October 9, 2023 - 7th Email - Tracting from 9 to 9

 Hola!

This week was eventful, but also a lot of the same every day. Just teaching and finding new people, and most of our lessons getting canceled.

On Wednesday we had dinner twice, once with a member and once with a nonmember. I was pretty full.

Oh wait yeah our truck broke down twice this week, and we had to jumpstart it. Luckily it was just in the driveway. So basically in our cars we have this thing called a "tiwi" which just monitors our speed and stuff, and we have to turn it on by putting a card in it every time we get in the car. But for some reason the tiwi wasn't shutting off when we took the card out and it used up all our truck's battery. We called the mission office and they told us to just unplug the tiwi. Don't worry, we still follow the rules.

Even though a lot of our lessons canceled, that's just missionary work. We had a lot of great lessons too, including inviting this one guy to be baptized, and he really wants to. It's great to see people's progression even in just the week I've been here.

But yeah Friday we had like eleven lessons planned and it was supposed to be super busy but over half canceled lol

Also something that's sad is my zone ran out of Spanish Books of Mormon and we just have a huge pile of English ones that we can't hand out to people who don't speak English, when we got restocked on Wednesday we only got the kid ones lol so right now we're surviving on a singular Spanish regular Book of Mormon we can hand out

Okay, about the title of the email.

My mission does this thing the Saturday after General Conference called Thanks Day, where we just spend the entire day finding. (Finding is just when we give a person a Book of Mormon and invite them to do something and set a return appointment). And we did it from 9 am to 9:11:30 pm specifically. I'll explain that in a second. It was a crazy day and we met a ton of people. My zone alone found 71 people. Unfortunately no Spanish :( but it's already gotten me much more comfortable talking to people and I know I couldn't've gotten through that day without the Holy Ghost helping me. We did a lot of exchanges where I went with different missionaries than my companion and I was able to learn a lot, it was a ton of fun actually. But I feel like I need a whole month to recharge before I can tract again.

Spiritual Thought:

So President Pinnock set up a goal of baptisms this month, and he told us the insane goal of 113 baptisms. He said the number just came to his head and he immediately searched the scriptures for something. He found D&C 11:3, which says

"Behold, the field is white already to harvest; therefore, whoso desireth to reap let him thrust in his sickle with his might, and reap while the day lasts, that he may treasure up for his soul everlasting salvation in the kingdom of God."

And I know this verse was about missionary work. It's been kinda funny how this number has just been popping up everywhere throughout the week. That's why President suggested we stay out an extra eleven and a half minutes on Saturday. He wants us to always have that goal in mind. And I know because of the insane finding day we had on Saturday we'll hit that goal. Even without Thanks Day, last week was the biggest finding week in the whole year in the whole mission. And the 71 people we found was just in our zone. Another zone found 85. Others were in the 40s. Everyone is working hard and pushing others and there's a real excitement going around and it's pretty awesome.

Also I met the ward yesterday at church so that was fun

Ok bye

Elder Hanson

Pictures!

Some cool views, plus an epic picture from Saturday evening with Elder Gonzalez, a big light tower I don't know what it is but it looks cool, 7up