june 11, 2012

yo yo everyone,

just got back from a rather exhausting day on the big island. me and my companion asked our mission president for permission to spend the day in the city so we could do some shopping, and we were super excited for it at the beginning of the day but now that it's over we're just tired and a wee bit cranky. this day just reiterated for me that i hate shopping here, because everything is poor quality but really expensive and it makes me MAD. also, i don't understand how people here find clothes, because everything seems to be too small for me but tahitian women are...large. in general. so i'm like...where are the big people clothes? i don't understand. anyway, the point is, i ended up buying some new colored pencils to mark my scriptures with and i think i was way more excited about that than i was for any of the clothes i looked at. haaa. what have i become???

anyway. this week was pretty good. we had some pretty legit moments and some pretty not legit moments, as usual. we're getting prepared for our baptism this saturday for frere ebb--the husband of olga who got baptized in april. his baptismal interview went well and we're good to go, so we're happy about that! he's awesome and totally ready to officially become a member of the church. we have a couple other investigators that are pretty potential for baptism too, they just need a little bit of courage to get there, but we love them a lot. one of our investigators, purotu, is living with a less-active member. she's received all the lessons and is really cool and wants to get baptized, but she's got some big hang-ups about getting married. but we had a really good lesson with her last week--in the middle of it, she grabbed my scriptures and was like "ok here's what we're gonna do. i'm gonna say a prayer and then open up randomly and we're gonna see what God tells me to do." so while she's saying her prayer i'm like desperately praying myself that she'll open up to a scripture that is clear enough to be like DO THIS. and boom she opened up to doctrine and covenants section 20, which talks about qualifications for baptism. ha! it was awesome. and she was like man God is totally talking to me huh, and we were like YES. so we committed her to praying about a decision and have been praying and fasting ourselves that she'll be able to overcome her fears and move forward.

so i don't remember if i wrote about this last week, but last week we visited an older inactive couple--papi and mamie manua. they are so great. papi manua was one a high council member, but he got sick and stopped coming to church and slowly fell into inactivity, and mamie fell with him. but we went to go visit them last week and i just kind of fell in love with them, and we committed them to come to church on sunday. so they didn't come, but this weekend we went back (on saturday) and it was actually perfect because our mission president, who used to be papi manua's stake president was with us and he like wham-bam-slammed them and the spirit was way strong during the lesson. AND THEN THEY CAME TO CHURCH ON SUNDAY! and i was sooooooooooo happy. for reals. and mamie manua was like SO happy to be at church--you could just tell she had been wanting to come back for a long time. and papi manua was there talking up a storm in sunday school, and it was just so great! and hopefully soon we're going to start teaching their 14 year old granddaughter, so i think this is a beginning of a good road. it really just made my day to see them at church though, because they really have the potential to be pillars of strength for this ward. everyone is important.

yesterday something cool happened too. we were knocking doors (or more realistically we were stopping in front of peoples houses and yelling "bonjooourrrrrr!!" to get their attention) and we stopped by this one place--not actually a house but a little stand where this guy was cleaning his 4 wheelers, and we stopped to talk to them and he's like yeah you can go talk to my wife so we were like ok! so we started talking to her (and in all honesty at first we thought she was high but it turned out she's just a really happy lady) and we figured out that her husband and his mom (who was also there) had lived in arizona for like 12 years and he went to U of A! and i was like HI MY WAY IN! i was like dude! i'm FROM arizona! and my parents went to U of A! and my mom was BORN in tucson! and bam. the mom came out and started talking to us, and everyone was just happy. so hopefully when we go back like we told them we were going to do, they will be just as happy to see us again! but i was like man this is NOT a coincidence. cooooooooooool!

anyway, i'm gonna wrap this up because i gotta go shower before our family home evening. i hope you will enjoy the pitchas--one of them is with the new elder in our district, elder cannon, WHO IS A GIANT. the other one is just one of those really painfully awkward posed picture with me and my companion soeur chapman, but at least the background is really pretty. the island in the back is tahiti. and then the last one is soeur chapman posing in front of the mountain that we love because it's in the form of a woman looking up to heaven. if you look closely, you can see the chin and the nose and the forehead, and her hair is like the downslope of the mountain. welp that's all i got. i love you and miss you as usual. thanks for everyone who writes me and don't be mad if it takes me forever to write you back. it does not diminish my love for you, nor my appreciation for your letters!!

love,

soeur hansen

p.s. CONNOR BINGHAM, if you read this, know that you are the BEST!!!! just got your package and it made my LIFE! you've got a big fatty letter coming your way.

