Hermana Juliet Hansen - Women in the Scriptures

Hello all,

 

This week I have felt really blessed by the Lord. We had the most lessons in one week that I've ever had since being on my mission. Our mission standard is 20 lessons a week and we managed to get 23!! I know that it had a lot to do with the Lord blessing us to find people at home and able to receive us. And at times we had experiences where the people were really really grateful that we had stopped by.

One such experience was with a girl named M(.........). Friday night we were deciding what we were going to do for Saturday and Hermana Williams was like "I feel like we need to go visit the V(.........) family." I was like okay, let's do it. So Saturday we swung by their house and it didn't look like they were home but we decided we would knock the door anyway. We said our prayer and pretty much as soon as we finished they drove up to the house. Miracle!!! Then we go over to talk to them and M(.....) was like "I'm so glad you're here. I was praying that someone would come and visit me!" We were able to visit with her and her mom for a little while and I feel like we were able to really help them that day. We talked about sharing the Gospel with people and we found out that M(.....) loves to share the Gospel with whoever she meets and so we gave her some Restoration pamphlets to help her out. We also talked about faith and building faith...I've been studying women in the scriptures and so we shared the story of the woman with the issue of blood. M(.....) loved it and she asked if we could help her understand the scriptures better. We told her that we would love to. When we left she just kept telling us how greatful she was that we had come over and that we were an answer to her prayer. It was so great that we could do that for her. The Lord really helped us know that she was in need and so we followed those promptings. I loved that experience this week!

 

So like I said I've been studying women in the scriptures. I started reading the New Testament and one day I decided that I would start writing down the women that are mentioned and why they are important. There is a line in my patriarchal blessing that says something along the lines of growing to love the women in the scriptures and I really feel like that is being fulfilled right now. As I read the New Testament my love for the Savior and these women grows every day. We all know the big names like Mary the mother of Jesus, Mary Magdalene, Elisabeth, etc. But even the ones that have smaller roles to play are such great examples to me. Like the story of Anna in Luke chapter 2. It says that she "departed not from the temple, but served God with fastings and prayers night and day." She is a great example of devotion to God. And because of her devotion she was able to see the Son of God. I love that story. I wish I had more time to share other stories because there are so many great women in the scriptures and we can learn so much from them.

 

Well I'm almost out of time.

 

I hope you all know that I love you A LOT!!

 

Have a terrific week.

 

Hermana Hansen

Hermana Juliet Hansen - 6 months on the mission ........

Good grief Juliet has been gone 6 months already. The time has passed quickly. Here is part of her e-mail sent earlier this week.

....and I'm tired. Haha. Such is life as a missionary :) Tired for good reasons though.

 

This week taught me a lot about the importance of serving your companion. We had one of those experiences where the little things about each other started to bug us. We talked about it all and we've resolved those things and we're back to being good friends. But Saturday night I was sitting on the couch and I was praying "Lord I really want to love my companion. Help me know what to do so I can love her again." And immediately the idea came that I needed to serve her. I didn't have a ton of time that night to do something big but I put away the dishes and I straightened up the living room and then wrote her a note and put it on her desk. After that I felt better knowing that I had done something that would help her feel better in the morning. I know that this is something that will help me throughout the rest of my mission and the rest of my life. I know that as I try harder to serve my companion in little ways every day, our relationship will be so much stronger and we will have the Spirit with us more. So that is my new goal for the rest of my mission...What can I do every day to serve my companion?

 

Yesterday, my district ended the transfer on a high note with a baptism. One of the sets of Elders had a baptism for a 9 year old named Sebastian whose mom and sisters are all members. There was such love during that baptism and the whole ward was so supportive. It was really a testament of how our district really has been blessed this transfer. 4 baptisms!!!

I know that these blessings have come from our renewed determination to be more obedient. I've really come to have a strong testimony of the scripture Mosiah 2:41...

 

"And moreover, I would desire that ye should consider on the blessed and happy state of those that keep the commandments of God. For behold, they are blessed in all things, both temporal and spiritual; and if they hold out faithful to the end they are received into heaven, that thereby they may dwell with God in a state of never-ending happiness. O remember, remember that these things are true; for the Lord God hath spoken it."

 

I know that to be true. As a missionary...in life in general...as I strictly keep the mission rules and the commandments of God I will be blessed in all things.

