August 4, 2015 Una Semana Buena (A Good Week)

What up fam!!!

It's been a sweet week this week. It seems like the mission is picking up and moving faster and faster!! My 3 transfers (4.5 months) in the valley seemed to fly by, 3 transfers in Chula flew by even faster and now I'm 5 weeks into my third transfer here. Time is going by even faster!! My trainer goes home in less than 2 months. We went to the temple together today. We also had a sweet old reunion with Elder Takke, Elder Quinonez and some other friends from the mission. We plan out our temple p-days so we can go together.

I was reflecting a lot in the temple about our family and how awesome it is that you will all be there this week. I'm so grateful for the blessings of the temple and especially the blessing of eternal families.

Anyway it's been a great week. Me and Elder Cloes have still been having a blast. We have come to learn that the key to a good sandwich is a good pickle. I have lived a whole year of my mission with mediocre sandwiches because of my lack of pickles. But I've repented and turned to Vlasic bold and spicy or Famous Dave's pickles. Makes all the difference.

We are currently teaching a bunch of drunks. But they're great drunks so it's okay. We love them. We have a couple investigators who we have been having a lot of fun teaching. It's cool because we can tell that we are gaining their respect and are able to have really spiritual lessons.

We have one investigator Jose, who has been investigation for a long time and came to church consistently for a while, but stopped. We had a lesson with him on Saturday, and he's been having a hard time because his mom died of a brain aneurysm. Just testifying of the atonement and the blessings of the plan of salvation brought the spirit so strong. And he went from "maybe I'll go to church" to "I have no other choice" (in Spanish of course). It was cool to watch the spirit work with him in that moment. Then we went back to see him again yesterday and helped  answer some questions about the restoration. It's been great working with him a lot.

Anyway, I'm doing great,  So glad you are as well! Have a wonderful week!

Elder Hansen

July 28, 2015

What's up fam??

We've had an awesome week this week!! Everything is still super sweet out here in Lemon Grove and the Sweetwater 3rd branch.

Last Wednesday we started out the morning by going to a class put on by LDS Family services. They have a therapist who councils a lot of people but she also offers a missionary class every once in a while and we were invited so we went. It was awesome. She talked about communication, it was something that is really made for families, but it applies to everyone. Basically it talked about how we respond to people who are in an emotional state. There are 12 really common responses that aren't necessarily the best ways to handle situations like that, and instead she offered 4 alternatives that would help the other person to feel loved, instead of feeling controlled. It was super good and she always connects everything to the atonement and the Gospel so it was sweet and it's something that I will use for the rest of my life. Especially as a dad but it can also help with companions and investigators.

After that we had exchanges with the Zone Leaders, who are in the other Spanish ward in the stake, they live in National City. I went to their area, with our new zone leader Elder Laws. He started in the Chula Vista Zone, so we already knew each-other, he's super cool! We had a lot of fun, and had some good experiences on exchanges. It's awesome to learn from one another.

To end the exchange we went to a Mexican restaurant in our area called Mariscos Altata, we go there a lot because on Wednesdays and Thursdays they have fish tacos 2 for 99cents so we hit that up as often as we can and they're huge!!! Random fun fact but the days we go there are always good days. To be honest we went there both Wednesday and Thursday... it's that good.

Friday we had district meeting Us and our four sisters! Plus the Zone leaders came to join us so that was a good time. Our district is super fun and we talked about using the Book Of Mormon and how important it is not only in knowing the church is true but in also receiving a testimony of Jesus Christ as our savior. We have been putting a lot of emphasis on the Book of Mormon with our investigators, especially in really helping them to read it and understand it.

Saturday we went and did service with an awesome family in our ward, they have been less active lately and I had never been able to meet them with Elder Gonzalez, but Elder Cloes and I went by on Friday and she invited us to eat on Saturday at their daughter's birthday party.

So we went to eat but they were still setting everything up when we got there so we did some impromptu service and helped them set up all the tables and chairs and she did a candy table similar to the one mom did at amber's wedding, so we helped her put the candy in the dishes and everything. They are super awesome and it was good service, and they said to come back later to eat lunch with them which we did, we had chicken and beef kabobs with rice and  veggies and a ton of desserts. It was super good and they gave us a bunch to take home which was really good. We are excited to teach them and help their family grow even more in the gospel!

Sunday all the people flaked on church again... but we don't get down on it! Sometimes it's kind of frustrating when they say they are going to come and they don't, but it is what it is. We can't overcome their agency.

After church there was a carne asada at our ward mission leader's house in honor of a member who just got endowed, it was awesome. we love to share time with the members plus you can't complain about carne asada tacos...

