The Latest From Calexico

What up fam!!!

We have had a super crazy fun exciting disappointing awesome week!

Wednesday was exchanges. Which are sooooo awesome!! I was with Elder Stecklein in my area. I learned so much!! He's such an awesome missionary. We taught a couple of really good lessons, like one to Hermano Garcia, who we were having a hard time getting to focus. And he kept forgetting everything. It got really frusterating... but then he told us he had 2 strokes, which explained everything. We were a little more patient after that! I learned a lot about being upfront and bold, but still loving. That night we had correlation with our Ward Mission Leader Halim (whos the bomb!!). He's so legit. After that we had splits with some of the young men. I went out with Omar Barron whos a super awesome guy! He's a less-active senior! We didn't necessarily have a ton of success, we just street contacted in one neighborhood. But we had some good talks and hopefully he will start coming to church.

Thursday was a crazy day. Just unusual. We had a bad battery in our car so we had to go to Pep Boys. They took like 2 hours just to change the battery so we napped in the lobby.  Later that day we went and talked to a less active named Hymie. He hasn't been to church in a really really long time, so he might not even be a member, but he says he was baptized. He has really bad memory loss. I'm not sure exactly why. He says he loves to read but can never remember what he reads, but he always keeps trying. His parents and family are JW, but he goes to a Catholic church. This made for an interesting discussion. He has some really interesting views on religion. We will help him sort those out :) There was a huge rainstorm on Thursday!! Tons of flooding and some crazy strong wind!! It was awesome though, and the rest of the day it was like 70 degrees. It was glorious. I'm so used to 110+ degrees that I wore a jacket the rest of the day, haha when it starts to cool down this fall I'll probably freeze.

Friday- We had district lunch at Hungry Harries, which turned out to be pretty darn good! And a good deal! We then had district meeting, I cannot say enough how much fun our district is. They're the best. That night we kept talking to everyone, so we added a solid Investigator who was about to run. His name is Angel Hernandez. He came to church on sunday and hopefully we will have a chance to teach him a super good lesson this week. He's legit. And then we met the ZLs in El Centro for another exchange. This time I went out to Brawley with Elder Thompson.

Saturday- Saturday was awesome, I learned a ton while I was on exchange with Elder Thompson. He's a great missionary. We taught some really good lessons. We also ran into two separate people who didn't know how to read in English or Spanish, which makes it real difficult to teach. but that's okay. We had an awesome dinner with a cute older couple, Elder Thompson calls them his grandparents. They made some really good Carne Asada. The Tortillas were so dang good!!!!

Sunday-I was pretty happy to get back to Calexico (I never thought I would say that). I just love my area and my comp and my district. Sunday morning we went out to wake people up for church, we had a big focus on getting people to church this week. So many people answered the door and straight up said no to going to church and a bunch who just didn't answer the door... so that was disappointing. But Angel ended up coming!! the Guy we added on Friday! He's so legit. Idk if he liked church, he dipped out right after sacrament but hopefully we will talk to him soon! Church was awesome this week. Daniella Silva gave her farewell talk, she leaves for Barcelona Spain soon. She's so awesome. They're whole family is Dynamite! They are super solid with referrals and member presents. And Hno silva is absolutely hilarious. She gave an awesome talk!

Monday- Today was another weird day schedule wise. We ran and went to help build a fence at a members house. It was so humid!! I felt like I really wasn't even working that hard, just swinging a hammer, and I was dripping sweat the entire time. The fence was beautiful though. While we were there we got a call from a less active named Hno. Ontiveros. He said he was worried about something, but he never really said what. So we stopped by there after Service. Turns out both he and his wife had a dream that the Elders weren't eating enough, so they felt like they needed to call us and feed us. So we ate with them and had a really good conversation about the book of Mormon. He had a sweet version of the Book of Mormon that had historical pictures in it. We had to go finish studies and then we went and talked to some of our investigators who didn't go to church. We threw down, and they will for sure be coming next week!!!!!

Love you all!

Elder Hansen

Pictures of: The Big Rain Storm, The Calexico Ward Building, The Apartment, and Laundry Time.