First off, can I just say how blessed I am to know each and every one of you? I feel like I don't express my gratitude enough for the things I have, and among those is you guys! So thank you! You're all awesome, and I want you to know that I appreciate your love, your testimonies, and also the time you take to read these emails. Fantastic. That's what you all are.
#tb to pictures of going to Popoli (May 22, 2016)
Anyways! This week was great! It's been strange having a new companion after having been with Anziano Cowden for so long, but Anziano Martin and I get along just fine. He's a great guy, and an awesome missionary. Here's a few highlights from the week.
Zone conference! Zone conferences are always so much fun and so spiritually uplifting. We left Tuesday night so that we could have interviews with president in the villa. It feels like I was in the
villa just the other day, having barely arrived in Italy. But uh, it's actually been three months. Time FLIES out here. That's what happens when you're busy and working hard, eh? Anyways, we left Tuesday night, got to Rome around 6:30 and literally ran to get to the villa by 7:30. The Sorelle had their interviews, and then we had ours. WOW. I love president Pickerd! One of the things that hit me at the end of our interview when we were kneeling and praying together was his love for me. Just me. I'm sure he loves the mission and all the missionaries here collectively, but for that time I felt that he thought about and prayed for me specifically. It's a pretty cool feeling. He's got to be so busy with everything going on, so those few minutes where I felt like he was focused completely on me were something else. And from there it just spread. I felt not just his love, but the love of my family and friends. I came to an awareness of how they all love me personally, how much they care about me and hope for my well-being. It's an awesome feeling, knowing that you're loved. ITS COOL, OKAY?! Anyways we actually finished with our interviews around 9 ish, so the AP's came to the villa to take us to their place for the night. Gosh dang it I love the assistants. One of them said this: "We have two rules in this house. One, eat whatever you want. Two, sleep on whichever bed you want. If you want to sleep on the ones we use, just let us know." You might think he said it in a joking way, but no. He was dead serious. I mean yeah there's four other beds besides the one they were using, but just the fact that they were willing to move for one of us was moving. It was a day full of feeling love, if you hadn't already noticed.
The next day we got up and went to one of the churches in Rome for zone conference! And wow it was great! We focused a lot on our new mission vision, which is to be a consecrated, preach my gospel mission that teaches repentance and baptizes converts. We also talked about what it really means to walk with God. That was something president Pickerd had asked us to study in prep for him coming to Italy. We've specifically studied Moses 6:31-34
" 31 And when Enoch had heard these words, he bowed himself to the earth, before the Lord, and spake before the Lord, saying: Why is it that I have found favor in thy sight, and am but a lad, and all the people hate me; for I am slow of speech; wherefore am I thy servant?
32 And the Lord said unto Enoch: Go forth and do as I have commanded thee, and no man shall pierce thee. Open thy mouth, and it shall be filled, and I will give thee utterance, for all flesh is in my hands, and I will do as seemeth me good.
33 Say unto this people: Choose ye this day, to serve the Lord God who made you.
34 Behold my Spirit is upon you, wherefore all thy words will I justify; and the mountains shall flee before you, and the rivers shall turn from their course; and thou shalt abide in me, and I in you; therefore walk with me."
and also chapter 7. We've made it a focus of our comp studies to discuss how we can walk with God daily. We've set goals and made plans to accomplish these things. Still a study in progress, but we've already learned a ton thus far. We also talked about repentance and what it means to repent, all using
scriptures from the Book of Mormon. We started off with one person sharing a scripture, and from there we just had a huge discussion which included us jumping from scripture to scripture and talking
about what it means to repent. It was great! I would tell you all about it, but it'd take up all my time today, and I wouldn't even finish. Instead, I'd invite you all to have your own studies of repentance in the Book of Mormon and to discover what it means for you personally. I promise your testimonies will grow and you'll feel closer to your Savior as you apply the principles you learn!
Besides that, we had lunch, Anziano Martin and I sang (I don't know why they're having the Pescara anziani sing so often. Must be trying to remind me to be humble, lol😅), had an awesome teaching on inviting people to "come and see" (John 1:39)
"39 He saith unto them, Come and see. They came and saw where he dwelt, and abode with him that day: for it was about the tenth hour."
by the assistants, said hi to everyone, and grabbed a bus back to Pescara for the night.
Another highlight of this week! We were just walking to the bus stop on Thursday night from our English discussion group when a guy steps out of his car and says "elders and sisters! I'm a member too!" His name is Josh and he's here visiting some friends from England. He's awesome! Both his friends live in Pescara, and we got to meet them too. This was actually a huge blessing for me because Thursday was a little rough. We had awesome plans for the day, but they all fell through. Every single one. And they didn't fall through in such a way that we could rely on our back up plans. It just resulted in a lot of waiting and finally being told they couldn't make it. Imma be honest,
in Italy, it's easy to sometimes feel like our church is super small. It's easy to feel like you're just a tiny voice shouting for joy amidst a sea of people yelling and shouting for fear and confusion. It's hard. But whenever it gets hard, Heavenly Father will always bless us with peace and comfort. He'll give us the reassurance that he's there, that this is his church, and that we are not alone - and sometimes he does that through an Englishman named Josh. How comforting it is though to know this church is global, and that there will always be people there to help us out.
