Trip to Juigalpa and Zone Meeting

The ride to Rama on the panga...

Familia y amigos!

What is going down?  I hope all is going well and everyone is enjoying the nice cool weather! Things have been going pretty well here in Bluefields, it is still really hot and we have been sweating a lot.  I don’t think people realize how hot it is here. The investigators are doing great and we have been seeing a little more success here!

This week was a little crazy.  All week we were working to lock down 2 baptisms here.  One of them was an 80 year-old woman, the mom of a member here in Bluefields. He lives and is working in Panama, and he was super excited to hear that his mom was going to get baptized.  The other was the granddaughter of the first lady. The 80 year-old woman was a reference here and when we first went to put a fecha (baptismal date) with her the granddaughter wanted it too, so we prepared them both.  Everything was going really well, they got interviewed on Wednesday, and then we got a call. 

Wednesday night the Zone Leaders called me and told me that me and my district would be having to go to the zone meeting which was on Friday.  That meant we had to drop everything we had planned for Thursday and Friday.

We left Thursday morning on a panga to Rama and then the long bus from Rama to Juigalpa.  It was the usual ride, super long and boring, and of course it was exhausting.  We worked for 2 days there in the area in Juigalpa to help them find some people to teach.  They are lacking some people to teach so it was 2 days of straight contacting, knocking doors, and such.

We had the zone meeting on Friday which wasn’t too exciting. We just talked about our possibilities and then the Zone Leaders gave a lesson.  It was all right.  The APs were also there so I got to talk to Elder Collado.  Overall, the trip was exhausting with 10 missionaries sleeping in a tiny house and then having to wake up at 3:00 am on Saturday to catch the bus back to Rama and then the panga to Bluefields.  The panga on the way back didn’t have a cover and I didn’t have any sunscreen so I got super sunburned and am in pain. It’s mostly my arms that hurt.  Also, we didn’t really get to eat anything on Saturday because the panga came in late and we had to rush to the investigators houses for their baptisms.  All I had to eat was like a half of a loaf of bread on Saturday.  Luckily there weren’t any problems with the baptisms and they both happened.  

On Sunday we were blessed to have 12 investigators in church, hard work really does pay off.  I hope that all of you have a wonderful week, and I love you all a ton!  I can’t wait to talk next Sunday!

Love,

Elder Hanson

Me and Elder Collado in the Zone Meeting

Baptism

It's Only Getting Hotter...

Familia y Amigos,

How is everyone doing?  This week was a pretty good week, we got a lot of things done here in Bluefields and had a nice visit from President Russell.  I will tell you about it all.

This week though it has been super hot, I have literally been sweating so much here.  Supposedly this is just how the weather is this time of year.  It is super duper hot until like the end of May when the rain comes and cools everything down.  The people here are kind of suffering because everyone relies on their posos (wells) for water.  Every time around this year it gets super hot so the wells dry out.  It has kind of been a problem here, so I just hope the well we have doesn’t dry out!

This week we were blessed enough to have 2 baptisms here.  Their names are Kevin and Sheneidy.  Everything went really smooth, so that was nice.  We prepared them well, they passed their interviews, got baptized and confirmed without a problem. They were both references from members, so I decided to see how many of the baptisms I have had were references from members.  Turns out that every baptism that I have had has been a reference.  It made me realize the importance of working with members, and how you can't be a successful missionary if you just work on your own, you have to work with the members.

We should have baptisms this week but we will see what happens there.  Our investigator pool has grown and is all right now.  Things are going good training and I’m learning a lot.   

President Russell also came this weekend to make a visit here in Bluefields and to interview us.  He got to see the 2 confirmations that we had which was cool, and the interview went really well.  He told me I was doing a good job here, which made me feel good. I need to keep working hard, being bold, and with obedience I know that the Lord will continue blessing me here.  Things are going pretty well, and although we continue to have trials, things always work out. I’m grateful for all of the things I have learned here on the mission, and I am going to keep working hard here.

I hope you all have a wonderful week! I love you all!

Elder Hanson

Roney's back, snowmen in Bluefields too

Familia y Amigos,

Well, sorry to bore you again, but this email probably won’t be that great either.  Nothing really happened this week in Bluefields and it has been a long week of just contacting and trying to find people to teach and baptize.  We have been doing a little more street contacting as we have found that house contacting hasn’t been that efficient.

So Elder Roney (my old companion) is Zone Leader here in the zone that I am in, its called Zona Juigalpa, so the Zone Leaders are supposed to come every month.  They haven’t come since January so they decided to finally come to see how things were going.  I got to work with Elder Roney and spend a little time with him, which was weird being with my old companion in the same area.  It feels like just yesterday we were together for the first time!

Elder Passey and I have just been working hard trying to find people.  We got a couple of references from some members which were cool, and we will see if they actually end up progressing or not.  This month of April hasn’t been that great in the whole mission, and a lot of people are focusing more on May because it is a month with 5 weeks to baptize.  The 5 week months get a little crazy, and the attitude is just to get everyone to the water.  The last 5 week month was in March and I think the mission as a whole, like 160 missionaries or so baptized a total of 243 people or something like that.  We are trying to break that in May.

