week 80

Bula Vinaka family!!!

Man sounds like things are doing very good back there…Except the Twinkie deal! That’s not good! Man Farley and Tyson are home already? That’s crazy...I don’t feel like I have been here that long. Not at all! It’s weird! Unlike Jace I am not fit, ha I am so fat! I like the beard thing though! Haha… Not going to lie...People said it would change on the mission but I still wish I could grow my goatee again! Haha.  Well this week was a pretty good week. We were in our area more than 2-3 days. We did two isevusevus this week...It’s the culture thing to open a village or an area. We did with two chiefs. It was pretty cool.  They use a Tabua...(whales tooth) for anything like that or a marriage or stuff like that.  You offer a tabua, it’s a big deal here in Fiji. It was cool to be a part of that. I finished the Book of Mormon in Fijian this week too. I want to finish it in English this month. I don’t know if I will because we have our Zone Conference to worry about but next month for sure. We have been way busy figuring out the ZC things. We need to get all the flights and boat schedules ready and make sure people are at the right place at the right time. Our zone consists of 4 islands but only 3 will be coming. ZC and mission tour is going to be soo busy. So much traveling and we need to give 2 different trainings and get all the numbers ready for the ZC. We are working on  two new ideas for the zone that we came up with to help so we are busy with that too. One is this area thing...5 different summaries about the goals and vision of the area, plans, situation now, area challenges and stuff like that we are doing for this next year...President really likes and wants us to bring it up in our ZL meeting on the 29th...yeah that week we will be in Suva for a whole week...We are also doing this district meeting log sheet thing for the district leaders and the district to focus more on the training, giving a commitment and the district actually doing the commitment and logging all the results and topic.  It sounds confusing now but it will take too long to explain. So we are trying to improve this zone even more so I think these two things will help. We are hoping that it will be a long term thing and not just while we are here you know. Oh yeah my two ward missionaries....Josefa Raika and Kaitani....Raika is going to the Marshall Islands and Kaitani is going to the Philippines. Kaitani called me the day he got his call and was way stoked!! It’s cool to see them get their calls and excited to serve. I felt like I did my job of making them excited and wanting to serve. It was way fun with both of them. We baptized Semi this week! It was an awesome baptism! He asked me to baptize him. He was the only one left in his family that need to be baptized. They were baptized not too long ago but he failed the interview because he smoked  but from that day, he quit and hasn’t gone back to it and I noticed he was very humble, and soft spoken and very grateful. The spirit was very strong there and it was awesome! Very good baptism! So now we need new investigators.  We have dropped quite a bit that aren’t progressing, but we need to kind of start over. We had a cool experience with Inoke. He is that 81 year old. We talked about Joseph Smith and asked him to read his testimony in The Book of Mormon. He said he read it and the power of it was so strong that he was up the whole night. It was awesome! He is way excited to learn! He has a bad leg though so the only thing is helping him get to church somehow. I think when he goes to church once or twice, he will get moving even more. That’s been a problem for us… getting people to church. So yeah all is good here though! Things are busy but going good! I sent that quote last week about pride and I was thinking about how I was a pretty prideful and selfish person before and as a leader I have really learned to be humble and just to serve! I forget about myself and my needs but try to just help the best I can,  the missionaries in their work and in their lives.  In my Book of Mormon reading, I am in Helaman where the Nephites are starting to turn away and it talks about pride and what not...Pride is evil!! Haha. So yeah lots of things I am learning. I have been thinking about the things I have learned and not necessarily deep doctrine things but learning more deeply and understanding the basics...the fundamentals of the gospel. As missionaries, we simplify the gospel, not make it deep and complicated. If you don’t have a strong foundation and testimony on the basics...you won’t move anywhere. So yeah it’s been good! I was thinking also about peoples conversion stories and realized I don’t even know my own families conversion stories! So I would like to ask all of you, if it is ok...To share with me your conversion story...the what, when, where, why type of thing of your conversion story. When you guys started to really progress in the gospel and what not. If not, no worries! I just thought it would be interesting! Well take it easy ! Have a good week! Love you guys!

Elder Hansen

Oh yeah I have been called Elder Handsome in this area too...haha fun fact.