3 29 10 Holy Week

¡Feliz Lunes Santo!

So it's semana santa here in Mexico (Holy Week). That means that all the kids get two weeks off of school, and almost everything closes for a week. This week might be kind of tough because everyone is going on vacation. It will be interesting to see the celebrations here. The pueblo I'm in is really traditional and really, really Catholic. I heard that they take the giant cross out of the church and walk it around the whole town. A couple weeks ago I saw a Jesus statue that was placed inside of a glass coffin and carried through the town. The celebrations usually start based around some religious theme but end up with everyone getting drunk and passing out in the street.

This week was awesome. We met this super cool lady named Elena. We started teaching her and we gave her a Book of Mormon and told her to pray about it. When we came back, she read and analized the whole chapter and prayed about it. She said that after praying she dreamed that she was preaching about the book to all of her friends. She came to church this week with her son, and said she wants us to talk to her whole family. She has a huge family! We also met another cool lady this week named Lidia. We were walking in the street and she whistled at us. Usually, the people that whistle at us are teenage girls or gays, so we didn't turn around. She kept whisting, so we turned around. She waved us down and we walked over. She told us that she met some missionaries in another pueblo a few weeks ago, and she wanted to meet with us. She came to church too. In our gospel principles class we talked about eternal families. The class went went well, but Lidia was pretty quiet. We asked her a question at the end of the class that caused her to let out all her feelings and talk about her family problems. We kind of lost control of the class and went like 20 minutes over time. It was kind of uncomfortable yet funny at the same time. But it was good. Both of them want to come back to church next week.

I think we had good results this week because we really made an extra effort to reach all of our goals and be 100% obedient. We set a goal of 35 contacts every day even if we had a lot of appointments. A couple of nights we were contacting people at 9:00 to complete our goal. On Saturday we had a lesson and we got out at 9:22. We were pretty far from home, so we decided to run home. We got there at exactly 9:30. I think God saw our extra effort this week.

Thanks for the letters. When did Jenny cut her hair? Are there really more people wearing skinny jeans? I'm not a fan. I'm glad you're making friends with crazy, old ladies. They always make for good stories.

Mom, I liked your story, and I've had many similar experiences.
Ok well I gotta go.

Love,
Elder Hansen

3 22 10 Tough Going in Zumpango

Hola,
Congrats, Brooke & Aaron, on the new baby. Mom said I should call the baby cute and hot healthly. I'm not sure what hot healthy is, but I feel even more uncomfortable calling the baby hot than I did calling it cute. That's just weird. Anyways, congratulations on the new baby. (note from Mom, that was a type-o)

It sounds like life has changed a lot since I was there over a year ago. Zac and the twins look really old. It will be fun to see all the kids and how much they've grown.

I'm glad to hear that the creepy, old guy is no longer cruising the streets of Waunakee. Although, I did enjoy the stories.

This week didn't go very well for us. On Tuesday, I got really sick. It was really weird. Throughout the whole day my knees were hurting a lot. But other than that I didn't feel too sick. In the afternoon, I got a bad headache that wouldn't go away. Then I started to feel really light headed, and I didn't have energy to keep knocking doors. We got back to the apartment and I discovered I had a 103 fever. I took some tylenol, but it still took like five hours for the fever to go down. But that's not all. I also got some crazy bad diarhea. I was going to the bathroom every hour all night. The next day the fever was gone, but the bowel problems lasted for a few days. It was pretty bad. So yeah, that kind of threw off a lot of our plans this week.

So I've realized that Zumpango is kind of hard. I feel like we are working really hard, but we haven't seen much results. Well maybe we haven't had many baptisms, but I think we have helped the area. For three weeks straight we've had over 40 people in church. The first few weeks when we got here we had in the high twenties or low thirties. Even though, we didn't bring any new investigators to church this week, I think the Lord saw the effort we put in and blessed us with three non members that either showed up or came with members. One of the non-members that came brought her three kids and stayed the whole time. She accepted to meet with us this week.

Ok well, I need to go. This hour goes by really fast.
All is well down here in Mexico.

Love,
Elder Hansen

" Ey guero echale ganas!" 3 15 10

Hey yall,

That's nice that the weather is warming up in Wisconsin. It has become rather unpleasant here. I loved Mom's story about the creepy, old, stalker guy. Is he as bad as cough cough man from Encinitas? It seems like every neighborhood has one of those guys.

This week went alright. We tried out the service thing. It didn't work out very well. Nobody wanted to let us help them. I also was kind of sick, so we only tried it out one day. I think we might try it out again this week. We did realize that working with the members really is the best way, but it's kind of hard here because there aren't many members. We brought a member with us to teach a lesson this week, and it went really well. The member passed for our investigator to bring her to church. I realized that we need to have more lessons with members present. They are usually willing to help us with that, but the problem is they usually don't give us referrals. And the names that they have given us have been pretty lame. Oh well, I think we need to help them a little more.

On Saturday we had a day full of appointments. We actually had 11 appointments scheduled for the day. But throughout the day all but one of our appointments fell through. We were feeling pretty bummed out. We were walking in the street and this old man stopped us and said, " Ey guero echale ganas!" In English that would be something like " Hey white guy. Get excited!" It made my day. I don't know if the spirit inspired that man to talk to me, but I liked it. It made me laugh. Sometimes it's the little things like that that keep my from losing it some days.
I'm sorry. I really can't think of anything to write, and my time is about be up. I sent a hand written letter that you should be getting soon.

And about the cds. You can send me an efy from 2007, 2008, or 2009, michael mclean, maybe some kenneth cope or something, and a good enya cd is always nice.
I'm sorry this letter is so lame, but I have to go.

I love you. Take care.

Love,

Elder Hansen