He is one his way!

Leeds Airport 4:20 AM Leeds time!

The Last one....

Aug 21 2017

                                                        The departing Aug 23, 2017  group  

Aug 14 2017

Get this out of the way, thanks for all the support and constant prayers and letters and everything. You all are amazing, and for all those who don't want to read my weekly email, 

my homecoming is on the 27th at 1:00pm, 1520 Fox Pointe Dr, Kaysville, UT 84037, for anyone who wants to come!:) love to see you all there, but this will probably be my last weekly email I have no idea what it will be like next week. Here's my home email for all those still out on missions you can add me next week: hunterhanks22@hotmail.com

 But this week unfortunately wasn't a very eventful week for us, every lesson we set up this week got flogged or cancelled but we still had some good things happen. Gave a talk on Sunday about having good friends, that was weird because it wasn't doctrinal based. Had our interviews with President Turvey, that was way good President Turvey is so inspired. Can't wait to have another one in a week with him! 

Haha I just laugh thinking about this but we actually found this Chinese girl on the university who told us that she believed in God because she watched a horror film and saw someone pray to be saved and they did, so now she believes. Never heard such a.... unique way of gaining a faith before but hey at least we get to teach her next week!!:) 

                   

This week the I...... family kids were away at camp and from what we heard they absolutely loved it! Had a great time and got along really well with the youth and so we are very excited to meet with them this next week and to see if we can't reschedule this amazing family for baptism for the beginning of September. So sad I won't be here for it but it's not about me it's about this amazing family coming unto Jesus Christ. 

This week we were able to also give a member a blessing, and what an amazing thing to be able to stand in for Heavenly Father and to give someone a Healing blessing. What a privilege it has been to been able to do that many times on my mission. 

                

Over these past few days I have been thinking a lot about my mission and what I have been blessed with, and I recently saw a prince of peace video that the church put out for Easter and in this video a man said this, "I have so much to be grateful for, that it would be disrespectful to God not to be happy." And this really hit me, I have been so blessed in my life to have this gospel and to be able to come share it with the people in England! My life truly has become happier and more meaningful because of my time here in England. I feel as though it has hardly been two years because of the amount of fun and laughter, sorrow and remorse, pain, and Love that I have felt here. I know that life will continue to have its ups and downs but through Jesus Christ we can ultimately be happy, why because he does everything for us. 

I love it 1 Nephi 17:30 

"And notwithstanding they being led, the Lord their God, their Redeemer, going before them, leading them by day and giving light unto them by night, and doing all things for them which were expedient for man to receive." 

Combined with the promise in 3 Nephi 28 

"and all this will I do because of the thing which ye have desired of me, for ye have desired that ye might bring the souls of men unto me, while the world shall stand.

And for this cause ye shall have fullness of joy; and ye shall sit down in the kingdom of my Father; yea, your joy shall be full, even as the Father hath given me fullness of joy; and ye shall be even as I am"

I love my mission, "the best mission in the Universe!!" I love this Gospel. I know that this is the true church once again on the earth, that Jesus Christ is my Saviour and my Redeemer, he Atoned for me so that I can be happy in this life and be with my Father in Heaven in the life to come. It was restored through the Prophet Joseph Smith and continues on through a modern day Prophet today. The Book of Mormon contains the fullness of the Gospel and teaches us what we must do to gain our own salvation. I will forever be in His debt for this missionary opportunity! 

Love you all and see you soon!

Elder Hanks ínéLÀÏ

Saying good bye.... and meeting some GA's

Aug 7 2017

What an ammmmmazing week this has been wow, three great weeks in a row!! Well to be honest every week is a great week but this is an especially great week. Hit my exact 2 year mark of serving my mission on August 5th, (happy birthday A.J.) so crazy to think it all started 2 years ago! 

So this week we had the coolest opportunity. We had ANOTHER APOSTLE come to the mission. We had an all mission conference with Elder M. Russell Ballard, and with him was Elder Patrick Kearon Presidency of the Seventy, and Paul V. Johnson, Brent H. Nielsen missionary executive director, Elder Donald L. Hallstrom all of the Seventy!! Wow so powerful got to hear from all of them! 

The whole England Leeds Mission !

with the visiting General Authorities! 

What a great meeting!! Wow to shake his hand and then receive counsel from him it was the greatest day ever. He is hilarious!  I wish everyone could see this side of the apostles. But he spoke all about coming into Christ ourselves and our investigators. Here are some of my favorite highlights. 