On Friday I did divisions with Elder Rodriguez and got to meet a couple of the people that they have there in their area which was cool.  I probably will get to know all of Bluefields before I leave here which will be awesome, knowing more than just my half.

This week we have 2 baptisms that should go down so that will be nice to have a couple people to baptize here.

I heard that it snowed in Utah, so we made some snowballs and snowmen, I hope you all enjoy them!  Have a great week and I love you and miss you all a lot!

Elder Hanson

P.S. - This guy from the US came and is investigating the canal that they are soon to build here in Nicaragua, so he took some pictures of us all.

Snowmen in Bluefields!

Snowball fight!!

Good to see Elder Roney again

Just chillin' in the hammock

I sure miss this boy!!

Puro Bluefields

Here is a picture of my district

Familia y amigos,

Well, I’m just going to tell you now, this email probably isn’t going to be too long because not much really happened this week.  The weather is still super hot here, and we have been sweating a ton.  I don’t really know if I have been losing or gaining weight because the members give us a TON of rice, I never knew so much rice could exist.

Anyway this week was a week of finding people.  We didn’t really have a ton of people to teach so it was a lot of contacting in the street and trying to get into houses.  It wasn’t the most successful week though, we put a couple of fechas (baptismal dates) but they weren’t very positive people.  I want Elder Passey´s training to be a positive experience of baptizing while he´s in his training, like my experience was, but who knows if it will happen.

We have a couple people progressing for baptism, like 4 or 5.  They are preparing for the last week this month and the first week of May.  After a long week of trying to find people and committing them to church, we didn’t really have a ton of fijo (committed) investigators who were going to come.  Sunday mornings are the worst, because all of the pressure of the whole week is on your head, to decide if it was a week of success or not.  As we went to each of the houses of the people we had committed, nobody was ready, not home or just hiding from us.  We went to church with 4 people, which is alright, but the Lord blessed us with another 5 when we got there, with 2 of them that are ready for baptism.  We went and put fechas (baptismal dates) with them for the end of this month.

I know that as I work hard here in the mission, that the Lord is going to bless us.  We have been trying to be obedient and I know the Lord blessed us because we are working hard and making sacrifices for Him.

Other than that not really anything happened.  We aren’t going to have a baptism this week, but should have one on the 25th.  It will be another week of finding, so keep us in your prayers that we can find some people! 

I love you all and will talk to you next week,

Elder Hanson

One of our converts here

Out Here in Bluefields for Another Change!

Elder Passey and me

Familia y amigos,

What is going on?  I hope all of you had a great Easter Sunday, enjoyed General Conference, and each had personal revelation in ways that you could improve in your lives.  Anyway, let me tell you a little bit about what happened this week.

So on Tuesday we got the call for cambios (changes/transfers) and only Elder Naisbitt was going.  We weren’t really expecting it because, like I have been saying, Bluefields is like a 6 month sentence and it doesn’t happen too often that someone is only here for 1 change.  We got him all ready to leave and sent him off in the panga at 3 pm. I didn’t have a companion so I worked with a member the rest of the day.

I ended up having to work with a member for the rest of the week, which was a little hard.  On Wednesday we got the call about who all was coming and everything.  I am finishing the training of an Elder here named Elder Passey.  He is from Washington and was in Masaya with the Zone Leaders there for the first part of his training.  I am the new District Leader here, which just means a little bit more responsibility and more things I need to do.  Elder Passey got stuck in Juigalpa. Because of Semana Santa (Holy Week) there were no busses or pangas so he got here about halfway through the afternoon session of Conference on Saturday.

Nothing really happened here as far as the work goes because of Semana Santa; it was super dead here.  Everyone went to Corn Island or Bluff to go to the beach so nothing really cool or awesome happened.

Crazy story this week, that family that was supposed to get baptized is probably not ever getting baptized.  One of the members here is family with the Father of the family.  He was asking me about why he didn’t get baptized and everything and I told him what had happened.  He told me that he was really surprised when he heard the family was going to get baptized in the first place, because the father had just gotten out of prison and is a drug dealer.  Looks like I won’t be going back there! hahahah.

Conference was super awesome.  We were blessed to be able to go to every session because we brought the people we needed to.  President Russell asked that we each bring 4 people to Conference, so we were able to find enough people to watch it.  In a couple of cases I just grabbed people off the street so I could watch it.  We ended up getting 19 people to come to Conference!  I really liked the Saturday afternoon session in particular, it was really good.  One of my favorite talks was from Dale G. Renlund, especially one of the things he said.  He said we should evaluate our lives, repent, and keep on trying.  While we may have struggles and difficulties in this life, but if we evaluate our situations, repent (repenting isn’t a bad thing), and keep trying, the Lord will always bless us.  I would encourage everyone to go and do the Personal Interview that M. Russell Ballard did in priesthood session, evaluate this, then repent, and keep trying.  This will help us all to grow spiritually in this life.

