January 29, 2024 - 23rd Email - Stake Conference

 Hola all you people

So this week was pretty awesome! Had a lot of good lessons and we worked really hard. Nothing too crazy happened, but we did have Stake Conference! And in the adult session, our mission president spoke and had us elders sing a song so that was pretty funny

It wasn't in the program, either, so we were worried for a second (especially since the guy conducting didn't announce we were going to sing) that President forgot to tell the stake president we were gonna sing but it's all chillin

The song we sang was "Brightly Beams our Father's Mercy" which isn't sung very often cuz it's a men's choir song but it's pretty fire because it compares God to a lighthouse and people seeking truth to sailors and us members as the lower lights guiding them to the harbor it's super cool

The Sunday session was all the way up in Barstow too, it was really difficult to get people to come to church 40 minutes away lol

The Barstow building is huge by the way, apparently it used to be a stake center, and Barstow was its own stake, while now only one ward meets there. It's a little sad honestly. Now our stake just doesn't have a stake center I guess?

We also almost ran out of gas yesterday we were trying not to have to get gas on Sunday but we had to give in, we should've gotten it on Saturday but we forgot to account for the drive to Barstow

Also our gas card doesn't work anymore so we have to get other missionaries to rescue us (which is another reason we tried to avoid getting gas). We called Elder Peterson (the car guy) and he said because we were passing around our gas card so much the thinks we hit the cap for the month and new money will come in on the first of February

Cool story there are some nonmembers staying here for a second that are being taught by sisters from the Fresno mission and we got them to church over here which is super cool and also those missionaries know some of the boys from my mtc district which was epic (they said they're in your zone Elder Nelson and Elder Murray if you're reading this)

Speaking of which it's already almost February

Christmas was a month ago

Transfers end this week

And honestly it's kinda nuts

People always say that your training goes by super slow (and it did even tho it was fun) and then it just gets faster and faster after that. This transfer was supposedly a long transfer at 7 weeks and it's already nearly over. I've been in Victorville now for 4.5 months, so I'm probably getting transferred out, which I'm kinda sad about. There was a time a couple weeks ago I was a little burnt out on the work and nothing was really going on but then these last two weeks have been insane. We put more friends on date for baptism this week, we've been trying for so long to put Angel's parents on date and we finally did, for the 24th of February! The ZL's have been putting like 10 on date a week so we just said "hey go on exchanges with us and do whatever it is you normally do with these people" and it worked. We're finding a ton of new people, and now I don't want to leave. Not to mention our house is kinda a party now, we just deep cleaned it like crazy and now not only is it awesome but it's also clean. But I'm ready to go wherever the Lord needs me, and if I do leave I just need to make sure we leave the area off ready for the new guy coming in. Also the members are awesome and it'll be hard to leave them

Well there might be a chance I stay because we don't know for sure yet so if I do end up staying ignore everything I just said lol except the part where I said I wanted to stay

Also it's pretty cool I was here for a 7 week transfer I feel like that probably doesn't happen very often

Anyway life is good and I hope life is good with yall too Jesus loves each and every one of you

Epic segue to spiritual thought

A lot of people think the gospel is super confusing with a bunch of rules and doctrine but really in the end the gospel is

-Faith in Jesus Christ

-Repentance

-Baptism

-Gift of the Holy Ghost

-Enduring to the End

Everything else we teach is secondary. The focus is on Jesus Christ and everything else (Joseph Smith, the Book of Mormon, temples) all comes after an understanding of those five points to build your faith, you learn step by step. Any doubts you may have can be set aside with a faith in Christ, with a knowledge there is an answer to all your questions. It's one of Satan's biggest lies that we have to get the answers to our doubts right now, you literally have all eternity to find an answer so when someone tries to shake your faith just remember you can't let your doubts affect your faith they are not mutually exclusive

Anyway that spiritual thought was literally a lesson but that's been on my mind so

Have an epic week

Elder Hanson

Fotos!

