12/25/2023 - Week 23 - Christmas in Gotham!

Merry Christmas y'all!

This last week has been a banger of a week so I'll try and keep this short and not take up too much of your Christmas!

Top 3 awesome things:

● We put our friend Helen on date to be Baptized on the 30th!! She is a super sweet old lady who is super funny and will be a great and much needed addition to the Ward family here in Dayton!
●The 3 Dayton Zones in my mission all met together for a Pancake Breakfast which included a Pancake eating competition (Elder Peterson clutched up and got all 10 Pancakes before the 3 minute timer was up), a White Elephant gift exchange (I got a ton of random sodas and couldn't steal this cool bull tamer rug 😠), a talent show (pretty weird, ngl), and a ton of games like signs and 9 square! I got to see a ton of my mission friends like Elder Cook and Elder Sainsbury (the GOAT 🐐)!
●We saw a kid (couldn't be older than 6) dressed up as Batman at a gas station with his mom. We were dying laughing because we always talk about Dayton is the real world equivalent of Gotham City from Batman, so it was just funny to see that kid in Dayton just chillin at a gas station.

Other things that happened:
● The Zone Leaders had a big meeting for the mission leadership (Mission Leadership Counsel) which I am not invited to, so I spent the day with the Swahili Elders and we were just in African and other Multi-national shops all day because they still don't know enough Swahili to teach people (they're working on it... they were called English speaking and have only had a transfer so far to learn Swahili) but boy were we out in the community. All the Swahili people love Elder Nwobi but are super surprised when Elder Whiffen (the whitest man imaginable) starts talking in some pretty good Swahili.
● We had our Christmas Eve church service which was awesome and featured our Swahili Elders narrating in both English and Swahili as well as the Ramazani family singing a very cool Christmas song in Swahili (at least I assume it was about Christmas, I don't speak Swahili)
● We all got Discs for Disc Golf from our Bishop, who is probably a professional Disc Golfer from how many tournament prize discs he has. He also taught us some basics about Disc golf so hopefully we do better next time!

Scripture time!
 Moroni 7
6 For behold, God hath said a man being evil cannot do that which is good; for if he offereth a gift, or prayeth unto God, except he shall do it with real intent it profiteth him nothing. 
7 For behold, it is not counted unto him for righteousness. 
8 For behold, if a man being evil giveth a gift, he doeth it grudgingly; wherefore it is counted unto him the same as if he had retained the gift; wherefore he is counted evil before God
Moroni 10
18 And I would exhort you, my beloved brethren, that ye remember that every good gift cometh of Christ.
30 And again I would exhort you that ye would come unto Christ, and lay hold upon every good gift.

Remember at this time of Gift Giving that we are giving gifts for the right reason and to not do it begrudgingly. Love to serve and give to others and become more Christlike in the process!! 

We have everything we have only because of Christ so make sure to remember Him at this time of year (and probably the rest of the year, too) because it is only in and through Him that we can have the joyous celebrations that we do have!!

Merry Christmas!

Elder Hansen

Pics:
Calling home for Christmas!
Mission Christmas Party
Eldé Sainsbury
Batman protecting Gotham
Elder Barker's trying his best
The Warehouse Entrance to our church building 
Pancake Eating Competition 
My Family's Christmas card

















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