My ankle is ripped!

Hey there.  Thanks for the emails and letters as always!

Well this feels weird. Writing home for the 2nd to last time.  Hmmmmmm.  Oh well. I don't like thinking about it.

This week has been awesome!  We have been teaching a lot and the members have been involved in almost every lesson.  It has been a blessing.  We found another new person to teach!  Her name is Emily. She is very open to learning which is great. 

Dylan is doing well also!  He is going to be baptized on the 9th of May! Right before I leave.  I am so happy for him.  He came to the regional conference yesterday down in Salt Lake City.  We sat together on the 5th row in the conference center.  It was an awesome conference.  Elder Niel L. Anderson spoke.  He is so inspired.  He talked about faith, diligence, and patience.  It was great.  Also Elder Arnold of the Seventy spoke and talked about hastening the work!  He used examples of families that were taught by missionaries in our mission! There were some pictures shown as well.  It was cool.  

The night before Elder Hawkins and I had the opportunity to speak in the adult session of stake conference.  It was good!  It was sad to think it was the last time I would get to speak as a missionary, but it was awesome to be able to share some of the things that I have learned about being a member missionary and hastening the work after serving 2 years in Utah.  The members here are amazing.  I hope they keep inviting their friends and helping the work to go forward here.

Well.  Other than that, I guess I should tell you what really happened to my ankle.  It is not just buff.  I just rolled it pretty bad playing basketball, but I am fine.  I can walk pretty well still and it won't hinder the work at all.  Glad we have a car though. :)  Anyways, it is completely fine so don't worry about it (mom... :)  )  

Alright, Love you all!!  The church is true.  The work is hastening!  Keep inviting your friends and neighbors and doing what you are supposed to.  Jesus Christ is our Savior.  I owe everything in my life to him and the love he has for me and my family.

Love,

-Elder Hansen

Peak The Strategy 

Miracles.

Hey!  This week has been pretty good!  We have seen a couple great miracles.  We have found 2 new people to teach.  They are very prepared.  I am excited to continue working with them and helping them feel the effect of the atonement in their lives.

Our greatest miracle this week was that on Monday afternoon we got a media referral (text) to go and see a man named Dylan Lines.  Our appointment fell through at 6:00 p.m. so we decided to visit this referral.  We knocked on his door and he said "wow, that was fast!" and let us come in.  We got to know him and his background and set expectations with him. He moved to Utah last fall from Indiana.  We went back on Wednesday and taught him about the restoration and invited him to be baptized.  He said yes and is preparing for the 17th of May!  I think he will be ready even before then so hopefully I can ask him to be baptized before I leave.  (Might be a little selfish, but I think he will be ready before then!) Then we met with him on Friday at the church and gave him a tour and showed him the chapel, classrooms, elder quorum room, and the baptismal font.  He said that he talked with his father about it and he got very emotional and started telling about when he was baptized and how great it was.  He is very happy for Dylan that he has decided to be baptized!  Soo cool. :) Then he came to church on Sunday and stayed for all 3 hours.  He is very prepared.  The Lord sent him here to receive the gospel. I know it.  We are meeting with him tonight as well.  The Lord is blessing us. :)

The other miracle was meeting a young man named Tyler.  He moved from Delaware in January.  A member took me there (Elder Hawkins was with another member) and we started talking with him.  His big question was why there are so many different churches and why there isn't just one church and one faith in God.  So that was a great place to start! :) :)  I shared the restoration with him and we came back a couple of days later and taught him again.  One of his best friends was killed in a car crash recently so he says it is hard but that it is making him depend on God more.  The Lord truly is preparing people all around us to share the gospel with!  We all need to be better at getting over being scared and just be open about what we believe.

Well that is about all I have time for.  I love you all very much!  I will write more next week. 

God lives and loves all of his children.

Jesus Christ is our Savior and Redeemer.

Easter was awesome.  I love sharing my testimony of Christ.  Did you see that video "Because of Him" on mormon.org? If not, watch it!!  Its good! 

Joseph Smith was a true prophet of God. He restored this gospel in its fulness. I am so grateful for what he did.

Love,

-Elder Hansen

Peak the Strategy

Crazy week!

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Hello!!  Well this week has been all over the place.  It has been great though. 

So as you know on Tuesday I got transferred to Bountiful Stone Creek Stake.  On Monday before that I went to the temple with the missionaries that were about to go home.  It was really cool.  A long session though because there were so many people!  It was because a lot of people stayed an extra day after conference to go to the temple.  I liked going to those temple trips before when I wasn't the one going home because I got to say goodbye to a lot of great friends and previous companions.  But now being the one that is leaving soon it was different.  It still hasn't sunk in quite yet!  On Tuesday the departing missionaries have a special testimony meeting in the evening where they all invite member families, past recent converts, and investigators and bear their testimonies.  Since I will be gone for the next one, I bore my testimony at this one.  It was a cool but kind of sad experience.  The good part was that I got to say that I am staying for another month or so!  So afterwards we went and taught a lesson to a less-active family!  It was great, but the meeting was so powerful.  Hearing missionaries right before they leave talk about what they learned and bear their testimonies is something else. 

Anyways, enough about that!  After those couple rough days, the week has been back to normal.  Teaching and finding and doing the Lord's work!  We had a lot of cancelled appointments this week though.  It always happens.  Im not sure how to get around it.  But we are meeting with some wonderful families that are progressing toward full activity in the church.  We are also teaching a few that are looking toward baptism.  I hope to see more success before I leave in helping people participate in ordinances.

