A Jamaican holding a Book of Mormon in public!?

Yea the week has been great! The weather is still getting hotter and more humid but it is still great!! One of the days we were riding to our next appointment down one of these streets and I am just looking around looking for people and I see this old man holding a Book of Mormon!!? I think I looked back 2 or 3 times just to make sure I was actually seeing this!!! So we turn around and start to go talk to this guy named Mr. Johnson. Come to find out that it isn’t his but it was someone’s that was living at his house. So we scheduled a return appointment with him for the next day. We come back the next day and now there is this lady there named Chin. So, we start talking to her and find out that the Book of Mormon is hers. She had been meeting with the missionaries over a year ago and one day they just kind of disappeared? So now we have been teaching Chin and Mr. Johnson and they are planning to be baptized the 7th of August. That was a pretty cool experience to be able to find them! It was super crazy to see a Jamaican holding a Book of Mormon in public!  

Other than that not a whole lot of interesting things happened! We had Zone Meeting down in Spanish Town! Our zone is pretty awesome! Talked a lot about going to the Rescue and working with Members! Trying to help member’s fulfill their duties by sharing the gospel to their friends and non-member families and friends!! So we will really try to apply what we learned with the members here! Also, for stake conference here they challenged everyone to think of people that they know that aren’t members? So I would issue that same challenge! Think of some people who need the gospel! And then invite them over for dinner or something! And for that dinner have the missionaries over also! The missionaries would love you guys for the food and new people to teach!! I know that the Lord will not only bless you for sharing the gospel but for the people who are learning and growing from the gospel! It is a WIN WIN situation! 

Elder Hansen

Prayers are answered!

Had a great week! This week we have done a lot of different things! The summer is getting Hot! & Humid! We got to help this old man, recent convert Brother James, move this truck load of sand into a sand pit thing and let me tell you I have never sweat so much in my entire life!! It was absolutely crazy! I guess that’s what shoveling sand in the middle of the day in Jamaica will do to you! We got a good workout from that! He also shared an interesting analogy with us! We asked him how he came to know this was the true church and he compared himself to a stone in a river…He said that, "We must not be like a rolling stone in a river that just rolls until stopped by something, we must be like a firm stone in a river that is able to grow moss so fish can feed." At first I was so confused but then realized that there is a lesson to be learned here! We have to be firm in our church and stay planted so that we don’t get tossed to and fro by every wind of doctrine! The fish feeding off the moss on the stone is us helping others and being an example to others so they can feed off our goodness! Super weird analogy but pretty interesting if you think about it!

We have been teaching a recent converts’ brother as well and we have had trouble getting his mom to accept for him to be baptized! We continue meeting with him and trying our best to keep him positive and finally this week she agreed for him to be baptized so he will be baptized July 3rd!!! I can truly tell you that prayer works!! Elder Porter and I had been praying very hard for his mom’s heart to be softened and guess what... Heavenly Father heard and answered our prayers!!! It’s great! Everything is going great Elder Porter and I are having a great time and we are really trying to find more people to teach!! We have found a lot and so time will tell! Grateful for this gospel and for the time that I have to serve!

Elder Hansen

"I know the gospel is true, but am I true to the gospel?"

This week has been great! I am starting to get more familiar with the area and it has been wonderful! This week was a pretty normal week in the field! However we did have Stake Conference in Spanish Town so that was great! We got to hear from two of the area seventies for our area! I can’t remember their names because they were hard names but one was from Haiti and he couldn’t speak English so he had a translator up there so he could speak to us! He had a super awesome testimony on how he got the mission going back in Haiti after all of the foreign missionaries got shipped out for good! So it was great to hear from them and the other leaders of the Island! It was President Brown’s last address as well! They all have such a strong testimony of this gospel and are truly inspiring people! The spirit at these meetings was very strong! They spoke a lot about Sabbath Day Observance, Temple Prep, Self-Reliance and Missionary work! These are the 4 key points of the Caribbean area vision! It is so simple and so great! 

Elder Porter and I are doing great as well! We have found a lot of interested people this last week! We have been really trying to grow our teaching pool so we have been doing a lot of contacting! It has been a great week and things are going great! Oh yes and something I heard that I thought was wonderful is, "I know the gospel is true, but am I true to the Gospel??" Now what does that mean!? It means that we must share the gospel and live by the standards that our Heavenly has presented in his Gospel!!

Elder Hansen

Late Post from June 6th....This new area is SWEET!

The new area is way sweet! We just moved into a brand new house Saturday because the last one was pretty gross! So we had been getting that all figured out! Linstead has a ward here so there are around 100 people that come to church!!!!!!! Which is so awesome!!! They also have their own building so we don’t have to be crammed in the back of a plaza now! SO yea Linstead is pretty awesome it is super beautiful here! Also here in Linstead they actually have underground pipes that take the water to different areas for homes and businesses. In Junction they had big trucks that had to individually truck the water to each of the houses! So Linstead is a lot more advanced than Junction and quite a bit different! It’s hard to leave Junction because the Branch was great there and our investigators were great also but I know here will be just as great and that we will be able to get work done here!

My new companion Elder Porter is from Mesa, Arizona. So he is kind of used to the heat! He is a super great missionary though! He has been out for a little over 10 months. We get a long together really well! Excited for these couple transfers they should be great! 

Our current teaching pool is pretty good! We have got a lot of part member families in our area so we are trying to focus on getting those to full-member families! We also have a couple different families! So hopefully this next week we will be able to make some better progress with all these people!

Elder Hansen