute, and set up a time we can come by again. That was actually the same day as Halloween now that I think about it. Halloween on the mission is kind of boring haha. We have to be in the apartment by 6:00pm. We got some snacks and just did administrative stuff/planning/studying. We made a short appearance at the Branch Halloween party, eat a hotdog and get outta there.

We also met this really cool guy. We taught him The Restoration on his porch and it seemed to make a lot of sense to him. When we came back to visit him again we read the Introduction of the Book of Mormon with him and and he was freaking out, he was like "This makes so much sense!" At one point was like "How come- oh wait never mind. I was going to ask how come no ones out talking about this. Lol" that's what we're doin'!! Lol hes a funny guy, hopefully more to report on him in the future. 

Anyway that's about it for this week. Love y'all!

Elder Hogg

Here is the text to the Introduction to the Book of Mormon (click to go to site/full text):

The Book of Mormon is a volume of holy scripture comparable to the Bible. It is a record of God’s dealings with ancient inhabitants of the Americas and contains the fulness of the everlasting gospel.

The book was written by many ancient prophets by the spirit of prophecy and revelation. Their words, written on gold plates, were quoted and abridged by a prophet-historian named Mormon. The record gives an account of two great civilizations. One came from Jerusalem in 600 B.C. and afterward separated into two nations, known as the Nephites and the Lamanites. The other came much earlier when the Lord confounded the tongues at the Tower of Babel. This group is known as the Jaredites. After thousands of years, all were destroyed except the Lamanites, and they are among the ancestors of the American Indians.

The crowning event recorded in the Book of Mormon is the personal ministry of the Lord Jesus Christ among the Nephites soon after His resurrection. It puts forth the doctrines of the gospel, outlines the plan of salvation, and tells men what they must do to gain peace in this life and eternal salvation in the life to come.

After Mormon completed his writings, he delivered the account to his son Moroni, who added a few words of his own and hid up the plates in the Hill Cumorah. On September 21, 1823, the same Moroni, then a glorified, resurrected being, appeared to the Prophet Joseph Smith and instructed him relative to the ancient record and its destined translation into the English language.

In due course the plates were delivered to Joseph Smith, who translated them by the gift and power of God. The record is now published in many languages as a new and additional witness that Jesus Christ is the Son of the living God and that all who will come unto Him and obey the laws and ordinances of His gospel may be saved.

Concerning this record the Prophet Joseph Smith said: “I told the brethren that the Book of Mormon was the most correct of any book on earth, and the keystone of our religion, and a man would get nearer to God by abiding by its precepts, than by any other book.”

In addition to Joseph Smith, the Lord provided for eleven others to see the gold plates for themselves and to be special witnesses of the truth and divinity of the Book of Mormon. Their written testimonies are included herewith as “The Testimony of Three Witnesses” and “The Testimony of Eight Witnesses.”

We invite all men everywhere to read the Book of Mormon, to ponder in their hearts the message it contains, and then to ask God, the Eternal Father, in the name of Christ if the book is true. Those who pursue this course and ask in faith will gain a testimony of its truth and divinity by the power of the Holy Ghost. (See Moroni 10:3–5.)

Those who gain this divine witness from the Holy Spirit will also come to know by the same power that Jesus Christ is the Savior of the world, that Joseph Smith is His revelator and prophet in these last days, and that The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints is the Lord’s kingdom once again established on the earth, preparatory to the Second Coming of the Messiah.