Well. Today we went hiking.  Hiked up to the "V" in Centerville.  It wasn't a hard hike at all, but it was pretty fun.  I'll send a picture or two.  Other than that we have just been moving forward.  Trying to help people make changes in their lives.  Its a good time :) 

Love you all!  Hope everything is going well and that you are all healthy and happy.

Godspeed.

-Elder Hansen

Peak The Strategy

Transfers...

Hello!!!  Sorry I did not email yesterday.  I was at the temple with the departing missionaries for most of the day and then saying goodbye to people for the rest. I got transferred.  It was kind of disappointing to leave with only a small part of my mission left.  I wasn't happy at first, but I know President wouldn't do it unless he felt a good reason. So I know that there is someone here in my new area that I need to meet and be in contact with.  I am serving in the Bountiful Stone Creek Stake in the farmington zone.  It is a great place.  My new companion is Elder Hawkins from Washington. He is awesome.  we have served around each other a lot but never really talked a lot.  But it will be fun to work with him.  He goes home just after I do.  

Anyways,

General Conference was amazing.  I don't have time to write about it now, but it was cool.  Saw some people that I know from home and from the mission that have already finished.  Also we took Chuck our investigator to the priesthood session and he loved it.  And on Sunday afternoon we had really good seats.  

On top of all that, we had a baptism!!  Chase Clampitt got baptized.  It was so cool.  It has been one of the coolest experiences on my mission to be able to teach him and see how he accepts everything and progresses in this gospel.  He will be confirmed next Sunday and also receive the priesthood. He will be going to the temple with the youth to do baptisms at the end of this month as well. :)  so great!  I'll send a picture.

I don't have any more time to write, but I will send you some more pictures next week to make up for it.  

Love you all!!  The church is true!

Godspeed.

-Elder Hansen

  

P.S.  Here is my new address -  1040 West 600 North, West Bountiful, Utah, 84087

Zone Conference

Hey everyone!  This email is going to be pretty short because we have to go to lunch in a couple minutes.

Thanks for your emails and letters!  They brighten my day.  Especially the pictures from my nieces and nephews! :)

Well this week was a little rough. A lot of our appointments cancelled and some people just decided that they didn't want to meet with us anymore.  It was hard, but things are still going okay.  The end of the week was the beginning of spring break so hardly anyone was home!  But we still met with a few people and had some great experiences.

Thursday was Zone Conference.  It was a looong day, but it was very good.  We talked a lot about teaching with the pamphlets and practiced.  Elder Kuck and I gave a training on teaching the Plan of Salvation.  It was pretty good I think.  We also found out about our mission goal for the month of April. It was a great zone conference!  Sad that it was my last though.....

This morning we got to go to the temple.  We saw a lot of missionaries from the East mission that we know well that are heading home tomorrow....  It was sad to see them go and it is scary to think that it is coming fast for us too. But it is okay.  

General Conference is coming!!!  We have tickets to 3 sessions.  We are bringing 2 or 3 investigators and 1 less-active family.  It is exciting!  I love general conference.  Here is an awesome quote from Elder Robert D. Hales about conference - 

" I promise that if you will listen, you will feel the Spirit well up within you. The Lord will tell you what He wants you to do with your life. In conferences we can receive the word of the Lord meant just for us."

Love it.  I know we can find answers and gain more spiritual knowledge at conference.  

Well that is all I have time for.  I hope everything is going well!  Love you!

The church is true!

Godspeed.

-Elder Hansen

Marianne's Baptism!

Hola!  This week has been great.  We had some great miracles and had a baptism!  Marianne was baptized and confirmed.  She is so awesome.  She wants so badly to follow the Savior in her life.  I am grateful that we got to teach her and help her on the path to eternal life.  I will send a picture from her baptism.  A lot of missionaries taught her over the last 6 months so they came back to see it.  So yeah.  Nothing better than baptisms.  I love it.

Well what else?  I will send another picture from a week or two ago.  So we were in this apartment complex called rose cove (where Marianne lives) and we see this dog running around.  A lady came outside and said that it had ran inside her house through the back door and took the bone from her dog!! ha ha so we went over to try to catch it and after a couple tries we caught the dog. We found a phone number on the collar and called it.  They asked if we could bring it back to them (they lived a couple of miles away!) and so we got the dog into our car and drove it to their house!  ha ha it was awesome.  We were hoping that they would be non-members or at least that they would be less-active, but they were active members.  So we talked for a bit and asked them how long the dog had been gone.  They said he only got out 1 hour ago!  It ran quite a long way. And it was kind of wet so we assume it went through a creek or pool or something.  It was an adventure! 

We have been teaching a good amount this week, but one of our investigators moved out without telling us.... and then another person dropped us.  So that was lame.  But the work moves on and we keep moving forward.  We are still teaching Chase and getting better at teaching with the pamphlets.  I love it.  I like the way it can become so interactive as we ask the right questions and keep them involved.  

We found a new person to teach this week.  His name is Kendall.  He is a handyman.  Like the one I used to work for with Wade and his brothers.  He is awesome.  We talked a little about the atonement and he is pretty receptive.  He has awesome kids and grandkids.  We can't wait to teach him more this week.  It is going to change his life a lot if he lets it! 

Well I know this is short-ish but we are running around today doing a bunch of stuff.  We played sand volleyball a bit today.  It was awesome.  This week we have zone conference on Thursday.  So that will be fun! I am excited for what we will learn and talk about.  Anyways.

The church is true!  