 

I love you all and I'm grateful for your support.

 

Con amor,

 

Hermana Hansen

Hermana Juliet Hansen - Finding People at McDonalds :)

Part of the e-mail Juliet sent us this week.

This week was good. We are still trying to find new investigators and we had a really interesting experience at McDonald's that led to two new investigators, ............... We had met up with a member for breakfast on Saturday to teach her granddaughter. We were sitting talking and this lady, .......... , keeps looking over at us. Basically staring at my companion. So Hermana Williams finally says hi to her and ............  says "how do you know Spanish so well?" So Hna G........ says "come on over and join us." So she sits with us and we chat about how we're missionaries and Hna G....... shares a story about how her granddaughter was healed by a blessing, etc. It was a really good conversation, which led to us getting an appointment to visit with them on Sunday. Well we had a lesson with them and it was awesome!! (.............) shared with us her story of how she got to be in the states and it was extremely powerful. As she was sharing the story the Holy Ghost pretty much filled the room. It was such a testament to me of how the Lord has prepared this lady to hear the Gospel. The things that have happened in her life have really helped her draw closer to God and want to do his will. When she said that she only wanted to do the will of God we smiled because all we really ask people to do is find out the will of God and do it (through reading the Book of Mormon, praying, etc.) I'm so excited to get to work with her!

 

That was the coolest thing to happen this week. We're still working on a lot of reactivation. We've looked at all the members in our area and we have a list of 50 families and 25 of them are inactive. We have a lot of work to do in our area.

Hermana Juliet Hansen - We Had a Baptism

(Most of last weeks contact from Juliet was family oriented hence no up-date.)

This week was awesome!!! We had a couple of miracles that I would like to share with you.

The first obviously by the subject is that we had a baptism. Our investigator (...........) was baptised on Saturday. I haven't mentioned him much so here is a little bit about him. He is 14 years old and he comes from a family with a bunch of members. His mom and brother are members but currently inactive and his extended family are active members. In December of last year his younger sister was blessed in a Sacrament meeting and afterwards he asked his mom why he had never been baptised or had the opportunity to learn about the church. So we were given their names. We started teaching him in mid January and every lesson that we had he just embraced whole heartedly. And every time we would talk about his baptism he would be super excited. Well his baptism was amazing. All of his family was there, even some from Utah, and they were so happy that he was finally getting baptised. One of the uncle's told us that this was a moment they had all been waiting for. It was so beautiful to see how much love and support (........) has from his family. And because of his example we really feel like his mom is going to come back to full activity and that possibly her fiance will want to take the lessons too. We actually went over to their house Saturday evening and we were talking to his mom who told us that she had given up drinking coffee that week. We were blown away. That is a testament to me that one person can have such a big influence on others. I feel really blessed that I've been able to get to know this family and be a part of such a wonderful experience for them.

Last night we actually got a call from President M saying he was so happy that we had a baptism. He actually sounded giddy that we are having success. (............) baptism was the first in our ward in 3-4 months so I guess he has every right to be pleased. And in the course of 2 weeks each companionship will have had a baptism. We had one Saturday, the bike elders had one on Sunday, and the car elders are going to have one next Sunday. The Lord is really blessing us for all our efforts.

The other miracle this week was a girl named (.......). I've mentioned before that we are working on organizing our area. Part of that has been following up on some referrals to make sure they are as updated as possible. Well we contacted her on Tuesday and she invited us back for Wednesday and this is what she told us...

Last summer she had gone to visit her aunt in Salt Lake City. They had gone to the temple and she loved it. She felt such a peace there that she hadn't felt in a long time. Because of that experience she requested missionary visits. And she has been waiting since last July for missionaries to come knock on her door. She didn't know when they would come so every night she and her mom (who is inactive) would read the Book of Mormon and pray together. Waiting and waiting and waiting....

We were stunned that no missionaries had visited her until us. She is so incredibly prepared to learn about the Gospel. We taught her the first lesson and it was like she was glowing because of how happy she was. And we extended her a baptismal date and she was so excited to know that she could get baptised. I don't know why missionaries didn't visit her before but I know that the Lord works in mysterious ways. There is a reason why we found her and no one else did. I'm excited to get to know her and her family better and help her progress in the Gospel. And one day we will know why it had to be us to find her.