Monday was a super awesome day, we went to go visit our investigators in one area but neither of them were home, so we started talking to someone we met on the street, named Anna. It was a great talk and we were actually able to teach her the entire restoration briefly and simply right there on the street. She said we can come back and talk to the rest of her family on Wednesday. She also mentioned that she has a brother who is a member and lives in Pasco Washington. 

Right after that we had to go do a little bit of time entering all of this information into the Area book Planner app so we went to the nearby library to use the wifi. While we were there we got a text from someone with a 425 number, which kinda freaked me out for a second but it was all in Spanish (good Spanish, not Google translate Spanish) so I figured no one was messing with me. Anyway it was Manuel, and he said he had just moved from Bellevue where he had met with missionaries. So we set up an appointment to meet up at the church with them. 

So we went along with the rest of our day, went to meet up with Santiago but he wasn't home so we went to try Hector, someone Elder Cloes had talked to on exchanges with Elder Cardiff. He wasn't home but we were able to talk to his mom. WOW! His mom is awesome. She was talking to us about how she really is trying to do her best with her kids (19, 18, 10 and 7) and how she wants them to have a belief in God but it can be hard, and she's a single mom, who was in a bad relationship before and she just has really sincere desires for her family and it is great to meet people like that, so we will go back and teach them on friday and she said we will be able to find her whole family together which is great. 

After that we went to dinner at our Branch President's house (The Dominguez family). It was great. They are an awesome family. They have 5 kids (Jose, Joyce, Josy, Joyce-lyn, and Josue) It's really hard to get their names straight but basically it's an awesome family and we had a great dinner with them. I feel like we have been developing more trust with the members  lately, especially president Dominguez. 

After dinner we met up with Manuel and his wife Paola (from the phone call, the ones that moved from Bellevue). THEY ARE SO COOL! They have lived here in the states for about 2.5 months and have been meeting with the missionaries in Bellevue for the majority of the time. They are super cool, they have 2 kids back in Mexico and are just an overall great family. We were so stoked to meet them!!

Today was a great morning as well! We took our dirty clothes to the friendly neighborhood Laundromat and they came back even dirtier! We also got the usual view from the Laundromat, not just 5 but six cop cars. (I'll include the picture). 

And that's the week!! Thank you for the love and support!

You are the best!  Elder Hansen

July 21, 2015

Hey awesome family! We had a really good week!

Things are great out here in the area! Still lovin it!

Not a whole lot to talk about this week, but we got the "area book planner" app, which replaces our area book and our planner, so we have been transitioning all the paper work information from our book and paper planners and we are getting used to using the ipad for pretty much everything now. But we still carry around little notebooks because there are a couple places where we don't want to pull out our ipads..haha

Sunday we had a mission president's fireside in Santee, brother Barber helped us out and gave us a ride, and the ward mission leader Hermano Robledo gave our investigator Eduardo a ride. It was awesome. In the firesides there are usually a couple of testimonies from recent converts and a few mormon messages and a bunch of awesome musical numbers. This fireside one of my favorites was a girl who isn't even baptized yet who sang and it was sooooooo good. She's supposed to get baptized this week out in Santee. She's like 16 or something like that. It was awesome and I think it really helped our investigator Eduardo because the
spirit is always really strong and it's good to hear from people who made the decision to get baptized.

Other highlight- I taught Elder Cloes how to juggle. haha he's super good at it now. It was pretty exciting.

Brother Barber made us dinner this week-bless his heart. I'm not sure if I've told you but he's a little old white man who goes to our Spanish branch because of something President Kimball said-to learn a language. And he's still workin on the language. But anyway, before we had the car he used to give us rides to church and stuff, he was always really helpful but he lives alone so he had never invited us to eat, but this week he did. He made us what he said was baked "chicken" but it turned out to be turkey and we didn't notice til we were eating the leftovers the next day but it was good either way. It just made us laugh that it was turkey in the end. He also made us spinach salad which was super good and potatoes and veggies, it was awesome! Then he apologized because he was going to make a cake but ran out of time. But we didn't need the cake! We were stuffed. And he served us root beer floats in an old frosting container. haha it was an interesting experience.

We have been teaching a lot of drunk people, well not really drunk but that had been drinking, and it makes it really hard because of their dragons breath, I had to back up from our investigator so I didn't puke. It was kind of a struggle, we will get to the word of wisdom pretty quick don't worry ;)


That's pretty much all I got. The gospel is true! I love the work and I love you all!

Elder Hansen

July 14, 2015

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

July 7, 2015

We had an awesome week! I'm just going to share a couple highlights!

So we started teaching an older guy named Santiago, he's pretty cool! He's battling with the word of wisdom but it's great to see how his interest level changed as we testified about how the gospel can help him with that. Now he's super stoked to go to church on Sunday and is interested in baptism! We are going to get him with a baptismal date this week. He had met with missionaries about 5 years ago in another part of California, but they never invited him to church, so he is super stoked to go! 

