Hump Day! June 25, 2015

At the Padres Game

Pamela's Baptism Elder Quinonez & Elder Hansen

I'm great! It's a beautiful day down here in Lemon Grove as well. Pretty much always is beautiful. Sometimes a little warm but always nice.

We had a great week this week!!

One of the highlights was District meeting. We played "how well do you know your pamphlets" a game that I invented to help us practice teaching. It was fun!

We also have a new investigator named Ulises. He's awesome! He has met with missionaries sporadicly for the past 10-15 years. He was about to be baptized about 4 years ago and changed his mind last minute. It was cool to talk to him about that experience and about how much more ready he feels now. He's working on Sundays at the moment , but is going to work on changing his schedule so he can come to church and is excited for his baptism in August.

Sunday we had one of the Haitian investigators Evans there, he loved it. The Branch welcomed him with open arms! It was sweet. That night we also had a Mission President's fireside which is always awesome. All the Spanish elders in the mission came to sing in the choir (except for the poor Imperial Valley, they are too far away). We had Ulises and Juan there, they loved it! It was awesome!

Those are kinda the best times from this week! Lots of other great stuff but those are the highlights!

Love you all! 

Elder Hansen

The District

Zone Conference

Tuesday, June 16, 2015 Padres Game

Hey family!! Happy Tuesday!

We had an interesting week!! It all started last Tuesday right after we left the apartment and went to contact some referrals. While we were walking back       down the street we walked past a normal looking van, except there was a guy in a bulletproof vest and with a combat helmet on... So we decided to try a      couple more people on that street so we could see what was going to go down. We waited a few minutes and saw a bunch more trucks and stuff pull up to a house where we were JUST TALKING TO A GUY. And they all jumped out with their DEA vests and assault rifles. And a couple minutes later the guy was   in handcuffs on the porch. That was pretty interesting to witness!

The next few days were pretty normal! But then Saturday there was a ward activity for Father's Day. We had a Carne Asada picnic in a nearby park which    was awesome.

We then went to teach Kendy and Evans with the sister who speaks French. We talked to him about prophets and invited him to a baptism that night in      Chula Vista and he came!!! We got a member, hermano Perez, to drive us all the way down to my last area and we got to see Pamela get baptized!!   I don't know if you remember talking about Ramon and his family...we went to the Mormon battalion a few times. We taught Pamela the lessons and challenged    her to be baptized. Well the sisters helped finish preparing her to get baptized which was awesome! I'll include pictures of that as soon as I can.   The best part though was having our investigators Kendy and Evans there and they loved it!!   We only expected to have one of them there, but Kendy invited 2 other friends. We had 6 people piled in a 4 person car. 

It was awesome to see our three Haitian investigators there in the baptism! That was the highlight of the week. Plus it was great to see some of the members in Chula again.

Sunday was sweet! We met our new investigator Ulysses. He had met with the missionaries a long time ago and even went to church and met some of our members! He's the brother of Alondra who is probably our most solid investigator. She didn't come to church this week but she is doing really good! Someone who is really looking for the truth, and doing what it takes to find the answers! 

Ulysses is also super open and very humble and receptive to the spirit.

Juan is still looking for a new job so he can come to church. As soon as he finds one he will be baptized. Sam disappeared off the face of the earth.  She's probably avoiding us which makes us sad. She was so ready to be baptized! Other than that we are on the hunt! 

The great thing is the branch is behind us and really supporting the work and we are seeing that make a big difference!

Yesterday we had a zone conference which is where a few zones come together and we receive instruction. Yesterday we talked about the Book of Mormon and how important it is as a tool in our conversion to Jesus Christ.  It was awesome to focus on the Book of Mormon and how it has answers to almost all of our problems and doubts! 

We also received iPads and we are in the process of setting them up and stuff and getting them going! It's nice to be able to email on the go!

And here is a picture of us at the Padres baseball game today!

Have great week!

Love Elder Hansen

Hey fam! Hope you all had a fantastic week!!! 

We sure did! 

Every week is a fantastic week in San Diego!

Here are some of the highlights!

