october 8, 2012

          

EVERYBODY

first of all, was conference not THE BEST? man. loved every second. never wanted it to end. and there's gonna be a temple in tucson!!!!! happy about that. and what???!!! mission age changed! so crazy. we were all just like WHOA. it really just goes to show that there is work to do and we need help! it'll be interesting to see the changes that this will bring to the mission world. anyway, conference was awesome. it really strengthened my testimony of the truthfulness of the gospel and this church, and the reality of living prophets. seriously, i walked out of conference wanting to run up to everyone i saw on the street and shake them and yell "WE HAVE A LIVING PROPHET WHO TALKS TO GOD, DO YOU KNOW HOW LUCKY WE ARE????!!!!" obviously can't do that otherwise people will think i am insane. i am just really grateful for these things. the worries and the questions that have been in my mind and my prayers for the past few week were all addressed and answered without fail during conference, as if those who spoke had been next to me listening as i prayed. everybody. God answers our prayers. do not doubt this.

man we had a big disappointment on saturday though. we had invited our investigators severine and her sister tetahipua to come to conference on saturday and then said yes and we were really excited. so we wait outside before the afternoon session (which starts at 10 for us, by the way, and the morning session starts at 6). we wait until like 10:05 and then go inside, sad that they were no shows. but afterwards we decide to pass by and visit them, and severine tells us about how THEY CAME, just late, around like 10:15. they waited by the gate and looked in at everyone and they asked a girl if there were missionaries inside and the girl was like yeah sure i'll go look for them, BUT THEN SHE DIDN'T. she stopped and started talking to a boy and forgot all about our poor investigators waiting at the gate. and then members who were standing outside didnt pay any attention to them so eventually they were just like well...ok...AND THEY LEFT. GAAAAHHHHHHHHH!!!!!!!!! i was so disappointed and sad and MAD! we do everything we can to get our amis to come and the members who were there couldn't even take 30 seconds to say hi can we help you?!!! mad! sad! frustrating! anyway. other than that, things are going well with severine. hopefully this won't have major effects for her...

let's see...other than that, things are going well. time is going by way fast! we're just trying our best to help our amis learn to love the gospel. because it's great. hope everything is going well for everyone. love you!

love,
soeur hansen

                              

october 1, 2012

hiiiiiiiiiiii all of my loved ones,

this week was a pretty solid one. we had a lot of lessons and were able to get a lot of new investigators--8! which is always a good feeling. we're happy with the progress that we're seeing in some of our investigators, and disappointed in the lack of progress in others, but that's all normal stuff you know. 

let's talk about some of our investigators, ok? ok. we met severine during tracting, and at first it was kind of like a well, that was nice, but i'm pretty sure she doesn't really want to see us again. but we left our number with her and said we would pass by again and she was like ok yeah. a few weeks go by, and one day we're trying to find a plan to replace our back-up plan that didn't work, and i'm like hey let's go see severine. so we went to see her and man is this lady totally into da gospel. we were able to finish the first lesson and teach about joseph smith and the restoration and she was like...so receptive! it was awesome. we left a book of mormon with her and set up the next teaching appointment. when we went back, she had already started reading the book of mormon (up to chapter 3, which is seriously like...ground-breaking because tahitians hate reading.) and she had so many questions. GAH! guys. do you understand how AWESOME it is to have investigators like this? let me assure you that is puts the bounce back into your step. we invited her to pray about all the things that we had taught and to ask if they were true, and then we invited her to be baptized once she got her answer. she was a little taken aback, but honestly, i think she is open to the idea. she didn't say no, she just told us that she would pray and think about it. so that's a good step, right? right. we're happy about it. and her little sister has been coming to the lessons too, which is also great. 

one of our other investigators, lydia, had some big progress this week. i'm really happy for her. last week we fasted with her so she could stop smoking. we started with a mini-fast since she's never done it before--we decided to fast from 10-3 just to baby-step it, you know? but when we went for our lesson this past week, she told us about how after we finished together at 3, she decided to keep going until 7 and she made it! we were super proud of her. and we committed her to come to church on sunday, and BOOM! SHE CAME! love it when that happens. lydia is really great. and she really wants to change. we're trying to do our best to support her in her good decisions.

