Serving with a smile all week!

July 17 2017

Heya!

the district before transfers last week 

the new district after transfers last week

Wow what a fun week it has been for us. Hopefully my pictures will work this week because apparently they didn't work last week. But we had a pretty fun week got to meet some fun people and get a bit dirty.

So on Monday because of it being Transfers elder Tsai and I made breakfast for the whole district, as kind of a last goodbye to the peeps that were leaving, so that was quite fun doing that.

A departing breakfast we fixed for our district

On Wednesday we went with the "elders quorum" to go do service for a lady in the ward who needed help with her garden and it turns out that only 4 of us went. But we still got right stuck in and went to town on her back garden and really got it in better shape.  But I'll attach some pictures so you can see the work that we did.

Our service project this week

This week we also got to meet with the I........ family, who was the family that walked into church last week. And they are such an awesome family. We took our member friend C...... with us and we went and taught them the restoration in their home and it was such an awesome lesson, the kids had really good questions and they all wanted their own Book of Mormon's. It was awesome - we will be seeing them again next week.

trying out a new iron... 

             

On Friday we got to meet another family!! I've never taught so many families before in my whole mission. But they are way cool they were taught by missionaries before but then eventually stopped meeting with missionaries. So we are excited to start working with them and share with them how the gospel brings families closer together. With a lot of our investigators it's been slow in progression but, as with us all, any progression is good so we will keep working hard.

It's so amazing how in the Gospel we teach people that they can be together with their families forever. I am so grateful for this knowledge that we have that this isn't the end but that we can see and be with our loved ones again, what an amazing blessing we have being members of this church and to go out and share with people how they can be together forever as well. I love it!

              

Also on Saturday we went to a Chinese restaurant with a member who served in Hong Kong. And we had proper Cantonese food and so I tried things like fried squid and chicken feet for the first time. And surprisingly it was actually pretty good. Haha the member brought a friend but he wouldn't try the chicken feet.
But that's really it for us. Thanks for tuning in. Hope y'all have a great week.

Elder Hanks

Ohhh the challenges

March 7 2016

Why hello there! I hope you all had a good week like we did this past week. I know that this week was a week of learning, and so lets gets started with what happened. 

 

So this past monday, on P-day we were at the chapel watching some movies and we were sitting there when an elder walks into the room with a massive 5 ft sword, but not only that- its Aragon's sword from lord of the rings! So we had a lot of fun with that, this past week, sorry mom no promises, but I might be buying a sword!:) But that was a fun start to the week. And of course with it being the end of transfer week, it was a lot of goodbyes and hello's for me and Elder Von Cannon because we were the ONLY people who stayed the same in the York area, including both wards here! So that was very interesting, but a lot of good things happened this week. 

On Wednesday, we were able to meet with our Investigator H...., now H... has been our investigator for about 7 months. He was one of the first people that I ever taught on my mission. And he has been a long hard road for us as missionaries, because he is so scientific. But this past week we were meeting with him, and we were talking about the importance of church attendance, because church is such a major blessing in our lives. And he agreed to try coming again! And then we invited him to be baptized for who knows maybe the 4th time, and he accepted it! He is looking to be baptized on April 2nd- My dads and sister's birthday!! 

Also big shout out to the sister and brother in law on the new kid!! I am now a new uncle with my first Nephew Samuel Jenkins!!!! SOOOO Awesome I am soo excited for you guys!! So that will be really exciting!

But its good to finally see some improvements with H..... over these past weeks, so I am really looking forward to bringing him to church hopefully this week and progressing him towards baptism! 

A..D...L..., is one of the coolest guys that I have ever met! He was our investigator about to be baptized- he was actually supposed to be baptized this week, but things happened and so its moved back a little bit, we aren't quite sure when yet.  But he cancelled the date, because he was scared that he wouldn't be able to attend church every week for the rest of his life, and didn't want God to be angry at him, so he thought he shouldn't be baptized!! So that was a different kind of problem to solve, we have to de-perfectionize someone! But he is an awesome guy and I am excited to hopefully see a baptism soon!! 

The next thing that happened was with our investigator J....! So J... has been our most solid investigator as of late and we have been teaching him a lot. And he seemed to be absorbing everything, which was super exciting! So this past week something came up. We taught him the Word of Wisdom. After the lesson we felt really good about it, but then came the text were J... was saying he wasn't quite sure in the church anymore, and didn't want to learn more, but after a lot of phone calls, and chats he has agreed to continue to meet with us! So hopefully we can still help him out, because I know how much this gospel is going to bless his life, he just needs to realize it as well. 

Never in my life have I ever been soooo scared, upset and sad that someone didn’t want to live the gospel, it almost left me devastated! But after some counseling from my companion, I realized that Heavenly Father will take care of everything, and if it’s not us, but other missionaries that can help him towards baptism, that’s good with me. But it left me in a bad mood and really challenged me on what I was doing on my mission and if it was all worth it! And let me tell you -ABSOLUTELY! Nothing is more important than fulfilling the work of the lord! I know that to be true!!! I love this gospel so much, and am so grateful for the role that it has played in my life! Love you all!!

The new district! 

Elder Hanks