Well that's the news for this week. Oh, I finished the Doctrine and Covenants in English. That was such a cool experience. I'm now working on the Pearl of Great Price. I've learned a ton as I've worked my way through the scriptures.

I love you all and hope you are doing well.

Til next week,

Hermana Hansen

Photos below are from Juliet's email last week.

Hermana Juliet Hansen - I Love Life

Hello all,

 

So my first week with my new companion has been awesome. Granted we are working really hard to mesh our teaching styles because we are both very strong personalities but we both really want to make it work and we've seen much success because of how hard we are working together. We are currently in a massive overhaul of our area books because we really want our area to be more organized. So we have lists and lists of people that we are trying to contact so we can update teaching records. Every day is something different and I love that we are now doing knocking with a purpose. Instead of knocking a whole building we knock one apartment with the purpose of trying to find someone that had contact with the missionaries before. We've had a lot more success finding potential investigators that way. And we randomly knocked into the English elders that way too :)

I really feel like the area is coming back to life and that we are going to be seeing a lot more success.

 

Speaking of success....we are going to have a baptism in 2 weeks if everything goes according to plan. We are so excited!! His name is (......)  and we had been thinking that he was going to get baptised in March but then yesterday we talked to his mom and she was like "all of our family is coming down the weekend of the 25th of February could we do the baptism then?" Well if the bishop says yes and (.....) passes his interview and goes to church this weekend then Saturday the 25th he will be baptised. I can't wait!!

Also, this weekend Hermana Williams and I are going to go down to the valley to see one of her old investigators get baptised. I'm really excited about that because it will be the first baptism I'll have attended on my mission.

 

This week we had the really awesome experience of setting a baptismal date with our investigator (........) I've mentioned her before. We set a date for March 18th. We really feel that because she has the date the Lord sees that she has faith in him and will make it possible for her to get baptised on that day. She and (......)  need to get married but we promised her that because of her faith the Lord would bless her to be able to get married. So today we are meeting with her and the family and hopefully we can commit (him) to be baptised that day too and talk a little more about how to get the ball rolling with their wedding.

 

We also have some amazing member referrals that we are going to meet with this week. One of them happens to live in the same home as the members so we're really excited to get to teach them. And they both already came to church this week before we had taught them the first lesson. I just love the power that member support of investigators has.

 

To end this email I would just like to share this funny quote from a member, that really has nothing to do with missionary work.

 

"This is so greasy it looks like lipgloss on my fingers!"

 

I love you all and I hope everyone has a terrific week.

 

Con amor,

 

Hermana Juliet Hansen 

Hermana Juliet Hansen - I'm getting a new companion

(This e-mail was received on Monday. Please excuse the delay in posting it here.)

Hello all,

 

Well today is transfer day. And most of the Spanish sisters are going to descend upon my apartment to do a massive companion switch at around 2 pm. Hermana White is headed to San Fernando and I'll be staying here in Santa Clarita. My new companion is going to be Hermana Williams. I'm excited to have her as a companion. I've met her a couple of times and I know that we'll get along really well. What's funny is that Hermana White and Hermana Williams were actually companions before, in the MTC and for one transfer in the field. I'm excited to see what I learn from her.

 

So funny story...earlier this past week we tried to go visit one of our investigators R........ Well she ended up not being at home. Near her house is a road sign that happens to have the same name as Hermana White's brother ....... Well after we found out that R..... wasn't home Hermana White asked if we could go take a picture of the sign. So we parked the car using the head lights to give us as much light as possible (it was night time). We were trying to get a picture to work when this lady comes out of her house in her bathrobe asking us what we were doing. So we told her we were taking a picture to send to Hna White's brother. She was super suspicious of us. Well I try to take another picture of Hna White standing under the sign and the woman says, "But why does she have to be tied up?"......huh?....."Ma'am she's not tied up!" And she starts asking us other questions like do we live around her, etc. Well the picture wasn't turning out so I'm like Hna White let's just go. We laughed so hard in the car. I don't know what she thought we were doing but how suspicious she was really amazes me.