God lives and He loves us.

Jesus Christ is our Savior and Redeemer.

Godspeed.

-Elder Hansen

Peak the Strategy

Birthdays!

Hey!  I don't have a lot of time to write today because we have been doing a lot.  Thanks for all your emails.  I love reading them. :)  Happy Birthday Jennie!

So this week has been good!  It has been hard because we have not had a lot of lessons, but Marianne accepted a baptismal date!  She is preparing for the 22nd!  We are excited!  There are a couple others that seem to be getting close for the weeks after.  I love serving in this area.  It is an awesome place.  I love this work.  

Also this week we spoke in a sacrament meeting.  It was great.  The fire alarm went off just as my companion started his talk!!!  It was loud and the Bishop said to just keep going... ha ha so he tried to talk over it and finally it got turned off.  We don't know who pulled it, but it was the first time that has ever happened to us!  It was funny.  

Elder Ballard came on Tuesday and spoke to us!  It was awesome! He talked mostly about treasuring up the scriptures and the lessons in PMG and then teaching for understanding.  It was awesome!  He also brought along Elder Bill Marriott!  So that was a treat!  He spoke to us as well.  He talked about how to be successful missionaries as well as some ways to be successful after our missions.  I learned a lot!  I feel so lucky to have heard from so many awesome people on my mission.  It has been such a blessing.  

Well that is about all I have time for! Sorry for cutting it short this time.  I love you all and miss you!  

Oh and last thing. Today we hiked Flag rock! (again)  So that is the third time I have hiked it!!  It was fun.  We had the whole zone come!  I will send a picture.  It was awesome.  

Love you!

The church is true!  

God lives and loves us.

Christ is our Savior and Redeemer.

Godspeed.

-Elder Hansen

Peak The Strategy

:)

Hello all!  I am so excited to hear about my new niece!!!!! The pictures you sent were awesome.  I am excited to meet her!  I am happy that Jennie, Paul, and Ruth are healthy and back home.  I hope this email finds everyone doing well and happy!

Well It is official, I came to Farmington on Tuesday!  I am serving in the Farmington Oakridge Stake.  It is a wonderful place to be.  There is a lot of teaching and work going on.  I love it here.  It is good to be back.  I was released from my last assignment and am now serving with Elder Kuck as a zone leader.  He is awesome.  He is from Atlanta, Georgia!  He is a Braves fan like us!  We are very similar and it is awesome to serve with someone who has been out the same amount as you.  We both go home in May.  

This week has been a little rough because 13 of our appointments cancelled or rescheduled!  But we still taught quite a bit.  I got to see some of the people that I taught 6 months ago that were baptized!  It was nice.  We had a pretty awesome miracle this week.  We set up a lesson with a lady named Connie.  She did a mission for her church a while back and she hosts a bible study once a month at her house.  She has studied the bible for +40 years.  She is way cool.  We had our first lesson with her and taught the restoration.  She was so open and already believes in almost everything.  She stopped us near the beginning and said, "I don't mean to offend anyone, but I want to tell you that I believe that God and Jesus Christ are two separate beings."  We were like, "no that is great, we believe that too!"    She grew up Catholic but she always thought that Heavenly Father and Jesus Christ were separate.  It was cool.  She is soo prepared.  She said that her son became a Mormon and she always wondered why he did.  She raised him to be Christian and then he converted and she said now it is time for her to see why he joined!  We committed her to read the Book of Mormon and pray.  She said she would.  We are excited to go back and talk with her more.  She is an awesome person.  

Well not much else crazy happened.  I will send some pictures this week.  Some from the baptism a week ago.  Danielle was baptized. She is great.  Then one we where Elder Williams, Elder Olsen (the new ap) and I were just messing around. :)  ha ha   

Once again I hope you are all doing well!  I love you tons!  And I miss you!  I promise to be more consistent in writing now that I should have the time.  :)

Love,

-Elder Hansen

Peak the Strategy

P.S. Elder Ballard is coming to speak to our mission on Tuesday! :) don't tell anyone.  ha ha I will write about it next week.  

Transfers!

Hello everyone!  So I don't have too much time so I am just going to hit the major points of what has happened lately.

-We finished up transfers and I am getting released and going to a new area.  We are about 99% sure that I will be going up to Kaysville to serve as a zone leader.  I will be serving in one of my old areas!! I served there for 5 weeks right before I came here.  It is going to be awesome.  I am so excited to have the opportunity to focus on the work and on a zone to try to lift and bless and motivate and just help them see success and be happy.  It is going to be a great opportunity.  So I will leave on Tuesday for the new area.

-My companion's birthday was on Wednesday and we had a very good day.  We taught 5 lessons and worked on transfers and he got some presents from some of the office staff and the people we teach.  It was fun. 

-We finally found one of the people we have been teaching after losing her for a week and a half.  Her purse was stolen (with her phone inside) and so she couldn't contact us and she went to park city with her family for a while so we could never find her.  But she got a new phone and then we got in contact and have been teaching her again.  She is preparing for the 1st to be baptized.  

-We had another couple lessons with Josh who I told you about last time.  He is awesome.  He is almost done with the doctrine and covenants and when we met last time we talked about the doctrine of Christ. At the end we asked him how he felt, and he said "well my plan is to finish reading the doctrine and covenants and finish the lessons that you teach me and then I want to be baptized."  It was sooo cool!!!!  We were about to invite him, but he already had the plan and has been praying about a time in march for baptism!  I have never taught someone as prepared as he is in my life!  He will be such a strong member of the church.  Usually most converts are converted by the way they feel when they meet with missionaries, when they read the Book of Mormon, or when they come to church.  It is interesting with Josh though.  I believe that he was converted solely because of the doctrine.  He knows the doctrine of the Church to be true, which is very good for someone who just started reading 2 months ago or less.  Granted he did read the whole triple.  Anyways, he is praying about the 8th.  It was such an awesome miracle and great experience to get to teach him.  

