November 27, 2023 - 14th Email - Thanksgiving Blitz

 Hey y'all

This week was kinda crazy, we had a lot going on and probably because of the holiday it was a really slow week for work.

On Tuesday we got the entire zone (even the elders from Barstow) to come down and do a lot of tracting to help a companionship find more people, and it's called a "blitz". It was pretty fun actually.

Honestly after a while you learn to have fun tracting, it's still not very effective but it's getting a lot easier for me, especially when we do it on exchanges and between houses you just get to know each other a lot better.

On Wednesday we had this guy cancel a lesson but we pulled up to his house anyway and he was back home earlier than he expected so we were still able to do the lesson lol

Elder Gonzalez got a haircut, I probably should get one soon too lol

Also on Wednesday a crazy thing happened, we visited a random person who missionaries stopped teaching about a year ago, and it turns out Elder Gonzalez was one of those missionaries, they used to live in Hesperia but moved up here recently, and we're gonna teach them again tomorrow!

Then, of course, Thanksgiving on Thursday! It was pretty fun, played some football with the stake in the morning, had two Thanksgiving dinners, talked to family, and played basketball at the end of the day! It wasn't an official pday so we still had to find stuff to do the other hours but it was a great day.

Friday we did exchanges. I went with Elder Soto. That day we had literally nothing planned. It was so hard, we had our lessons cancel except one at 8 pm so the rest of the day was us just out tracting and finding for like three or four hours. It was fun though.

We're also trying to rebuilt the area, kinda sorta, we have a lot of people in our teaching pool but we don't really know how committed they are.

On Saturday we also did service helping a sister in the Brentwood (English) ward move.

And church on Sunday is always good.

Spiritual thought:

Mormon 9:19-20

19 And if there were miracles wrought then, why has God ceased to be a God of miracles and yet be an unchangeable Being? And behold, I say unto you he changeth not; if so he would cease to be God; and he ceaseth not to be God, and is a God of miracles.

20 And the reason why he ceaseth to do miracles among the children of men is because that they dwindle in unbelief, and depart from the right way, and know not the God in whom they should trust.

I know God is a God of miracles! As long as there's even just one righteous man on the earth miracles will happen. If you look around you can always see small miracles around you, they don't have to be big.

K bye

Pictures!

-dogs love me I guess

-big train

-me and Elder Soto

-lunar halo last night (the circle around the moon, surprised it shows on the camera) and I mean full moons are just cool in general

November 20, 2023 - 13th Email - Pablo

Hola you guys!

We had Zone Conference this week! We started this thing called "Holy Habits" where we're taking the next month to develop good habits by following the rules exactly. It's a bit more complicated than that but I feel like that's a good enough explanation. It was a really good Zone Conference. I feel like I've been here a long time now because after the last transfer people were moved to other zones around here and I was able to actually recognize people in the 2 other zones that go to Zone Conference with us lol

Also, Angel, who we baptized last month, has a sister who really wants to get baptized now! It's pretty awesome and she's on date for the 3rd of December.

And one of the elders from up in Barstow, who's only in his second transfer like me, got to hang out with us when the ZL's went on exchanges for two nights. That's a long exchange for y'all who don't know, but he was super cool and we got along well

Wednesday we did service at one of the church buildings down in Hesperia, we just did a food drive. I've always loved doing food drives so it's hardly even work to me

But we had to leave a bit early because I had some training zoom meeting, and we were on a zoom call in the car lol

Also also also

It RAINED on Wednesday, pretty hard actually. It was the first rainstorm since I've gotten here. Apparently it rains a little bit more in the winter and honestly I'm super excited since I've missed rain so much.

And we accidentally had a member show up to one of our lessons. Getting friends fellowshipped with members really works! She was just over doing nails with the girls in the family, just because they were friends and we didn't even know she would be there. She shared her testimony on prayer and it was awesome.

Our friend Sergio is literally awesome. He's been coming to church every week, and we invited him to get baptized, but he said he wanted to actually see a baptism first, which is understandable. I think we can put him on a baptismal date really soon.

On Friday we had an epic ward Thanksgiving dinner, really good activity and we got a few friends to come to it.

I've also been driving a lot this week! I drove all day on Friday and Saturday. My mom's probably gonna freak out by me saying this, but I drove on the freeway (on I-15) for the first time on Saturday and immediately was like "I'm staying in the right lane I don't want to drive too fast" and then I realized the right lane forces you to exit the freeway so I got on the wrong exit on the freeway then immediately just got back on lol

On Saturday one of our Traveling AP's came to visit us. AP stands for Assistant to the President and basically his job is to just go around the whole mission and solve problems and check up on companionships. So we were a trio for the day and he just traveled with us. It was basically a normal day but he helped us a lot and at the end of the day before he left he kinda evaluated us and told us what we do well and how we can improve. It was a cool day. We also accidentally left the zone to go to Wendy's but it was okay because we were with someone who could give us permission to do that anyway

Pablo is just this dog we found that walks around our neighborhood. He's somebody's dog but he just roams and Elder Jensen named him Pablo. He's actually the same kind of dog that bit Elder Gonzalez's leg (an American bully) but he's literally the sweetest fattest dog I've ever seen, he's honestly just big and clumsy and likes to be petted. He's probably been mistreated though so that's really sad but he's literally not scary at all

See you guys next week and have a Happy Thanksgiving!

Elder Hanson

Pictures!

-we saw a peacock yesterday

-pablo

-us and the traveling AP (elder smith)

-I got a picture of Juan's baptism from last week

-rain pics

November 13, 2023 - 12th Email - Transfers

 Hola!