 

Also this week I found the scripture that really describes my time in Santa Clarita. It's D&C 64:33, "be not weary in well-doing, for ye are laying the foundation of a great work. And out of small things proceedeth that which is great." We haven't been having a ton of success lately especially with finding new investigators and getting our current investigators to keep commitments but after I read that scripture I knew that every effort that we are making is worth it. It may not feel like we are successful especially numbers wise but everything we do is for a purpose and we are just planting seeds and laying foundations. Those things need to be done first before we can see success/great things. So I will continue knocking doors, working with less actives, asking for referrals, etc and hopefully everything that I'll have done in this area will help future missionaries have more success. And each small step that we take in the work will ultimately lead to something great.

 

Take care,

 

Hermana Hansen

Hermana Juliet Hansen - Transfer 2 is coming to a close !!!

So earlier this morning I was talking to my companion and I was like I have no idea what I'm going to write in my email home. And then we got to talking and we have had good experiences this week. Sometimes it's a little hard to remember them because everyday we knock and we knock and we knock and knock some more. So by the end of this week it felt like that's all we did.

 

Tuesday we had a really great sisters training given by Sister Martin. She talked a lot about the parable of the 10 virgins and how we need to be prepared like the 5 wise virgins. It was a really great training. At the end of the training President and Sister Martin talked a little bit about how they met and their engagement story. They are such a funny couple. Basically they met at BYU and President likes to say that she just flew into his arms. She was running away from a guy who was going to throw her into a pool and she ran into President's apartment saying "SAVE ME!" while locking the door behind her. Then for their first date he had asked her out for a Saturday to his mission reunion and he couldn't wait to go out with her and so he called her up and asked her out for Thursday as well. She was like "What if we don't like each other after Thursday? Am I going to have to suffer through a date on Saturday too if the one on Thursday doesn't go well???" Well the date went well, obviously. Their engagement story is funny because President completely botched it. Instead of saying will you marry me he said something like Gemmie what am I going to do with you? And the conversation continued something like this "well I don't know what are you going to do?" "I think I'll throw you to the dogs..." huh is that what he thinks of me!?! "...no I think I'll keep you." "For how long?" "Forever." And that's how they left it. And she didn't say yes or anything for 2 days. And when she did it was in a note that she sent to his apartment through her roommate. And he took so long getting to her place after she sent the note that she thought he had changed his mind. Well he didn't change his mind and obviously they have lived happily ever after. It was so cute to hear their story and it was so easy to see how much they love each other. And you're probably like what does this have to do with a sisters training. Well one of the things they talked about was marriage after the mission and one of the sisters asked how they knew they had found the one. And it launched into their story.

 

I don't know if I've ever told you all about this family we are teaching. I may have mentioned them when we found them back in November. So this family, is seriously like my ray of sunshine in our investigator pool. We found out two lessons ago that they weren't married and so we knew that our next lesson would have to be the Law of Chastity. Well the next lesson he wasn't home so we had to do a different lesson but finally this last week we were able to teach them together. I wasn't sure how it was going to go but it turned out to be the most comfortable, spirit led lesson about the law of Chastity ever. We asked if they had ever considered getting married and they were like we would have gotten married a long time ago if it weren't for some things that need to get sorted out. So they've basically been living like a married couple for years hoping that one day the problems will work out and they can finally get married. When (........)  heard that they couldn't get baptised until they got married you could tell that she was disappointed. And it's not like they could take the other option and live separately because they have a lot of kids to take care of. But I know that eventually they will be able to get married and then ultimately get baptised. They have such a desire to learn and do everything to help their family be more united. We asked (.......)  at the end of the lesson if he had prayed to know if these things were true and he said yes but that he hadn't received his answer but he's seen signs that maybe it's true. And one of those signs was the Law of Chastity!!! I love that family so much and I come away from evey lesson feeling so happy and uplifted.

 

Anyway, I don't have much time left. It's a lot of hard work right now and sometimes it can be discouraging when you knock doors for 2 hours and you don't find anyone. But then when we do find someone it's such a sweeter experience. And guess who we met this week knocking doors...Christopher Columbus :) He still exists...hahahaha.

 

Love you all.

 

Hermana Hansen

Hermana Juliet Hansen - Update

Hello all,

 

This week was a great week. The Lord really provided for us and for the first time in a few weeks we were able to achieve almost all of the goals that we had set at the beginning of the week.

 

So this week a few great things happened.

