2/19/2024 - Week 31 - The Saddest Holiday of the year

Wow, this week was a loooong one.

It started off with the weirdest timed leadership meeting ever. For some reason we had a meeting on how to be a District Leader this week. Now that's all well and good; however, we already had one of those at the beginning of the transfer, so it felt really weird to do it again, but over halfway through the transfer this time. Feels a little bit late to be getting that info out guys.

As I'm positive all of you guys know, Valentine's Day was this week. That's all I have to say about it. It happened. It was about as sad as it is every year.

We were able to have a lesson with Lisa and Kelsie on Valentine's day and we were able to talk about the importance of scripture study and we watched the first BoM video with them (because they love the videos we watch with them). We also taught the youth how to bring up the gospel and church in normal and natural ways during their day to day interactions with other people! The youth here are super awesome so I spent probably too much time after their mutual had ended building up some ward trust with the youth (hopefully one of them will be able to come finding with us soon!). We ended our holiday by eating an apple pie with the Huber Elders, courtesy of one of the Huber Elders' girlfriend back home.

Bro Hines from the ward decided to become a missionary for about 3 or 4 hours with us because we needed him to help us out for a lesson, but the lesson ended up calling and saying he was gonna be there an hour after we had scheduled (he called after we had been waiting for him for like 20 minutes or something). So we just chatted with Bro Hines until our lesson showed up. The lesson was actually stellar, our boi decided to pop off at the very end and he was talking about how he has a learning disability so there was no way for him to be able to answer any of the questions that he did without the help of the Holy Spirit. Kinda fire ngl (not gonna lie). He also talked a whole ton about how he wants to turn his life around and follow Jesus, and we were like "Bro thats literally what we help people do." Anyways, after the lesson Bro Hines took us to our lesson with our new member Cherry, which was awesome other than the fact that she has like 40 cats and I am allergic to every single one of them. After that Bro Hines was like, "well, are you guys hungry?" to which the answer of course was yes. Then we went to Subway which had the most GOATED workers I've ever seen, they were giving us free drinks and the coupon deals even though we didn't have them. A true tender mercy. But basically we stole like half of Bro Hines' day, but he was okay with it because he wasn't doing anything anyway apartently.

Zone Conference was on Friday and it was crazy. The weather had been in the 50's and 60's all week, but Friday it decided it was gonna be 28 and snowing all day. We had Elder Haynie (flatten your water bottle guy at conference a few years back if you remember), our area president, at the meeting and he laid out the steps to baptizing every week as a companionship and charged us to figure out how to actually baptize every week (for clarity: our mission goal is to have one baptism per District, which is roughly 3 or 4 companionships, per month, so that is a major jump in goals). So yeah it was a little crazy, to say the least. At the insistence of my crazy companion we biked to Park Layne that day in the snow on a bike ride that is already pretty sketchy when there is no snow or fog... but we survived with only a little bit of slippage the entire way there. While we were in Park Layne, Mother Nature decided to make sure we got extra snow, so instead of the 1 or 2 inches we were expecting, we got maybe 4 or 5 inches (that doesn't sound like a lot to you Idaho folks, but out here in the Ohio they run around like chickens with their heads cut off when it snows and just don't know how to fix the roads and sidewalks). We were able to stop by a part member family which needed some help gettting stuff into their attic and have a quick lesson with them before we got a ride home from a different member (because we would've died trying to bike back to the apartment with how bad people in Ohio are at driving in the snow).

On Saturday David got baptized in our ward, despite Satan trying all he could to stop it with the weather beforehand and the heater to the font going out morning of. David is a legend and his baptismal service was in a mix of Spanish and English talks and I got to say the opening prayer (but in English cuz I was not prepared por una oración en Español).

Sunday I was able to conduct a baptismal interview for a 10 year old in the Huber Heights Ward. Full honesty, I was way more scared to be interviewing a 10 year old girl than she was to be getting interviewed by me. I really didn't know how to interview a child cuz the questions are defo more focused towards an adult, like I'm not about to ask a 10 year old girl if she's committed a serious crime or participated in an abortion, I'm just not gonna do that. Luckily she asked for her Aunt and the Sister Missionaries to sit in on the interview so I think that helped me out too. The interview went well and she is super sweet and prepared for baptism which is exciting!

SPIRITUAL THOUGHT BC THIS IS ALREADY WAY LONG:

I have 2 different thoughts today and I can't decide which one I want to share so I'm gonna just share all of them briefly.

The first one is about the scripture 2 Nephi 2:11 which says "For it must needs be that there is opposition in all things. If not so ... righteousness could not be brought to pass, neither wickedness, neither holiness nor misery, neither good nor bad. Wherefore, all things must needs be a compound in one..."

This scripture stuck out to me as I thought about the Gospel of Jesus Christ. When I teach people about the Gospel of Jesus Christ I compare it to a spiral staircase going up and the steps of the Gospel: Faith, Repentance, Baptism, the Gift of the Holy Ghost, and Enduring to the End making up the stairs going up. The Gospel of Jesus Christ is simple and beautiful.

Applying the principle of opposition of all things to my spiral staircase analogy, there is also a set of stairs that lead down as well. That is the Devil's steps to destruction. It is equally simple, but instead of leading to Eternal Life, it leads to destruction. The Devil's steps are: temptation, falling to temptation, guilt, falling again, and added guilt.

Both the Gospel of Jesus Christ and the Devil's steps are simple and continuous cycles. One of them leads us to grow, become better, and will lead us to Eternal Happiness and the other will lead us to despair, sorrow, and eternal depression. Which path will you choose? Life is kinda like a Choose your own adventure book, which path will you take?

The other Spiritual Thought is a little more on the happy side! Since its Valentines Day and everyone is all lovey-dovey, I think its important that we should make sure we are telling people that we love them if we do in fact love them! Many people just never hear that someone loves them and that's pretty sad. So make sure to tell people that you love them if you do, because it may just make someones day, week, month, or year! I took a very thorough look through the email list and I can say with confidence that I do in fact love each and every one of you guys and I do pray for all of you guys every day!

ADIOS!

Elder Hansen (Formerly Known as Parker)