December 25, 2023 - 18th Email - Everybody got sick lol

 Feliz Navidad!

This was a really good week overall, first full week with my new companion and we're pretty much chillin

But yeah like the title says everybody got sick, my whole ward was sick still, one of the ZL'S was literally out the first few days, and another guy in my zone got the flu lol but it's okay we all chillin now

We didn't have a whole lot of lessons this last week, but that's okay we just tried to spread as much Christmas cheer as we could by knocking doors

Also it rained a ton, like three days in a row it was awesome I love the rain

We also had Zone Conference on Tuesday, it was super fun. For Christmas we had half the mission pull up in San Bernardino. The whole high desert was there (Victorville, Hesperia, and Apple Valley) and Fontana and Rialto from the inland empire. They also had a talent show and I played the Charlie Brown song so that was pretty cool

And we also have a new goal for 2024: 1001 baptisms. This year was 660 and we're actually about to hit it. Our zone has 7 baptisms lined up this next week, the last week of the year. But next year is 1001. President said he wanted to just say 1000 but then he was like "well that number just looks big for the sake of being big, what about that one more soul that needs to be saved" so they added one more. Which is super cool. It's a big number but it's also extremely focused on our purpose, ministering to the one.

We also saw a ton of people I haven't seen in a minute, it's cool that I actually know people now

Morning basketball is still fun I'm actually getting better

Quickly getting more comfortable with the new people in the zone, on Thursday we drove the bike Elders to the hospital and the person wasn't even there but we got to chill for a minute so that was cool

Then on Saturday we went to two baptisms cuz I had to play piano for them so we were just hanging out

Elder Pittman also apparently gives haircuts, he gave one to our friend and to another Elder

Church was super cool yesterday, it was absolutely packed, there were two wards there. We sang in a ward choir and it was fun

Then yesterday evening we did a white elephant gift exchange with the zone. It's just been a pretty chill week with nothing real crazy happening just chilling for Christmas.

Spiritual thought for Christmas:

Isaiah 9:6

"For unto us a child is born, unto us a son is given: and the government shall be upon his shoulder: and his name shall be called Wonderful, Counsellor, The mighty God, The everlasting Father, The Prince of Peace."

Always remember the real meaning of Christmas! Christ was born to redeem the world and do what no other person in history could have done.

Ok boutta go eat with some members bye

Pictures!

-my parellel parking job

-me and Elder Nielsen who is going to the same mission as my cousin in Japan we're in the same district while he waits for his visa

-clouds

-these pine trees look like spongebob's house

-cat

December 18, 2023 - 17th Email - Haircut and Transfer News

What's going on guys

I got a haircut last Tuesday from a member and since then everyone's been like "no your waves are gone" but they'll be back in like a week or two

Angel, Caroline, and Kimberly (the siblings who all got baptized) got their temple recommends on Tuesday too, they were able to go the temple on Saturday, more on that later

So on Tuesday we get a call from the mission office that the mission Housing Coordinators were bringing over a new bunk bed. We weren't told why until Friday, but they were going to make our house a 7-man with three companionships and one being a trio. But apparently last minute they said that wasn't happening anymore. While it would have been fun, we barely have enough space in the house for the bunk bed and the new desk they brought in (we haven't set up the new desk yet we don't know where it'll go) but we put the new bunk bed in the room where the ZL's sleep and we all have been sleeping in the same room since Wednesday. It's actually been super fun.

On P-day apparently Elder Gonzalez and Elder Jensen (they went down the hill and I stayed with Elder Soto, they took a missionary to the airport) went to hang out with President and they asked him if they could stay in Victorville, and President told them both no.

Also they changed transfers where instead of finding out Wednesday night we only find out if we're leaving Friday morning and then Saturday Morning at transfers is where they figure out their area and who their companion is. But we knew Elder Gonzalez was leaving already. One less day to pack is kinda sad lol

Oh yeah remember how last transfer I said our zone was in shambles, this transfer was even worse. The other district had 4 companionships to start and it ended off the transfer with just 2. Up in Barstow since Elder Parry went to Peru his companion came down to join an elder whose companion went home and both the sisters went home. They closed Barstow for missionaries for two days.

Transfers was honestly insane. I'm still in Victorville. The ZL's were kinda upset because president had said "I don't want to change things up too much" but then everything is crazy different. There are 17 missionaries in our zone (one trio for two weeks until a missionary finishes his mission, he extended) and only 6 were here last transfer. The ZL's aren't in the same district as the other companionship of elders in their ward, or us, even though we live together. Our district leader is up in Barstow, which got whitewashed. Our ward got another companionship. Another one of hermanas (sisters). So our ward has three companionships now, one of elders (us) and two for hermanas. Apparently like 22 new missionaries came in and a billion of those were Spanish speaking. We were asked by the assistants to President (AP's) if our ward needed another companionship and I told them sure there's enough work but they'd need to be good missionaries. It was weird seeing their area book have absolutely nothing on it because they're opening the area.

I think Elder Gonzalez had a really hard time leaving. He loved this area a lot. We went and said bye to a lot of members and friends. I'll miss him too not gonna lie he was awesome

Now he's down in Redlands and Elder Jensen went to San Bernardino.