 

First, I finished the Book of Mormon in English!!!! You know how I told you that one of my goals this year was to read the Book of Mormon in both English and Spanish. Well I accomplished half of that goal already. I started in September when I entered the MTC and I finished January 18th. And I really wanted to take Moroni's promise again so that I could say to my investigators that I have done what they need to do and that I know that I've received my witness. Well the morning I finished I just got on my knees by the couch and I prayed to have that confirming witness that the Book of Mormon is true. It was such a great experience to have because it was like I just felt this overwhelming feeling of love for the Book of Mormon. I felt so much gratitude to have it in my life. And for me that was my reaffirmation that the Book of Mormon is true. And I shared that experience with some of our investigators that same night and I really feel like it helped them know that they will get an answer to their prayer. I've always known that the Book of Mormon is true, I've never doubted that. And know I have this experience that really solidifies my testimony that the Book of Mormon is true.

 

Second, We got two more investigators to commit to baptism. One is a 14 year old boy whose mom and grandparents are members. He was never baptised but his older brother was. Well in December his little sister was blessed and he started to wonder why he was never taught those things. So he went up to his mom and asked what he needed to do to be baptised. We met with him on Friday and we talked about the Book of Mormon and coming to know for himself that all of these things are true. He just seems so excited to learn everything. And if everything goes well with talking to his grandpa, going to church, and praying about the date, he is going to get baptised the 5th of February. 

The other is a man named (.......). He was an investigator a couple of times in the past but he never really progressed because it was next to impossible to find him. Well it's still pretty hard to find him but when we have it's been a miracle. He has such an amazing spirit about him. He has a deep desire to really know for himself if these things are true. He's been reading the Book of Mormon and he already likes what he is reading. I'm so excited for him to continue to progress. Hopefully this week he will pray to know if the Book of Mormon is true and be able to attend church. And if everything goes well for him, he will be baptised February 26th.

 

There were so many other good things that happened but I'm lacking in time to share all those stories. Just know that we are working hard and enjoying ourselves at the same time. Imagine a fashion show at a Relief Society activity of a whole bunch of different hats representing things about Visiting Teaching. Then imagine one of the sisters wearing a huge hat that looked like a rooster and another sister wearing a hat that looked like a beehive. (I wore a leprechaun hat). It was super fun(ny)!

 

Love you all!!

 

Hermana Hansen

Hermana Juliet Hansen - Exchanges!!

My companion and I are in the process of rebuilding our investigator pool. This means that we do a lot of knocking doors and contacting people. Some days it is really hard but I know that soon the Lord will reward us for our labors. We just have to keep working hard and praying every day to be led by the spirit.

 

So the best experience of this week happened during exchanges on Thursday. So last week I told you that we have a baptismal date with our investigator (......). Well that is really tentative and that experience was not nearly as cool as the one on Thursday. 

So thursday I was up in Palmdale with Hermana Stander. One of the lessons that we had was with a girl named (......). She is (..) years old and she lives with her grandparents, her aunt, and like 14 cousins. Her grandparents and aunt are actually members but have not gone to church in about 8 years. Ever since (.......) met the missionaries about 4 weeks ago she had been taking the lessons and going to church all by herself. On Thursday we watched the movie "The Restoration" with her and talked a little bit about the Young Womens program because she went for the first time on Wednesday. After our little discussion we talked about how to be a member we have to be baptised. So we asked her if she would be baptised on the 12th of February. And she said YES!! And she was so excited! It was like she could hardly contain her smile. And I was so excited for her. 

She's not my investigator but it was so exciting to see for the first time someone who is so excited to get baptised and be a member of the church. AND miracle of miracles because of her example her aunt and several of her cousins went to church on Sunday. And now 4 of her cousins are taking the discussons. It's so awesome!

 

And we also had one of our families come to church on Sunday. They missed Sacrament meeting but eventhough they were late they still came for Sunday School and Relief Society. That was so exciting when we saw them there.

 

Anyway, that's about all the time I have for today. But I want to share this scripture with you... Alma 36:26. I love this scripture. Next to it I have written "how to be an effective missionary...have you tasted, seen, and known?" So something to think about is how have you tasted, seen, and known that the gospel is true? And how have you shared that knowledge with others? It's really cool that the scriptures compare gaining a testimony/spiritual experiences to the senses.

