Date: 04-17-2017
Companion: Sister Staker
Area: Vancouver North Stake, Walnut Grove Ward
Wowowowow!!!!!! Good morning everyone!!
The highlight of this week is probably the fact that MICHAEL WAS BAPTIZED!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! ahhhhhh!!! He's incredible, I love him so much! The baptism was amazing and the spirit was so strong. He bore his testimony and it was just soooooooo fantastic! Ahhhh! It was so cool to see his testimony grow. The first time we met him, one of the first things he said to us was "I don't know much about the church, and I don't know what it is but this church is so true. I want to be Mormon so bad" BAM!!!! and then at the baptism it was so good! His testimony makes me want to be better and to rely on God more. I know that as we put our trust in Him wholeheartedly, that he will NOT let us fail. I LOVE THIS GOSPEL!!
A couple of other fun things this week. We had district meeting and district lunch outside this week and it was FREEZING. But it was so much fun! We play this fun game called "snaps" and its probably not really that fun but when you're simple minded and easily entertained like I am then it's a really fun game! Basically you just throw a snap to someone like you're throwing a ball and they have to catch it, but you're not really throwing anything so you make it a big production so it's funny. We played that. It was fun!
Sister Staker went on her departing temple trip this week so I got to be with sister samples for most of the day! It was really fun!
I know that God lives and hears our prayers. And when we work hard and show Him we are serious, He will give us all that we need! The church is true! See you all next week!
-Sister Hansen
1. Sister Hansen & Sister Samples
2. District
3. District
4. Sister Staker, Michael, Sister Hansen
5 & 6. Michael with us missionaries and his family and friends
Date: 04-17-2017
Companion: Sister Staker
Area: Vancouver North Stake, Walnut Grove Ward
GOOOOOD morning everyone!!! I hope you all had a fantastic Easter yesterday. I love that we celebrate the life of Christ and all the hope he brings us through His sacrifice we call the Atonement. We are never truly alone. He loves us so much that He was willing to take our sins upon Himself, but He did more than that. He felt everything that we would ever feel, so that we would never be alone. He is always there and knows what we need. It is imperative that we are doing all that we can to hear Him. Pray, read, go to church, serve others, but most importantly, do all of these things with the intent that He is there and listening, that He will answer. I know that He will. He loves you, and the second you do one thing that will allow Him to draw closer, He will let you know that He is there. I wish I could tell you exactly how He will speak to you, but He speaks to all of us differently, so it's up to you to figure out how He speaks to you. But I know that He is there, and that He loves you.
This week was kind of a fun week! I went on exchanges with the Sister Training Leaders. I stayed in my area, while Sister Staker went to their area. Funny story: we knocked on a door looking for one of our new investigators and a woman answered the door with a snake around her neck and I said "woah there's a snake around your neck" (I know, you're thinking 'why doesn't everyone let you in with a door approach like that?' And it beats Me?) And she goes "oh yeah, I kinda forgot she was there!" Like it's a normal thing to just have a snake around your neck. And then Sister Freeze (my companion for the day) says "Wow, I've never held a snake before" only she has this terrified look on her face of 'I've never held a snake before and I don't want to' and the woman goes "well do you want to hold her?" And grabs the snake and just kind of holds it out. And BOY, Sister Freeze just stood there, you could say she was, "frozen" (ha. Ha. Ha. Someone tell me I'm hilarious) so I just said "SURE" and stuck out my hands and BAM! There was a snake in them. And then we sat there and talked about the Book of Mormon and BAM! new investigator! It was awesome! And then I gave the snake back and we set up a time to come back! It was seriously so cool! Hahah!
Michael is getting baptized on Saturday!!!! We're so excited! He's doing amazing! I'll let you know how that goes next week!
I love you all! Thank you so much for the letters, emails, and packages!
Again, I am so grateful for families who text me pictures of Emma.
April 16, 2017: I Stand All Amazed, it was beautiful.