-look at this cat

-look at this sunset

-look at this super long road that goes nowhere

-us singing at stake conference

-me and Elder Gannon on an exchange in front of an airport

-the mountains are really pretty with snow on them I hope it snows here sometime soon

January 22, 2024 - 22nd Email - We decked out our house and I went to Barstow

 Hey

So basically this week was super busy

Not a whole lot of weird stuff happened we just had a ton of lessons, we haven't had this full a week in a while it was actually kinda refreshing to finally have stuff to do and not just go to contacts all day

But our garage is absolutely amazing now we got led lights and a couch and new flooring Elder Taylor put in and now we're vibing like crazy

We got all the furniture from an apartment the Hermanas used to live in but now they moved out and we emptied out their apartment so we got all their stuff

I went to Barstow on Tuesday for my first away overnight exchange (somehow I went over 2 transfers without one) and it was super fun up there, I was with Elder Middledorf who actually got his visa to go to Brazil so he's in Rio rn

Barstow is so weird because it's just a lonely city way out there that we know basically nothing about

Honestly tho we have a lot of crazy stuff going on with the personal lives of our friends that makes it really tough sometimes (like financial problems and other stuff) so it's really weird to keep track of it all especially since it's not our job as missionaries to deal with all that so we've had a few phone calls to Obispo throwing our friends' problems that we can't deal with to him and I honestly feel kinda bad but he's a really amazing bishop so it's going alright for now

A guy in our ward got set apart as a missionary yesterday and we took him out with us all day, it was so much fun

Also our gas card straight up doesn't work anymore we have it but we still have been needing to borrow the cards from the other companionships lol

Met some new people yesterday who are super promising

But overall it was actually a really good week I had a lot of fun Elder Pittman and I work well together

Oh yeah also the Brentwood B Elders had a ton of donuts

So basically the story is

They pull up to a donut shop and there was a truck coming in with a huge canceled order

There was a lady who asked if they wanted free donuts cuz they were giving them all away, a whole truckload and then she said they had even more but they didn't want that many

There were easily like 800 donuts maybe even more

So they gave us a whole bag and it was super goofy

The work has been hard sometimes because sometimes getting people to understand is tough but we have so much fun anyway, I love teaching the gospel that i know is true!

K peace love you all

Fotos

-DJ Pitty

-our garage (that's Elder Taylor the ZL)

-all the donuts (that's Elder Bowen from our zone)

-us and Elder Ortiz

-our recent convert's younger brother drew this

January 15, 2024 - 21st Email - Orbeez war

 Yoooooo

So basically not a lot happened this week

We were super busy tho we had a ton of lessons

Did some service on Wednesday and went to McDonald's after

We had some friends move :( I was super sad but the missionaries in Pacoima boutta be great for them, we went to their house a bunch and even bought pizza for them I was super sad because I've known them since I got here in October so it's a little crazy

We also put our friend Sergio on date for the 17th of February, unfortunately that was the earliest day we could get because he's super busy. I guess I have to hope I don't get transferred, transfers are on the 2nd which is super soon

On Friday we had our trip to the temple! Hung out in Redlands for a minute and it was fun, it's super nice down there. It was super epic and after we were done the sun had crazy lighting and we all smoldered in the sunlight and it was pretty crazy

Also on Friday we stopped at a gas station because I was parched and I needed somethin to drink so I was boutta grab a blue raspberry icee thingy but I pull up to the cash register and the guy's like "dawg I can't sell that to you as much as I like making money" because it was just the syrup and the machine was broken. So I went and grabbed a soda in the fountain drinks and the guy was like "bro let me teach you somethin" and he told me the cup I grabbed cost 3 bucks but there were much bigger cups for $1.50 and so the guy said "you seem like you've had a long day just take it on the house" so I snagged a free Sprite

Weekend was pretty good too nothing of note

Ok here's a pretty crazy story

So on Monday after our zone activity everybody got out their orbeez guns and had an all out war with them and it was pretty funny but I did not participate

