Baptisms!

Alright.  This week was nuts..  I have like no time to write today... We are pretty busy these days.  I love it.

Well this week we had 3 baptisms and confirmations.

One was a family, The Orozco family.  The Mom and Dad (David and Keli) got baptized.  They are amazing!  So strong in faith! They are going to get sealed in the temple and their children will learn and grow.  Their son who is only 7 already wants to serve a mission!  So cool. :)

The other baptism was Christopher Miles. He is also so strong in his faith.  He knows and understands the gospel and already has a testimony.  I actually had the opportunity to confirm him.  It was one of the more powerful experiences on my mission.  I could feel his family specifically his father who was killed right after he was born and how proud they are of him.  Their family will be completed soon in the temple.  I love this church and this gospel.  It is so amazing.  I will never leave it.  

I wish I had more time to write and tell you about everything that is going on, but it just isn't possible.  The work is moving forward.  It is getting to the point where we never have enough time.  Yesterday was one of the busiest days of my life.  We never stopped.  Spoke in a sacrament, had 3 confirmations at different times, taught a youth lesson, went to a couple other wards to bear our testimonies and to meet some nonmembers, had 3 correlation meetings with all 3 stakes that we cover, grabbed a super quick dinner, taught a couple lessons, set up another young man to be baptized this coming Thursday.  It has just been crazy, and yet the best time of my life.  I can't accurately express how much I love being a full-time missionary.  A disciple of Christ.  It is by far the best experience I could have asked for, and has helped me to grow in ways that I never could have expected.  The church is true.

Alright. I will send some pictures.  Love you all!  Thanks for the emails!  Wish I could have responded to all of them. Sorry... 

Godspeed.

-Elder Hansen

Peak The Strategy

Fire!

Hello!  Well I am going to make this pretty short because I want to go play sports.  I miss just playing for hours and hours.  But we will do it today.  We go to a place called the Sportsplex in Kaysville.  It is free for missionaries and it is basically a whole gym place with an indoor field and a trampoline park and all sorts of stuff.  Im excited.

 

Anyway,  This week was great.  Had a leadership training on Tuesday.  Im seeing more and more what it takes to be a better leader.  Im still not very good at it, but I am trying.  I feel so blessed to get to try to help others especially missionaries in this work.  It is awesome.  So ya.

We taught a lot of lessons this week.  It was great.  We took a family down to temple square to have a lesson there with the sister missionaries.  We had a short tour there and looked at the temple and explained to them what is done there and what blessings come from it.  The spirit was strong, and they recognized it and now they have a firm goal to be sealed in the temple.  They are preparing for baptism this coming Saturday the 24th.  Also a young man named Christopher Miles is going to be baptized this Saturday!  He is awesome.  Very smart and understands what the spirit feels like.  He is only 11 or 12 yrs old!  Way cool.  Their family is also looking to be sealed together in the spring of next year. I love how this work gets families pointed toward the temple.  :)

 

Well, other than that we had a fire really close to us.  Just on the mountain in Farmington!  I'll attach some pictures.  It was big.  It took about a day to get it out.  But no damage was done to any homes.  Also this week one of the sister missionaries in our zone had to go home early for medical reasons.   It was sad to see her go. She is a great missionary and very nice to everyone around, but it is better that she went home so that she could get better.  She may try to come back out soon. 

 

Side note, I got to listen to Trevor Luke's homecoming talk!  It was very good.  He is an awesome missionary!  He has come out to teach with us before and he brings a great spirit with him.  So ya.  I also saw the Mannings there!  And the Evans family!  All families that have moved here from Colorado.  They said hi to you all back home.  

 

Then today we got to go to the temple. :)  I always love those trips.  Its so good to just be there and listen and feel so good. 

 

Okay.  Im going to keep it short.  I love you all! Keep being awesome.

God lives and loves us.

Jesus Christ is our Savior and Redeemer.

The church is true.

 

Godspeed.

