1/15/2024 - Week 26 - Am I Swahili Now?

Short answer: No. But I did spend way too much time with them on "day exchanges" aka, my companions didn't want me so they threw me with the language missionaries for the day so they can do "Zone Leader Stuff." Kinda a major RIP for me, but we tough it out. When I'm with Swahili, I just kinda go around with them to African stores and communities where no one really speaks English, so I was pretty much useless for most of the time. I was able to teach some lessons with them for our friends, (pretty much all by myself because they're both new missionaries and have been studying their new language for a lot of their time and haven't had a ton of teaching experience).

Anyways, we had some awesome service this week at a food pantry here in downtown. They are super cool and bought lunch for us on Tuesday!

We finally met Helen's husband! Helen is the lady we baptized in late December last year and her husband finally recovered from his stroke enough to be back living with Helen and we were able to talk with him! He's a legend. He was talking to us about Transformers, NFL, and all sorts of random stuff and is just a genuinely nice guy!

We had a special District activity this week on Friday where we went bowling as a district. It was pretty fun and none of us were taking it seriously, the best way to play (sorry Bowling Club friends).

Yesterday was a super cold day here in the Ohio. Dayton was around 10-14° at the highest and was around -10 to -20° with wind chill. It was a brutal walk to Church. (Everyone pray for Elder Merrill up in Sandusky, Ohio which is more north and much more humid since it's right on the Great Lakes). At church I gave a fire talk on receiving Personal Revelation, which is what today's Spiritual Thought is sponsored by!

Elder D Todd Christofferson gave a talk on personal conversion called "When Thou Art Converted" where he talks about the importance of making sure you are not just spending time reading the scriptures, but are spending time pondering the scriptures. He talks about the importance of prayer with scripture study, taking time to ponder the meaning of scriptures, asking the Lord questions about the scriptures you have read, and writing down the impressions you receive by the Spirit. He also emphasizes that reading a certain amount of pages or chapters or verses every study is good, but a much better practice is to spend a certain amount of TIME in you scripture study. I know for me it is really easy to say that I'm just gonna read a chapter in the Book of Mormon, a Chapter in the Old Testament, a Chapter in the New Testament, a Section of Preach My Gospel, and a Conference talk. However, it is much more important that we are spending a solid amount of time studying the scriptures, even if you only get through 1 chapter in an hour of study, it will be a whole ton more productive and you will learn a lot more if you are pondering and focussing on the details, rather than just reading the story.

ADIOS
Elder Hansen

Pics:
Bowling w/ the Dayton District
District Lunch
Service x2
Drawings we get from one of our friends









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