Es que ahorita voy a hacer un mandato, mejor que vengan otro día
Note: Alex has been adding funny excuses from people that don't want to talk with them right now - that is what these headings have been each week. Try google translate if you want to try to figure out the meanings.
What's up fam and friends. We had such a sick week this week!!
I'm just going to get to the most exciting part because I can't wait to talk about it. This last week we had a visit from Elder Jeffrey R. Holland of the Quorum of the Twelve Apostles. It was UNREAL!!
For those of you who aren't familiar with him, here's a link to one of his talks...GO READ IT RIGHT NOW! This man is an amazing speaker, and this is one of my favorite talks of all time.
https://www.lds.org/general-conference/2015/04/where-justice-love-and-mercy-meet?lang=eng
So we got to hear from Elder Holland for about an hour and a half on Friday, it was amazing. It's amazing to hear from him when his audience is so small, and his topics so personal. He talked about the importance of missions, and how missions help us bring the doctrine of Christ out of our head and into our hearts. Here are some of my favorite quotes.
Joyful but serious” – that’s a good combination in missionary work.
• “All service in the Church is lateral.” It is not vertical. God loves the Nursery worker just as much as He loves President Monson.
• I want you to love every minute of your mission; to cherish your mission.
• “This is your apostolic moment.” You are “little a” apostles. You are doing work as close to the Quorum of the Twelve Apostles and First Presidency as you will ever have.
• “The most important thing in the universe is the salvation of a human soul.”
• “Obedience is the first law of everything. Agency exercised in the act of obedience.”
• “You do it God’s way.” and say “Lord, I accept and do it your way.”
• When you are obedient, “that leads to the Holy Spirit.” “This is the way you work miracles.”
• “You are obedient all the time, with exactness, to the extent you can be.”
• I cannot promise you any number of other converts, but I promise and demand at least one convert – yourself. You are the most important convert.
• “You are to go home and be faithful to this (Gospel/Church) for the rest of your life.”
• “You can never go back to what you were before!”
• “You are God’s investigators and He is teaching you lessons.”
• “There is no going back!”
• “Let’s be persistent.”
• We need to get the lessons and doctrine from the head to the heart.
• We want you to have this in your soul!
• People do not know how much you care until they know how much you love.
• I want you to love the Book of Mormon!
• Work hard. Love every minute of it.
It was incredible. I don't know if I've ever been so locked into a speaker for so long in my life. At the beginning of the meeting he shook our hands and we said our names and where we are from. Directly after that he thanked us for the opportunity to interview each one of us, because he doesn't really remember our names or where we are from, but he takes a moment to look deeply into our eyes and have a brief interview with us. And you could really feel that he looked into our soul. That's an experience I'll never forget. It was like Christmas in May.
Beyond that we had a really cool experience this past week. We will see if I can make it make sense over email, it's a long story. So a couple weeks ago we got a text from some other elders asking about our meeting time and address, so we gave it to them without much thought. Someone they had talked to on the street was asking for it. Later on, last Tuesday we received a call from someone who said they were visiting from Mexico and had a referral, it wasn't from our area so we took the referral and sent it off, the man said he might pay a visit to church. Again, we didn't think much of it because we get people passing through San Diego all the time. BUT, we put everything together on Sunday. The night before we were flipping through a long list of potential investigators who had met the missionaries and hadn't been followed up with. Elder Laws decided we should go see Horacio. I rolled my eyes because I had been to that house before and found nothing but 29 Palateros (Ice cream guys), none of which with the name Horacio. But I went with it and when we stopped by once again we found no one with the name Horacio, BUT by chance we met a man named Oscar, who happened to be the guy that called us with the referral. PLUS he is an endowed member, who isn't just visiting, he's staying here to work. He's held numerous callings and is stoked that we ran into him, without planning it. He also said "Elders we will soon see how to help my friends and coworkers hear your message, there are 29 men in this house, if the branch is lacking priesthood".
He's SO COOL! His family is back in Mexico, he's here working and sending money back to his family. He's stoked to help us teach the people he lives with. We are stoked to meet them all. He's a super faithful man, he just had no idea where the church was because we meet in a school...easy to do that.
Apart from these cosas (things), Veronica didn't come to church because she was in Mexico, again. Sometimes Mexico is the worst, it takes our people away on weekends and sometimes just takes them away all together. Pero asi es la vida (but that's life). Other than that we are working on finding some new people to teach, hopefully we will have 29 new investigators from the Palatero house :) haha
A quote from Elder Mark C. Davis of the seventy who spoke before Elder Holland "If you're not having a ball as a missionary, you're doing it wrong" and it's so true! I'm having a ball. I'm loving every minute of it. The hard times, the good times, the sad times. I love it!
Love you all, hope you have had a great week!
Elder Hansen
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