A sister got hit in the eye though lol it was pretty crazy she ended up with a black eye, she wore an eyepatch for the next couple days

So anyway what was super scary was we had President interviews on Tuesday so he was gonna see her black eye and probably ask about it. She said she'd just tell him a ball hit her eye, because she was playing with the guns too

Interviews were different this time, we also had to do roleplays with the zone leaders. And one of the zone leaders (Elder Soto) was the guy who had shot the sister in the eye

So basically what happened was we were with the zone leaders doing our roleplays when President had just finished up with that sister's interview so President walks in and asks Elder Soto if her name rang a bell and he was like "oh no" and this was basically what President said

"I had to really yank it out of her that the ball that hit her eye wasn't just any ball but a tiny ball shot from a gun"

And we were so worried the guns would get banned but he didn't say anything about that so we good

Also we asked the sister what happened and she said she was sorry but that he was listing off the names of all the elders in the zone to find out who coulda done it and then he was asking what kind of ball it was and she was begging him not to ban the orbeez stuff and he said he wouldn't so we chillin

That was our zone activity for pday today actually was just an orbeez fight

But yeah that's been my week

For my spiritual thought Alma 34 is a great chapter in the Book of Mormon go read it we used it in a lesson and it's just so good

K love yall peace

Ok now pics

-me in redlands

-us at the temple

-elder pittman smoldering in the sun

-volkswagen beetle

January 8, 2024 - 20th Email - Exchanges and helping people move and gas card junk

 Hola!!!

First week of 2024. Pretty wild

So I'll start with last Monday. So after our zone activity we did a couple trios, because Elder Pittman wanted to go play basketball and I wanted to get Dominos pizza. So i went with the Mesa Linda (English ward) Elders because they had a Dominos gift card, and we left our truck at the church. They also didn't have a gas card (so basically it's what we use to pay for anything car related) so I brought ours with us to pay for their gas. This will come back to bite me later.

So we get to Dominos and we order and we go to the nearest gas station to get soda and we go home. Then we realized we gave our house keys to the Mojave/Jeraldo (Samoan and Tongan) ward Elders because they do their laundry at our house. And we also realized we left the board game we wanted to play in our truck back at the church. So we decided we were going to drive over to their apartment and pick up the board game on the way. So we get to the church building and they tell us they went to the house and just unlocked the door for us and left the key on the table. So we just drove back home and chilled inside the rest of the day. But I may or may not have accidentally left our gas card with the Mesa Linda Elders. Eventually it fell into the hands of the Mojave/Jeraldo Elders, because they were a trio before the new year, but the third missionary finished his mission mid transfer and accidentally stole their gas card. So they saw Mesa Linda with ours, and probably thought it was theirs. So when we needed gas on Thursday, we didn't have our card with us and then we had to call the Mojave Elders for "theirs" (we didn't realize they had ours yet, we thought for a solid hour the Elder who left for home took ours. Then we realized he left home before we lost our card and we realized Mojave actually has ours. And to this day we still haven't gotten it back lol

Anyway we ended up leaving the house keys on that table when we left for the day so we get home and we realize "heck we're locked out" and we found a sneaky way to break into our house in emergency situations (we found it out from the Elder who went home, he used this tactic to do his laundry at our house when we weren't home) so that's pretty epic

Also we haven't taken down our Christmas tree yet and probably never will

And we also ended up needing a ride to the church building because we left our truck there

Also Elder Walker (one of the Mesa Linda Elders) got a steal on an Orbeez gun (a toy gun) at Walmart, it was $50 but it was put in a spot that was labeled $10 so he got it for $10 it was crazy

So that all happened on Monday after I sent my last email

Tuesday we helped a good friend in the Brentwood ward (English ward) move. It's crazy cuz I first met him and his wife when I saw General Conference with them when I first got here. That was with Elder Gonzalez and Jensen and Steere. I've been here a while.

