Elder Hopkins in San Jose: Week One! (In California)

P day is Monday now. I can Email for an hour on Pday and write letters on Pday only.

Okay so first before I go into the California stuff I'll see what I can remember from my last few days at the MTC.

So first off the Speaker at the Sunday Devotional was Jenny Oaks Baker, she is the daughter of Dallin H. Oaks and she is a world famous violinist. Her talking was pretty good, but here violin performance was absolutely amazing. She started off by playing Nearer My God to thee and I just wept. I felt dumb cause no one around me cried... awkward.

The next few days were pretty fast, I said goodbye to all of my friends at the MTC and then we woke up at 3:30 AM on Wednesday, got on a Bus, headed to the airport and flew to San Jose, California.

Elder Finder, Teacher - Brother Flinders and Elder Hopkins

Elder Whiting's Selfie

Teacher - Brother Belliston with the district

Nate Mella and Elder Hopkins

Elder Hopkins and Elder Lundgreen and many Elders sleeping

Insert from Nate's mom: Nate called me from the airport. He sounded really good and was excited to fly to California. This was his first time flying. A kind LDS member traveling through SLC sent me this picture of Nate waiting to board the plane.

Elder Hopkins at the SLC Airport

Back to Nate's letter

The first thing we all did was street contacting, they sent us in groups onto a nearby College campus with some stuff to pass out and then they were like "go for it, be back in an hour." I thought it would be really freaky, but I will tell you it was a blast. I got paired up with an old buddy of mine from High School, Nate Mella. He is not called here, but his Dad is the Mission President here. We had so much fun. He was serving a "mini mission" before he headed out to BYU.

Anyway we then went to the Mission Home where we had Dinner and spent the night, or at least the Elders did. We all just found spots on the ground in the Front room and then fell asleep. The sisters got to go stay in apartments that night. We woke up and went to the mission Office and waited in the Chapel to be assigned our training companions. My Companion is named Elder Harper, I have included a photo. He is really awesome, he is a really good missionary.

Oh and by the way the address I gave you to send me letters is actually the mission Office, if anyone sent letters there I may not get them for another six weeks, sorry. My real mailing address is

Elder Nathan Hopkins

548 E Crescent Drive

Palo Alto, CA 94301

We live in a hmm... what's the right word? I'd say a cottage. Its a small little place in the backyard of the Stake President's yard. It is small and messy, but what are you going to do. Our area we cover is actually pretty big. We cover three distinct areas.

Palo Alto 1st ward is very very wealthy. Steve Young is in our ward, I met him yesterday. The third chair of Google, one of the lead programmers for Apple. Also Mark Zuckerburg is not Mormon but he lives a street away from us in a very secure house. I haven't seen him, but maybe I will get the chance. Also we have the richest member in the world in our ward, he owns the land that Google is on and the bishop is his son.

Palo Alto 2nd ward is a pretty normal ward its kind of middle class I'd say. They are very friendly.

We also cover East Palo Alto. In East Palo Alto the members there go to the first ward, but East Palo Alto is very ghetto. Elder Harper told me that it used to be the murder capitol of the country. The people there are very humble.

Since we cover two wards we pretty much have 7 straight hours of church on Sunday. That's pretty fun.

Lets see what else... The members feed us Dinner every night. Oh! My third day here we had a baptism, I only helped teach her the last lesson, but since we have set 2 more baptismal dates and we might set a third one tonight at our appointment.

Also I thought the culture would be the same here, but boy was I wrong. There are a lot of Polynesians here. The woman we baptized, Pelenaise, she is Tongan and she invited us over for a Tongan feast. Some of the food was really weird and some was really good. They were all so friendly.

Sorry I hope this super long update didn't scare anyone off, I just had a lot to say. I think that is all for now.

The pictures I have attached (in no particular order) are of me and Nate Mella at the airport. Elder Lundgreen driving back from the airport and everyone was asleep, a picture of me and Elder Finder with our teacher Brother Flinders, Another picture with my teacher Brother Belliston and my district, a selfie Elder Whiting took with my camera, and me and Elder Harper in our cottage.