Exceptional!

Hello Family!

Hope everyone is doing well!  Happy (late) Halloween!!!!!!  I hope that your night was filled with fun and with hot chocolate and donuts as usual.   :)

Thank you for all that you are doing for me and the emails and letters you send. They make my days even better!  We have been having a crazy time lately.  Just running around from thing to thing trying to help people along the way as well as help our area and the wards we cover be more involved in the missionary effort.  It is great though. I mean exceptional!

Side note – I don’t know if I had mentioned this yet, but when Elder Clarke of the seventy came to our mission tour he would always ask how we were doing and we would say “good!” and he would say “NO! You are doing exceptional! Not just good.”  Ha ha so now when I ask missionaries how they are doing and they say “good” I usually say, “Are you sure?”  “I think Elder Clarke thinks otherwise!” They have started to catch on and now everyone in the mission says that they are “Exceptional!”   Just something cool. :)

So.  Over the last week we have seen some great miracles.  We have an investigator that came to church with her recent convert friend and they came for all three hours.  Not only that, but we had been praying in the car right before church that someone would show up that we wouldn’t know but that would need our help or listen to the lessons or something.  Halfway through Sunday school our recent convert and investigator friend lean over to us and tell us that they have to leave for a couple minutes to go get another friend for sacrament meeting!  So our prayers were answered!!  All three of them came for sacrament.  And listen to what we did.  (Elder Clarke gave us this advice in a meeting a week or two ago.)  In our last lesson with the investigator we went around the church looking at the paintings and describing what was going on in each one and asking questions about them.  At the end we went into the chapel and brought her to the very front row and sat down and talked to her about the difference between sitting there and sitting in the back of the chapel and how much better she could feel the spirit and receive revelation and answers to questions up front in the first row.  We committed her to sit there on the very first row on Sunday.  I thought she was going to say no, but she actually liked the idea and agreed!  So for our next step we called the bishop and let him know that they would be sitting on the front row and to look for them and asked him to greet them right before.  Then we asked who was speaking in the ward that day and asked if he would mind if we could ask them to do us a favor.  He said sure.  So we called up both speakers and asked them if when they were bearing their testimonies at the end of their talks they would look at our investigator and make eye contact as they said part of their testimony! It was pretty epic.  And it worked!  The one returned missionary said as he looked over at her, “I learned on my mission that the Book of Mormon was true.”  It was awesome.  And then to add to all of it, the other speaker came down from the stand afterward and invited all three of them to dinner that evening!!  What a great ward!  It was cool to see how we could make things work out even better by making a couple simple changes.  Instead of sitting in the back, take them to the front row and contacting the speakers beforehand.  Both were ideas from Elder Clarke.  So ya.  That was a great experience.  Hmmmm, oh!  Then right after that we went to a different ward and our recent convert Edwin asked me to ordain him and give him the priesthood!! It was awesome.  Such a great spirit as he received the power to act in the name of our Father in Heaven.  I will never forget things like that.

We also taught a Relief Society lesson on Sunday.  It went well.  They all are pumped to do missionary work and invite their friends!

Took some missionaries to the airport that were going to France!  They got their visas and left on Monday.  It was cool.  They have only been here for six weeks and they have learned a lot already.  These young missionaries are getting smarter and smarter every day!  Word.

Prepared a training for one of our Mission Leader Councils. It actually went pretty well! I learned a lot from just preparing it.  I was a little nervous though….  Oh well.  Then we had some trouble with some missionaries.  They were just doing stupid things.  Nothing too horrible, but still very disobedient and just ridiculous.  But President Hansen is amazing. He always knows how to handle things and help others become better.  We have seen a lot of missionaries change because of what he has done!  It is good to see the success in helping missionaries see their potential and do better.  It is a good feeling.

Anyways,

Then Halloween yesterday!  It was pretty awesome.  We got to go to the Bountiful Temple in the morning.  Finally got to see the new film.  I think it is phenomenal!!  I was very impressed with what they have done with it.  So yeah.  And I love the Bountiful Temple. The Celestial room there is soo great.  So then after that we had some sushi for lunch.  Then went to the office, worked on some things.  Then played ping pong for a bit. My new companion has played in competitive tournament table tennis. So yeah…. He is really good!  I never beat him, but its all good.  Then I got a quick haircut and then home to plan out next week. We couldn’t go out last night because of our rules here.  So we did our weekly planning and got some things done for upcoming meetings in the mission, next transfer stuff and information that new leaders should know, etc.  I am really tired though.  We haven’t slept as much as I wish we would.  But its okay, the Lord is sustaining us.  He is keeping us going.  He has really helped to keep my mind clear and helped me remember all these missionaries way better than I could before. There are 214 missionaries in our mission right now.  They are all EXCEPTIONAL!!  :)  So that pretty much sums it up.  I love being a missionary.   I love all of you so much and I miss you!  I know this work is real and full of miracles that we see every day.  There is one more miracle that I should share that I just remembered about.  So we were going to contact a referral, on the way we contacted a man outside and asked if he knew anyone YSA age around the area.  He told us of a couple places, then on our way to this door my companion started jogging over to try to help a young couple bring in groceries from the car.  They declined, but we asked them the same question and they gave us a door to go to.  My companion was rushing so we went to the wrong door, or so we thought.  We talked to this man who is married, but he isn’t LDS. He has cleaned up his life and seems to be looking for a new direction to take!   Golden.  We set up an appointment and sent the other Elders to teach him.  Then after we were done I told my companion that we had gone to the “wrong” door and so we knocked on the other one and it was a couple guys with long hair (dreadlocks.)  My companion recognized one of them from his home in Houston!  It was great!  We went in and talked to him and got to get his information so that we can help him come back to church. So yeah.  All because we were trying to talk to a lot of people and trying to give service.  What a blessing to us.

Okay.  I love you!!!!!  God loves you!

Jesus Christ is our Savior and Redeemer. 

The church is true!

Godspeed.

-Elder Hansen

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