-We have a baptism today at 2:00pm for a girl named Danielle.  She is also very prepared.  It should be a great day!  

-We hit all of the Standards of Excellence this past week!  It was kind of hard to have that many lessons and be able to do everything else, but it was definitely a successful week. :)

-Lastly, we met with President to work on transfers and he invited two future mission president to come watch.  It was interesting!  One is going to Dallas Texas and the other to the Philippines!  We just talked about how a transfer works and what we do to find out where each missionary should go and who should do what.  It was fun to talk to them about it and see how excited they were to go to their own missions and work with the missionaries there.  

Well this was longer than I thought, but I have to go. We are going to go fill up the font.  I will try to write again on Monday.  Love you all!!!  Miss you a ton. Hope all is well there and that everyone is getting better!

Love,

-Elder Hansen

Peak the Strategy

Happy Valentine's Day!

Dear Family,

I have to say, valentine's day in a YSA ward as a missionary is not the best day to get things done.  Ha ha not many people want to meet with you.  And all the members are out on dates so they can’t come to lessons with you.  So tonight will be an interesting night!  Ha ha anyways, it is good to have a couple minutes to write you.  I am sorry that it has been so long.  I have been getting all of your emails and letters and I truly appreciate the updates on everyone!  It gives me comfort to know what is going on even when it is not the best news.  I hope and pray that everyone continues to recover well and that there will be fewer problems in the future. 

Life has been pretty great out here!  I am finally better from being sick!  I wasn’t even that sick compared to what is going on back there!  I hope the pneumonia goes away quickly since you caught it early.  The work has really picked up though.  We have been teaching a lot more and they are bringing their friends to appointments too!  Also we got the coolest referral I think I have ever received on my mission!  His name is Josh.  He grew up in a home with Catholic and Christian non-denominational backgrounds.  He didn’t know what was right, so he has been searching.  He moved out here for work and his family came for military.  He works as a pharmacist at the LDS hospital. He was curious about the LDS faith so he got a copy of the Book of Mormon and just started reading.  He read at a very quick pace and wanted to get a feel for it before meeting with missionaries.  He finished the whole Book of Mormon in 6 weeks! He said that at the beginning he had a lot of questions but as he read the Book of Mormon all of his questions were answered and he believes that it is true!! So epic.  His friend from Ogden got him a nice set of scriptures (a quad) and he just wanted to keep reading! So he read all of Moses and all of Joseph Smith History.  He started reading the Doctrine and Covenants and is already at section 44.  At this rate he will be done with all of the standard works by May!  He sent himself as a referral on LDS.org.  And then we got the referral from some sisters in the mission when they received it!  How cool is that???  He is one of the most prepared people that I have ever taught.  I love being able to work with people who actually want to learn and grow and are sincere about finding the truth. I am so grateful for the miracle it is to be able to teach him and help him come closer to the Savior. 

Hmmm what else has been going on… We had a lot of meetings lately.  We had an MLC and Leadership Training.  Both were great.  They might have been some of my last meetings that I will get to attend.  We have been working on transfers and I will most likely leave this transfer.  I might be a Zone Leader, or maybe a District Leader.  It is all up in the air, but we worked on it a lot yesterday and I think I have a couple ideas of what will happen.  Either way I am excited.  By this time in my mission I have learned that the Lord will put me wherever I can be the most effective and wherever both myself and those around me can be lifted and grow to become what He needs us to become.  It is a good feeling to know that because now the changes I go through are not as hard.  And that also translates to life in general.  Life is full of changes.  And even though I do not prefer to go through so many, I can always be confident that the Lord has a purpose in it for me and that I will become what he needs of me. 

Well that is about it.  We had some other sweet miracles.  A girl in the Capitol Hill ward who thought she was a member turns out not to have records.  So she already knows everything and she can’t really remember being baptized so we have started teaching her and she will be baptized in the next week or two.  She is awesome. Also we have started meeting with a girl in the Westminster ward that has come a couple times.  We went to temple square with her and had a great time talking about the gospel of Jesus Christ and sitting in front of the Christus.  It was an awesome experience.  She is prepared as well.  She also is full of desire to know the truth.  What a blessing it is for us to be able to work with these people.  I am so grateful for the success that the Lord shows us as we put forth our faith and act as true Disciples of Christ. 

I have to go, but I hope you all know how much I miss and love you!!!!!  Keep healing and keep me posted.  You are all in my prayers.  I love you so very much.

Have a terrific week with school and work and all that!

Love,

-Elder Hansen

Peak The Strategy

Hello everyone!  How are you doing? I am happy to hear that the surgery for Becca went pretty well! She has been in our prayers out here a lot. I am also happy that Grandma's went well too!  I hope they both continue healing well this week and that they know how much we love them.  Please keep me informed about how Karen is doing. I miss her and I wish I was there to be able to see her.  I was happy to talk to her for a couple minutes on Christmas.  She is so wonderful.  Let me know how she is recovering. They are all in my prayers regularly!

