Tuesday, September 22, 2015

Hey fam, it´s been another good week in Lemon Grove, California.  Just started the last week of the transfer, these past 5 weeks have absolutely floooown by.

This past week we've been working with pretty much the same people, it's been kind of hard to find new investigators but we keep going anyway. Eduardo is doing well, still working on helping him to grow his faith and set a new baptismal date, he looks great and has come so far!! He and the guy who he rents from--Jose came to church on Sunday. They're funny guys, they are the ones that started to call me Chicharito, which means little pea because of the soccer player, but now they call me Chicharote, which means big pea.  haha  they say my eyes look like his eyes...    

Saturday we had more Lengua for dinner :) A member family-the Quinonez's made us tacos de Lengua. They prepared it a little different than Eduardo but they were super good too. We are helping their little 8 year old Angel get ready for his baptism in the next couple weeks.

Sunday was awesome. Raquel and Cynthia and their daughter Melanie came to church with us! (Melanie is like the friendliest little 2.5 year old ever). They had a really good experience. We had the privilege of teaching  gospel principals super last minute because our teacher wasn't feeling good--he told us as we were walking into the class..we taught about obedience. It wasn't too bad. Later on we had a mission president's fireside in Chula Vista so we went there for that, it was good to see a couple of people from the old ward although there were a few people that weren't there that I was hoping would be. I got to see my "mom and dad" from that ward, the Quintero family, I'll try to send ya a picture. Hermano Espinoza was also there who is one of my favorite people I've met in the mission.

Yesterday we had dinner with the other Quinonez family-they're brothers. She asked what we wanted and Elder Cloes said Aguachiles, which is his new favorite thing. It's shrimp which is cooked, but not really cooked. It sits in lime so the acidity cooks it, it's really good. We also had shrimp ceviche which is similar, just that the Aguachiles is made with chiles. so It's spicy. We love Mexican seafood!

Can't wait to see my little nephew! Send me pics and info asap!!

Love you tons!

Elder Hansen

Tuesday, September 15, 2015

 My Comp decided to play a game of "stack stuff" on me.

 Zone Conference

 The new International Zone t-shirt I designed.

Hey fam! 

It's been an awesome week here in beautiful Lemon Grove. It's currently pouring down rain which is a pleasant surprise!!

We started this awesome week with Zone Conference last Wednesday which is when Our zone and the Chula Vista English and Spanish zones get together and we get some awesome instruction from the members of the mission presidency and president Schmitt.

This time we talked about working with members, and how essential it is in missionary work that members work alongside us, we are on the same team. We talked about working with our ward and branch leaders and how the bishop or branch president   holds the keys for the work and needs to have a high vision for there to be success. After that he needs to work through the    ward mission leader, branch or ward council and the missionaries to bring to pass his inspired vision. We have been putting all of that into action this week, we got together with our branch president and set some expectations and made a plan and talked about it in ward council.

Thursday we had weekly planning and stuff-its always kind of a long day because we have to spend a lot of time inside the       apartment. We also had dinner with our branch mission leader and the sisters here serving in our ward. Hermana Robledo       made carne asada and pollo asado and she makes awesome salsa and guacamole. It was awesome. Then we had coordination which was good! People in the branch are getting a lot more motivated to work. We had an awesome lesson after with Julio and Paola, plus little juliette. They are such an awesome family! (Pics of us with them later on)

Friday we had a couple sweet lessons with our investigators Raquel and her daughter Cynthia. It's cool to see how the Lord     has prepared them through trials and life  experiences to receive the gospel, especially Cynthia, and they are super stoked! We also had an awesome lesson with a less active member who we just met. He's super friendly and really fun!

Saturday we had dmeet (district meeting)! We talked more about working with members-there is a sweet talk called "It's a          Miracle" by Elder Anderson that we talked about. Our branch president had a birthday party for their daughter. She turned 14-it was awesome.   It was princess themed and there were lots of people and lots of good food!  While we were there we got one of the best phone calls ever ... that the speakers weren't going to be able to speak so they called us, the missionaries, to give the   talks the following day...like 15 hours before the sacrament meeting. We talked about prophets and the restoration. It went      pretty well.

There's a little summary of the week! Love you all!

Elder Hansen

Tuesday, September 8, 2015

The end of another awesome week here in Beautiful Lemon Grove, California!

Elder Cloes and I are still having a blast out here in the Sweetwater branch!  

Here are a few highlights!  