My new companion is Elder Pittman. He and Elder Gonzalez were like best friends even though they were never companions. He's super cool, he actually went home for the last two transfers to get knee surgery but he's back out. I have to show him around the area now and I was a little scared of that but it's actually proving to be pretty fun.

So Angel's family went to the temple on Saturday, the parents and their youngest brother stayed outside but they had a great time. Unfortunately, the AP's told me I couldn't go. Transfers were too crazy that if I joined in I'd be holding up other companionships by going to the temple when they could already have been in their areas. Elder Gonzalez got to go, though, since the temple is in his new area.

We also had a ward Christmas party on Saturday evening, which was really good, there were a ton of people there (easily like 150) but then the next morning barely anybody showed for sacrament meeting. Because everybody got sick at the party with some stomach virus. Which was not really good. We were working so hard to get rides for friends and even some of our friends had gotten sick at the activity. But we did our best.

The work is super awesome guys and this transfer even though we need to get used to all the changes I know our 2023 goal of 660 baptisms will happen! We're actually really close!

Oh yeah also this transfer is 7 weeks so we in for the long haul

Spiritual thought:

10 But, notwithstanding the greatness of the task, I must do according to the strict commands of God, and tell you concerning your wickedness and abominations, in the presence of the pure in heart, and the broken heart, and under the glance of the piercing eye of the Almighty God.

This scripture was super cool to me as a missionary, it doesn't matter how hard it is sometimes we're just here to spread the gospel, and I saw some real miracles last week, and those make it all worth it.

Elder Hanson

Picks:

Elder Gonzalez and me

Elder Pittman and me in front of a bunch of hay we hauled for the Nativity play at the Christmas party

Elder Pittman and me with the wise men

Screenshot of our transfer news (victorville on the right)

December 11, 2023 - 16th Email - Barstow and baptisms and exchanges

What's up guys

So I didn't get to write about what we did last pday, we went up to Barstow (smaller town in the middle of nowhere) and did some cool drives and hikes up there with the missionaries up there. It was pretty cool I'll attach pics

Also one of the Hermanas was absolutely dying of something earlier last week, they had no idea what it was but we brought them food from a member and she fell asleep while talking to us. So we gave her a blessing and she got completely better in two days. It was pretty awesome. And Elder Gonzalez and I bought beanies to get us through the winter

We also started going to a church building to play basketball in the mornings which is pretty fun

And we did service for Bishop's Storehouse

filling out orders and we gave food to a member in our ward. Turns out she wasn't feeling well either so we gave her a blessing! That day we were also doing exchanges, I was with Elder Taylor. Apparently his companion and Elder Gonzalez put someone on date they had just met tracting that day so that was pretty cool. I had to teach a lesson by myself in Spanish lol, that was a fun day.

Then we did exchanges again the next day, I went with Elder Jensen in the English area. We had wholesome conversations making Spongebob references and rocked beanies together

Friday was super busy. We had a 2 hour daily contacting session (calling people, normally takes a half hour) because we couldn't find a building to hold our friend Kimberly's baptism in. On Saturday we had 8 baptisms in the whole zone. There were 13 in the entire mission that day. And there was also other stuff going on and we were trying to find the right building at the right time. We couldn't do any building after 11:30 because out Obispo's daughter was getting baptized then and no member would be able to go to any baptisms after that, and because of activities and other baptisms the only time we could do was at 9 am at the Ridgecrest building but we had to speedrun because there was another baptism at that building at 10.

Then we had lunch at an all-you-can-eat Asian restaurant and of course I ate all the American food there because most of the other food was seafood, a lot of missionaries were there and it was all paid for by a member. The Barstow Elders even came down. We were actually gonna go up to Barstow again anyway that day so we did a short mini exchange with those Elders. I got to go with Elder Parry (who actually is in the same transfer as me). The actual city of Barstow is both really weird and surprisingly normal, I don't really know how to describe it. But we did some service shoveling rocks and I didn't have a change of clothes lol

The reason we were going up to Barstow is because there was a Christmas activity at their building (which is surprisingly big for just one ward) for the whole stake and even other churches were invited. We sang in a ward choir, and other missionaries were there too doing the same thing.

It was pretty funny because people were clapping after each "act" and the stake president got up and told everyone "we appreciate the enthusiasm but we want to be respectful in the room where we partake of the sacrament" which was pretty funny

Also the apartment in Barstow is actually really nice and big

And Elder Parry got an email saying his Visa came in and he's going to Cusco Peru on his mission on Friday. It's a little sad but he's also going from Barstow to one of the most famous cities in the world

Saturday was also crazy. Because we actually had the baptism we planned. We ended up attending 3. Ours, some other Elders', and then Obispo's daughter's. The last one was at the Maple building, which has a broken water heater and it has been broken for about two months now. Every baptism there has been absolutely freezing. So we didn't want that to happen again for an 8 year old, so we boiled pots of water to dump into the font. We probably got like 7 full pots of boiling water and then it proceeded to not have any effect on the cold water. So her baptism was freezing cold and she was crying. I felt so bad but then apparently she was chilling by the time they got home

Then we tried to get the parents of this family to want to get baptized but they still need some work and concerns to figure out

We had a lot of lessons that day but they ended up being like really weird and we didn't teach anything. For example, we crashed a party full of drunk people.