We didn't have anything the rest of the day so we drove a half hour to El Mirage in the middle of nowhere, and we had just washed the car :( and it got so dirty but we found someone new to teach who was taught in the past

Ok you know gas card junk isn't over yet

So that night we started an exchange. We exchanged with the Barstow Elders for the night. They drove down and accidentally left their gas card at home so they asked us to stop at a gas station and give them our gas card. We thought we had ours. And we didn't. So I paid for the gas with my mission food money and got reimbursed. We went home and didn't find the card, so we then got gas the next morning with Mojave which I already mentioned.

Wednesday was MLC, a big meeting with the zone leaders and sister training leaders and president, but this time district leaders were invited too. In Barstow is our district leader. The other district leader came over to the house too. They got permission to sleep over so they'd save gas the next day and just carpool down the hill. But the problem was both of them are companions with trainees who haven't gotten driving privileges yet. So we did another three-way exchange! I was with Elder Evans (who is from Florida) and Elder Pittman was with Elder Middledorf in Barstow while Elder Gannon and Walker (the dl's) were at the meeting. We went and we did service helping someone move for like six hours which we were eventually told we probably shouldn't have stayed that long but it's all the Brentwood bike Elders' fault because it was their members and they had lessons so we had to do it lol

And then after dinner I ended up just going with Elder Gannon because they got back from the meeting early anf Elder Evans went back to his area with Elder Walker

That was a fun day

Called a billion people on Friday to clear up our area book it was really satisfying

Idk the rest of the week was a lot of lessons and contacts not as interesting

Also now there's a new rule where if you're sick you have to do FaceBook work lol

I don't mind that because apparently it only takes like an hour but I hate cold calls so much lol they terrify me, it's basically tracting but on FaceBook where you call random people

We've seen a lot of miracles this week but we've also seen a lot of opposition. One person we're teaching has covid, and another is moving on Friday and we don't think we can get him baptized before he moves because his parents won't give permission. We've been praying a lot for them but it's been hard

Today has been fun so far we had a cool zone activity and got Chick Fil A and played board games

Also Pablo the dog returned on like Wednesday and everyone went crazy over his return, he got in one of our cars, we caught him barking at a cat on a fence lol

Anyway spiritual thought

Alma 34:31

Yea, I would that ye would come forth and harden not your hearts any longer; for behold, now is the time and the day of your salvation; and therefore, if ye will repent and harden not your hearts, immediately shall the great plan of redemption be brought about unto you.

Cool verse that says as soon as we listen to the Spirit and come unto Christ we'll see the blessings from it.

The work is super hard sometimes but that doesn't stop us from working super hard! We out there finding people all the time and our zone was the first to hit our new standards of excellence (basically numbers we're expected to hit) so we're absolutely crushing it rn

Ok picks

-Double haircut with people we're teaching

-Elder Gannon with a dog

-Me and Elder Pittman

-Honestly not sure why this picture of Elder Nielson is in my photo album

-Me and Elder Pittman again

January 1st, 2024 - 19th Email - New Year and Former Missionaries

 Feliz año!

This week was actually pretty good! Still a smidge slow with lessons but we workin really hard anyway tryna find lotsa new people to teach

First we gotta talk about Christmas, we got fed by the Tongan ward bishop and it was some pretty epic food not gonna lie

And all six of the missionaries in our ward went around caroling, it was quite fun, then for the last person (we were planning on calling it for the day and then we just went anyway) was our new convert Angel's family, and then they fed us Mexican food. We got a lot of food that day.

Tuesday was nuts. We went on a three-way exchange. So basically what happened was Elder Soto woke up super sick Tuesday morning and Elder Taylor said they still had work to do in their area so I stayed at home until like 2 pm while he went with Elder Pittman. Then the Brentwood Bike Elders pull up saying Elder Taylor (different Elder Taylor) was feeling sick so they were just gonna throw the two sick missionaries together. But Elder Taylor (the first Elder Taylor) and Elder Pittman weren't back yet so I just went with Elder Nielsen, Elder Taylor's (the second Elder Taylor) companion, in both his and my area. We  had lessons in both areas so that was weird

So this week we started a new finding tactic, passing by gray dots. Gray dots are people who were taught in the past but for whatever reason were stopped teaching, and I guess it's useful because they might be more interested again with time.