-Elder Hansen

 

Peak the Strategy

 

...out of ideas...(that's why there are repeats)

Hello my wonderful family!  I miss and love you all.  Thanks for the letters and emails.  I appreciate it.

Well I am going to make it short this week. Like really short.  But I am going to send a lot of pictures.  Deal?

Okay.  This week we had Mission Leader Council on Tuesday morning.  It was pretty long.  8:00am to about 1:00pm....  Learned a lot though and am very excited about the changes I am making and the changes that others in the mission are making to become better disciples and even closer to the Savior in his work.  Our mission is heading in the right direction, I hope it continues to do so and can accelerate to the goals and the vision that we have seen that the Lord has for the Salt Lake City mission.  Word.

We had zone meeting this week so Elder Lawrence and I took some time to prepare for the training we would give.  We made it pretty fun and ridiculous, but memorable and I definitely learned a lot from it so I hope the rest of the zone did as well.  I will send pictures of what we did.  In brief explanation we drew a picture of a mountain with our mission baptism goal by the end of the year at the top and a little dude at the bottom and a bunch of obstacles he has to overcome to get to the top and achieve his goal. Here are the obstacles and the solutions. 

1) a fork in the path -> ask "old man rivers" which path to take (ask everyone we meet for referrals) 

2) a pack of ravenous wolves -> call on the "Local Natives" to help you out. (work in unity with ward and stake leaders.) 

3) "Ranger Rick" is laying beside the trail and needs CPR (Helping our investigators gain a testimony through Church Prayer + Reading the scriptures / spiritual CPR.) 

4) Your friends are going down the wrong path -> Quickly call them to come back (invite investigators to follow Christ and be baptized EARLY in the teaching process.) 

5) There is a huge cliff and no way to get around it. -> Miraculously giant eagles come and fly you across the gap! (Pray for and expect miracles as you do the Lord's work.) 

6) The Dragon of doubt comes and tries to attack you and make you think it is impossible to make it to the top. -> we use the weapon of Faith in this case a crazy powerful light beam. (We use faith and believe we can reach our goal to overcome all doubt.)

Hopefully you can see all that in the picture.  The point is that as we do all the principles in parenthesis we will increase in convert baptisms and achieve our mission goal of 750 baptism by the end of the year.  pretty sick. :)

The other part of our training we focused in on working in unity with ward and stake leaders and had each companionship work together, the person in front could not use their arms but could see what was going on and the person behind was the arms and hands but couldn't see.  We had them make brownie sundaes.  It was fun.  I'll send a picture of that too.  The idea there is that the ward and stake leaders here are the people in front.  They can see what is happening in the area and hear everything and know what needs to happen.  The missionaries are the arms and hands.  We are the work force. We can't always see the whole picture and know what needs to happen but as we listen to our ward and stake leaders we can make miracles happen.  And make some pretty good ice cream sundaes :)  If we don't listen and heed their counsel then things go a little differently.  It makes quite the mess.  :P

 

So that was our training.  I liked it. :)  So much for this being a short email...... Anyways.  Other than that we just taught a lot of lessons.  Had everyone come to church! :)  It was such a blessing and we found a new family with a unbaptized child that is eager to be baptized.  They have a very cool story.  He is preparing for the 24th.  It was funny, before we went into the lesson we planned on inviting him for the 17th of August.  But literally as I was inviting him the spirit told me to say the 24th of August instead.  It turns out that weekend is the weekend that his sister will be in town and that is what they were hoping for as well.  Just little miracles like that make me happy. :)  The church is true.

We gave a youth lesson yesterday and spoke in a sacrament meeting.  The ward we spoke in was the Farmington Ranches 2nd ward.  I am pretty sure I spoke 1 year ago in that ward!  ha ha I got to see some of the people that got baptized while I was here last year and one lady is going to the temple!  Her name is Tiffany Montgomery.  She is receiving her endowment on the 28th of August.  We are probably going to get to go with them as well. :) They invited us and I am so excited to see her take this step! :)  What a blessing it is to be a missionary.  The best time of my life.  I love teaching and sharing the gospel.