june 4, 2012

june 4

helloooo,

welp this week's email is going to be short and sweet, because yesterday was tahitian mother's day, meaning that i got to SKYPE. so mom and dad and fambly, you've gotten your fill of me i'm sure. as for the rest of you, sorry you couldn't see my tan missionary face, but i hope you will be consoled by these pictures of a beautiful tahitian sunset and a crazy tahitian fruit that i honestly don't know the name of in english because i'm pretty sure it only exists here. (also, i don't know why i'm partially transparent in this picture, so just ignore that...) 

this week was a pretty good one. slowly but surely the work is moving along, and we're getting some new potential investigators. the other investigators that we have right now are doing pretty good, some are progressing, some are not. it can be pretty frustrating sometimes when you feel like you're doing your best to teach the gospel and they still just don't get it, but i've found a lot of insight and comfort through the stories of missionaries in the book of mormon--even THEY had struggles during the mission, and they were like...really awesome. sometimes i'm way too impatient with myself in the sense that i feel like i need to be perfect all the time and that if i'm not perfect by the time my mission is over, i'm a FAILURRRRRE! obviously this is not true. it's part of the process of learning patience, i guess. anyway, we're trying our best out here on this lil' island and i know that God is going to bless us for our diligence. that's about all i got for now.

hope everyone is doing well and being happy! enjoy the pitchas and write me ok? love!

love,

soeur hansen

may 28, 2012

may 28

hey errbodyyyy,

we just got back from an activity day with our ward--sports day. it was actually pretty fun but reminded me of how horribly uncoordinated i am. although i am proud to say that i made a basket. that's my one claim to fame. the rest of the day pretty much consisted of me making a total fool of myself. but that's gotta be pretty endearing though right? that's what i kept telling myself. although there was a slight mishap that probably gave me some minor brain damage--some kid in the ward david beckham'd me in the head with the soccer ball and it HURT SO BAD. seriously. i was like...dazed. and i felt the tears coming to my eyes but i was like GAAH I CAN'T CRY IN FRONT OF PEOPLE UNLESS I'M BEARING TESTIMONY!! so i calmly removed myself and sat under a tree and pretended like my eyes were sweating. i think the kid felt really bad though because he like put himself in time-out, haha. other than that, it was a successful day and everyone seemed really happy to be there. then afterwards i gave soeur chapman a piano lesson, because she wants to learn. she's actually catching on really quick. i taught her the jazzed up version of "heart and soul" on the piano and we had ourselves a little jam session and it was just precious.

welp this week we just kept pluggin' along. still in a bit of a lull in our sector--we're trying really hard to find new amis, but little by little things are moving forward. we've got a couple new potentials that we're trying to build a relationship with so they can be comfortable with us. we had three people come to church with some members on sunday and obviously we were really excited about this, but then at the same time we kind of have to calm down and stop drooling because if we pounce on them right away they're going to be totally weirded out. anyway, i can say with 100% confidance though that these people are answers to our prayers and that God is preparing them. so for right now we're encouraging the members to be a good support to them and trying to be as normal and friendly as possible when interacting with them. also, one of our other potential investigators is the father-in-law of a woman in our ward--we went to eat at their house last night and were all talking together and the father-in-law decided it would be a really good idea to offer me to his son as a future wife. aaand he pretty much has our wedding planned. the first time he said it we were all laughing and stuff, but then he kept bringing it up and i was like dude i think papi might be serious about this marriage thing... so...yeah that whole situation was pretty awkward but you just gotta laugh about it. i'll let you guys know if a ring surfaces in this situation. stay tuned.

let's seeeee what else can i talk to you about...well, we had to drop three investigators (a fambly) this week because they got secretly baptized into a brand-new upstart religion and their leader person told them they couldn't talk to us anymore. so that was kind of a shock. and it was really frustrating too, because we have been working so hard to get the dad to move forward because he has been dragging his feet for so long, and now BOOM. baptized. into a new religion. where they meet at some guy's house. and then he was like "yeah! all the things they teach are the same things that you guys teach too!" and i was just like WHAA??? definitely a punch-myself-in-the-face moment. who knows though, maybe it's like a preparation for him on da path o' righteousness. so we put them on standby for a month or two but we're going to go back after and see how they're doing.

this other day we were focusing on the part of our sector that is the farthest away from our house (like 35ish minutes on bike) and of course, it starts to pouring rain and we're drowning. so we start looking for some place to take shelter until the rain calmed down and i said this lil' prayer in my heart like "father in heaven, can you put someone in our path to teach where we find shelter?" and we keep biking and decide to stop at this member's house. we get there and the member isn't there, but lo and behold their daughter in law is (who we have never before met) and she greets us with a HUGE smile and welcomes us and gives us towels to dry off. so we're kind of chatting for a bit and find out that she's not a member, she has met with the missionaries before, SHE'S READ THE ENTIRE BOOK OF MORMON, and she wants to get baptized. WHAT?! OK. seriously, my jaw kind of dropped when i saw how immediately and how...completely my little baby prayer was answered. although i know that there is a long road ahead for this particular woman because she's got some big obstacles in her way, i know that it wasn't a coincidence that we met her that day and i was really grateful for that boost for my spirit. 