Well this week was good.  We had some wonderful lessons and started teaching a couple new people.  Monique is one of them.  She really wants to learn and understand what she should do in her life.  It is cool to find people with that complete sincerity.  We are excited to teach her at temple square this week.  We also taught Hannah at temple square.  It was fun!  We saw the movie "God's Plan." Then we went to the temple model and talked a little bit about what goes on in the temple.  

I am going to keep this pretty short, we have some things to get done for our meetings tomorrow and the next day.  Oh!  But first I have to tell you about a couple things!  One of our missionaries named Elder Webb had to go home this week for medical reasons.  He is such an amazing man.  I'll tell you his whole story another time.  Basically Elder Clarke (the one who did our mission tour and that we went teaching with) wanted to personally thank Elder Webb for serving.  So President Hansen had us set up the timing and we got to accompany him to go see Elder Clarke!   (Once again Elder Clarke is from the first quorum of the seventy)  Anyways, we went and he let us come in while he talked to Elder Webb.  It was a very special experience.  He thanked Elder Webb on behalf of the prophet and on behalf of the Lord.  He also gave Elder Webb a couple of assignments.  I can't find the words to describe the spirit that was there.  It was amazing.  Then he asked Elder Webb what his favorite food was and Elder Webb said "Steak."  So he gave us a couple of assignments as well.  First to go get some steak for Elder Webb for lunch! ha ha :)  Then to make sure that Elder Webb's travel arrangements were complete and that he had transportation from one terminal to another for his layover in Dallas.  He said that if we had any problems we should call him. It was cool to see how a man as busy as him would be so willing to help.  Elder Clarke called Elder Webb's parents and stake president the night before as well.  It was just a sweet experience.  I will tell you more about it another time.  We got a picture with them while we were there so I will attach it.  Also Elder Martino from the second quorum of the seventy stopped in to meet him.  And the man in the picture is Steve Peterson from the missionary department.  On the way out Brother McConkie (Elder McConkie's son) came to meet him.  It was so cool.  I will always remember the smile on Elder Webb's face as we walked to our car. 

There were some other things that happened this week, but I can't remember them at the moment....  Oh well.  

I love you all soooo very much and I hope you can feel my prayers for you.  

God lives and He loves us.

Jesus Christ is our Savior and Redeemer.

The church is true.

Godspeed.

-Elder Hansen

Peak the Strategy

Transfers!

Hello Family!!!  I am so sorry that it has taken me so long to write!!  I keep telling myself that I will be better about it, but then other things just keep coming up and every time I sit down at a computer to write an email I find 5 other assignments that we need to get done by the end of the day or sooner.  Still, there are no excuses.  I hope you know how important you all are to me!  I love you and miss you so much.  I read your emails and enjoy hearing about what is going on in your lives! (even when things are not the best sometimes)

That being said, I am going to take about 10 minutes more to write you a quick note and let you know what has been happening lately! 

The greatest things that have been happening lately were two baptisms!  One was the first week in January.  That was Marlen Olmedo.  I believe that I have told you a little bit about her before.  She has had a very wonderful experience learning about the gospel and although it took about a year and a half from start to finish she was finally baptized!  She said the whole reason that she started listening to missionaries in the first place was because I sister missionary from temple square came into the store where she works and she felt the spirit that she brought with her.  She could see and feel a difference! She started being taught and then was off and on for about a year.  Then we got the referral and started teaching her with the sister from temple square.  It was a group effort along with the efforts of the friends in the ward that were so incredibly supportive of her that helped her feel a sense of belonging and gain a testimony of the gospel.  The cool thing about Marlen is that she has already been interviewed by the bishop and last week she went and did baptisms for the dead with the 3 YSA stakes in Salt Lake City!  How sweet is that??  

The other baptism was the other day (second weekend of January).  It was Justin Palmer!  He has a similar story.  He was taught by elders from the family ward about a year and a half ago and he kept reading and going to church and then the referral was passed to us!  It was my second week in the area when we started teaching Justin.  He has grown so much and was prepared for his baptism.  He also wants to do baptisms for the dead. He wants to bring his mother's name to the temple and be baptized for her as soon as he can.  I am so excited for him!!!  So both of these were highlights from the last 2 weeks and I will attach pictures as well.  

Other than that we had Zone Conferences last week!  It was a long week. We didn't have a preparation day either.  We had a zone conference every day Monday through Thursday.  We traveled to each zone and the conference went from about 8:30am to 4:30pm.  It was fun though!  We gave some trainings.  I would love to send you a slideshow that we made for it as well and you can watch it sometime.  It has great music to it.  

Then we finished up work on the transfer!  Lastly, I found out that I am staying here.  I will still be in my current assignment with my current companion, in our area.  We are both staying.  I thought for sure that I was going to move, but President and the Lord must have thought otherwise.  I know it is because I still have so much more that I need to learn here from everyone that I am serving around and with.  I am grateful for the time that the Lord has given me here to learn and grow and try to become the missionary that I need to be.  I love the work, and I love the Lord.  And I love you all!  

Alright, that was a little more than ten minutes. Oops.  I have gotten a little faster at typing than I was before though!  

Have a terrific week!!  I hope you know that you are all in my prayers!!!!!  

Love,

-Elder Hansen

Peak The Strategy

P.S. Here are the first pictures.  More to come in another email!

Merry Christmas!!!

Dear Family,
Hey there! How is everyone?? Thanks for the letters and packages you have been sending!  And Merry Christmas!!!! :) I can’t believe that it is already Christmas again...  So weird.  It feels like just yesterday was last Christmas!  I don’t know where the whole year went.  But I am happy to be able to share the message of Christ’s birth as a missionary during this time of year!  It is amazing to see how much the life of an individual can change because of our Saviors life.  I love being able to invite people to make changes in their lives to be able to be more like Christ and use his atonement.  So yeah.