Well I have rambled on long enough.  I love you all!  I miss you and hope everything is well. 

Have a good week! I know we will. :)

Godspeed.

-Elder Hansen

Peak the Strategy 

Happy Birthday Natalie!!!

HELLO!  Wow. So yeah.  Another crazy week.  Thanks for all the emails and support.

So. I got transferred.....  I left Erda and Stansbury.  It was really sad to leave. That was one of my favorite areas.  The people there are amazing.  So it was really hard to pack up everything and leave.  I didn't even get to say goodbye to half the people that I wanted to.  We had only a couple hours to say goodbye.  But its okay.  I will go back to visit those people after my mission.  

Wednesday was transfer day.  We came down to Salt Lake and had a quick meeting.  About 40 new missionaries came into our mission.  2 from Colorado!  But yeah.  I thought for sure I was either going to Layton or Bountiful because I have pretty much served everywhere else.  But then I found out that I was going back to Farmington!!!! :)  :)  so legit!  My new companion is Elder Lawrence.  He is such a boss.  He is from Spokane, Washington.  He has been on his mission for almost as long as I have.  I am really excited for this transfer.  I think we will do well.  The zone is already on fire.  It is such a blessing to see success.  I hope that we can continue to see this blessing as we put forth our efforts and faith.  

Word.  We had dinner with the family that I had my very first dinner with in the mission field!!! It has been over a year.  It was funny to catch up and to talk with them.  

The rest of the week has just been trying to figure out who we are teaching, who the leadership is in the stakes that we cover and what we need to do to help them and get the work moving faster here.  We cover 3 stakes.  The Farmington West Stake, Farmington North Stake, and Farmington Oakridge Stake.   That amounts to 26 wards.........  So there are a lot of people we need to meet and get acquainted with.  We started with the stake presidents.  Met with all three of them and have a more solid vision for what they want to happen here.  Then started in on the bishops.  We visited a lot of them, but definitely not all of them.  Probably about 10 err so.  We had some good lessons this week and put a mother and father on-date for baptism on the 24th of August.  They are great people.  I am excited to keep teaching them and helping them prepare for that.  Then some other lessons with a lady named Debbie who is preparing for the 20th and a boy named Aden that is preparing for the 17th.  So yeah. The area is moving.  Could always use more though!

Well then church on Sunday.  We went to 6 or 7 wards but still that isn't much in comparison to the amount we cover.  Crazy thing that happened at church! I was walking past one of those bulletin boards for missionaries in the church and for some reason I stopped and went back to look at it.  Guess who I saw?!?!? Elder Trevor Luke!!!!  Ha ha I freaked out a bit.  Then asked my companion if we cover that ward.  And he told me that we do!  So we went to their ward for some of sacrament and I heard a young girl talking about going to girls camp.  It was Heather Luke!  I have no idea how she is already in young womens.  It doesn't make any sense to me.... ha ha so I found the Lukes after sacrament and talked with them!  Trevor just got back on Wednesday (same time as Wade)  and Tanner was there too.  He is 18.  So crazy!  So they took a picture with me and let me know that they are going to Colorado this week.  So that was awesome.  Its weird to see people you know on a mission.  And its funny cause we cover their ward so we will probably take Tanner and Trevor out with us to do splits sometime!  ha ha crazy.

Alright well that is about it for this week.  I forgot to bring my camera so I can't send any pictures..... sorry. But next week I'll send a ton!  sound good?  

Oh and at this point we don't have a solid address..... So if you could just send it to the mission office until I let you know that would be great! Love you all!!!!!!!!!

Have a good week!

The church is true.  I love this gospel and I love sharing it.  Keep the faith.

Godspeed.

-Elder Hansen

Peak the Strategy