Last Thursday we went to visit our investigator Alondra. Last time we saw her she had lost a lot of interest as she got busy with her kids and life got in the way. But between our visits Hermana Perez had called her and invited her to the activities and to church.  Alondra told us that she felt different when "Alma" (hna Perez) had called her. We had to figure out who Alma was but once we did we set up an appointment with Alondra so we could bring Hna Perez with us. And it was dynamite! We talked about the plan of salvation, and Hna Perez was right there the whole time to testify and be her friend. She invited Alondra and her son Elliot to church and they came! It was a huge testimony to me how important it is to have fellowshippers for our investigators. She had a fantastic experience at church as well because the members were really friendly and went up and greeted her and made her feel welcome. 

CHALLANGE- next time you see a new face in church, whether it could be an investigator or a newly-moved member go say hi and introduce yourself. It could make all the difference in whether they have a great experience in a new church or new ward! It made all the difference for Alondra, and she has every intention of going next week!

We had a great lesson with our branch mission leader Brother Robledo yesterday with an investigator who is working really hard to find a new job so he can go to church and also working to get over issues with the Word of Wisdom. It was great to have Hermano Robledo there to testify and help him see that just because we fall doesn't mean that all is lost.

I have gained an even bigger testimony this week of MEMBER WORK! We can't do it without the members, so do all you can to help the missionaries Find, Teach, Baptize, Rescue and Retain those sheep that the Lord needs back in His fold!

Another Cool highlight is that Saturday the sisters' investigators got married and baptized.  It was awesome to see them take both steps in the same day! It was an awesome service and the ward provided a nice little dinner afterword which was fantastic!

Another highlight is we found out we are allowed to go to the Padres Game next week for pday! We are stoked about that! It should be a fun adventure, we will see how that goes!

Next week I'll probably be emailing you from our sweet new ipads!!!

Love you!

Elder Hansen

June 2, 2015

Sunset Cliffs

Hey family how's it goin! How was your week?

We have had another awesome week! This last week was transfers but Elder Gonzalez and I stayed together which we were both pretty stoked about! 

We have just continued to work to find, teach and baptize. There isn't a whole ton of stuff to report. Our investigator Juan is continuing to work toward baptism this month, with only his job holding him back. He's awesome though, we are having a ton of fun teaching him! 

We also have a couple of awesome new investigators! Two of which came to church this past Sunday which is huge! That was a highlight of this past week.

Teaching appointments with the French speakers are always short and as simple as we can keep them, we just let them read the pamphlets and the Book of Mormon because those are in French and they understand it way better! He was going to come to church on Sunday but backed out last second, so we will see if we can get him to come this Sunday. He's super cool and fun to teach! 

Funny story with that. We had just gotten the French pamphlets for Kendy and Evans and were going to teach them last Saturday morning. We get off the trolley and their apartment is about 100 yards or less from the trolley stop. As we walk up the street a guy stops us and asks us for something to read. It was obvious he wasn't all there so we were just going to give him a couple Spanish pamphlets and get on our way. As Elder Gonzalez reaches in his bag to grab a couple of pamphlets for him, the guy reaches in and grabs the only 3 French pamphlets we have, and won't give them back. He doesn't speak French he just wanted those specific pamphlets for who knows what reason...so we chase him down and try to reason with him, and eventually he traded us a Book of Mormon for one of the French pamphlets. So at least we had one to leave with Kendy, but it was really frustrating that he would take the only pamphlets that we actually needed in that precise moment..I'd say it was probably Satan working - haha .

Also other funny story-Today we were doing laundry in the laundromat. Keep in mind Lemon Grove is pretty ghetto. haha So we were just sitting down studying while we waited for our washers to finish up, and all the sudden this one black guy is yelling at another one how he's gonna take him out back and beat his *** and all these profanities and stuff. And the other one is yelling back and they are two tough guys just threatening eachother so we are just like "dang, are we about to witness a fight?" haha I'm not gonna lie I was getting excited about what I was gonna see. But then one left or whatever and the other guy comes up to us and is like "I'm sorry you good Mormon boys had to hear that. Just so y'all know black people don't always communicate like that". We were laughing so hard! It was pretty funny at the time!

Also I forgot to mention the other day we were sitting by the bus stop, and it was about 7 PM and in the evenings the buses don't run as frequently so we were going to have to wait a while. But anyway this guy pulls up, we don't know him, he's not a member but he offers us a ride! So we hopped in and he took us down to the trolley station and we had a nice little chat with him. He was a super nice guy named Dale. So that was a sweet little tender mercy from the Lord yesterday!