Not a whole lot actually happened this week, for me and Elder Gonzalez at least. Because this week was transfers, so a lot of people got moved to different areas. We were the only companionship in the whole Victorville Zone (that's 8 companionships) that stayed the same. One of the last zone leaders moved to Redlands, someone else went to Rialto, another just next to us in Apple Valley. Gotta get used to new people again lol but it's gonna be this way every transfer so

Also this transfer is apparently only 5 weeks so people who are finishing their missions can get home for Christmas, and then the transfer after that is going to be seven weeks to even it out. So this transfer is going to feel really short and the next one is gonna be super long

Today is gonna be interesting because we have to go down to the Inland Empire for a doctor's appointment for Elder Gonzalez (it's sad it was on a pday)

Yesterday we had a baptism for our friend Juan! He was so ready from the start and he had a huge desire to change his life and it was really awesome to see him make the necessary steps. Unfortunately I still don't have the pictures for the baptism :( otherwise I totally would've posted them

This week just felt super long though overall. Seemed like we had lesson after lesson and by Thursday it felt like we had just gone through a whole week.

Now that we actually have all 8 companionships that our zone normally has I hope it raises morale for everybody and we'll keep getting a lot of work done. There's been really good success up here in the last bit despite the many problems popping up. And my Spanish is getting even better, too.

Oh yeah goofy story from yesterday I went to call a member we were going to have dinner with, I typed the number and everything, and it called a random guy we were kinda sorta teaching and I didn't realize it until I had already asked about if we could go by for dinner and stuff so that was awkward but it led to me inviting him to our Thanksgiving dinner activity! I swear I called the member's number it was so weird

Little spiritual thought from 2 Nephi 26:

"[The Lord God] doeth not anything save it be for the benefit of the world; for he loveth the world, even that he layeth down his own life that he may draw all men unto him. Wherefore, he commandeth none that they shall not partake of his salvation."

Whatever God does, it's for our benefit, and everyone is invited to come unto Him.

K bye

Elder Hanson

Pictures!

A cool view when we tracted on Friday and then a sign that says you can turn left, go straight, or turn right from one lane, driving on the Cajon ("down the hill")

November 6, 2023 - 11th Email - Yesvember

Hey all you people

It's pretty crazy how this is the last week before transfers. I'll probably be staying here but Elder Gonzalez might be leaving, but we'll see when we hear the news on Wednesday.

So basically I got my mission president and the zone to call the month Yesvember instead of November so I guess I'm a trendsetter or something

Also my zone is quite literally in shambles for this last week because we have three fewer companionships than normal so we're working extra hard and it's pretty cool to see that we're still getting a lot done.

Last Wednesday was pretty crazy, we had a baptism of these two little girls so that's pretty awesome and stuff but we spent the whole day dealing with preparing for the baptism and we kept having to reprint the baptismal programs because we spelled one of the girl's name wrong two separate times lol

We ended up giving up and only printing the correctly spelled name on a couple programs to give to the bishop and the family because we had wasted so much printer ink

The girls were so sweet though, one of them after being baptized said "the water isn't black!" because she was told by her older sister that she was so bad that the water would turn black from her sins I guess lol

One thing that was hard was we didn't find a lot of new people to teach this week. It was looking pretty bleak but then on Saturday we found two people and then on Sunday we found two people and it was super cool

Also on Saturday morning we took the truck in to get the tire fixed and apparently they had one dude in the shop for 11 different cars to deal with so the guy was like "yeah it'll be like four hours probably but actually doing the job will take like ten minutes" so then like four hours later we get a call from pepboys that they needed to call our car guy in the mission (this old guy named Elder Peterson) to get permission to do the job so we call him and he calls pepboys back and then we were told "you'll get a phone call when it's done" and it's two days later and we still haven't gotten a call back so we're probably gonna stop by to see what's up over there

Oh yeah forgot to mention this it didn't happen to me but on Friday the ZL's were on exchanges with a different companionship on bike and apparently a pug started chasing them and they had to pick it up and find out where it lived lol so they sent a video of them holding a pug while riding a bike and it was absolutely hilarious

Also daylight savings ended and I got a great extra hour of sleep

Apparently that same night there was a search helicopter that hung around our house for like a half hour with searchlights and everything that I slept through but the other elders woke up to see which makes me a smidge sad

We did exchanges on Saturday with the ZLs again so that was cool, Elder Steere and I got to hang out but this time I lead out in my area which was hard but really fun too.

Elder Jensen went with Elder Gonzalez, and they came across an entire town that's totally abandoned. It's right next to the Southern California Logistics Airport and north of the prison. They had stuff I guess in their air conditioning that caused cancer. So everyone just dipped.

One of our friends that was supposed to get baptized yesterday didn't because his family (actually the guy that was supposed to baptize him) went out of town to Mexico yesterday for a doctor's appointment that he never told us about so we had to push it back which kinda sucks but I know he'll still get baptized.

And finally on Sunday Elder Hudson hung out with us all day yesterday. His companion finished his mission actually last Wednesday (in the middle of the transfer, kinda weird) so he's pretty much alone and just hanging out with whatever companionship he can and we have to usually take him to church anyway so we went with him to his ward and then he just tagged along with us all day. He doesn't speak Spanish though so he was just chilling during lessons. It was probably super easy for him since he didn't have to do anything lol

Ok that's everything bye love you all

Elder Hanson

Pictures!

-there was some kinda flyover if you look closely at the center of this picture, there's an air force base up in barstow but idk since the guy we were teaching that day said they looked like Chinese planes

-a cool yard

-this picture is poor quality but it's a light specifically for u-turns

-i took this picture when we hit a speed bump

The girls' baptism