Elder Pittman gave a recent convert a haircut and it was looking good until his friend who lives with his family totally messed it up lol (he still hasn't noticed because it was a couple small spots on the back)

On Thursday we somehow managed to split a bowling ball in half so if you ever wanted to know what's inside a bowling ball you now have the chance it's like a weird sponge thing

Even though the work is slow sometimes, the people we are teaching are super promising and we're going to work super hard to get them on baptismal date soon. We think they all just need pushes from members. We're planning on getting the 2nd counselor in the mission presidency (Presidente Luna) to come with us because he is literally awesome

Ok so the former missionaries stuff

On Thursday we were chilling at home doing studies in the early afternoon and we got a knock on the door, and it was this super tall guy like he was 6'6" probably my brother's age, and he says that he served here and lived in this house back in 2017 when this area was in the Rancho Cucamonga mission (which I don't think exists anymore) and he was telling us how the house hasn't changed at all and he was happy to see that missionaries still lived here. It was super cool actually he was just in the area and stopped by. The Church has owned this house for like 10 years now I think maybe more

And then, the recent convert told us that some "weirdos" pulled up to his house on Friday. We were confused, because we actually stopped by twice on Friday and nobody answered. But he said it wasn't us, it was right after we came by the first time and apparently there was "a lady and two dudes" and they all thought they were Jehovah's Witnesses so they didn't answer the door. Then we go to church on Sunday and we see a former missionary, Elder Davis, who finished like right before I started (back in July probably) and was just visiting the area. He also got a different recent convert to church that we've never met before and have been trying to get in contact with for a while so it was super cool that we figured out the best way to talk to him

But apparently the people that were at the house was just him and his parents, which is weird because they should've recognized him lol

Ok Saturday was funny

We were going to the Farahs' house to do service. They wanted us to pour cement on their side yard to make a walkway. But the problem was it was absolutely pouring rain. It's a little difficult to make concrete if it's raining. So they took us to Red Robin instead and I had the best bacon cheeseburger I've had in a long time. When we got back to their house we still got some work done shoveling dirt so it's all chillin

Then more about yesterday, New Year's Eve. We went on quick exchanges with the Brentwood Bike Elders after church and we went to a small town called Oro Grande in the middle of nowhere trying to find somebody but it turned out the address we were given went to a huge construction site. It was super weird, to get to the town we had to drive under train tracks with a 1 lane space tunnel it was crazy but we saw a cute dog so it's ok

In the evening we had a year-end review missionwide. Our zone got 16 baptisms this month! An all-time zone high, we had just broken the record in November when we got 11 baptisms, the previous record was 10. Two months in a row we got new highs! It was also the highest in the mission for the month and it meant we hit our goal of 15.

Speaking of hitting goals, our mission goal for baptisms in the year was 660. It started at 600, but then they raised it by one-tenth in April. And we got 667 baptisms this year. It's super cool to know that I was able to contribute to that number, but what was also super cool was how Elder Taylor (the not-sick one) said he got here last December, his whole mission so far was working to that goal. Now we ready to take on 1001 this next year!

I know the work is still happening even when it's slow, I know we're planting seeds in people's hearts when we talk to them, that maybe at some future date they'll be more interested! I know that these baptusm goals are inspired by God and I know if we work super hard next year we'll be able to hit 1001 too! (Because last January the whole mission only got 23 baptisms. We got 88 in December. We can totally beat that)

Ok bye and happy new year (the fireworks here are so loud)

Pictures!

-us caroling (Elder pittman and I are in the dark in the back)

-weird half rainbow I saw the other day

-the view of the clouds and mountains was epic that day I wish pictures could capture how cool it was

-Elder Taylor (the formerly sick one) and a dog

-inside of a bowling ball