Well these past couple of weeks have been nuts.  We have been taking time to plan meetings for the mission ahead for the next year or so….  So just some calendaring things and working on meetings that are this month.  We had a Leadership Training with all the Zone Leaders, Sister Training Leaders, and District Leaders.  It was a cool meeting.  We talked about how to help individual companionships work toward and achieve their goals.  Just increasing a little bit every transfer.  We aren’t asking for impractical things, but as we just set our goals a little bit higher than before we will be able to see some great things happen in this mission.  So it was a good meeting.  Right afterward we had a meeting with all the newly called leaders and talked to them about their roles to lift, inspire, bless and help the missionaries in their districts and zones. 


The other day we had 4 new missionaries come to our mission! The MTC just told us a week or two ago that they were sending them to us in the middle of the transfer. So we had a mini transfer with all the trainers involved and had a couple trainings.  It was a fun day.  I love being with new missionaries! They are so eager to work and to help people.  Full of fire. It helps me remember what I wanted to do when I came out and just puts all of this into perspective.  I feel so blessed to be able to serve and serve with the missionaries in the Utah Salt Lake City Mission. 


As a fun test the other night my companion asked if I could name or write down the names of all of the missionaries in our mission without looking at anything.  So I got out a piece of paper and started writing by zone.  It took me about an hour to do it, but I remembered all 216 missionaries and where they are serving.  I don’t think that I could quite tell you the names of each stake (there are 67) but I could probably get a little over half.  It is so cool to see how the Lord has been able to help me and enlarge my memory and mind to be able to remember all of these missionaries and areas and housing and cars and just everything! I am not sure that I told you this but when President Hansen called me and we were talking and he asked me to serve the missionaries with him he gave me a blessing.  He blessed me with exactly what I have seen happen.  An increase in mind, understanding and memory to help serve these missionaries and that I would have all the necessary means to do so.  I feel so blessed to see the Lord work in my life and help me to be able to bless others.  I truly love this work.
Well I will email again on Monday and probably tell you when I am going to want to call (or skype / google hangout) on Christmas.  I hope you are all being blessed during this time of year and have opportunities to share the gospel with your friends!  I also hope and pray that you are all travelling safely in the weather!!


Thanks again for everything.  I love and miss you all! Merry Christmas!!!!!!!!! :)


Godspeed.
-Elder Hansen

Peak The Strategy.

Hello!  These past few weeks have been pretty good!  Thank you Paula and Brian for the package!  We already ate all the cookies, they were delicious!!  I shared them with some of the office staff, my companion, and President Hansen.  He said to tell you that they were great! ha ha  Also Mom I got the two packages for Christmas but I haven't opened them yet because I think I will wait till either Christmas day or a little earlier.  I appreciate all of you for emailing me and sending me letters and things.  They always seem to come at the right time.  When things aren't going so well or our missionaries are doing not the smartest things and it is frustrating - that is when I receive your emails and letters and it really helps, so thanks!

So.  Its been forever since I wrote last...  Thanksgiving was great!  We ate at President and Sister Hansen's house.  Some other elders joined us.  President bought a Foosball table and put it downstairs in the mission home so we played a lot of Foosball and just talked and had a good time.  Then the rest of the evening we worked on transfers...  We finished everything up early this time and everything went pretty well!  I am still with Elder Williams in our same area.  It has been hard lately. We haven't had as much time to work as we would like to and then when we do it is hard to find anyone home.  We set up appointments with new people and they just keep cancelling.  And with finals coming up our work is going to be almost halted.....  but we are still working with some people like Marlen, Justin, Gio, and some others!  The Lord is blessing us for the work we do and I am so grateful for that.  

Anyways, we have been running around giving trainings and working with President on where this mission is headed.  It is an exciting time!!  I feel sooo lucky to be serving at this time when we are defining how the work is moved forward at an accelerated pace in our mission and what our goals and plans are as a mission (all of this relating to hastening the work of salvation).  I am learning so much and having such a good time.  I love all of our missionaries (even when they do stupid things... :) ha ha)   We have very powerful, strong, converted missionaries that uplift and inspire others and are true disciples of Christ.   I love this work and I love my mission.  

