November 17, 2014

You all are lookin good, thanks for the family pic.

First off, I´m doing pretty good. Nothing new or super exciting, at least that I can think of right now. Everything kind of blends into one. I know exciting things have happened but for the life of me I can´t think of them. Last monday after writing we went and did these sweet ziplines up in the mountains from treeetop to treetop and it was pretty cool. Got to hold some more monkeys. But honestly I just wanted to go home and do my laundry and rest, I´m always wiped out by mondays.

But yeah, I´m in good spirits. This next week is gonna be pretty exciting with lots of working with the members and all-we have two RMs that just got back and all the young men and women finished with school. We´re starting this thing where we go and visit families and then surprise them and ask them to teach us the lesson-theyre always nervous at first but they always end up absolutely loving it and its real powerful. Still really working on building relationships with ward members and leadership-which is hard because of the language and my companion is pretty quiet. But the languauge is going better and better and every week.

Also had a huge group of gringos from Idaho in church this week.   It was an experience for them im sure, especially because we asked one of them to play the piano for us.

And the other night, after a pretty rough day and being sick the whole day, we ran into two gringos from texas-He was a newlywed RM and we talked with him and his wife for a little bit and it was just awesome to talk with Americans and I really don´t know why but it was a huge boost to our spirits. And he served in New Caledonia and was shocked at how high our numbers were, which I thought were pretty low so that was nice. And then he gave us the equivalent of 20 bucks for dinner. So, if you´re ever somewhere away from home and you see missionaries, go talk to them, it´ll probably make their day. Also, on the same vein, when you have to cancel on missionaries for dinner give them some money or something-whenever people cancel on us we can only afford to spend about the equivalent of $1.50 on dinner. Missionary budgets are tight!

Oh! And we lost three days of work traveling to San pedro sula. we stayed the night in la ceiba, which is great-always love ceiba, hope I get to serve there. The wards are very strong. We went and played soccer with the other missionares for a ward activity and they had 16 investigators there. The members are solid. It´s hard to not have a ¨grass is greener¨mentality about other areas but Roatan definitely has its own struggles. Money is always a struggle because everything is so expensive. And this isn´t even like part of honduras. It´s a totally different people and culture and language than I´ve been preparing for. But yeah, its still pretty cool.

We have also had a little opposition for the first time this week-we had one pastor approach us at the entrance of a neighborhood and tell us to leave and that we can´t preach here. I kept walking like I didn´t understand him (cause I can still pull that off for now) but then my companion stopped and talked to him so I had to retreat and then I was getting all ornery with him but then my companion was like "ok, we´ll go". which was probably the responsible thing to do but that situation still makes me mad. I don´t know what the right thing to do in that situation is but i´m sure it will happen again.

Also, the local paper here published a little paper about joseph´s smith´s polygamy in their religion section-nothing untrue, just skewed a lot-so we had to spend some time fielding questions like that for a couple days.

But, all in all, the opposition is good. Thanks to that pastor I´m gonna go preach the gospel in that neighborhood like never before, dangit. And the members need a little opposition too I think, its good for us.

That´s all for me I think. Still struggling with church attendance and having people sacrifice a little bit. If it´s raining or cloudy, forget about it. no one will walk to the church. And the people that live in our other area away from the church won´t spend  the money for a taxi-and its hard to fault them when they don´t have any money, but a taxi costs about as much as a 2 liter bottle of coke that they drink everyday and I can´t imagine it would be that hard to go without a bottle of coke for a couple days.

Kate-Your spanish was spot on! except parts seemed like google translate, did you cheat? what song did you play? what did yall do with orrin, just ice cream and movies? Are you and Marissa friends and all? I always liked her when I would hang out with her sister, she´s a good one i  think. sorry math is hard. suck it up I guess. And I´m so jealous about the weather. And way to go on the missionary work and all. do you still love highschool?

Dad-so glad yall finally made it out to the river! that weather is the best. Favorite time of year. Long sleeve shirts without sweating, bass are energetic, deer season, chilly mornings...the best. Like my shirt? And was the buck in hard horns or velvet? That´s a shame about the sand, I do worry about the ecological health of the river. Once the sand comes the fishing goes. Julie told me about this hydrilla chemical, have they sprayed it yet? What topwater baits? Thanks for the little update on the good life. Anything specific going on in politics, as far as issues go? anyways, yup, I´m doing good. what truck are you gonna buy??

Mom-I´m probably not gonna be taking any selfies haha. I´ll get some pics in a couple weeks, there are pictures of me on other missionaries cameras with monkeys and parrots and cruise ships and all. soon! And The food is usually pretty good. The fish is just a pain cause you have to eat it with your hands and no one here uses napkins. And its funny cause they´re always mangrove snapper, the same fish I would bring home in florida. our usual meal is chicken though. and rice and tortillas of course.

And that´s cool about the family from san pedro...san pedro is the hood. A family from AZ that knows the Ramseys and has been to roatan? small world, thats funny. Are they up there for oil too?

And yeah, Matt´s solid. Been through alot and overcame.

Thanks for the packages! I have high hopes.

And I love having people over at the house too. It´s fun. How are the fruit trees?

And I love that scripture haha I think back in my seminary days I drew a little picture of a deer next to it. And thats exactly right about climbing mountains. I never pictured honduras having mountains but my gosh...my quads are gonna be massive when I finish. So steep.

And I do have a cell phone, but I´m not sure how they could call it with an american phone. not sure how that works. But they´ll be in church right? I´ll just see them then.

so the wards grown huh? Anything else interesting going on with the new stake and things like that?
 
As always, glad to hear that everybody is doing well. Tell me about extended family and sunburst and all that good stuff.

I´m sure I´ll forget something and send another email shortly. But as always, thanks for the support and updates!

Love you all, miss ya, rest assured that I´m working hard and safe and well fed.

Elder Hansen