January 16, 2012

oh hiiiiiiii everyone,

so we had another super awesome choir practice today. actually, i found a way to make it through--every time the choir director does something that irritates me, i imagine him falling through a trap door. so rather than getting annoyed, i was able to laugh by thinking about him being like oooohnoooooo whoomp! (sound effect for falling through the trap door, duh). probably not the most christlike way to deal with the situation, but hey, we all have areas to improve on. anyway, our concert for the arue stake is on sunday, so that'll be cool. the concerts are always good, it's just the practices that make me want to rip my eyeballs out and throw them at someone.

ANYWAY. so i'm back in a companionship of three--soeur teheiura is with us now. she has been out of the mission for 3 months for health reasons and is now reintegrating back into the swing of things and got put in our sector because we have the car. this basically means that either me or soeur taie are getting transferred soon because we don't have enough sisters to have threesomes, especially since 2 are finishing at the end of this month. so within the next week or two we'll know what's happening. soeur teheiura is cool so far. she's pretty blunt, which can be funny, but also sometimes cringe-inducing. but so far things have been good--she's really humble and gives compliments often and sincerely, which is a nice change of pace. i'm sure this week has plenty of interesting experiences in store for our companionship. she's currently trying to talk to me right now but i'm not listening because i'm writing an email. but she's still talking, so as long as she doesn't catch on that i'm not actually saying anyhting other than "mmhmmm" and "huh", things should be ok.

oooh!! guess what!! i got to go to the temple here for the first time last thursday (and for the first time in 4 months). aaaah it was so good. i seriously didn't want to leave, but alas i had to. the temple is beautiful, as they all are. the session we went to was in tahitian, and at first i was like eh maybe i'll try it in tahitian, but then i was like yeah no way gimme those headphones. and i listened in english and it was awesome and beautiful and just what my soul and brain needed. i love the temple, and i love being able to teach our investigators about it and help them get there. aah temple.

so now let me tell you about one of the most demoralizing/horrifying experiences of my life thus far. if you're easily offended by stories that involve a missionary sittingon the toilet, i suggest you skip this paragraph. so anyway, last night, i was in the bathroom. first of all, you'll need toknow that the toilet is in it's own little closet that is like three feet by four feet. small enclosed space. anyway, so i'm sittingon the toilet, going about my business. and all the sudden i see a cockroach crawl under the door. andi'm like AAHHHHHHHHHHH! but i can't get up and run away BECAUSE I'M ON THE TOILET. so i'm trying to manuveur as much as possible to get away from the giant roach but can't really move because i'm in a toilet cupboard and not wearing any pants. anyway, i wish i could paint a better pictureof this but basically it involves me screaming, half naked, and my companions laughing their butts off. this is my life.

apart from harrowing experiences with toilet roaches, things are going well. we're working on nailing down baptismal dates for a bunch of our investigators. there are 3 of them that want to get baptized, which is awesome. but the thing is with people here is that a lot of them want to get baptized on a day like their birthday, or their parents' wedding anniversary. which are in may. or september. and we're like noooo that's too far awaaaaay. so we're working on that. but we have one investigator, a dad, who is really making a lot of progress andit's awesome to see the changes. his wife is inactive, but trying to come back. last week we had a lesson about setting goals for the new year and they both set the goal to quit smoking and drinking this year. when we wentto the lesson this past friday, he was like "man we had so many temptations today! all of our friends invited us to go drinking, even offered to pay, but we were like no we can't! and we thought about how the sisters were coming to teach us and we were like yeah we DEFINITELY can't!" haha. and they've started reading the book of mormon together too, so that's way cool.

anyway, i gotta wrap this up, but before i do, i would like the share a funny quote from the week. we were teaching a follow-up lesson to the babou kids about temple marriage and how they can start preparing now, and their mom, nas, was like: "yeah if you don't work hard in school, you'll have to marry a homeless person. and homeless people can't go in the temple." haha. so random. so funny.

anyway again, gotta go. love you all and i think you're great. have a good week!!