We are teaching an awesome family consisting of Juliet (1 year old), Paola and Julio. They are awesome! They are a lot of fun to teach and this week we were helping them get the first birthday party of Juliet all put together. We were helping them glue ribbons on jars, little "Juliet" stickers on stuff, marshmallows on a stick and other crafty stuff. It reminded me of getting things together with my crafty mom and sisters! We got permission to go to the party even though it was out of our area. Birthday parties are a huge deal in Mexican culture. They rented out a hall, had tons of decorations, dinner and even a mechanical bull. Unfortunately we didn't participate in that... :/ But it was packed!! We helped serve food and we were running around helping Paola and Julio as much as we could. It was cool to see all the Mexican traditions. Piñatas, Mexican dulces (candy) and the tradition when they throw quarters out to the crowd. We came up on some extra laundry money for the week :) There was lots of good food and it was cool to meet all the friends and family. We were definitely the only white people there. haha  

We have been teaching Raquel, she's doing awesome! She's always so grateful for everything we teach her and everything we do. She says we are like her sons. This week we also started teaching her daughter Cynthia, who is super nice and cool! It's an awesome little family. Cynthia has a crazy little 2 year old who is always running around and having a good time. She falls down a lot but never cries. Just sticks her hand out and waits until someone helps her up, then she dusts herself off and goes again!  

Eduardo is still doing really good. It's cool how he has started to recognize the changes he has made, and how much better he feels now. We had an awesome lesson with his neighbor Jose as well. He is feeling pretty down and lonely since his mom died recently and all of his kids are grown. He has really been humbled and it's cool to see the spirit work on him.  

I can't remember if I mentioned the best restaurant ever!! Bankhead Mississippi cooking. We went back as our pre-fast meal and man!! It was just as good this time. It's like takin a trip to the south. Had some baked chicken, fried chicken and smothered chicken plus smothered potatoes and Mac N Cheese. It was good preparation for Sunday.  

Sunday we went to lunch after church with some members that I met in Chula Vista, the Gallegos family. They are so awesome! Side story-I had some really good pistachio ice cream and pistachio popsicles in Chula and ever since whenever we run into a palatero I ask if they have them, they never do. But after we finished eating Hermana Gallegos was like what flavor ice cream do you want? Pistachio or I don't even know what she said afterwards because she lost me at pistachio. I started acting like a child because I was so excited. But anyway I had my pistachio ice cream and she bought me a whole container of it this week :) haha 

Since we have a car it has been a lot easier to get out and meet the members and eat with them :) we get fed quite a bit now.  

I love you dear family and friends! Thank you for all of the love and support!  

Elder Hansen

Hey family!

It's going to be a quick email this week, but it's been an awesome week! A picture is worth a thousand words right?

Things are going great here in Lemon Grove! Still teaching some great people! We currently have 3 with a baptismal date and we are still finding a lot of awesome people! We got a referral from the English elders this week, her name is Alica and she is super prepared! She had been talking to her boss and has LDS family, and we are super stoked to go back and teach her this week!

Tonight we will be eating tacos de lengua with our investigator Eduardo (Tacos of tongue). 

They are actually delicious.

This is a taco de lengua. It's actually really good. When we come back, we will eat some. 

Love you family!

Elder Hansen

August 25, 2015

Hey family happy Tuesday!!

It's been another awesome week out here in Lemon Grove California. We've seen miracles everyday and we are still stoked to be here doing the Lord's work.

This past week was pretty crazy with transfers. We are very happy we stayed together. Even though neither of us were transferred we got to go to transfer meeting since we had to take a car down there, with all the mission downsizing lots of stuff has changed! It was a crazy transfer meeting, but we got a bunch of our transfer predictions correct, that was exciting. The zone we are in got smaller because of the decreasing number of missionaries in the mission. In our Sweetwater zone lots changed. Our district is now made up of all the spanish missionaries in the zone: us, the Zone leaders (Elder Laws and Elder Carlson (my trainer who goes home next month)), the sister training leaders Hermanas Huefner and Chamberlain (served with both of them in Chula, they're great) and the Mormon Battalion sisters Hermanas Gross and Martindale (also great). Needless to say we have the best district ever. In the Zone we now have English, Spanish, tagalog, and Lao speaking missionaries. We were just Spanish before.

We is the international zone now.  It's purrty cool. The cooliest part was the other day I was taking a nap during lunch and I had a vision about a zone t-shirt with all the zone's languages (Lao writing is pretty cool). Elder Cloes and I got right to work making sketches of my prophesy (Elder Cloes said I sprung up out of my dream like Lehi) and today we went to this shop called Laostars to make it a real thing! It's gonna be awesome and I'm sure president Schmitt will be coveting one as well ha.

My comp and I have had a good time during our lunch breaks and night time, making fat ties into skinny ties, They are pretty sweet. We know how to make them pretty fast now. We have Made like 5-6 ties each in just a few days time. We got a sweatshop goin here. We even came up with a brand name for the ties. We just combined our names...We like"Hansoes" ;) .... We are going big!