I'm trying to find out why she has that look on her face . . . I know that look. LOL
April 11, 2017: "We fed your daughter tonight. We love her. She's such a delight and a great missionary!" Brother Bower
Sister Hansen and Sister Freeze (they must have been on exchanges as her companion is Sister Staker)
Date: 04-10-2017
Companion: Sister Staker
Area: Vancouver North Stake, Walnut Grove Ward
Hello everyone! I wish I had more to say about this week but nothing really big happened! We had a cool miracle though. We had one of the youth out tracting with us. No one was answering their door, so it was really frustrating! No one would listen to us and finally after an hour we called it quits. So then as we're dropping her off back home, she says we should go to the two houses across the street. So we go over right then and the first one just shut the door, the second one told us he had cancer. We told him we had a message of hope and he said we could come back!! Miracles do happen!! It was amazing! So my message to you this week is to not give up. When you're working hard, the Lord will bless us and give us what we need. So continue working hard and just remember that the miracle has not come yet but it will! I love you all! Thank you for your emails and letters! I love them! God loves you! Have a great week!
1. Sister Hansen & Aunt DT, cousin Marley
2. Sister Hansen & Grandma Adair
3. Sister Hansen & Sister Staker - selfie
4. District "funniest tie" competition. Brother Tellez helped the Sisters out and they won!
5. Two dogs that freak out every time the Sisters come over, and they just have to sit on the Sisters.
-Sister Hansen
{note by Mam, Emma is serving in Vancouver, close to where some of her family live. Her zone had a big meeting in Longview, Washington so she got to briefly see her Aunt Courtney, Cousin Marley and Grandma Adair. And yes, my family is vertically challenged, while Emma is not!}
Date: 03-27-2017
Companion: Sister Staker
Area: Vancouver North Stake, Walnut Grove Ward
Hello friends! So there's not much that happened this week! I mean, we did a lot and we're working hard, we've found a lot of new investigators which is awesome! One really cool experience was that Sister Staker and I had been out all day and we were just having one of those days where nothing was working, and we were trying to not get angry or anything. We knock on a less active members door that we've been trying to meet for the past 3 weeks, and nothing. So we start walking and we decide to knock on a house across the street. At first the lady said she wasn't interested in Mormons, and we asked her what she knew, and she said not much. So we started talking about the Book of Mormon and how Christ came to visit the Americas and how the Holy Ghost would tell her if the book was true if she read it and prayed about it, and she goes "oh yeah! I've felt his spirit when I pray! He would totally tell me if it's true!" So we left 3 Nephi 11 with her and asked if we could come back and talk about it and she said yes!!! She was super excited about it too! That was a pretty great miracle!
GENERAL CONFERENCE WAS AWESOME. I really liked Elder Sabin's talk about being all in and how sometimes if we take a wrong turn, the GPS doesn't just quit and call us failures. We make a U-turn and just keep going! I loved it so much! I also loved how he talked about the sleeping bag! And how we can always put a little extra work in right now, to save ourselves in the future. It was awesome. I also liked how he said to let go of worldly things in order to hang onto eternal things. That was SOOOO GOOOOOD. Wow these men are definitely men of God and I have the strongest testimony that He speaks to us through them. If you haven't read his talk already, I challenge everyone to read it. If you have, I challenge you to put more in now, to help yourself later. Keep yourself warm with the spirit.
OKAY. Funny story of the week! We watched the Saturday afternoon session of conference at the church and the elders from our district were also there, and earlier that week they had asked us for a banana bread recipe because they had a TON of bananas that were going bad. We finally got a recipe to them and they said they would give us some bread when they were done making it. So after conference, they tell us to go to the kitchen cause they have the bread in there. They had made some for us and another set of elders in our district so they wanted us to cut the loaf and take how much we wanted and they'd give the rest to the other companionship. So I start cutting the bread and its gets really hard to cut in the middle and then it's just all liquidy!!! And then all the sudden THERE'S A BANANA PEAL IN THE MIDDLE OF THE BREAD. The elders were laughing so hard they were dying, and that's what it made it so funny was that they were laughing so hard. Hahah! But then we cut out pictures of their faces and put it on their car after priesthood session so everyone saw it and it was hilarous. Lol.
I hope you all had a great time watching Conference! And if you haven't watched it yet GO WATCH IT! Be all in!! I love you all!
