Hello!

Dear Family,

I am sorry I haven’t written for a bit.  We have some really great things going on.  The work in our area is finally starting to pick up a little!  We are seeing some good miracles and some new people come out of the woodwork.  I am so grateful when we see success in our area.  All I want is to be an example to these missionaries and help them to see what they can achieve in their areas.  We sometimes tend to think that we can do that through trainings and meetings and all this stuff, but honestly I think that it mostly comes down to hitting the pavement, being the example, and literally showing them what they can do to see more success.  We are focusing on doing more exchanges over the next couple weeks to try to help some of the zone leaders and district leaders see how they can approach the work differently to see more success. Or maybe not even a different approach, but just to be practiced and ready to act and be led by the spirit.  That is something that I am focusing on right now. 

Anyways, life here is great! :) I am so happy and grateful to be a missionary at this specific time.  So much good is happening.  The Lord truly is hastening his work!  And I get a front row seat and an active role in fulfilling the Lord’s will…. There is nothing like being a missionary.  I never want to stop being one. 

Well I cannot take too much time right now because we have other important things to get done very quickly.  So I want to summarize some of what has been happening briefly. 

First I will start with the not so great things….  A couple elders have gone home since I last wrote…  It is sad.  Most have gone home for medical reasons which are really hard.  But even harder is that a couple went home for either plain not wanting to work or disobedience.  It has been really rough to see.  I wanted so badly for these elders to succeed out here and to feel good about the service they have given, but some of them don’t.  And others I don’t even feel good about them going home……  So yeah.  That has been one of the hardest things lately and one of the saddest.  I just hope and pray that it doesn’t happen as much from now on, and that these elders still see the blessings of the gospel in their lives and remain completely active in the church.

Other than that the rest of these last two weeks have been terrific!  Working hard on the upcoming mission events and transfers.  Speaking of mission events, let me tell you one that we have known about for a little while but couldn’t tell anyone until Monday.  We have a whole mission meeting on Friday of this week (two days from now) and we are having a guest speaker come.  Guess who it is???              Elder David A. Bednar!!!  He is coming for 3 hours to talk to us and it seems like it will be a question/answer session!  Isn’t that exciting?!?!   The story goes that President Hansen knows Elder Bednar on a somewhat personal level and at the MTC when President Hansen was there Elder Bednar came up to him and said, “Hey, you know that I like to go around and get in front of missionaries.  I would love to come to your mission sometime to talk to your missionaries, just let me know.”   Ha ha isn’t that sweet??  So they have been in communication for a while and decided to have it on Friday.  We have known for a while, but couldn’t tell anyone so that people wouldn’t get overly excited and tell all the members and start inviting everyone they know to come.  It is only for our missionaries.  I am so excited!!!  There is only one thing….   I might be conducting the meeting…………..  Remember how I was nervous about conducting for Elder Clarke?? Ha ha yeah……..  I am more than nervous for this time.  But I think it will be okay.  As long as I have it in front of me to refer to and I practice it a lot before hand I think I will do alright.  So that is the biggest thing that is happening.  We have some other meetings coming up but nothing quite as important as this. 

Other than that we had stake conference for the Pioneer YSA Stake!  It was soo good.  Elder Samuel Clark (area seventy / different than Elder Don Clarke) came and he and his wife spoke. It was phenomenal.  They had a really great stake choir as well.  Just a good time.  Learned a lot.  Then on Monday guess what we got to do??? Mom you will be jealous! We went golfing!!! :)    First time I have golfed since we went for a quick round in Tooele.  It was so fun.  We went with President Hansen and 4 other Elders.  We played 9 holes at a course up in Kaysville.  I actually didn’t play too badly.  It was a beautiful day.  On the first hole I hit it onto the collar in two and a chip to about 12 feet away.  And a made the first putt!    It was so nice to relax for an hour or two.  I am so thankful that President took us out there.  He is such a kind man. And he is great at golf!! He has played all over the U.S.  He shot about 6 strokes lower than I did.  So ya. 

Well I realize that I haven’t talked enough about the actual missionary experiences that we had so I will summarize one quickly. 

We have been looking for someone new to teach for quite some time now and it seemed like no matter what we did or how we asked or what approach we took, we just could not find anyone new to meet with.  So the other night we were walking through an apartment complex trying to contact a couple investigators and I remembered that when I served in Swahili that I taught a YSA age girl in a building just around the corner.  We decided to stop by quickly to visit and she was home.  We talked for a couple seconds and she remembered who I was! (I thought she would have forgotten since we only met a couple times.)  It has been almost exactly one year since we taught her and she was even more open to it this time.  She is attending Westminster college and so we invited her to church on Sunday with us there at the YSA. She said yes!  And that she wants to make some more friends up there.  It was so cool to see that she is prepared now to make a couple more steps toward the gospel and we will be there to help her along the way.  The Lord really showed me that people can become more prepared over time and that these people that I used to teach that didn’t progress may now be ready to make commitments.  It was a nice small miracle for us to see.  We are going to teach her and I am confident that we can help her come into the gospel soon. 

Alright, I have taken a little more time than planned.  I just had a lot to say I suppose.  And I haven’t written for a while and I probably won’t have time to write for a little longer.  But anyways,

I love you all so much!!  Thank you for everything.   I appreciate your thoughts and prayers and the emails and letters that you send.  They really uplift me and help me continue to work my hardest.  I will try to be better at responding to emails and letters. 

Have an exceptional week!!

Godspeed.

-Elder Hansen

Peak The Strategy

P.S.  Mom I got the package!  Thank you soooo much!!!!  The journal is perfect and the snacks are great! We needed those.  Since we are never home we never buy groceries…  So it is nice to have little snacks around so that we can eat if we feel like it.  So thanks!!  Love you all.