We got a ton of people come to church on Sunday! New converts and friends. It was honestly a chill day overall. Plus three of our recent converts got temple recommends!

Yeah good week overall I just think it's funny we did exchanges three days in a row

K bye

Elder Hanson

Pictures!

Me and Elder Jensen wearing beanies

Me and Elder Taylor

Me and Elder Parry shoveling rocks

There's a shopping cart in the tree outside our house

Roblox face on a pumpkin

Cat stuck in a water bottle thingy

Spongebob doodles we saw on a chalkboard at a church building

Hike pics from last Monday

December 4, 2023 - 15th Email - The-cember

 Hey all you people

So this week was pretty awesome

But first I wanted to start with a goofy story from last Monday

So basically Tuesday was one of the Hermana's (sisters in the Spanish ward) birthdays and so they wanted to drive our truck for a day. Apparently they think our truck is the coolest thing ever lol, so we got their van. And for the record, I think their van is way cooler than our truck, it drove insanely smooth and it was a hybrid vehicle which was sick

But anyway

We get home and we were calling people from inside the van to set up lessons when my phone died. And my phone has the sim card. So we couldn't call people anymore and we didn't have a thumbtack to switch the sims. Elder Gonzalez left his charger at home so we had to go inside. But we found out we left the keys to the house on the keys to the truck. So we had no way of getting inside and no way of contacting people. We were using my hotspot on my phone when it died so Elder Gonzalez couldn't even call people on Messenger. We spent like a half hour trying to break into our own house lol and it was really cold, in hindsight we should've just waited in the van

Eventually the other companionship in the house got home and let us in so we chillin

Also on Monday one of the bike elders sprained his ankle, so he couldn't ride a bike anymore. On Tuesday we drove them to some parking lot to pick up a car from Elder Peterson (the car guy) so they have a car now, and we got the official okay in person from Elder Peterson to leave our tiwi (the car speed regulator thingy) unplugged because it drains our battery.

I want to reiterate how nice the van was it was so cool

Also because it was one of the Hermana's birthday and we had our ward huddle (we meet with leaders on Tuesday to go over the people we're teaching) she brought a ton of candy and honey barbecue fritos to the meeting and it was so fun lol

Literally nothing happened Wednesday and Thursday out of the ordinary, except now we're calling December The-cember because this isn't just any December it's The-cember to end all cembers

Friday was cool though, we went tracting and ran into this guy who was cursing out Jesus for a second which was a little uhhhh but we still just shared a story from the Bible and then gave him a Book of Mormon and his whole personality just changed and he was like "yeah I'll read it why not" it was absolutely insane I've never seen that before

Also we had a volleyball activity where we invited a bunch of people, but apparently there was a relief society activity in the gym at our building at that time and everyone (the other missionaries) was just like "just cancel the activity" and we were like "no" and we did it anyway at a different building. We still had to go to our building though because we needed a volleyball and our volleyball was stuck, I don't even know how to explain it, there's this overhanging thing in the gym where we hit the volleyball up there like two weeks ago on accident. I'll save you guys the less important details but we accidentally knocked over a table that had been set up for the relief society activity with a pile of chairs that fell over and we had to fix it. But we got the volleyball.

The activity was really good though, we bought Little Caesar's pizza and had a lot of friends come.

Saturday was just lesson after lesson after lesson, it was honestly pretty exhausting, we gave 7 blessings that day too. Then at the end of the day we set up Christmas decorations at home.

Yesterday was also a good day, we had a baptism! Angel's sister Caroline got baptized, and Angel had just gotten the priesthood so he was able to baptize her. We did the baptism at the building that Elder Gonzalez's first ward met at, and I was able to meet a bunch of people he knew because they were just finishing up church.

The baptism was so good that then their other older sister Kimberly (after like an hour long conversation, and calling the mission president for help) accepted an invitation to get baptized too! Her baptism is this Saturday. Then we went to a member's house, and they have a daughter who is her age who told us that Kimberly had called her and she told her she was going to get baptized too. It was so hype

And President said he wanted to be at the baptism.

Also I benched 135 this morning which is a new max

Spiritual Thought:

I was thinking about a story in the Old Testament about when Elijah visited a widow in 1 Kings 17. She was almost out of food and just wanted to make one last meal for her and her son before they died, but Elijah told her to feed him first. She made him food with the last little bit she had and she found that her food never ran out again and they didn't starve.

I love this story because it shows that if we have faith and do what we are asked to do (especially as missionaries) then the Lord will always provide and we will never starve spiritually. Even when it seems like we're giving everything we have, like the widow was, it will be given back to us and then some.

Ok love you guys bye

Elder Hanson

Pictures!

-Christmas decorations

-okay this picture might look just like a black image but if you look closely on the middle left part and I'm sorry for the poor quality but we were driving home and there was just a toilet sitting on the side of the road

-picture of me and Elder Gonzalez