11/25/2024 - Week 71 - Don't eat the Chicken Taquitos

Santai, Bon za'ats, Chan cha'quil, and A'uts a'watch to all my Guatemalan friends out there!
(and How're you doing? for everyone else)

This week was pretty crazy for us! We ended up having 7 meals with members this week (which took a lot of pressure off of my wallet) and they were (for the most part) very good!

As I'm sure a lot of you can guess, we got some food from one of our members and it ended up giving Elder Harmon, my comp, some pretty brutal food poisoning, so we were out of commission for an entire day afterwards (and you never quite trust food again after that for a couple days too). Ironically, a couple days after Elder Harmon got sick and threw up all day, Elder Martinez decided to follow suit and put himself out for the day after taking some new meds on an empty stomach (a very bad idea) so that made the work this week very interesting. 

As far as the work goes, we sadly had a lot of our lessons fall through or cancel on us so there wasn't a whole ton of progressions for our friends that we're teaching. 

Saturday was a crazy day, so I think I'll just talk about that and call it wraps. 
-the day started off with me helping a lady translate her Spanish to English on a phone call so she could file a police report on her husband (I'm assuming we're the only people she knows that speak both Spanish and English, but it was wild)
-our lesson we had at the church cancelled after we called every single male member in the branch (and a few that aren't) so we could have this lesson with this lady from Nicaragua. Why did she cancel? Because she almost had a heart attack the day before 🤯 she's like 21 so IDK how that happened, but in normal latino fashion she sent photo evidence (they do that a lot) so it probably did. 
- We had a member meal with a family who had a kid who is slightly autistic, but he's honestly the GOAT because he wanted to show off how good he is with country flags, so I started quizzing an 8 year old on the most obscure country flags that I know and he got literally all of them almost instantly. I was super impressed. 

-Oh yeah, I also tried 9 Million Scoville hot sauce (just a very small bit tho so I didn't die)

In retrospect, that day wasn't too crazy, but it felt crazy in the moment...

either way
SPIRITUAL THOUGHT:
Perspective! It's crazy
I've been thinking about the saying there's two sides to every coin and it's very true that usually there is a lot of bias in what we say and what we hear each and every day and it makes it hard to tell what is true and what is just incredibly embellished.
As I've been reading through my scriptures, I've come across many examples of how to discern the truth and the lies/traps. 
It's the Holy Ghost! As the lawyer and scribes tried to catch Jesus throughout his ministry in some sort of lie or to try and make him brake the law, He was able to rely on the Spirit to guide him in the correct path (and he is Jesus, so kinda helps too). But we also see similar stories in Jacob 7 where Sherem tries to sway the people and contends with Jacob the prophet, but is unable to reach his goal because Jacob relied on the spirit! How did Ammon know the thoughts of King Lamoni (even if Lamoni wasn't trying to tear down the kingdom of God)? He relied on the Spirit and was able to know the king's thoughts!

What does any of this mean? It means we will be able to overcome all of the challenges of the world, especially the most difficult challenges as we confide in, listen to, and learn from the Spirit of God every day!

Hasta la próxima
-Parker "Elder" Hansen






Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

7/16/2023 - Elder Hansen's Farewell Talk in Sacrament Meeting

Image
Good morning Brothers and Sisters, it feels good to see all of you one last time before I head out on my mission. I’d like to start today by sharing some of the insights I have had while doing the online portion of my MTC training. My companion for all of my MTC training is Elder Sainsbury who just graduated from Rocky Mountain this year and someone I deeply respect. I am extremely grateful for the fact that my companion is someone I know at least a little bit and can get along with easily. I am also grateful for all that he has taught me so far during our time together in the MTC. My MTC district has also been a huge blessing to me. My district has always been very open about their struggles, insights, and together we have helped each other out and encouraged each other along. We are each slowly improving every day and that's all that we can hope for from one another. One of the main focuses of our study in the MTC has been the power of boldly proclaiming simple truths and allowin...
Read more

10/9/2023 - Week 12 - Carr vs. Car

Image
Whats up y'all? This week's been a roller coaster of just crazy cool and crazy weird things happening. I'll start with the title story, which isn't that funny, but it made for the best title in my opinion. So, it's no secret that Elder Carr is an adrenaline junkie and when we go down this one big hill back to our apartment, he loves to just go as fast as he can down the road. Unfortunately, on Saturday night this week when we were about halfway down the hill (going very fast for bikes) a car decided to turn left right as Elder Carr was going through the intersection (we had the right of way) and Elder Carr trying to not get hit smoothly drifted his bike for about .3 seconds until he flew over his handlebars right in front of the car turning left. Luckily, the car stopped in time so he wasn't run over, but he did rip his pants. So technically the Carr v car fight night ended in a draw, but luckily no one was hurt too bad. We also found a dude outside the Church w...
Read more

7/15/2024 - Week 52 - Transfers + Baleada = Great Week

Image
Wowza, so much stuff happened this week. I'm still gonna try to keep this email pretty brief so you don't have to take a nap halfway through it. This week we had a ton of member meals with members from a lot of different countries so we got to try a ton of different kinds of foods! Some of the best was some Guatemalan spaghetti and fried chicken (with tortillas of course), some amazing tacos from the familia Escobedo (plus cake and they sang me happy birthday because I had a birthday since they fed us last? I'm still not too sure what that's about but they're amazing), some world famous Nicaragüense BALEADA with the familia Amador, and lastly some Chicken Noodle Soup with our new member Yenni and her family! It was awesome to see the dedication and sacrifice these families will make to show their love for the missionaries! We also had transfers this week so I kind of got transfered to another area, but its more like the two sets of missionaries in this area got comb...
Read more