Other highlight was our Fourth of July! In the morning we got to go to the baptism Of Alma Tomayo, the daughter of Yolanda, She's seventeen. We were teaching her along with her mom when I was in Chula Vista.  She asked me to baptize her! It was awesome! It was great to see Yolanda and Bishop Corona and all the other great people from Chula Vista! 

After that we had district meeting. Its our last one with our district the way it is. We had one sister finish her mission, and after transfers we will look totally different! We talked about the Atonement, and watched an awesome video with talks from Elder Holland and Elder Eyring. The video is called Missionary Work and the Atonement. You should check it out. It's on youtube. I had to have someone send it to me. It talks about how missionary work is hard because salvation isn't easy, but that because Christ offered his sacrifice, it makes it possible and makes it worth it. It's super great and motivating!

Saturday night we had to be in the apartment before 6, but we got a sweet lesson with Ulises in before that! He's super stoked for his august 8th baptismal date. We are looking forward to that! 

After we got home we ordered some pizza and started doing the study that president assigned us. We are studying all about planning and using the area book and stuff because we are getting the area book planner app this week and so it's important that we are master planners and know the area book like the back of our hand. 

Yesterday we had an awesome day too! We did service for a member in our ward. She gave us a bunch of food too which was great! We love doing service, especially when we get to do it as a district! Then we had a sweet lesson with Santiago! He's so stoked to go to church. And a lesson with an investigator named Eduardo who has been investigating with the sisters but we are teaching him now. We had a lesson in the home of our ward mission leader Hermano Robledo and his wife made us dinner. It was awesome because its a great environment to teach and the spirit was strong! He knows it's true, we are just helping him build his faith so he has a desire to follow Christ and be baptized. He's an awesome guy! We had home-made carne asada quesadillas which were delicious. 

And this morning Sister Gamez from our district took off, we got to have their car for the day and so we did laundry and here we are at the library emailing. We got the transfer call and Elder Gonzalez is leaving and I'll be getting a new comp tomorrow! It will be another exciting transfer of course!

Hope everyone has a great week!

Love,

Elder Hansen

June 30, 2015

It's been another awesome week here in the Sweetwater 3rd Branch!

We have had a fantastic, but fairly normal week here!

Some of the highlights this week!

Last Wednesday we went to the Mormon Battalion Historic Site with our investigator Ulises. We had a blast! I'll include a picture. It was his second time there but it has been years since he's gone. I think I mentioned this before but he's been meeting on and off with missionaries for more than 10 years. He has a baptismal date for August 8 and we are super stoked to help him work towards it! He's been reading in the Book of Mormon and loves it!! Keep him in your prayers! :)

This week I have been studying a lot about Grace, and the Atonement. I've been meditating a lot about where I was personally about a year ago, where I am now, and where I want to be in the next year, two years, five years and even more. Thinking about the distance I've come it makes me grateful for the grace of god, but also makes me think that I can do more. But the question is how. As I've been studying it's clear that nothing I personally can do will ever reach up to the standard of Christ, but through Christ, we can reach that standard and reach our potential. Here is a quote from President Uchtdorf's talk in April's general conference that really stood out to me. "Another element of God’s grace is the opening of the windows of heaven, through which God pours out blessings of power and strength, enabling us to achieve things that otherwise would be far beyond our reach. It is by God’s amazing grace that His children can overcome the undercurrents and quicksands of the deceiver, rise above sin, and “be perfect[ed] in Christ.”  Though we all have weaknesses, we can overcome them. Indeed it is by the grace of God that, if we humble ourselves and have faith, weak things can become strong."

Throughout my mission I have noticed as weaknesses get pointed out and made obvious, while at the same time they are erased and made into strengths. I know that it is only through the grace of God that this is possible. I also have realized that we can't just sit around and wait until the grace of God makes us something better than we are. We have to be constantly striving to live the gospel, so that the Lord can make up the rest. 

 I really like this quote by Lorenzo Snow “Do not expect to become perfect at once. If you do, you will be disappointed. Be better today than you were yesterday, and be better tomorrow than you are today.” 

There are a few random thoughts that have been going through my head this week. I hope that made a little bit of sense. I invite you to all study that talk by President Uchtdorf. Here's the link so you don't have an excuse to not read it! :)  https://www.lds.org/general-conference/2015/04/the-gift-of-grace?cid=HP_TH_6-18-2015_dPTH_fGC_xLIDyL1-A_&lang=eng

Dad! Happy happy birthday! Do something extra special to celebrate! I love you!! You are the best dad in the whole wide world! I'm so blessed to have you!

Love Elder Hansen

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