February 22nd 2009

Hello!

Well yes things are very good here in good old Santiago. I actually am loving it here, and yes we have been very blessed with the work lately. Actually we had dinner with an investigating couple yesterday, the guy came to church, had a billion and a half questions, and then we went to their house right after, (she had some work thing). It was really great. The only thing is that he’s maybe moving back to Italy, (he’s Italian, but has lived here for a long time, and speaks perfect Spanish, and not to mention English) so we are sad for that, but it was way cool to talk with them. Mainly it’s just been the change. I don’t know how much I’ve told you of the story with them, but it was just a normal contact on the street, late at night, like 9 or so, and we talked for a little, he said that he wasn’t interested, and that he had studied the catholic religion for 13 years, and that he knew a lot, but hated religion, and didn’t believe in God. So we somehow got them to meet with us in the chapel, and so the next week we did, and they came, and all we talked about was prayer the entire time. That went very well, and he had been praying until the next visit, and was much happier, and extremely different. Well then with the visits on from there, it has just been better and better. He has tons of questions, and is reading a decent amount of the Book of Mormon. Well now, they are both very nice to us, want to learn more, and are having us over for dinner on a Sunday night! Not too bad! It’s been such a great experience, I can’t wait too keep teaching them.

Otherwise, nothing too out of the ordinary, just knocking a lot of doors, and talking to a lot of people. It is getting better all the time. 

But hey, it sounds like that business thing is going good, but that seems tough when you’ve got to deal with papers and all that.

Oh yes, another quick question before I forget, did you ever look at the money thing? The credit card from sears, or the exchange rate thing? I just am curious, not a big deal, but you know, just curious...

LHM died, that is big news. And kelvyn is ward mission leader? That’s pretty cool, but how do the full time missionaries even work there? Like they come once every few months or something, if that! Things are a bit different. I remembered that we used to have 10 people pass the sacrament....and 12 on other days. With our 1 person here, I forget what it was like.

Anyway, I sent Beth a letter the other day, and same with Hulka, so hopefully I’ll get something back!

Thanks for everything, take care.

Love,

Elder Hanson

February 16th 2009 (For Shelly) Yey! an actual letter just for me.

Hey, 

Well I’m glad that you are doing so well, and that my handwriting was better and you could read all of it! I have tried to work on the handwriting, but I didn’t pay much attention to it in that letter, so I am glad that you could still read it. Plus that paper that it’s written on is pretty cool huh?

So, about that cooking show, that’s awesome that you get to see that. Actually yesterday I was thinking about how I am now in a branch with some really good cooks, and we’ve been eating better here than in any other city I’ve ever been in. We go to a member’s house generally every Sunday, and they are from here in Galicia, from Santiago, and they cook really well, and native like. In fact, yesterday we had this pig leg stuff. To be quite honest it grossed me out because we had to eat the meat (which tasted ok) then if you had some bones, or hoof things, or the pads on the bottom of the pig feet, you would just pull them out of your mouth, and put them in the bowl. Well that was yesterday, but lately we’ve just had some really good dishes, and soup, I am going to start writing some of this stuff down, but it is so good! The Spanish tortillas are my personal favorite, they are big, and I really don’t even know what they are, all I know is that when they are on the table they’re gone really quickly!

So that cooking show...where is the guy from in Galicia??? You know I’ve been here for the most part of my mission, Ferrol is in Galicia, and now Santiago is actually the capital of Galicia. (Oh yes, and I do say it like Galithia....welcome to Spain) But the only tough thing about being here is that they have their own language, and the street signs are written in it, and most official documents and everything are written in it, and everyone learns to speak it in school. Well we have picked up some of it, but it’s basically a dialect of Spanish (although they’ll never admit that, they’ll tell you it’s original until the world ends!) 

well anyways, I thought you would like that little schpeal on Galicia, after all I’ve been here for about 6 months, and  I’ve got probably another 5 here! So I figured that I’d let you know that I love this place!

Well take care, thanks for the mail! Have a good one!

Elder Hanson

February 15th 2009

Hello,

Alright, that’s good that you’ve heard from Hulka, because I have too. He sent me a letter, and I got it the other day. I made sure to get one to him his first few days in the MTC, joking about everything and so on. He sounds like he’s having a good time. Ya a good comp for the MTC, because you need one, otherwise that place could be a nightmare. He said that he’s happy he’s taking off because they get along too well, and don’t get too much done...but you know it’s only the first 3 weeks. 

And about the letters to all the grandparents, yes, I am in contact with most everybody pretty regularly, but grandma and Grandpa Hanson are more by email, what is their land address? I’d like to have it; I mean I sent mail to everyone else, but not to them. And yes, grandma and grandpa lance have been good on keeping me updated, they sent me my first letter that I ever got here in Santiago, and it was just letting me know all that was going on.

That’s awesome about Barny! I didn’t even know that! How long ago was that?

When I was there it seemed like the members had all been around for a long time, and had served missions, and all that so I would be interested to see when Barny was there. 

