Calexico

Hola Mi Querida Familia! (Hello my dear family)

More about the Area/District

My companion's name is Elder Daniel Carlson. He's from Kenai Alaska, which sounds like an amazing place! It's funny when people hear where we are from they always ask why we came from the cold places with no sun to the hottest place with all sun. The rest of my District is Elder Steklein from Ogden, Elder Takke from Orem, Hermana Brady from Denver and Hermana Squire from American Fork. They are all super fun. So all three of our companionships work in Calexico. There are 3 separate areas here. We have a pretty big one, and it's the nicer side of town. Elders Take and Steklein cover a smaller area because they are on bikes, but they are having a lot of success. And Sisters Brady and Squire cover the rest, and some other cities where there are Spanish speakers. All six of us are Spanish Missionaries, there is only one ward here in Calexico and it's Spanish. 

We have some awesome members here. Bishop Quiroz and his son Carlos are a ton of help.  They are awesome. As a missionary, working with members has become really important. Especially with the bishop. We are lucky to have an awesome bishop in our ward. It helps a lot!  Our ward mission leader Halim is also super legit. He's a Piano Genious, the only person in the ward who plays actually. So he plays for all of the meetings. He's also just super smart. He went to BYU and now he basically runs his dad's printing business with the rest of his family. He's awesome.  I always look forward to Coordination meeting every week. 

Our apartments aren't super nice but they aren't ghetto either and the AC works great so that's the important thing. We keep it at 68 all the time. I don't have my camera with me at the library so I don't have any pics, but I will make sure to send you some next week. We have plenty of food. We try hard to eat healthy but we do get fed by members pretty frequently and they make it harder to eat healthy. Oh well. It's just me and Elder Carlson in our apartment but the other elders and the sisters live right down stairs in the same complex.

This week was an interesting one! All last week we had things in the morning, like Zone meeting, District leaders council (Elder Carlson had to go so I did too) and a lot of service, so we didn't have as much Proselyting time as we would have liked. It's okay though we make the most out of it!

We helped this family move, the Martinez family. They were so awesome! Unfortunately they are moving to Mexicali but they are a solid referral for the Elders there. They were so nice and so appreciative of our help, and the mom pretty much has a testimony without even knowing it. Working with them was a lot of fun!

We added a couple of new investigators named Fernando (fernie) and Maggie. They are pretty cool. He just moved in so we offered to help him, but he didn't want us to. We talked to them for a while and even though they thought we were JWs, they found out we are a lot cooler than that. And he invited us to come back and "hangout". So we go back and talk a little more each time about the gospel. Pretty soon I think he will be more serious about it.

Yesterday we had MTEs (Missionary Training Experience) where the mission president comes and trains us and then after the training we go out with a coach! Elder Carlson and I were coached by one of our Zone leaders Elder Thompson. He's so awesome, we learned tons from him and from the mission president and APs. We had a lot of success yesterday when we went out and applied what we learned. We learned to open our mouths, and how to help our investigators receive revelation. We also learned the importance of getting investigators to church. When we applied this we had some solid lessons! And had a couple of cool experiences adding new investigators!

We went to visit a less active member, but he wasn't there so we randomly decided to knock on the apartment next door. She was home and she was a super nice lady named Veronica. She had lived in Utah for a while and she knew LDS people as kind and friendly, so she was happy to talk. We talked about Church and she mentioned that her son is really interested because of his time in Utah! We are going back tomorrow and I'm super excited. I think they will come to church this Sunday.

When we went out to the car it wouldn't start, which was a bummer. So we were talking to the car fleet coordinator Elder Soffe and we noticed a family in their apartment. We went and knocked on the door and it was a family Elder Carlson had talked to before! They had moved to Fresno a couple of months prior but decided to come back! We are excited to go back and teach them. They had a baptismal date before they moved.

Another cool thing. We went to visit the Ramirez family who knows the Book of Mormon is true, but has stopped keeping commitments and won't come to church. They were on their way out but said we could come back in 2 hours. When we came back, they weren't there but their older son, who doesn't usually listen too much to us was locked out. We talked to him for a while and found out they were having some family problems. He basically said (on his own) that he thought they needed to come to church to help with that.  He committed to coming with his family on Sunday. Hopefully he comes, I think this is the last little push they might need.

We are having a great time! Love the work! Miss you guys, think about you all the time. Appreciate the prayers.

Les Amo un montón (Love you a lot)

Elder Hansen