love,
soeur hansen

January 9, 2012

ok as usual i have no time, but for real this time, i have like 10 minutes max, because of stupid missionary choir. i'm not bitter, i just hate it. we have "encore performances" in a few other stakes on the island sooooo practices have started up again. it's nice that people want to hear us sing, but...let me compare it to this. the first concert was like the superbowl. we all practiced hard and put on a good show and everyone was happy with the success. and now it's like they're asking the winning superbowl team to go play a couple of pick-up games with the local high school teams. does that analogy make me sound incredibly conceited? well get over it. the point is, nobody is really in it anymore so it becomes a 3 hour session of the choir director yelling at us to sing better on our pday. bleh. oh well.

anyway, in other news, it's literally been raining non-stop (when i say literally, i mean literally) for the past three days. hasn't stopped. i've actually been COLD here, because my feet are constantly soaked and the wind blows and it's just miserable. but it's the rainy season apparently, so it is to be expected. i'll do my best not to drown this week.

let's seeeeee...this week we're going to focus on recontacting some old investigators to see if they are still interested in the lessons. last week was slow--we had a lot of references that we contacted, but every single one of them told us no! i don't know what the deal is. so we're basically on the search for new investigators, and still trying to help the investigators we have now progress. it's been hard not to feel like we're in a slump--especially with this weather, but as always, trying to keep my chin up and do my best. i'm working on being better about following the impressions that come to my mind and seeing what happens afterwards, rather than wondering what would have happened if i would have done it. sometimes nothing happens immediately, but other times i recognize right away why i had that thought. i'm realizing more and more that i just need to be brave and open my mouth--with the people around me, with our investigators, and with my companion. i always just thought that i didn't want to be imposing or demanding, but there's a difference between being bold and being overbearing, so here's to finding that balance this year.

well, my time is about up. we have to take back the sisters from another area, and we have two family home evenings to teach tonight, so time is short! sorry this update is so skimpy. next week we have choir practice again, so i can't promise anything better. but know that you're in my thoughts and prayers and i love each and every one of you!

love,

soeur hansen

January 2, 2012

herro everyoneee,

first off, let me just say: happy 2012! supposedly the world is ending this year, so i suggest you all start repenting and reading your scriptures and stuff. as a missionary,it's my duty to warn. so there you have it--you've been warned. anyway, how crazy is it that it's 2012? in reflecting on the year 2011, i have to laugh a bit, because it was last january where i was asking myself the question "should i go on a mission?" and voila, january 2012, here i am a third of the way into said mission. crrraaaaaaaazzzzyyyyyy. here's hopin' that 2012 will be a good one.

anyway, we just got back from the best pday activity ever!!! going to a birthday party at the pool! oh wait, did i say the best pday activity ever? because i actually meant THE WORST!!!! do you know how awful it is to be sitting next to a pool, in a skirt, on a blazing humid and hot day watching everyone swimming while you sit there, hating your life? IT'S THE WORST! why my companion thought that this would be an enjoyable way to spend pday is totally beyond me. whatever, now i'm sittingin front of a fan doing my emails, so alls well that ends well i guess. (grumble grumble stupid pool stupidpeople that are allowed to swim grumble i'm not bitter)

back to new years (can you tell i'm scatterbrained??)--it was actually pretty fun. although we had to be in back in our house at 9:00, we got permission from our mission president to stay up until midnight to watch the fireworks. and we have a reallygood view from our house so we got a good show. and we just sat out on the terrace and played the guitar and ukelele (i'm getting pretty good, just so you know, but apparently my sense of rhythm is seriously lacking because when i play i may or may not sound occasionally handicapped--but i'm workingon it) and ate food and drank martinelli's. so that was cool. but then on sunday church started at 7:30 which was pretty uncool. and since it was january 1st on sunday, out of our three wards only2 of our investigators came to church. bleh. in one of our wards this past sunday there was a couple visiting from the cook islands (part of new zealand, so they speak english) and i got to translate for them. dude, translating is hard! my brain was all mixed up and didn't know what the heck language i was trying to speak. and then when people would start speaking french i would just listen for like 30 seconds and then remember that i was supposed to be translating and i was like ah crap and would try to catch up. and i'm pretty sure i was speaking a whole lot of franglais (french and english) sooo...whatever. it was fun and in the end, everyone was able to communicate which is the point right? right.