That’s awesome about work! I just hope the shop says alive too, and with the detailers and all that, are you going to have to hire new ones once Newt takes off??

But this week here has been really great. The weather finally has let up, and for the first time since I have been here I didn’t use my umbrella! It started from last Tuesday, and I haven’t used it since, otherwise everyday before then I had to use it, every blasted day. Well so that was a nice addition to the week. But then we had really good success knocking, like we got let in to doors. Because usually we just make a return appointment, and come back, but we were super blessed, and just got in 2 times this week. 

And also we found some other new girl. She came to a lesson with another investigator, and was pretty cool. She’s from Brazil, but her mom’s Argentinean so she speaks perfect Spanish, and then she learned English somewhere, and we just talk with her in English. Well it just so happened that we taught the 1st lesson with the investigators, and then we scheduled a lesson with her the next day. We gave her a Book of Mormon, and she came to church yesterday! Usually doing all this stuff takes a few weeks at least, finding, teaching the first lesson, and then convincing people to get up Sunday morning to walk to a random building...Oh ya, and when she got to church she said that she had already read 5 chapters in the Book of Mormon, and that she would like to read more, on her trip to Denmark (she’s leaving today for 3 weeks) but she didn’t want to take the Book of Mormon because she never paid for it! We had to tell her several times that it was free, and not to worry about it! It was awesome. She’s way too smart, she was a lawyer in Brazil, and now she’s studying something to get her PhD. Anyway, we’ve got to wait for 3 weeks, but hey, she seems really good, probably the best investigator that I’ve ever found personally.

Things are just going very well, and I’m happy to be here!

I’ll get something out to Beth today, for sure.

Have a good one,

Elder Hanson 

February 8th 2009

Hey Dad,

Hey, first of all the memory card is bad, but don’t even worry, because memory cards are way cheap, so if you need me to buy one, I can, but get this, I have bought an 8 gig flash drive that I have been backing everything up on, so I’ll just send all the pics with the next one! I kind of figured that one of these times it would get stolen, or damaged, or you know, just get ¨lost in the mail¨ so just tell me what you want to do, the memory cards here are like seriously 5 euro for a 4 gig card, not a big deal at all!

But hey, that pic of newt was hilarious, oh man, that looked like a fun car,

was it? But wow, that lease deal seems pretty sweet! And you getting your state and I/M??? How hard is that to do? I would think that isn’t too hard, but wow I just didn’t know that you were going to get it!

Well here, things are pretty normal, we have been just finding new people all the time, because we don’t really have anyone that wants to progress, so we are just looking for some. We found some cool people that speak English, and we had our lessons in English, and wow how EASY that was, I almost didn’t know what to do! I had so many options of what to say, and express myself, I loved it. We are pretty blessed to have been finding as many people as we have been.

We had a priesthood meeting for the district (the eventual stake) and a bunch of members came down from Ferrol, and that was way nice to see all of them again, the old branch president and I talked for a while, and it was just good to see them all. I guess that’s an advantage to not moving far away.

Well that’s about it! I’ve been trying to get some more pictures taken, because I hardly have any here in Santiago, (I don’t know why, maybe it’s because it rains everyday, or we actually work all day???) But I’ve been trying to think of some to get to send home!

Thanks for the mail! Have a good week too!!!

Elder Hanson

February 1st 2009

Hey,

Ya, well all is well here in Santiago, it is a way cool city, but first thing, I got every other package that everyone sent me, I just didn’t get Grandma and Grandpa’s. I just figured that it was in Ferrol right now, and I’d have to just get it at Zone Conference. But besides that, all is well.

This city is pretty sweet, and is really busy too. It is a huge tourist city, like I said before, but I really like it. My comp is from California, and studied Spanish a lot before the mission, so that helps me a lot. He knows all the grammar rules, so he is helping me get some of them down, and it is just a really nice blessing to have him as my first junior comp. We have been doing really well lately. Probably better than I have ever done on the mission, we didn’t have too much going on when we first got here, but we’ve been knocking our brains out, and the nice thing is that it has been working.

Knocking here has got to be much better than most knocking in the states, because everyone just lives in like apartment complexes, and when you can get into the building, you can knock a 7 story building with 4 doors on each floor, and contact a lot of people in a very short amount of time. So after doing that for a while, you can usually find a decent amount of people! So that’s what we have been doing; a lot of first lessons, and hope to move on. Obviously it is tough to say that everyone new that we find will be good investigators, so we have been getting through that too.

Well the branch here is really small. Like 20 people in church every Sunday. They are really nice and great members, but it is just hard when there are so few. We would really like to help the branch out and find some new people.

So Dave is working at the CU?! (CU Auto Sales) That’s great, what made him want to leave? I thought that Jeff would have wanted to leave before Dave. That’s nice on the lease returns, what condition are they in? Or like how old are the cars?

Otherwise ya, that’s all for this week, I’ll fill you in on anything else you ever want to know. Just ask!

Have a good week!

Elder Hanson