Elder Johnson said, "when do we ever look past our challenges rather than looking right at our challenges." And related to us the Story of Ammon at the waters of Sebus, and how he viewed the scattering of the sheep as an opportunity to open up the kings heart, and not as a challenge and how we need to be doing the same thing.

Elder Nielsen shared a cool statistic, he said "it took from the year 1830-1930 to get the first 300,000 Converts to the church. Now you as missionaries get that in one year!"

Elder Kearon shared about challenges as well, he talked about how most of the scriptural characters learned the most when things weren't going their way, and that's when they saw miracles. 

Then elder Ballard. His was sooo good he talked mostly about coming unto Christ and being cleansed through him. He read a few scriptures with us about Christ and it was so amazing somethings that he said that I really liked was, "on your mission, the Lord is learning more and more about you" it really makes you think what impression are we giving off to Him. He also said,  "as missionaries we are on the frontline in the War in Heaven. So don't just stand there but defend what you believe, we are not here to share mortal opinions we are hear to teach Eternal truths!" 

Then we got to ask him some questions it was really amazing!! Haha crazy to think that lived in Utah for 18 years never met and apostle, came to England for 2 years and have met 2 of the 12! Blessings of missionary work. But the sad part was everyone at the mission conference kept saying bye to me and saying I'll never see you again and it was really sad knowing that I won't see a lot of these people again! I have just loved being able to meet so many amazing people here on my mission. 

Nothing like burritos after the conference! 

Awwww.... the england sunsets!

Other than that we did some service for our friends C..... and C....., a cool family. The I..... family are doing good we took them to my last mission home fireside on Sunday and that was really fun! More people saying bye to me again! Haha but it was great! So the I..... kids are going on a Stake youth camp this week so that should be a really cool experience for them! But yeah that was our week! 

Have a great Week!! 

Elder Hanks ínéLÀÏ

getting drenched in the rain!

                                   
          My posterity from left to right( great-grandson, me, grandson, first son, second son)

Enjoying the sun at a bus stop!

Doing service the fun way! 

It's raining blessings!

July 31 2017

                     

Hey familia!

What a week this has been full of fun lessons, crazy weather, promptings, service, lessons and new friends. Haha it was a great week! We had 7 people at church this week absolutely amazing!! Wow
Heavenly Father is toooooo good!!! I don't think I have done anything to deserve this so it must be elder Tsai.

this just happens to be parked next to our house

This week we found this new Chinese guy named B....... Haha he is a funny character. We taught him once and he kept asking us why Christian's haven't taken over the government yet and teach people how to be good.
Haha the reasoning behind it was good, but not quite the way of doing it. So we will see what happens with him.

We also taught our amazing Family the I....... family. We taught them the Plan of Salvation and it was aweosme they seemed to really like it. It was a powerful lesson, but please pray that the spirit specifically of the restoration will touch their hearts. But they came to church this week as well and I just love teaching them!!

On Sunday we also had a really cool experience. So right after sacrament we were talking with members and this senior couple sister comes up to us and introduces us to this guy named A......... Turns out this guy ALSO JUST WALKED INTO CHURCH and wants to learn more!!! Wow amazing so we will try and meet with him later on this week. What a blessing!

Everyone knows ELM  stands for England Leeds Mission! 

So really amazing experience this week. So on Friday this week we had just finished our lessons for the day and we were coming in to the flat to eat tea and to do our language study. But after tea I just felt like we needed to leave. Had no idea why? And not only that but with the English summer as well it was raining so my desire to go outside was very little. But we went anyways and as we are walking down this road to the bus stop. We run into this less active who hasn't been to church in years and who we have been trying to see since we came to Leeds. And there he was so naturally we took the bus with him just so we could talk. And it was such a good conversation! He said he would come to church but he didn't, but I believe that was a definite prompting of the spirit to lead us to this man and one day he will come to church. It strengthened my testimony even more of the importance of the spirit in missionary work.

I love this gospel so much, and more importantly I love my Saviour Jesus Christ. What a blessing it is to know that He suffered specifically for me, died for me, and now supports and guides me in all I do! This week I was able to finish the Book of Mormon again following President Nelson's council from conference highlighting everything in it about Christ. What a great testimony builder I invite you all who haven't done it to do so, grab an empty Book of Mormon, and mark it. If you don't have one call the local missionaries and ask
for 2 copies one for you and one to give to a friend!;)

waiting for our investigator....

still waiting..... 

A member brought us tea (dinner), it was awesome! 

Love you all and hope you all have a great week!

Love,
Elder Hanks