Dear family. I cannot even express to you the happiness that I have to be with my new companion Elder Austin Cloes (from Herriman Utah). Elder Cloes is from the same MTC group as my old companion from Elder Browne. So when I was with E. Browne I heard how cool he was. And then I saw him at a baptism in Chula and got to talk to him a little bit. And then he was companions with Elder Takke in Chula (my bro in the mission, you already know that) and we added him to the trifriendship. In other words Elder Takke, Elder Cloes and I are bromigos.
So in transfer meeting on Wednesday there we were sitting just waiting for it to start. I whisper to elder Takke "Elder Cloes could be my new companion" to which Elder Takke responded "if only". No one would think that we would be lucky enough for that. But sure enough when they called Elder A. Hansen I stood up and he called Elder Cloes who was sitting two seats down on the same row. We do the transfer meeting in the chapel so they ask us to be reverent, but when that happened we both speed walked through the overflow to the gym so we didn't disrupt the spirit in the meeting and hugged. It was funny, we heard a collective "ooooooh" from the rest of the mission because there are a lot of people who know how good of friends we are and how cool we both are ;). You could say we are the "it" companionship in the mission right now. Before the meeting Elder Stecklein one of the assistants said "I'm so excited for you" to me and it just made me scared, but now I know why he said it!! Anyways we are super stoked to be together not just because we are great friends, think very similarly, have similar interests and relaxed personalities but because we both love the work and are excited to light this area on fire together. They also took a companionship of sisters out of our branch, so we added a good portion of area to ours, and they gave us a car!!! It's been a lot of fun this week to say the least. Besides the highlight of being with Elder Cloes we have had a lot of great lessons. We are really focusing on helping our investigators read the Book of Mormon because we understand the key role it plays in their conversion to the gospel of Jesus Christ. It's been a big focus and we can see the investigators interest level change as they begin to read and pray. We met and taught a couple of cool kids this week named Jonathan and Jason. They are 13 and 9. They don't sound Hispanic but they are :) Jonathan has been going to the English ward because he's friends with some members there, but the rest of the family only speaksSpanish. We taught them the restoration really simply and it's amazing how much they captured and understood. They are smart little guys and have a great desire to learn! We also started talking to this guy Alfonzo yesterday and started teaching him the restoration right there on the street. He had a ton of real intent and real interest in learning so we are excited to teach him more this coming week. Other cool little experience we walked up to this guy and started talking to him,, but he quickly gestured that he can't hear. But luckily the tiny bit of my 3 years of ASL that I remember kicked in and we were able to tell him about missionaries who sign! He gave us his number and we gave him an ASL missionary card (which I had randomly put in my bag like a week earlier. usually I forget to carry them around). He seemed pretty interested and super cool! Those are a few highlights of the week! I'll try to send some pictures a little later! Love you all so much! Elder Hansen
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