Week 17

Dec 31, 2012

MY WONDERFUL FAMILY!!

It was so FANTASTIC to hear all your voices last week! I'm sorry I am bad at phone calls I just get too excited. Hopefully on Mother's Day I will be better at it.

So our week has been so great! We have just been so blessed! For Christmas we went around delivering Christmas cards to our investigators and the older ladies we visit. We had dinner at the bishop's house and then went caroling after. It was a great day. The best part of the day for me was when I got to talk to you all and it didn't make me home sick, it just made me realize how happy I am being a missionary and how important this work is! I absolutely LOVE being a missionary (most of the time ;))

Well our investigators are doing so well! I love them so much! The one family we have been teaching are progressing so well. They have been coming to church every week and have real desires to know the truth.  We taught them the word of wisdom and law of chastity this week and they realized that they are going to have to make a few changes in their lives but they are willing to do it. We went over yesterday and watched the Testaments with them, we wanted to help them get a visual of what it was like when Christ came to the Americas and they really loved it. At the end of the movie we were all in tears. Joel, the father, then told us that we had been feeling something he never had before. He was noticing that he was thinking about God more and had a lot of desire to know Him. He said he couldn't even describe the feeling! He is so open to the spirit! We just love them! They have a baptismal date for the end of Jan so please keep them in your prayers!

Ok now for a funny story. I have been laughing about this for days. Please do not think I am a terrible person for laughing so very, very hard at this but, Hna Higley got hit by a car this week. Are you laughing yet?, because I still am! So we were riding home the other night and we were almost back to our apartment. Hna Higley was leading because she had the keys to the garage. She was pulling the keys out of her pocket while she was riding and then a car came out of the other garage just as she was about to pass it. Now the sad thing about both of our bikes is that neither of us has working back brakes, so when she pulled the brake on her bike it did nothing and she went right into the car. (I am dying right now while I write this.) I was behind her and I was obviously worried for her but she backed up, looked back at me and smiled and assured me that she was fine and so was her bike. I was so relieved and then the image of her hitting the car popped into my head again and I lost it, I just started to laugh so hard. The guy got out of his car to make sure she was ok.  He saw she was fine and that I had lost it he drove away. His car was super dented and scratched though. Too bad for us, he lives in our building, that is going to be an uncomfortable elevator ride someday. We have just been laughing about it since.

Life her is super awesome! We are working hard and smiling a lot! We are going to the zoo today so we have no complaints. Please keep the prayers coming. I LOVE YOU ALL!!!

Week 16

Dec 24, 2012

Heyyoo I don't have much to write today since I just get to talk to all of you wonderful people tomorrow, but I have had a tremendous week! We got to go to the temple this week. SOOO amazing! I love the temple. There is nowhere in this world where I feel more peace and love than the temple! I just feel so blessed each time I go! Our investigators are doing well. Joel and Angelica came to church again yesterday and then a member took them to the temple to see the lights and watch the Joseph Smith movie. From what we heard from the members, they loved it! claro.

I can't wait to hear from you all tomorrow voy a llamarles a las 11 manana! They keep changing the amount of time I have to talk, they said around 45ish mins but if we go over its not the end of the world, just don't go over an hour and a half, that's a big limbo. CAN'T WAIT!!!!! i don't know if I will be able to sleep tonight! Sorry this email is lame. don't bloggit whatevs. I LOVE YOU ALLLLLL!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

Week 15

Dec 17, 2012

Well Family,

 It has been another wonderful week here in NoHo.  We have been working our little hearts off and God has really been so good to us!

We have continued to teach the Ramirez family and they are so great. The mother is still a little unsure of the whole thing. She gets really stressed out when she doesn't understand as quickly as the others but we are helping her and we saw them yesterday and she is doing great! I just love this family! They are all so awesome!

We also have been teaching the familia Noriega, they are the ones we found through talking to the father on the street. They are AWESOME!! We just love them soo much! We saw them a couple of times this week and they are just such champions. They are reading and said every time they read they just want to read more. They came to church yesterday, which was just so exciting. Having investigators at church can be really stressful though. We are just so worried the whole time, you never know what will go down in our ward. They came in late so we walked them up to the front of the chapel to sit, that way the members would see them and know its their first time. Everybody came up to them after sacrament and they were all so nice! The classes went well, we talked about final judgment in gospel principals, which was a bit scary because we hadn’t talked to them about the plan of salvation yet, but they liked it. They have a 7 yr old son named Jesus and he LOVED primary. They said on the way home they asked him if he liked it and he said yes I want to know more about Jesucristo! awwww! So precious! We went over after church and taught them the plan of salvation-my favorite to teach. They are so solid. They really just have a desire to follow God and want to know if what we teach is true. They are really trying to receive an answer from God. They are amazing! Please continue to pray for them!

