Week 83 - House hunting, soccer and a ward activity

Hey team!!

Well I think I owe you guys a good email for once haha

But first off, congrats to Erik and Kelly!! Proud of you guys and love you a ton! Sorry I couldn't be there haha.... ha.....haaa..........

But anyway, these past few weeks have been super busy but some of the best of my mission. Last week, we had a few ward activities for the Week of the Family. There are two wards here so they each had separate activities but we were invited to all of them and they were all super fun. On Friday night, there was a talent show in the San Diego ward, (where Elder Greene and Hernandez are), so we played it cool and sang a hymn with Elder Greene's harmonica. It was cool but we saved the best for the talent show we had in the Tres Rios ward (our ward). On Thursday morning, we had already decided what to do in the other talent show and we wanted to do something better for our ward so we came up with the idea to make a music video to a song some missionaries from Columbia had written a while ago and published online. It's based on some old classic song, can't remember which, but talks about some missionaries that got accidentally taken to jail and there they preached about the Book of Mormon and everyone was converted. Anyway, so we filmed the video, almost making it up as we went and then edited it, and presented it Saturday night for the activity. When it finished, it was the biggest hit of the night haha everyone came up and was asking for a copy of it and wanted to see it again and again haha. We thought it had pretty much ended there, but the next day everyone was talking about it and apparently the stake president had put it on some social media thing and it went out from there, getting on Facebook and YouTube and almost all this week we've been getting calls and messages from members, missionaries, converts, everyone asking about the video haha. I'm not gonna lie, it's one of the coolest things I've done on my mission and the members have been a lot more open to us after that so it's worked out great.

Then on Tuesday, President asked us to go down to Perez Zeledon, about 3 hours outside of San Jose to go check in on a district. I was pumped because it was another place I'd never been and there's this one place called the Cerro de la Muerte, or the Hill of Death (lovely right?) where it's supposed to be really cool and super cold. The drive down was amazing, super green and some great views, but the best past was when we passed by the Hill of Death. It was covered by a dense fog and had this eerie feel about it and when we stuck our hands out the window it was freeeeezing. I've felt cold before, but that was something different. Anyway, just a cool experience haha.

On Wednesday we had to go house hunting because our house just wasn't good for us anymore. The neighbors were crazy and someone had tried to break in a few weeks ago so we wanted to get out. We had a few options but they all ended up falling through so we had one day to find a house that was good enough and as always the Lord came through. We were walking around almost all morning looking and looking and found nothing that was going to work right, until we finally found something. There was a tiny sign that said for rent outside so we knocked on the door and this really nice old lady let us in to see the house. It turned out being on the other side of the street, where we had looked before, but not seeing a sign, we'd passed by. But we saw the house and everything worked out perfect and Thursday, soaking wet, we moved into paradise.

After that, Friday and Saturday were pretty normal.

Sunday was another great day. We had a really good lesson with the younger sister of the member who washes our clothes. She's here for a while to help out her sister who's about to have a baby and has apparently really liked the church, but there's always been something holding her back. The member and her husband are both returned missionaries so they had taught a lot already and we wanted to pretty much just run through lesson 1 to know what she already understood. We got through the lesson and at the end we basically just asked if she already understood everything, what was the problem? After putting up and few reasons about how she was waiting for an answer, her sister gave a really powerful testimony about how it was that she came to know the church was true and why she wanted her sister to be able to do the same. That was when the tears started flowing and she told us that she had gotten an answer she just wasn't sure what to do with it. But it was an incredibly powerful moment because the spirit hit so strongly when her sister bore her testimony. It just never ceases to amaze me how much stronger are the sincere and genuine testimonies of regular members. I love this gospel and I love members.

The winning team

Then today, we had a super cool pday. Zona Cartago hit their goal this month which means we can get permission from President to leave the zone and do something cool. We decided to challenge the neighboring zone, Zona La Paz to a game of soccer. These past few weeks, we've been super pumped up for the game and today was the big day haha it was the first time in my mission playing on a full sized grass field and man am I out of shape haha but it was super fun and we walked away with the victory 5-3. I even had a sweet bicycle kick assist haha. And they made shirts for the whole team and they're super sick haha it's the shirt of the soccer team in Cartago but we put Zona Cartago and our last names on it and its now officially my favorite shirt.

But anyway that about sums it up. Life's great out here! Loving every minute of it! Hope that email was long enough for ya dad! haha also it's the last one I'll write as a teenager. I'll just leave it write there. pun very much intended hahah

Love you all!

Elder Hansen

On the way to the game 

"Post game taco bell.......bad choice haha"

"Elder Hernandez fell asleep"

"With my boy Elder Hansgen. We're tight because he's got almost the same last name as me"