Feeling Good - 01/28/13

This week was a really rewarding week. Elder "H" and I decided that it was time to roll up the sleeves and do some work. So we might´ve skipped a few meals to go contacting, which is definitely my favorite missionary activity. And it was pretty great actually, and the Lord blessed us for our sacrifices. We found 14 new investigators this week, which is pretty good. It feels really good at the end of the day knowing that you gave it your all.

The temple is right around the corner. On Sunday, we divided out invitations to us and the ward missionaries. Even though we gave out around 200 to the ward missionaries, we still got left with a chunk of 80 invitations. So that's going to be taking up most of our time nowadays.

 We had some investigators bum out on us this week, but we also saw a few miracles. One in particular happened in Familia "A".   Two of the daughters are recent converts, but the rest of the family is hardcore evangelicos. The dad didn´t want anything to do with us, and we´re working with the mom.  The mom recently told us that she wants to get baptized so we started working on her wedding but she was dragging her feet.  It eventually got to the point where she didn´t have any other excuse and she just told us in effect "not now". Well, we decided the best action to take was to just start reading in the Book of Mormon with her. Turns out that the Dad was listening to us on the other side of the wall, and that the spirit touched his heart. He left to go take out his paperwork so that this weekend they can get married. He also wants to take the discussions, go to church and visit the temple. All because of those "two persistent young gentlemen" who  "touched his heart with the Word of God". He´s never had any desire to go to any church, but the Holy Ghost changed that. Pretty cool huh?

The district is doing great. There is a lot of unity right now, so we´re having fun.

A special thanks to the Primary for all of the drawings. I really enjoyed them. And to Uncle Ray and Sarah, Wes and Natalie, the Richies and Bishopric for all of the Christmas cards. You guys are the best.
Take care guys! Adios´m

Elder Hansen

Life couldn't be better - 01/21/13

To answer your first question, yes I ran outside, but in Honduras, the houses look more like prisons. We´ve termed our house Alcatraz because of the 12 foot cinder block wall with barbed wire that surrounds our house. So nobody saw me in my undies, don´t worry.

I´m still in La Pradera, and my new comp is Elder "H" from Seattle Washington. It's always fun because everyone asks us if we´re from Utah, and both of us aren´t. I like him a lot and this is going to be a great transfer. He´s got 6 months in the mission. He was trained, and then he trained, so that means that he was a better missionary than I was at this time. He´s really responsible, funny, and hard working. He is a huge support to me as DL, and I´m pretty sure the reason why he is here is because I´m unofficially training him to be the DL when I leave. I did that in my other area with Elder "T", so we´ll see if my prediction is right.

Things are hustling and bustling here. The temple open house starts up on the 2nd, but not to the public until the 9th. Our ward is assigned the morning slot on the opening day. Its pretty cool guys, I´m not going to lie. Its really cool how everyone is teaming up to make this a success, and we´re stoked to be a part of it. I won´t be doing any tours of the temple, but I can go as many times as I want as long as I bring an investigator. I plan on bringing all of my investigators and using it to contact new people. The Spirit is always so strong there, and I´m really, really, really excited to be a part of this. Life couldn´t be better.

 We got 6 references yesterday, which was an answer to a prayer. One of the speakers was a missionary who is leaving for his mission to New Jersey today. He passed around white slips before church started and he asked the ward to write down a reference for the missionaries. He said "I could talk about missionary work, but its better if we just do it". We got 4 from the audience of 115, but we´re grateful for the blessing. The other two we got by visiting some members, who would´ve given it at church, but they didn´t have slips.

 Be sure and tell Jacob Happy Birthday for me. I love you all, and I hope you have a fantastic week!  

Life is always changing - 01/14/13

Life is always changing.

So we´ve got transfers on Wednesday, which is pretty exciting. President Fortuna called us as I was walking out of the shower in a towel. Nobody wanted to answer, so of course as the DL, I had to do it. He asked for my companion, and he was so nervous. He said, Elder "A", are you ready to train? I ran out of the house hooting and hollering. I think Pres probably heard me,  but I don´t care. I´m so happy for him, and his companion is going to be really blessed to have him as a trainer.

We don´t know who is going to be leaving this transfer. He could open a new area, seeing as how they are opening 6 new areas this transfer. Or I could leave, and he could stay. We don´t know, and we probably won´t until Tuesday night.

