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.