Those are some of the interesting things going on around here. haha :) 

Yesterday was fun! It was full of service. In the morning we went to help one of the Sister's investigators move, and she told us to come to a taco shop she works at that afternoon when she was working! So we did and she gave us a huge thing of Carne Asada fries which is like one of the tastiest things ever, but on the way there there there was a guy who ran out of gas so we pushed his car .8 mi to the nearest gas station. (I just looked up the distance on LDS maps) it was a good workout! I was sweating a lot it was hot and we were in proselyting clothes so that was fun! 

Friday's District meeting was awesome. We talked a lot about a talk that Elder Holland Gave in the MTC called "Feed My Sheep" he also gave a similar talk in the following conference. I'll include the links. 

https://www.lds.org/general-conference/2012/10/the-first-great-commandment?lang=eng&query=Elder+feed

http://laytreasuresinheaven.com/feed-my-sheep-elder-holland/ 

Well that's pretty much the highlights of the week! What's new with you?

Love you!

Elder Hansen

May 26, 2015 - Mission Conference

Hey Fam! It was a great week this week! 

We added 7 new investigators, and we got a new one with a baptismal date! so we have a couple who are really serious about preparing for baptism! We are stoked about that! 

Highlights of the week were the mission conference Tuesday for sure! Here is a list of favorite quotes from Elder Clarke

- Marriage and family is the most important organization in time and eternity.

- Are you a convert to Chapter 8 (using time wisely/goals)? You become different and everything else will become different. 

- With goals, take the word "try" out of your vocabulary. President Kimball said "Do it now!" 

- The Lord can work miracles in you. When you set inspired goals, you can expect miracles. We need to start thinking of thousands, not 2 baptisms per missionary each year. (Alma 23:5).

- Goals that are not written down are called dreams and they don't happen.

- Take off your name tag, look at it, kneel down, and report to Him what you have done with His name today.

- Iowa Des Moines Mission in 2010 - went from 279 baptisms Thanksgiving week to 401 by year-end. Teach the "cans and wannas" and stop teaching the "can'ts and don't wannas." 

- Love problems, love life!

- Happy always, content never!

- The Missionary Handbook doesn't have rules. For missionaries, these are commandments!

- The question is: Can you be trusted?

- I have no interest in fishing; I have interest in catching!

- The question is: Do you love Him? If you do, you will feed His lambs and sheep.

- We need to change. If we keep doing things the same ways, we need to change. You've got to be hungry to convert. We should baptize because we love the people, and then we keep them. Do you ask, "Who do you know?" after every lesson? 

- I'd tell my companion, "Don't let me eat if I don't always ask 'Who do you know?'"

- There is not a day on your mission that you should not read two books: The Book of Mormon and Preach My Gospel.

- Don't let anybody determine your happiness. If you don't let the mission go through you, it will not change you. You cannot simply go through the mission.

- We need to be hungry to do this work. This work matters to the Lord. You will become like Him as you do this work!

- I would go home tonight and write down who I am and who I will become. Each night, I would commit to the Savior that I'll be better. Write up who I'd like to be and make it who I am.

That was one of the most inspiring meetings of my life and it has really started to help change the culture of the mission. We have started to become master missionaries and the results are already coming! We are starting to see the miracles in our area and in the mission as a whole!

Other highlight of the week happened yesterday! First off we got our new investigator Michelle with a date, she is 13 and is really excited! Then after that the English elders called and told us we were going to start teaching a couple of investigators they had. They are from Haiti, and they only speak French, Creole and a tiny bit of Portuguese, except one knows a little bit of Spanish, so we get to teach them! We got some French pamphlets and a couple French Book of Mormons and we are starting to teach them! We taught one of them-Kendy the restoration yesterday.  We basically taught him in the most simple vocabulary we could muster, like teaching a child and it was awesome to feel how we were all edified even though there was a slight language barrier, but the holy ghost doesn't have a language barrier, which was a huge blessing. We are also learning how to teach more simply and clearly, which is always a good thing!

Anyway! Those our adventures from this week! Elder Gonzalez and I are staying together for at least another 6 weeks and we are stoked! We are planning on seeing tons of miracles this transfer and continuing to grow! 

Can't wait to hear from you again! 

Elder Hansen