I love you all and hope you all have a great week,

Elder Hanson

Change Coming to an End, Semana Santa Begins

A cool sign we found written in Creole

Familia y amigos,

Whats up?  How is everyone doing this week?  This week was a little bit of a harder one here in Bluefields, the heat picked up a little and a lot of our baptisms fell through, but we are doing well here!  I got a lot of cool pictures this week so I'm sure my mom will be happy.

This change has definitely flown by.  This Wednesday is cambios (transfers/changes), and there are a lot of rumors floating around.  We´ll see what ends up happening here in Bluefields and in the mission.  Chances are that I stay here in Bluefields because it is like a 6 month sentence out here, so we will see what goes down!

Anyway this week we were preparing a couple people for baptism.  They were all super stoked all week getting ready, and we thought for sure we had them in the bag.  But a lot of stuff went down.  On Saturday we made a couple of mistakes regarding the baptismal services, when people were going to get baptized, and making sure they were actually ready, so a couple of them fell.  We ended up having one baptism here in our area, and let me tell you it was one of the worst baptismal services ever.  

We were kind of rushing around, a little discouraged because all of the baptisms fell like 20 minutes before they were supposed to go down.  We showed up late, and everything was going wrong.  The ward assigned an 81 year old man to baptize (because we aren´t supposed to baptize) and let me tell you, it was a disaster.  This member is super awesome and a great guy, who speaks english and is always at the church 2 hours early on Sundays to open it up.  I asked him if he knew the prayer right before he got in the water, and he told me it.  He went in and completely forgot it. Hahaha, we had to write it out, and he could barely read it.  It was making me laugh, my companion was laughing and even the old man was laughing.  It kind of took off a little bit of the stress.  He finally got the prayer right, and our investigator went all the way under the first time, so at least he didn't have to do that over again.

On Sunday, pretty much all of our investigators were gone so we didn't have a ton to go to church.  We passed by for all of the remaining people we had and nobody was home.  We went to the last house that we had people committed to go to church, and there were like 10 people all ready to go.  We ended up having 14, and the Lord really blessed us.  Like it says in that same talk "Trust in the Lord" by Elder Scott, when the Lord closes up a door, he opens others of the same size and importance in our lives.

Semana Santa is this week, and a lot of people are leaving to go on vacation, mostly to Corn Island.  You all should go look up Corn Island, it is really beautiful and I will definitely be going there some day.  I hope all of you have a super great week, and I will let you know what happens with cambios next week!

Love you all,

Elder Hanson

Our baptism this week.

A recent convert here in the area.

We teach this member a lesson every once in a while.

The heat is starting to pick up here and it makes for a super sweaty face.

Multimision with Bishop Dean M. Davies and Ayoleth Gets Married

This week's baptisms.

Familia y Amigos,

Que onda? (What’s up?) I hope everything is going super well, we had a normal week here in Bluefields, besides the fact that we went to Managua for the conference.  Things are going well and the weather seems to be heating up a little bit but who knows because it is always hot.  Ill let you know a little bit about what happened.

So on Wednesday morning we left here in Bluefields on plane.  It was super nice to finally not go in panga (boat) and on bus.  The plane wasn’t sketchy at all and was a nice 45 minute nap on the way over to Managua.  The reason we went is because Presidente Russell called us on Sunday Night and asked if we could help out in the office, so on Wednesday we just worked in the office.  It was super boring and a lot of sitting around.  It made me feel like I wasn’t doing anything and I didn’t like it at all.  We got everything prepped for the next day, because all of the missionaries had to be in one of the chapels (San Juan) at 6:30 in the morning so that we could bus everyone up to the chapel in the North mission (Waspan).  We did get to eat at Price Smart when I was there, which was awesome.  It’s like the same thing as Costco so I got some samples and just hung out.

On Thursday we woke up early and got to San Juan to make sure that all the missionaries were there.  It was really awesome seeing some people there, I got to talk to Elder Collado, Elder Hernandez, and Elder Sacalxot for a while.  It was nice seeing all of my old companions and hanging out with them for a minute. I didn’t get any pictures because things were moving really fast. We got bussed up to the conference, and got to listen to Bishop Dean M. Davies. He gave a lesson about how we can find revelation in the scriptures.  It was nice to be able to listen to a servant of the lord.  There was a huge difference between the missionaries in our mission compared to the missionaries in the North Mission, it was interesting.  Right when the conference ended, the Bluefields people got sent straight to the airport so we didn’t really get to talk to any of the missionaries or eat with the rest of the mission.

On Saturday we ended up having 2 baptisms, of Ayoleth, who got married in the morning and then baptized, and Jerey, who is the nephew of a member here in the ward.  References from members really are the dopest baptisms!  Ayoleth was a reference, and the majority of the baptisms we are having have been references.  Working with members is key, and that is why Bluefields has a lot of baptisms, because the members work with us.

Sunday we were blessed again to bring 10 to church.

This week is going to be a week of finding people to teach.  We have kind of brought the majority of our investigators to the waters of baptism so we need some new people to teach!  I hope all of you have a wonderful week, and all goes well!

I love you all,

Elder Hanson

Ayoleth's wedding.

We got a cake for the wedding.

Me, Jerey, and Elder Naisbitt.

I found some Cheez-Its and Capri Sun at a store here in Bluefields.