I will just talk about yesterday for a bit then I have to go.  In the morning we went to the Wells YSA ward and we both spoke and my companion did a phenomenal musical number "The First Noel" on the piano.  It was so good.  Almost everyone was crying by the end.  He is so talented.  And I don't think that he realizes that not everyone can just do that!  Especially with no music in front of him and just pretty much making it up as he goes!  It was so good.  Then we left there and went to the Capitol Hill YSA ward and did the same thing! My talk was better in this ward than the first.  It was awesome.  Then we split up and my companion went to the Cannon YSA ward and I stayed in Capitol Hill and taught Elders Quorum.  Did a lesson with the video clip of Elder Ballard at conference and his invitation to invite one before Christmas.  It was cool.  Handed out a note card to each of them and had them write their name and phone number on the front and on the back write the names of 2 non-members they know and 2 less-actives that they know.  Then circle the one that you want to invite before Christmas and on the bottom write the invitation you will give them.  We brainstormed invitations that they could leave.  I think it was an okay lesson.  I got a little "up in their faces" to get the point through to them that an apostle/prophet of God had invited them / asked them to do this and that we need to apply it now.  No more waiting around saying that we will do it sometime in the future. No more only praying that we can apply it and then not taking the action required to apply the principle and doctrine in our lives.  So ya.  That was fun.  Then taught a girl named Erika about the gospel.  She is great.  She is an active member but never really knew much about the church so we are teaching her and she is asking all sorts of cool questions.  For example she asked us a lot about the second coming yesterday and we had a great conversation about it.  But yeah, then guess who I saw at the Institute building???  Aaron Young!!!  It was so crazy to see him!  It has been like 4 years!  He is awesome as usual. He is in a different ward that attends in that building.  So ya.  That was a fun side note!  Then we went to the Christmas devotional at the conference center with Marlen and her friend Laurel!  We didnt have tickets but since it was so cold and snowy there were not very many people there so they just gave us tickets and let us go in!  It was so good!!!!  Very cool devotional!  If you didnt get to watch it you should!  The music was exceptional as always and the speakers were very good as well.  Then some members of the Cannon ward brought us some dinner at the office.  It was delicious!  Then we went to President's house and worked for the remainder of the evening.  It was a long, but great day.

Well that is about all that I have time to write.  I love you all soo much!!!! I miss you and hope and pray that everything goes well with you this week!  I hope you know how much I care even thought my writing is so sporadic.  

Have a wonderful week!

Godspeed.

-Elder Hansen

Peak the Strategy

P.S. Mom and Dad I am doing great.  I feel good and am no longer sore at all.  I feel better and we were able to get all our stuff and most of it is handled.  So yeah.  Love you!!! 

Elder Bednar!

Dear Family,

I am sorry it has taken so long to write!  We have been pretty busy.   I started this email about a week ago, but things kept coming up so I am just finishing it now.  First off, thank you for your letters and emails.  I will try to take some time to reply individually.  I love reading about what is going on with all of you!  It gives brightness to my days especially when they are not the best days. So thanks again :)

There is so much to talk about!  I guess I should start with the most important event. Last time I emailed I was letting you know that Elder Bednar was coming.  Now it has been about two weeks!  So I’ll start by talking about Elder Bednar.  We did a lot to prepare for this meeting.  You would not believe how hard it was to make sure the building would be ready.  We reserved it 5 weeks before and called the stake presidency to let them know we would be using it.  We didn’t tell them who was coming so that nobody else would show up and to minimize the gossip.  So it was reserved.  We went into the chapel 2 weeks before and all the pews were being redone!!  We frantically called them and were like, “Hey we have a very important meeting on Friday, will it be done??” They said yes and we went to the church building on Sunday just to make sure.  All of the seats were finished and everything looked great.  We were relieved.  Little did we know what would happen on Tuesday night when we went to recheck the number of rows and what zones should sit where.  We open the doors to the chapel on Tuesday night and all of the huge speakers in the ceiling (which is like 30 feet up) are on the ground, there is a big ladder going to the organ pipes, all of the audio ports are taken out, etc…………..  I just felt this sinking sensation…….  An apostle was coming to visit our mission and we would have to change the building location 2-3 days before????  You just don’t do that when an apostle comes.  Sure if it was a different visitor who is more able to adapt and has more time to spend with us, but not when Elder Bednar is coming to the mission! Anyways, we were more than a little frantic.  Called the stake presidency and they were like, “oh well that construction and replacement of the audio system has been scheduled for a long time!”  But we had scheduled the whole building (literally) for this event and now they were telling us that this was already in the plans?!  Ha ha so we called the FM group man who is in charge of the Salt Lake City general area and informed him of who was actually coming to this meeting and why it was so important.  At first he says, “Well maybe you can do it in a different building? One of these buildings close by might be big enough!”  We were like “What???” He then said, “Let me work on some things and see what I can do...”  We were even more frantic at this point.  He called back 3 hours later and let us know that they hired an extra crew to get all of the work done by Friday.  It was still nerve racking, but it was finished.  The last worker finished at 9:30pm on Thursday night! We cleaned the chapel up afterward and checked all the microphones and got everything ready.  Meanwhile throughout the whole process I was mostly worried about conducting the meeting!  ha ha I was a tad stressed.  But really overall everything went great!! :)

