Baptisms in the air!

Subject:	Baptisms in the air!
Date:	Mon, 16 Jul 2018 14:22:35 -0500
From:	Brett Hogg

Some awesome miracles this week fam!

First we received a referral from Plano, an old Bible referral that they had lost contact with, but were able to contact now several months later and it turned out he had moved to our area. Hes from Milwaukee! He went to high school and drove School buses there, Well he's been wanting to be rebaptized for some time now as he grew up Lutheran and was baptized as a child, and doesn't like the fact that he doesn't remember it and has no idea who baptized him. This week we were able to meet with him twice and set a baptismal date! He does have some big life changes to make, so it's a softer date, conditional on his motivation from the spiritual witness he will receive. Hes awesome.

We also have another awesome girl! She is a friend of several members, and who is disillusioned with the church that her family currently attends. Someone put her info into mormon.org and they called her and had a couple quick lessons over the phone. She is 17 and has a friend that is leaving on a mission next week from here in one of our wards. While all this is all happening he shared with her a Book of Mormon and read some of it with her. She just showed up at church last week, and we set up an appointment. In the lesson she said she had grown closer to God during this time talking to her friend, the missionaries over the phone, and of course reading the Book of Mormon, than she had the last 17 years at her current church. She said she believes that we teach is true, and so we set a baptismal date! Her mother is very supportive even buying her a copy of 'Mormonism for Dummies', her father on the other hand is does not like the idea one bit. But she loves church and really wants to be a part of it. We invited her to invite her parents to church and her mother came! She is also going to be sitting in on the next lesson we have. It has been awesome to be part of this amazing miricle, and watching someone else really feeling and coming unto Jesus Christ!

I've been telling Elder Tornow that the air outside reminds me of the air in the chapel before a baptism, with the font filling and there's a beautiful humid atmosphere that makes you anxious to taste a little bit of heaven. 

Also! I talked to a member of the former stake presidency in our Ward who said if we could gather a list of active, native spanish speaking members we have in the stake that are currently attending other units, we could take it to the current stake President and pitch a Spanish branch (or group)! The list would be pretty hard to obtain however, mostly now that Carrolton is out of the mission, since their Spanish ward technically (it's just the closest) covers half of Frisco (another reason for Frisco to have their own Spanish branch).

That's pretty much it,

Love you all!

Elder Hogg

A big ol' storm rolling through, we found refuge at a playground pavilion.

For whatever reason it'll be totally sunny and totally stormy at the same time. And sometimes it lightning and thunders but never even rains lol

The salt deposits on my backpack lol. This week they have been especially bad, with little piles building up. 

From Mom: Eww!  But WOW - I hope he's getting enough to drink!!  That's a lot of sweat!

ExCons and Weeds

Subject:	ExCons and Weeds
Date:	Mon, 9 Jul 2018 16:01:05 -0500
From:	Brett Hogg

Familia!

Not much to report on this week!

On Friday we were biking along and we stopped and offered a card to a gentleman who was sitting outside this apartment complex with two youngsters, and their Pitpull. We offered him a card and chatted for a sec, and he asked if we could pray with him. Turns out he was recently freed from 14 years of incarceration in a federal penitentiary, and I offered to share a verse from the Book of Mormon. Well I completely forgot the reference (2 Nephi 26:33), so paraphrased it and shared a bit about the Book of Mormon and explained what we do and he loves it. He starts going off, basically sharing his testimony and he was super excited and even asked us if he could take a picture with us! The sad part is that hes just intown visiting family, and hes actually from St. Louis. Well we said a good prayer with him and he told us to add him on Facebook so we could keep in contact. We gave him the Book of Mormon and he was excited to read it, and a card with the number to call for missionaries to come by when he gets back over there. Also he shared that his Bible just got ruined in the rain, so we told him they'd bring him a new one of those too. It was probably the coolest street contact I've had on my mission haha. We're Facebook friends now.

From the Book of Mormon - 2 Nephi 26:33

Then this other family we stop by a lot. The wife is the only one that's really at all interested, but they all love Mormons and love when we stop by. The husband is a funny guy from southern California and  talks like a surfer dude and everything, but he's super conservative and loves talking about politics with us and stuff (we just listen, as missionaries we're politically neutral). He doesn't consider himself a Christian, but he does consider himself a warrior for Christ, because then he doesn't have to abide by the "thou shalt not kill" rule that way he can protect Christians when they can't defend themselves. Their garage is his kind of his man cave with various words or phrases spray painted all over the walls and fridge, where he and sometimes friends or family can be found kicking back a couple of ice cold Coors Lites. One night we stopped by and while we were leaving we asked if there was anything we could do for them and he said we could come by the next day and pull some weeds. He's offered to let us before but was always joking. But this time, he let us! Afterward we realised he was probably a couple drinks deep. But we showed up the next day and his wife tells us that he told her to tell us when we came that he didn't actually want us to do it, but we were there anyway so we went to work. It's wasn't that bad just a raised garden thing with like wild grass growing in it. Anyway as we're working he come out (he was taking a nap), and was like "oooh man, you guys actually came." He felt bad but it was a cool experience, and we were able to share Mosiah 2:17. It was funny, not sure I was able to really share the experience that this family is, but they're awesome.

From the Book of Mormon

Anyway that's about it!

Love y'all!
Elder Hogg

Just a little voice recording for my fans

And here are some pictures!!

Opening the Box from home!

SO appreciated!!

Y'all need JESUS shirt from Mom

Card from Miss Diane (our neighbor!)

From mom: We didn't get it either... but he is finding a
unique collection of "No Soliciting" Signs!!

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.