first off, I have a blog? what the heck? 

second, atta boy curtis!
and ahhh. The weather. I love this time of year in florida. Orrin sent me some pictures of him offshore with bluebird skies....perfect. But it's actually been pretty nice here, sometimes I have to turn my fan off in the night because I'm cold. It's been in the 70's in the mornings. 

I'm just gonna respond to everyting in order, hope you all can decipher it. 

Week has been good. We had to push Marsela's back a little bit for more preparation but we still have her, krisia, and a girl named stephanie scheduled for the next two weeks. And funny story about Marsela...we've always had a funny vibe about her family...it's a house with 3 women and there is always a ton of guys-men, boys, teenagers-just loitering around the house. Elder Vasquez and I were thinking something fishy was going on but we went ahead and taught and all was well. Marsela is the normal one in the family though, she's great. But anyways, we came to find out this week that the mother, in fact, runs a prostitution operation on the beach. That was interesting. So for the past 3 months two mormon missionaries have been going into a whorehouse twice a week, ain't that something. 
And stephanie is interesting. We contacted their house, and then they invited us in and started off by telling us "I had a dream about you two last night" (we're there for the first time, ever) and I was just bracing myself for something weird or another woman that had a dream about marrying a gringo missionary, and then she was like " I dreamed last night that there were four men praying, and then they arose and told me that tomorrow I was gonna hear the word of god, and then I saw two men in my house and they said that they had a message" and her daughter, at the same time, was telling us how she had a similar dream and she had a dream that one of the sister missionaries they had come in contact with before visited her in the dream and told her to wake up and accept the missionaries. So that was interesting. I'm usually pretty reluctant to believe stuff like that because the people here make up all kinds of crap about their dreams and spiritual visitations but they seemed very sincere and if so...that's pretty cool. This lady recieved a book of mormon from the sisters a while ago and has been reading "in my hammock 3 pages every day and I'm in the alma part". Talk about golden investigators. 
But yes, I dream in spanish. I speak way more spanish than english, we speak spanish in the house and I only ever speak english if we're teaching someone that literally doesn't understand spanish. 

Sterling as quarterback! right on. Sounds like a fun team. Is devin snyder good? his whole family is athletic. how come you're playing football right now, do they have stuff at this time of year? Football in chilly weather is the best. 

Curtis killin' it with the ladies. are those the twins? The mile is hard, I could never get good enough mile times, I could only ever run long distance. And I'm glad you're liking civics! Do you have a good teacher or are they super liberal? Politics and history, good stuff. 

Also, poor skip. I hope he kills the cat. I actually have a cat friend here, his names bambino. I like him cause he's like a dog. He's our cooks cat and we give him bones to eat and he eats them like bread. I mess with him a lot and he's clawed and bit me but we're still buddies. 

So what's going on with this horse of sarah's? That's exciting. where's the money coming from? Your dream's coming true. how's the club going? I want a tshirt, i'm not kidding. Good luck on admissions!

Kate, way to do your missionary work! three mormons in one class, that's fun. sun rail and park avenue? how ritzy. Thanks for helping curtis out and all, at least he's batting for the right team. 

I do love BYU basketball, keep me posted. 

that's great that orlando and boca are pulling a profit! And the buffalo job, ohhhh. I can just feel the frustration, I remember how that goes. 

And I am in full agreement about the whole spouse thing! It makes a huge difference, I've seen it a million times here. 

The boys making firecrackers, sounds like fun. I used to try and do that with shotgun shells but it never worked. And church ball, wooo! sounds like a party, who got thrown out? 

anyways, here's my brief little update, not a ton. The biggest thing that's happened is our shakeups in leadership. Our new branch president is changing things up and it's awesome. He's a great guy. He works like president carter and he's super nice and friendly like president pratt. We're finally getting branch support and we're being included in more things and just working alot more effectively. He brought us in for a few meetings with other priesthood leaders and he was just grilling me (cause my comp is a scrub and I didn't want him to answer for us) just rapid fire, how, what, when, where, why, tell me what you need. I loved it. Straight up and to the point. Told him how we're doing, where we're falling short, where we're doing good, and what help we need. It was a big change and much welcomed. 

Also had divisions this week and I spent a day with the elder from mexico. he and I are best buds, I like him alot. He's all about wrangler jeans and ford trucks and mexican food. Good guy. And the jokes...I remember what lucian said about mexican humor and it is spot on. 

That's about all I got for ya! Thanks for the pictures, always love to see home and family. 

miss ya'll,

Elder Hansen