ok funny story. yesterday, all of our plans fell through. which is dumb and frustrating when that happens, but whatever, it happens. so we are wracking our brains for people we can try to track down and we go to this one house to see our investigator, and sure enough, she's not there. but there are little kids playing marbles outside (tahitian kids are ALL ABOUT playing marbles.) and so we start talking to them--one of them is a member, and i was like hey, mihimana (that's her name), do you know anyone who you think would be interested in talking with the missionaries? (i know it was kind of a stretch to ask her, because she's like 10, but hey! i was trying!) anyway, she was like "hmm...hold on a second." then she turns around and runs over to her friend and is like "HEY DO YOU WANNA BECOME A MORMON?!" and he looked up from his marbles and looked at us and was like "ok!" hahahahahah! i wanted to laugh and cringe all at the same time. it was so great. so we go ask the parents if we can teach them and the mom is like sure ok. so we go and teach a lesson about the importance of prophets with all the little neighborhood kids under the mango tree. guys, that is my life. isn't it great?? also, i found out that the little boy is the grandson of someone i taught in faaa. coincidence? I THINK NOT. aah little kids. they kill me.

anyway, things are moving along. it's already october! gah! weird. we went on a hike today in the jungle with the missionaries in our district. it was sweet. and i free-climbed a cliff (mom, don't be mad, and tristan higbee if you read this, be proud of me!). i included pictures for your viewing pleasure. one is our district in the river, one is me climbing the cliff, and then another is me contacting an asian lady. (LAUGH!) welp i'm gonna wrap this up. hope everything is going well back in good ol' america and hopefully the constitution isn't hanging by a thread or anything. EVERYBODY! GO LISTEN TO CONFERENCE! IT WILL HELP YOU! i love you all. OH. and by the way. i've only gotten ONE letter in the mail since i've been here in paea...and it's been almost two months. :( have pity on a missionary? i know i'm the worst at writing but...what would jesus do? think about it. 

love,
soeur hansen

                                         

september 24, 2012

everyone,

as mentioned in the subject area, i am indeed alive. i went to a tahitian doctor last week and he cured me with some traditional dancing and a potion made out of pineapple juice with just a hint of lizard pee.

just kidding. the doctor was some french lady who was very nice and diagnosed me approximately 0.5 seconds after listening to me breath--bronchitis! weeeee! she prescribed me some nice antibiotics and a powder to mix with water to break up the phlegm in my lungs. (learned the french word for "phlegm" this week, by the way. my vocabulary just keeps getting bigger.) i was pretty much out of commission for 3 days though, which was dumb. i slept a lot. and ate soup. and coughed a lot. i was hoping that maybe with all the violent coughing i might acquire some abs, but unfortunately they still seem to be hiding behind my "steak". (that's what we call the belly here. don't worry if it doesn't make sense. just go with it.) anyway, i'm back on my feet now and doing well. one more day of antibiotics and i will be germ free! staying in bed for three days is dumb because you sleep all the time and then when you wake up you're like aaah who am i, what am i doing here? and you just don't feel like a missionary anymore. but i think i've been able to bounce back fairly well!

soooo since i was semi-unconscious for most of last week, this letter is going to be fairly sparse in details. ah! i know. we had a service project on saturday and it was great. i love service projects because they're instantly satisfying. the proof and fruit of your labor is visible and measurable. aaah so nice. we met this lady last week during contacting and noticed that she had a very large garden/jungle in her front yard. and so we offered to help clean it up and get it in order. at first she was like noooo i don't need your help (that is the reaction among EVERYONE, by the way, which is annoying), but eventually we coaxed her into letting us help her. so we went on saturday with some of the young adults from one of our wards and got down to business attacking weeds and plants and dirt. it was cool. except it rained through most of it. but that's not a big deal. it was fun anyway. i don't remember if i told you about this in another letter, but there's like a girl's home here in our sector (where girls with difficult backgrounds come and live) and we went the other week to offer to help with homework and teach english and stuff. we're still waiting for approval from the director of the home, but i'm reeally hoping she'll say yessssss. service projects are the besssssssst.