this week we had another service project where we went and planted a garden at a potential investigator's house. it was actually pretty cool because when we started, the dad wasn't there. the second day when we went back to finish, the dad was there and he started talking to us and was like "i'm catholic and pretty involved in my own religion, but i gotta say that this is just a miracle!" and started telling us about how a few weeks earlier he was talking to some members and how they were telling him about planting gardens, putting together 72 hour kits, being prepared, etc. etc. and he had thought to himself about how he wanted to do that, but he didn't know how. and then bam! he comes home one day and there's a garden started in his backyard! he was super into it and wanted us to teach him how to plant and take care of it and stuff. hopefully we have enough of a confidence built up between us that we can commit him to take the lessons. we'll see what happens--we're supposed to go back tomorrow.

anyway. as fun/weird/hard as the holidays were here, i'm kind of glad that they're over, because maybe now we can actually get back to the normal groove. i think i said this last week, but lessons are hard to come by during the holidays. we got a bunch of references for people to teach but all of themwere for after the holidays. but! now we can go find them.  i'm anxious to get back into days filled with lessons. when we don't have lessons, life just becomes really heavy and i hate that. so here's to a new year and a new chance to digin our heels and get down to business.

welp that's pretty much all i got for now. transfers will potentially be happening in maybe 3 weeks or so. i'm never quite sure when transfers happen. but, whatevs. i kinda hope that i will get to be on a bike soon (i know i'mgoing to regret saying that after my first day out on a bike) so i can stop feeling so dang faaaat all the time. the car has its perks, for sure. but i feel like missionary work is better on a bike--easier to stop and talk to people. anyway, we'll see what happens.

alright i love you all and think you're all great. i wish everyone a very happy new year! 

December 26, 2011

heeeeyyyyy everyone,

so the computer i'm on doesn't have a great relationship with the space bar, so excuse any lackof spacing in this letter. merry christmas! i hope everyone's day was absolutely lovely. as for me, the best present ever was gettingto skype with da fam. loved every secondof that. i loved seeing everyone's smiling faces--it's so good to see something familiar! i definitely missed eating chicken salsa soup on christmas eve though, but don't worry--i definitely ate well here, as usual. on christmas eve we were at the babou's house, and we ate "raclette", which is like...fondu. with potatoes and meat. andit was soooo good. except i burned my mouth off because it was so good i couldn't wait like an adult to shove it into my mouth. on christmas day, we ate and ate and ate, and skyped. i told everyone this on skype yesterday, but whateveri'm going to repeat myself--i ate oysters for the first time last week. they were...gross. i tried to swallow as quickly as possible so as to have as little taste asp ossible in my mouth. but number one, i was creeped out by how it looked. number two, smelled funny. number three, slimy. but, i ate two and called it good. now i can say i did it. uhn.

so my brain is a little bit fried right now because i spent the day HIKING IN THE TROPICAL JUNGLE. ooohhh yeah. we were supposed to hike up to this waterfall, but when we were twenty minutes away from our final destination, everyone was like "nah i'm too tired let's go back." andi was like "what??" but no one wanted to keep going. which i personally thought was....the stupidest thing ever, you might say, but whatever. the tail cannot wag the dog i guess. in any case, the hike that we did was awesome. there was one point where i kindof just laughedto myselfbecause i was like "dude. i'm hiking in the jungle right now. i just picked some wild fruit off of a tree and ate it, and I'M STILL ALIVE." it was legit. it's nice to have real pdays now that the missionary choir thing is over, so we can actually do stuff. hopefully i can discover more cool things.

anyway, missionary work during the holidays isn't ideal, because no one is home and everyone says they're too busy to talk to you. so this past week has been kind of slow, and it's hard to keep your chin up on days where most of your lessons fall through. but, we're still trying to be effective. hopefully after new years things will be able to pick back up. but we have one baptism set for this week--the brother of the 15 year old boy that got baptized in november. he's getting baptized on the 31st and confirmed on the 1st--he said he wantedto be the last for the year and the first for the new year. so we're excited for him and hopefully things will go well this week to prepare him for the blessed day.

welp, i don't have too much more intelligent things to say. love you and miss you! happy new years, everyone!

love,
soeur hansen 

December 19, 2011

HIIIIIIIIIIIIIIII!

