2/24/2025 - Week 84 - Crazy Week

This week was pretty Loco, but I have very little motivation to write this email right now so y'all are gonna get the bare bones version of the week!

Last P-day was pretty brutal. We had to take 2 of the kids we're teaching off-date for their baptism because they aren't living the commandments and apparently have lost their desire to do so (like broskis, you're 9 and 11, what are you doing?)

The next day we were in a trio temporarily while our ZL was at MLC, so we were going crazy with Elder Montie! 

Wednesday we had our District Council and I finally got my piano back. We had a lesson with our friend that lived in Spain and he gave us his whole backstory, so we were there for a minute. We also had 7 people show up to our English Class!

Thursday we got double parked in an apartment because a lady was super mad we parked in her parking spot. We also had Dinner with the Stokes and they went all out making basically 2 Italian dishes and we had Graeters Ice Cream go finish it off (a big deal out here)

Friday was wild. We found out our most progressing friend lost his job and might be moving to Kentucky. We then had dinner with the Nichols and left in time to go to our friends house and have a lesson with him and we found out he is legitimately married to his 1st cousin and has a kid with her back in Venezuela (where it's apparently not too uncommon to marry your first cousin). He asked us if that is ok in our church, which I honestly have no clue (so if you know the answer doctrinally, send me an email ASAP). Not how I expected that lesson to go.

Saturday we were supposed to have 5 lessons and only 2 of them happened, but they were both good so I'm not complaining.

Sunday! We had 13 friends come to church! 3 of our most progressing friends, and then a family of 10 which have come to English Class! It was chaotic, but really good! We also had 6 latino members, so it was really good to see the potential this area has! We also had a great dinner with the Evansons and finished off the day with a Devotional!

Spiritual Thought: in said devotional, we had some speakers who were from India and converted to the church here in the States and they had an amazing conversion story, but 2 of the topics they hit on that stuck with me were 1) Conversion is a daily process and 2) Be conscious of who you surround yourself with. To talk a little bit about the first, I've realized that I often become complacent if I don't have a goal I am striving for. And complacency is bad. Our conversion is kinda like swimming upstream in a river, if you stop swimming, you're going to be pushed down the river and regress, but if you exert your strength and swim faster than the stream can take you back, you will make headway! In our conversion, we need to ask ourselves daily how we deepened our conversion that day and what we can do tomorrow to deepen it just 1% more, and then do that.
For number 2, there's the common phrase "you're the average of the 5 people you spend the most time with" and its very true. As I've served my mission I've had the opportunity to live 24/7 with some people very different than me, and I've seen how I change because of it. Therefore, to use that for our benefit, if we spend time with the people who will build us up and help us physically, emotionally, and spirituality, we will find ourselves much more capable to meet our own personal goals!

Hasta pronto!
-Élder Hansen

Random pics from the week

English Class




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