The Lord never disappoints!

This week has been great! We were able to have Brother Coal and McKenzie show up to church! It is really quite a journey for these 2 to get to church! They have to walk from the bush a good 30 minutes to a road where taxis run and then wait another 30 minutes to an hour for a taxi to pick them up! It is so great to see these people show their faith by doing what it takes to make it to church! Brother McKenzie also had a cool experience where he had no money at the beginning of this week. He told us he wouldn’t be able to make it because of that! We replied telling him that if he truly desires to come to church, money WILL not be the problem! Sure enough the Lord never disappoints and Brother McKenzie got some work for a day so he had enough money to come to church! The lesson learned is that the Lord does not give us a commandment that is not possible! 1 Nephi 3: 7 is exact evidence of this! He will ALWAYS prepare a way for us to accomplish what he has commanded!  I’m very grateful for this opportunity to serve! 

Elder Hansen

I am grateful for this time to serve the Lord!

This week has been great! Elder Graham is an awesome missionary and we really get along! Our investigators are doing well! Collin and Karryanns family come to church every week and are doing awesome they just haven't gotten married yet! Once they get married they can get baptized but they just keep pushing marriage back! So we are praying and working very hard to get them married so they don't have to wait much longer for the blessings of being baptized and receiving the Holy Ghost!

Devin is still doing great! This last week we found a weed plant in his front yard and asked what this is all about? He looks over the railing and says, naaa thats jus a flowa!" Then walks down the steps pulls the plant out of the ground, says, "I hope God don't charge me for this one!" Then throws the plant into the bushes!! It was the greatest thing I have seen in a long time! Devin is the most humble man ever and wants to do good! He obvious has a couple concerns but nothing that the Atonement can't fix! He is doing so well and just needs to come to church!!

Elder Graham is from a place by Portland, Oregon. He has been out for a little over a year and is really a great Elder! He has served in Yallahs, Spanish Town, and Savvanah La Mar. He actually went to BYU Idaho before coming out and has family that lives all around in Jerome! Small world!

Our other investigators are doing great! They want to be baptized as soon as possible! They just need to stop doing some things and start doing some better things in order to do so! 

I am Truly so grateful for this time that I have to serve the Lord! It doesn't matter where we are in the world because the Gospel is the same everywhere! I know that this Church is true and am so thankful for the blessings that come because of it!

April 18 Last recording with Elder Warren and Elder Braeden Hansen

Audio File

Braeden's Audio File

Rain and Crocodiles!

 My companion has been here for over 7 months, now so he is due for a transfer. He has also been filling out a bunch of paper work for the Bahamas so he will be leaving this next week. The transfer is next Wednesday. The work has been going good! This last week it has rained every day! It really plays a big role in the work because nobody wants to meet when it is raining! But it is enjoyable to be completely soaked and just ride through massive puddles! A lot of our roads are just dirt roads so it gets super slippery and muddy when it rains! We have a few families we are teaching and a couple men! So we will see how well they start progressing. This last week has really been hard to meet with any of our investigators because they don't want to meet when we are soaking wet so that is a bummer but this next week should be better! Hopefully not so much rain however the people are so happy when it rains because that is how they drink, bathe, wash clothes, cook, grow food in their farms. So it is a great blessing for the people when it rains just a little harder for us as missionaries! However we will be able to push through and our investigators will just have to show their faith by letting two white soaking guys into their homes! 

Last p-day we went to this place that gave boat rides to see wild crocodiles. SO we went and did that! IT was so sweet! Crocodiles everywhere! These Jamaicans would be slapping them and yelling at them to get them to come to the boat so we could see them closer! It was CRAZY!! Way cool to be able to see Gods crazy creations and power through crocodiles! We also got to hold baby crocodiles!

Elder Hansen

Brother Cooper got baptized!

This week was a great week! Brother Cooper got baptized! On Saturday morning we awoke at 5 and got ready for the baptism and then left by 6 to meet him at the church! We then taxied down to the ocean; a place called Alligator Pond and had the baptismal service there! It was such a wonderful experience! Very quiet with the ocean waves rolling! Brother Cooper was so excited and a little nervous as well! After he was baptized we had a small testimony meeting and it was so great to hear him bear his testimony on how he personally came to know that this was the true church!

We also went on a trade off with the zone leaders earlier this week! That was also a great experience! Got a break from the bike and got to ride in a truck for a couple days! The zone leaders live up in Santa Cruz not too far from Junction! It was weird to see small neighborhoods called Schemes because Junction doesn’t have anything like that. Just little houses scattered throughout the bush! But it was awesome to be with a zone leader for a while and learn more about teaching and finding! 

I was also able to give a talk in sacrament this past Sunday! I was asked to speak on our branch mission goals because the branch president is really trying to get this branch moving. So I tried my best to give them some motivation on how to accomplish the goals and how we can’t do it without them! We also had a family from Texas close to where I was serving prior so that was really weird to see white people that aren’t missionaries at church! All in all it has been a great week! I know that as we continue to work our hardest and rely upon the Lord to strengthen not only us as missionaries but the branch and our investigators, we will be able to work mighty miracles for this Junction Branch!

Elder Hansen

Its raining buckets...of miracles!

This week has really been great! All of our investigators are moving forward and we had 5 of them at church this week! It is so great to see some people’s faith! Most people have to walk a good distance to get to the main road and then wait for a taxi to hopefully pick them up to take them 30 minutes to the church! And most of our investigators really don’t have any money! It is such a testimony to me to see these faithful people make it to church and continue to progress in the gospel and really how important prayer is! 

Our perfect investigator Brother Cooper was waiting for a taxi for about an hour. We called him and asked where he was 20 minutes before church. He told us he had been waiting for a long time! So we told him to say a prayer and that we would pray for him also! Not 2 minutes after we had finished praying he called back saying he had caught a taxi and was going to make it! How awesome it is to see the Lords hand help in every aspect of missionary work! 

I still can’t believe how much it rains here! Every single day it will rain for a solid couple hours pretty hard! It’s great for all the people but not so much for all the missionaries! When it rains everyone goes inside so it is hard to contact people. But it does replenish every ones water supply and waters their farms! 

We also had interviews with our Mission President this week! And that was awesome! He is such a great spiritual giant! He truly has helped me to want to work my absolute hardest and do my best as a missionary at all times! I am so grateful for him! The work is going great! Quite a few of our progressing investigators have hit a road block but we will work through those and baptize them soon enough! I am so grateful for the time I have to serve the Lord and it is so amazing to watch people change because of the Gospel!!

Elder Hansen