December 13, 2011

EVERYONE! I'M NOT DEAD! last pday we didn't have time to write because we had a big all-missionary activity after choir practice. it was nice to get to know some of the other missionaries a little bit better and have some fun. but i'm glad this week to have the time to write some stuff. i have things to say.

first off, we have SIX baptisms this week! weeee! the family babou is getting baptized on friday and we're pretty stoked about it. everything went well with their interviews and so we're all set to go. and last week this lady who takes care of two kids that we inherited from the sisters before us that have been taught for like a year but have never been able to get baptized because the parents never gave permission (this is becoming a really long run-on sentence DEAL WITH IT) anyway she called us last week and she was like "hey i need parental consent forms for the two kids because the parents gave their permission for them to get baptized and they want to come to the baptism and la la la everything is so great!" and we were like whaaat?! ok! so we're pretty excited about that too. so we have 6 baptisms in one day. it's going to be insane but awesome. all of the elders in our district are super jealous and we're like yeah suckers if you were awesome you could have a bajillion baptisms too. except not really because we didn't really do anything to get these baptisms--we just taught them, and God definitely did the rest. i'm realizing more and more that i don't actually do a whole lot--i just try and do my best and trust that their hearts will be prepared to accept the message. and lookee there, it kinda works! i'm really happy about the babou family though. their two kids that are getting baptized--samir is 13 and nasra is 12--they are cool kids. i love nasra--she's always super excited to see me and runs up and hugs me and kisses my cheeks. i know i can always count on her to show me some love. when we were preparing her for her baptismal interview, i was like "hey nasra, why do you want to get baptized?" and she was like "because i love God and i know this church is true!" it made my heart happy. every time i see her she tries to take my tag and wear it because she wants to do a mission too. she's just precious and i love her. 

oh yeah. guess what guys. I'M GONNA BE TAHITIAN FAMOUS! freals. on wednesday, we get this call in the morning from the assistants and they were like "hey the news people from public affairs called and they want to interview a missionary for a program they're doing and gonna put on the teeeveeee" (ok they didn't really say it like that but whatever) basically they wanted to interview and american sister and out of the choices they had, they had the most confidence in my french (to be fair, i did kind of study it in college and the rest have only had 9 months max so it's not really a fair comparison) so i got picked. so i was like uhh ok coool....and then later that afternoon they called us again and were like "oh by the way it's tonight in like 3 hours soooo...okbye!" and i was like aaah my haaair (which is always AWFUL, just so you know). anyway, i did my best to look presentable and we went so i could talk into the camera. apparently it's some sort of christmas program where they wanted me to talk about christmas in america and how it's different and how i'm going to keep the spirit of christmas with me during the mission. my response wasn't super profound, it was pretty much like "welp i think i'll try to keep the spirit of christmas with me by TEACHING PEOPLE ABOUT JESUS EVERY DAY." UHN. nah i said other stuff too and tried to sound intelligent. not sure if it totally worked, but in any case it will be broadcast on national tahitian television next sunday. so basically, i'm a celebrity everyone. you can tell all your friends and feel really cool. 

so this week i had a great blessing come into my life for four days--the sisters serving on raiatea came to stay with us. they're american. choruses of angels were singing in the heavens. my heart was filled with joy. i can't even tell you how refreshing it was to have people who understand my culture--who laugh at the same things that i laugh at, who don't tell me that everything i do is wrong, who don't expect me to read their minds. they reminded me that there IS happiness! but seriously, it was so awesome to have them with us. we got to do splits and i taught with soeur buswell, (who by the way, was in one of my french 101 classes at byu, go figure!) and it was so great! i felt so comfortable and at ease and the spirit was super strong and i was just super happy. and we had a really nice conversation that helped me a lot and gave me hope for the future. having them with us was really an answer to my prayers. they helped me to feel less alone and now i feel like i actually have friends here. when all the missionaries get together, i have people to talk to now, rather than just standing next to people and listening to conversations. 

which brings me to my next point: we finally had our missionary choir program on sunday. it was so great! there were a bajillion people who came and so many of our investigators showed up too! it was awesome. the spirit was super strong and it turned out really well. apparently the stakes on tahiti want us to do like a tour or something and re-do the program in their stakes, so i guess we're gonna do that. again, we're famous or whatever. haha. anyway, i kind of have a love/hate relationship with the missionary choir. sometimes i'm like yeah this is awesome wee! other times i'm like I HATE THE MISSIONARY CHOIR because it takes up pday and the director is kind of a tool (ok but he's really nice and works really hard but sometimes he seriously acts like he's craig jessop and i'm like DUDE YOU'VE NEVER TAKEN A MUSIC THEORY CLASS IN YOUR LIFE). anyway. the point is, it's cool but sometimes makes me want to punch myself in the face. but i will admit, it was really great to have our amis there to feel the strong spirit.

this week i had a cool experience. i was with soeur buswell on a split and we had taught a lesson and went back to the house to pick up the other sisters, but apparently my companion thought it would be a good idea to start straightening the other sister's hair so they weren't ready to go yet. so i was like "hey i was thinking about going to visit nella (one of our investigators) and see how she's doing and invite her to the program tomorrow night." no response from my companion. me: "soo...is that cool?" she shrugs her shoulders. me: OK LET'S GO SOEUR BUSWELL SEE YOU LATER HAVE FUN BEING A JERK!| just kidding i didn't say that last part. anyway, so we go to see her and she's at the house and she's way excited to see us. to give a little background, the last lesson we had with her and her sister (18 and 16 years old) i gave them the committment to baptism and they were like "yeah we had talked about it but we're not sure because we want our whole family to follow too", which is legit of course. anyway, so i was like hey will you pray about it? and they were like yeah! and i gave them ether 12 to read too. anyway, back to the story. so we go see her and she's like "hey i read that chapter you gave me. and i want to get baptized." and i'm like AH! OK! REALLY? and she's like yeah! and i was so happy. it was a moment where i really felt joy in the fruit of my labors. i'm so excited for her and excited to see her progression. 

