oh haaayyyyy everyone,
pday has come again, last week went by super fast. i'm trying to think about what exciting/new things that i can report to you all. i think heavenly father had pity on me this past week, because there were no strange creatures in our house and i was able to regain a little bit of the sanity that i lost previously. our house continues to be potentially haunted however, weird noises come from our ceiling only at night when we go to bed. which is super sketchy. but we made the elders come over and check it out and they only found a couple rats so i just took that as an explanation and left it at that. i don't really want to explore any further. actually it was pretty funny because the elder who went up into the roof saw these cardboard boxes and was CONVINCED that it was Jumanji (google that if you don't know what i'm talking about and then GO HAVE A CHILDHOOD FOR GOODNESS SAKES). so he like did everything possible to see what was in the boxes, which turned out to be totally empty. but it was a fun time of reminiscing about how much we loved the movie jumanji and about what kind of things would come out of it if we were to play it here in tahiti. maybe centipedes and giant pregnant spiders and jehovah's witnesses. oh my gosh guys, my life IS jumanji!!
anyway, last week we did A LOT of contacting, going from house to house trying to find new investigators. on one hand, it's cool because things change about every 10 minutes. on the other hand, it's not that cool because things change every 10 minutes because people constantly reject you. but we found some potentials i think, we're going to go back this week and bother them again. aaah bothering people. such an awesome pasttime. actually one day when we were contacting, we were looking for this reference that a lady in our ward gave us--just the name and the general area in which the person lives--no number, no address (awesome). anyway, we were looking for this person and i was like ok let's stop at this house and ask the people if they know who it is. so we stopped and we're talking to this lady, striking up conversation and what not--she has no idea who the person is that we're looking for, which was too bad. but i was like welp lady, have you ever talked to the missionaries before? and she was like welp soeur hansen, i AM a member. or at least she was. she's been inactive for like 10 years and has 3 kids and her "husband" (everyone here calls their spouse their husband or wife even though NO ONE is married) isn't a member. so i was like WELP LADY, WE GONNA SAAAVE YOU! not really. i just said that in my head. but we got her number and proposed a family home evening with her. she was kinda like ehhh about it, but as i said before, we are determined to bother people until they know the gospel is true. in all seriousness though, i really don't think it was a coincidence or an accident that we stopped at her house first and got to talk to her. there is potential there.
other less pleasant contacting experiences happened this week, for example, i had my first face to face encounter with a straight up racist. seriously. i've never felt so much pure hatred coming from a person directed right at me. i think my eyebrows got singed. we stopped at this lady's house and she was like suuuper nice and welcomed us in and we sat down and started talking and we kind of launch into the missionary stuff and all the sudden it's like BAM! and she starts yelling about how my people (white people) have destroyed her country and her culture and how all the evil in the world comes from white people and we ruined everything. and then she's like you know what you need little hansen (literally, she called me little hansen throughout this whole discussion) is someone like THIS (pointing to my companion soeur chapman), someone PURE and GOOD to come to YOUR country and preach to YOU. and i was like hm. ok. welp good thing god loves all of his children and is no respecter of persons. and then she was like yeah GOD is no respecter of persons but WE need to get white people outta here. yikes. it was a rather uncomfortable situation. makes for a good story in the email though, right? right.
aaaanyway, we have two baptisms this week! on saturday, olga and her daughter manihiki will be taking the plunge and become members of da churrrch! hooray! pretty excited and happy about this. and we set up a time to start the lessons with her husband this week, who by the way, came to church for the first time yesterday. yessssssssssssss. anyway. i'm gonna wrap this up. just know that miracles are happening and God is answering ouur prayers. love you all!!
love,
little hansen
heh heh