aaaaaaaaaaand i got to go to the templllllllllllle this week and it was wonderful and lovely. and i got the liahona with the conference talks. and i got to eat mcdonalds. ALL IN ONE DAY. trifecta of happiness, right there. ok i really feel like i'm just blabbering right now so i think i'm gonna wrap this up. so as usual, i love you and miss you and think the people that write me letters are great. the people that don't write me letters, you have the potential to be great and i believe that you can achieve this greatness. so get to it. xoxo!

love,

soeur hansen 

may 21, 2012

hey everyone!

last week our normal internet spot kind of pooped out so we didn't have time to look for a new one and do mails, so i only had a few minutes to send a quick note. hopefully nobody cried too much. anyway, here i am another monday afternoon sending out my email to tell you all i'm alive and stuff.

so i gotta be 100% honest here--these past two weeks have been BRUTAL. let me elaborate. as a missionary, we plan out every hour of every day. where we're going to go, who we're going to see, what we're going to do. that way we (in theory) can effectively use our time. so we have a plan A, which is ideal, but because we try to be prepared, we make a plan B just in case. well lemme tell ya. these past two weeks i feel like every day we had to go through plans a,b,c, d,....aaaaaaaaalll the way to z!! guhhh. every day i felt like we were pulling our hair out trying to meet with our investigators, trying to find new investigators, and trying to motivate our members. it has been...exhausting...and demoralizing. and yet, we have been really trying hard to be obedient and prayerful and fasting a lot a lot. it's times like this where at the end of the day, despite your best efforts, you feel like a total waste of space. blah!! we have been trying really hard lately to find new investigators to refresh our pool a little bit, because most of the ones we have now aren't moving forward (again, despite our best efforts). we've been trying to work with our members to get them motivated to prepare their friends to meet with us, but...it's been like...hmm what would a good analogy be? it's been like trying to drag a dead horse over the rocky mountains. anyway, in the meantime, we've had to resort to our own efforts for finding new investigators. which means that although it's like a last resort, we've been doing A LOT of door-to-door tracting. a lot. ha! let's move on to a new paragraph to tell a funny story about tracting.

so last weekend, we had some mini-missionaries with us (aka young adults preparing to serve a mission come with us for a day to get a taste of what the mission is like. poor them they came during our slump). so i took two with me and soeur chapman took one with her and we did a split for the day. anyway, so i took my two minis with me and we started doing tracting. the FIRST house we go to--so this is their very first tracting experience, right--it's this old papi and i'm like hey how's it goin' and he comes out and starts yelling at us in rapid tahitian like "blaaah aren't you guys tired of coming around here all the time? we don't want you here that's why we put the gate up! if you come back again i'm going to let my dogs loose on you!" etc. etc. other colorful things were added and i was just like ok papi have a good day and turned around and walked away. those poor lil mini missionaries! hahaha. so sad. but so funny at the same time. one of them was like "oh man i wanted to cry when he was yelling at us!" i guess the fact that i was able to laugh about it just shows that i'm a seasoned soldier? haha.

anyway, maybe that story will give you a little taste of the past two weeks. but it hasn't been all bad, of course. i know that times like this that forge our character and our faith, so i'm just trying to keep the perspective that there is SOMETHING that i'm supposed to learn from all of this. either that or God wants me to go prematurely bald from pulling out my hair. there was one day where it had been a really long, hot afternoon of rejection over and over, and i was seriously just at the point of throwing down my helmet and dying on the side of the dirt road. i said a pathetic little prayer in my head, "Heavenly Father? I can't keep doing this. I need to see at least a little pinpoint of light at the end of this tunnel." We go to the next house. We see the person inside, and we're calling out to them, but they purposely ignore us (i guess that's better than getting threatened by an old papi, right?). We move on. And i'm on the verge of giving up, but there's one more house in the area so we're like ok we'll go. and you know what? they welcomed us in and listened to us. there was no miracle conversion or anything, but we were able to invite them to listen to our message and they accepted. i don't really know what will happen with them, but i realized that that was my little ray of light in the darkness. after so many rejection, there was at least ONE person that listened to us.

ok this is getting too long and my companion is getting bored, so i'm gonna wrap this up. i love you all and think you're great!

love,

soeur hansen