anyway, this is long and i gotta go. but i love you all! have a good christmas!

love,

soeur hansen

November 28, 2011

oh hey everybody!

exciting things happened this week. first of all, it was thanksgiving! we organized a little feast with some of our investigators and our DMP and his family. we didn't end up doing it on the actual day of thanksgiving, because they didn't have friday off like good ol' america, so we did it on friday. remember how i've never cooked a turkey in my life? and how everyone was like "soeur hansen...we thought you knew how to do this..." because turkey isn't exactly the most common thing here in tahiti. there's not even a word for it in tahitian--they kept calling it the "big chicken". haha! it was so funny to watch them open up the raw turkey and be like uhh...what the heck are we supposed to do with this? anyway, it all worked out in the end and we had a nice little thanksgiving with turkey, mashed potatoes, rolls, and pie and stuff. and we had to have rice, because tahitians have to eat rice with everything otherwise it's not a real meal. when i told them what we normally eat for thanksgiving they were like, "soo...what do you eat the rice with?" and i was like "...there's no rice in thanksgiving." and they were like "...no rice?" it was a hard concept to grasp. but i decided to ahve a little bit of a multicultural thanksgiving and include rice in the menu. hopefully i can get pictures to you soon, but i forgot my camera cord today so no pictures of thanksgiving. there's a really funny video too that we took, but i don't have it with me either. so you'll all just have to imagine. anyway, i hope thanksgiving was wonderful for everyone. i'll admit, i felt a little homesick thinking about everyone around the table eating mom's good thanksgiving cooking. although, i am proud to say that everyone LOVED my rolls. weena (dmp's wife) even wants me to teach her how to make them. weee!

also exciting thing: i had my first baptism with our investigator that we taught start to finish on saturday! ariinui is one of the brothers we're teaching--he's 15. actually it's pretty cool that he got baptized, because when we first started going to his house, it wasn't even orginally for him, it was for his older brother, and ariinui would always go into his room and not come out. but then one day he came out and sat through a lesson and we asked him if he wanted to receive the lessons, and he was lik yeah i do. what? ok! since then he has made so much progress. the baptism was really good, and i was so happy! he bore such a good testimony at the end too, i was even a little bit surprised. he remembered so much from the things that we taught him and he spoke with such confidence and surety. (is that a word? i don't even know.) i felt proud and grateful for the chance that i had to teach him. we have more baptisms coming up on the 16th and the 31st, and possibly one or two others for december or january--we're still trying to work with our amis to get them there. getting amis to commit to baptismal dates is an awesome and terrifying thing all at the same time because you want them to do it, and when they do, you're really happy, but then afterwards you're like oh crap now satan is gonna work super hard on them to try and stop them from getting baptized. so we really have to pull out the big guns to help protect our amis, haha. but watching the transformation that happens once they commit to getting baptized is really amazing. 

this week, although there were many exciting things that happened, was also a super weird week. we called it the week of "cacaboudin." what is cacaboudin, you ask? roughly translated, grumpy. cantankerous. ill-humoured. bleh. yeah. bleh. i think that sums it up pretty well. here's an example--on tuesday, we had 8 lessons planned and we were stoked because we had set a goal for 30 lessons total for the week. guess how many of those 8 got canceled? SEVEN. seven lessons fell through in one day! guhhhh! it was the worst! and then the rest of the week was just weird. everyone was in a weird mood, our amis were cranky and flaky, me and s. taie were cranky, dmp and his wife were cranky. everyone was doing their cacaboudin! it was the worst! but this week is going to be better. 

i've been reflecting a lot lately on the idea of happiness, and how we can be happy. admittedly, the reason for this reflection is because i often find myself feeling unhappy, and i'm not sure why. i'm trying my best to be obedient and to work hard, to pray aallllll the tiiiiiiiime and to read my scriptures, and to try and serve people, basically to do all the things that i know will help me to be happy, and yet, there is something missing. i kept thinking to myself, "ah maybe when i get transferred i'll be happy, maybe when i go to a different island, maybe this maybe that..." waiting around for happiness to hit me in the face or something. i came across elder uchtdorf's talk from the general relief society broadcast, and i think it was exactly what i needed to hear. he talked about choosing to be happy now, and not waiting for the "golden ticket" like in charlie and the chocolate factory. if we just open our eyes, we have so much to be happy about. and it's true, i really do have a whole lot to be happy about.

anyway, i was struggling to keep my head about water, bogged down by discouragement and loneliness, when the words of the hymn "count your many blessings" came into my mind: "when upon life's billows you are tempest tossed, when you are discouraged thinking all is lost, count you many blessings name them one by one, and it will surprise you what the lord has done." i decided to say a prayer of gratitude, and instead of asking for things, to just say thank you for the things that i did have. it probably sounds super cliche, but as i prayed, i felt a warm peace wash over me, a sense of satisfaction and happiness. i finished my prayer, and looked up with a smile. i know that things are still going to be hard--missions are super hard. everyone told me that it would be, but i didn't understand what kind of hard it was oging to be until i got here. i know it will still be hard, but i also know that this is the thing that is most valuable for me to be doing right now. and i have a lot to be happy about. 

i'm going to end there because my time is about up, but i love you all and miss you! i hope everything is going well back home. oh and i'm the worst at writing letters, but i made myself the promise that i was going to be better, so expect some hand-written goodness from me soon! love!

love,

soeur Hansen