We also have a great teaching pool right now with a couple of really awesome new families that we've been working with. We have seen lots of little changes in our investigators over the past little bit of time and it's really awesome to look back and see how far they've come--little by little.

One cool family we started teaching in the past couple weeks is Julio and Paola, plus their little girl Juliet, who just turned 1. They are a super awesome younger couple who are a blast to teach.

Their daughter is super funny too! She's having a big birthday party in the next couple weeks and we got permission to go. Saturday we did a private little church tour with them, one of our members Hermana Quiñonez came and helped us out, it was awesome. They weren't able to come to church on Sunday but next week!

We are also teaching Raquel and Jesus, who are awesome! We met Raquel through a member-Hermana Castañeda. Hermana Castañeda sells stuff every Friday on a street on our area, which is right by Raquel's house so we went to talk to them both last week (mentioned in my last email) and we were actually able to teach about the restoration and then last Wednesday and Friday we had another lesson and were actually able to teach both Raquel and her husband.

This week they were sick so they weren't able to come to church, but next week! Raquel was very grateful for us and it was great to hear about how good she felt at church and when we taught, and how she recognized the spirit.

We are also still teaching Eduardo, he's doing so good, come to church like 3 weeks in a row, has left a lot of things behind him, and we have seen a BIG change in him! He's been investigating for a long time, but as our friendship has grown. He as also grown a lot in his faith and has come a long way, it's awesome to see, and it's all because of how his prayers have changed, and his commitment to read the Book of Mormon.

August 18, 2015

The transfer ended on Sunday and today we got the news.......We are staying together. Thank goodness! We were worried it was all too good to be true but we are staying another transfer here in the Sweetwater 3rd branch. Another 6 weeks in the ghetto paradise! It's still great, I'm not tired of the area at all which is kind of unusual.

This week has been a really good one! Starting off with MTEs that I mentioned last week and then we had exchanges with the Zone Leaders one last time before Elder Cardiff went home-He left today, along with one of the English Zone Leaders Elder Hirst who lives in our same apartment complex, we will miss them!

On exchanges I stayed in our area with Elder Laws, we had a good day! We got our investigator Santiago with a baptismal date again, which he lost and taught a couple other good lessons. We had a lot of fun, even though I spilled the dinner alllllll over myself that our member gave us to go. It was some really good broccoli and beef with lots of sauce and I had ALL of the sauce on my pants/shirt. Funniest thing is we ran to the church to eat and clean up and while I had my pants partially open to dry off one of the bishops from the other ward walked in... awkward but he got a good laugh out of it.

We have an awesome new investigator named Raquel who we met by way of a member. We taught her the restoration while they were selling stuff on one of the streets in our area, the member was there to testify and everything! Raquel now has a date for September 26 and she came to church! We now have 4 investigators with baptismal dates and we started last week with 0, so now the job is keeping them on date by making sure they keep their commitments to read the scriptures, pray and come to church.

Sunday was a mission president's fireside in Linda vista, which is kinda far away but we went because we were supposed to have 2 investigators there. They cancelled last minute but we already had the ride from the member. Brother Barber. His poor little car was having a hard time though- He is having trouble with his air filter sensor and his car doesn't accelerate past like 40 mph...it was an adventure getting up there but we made it with no serious problems. People were just made getting stuck behind us, even on side streets. We got a good laugh out of it.

Things are going good out here in the branch, Elder Cloes and I are happy to have at least another transfer together and we will see miracles!

I love you all!

Elder Hansen

August 11, 2015

Hey Parents! Sorry this is coming so late, it's been a crazy p-day, but a good one! 

We had mtes yesterday and today and they were awesome. We talked a lot about recognizing and relying on the spirit. It was a great topic, and learning how to seek out and understand personal revelation is key to our progress in the gospel. 

So after we had our workshop thing at the stake center (this is with 4 zones worth of missionaries) we get to exchange with someone in one of those 4 zones, we never really know who it's going to be. I exchanged with Elder Conner in Imperial Beach which is down in my old Chula Vista Zone. You might recall we exchanged once a few months ago, we were in the MTC together he's pretty awesome and we were stoked to be together!! We had an awesome day and saw lots of miracles!! It's a cool area down there in Imperial Beach. 

Today we played ball with the Assistants Elder Stecklein and Mcchesney, they are both super cool I served with them out in the Valley. It was a lot of fun! Elder McChesney goes home next week, It's the last week of the transfer....CRAZY! I Feel like Elder Cloes just got here! We will see what happens next week with the transfers hopefully I stay with him another one. 

I'll try to send more a little later since it was a crazy p-day with the meeting and stuff. Have a great week! Send me lots of pictures as soon as you can! 

Love you!!

Elder Hansen