We went caroling a couple of times this week. We are trying different finding ideas and so we thought caroling would be fun, with our district. It was a lot of fun! Its great to be a missionary this time of year! It’s crazy that Christmas is next week. It doesn't feel like it usually does around Christmas time at all. It has a very different spirit about it this year. I am so grateful for my Savior and all that He has done for each of us!

Happy Christmas!!

Week 14

Dec, 10, 2012

Hello my wonderful family!

Dang it has been a big week at home! I can't believe Andrea & Jeremy are moving!!! That is such fantastic news!!!!! That will be so wonderful to have the whole family in the, oh so wonderful AZ!!

So this week has been so great!! We have been working really hard. We have really been trying to show Heavenly Father He can trust us with his children and it has been going so well!! We FINALLY have Hna Higley's bike in working order! We now have 2 bikes in storage just in case her luck continues.

We have 2 pretty solid families we are teaching right now. I am afraid to write about them because I don't want to jinx it. :) But one family is the one that had us over for Thanksgiving. The dad has really loved what we have been teaching. He told us the other night that he has felt something missing in his life and has been searching for it and now he thinks he has found it! How great is that! We didn't even tell him to say that. We have a lot of hope for them! They are such a great family! Please keep the Ramirez family in your prayers.

The other family we found was quite the miracle. We went to stop by some other investigators house the other night because we keep missing them. As we pulled up, I mean rolled up, we saw a couple of men sitting outside of their house. I have met them before just in passing but we never really had a conversation with them. Well Hna Higley and I started to just talk to them and we were talking to them about the Book of Mormon. They were only so, so interested but for some reason we felt we needed to keep talking to them so we did, about 15 mins later a friend of theirs walked up. He was smoking a cigarette  and I got nervous that he wouldn't take what we were all talking about serious. Oh, but he did. He was just eating it up. We read the intro of the Book of Mormon with him and we really seemed to understand it. We asked him if there was a time we could come back and talk to him more about this book and our message and he said YES. He wanted us to come teach his wife too. UMM OK!

So we went to his house on Saturday and it went so well. They are a really wonderful family. They have a brand new baby and they were really open to all that we were teaching them. They were super excited for us to come back and teach them God's Plan of Happiness. AWW yeah! They are super awesome!!

God is really blessing us a lot! I just want to do the best I can to be worthy of these amazing blessings and be able to help these people to continue to progress. I LOVE this work. This week I got to look into the eyes of a young 16-year-old girl and tell her how amazing she is. I got to tell her that she is a special and beautiful daughter of God the most powerful being in existence and that He knows her by name and loves her very much. What a blessing that is that I get to help people realize their divine worth. Dang I love this!!

I love you all and can't wait to talk to you all in just a few weeks!! WOOOT WOOT!!!

Hermana Hansen

Week 13

Dec 4, 2012

Helloooo!! my wonderful family!!

Dang my email was just full today with emails, that is what I like to see! Sorry I didn't write yesterday we switched our pday to tuesday this week because we had Elder Don R Clarke from the 70 come for a zone conference yesterday! It was so awesome! I have never felt so guilty and inspired all at the same time! :) He was very bold with us and just told us how to get the work done and it was just so fantastic!

So I have a new companion. She is...GREAT! I just love her so much! I was SUPER stressd because we had guessed that she might be the one coming to me and I was just not to sure about it. All I knew about her was that she is shy but really sweet. I don't usually do well with shy sweet people. But she is awesome! She isn't shy at all she gets in there and gets work done! I love it! The poor girl though, she has spent her whole mission so far in Santa Clarita, aka fancy. Her apartment had its own washer and dryer AND there was a Walmart in her area AND she had a car. I think she was pretty shocked to be biking in the hood for the first few days, but she is doing so well! She has had a LOT of bad bike luck though this week. Her mom sent her a bike in a box that we had to build (sketchy) and everyday since a piece or two has fallen off. On sunday it was the pedal and it is a gonner. Its pretty funny. We were in the middle of the hood at night and there goes her pedal, we got the oppurtunity to walk home. Ha we were just laughing all the way. After the conference yesterday we had a few appts that we needed to get to but we were still one bike short so we got to walk again. There is something very interesting about walking the streets at night. We were sure though that God had a reason for refusing to allow Hna Higley to have a bike so we talked to people all along the way. It was good. I have had a cold the past few days (Elder Clarke came up to me after the conference and told me I should probably get a blessing for that cold, my b I guess I was sneezing too loud ha) and the walking hopefully will do it some good! :)

We got to go back to the Familia Ramirez this week and teach them lec 1, which is the restoration and all and it went so well! The spirit was so strong! I love teaching the good news of the gospel to people! They mentioned the peace in our eyes again and set up a time for us to come back next week. WHOOT WHOOT! Life is just dandy!

This has been my week just full of goodness. I wish I had time to call all of you everyday and just chat all about the good stuff but I just love you all and pray for each of you all the time! THE CHURCH IS TRUE! No really, it is. I love you all!!!

Hermana Hansen