 

I hope you enjoy that scripture.

 

I love you all and know that I pray for you always.

 

Till next week,

 

Hermana Hansen

Hermana Juliet Hansen - Awesome conversion story and a baptismal date !

Hi everyone!!

  

This week was a little slow but I can't expect every week to be jam packed. We did a lot of knocking doors and trying to track down less actives and old investigators. I guess you can call it success when you learn that they've moved, then you can redirect your focus a little bit. Though it would be awesome if we could know where they moved to so we could send other missionaries to their homes. Sometimes we get lucky with that.

This week I met a really inspiring lady. Her name is (.......) and she is in her late 60's/early 70's. We met her because she had referred her daughter to us, asking for a blessing. We arrive at her house and her daughter isn't there yet (and neither are the elders) so she starts to tell us about how she came to know the church. 

About 3 years ago, she and her family had just moved into their house in Canyon Country when one Sunday morning she woke up and decided that she needed to go to church. She said that it didn't matter what church, any church would do. So she decided that she would either walk two blocks to the left or two blocks to the right and the first person she met she would ask about where she could find the nearest church. She started walking and she saw this man holding what looked like scriptures, putting stuff in his car. So she went up to him and asked where they were going. They happened to be LDS and his wife said they were going to church and she asked if (........) wanted to join them. She said yes, she would. So the family said they would pick her up in 15 minutes. She went home to change (she saw the wife wearing a skirt). She had no idea where to find a skirt (since they had just moved) but miraculously there happened to be one sitting on the back of a chair. The family picked her up. She went to church, not knowing much English, but happy to go anyway. She enjoyed what she saw and felt. She got baptised and since then hasn't missed a single Sunday. And because of her example her granddaughter was baptised just a short while ago.

She is such a great example to me of the converting power of the Holy Ghost. She didn't understand much English and to this day she only understands about 75% of what is said but she felt that what was being said was true and thus wanted to be a part of it. Her story, to me, is one of those amazing conversion stories that you don't hear very often. I'm grateful to have met her and hopefully I'll get to see her again in the future.

In other news... Hermana White and I have a tentative baptismal date set for one of our investigators, (.......), for the 12th of February. She's a great lady and we're excited that she wants to be baptised. I'll have to tell you more about her when I have more time because I don't have time (now) to tell you sufficiently about her.

Oh and we are doing exchanges this week. On Thursday I get to go up to Palmdale. I'm super excited. I'll let you know how it goes.

Have a terrific week.

Love you all,

Hermana Hansen

Hermana Juliet Hansen - Happy 2012

(I have been a tardy mom regarding posting J's e-mail for this week. My apologies for that.)

Happy New Year all,

 

This week was by far so much better for missionary work than the week before Christmas. Investigators were more willing to receive us. When we knocked doors people weren't busy with family visits. Granted New Year's eve was hard to contact people but for the most part we had success.

 

So this week I started something new with my reading of the scriptures in English. I decided that I'm going to underline every time the scriptures mention a part of the gospel of Christ (faith, repentance, baptism, gift of the Holy Ghost, and endure to the end). I've assigned each topic a specific color. I've really enjoyed doing this. It's kind of been like a treasure hunt. I've found that after I started doing that every morning I'd wake up and I couldn't wait to read some more of the Book of Mormon and every night before I go to bed I want to read some more, basically because I want to continue to find times when these things are mentioned. It's been amazing how quickly the pages go by as I'm really focused on the words so I don't miss an instance. Before I started underlining these words I'd read the scriptures in English and I'd only feel like I could read one or two chapters at a time but now I have this immense desire to keep reading and reading. Sometimes it's hard to stop.

But here's what I've found so far...from Alma 1- 36 (granted I skimmed the first 10 chapters of Alma because I had already read them before I started underlining)

Faith...54 times

Repentance...82 times

Baptism...16 times

Gift of the Holy Ghost... 4 times

Endure to the End... 3 times

 

I've learned something from how many times repentance is mentioned in these chapters. This is mainly when Alma and the sons of Mosiah are out doing missionary work. And there is a scripture that talks about how a missionary is to "cry nothing but repentance unto this generation". Well by underlining these words I've come to see just how much Alma, Ammon, etc. are truly fulfilling their purpose as missionaries. That's pretty much all they did, was bring people to repentance. Awesome! This also shows me just how important repentance is to the Lord. Really seeing how much it is mentioned in the scriptures is helping remind me that I need to repent every day and so I've become a lot better about doing that.