We got there early on Friday to prepare.  Set up microphones, reviewed the talks again, made sure all the missionaries were coming and sitting in the right places, reserved parking spots for Elder Bednar and the Mission Presideny, etc. I was still very nervous to be conducting.  Then at about 8:30 President and Sister Hansen, President and Sister Bennett, and President and Sister Hodson (Mission Presidency), Elder Williams and myself were standing in the foyer waiting.  A white car pulls up and Elder Bednar jumps out and opens the door for his wife.  It was raining so Elder Williams went and opened an umbrella for them and Elder Bednar told him to put it over his wife.  They walked up and I am holding the door for them.  Elder Bednar shakes my hand and says, “Elder Hansen, where are you from?”  I say Denver, Colorado.  He says, “No, nobody is actually from Denver! You must be from right around there.” I say you are right, I am from Louisville.  He says “That is terrific.” It was so cool, as soon as I shook his hand I felt all the nervousness leave and I just felt calm! I appreciate what the spirit can do for us in our times of need.    Then we all went into the relief society room briefly (Elder and Sister Bednar, the Mission Presidency, and Elder Williams and I).  The first thing he says is, “Alright, we are here!  I only have one question for you.  What can we do to help?”  He asked President first and President answers by saying something like, “I wouldn’t dare infringe on the revelation and inspiration that you have and will receive, but here is what we have been doing and talking about.” He went on to describe a couple of things that the mission was working on.  Then Elder Bednar looks at the rest of us and asks again what they can do to help.  He looks over at Elder Williams and I and we are just standing there smiling thinking about how crazy it is that there is an apostle standing with us.  Elder Bednar then said, “Don’t just stand there and smile, tell me what this mission needs!”  We were both a little shocked and gave some answers that probably sounded lame but we told him that whatever he could teach about the atonement would help our mission and I said something about learning to teach by the spirit.  Then Elder Bednar asked his wife if she was ready. She said yes and he used this phrase; “Alright, let’s go to church!”  We walked into the chapel and every missionary stood up. It was silent.  The spirit was so strong.  Elder Bednar is truly called of God.  We get to the stand and I was sitting right next to Elder Bednar.  On his left side.  We sit down and he asks me, “Are you ready?”  I said yes and again he said “Alright, let’s go to church!”  (What a funny phrase, I wonder if a lot of people know that he says that?  He might not say it a lot, but he said it 2 or 3 times with us so I think it might be something he says regularly. Just a funny side-note).  Conducting the meeting went well.  I felt pretty good and it all went smoothly.  I had practiced a bit and so I don’t think I messed anything up too badly.  He told me I did a good job when I sat down.  Then Sister Bednar spoke first.  She talked about her husband’s apostolic calling and what she had learned because of it.  She also talked about the Book of Mormon and about the atonement.  It was powerful!  Then Elder Bednar spoke.  Wow………..  It was soo cool.  I will never forget this experience.  I know I have talked a lot about the temporal side of what happened, but I will never forget the feelings that I felt that day and the impressions I received.  It was amazing.  He told us not to write down everything that is said but to write in your “small plates.”  Meaning to write only the impressions that come as they pertain to spiritual and precious things.  Then he asked us what we had learned from his 3 talks that he asked us to read in preparation for the meeting.  Elder Williams and I were running around passing microphones to everyone who was called on to answer.  It was a great discussion!  Over time it turned into a question/answer session.  We all were taught, but not necessarily from what Elder Bednar had said, but from what the spirit had impressed upon us.  And that all was predicated on our personal preparation.  It was such a cool experience.  He taught us how to learn by the spirit and by so doing taught us how to better teach by the spirit.  Helping us get out of the way sometimes and let the Lord teach our investigators through the Holy Ghost.  It was a terrific blessing.  I loved every minute of it. And it felt really fast as well!  He shared some experiences and so did Sister Bednar.  It was a special meeting, and I believe that what we learned was determined by how we prepared.  For this meeting everyone prepared really well and we were able to learn some truly amazing things and hear some great things from an apostle that I don’t think he would have said if we were not ready to be taught.  I was impressed with our missionaries.  They were and are very good! So yeah.  A couple things that I learned personally were how to ask inspired questions and let the spirit teach our investigators more.  I also learned a lot about faith and moral agency.  What an awesome opportunity.  I don’t think that I will ever get that opportunity again.  I so grateful for it and I will never forget the spirit I felt when he was with us.

Anyways, a lot of other things have been going on! Working hard in our area and it is starting to pick up (I know I said that last time, but we have even more potentials and a few more new investigators we are starting to teach). We have had some great experiences with a girl named Marlin (its pronounced Marleen). She was a referral from temple square and we have been teaching her.  She is progressing well. The only problem is that she went to missionary farewells for the past 2 weeks in different wards so she still hasn’t come to the ward.  She is going to come this week though!  And we will meet her brother who is interested as well.  It is different working in a YSA stake.  Usually in other parts of the mission if you work harder, contact more, and teach better the baptisms come in some proportion to what you have been doing.  In YSA it seems like you can work and work and work and still not see success and then when you do see success it seems to have no correlation to the work you have been doing or the people you are working with.   It is just a blessing dropped out of the sky.  Marlin was one of those blessings.  We were working hard, but nothing was coming from our work or from anyone we were currently working with and then one day a text from temple square and we are working with someone who has a desire to progress!   Im not complaining though!  I feel blessed when we see miracles and success in our area especially because of the little time that we have to work in it. 

The days and weeks are starting to blend together so I am trying to remember what I told you in the last email…  Well I don’t have much time left anyway so I will just tell you a funny experience that happened while leaving church the other day.  We were walking out of the U of U institute building after Capitol Hill ward and we were kind of in a rush.  We were walking quickly to our car and there was a man standing next to his car parked next to us.  I glanced at him and thought wow he looks familiar…. Then I looked again and realized who it was!  President Clayton from the Presidency of the Seventy!  We shook his hand and talked for a minute.  The reason it was hard to recognize him was because he was wearing a sweater / sweatshirt zip up thing over his white shirt and tie!  He explained that he had just gotten back from Logan and that he was going to a YSA ward quickly but he had to make a few phone calls first.  It was pretty random, but sweet!  That is the second time on my mission that I have met him and talked to him.  He is really good.

    

Well I am about out of time for now.  I think I will send this and another email soon.  I love you all!  As for myself, I got sick for a couple of days but now I am fine!  Always tired, but what’s new.  I love the work and I love being a missionary.  There is no experience quite like it.  I hope all of you are feeling well and travelling safely for the holidays!

Have a Happy Thanksgiving!!!! We will be only about 25 minutes apart when you are at Paula and Brian’s house!  Love and miss you.

Godspeed.

-Elder Hansen

Peak The Strategy

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.

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

Peak The Strategy