I´m going to be making cookies for the district tomorrow. I´m pretty excited, and hopefully I won´t burn them. I love the district so stinking much, its going to be hard to see some of them go.

That's awesome about Ryan and Holly going on missions! Good luck guys! You´ll both do great! (Ryan and Holly are Brett's cousins on the Tuckett side.)

I think that wraps it up. Take care guys. See you next week

Elder Hansen

P.S.  If you guys could do me a favor, we need a miracle with Hermana"M". We´ve hit a wall, and we´re not quite sure how we can help her. Any prayers would be nice. 

Living the good life - 01/07/13

So this week I realized how blessed we really are. Life is good.

We found a new family of 5 this week. They are pretty cool. We found them contacting, and turns out that the Dad´s Mom was baptized not too long ago in our ward. He wanted to learn more about the church, but didn´t know who to ask. Hurray for being guided by the spirit! Woo Hoo!

 I spent a lot of time with the missionaries in the District this week. I feel like they are all my friends and that I have a solid relationship with all of them. I did some interchanges, and it was fun to see how they are working in their areas. This should be a really good month for the district.

 We had a Leadership Meeting with President Fortuna. I showed up late, which was pretty embarrassing. The AP´s asked why I was late, and I told them traffic, even though there was nobody out in the roads. Really I just lost track of time. I live pretty close to the Stake Center, but I forgot that it takes my comp 20 minutes to get ready from the time you say, "Lets go". I´m grateful for the opportunity to develop more patience and brotherly love.

 I´m also craving a good ol´ camping trip. That is definitely going on the list of things to do when I go home.

I also got some talks in the mail, so those keep me pretty happy as well. I just want to share a cool spiritual thought that I found today during personal study.
1 Nephi 15:7-11

So Laman and Lemuel are complaining, like normal, about how they can´t understand the words of their father. Nephi tells them to go pray, but they say the Lord doesn´t give them knowledge. Laman and Lemuel were right, the Lord won´t give them an answer to their prayers. It's because they know that they weren´t worthy to recieve an answer. We can´t ask things of the Lord if we know that we aren´t keeping the commandments. Verse 11 explains it better than I can, but yeah, that's why we have to be obedient. If we aren´t obedient, than we can´t expect to ask God for things without feeling bad about ourselves.

 I love you guys. I hope you all have a fantastic new year and that you can all make great new goals for this year. Remember a goal isn´t a goal until it's written down, it's just a desire.

Elder Hansen

Happy New Year - 12/31/12

Well, today is the last day of 2012. It's pretty weird to me to think that I spent the entire year in Honduras. Holy cow, time goes by really, really fast.

So it has finally hit me that I´m not starting the mission. I´m officially one of the old guys. I hit 18 months on December 29th. Man, this is so weird.
We had a baptism this week, so that was pretty exciting. We had it at the Stake Center, and we had all of the baptisms in the zone that day. We planned on it being a huge activity with like 15 baptisms with it being really well prepared and everything. But sadly, if there is one thing that missionaries are great at, it is procrastinating. Sadly, in our district all of the baptisms fell through except for one, and in the other district, they only had three. But it was okay.

We still made the trip out there, and I´m used to showing up an hour early because Grandpa Hansen always taught me that if you´re not an hour early, you´re late! Ha ha ha, but yeah, things always go bad, so its good to be prepared. We get there, and they hadn´t filled up the pila (font), or set up the chairs.  They didn´t have the keys and there was nobody there. Fun stuff. So my comp and I went to work getting everything ready, last minute, like it always is. It turned out alright in the end. I had to baptism Jahaziel 2 times because the first time I mixed up his first and middle name. It wasn´t really my fault, he told me his name was Jahaziel Henry, but on his I.D. its Henry Jahaziel. The good thing is that it all worked out in the end. The sisters bought some delicious milk cake, and everyone was happy.

 Here in Honduras they have a cool tradicion (tradition) where they make little scarecrows and put them out in the street. They ask for money, and then on new years they stuff them with explosives and set them on fire. Its supposedly a symbol of leaving the bad behind by burning it. I just think that the kids here like blowing things up. Anyways, its pretty comical.  I don´t think we´ll be sleeping tonight. Last year it was like World War 3, so we´ll see how things go.

Thanks for everything guys. I´m happy to be here, and I´m not trunky. Things are going great. Take it easy.

Elder Hansen