9/11/2023 - Week Eight - The Purge

This week has gone by crazy fast. I don't know where all the time went.

Last Monday our ward had a picnic and we had a great time there being out with the Ward and a few of the people we're teaching just playing games and eating food (two of my favorite things). We also finally got to meet the Stake Patriarch, Brother Busken, for dinner (with the Spanish Elders so they couldn't cancel it) and we had a great time learning about him and hearing some of his insights from his 20 years of being the Stake Patriarch. 

We actually got fed quite a bit this week, which is amazing! We were able to have dinner with one of the Blackwelder families in the ward on Wednesday, the Tensmeyers on Thursday, and we had a lesson with a younger couple in the ward, the Wozniak's, who helped us teach Doneshiah, who just got baptized, and her friend Makiya about Prayer, Prophets, and the Book of Mormon! 

Sadly, most of our lessons fell through this week and other than the lesson with Doneshiah and Makiya, the lessons that did go through were not our best work. A lot of people we met with just wanted to talk about something completely unrelated to what we were saying more than about the message we were trying to share with them. It made it very difficult to try and teach those lessons when every time we asked them a question they took 5-10 minutes to answer (and it usually didn't answer the question) but we're working on it and trying to get better each lesson, keeping the focus actually on the lesson and trying to tone down the off topic rambling comments.

We had a very funny lesson co-taught by the YSA Sister Missionaries with a guy named Marco who they were teaching and were trying to get to the correct set of missionaries because he was about to be out of YSA ward age. Unfortunately we found out right before the lesson while we were chatting with the Sister Missionaries that Marco wasn't even in our area and wouldn't be going to our ward, but we decided to just go along with the lesson anyways. Marco was wild. He showed up to the lesson eating a blue Laffy Taffy and his ENTIRE MOUTH was blue and he'd randomly just stick out his *very blue* tongue throughout the lesson which made it hard to keep a straight face. It didn't help that the way he talked and the things he said were just funny to Elder Carr and I so we were dying the entire lesson. The lesson was good though because the Sisters carried the lesson on their backs.

As for the Purge, Elder Carr was really annoyed on Friday about the sheer number of people we had in our logs as interested but not being taught, so he went through the list calling people and if we hadn't gotten in contact with them in a while or they said they weren't interested, we removed them from our "interested people" section. In the end, we were able to drop about 10 people from our interested section, which makes it a little easier to manage now. It kinda felt like the opposite of missionary work to get rid of people to talk to, but sometimes it's necessary to trim down those numbers so we can actually get in contact with the people who are actually interested more often.

This Email is already too long, but I'll just end by sharing a scripture that stood out to me this week - 2 Nephi 19. This chapter is very similar to Isaiah 9, and the part that I loved about it is the quote: "For all this his anger is not turned away, but his hand is stretched out still." This same quote comes up several times throughout the chapter, so I know it's important for us. Before this quote comes up, the chapter is talking about the wickedness of the House of Israel and how they were punished for their iniquities, some dark and dismal stuff. But I like how when Isaiah uses this, it refocuses the meaning of the chapter to the love of God. "His anger is not turned away" tells us that God is true to his word and cannot justify sin, iniquity, and transgressions, there must be punishments for those spiritual crimes that must be paid, but "his hand is stretched forth still" reminds us that God is there for us and is waiting to help us out of any situation we may find ourselves in physically, spiritually, emotionally, it doesn't matter because as we rely on Him and have faith in Him, He will deliver us to where we need to be. 

Love you all,
Elder Hansen

Pictures: 
1. The district Lunch
2. The District (but cooler)
3. Fun history fact
4. Just another Castle I guess
5. Very good Pizza from Goodfellas (100% recommend)







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