Last highlight from the week! Yesterday it was Anziano Martin's birthday! Buon compleanno e tanti auguri a Lui! It was a tranquillo day. We did get to rollerblade that morning to centro though! We also
got pizza that night, and had some awesome experiences throughout the day. Per esempio, while walking through centro Anziano Martin felt like he needed to pick up that flyer on the ground. So he does, and someone asks "what's that?" Ended up talking to them for awhile, and it turns out they used to come to church! So we're planning on seeing them this week. When we follow promptings, or what we feel like may be promptings, who knows what'll happen? Let's follow them!
A few other things: President Uchtdorf came to visit the mission last week!
"President Dieter F. Uchtdorf, second counselor in the First Presidency, and his wife, Sister Harriet R. Uchtdorf, visit the Rome Italy Temple site. (Photo by Tyler Harris, IRI)"
(Source: deseretnews.com)
All in all, it's been an awesome week. There's been a huge lesson I learned though, and it's that goal setting and accountability are important.
It's really easy to get stressed dealing with life. Out here on the mission it's stuff like having meaningful plans each hour of the day, getting up early every morning, having an infinite list of things to get done all the while feeling like there's not enough time to do it all. That's not even taking into account personal goals and development we want to get done. Where do you start? Do you just tackle it all at once? Just blindly begin somewhere? Nahh. When we try to tackle all these things like this, we become stressed. So what I've done this past week is I took some time during personal study and just sat there and thought about all the things I wanted to do. I went through and I made a list of almost everything. I had things I wanted to do this week, things I wanted to do this transfer, long term things I wanted to accomplish by the end of my mission, things for the day, stuff like that. From there, I analyzed the goals. Which ones can I control? Which ones are out of my control? Which ones need some fine-tuning? From there, I thought about which ones were the most important. What needs to be done as soon as possible, and which ones can wait? Then, once I'd prioritized and simplified them, I started with the first one. I thought about it. I prayed about it. I studied its principles. Once I did that, I prayerfully set a small goal. Just a small one. One thing I can do everyday to become who I know the Lord needs me to be. Baby steps. Then, at the end of each day, I accounted with the Lord. Did I accomplish the goal we set? Why or why not? If not, I commit to be better tomorrow. I ask for help. If I haven't reached the goal within a few days, I'll reevaluate and set a new goal. If I did, great! I then ask for the help to do it again tomorrow anyways, because I know the only reason I'm able to accomplish anything is because of the Lord, and if I ever forget that...eesh. I don't even like thinking about it. Anyways, you may be wondering why this is the spiritual thing I'm writing about today. I also wondered about that. But here's a quote from Elder Ballard that'll help clarify why I wrote about this. "I am so thoroughly convinced that if we don’t set goals in our life and learn how to master the techniques of living to reach our goals, we can reach a ripe old age and look back on our life only to see that we reached but a small part of our full potential. When one learns to master the principles of setting a goal, he will then be able to make a great difference in the results he attains in this life.” It's goal setting that helps us reach our full potential. I can't be quite sure, but when I think of the parable of the talents, I imagine that the two servants who doubled their talents had goals, while the one who buried his talent didn't. I'm sure we all feel like him sometimes. We have talents of our own that we've been given, and they're of great value. Priceless, in fact. But what do we do with them? If we don't have goals that we've set with Heavenly Father, we too will end up just burying them in the dirt until the coming of the Lord. Another thought on this: does Heavenly Father set goals? Personally, I think yes. We all know Moses 1:39.
"For behold, this is my work and my glory - to bring go pass the immortality and eternal life of man."
He has a vision in mind, and he's set goals that will help him accomplish it. Isn't that awesome? Goal setting is a divine principle that will help us become more like our Heavenly Father and draw nearer to our Savior, Jesus Christ. That's my invite for all of you this week! Set one goal! And don't just pick any random goal. Think about it. Pray about it. Study about it. Make it manageable, because remember, we are all still children that are learning. Baby steps. Then, carry it out. I promise that you won't regret it.
I'm hoping you'll all have a fantastic day and an even better week!
(Note from Anziano Hansen's mum: I'm just going to post pictures from back in May when he went to the town of Popoli, because we didn't get any pictures from him this past week)
"Popoli! A member lives up here, and we went to see them two weeks ago."
"Is pretty dang cool, eh?"
"Forza juve! <3"
Anziano Hansen
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