let's seeeee...our investigators are doing well. i feel like we're kind of in a lull with some of them, which is frustrating. we have two investigators that want to get baptized, but they have to get married first. so we've been trying to work on that lately, but it's pretty slow going. ah and we had some bad news the other week--we're teaching little malia, who is almost 10. we had her baptism date fixed for october 7, but the other week she told us that she wants to "think about it" some more. not really sure what happened with that, but we were pretty disappointed! she's such a great kid too--her dad is an inactive member, and on sundays she comes to church all by herself. guhhh! obviously we're not going to give up on her and we're trying to work little by little with her parents to build up a good relationship.

one of our investigators, miri, is a young mom that we found doing door to door. she's super nice and her son is adorable. we go to see her pretty regularly and she's started to read the book of mormon and last week, she told us about how her "husband" started reading the book of mormon too and agreed to meet with us. and we were like yaaaaaaaaaaayyyyy! so we had our first lesson with him/both of them this past week and it went pretty well! his name is tapu and he has lots of questions. we had a really good discussion and we're going to go back on wednesday for the next lesson. hopefully things will go well with that! i can't really think of anything else to say because my companion is sighing loudly behind me because she wants to go play basketball, so my brain is distracted.

anyway, i'm gonna wrap this up. but i love you! and guess what? it's almost conference time! weeeee!

love,
soeur hansen

september 17, 2012

everyone.

i am sick. possibly dying.

just kidding about the dying part, but serious about the i am sick part. it started on saturday with a scratchy dry throat and slowly progressed into a hurricane of stuffy nose, headache, cough, and hard-to-breath-ness. and the thing is, i just really don't want to go to the doctor (mom, i can hear your exasperated scream from here) because MODERN MEDICINE IN TAHITI IS A JOKE. and i hate spending money for a doctor to tell me to take "doliprane" (the french equivalent of like tylenol or something) and it'll be fine. stupid! and my companion has suddenly switched over into crazy macho-mom mode (i.e. "IF YOU GET OUT OF BED I'M GONNA PUNCH YOU!" or basically just telling me what to do aaallllllll the time.) i see that this is an expression of her love for me, which is nice. but also suffocating. which is bad since i'm already having difficulties breathing. ANYWAY. the point is, i'm giving in and going to see the doctor after i send off this email.

in other news, when i'm sick, i tend to have some pretty crazy dreams. like where somehow there's a mixture of britney spears and the tree of life. not seeing how my brain made THAT connection, but whatever. i can't remember if i told y'all in the last email, but i definitely had a dream a few weeks ago that i was teaching britney spears about the law of chastity. why i keep dreaming about britney spears? i wish i knew.

anyway anyway, this week was pretty good aside from the whole i'm dying part. we got three new references from our members! i'm so happy! i love member references! andrea is a single mom with three kids and she is so dang nice and i really just love her. we had our first lesson with her and it went really well and she talked about how she just feels good when she goes to church and stuff and it helps her so much. and i was like yes! it does! don't stop! we set up a family home evening with her and her integrating member (i actually don't know how you say that in english) and it was soooo great! matevahi is a youngin'--she's 18 and her aunt and uncle are members are proposed the lessons to her and she said ok. not really sure about her REAL level of interest, but the first lesson went well and she's just really cute and i love her too. and then lahaina is also a youngin' who comes and stays with a member family over the weekend. let me just tell you why member references are SO MUCH BETTER THAN ANYTHING ELSE. it's because there's an AUTOMATIC support. once we leave, they're not all alone. and things just work better. so i'm excited to see how these investigators are going to progress, because i love them all.

yesterday was the primary program sunday in both of our wards. probably one of my favorite sundays of the whole year. love seeing the kids up front because somehow they think that they can see everyone but no one can see them. cue the funny faces, wedgie-picking, nose-picking, crying, etc. i can just hear the silent groan going throughout the parents. so awesome. i hope your respective primary programs were equally entertaining.

alright everybody. my body hurts, so i'm gonna stop typing now. i think you all are just great.

love,

soeur hansen