 

Anyway, that was probably the most interesting/significant thing that happened to me this week. I got creative with my scripture study. So my question for the week is... What can you do to be more creative with your scripture study? I know that studying the scriptures in a slightly different way has really helped me have a greater desire to read every day and I find my study a lot more enjoyable.

Have fun with your scripture study this week!!

 

Also, tonight we are going to find out if our investigator (......)  got a response to his prayer about being baptised on the 15th. Pray for us that he'll commit to that date. I'll let you know how it goes in next weeks email.

 

Love you all,

 

Hermana Hansen

 

p.s. Don't forget those hand written letters :) Oh and I'm also asking people to share with me their favorite scriptures. So what's yours?

Hermana Juliet Hansen - I love being a missionary

This is part of the e-mail we received last week. With everything else that was going on I did not get round to posting it. We had a wonderful phone conversation with Juliet on Christmas Day for about 40 minutes. She loves where she is at and we are grateful that she is enjoying her mission and that she is learning so much from the people around her.

.........So this week I want to share with you some interesting/fun stories. For the most part all of my other emails have been more spiritual so I'm going to shake it up a bit. I'm going to share with you two stories...

First, a tale of epic miscommunication...

         Hermana White has kind of put me in charge of the phone. So I make a lot of the phone calls and answer the phone, especially when she's driving. Last weekend we called one of the less active members to see if we could visit her. She said that she was busy working so I asked if she was going to be able to come to church on Sunday. She again said that she would be working. So I asked if we could send someone by to pick up her kids. She then starts to tell me that her kids have gone back to Mexico to live with their dad. This is what I heard anyway and I didn't really think anything of it. But then I tell Hermana White and she starts freaking out because apparently the dad is really awful and it was going to undo all of the progress that (.......) had made over the past little while. So Saturday, Sunday, and Monday we go over to her house frequently to try and visit her because we are extremely concerned. Well, Tuesday afternoon we go over to her apartment and the other people that live there tell us that she's not there. And they say that she's gone to pick up the kids from the bus. Huh? As we walk back to the car who should we run into but (......)  and her daughter! We walk back with her to her apartment and Hermana White tells her that we thought her kids had gone to Mexico. Her face was like "Are you crazy!? How would you ever come up with an idea like that?" So I'm left super confused about how I could so completely misunderstand what she said to me on the phone. I mean I'm still learning Spanish but I can, for the most part, understand it pretty well. So yeah...I just about gave my companion a heart attack, one of the less actives thinks I'm a little crazy, but at least we managed to avert an international CPS crisis.

Second, a tale of how I'll never be able to eat lamb again...

        A couple of Saturdays ago we had the opportunity to help out with one of the YW's quincinera (15th birthday). Basically, huge/expensive party with a ton of food and lots of dancing that takes months to plan. Anyway, one of the other brothers in the ward offers to make the food for the party. So he gets a 220 pound lamb! (We walked into his apartment with all of the fresh meat sitting on his kitchen table. That was weird.) And he makes barbacoa with the lamb. Basically you cook the lamb in a big metal trashcan with water and banana leaves (?). Well we go over to this family's house to see if we can help out and we get left to baby sit this meat for over an hour. Initially it smelled so good and the hermano let us try some and it was delicious. But after smelling the same thing for an hour and then going and carving the meat for an hour or so and then serving it and then having your hands, your hair, your jacket, everything, smell like lamb...you kind of never want to eat it again. Oh man, that party was something else. But you want to know what is even crazier. The mom of the birthday girl went to the hospital a couple days before and they still had the party. Then last week she goes to the hospital again and it turns out that she had had a stroke!! I don't know how she was able to function at this party but that is some devotion and love for your daughter.

I hope you enjoyed those stories. Not only is the mission very spiritual but you also get some pretty crazy stories to go with it.

We had our Christmas concert for the stake this weekend and it was amazing. And guess who our narrator was...Kirby Heybourne (the actor from the singles ward and the Best Two Years). The music reminded me so much of our stake and I'm glad to hear that all of your concerts have gone well.

Love you all,

Hermana Hansen