ok this week was pretty much AWESOME. first of all, we moved into a new house and it's amazing. all the pictures are on my companion's camera so you'll have to wait for those, but the house is great. so much better than our dumb apartment before. we have a beautiful view of the ocean and moorea (neighbor island), and there are 3 big bedrooms with AIRCONDITIONING. except i'm so unused to airconditioning now that i'm like freezing all the time. funny. AND there's a mango, grapefruit, and coconut tree in our yard. is that not the most picturesque thing you've ever heard or what? my life is kind of beautiful right now. my companion is super happy too. she hated the old apartment and complained about it all the time. it was actually her complaints that got us the new house, so i guess for once i'm actually kind of glad for her whining. aah silver lining...

anyway, some really beautiful experiences this week. on friday, we had SEVEN baptisms--the babou family got baptized, and three other people in one of our other wards got baptized too. i was sooo happy for the babous. we had been pretty worried about nas (the mom), because we didn't know if she was really ready to get baptized. we had the feeling that she was just kind of going through the motions and not really in it. we weren't sure if she really had a testimony, so we had some reservations about the baptisms. but we prayed and prayed and prayed that she could get a testimony and really have the desire to get baptized and moved forward with faith that God would help her and us. it's hard to explain the change that we saw in her the day of her baptism--she was...a different person. before she treated everything really lightly and joked about everything, but on the day of her baptism, you could really feel the spirit around her. she was serious, but in a good way. and she cried and cried because she was so happy! and the day after her baptism, something really amazing happened. i saw her and she pulled me aside and she told me about this dream that she had where a man in white came to her and told her that she had a long road to travel, and then he took her hand. call me crazy, but i seriously think she had a vision. and after that, she's like totally in it to win it. i taught a lesson to their family the day after their baptism about lehi's vision and the tree of life, and compared it to the temple and how there was a lng road to travel to get to the temple, but that with the Lord's help they could get there to be an eternal family. and she got up in the middle of the lesson and hugged me and kissed my cheeks and told us that that was exactly what she wanted and she was willing to sacrifice to get there. ah! i was so happy! and then they all got confirmed on sunday. man i totally cried, i wasn't even embarrassed. it was so beautiful to see this awesome family take a huge step forward towards being together forever. i'm really hoping that next year i can be there when they go through the temple. anyway, it was really just such a testimony to me that God hears out prayers and that this is his work. i saw a beautiful change of heart in our investigator, and i feel really grateful to have been a witness to that miracle.

also, cool experience this week. we've been teaching this lady joanna for about 2 months. her husband is an inactive member, and we usually teach them together. anyway, this past week her husband couldn't be at the lesson but we decided to still just teach her (duh it's what we do). anyway, i felt like i should teach the lesson about the temple. it went pretty well. normally she doesn't have anything to say during lessons, but she really opened up during this one. i asked her if the temple was something she wanted for her family and she was like uhhh YES. and then i was like so what's stopping you from getting to this goal? and she was like "steve" (her husband). and she told us about how he's not really ready to give up his habits and she really wants to change and come to church and go to the temple to seal their family, but she can't do it alone. anyway, it was really cool to have this discussion, because normally she doesn't really say a lot. and i felt like we got such a better look into whatshe was thinking and wanting. anyway, this week i prayed a lot that her husband's heart could be softened and that together they could have the desire to move forward. and on sunday i totally peed my missionary skirt BECAUSE THEY BOTH CAME TO CHURCH!!!!!!! GAAAAAAAAAAH I WAS SO HAPPY! seriously i cried. i was so happy. i know it doesn't really mean that tomorrow she's going to get baptized or whatever, but still, it was a little thing that really meant so much to me. it meant so much to know that God had listened to my prayers, that he helps his missionaries.

anyway, i don't have a lot of time. but i just wanted to talk about those two really awesome things that happened this week. i think about them, and i just smile. i love our investigators, and now that i've seen how much they can change, i feel like a little fire has been lit under me and i want all of them to have those changes! lots of testimony building experiences this week. the gospel is true, guys. it's legit. it makes you happy. i'm glad to be out sharing this message. i hope you all have an awesome and beautiful christmas. i love you!!

love,

soeur hansen