Hey homies!

This past week was AWESOME!!!!!! The best part about this last week was that we went to the temple this past Tuesday!!!! I. LOVE. THE. TEMPLE. It felt SO good to be there, and I felt armed with spiritual power when I left. We were talking to a member last night about how so many people just go through the motions of being a member of the church. I remember being like that when I was in high school. And then I decided to go on a mission and then I went through the temple. Being an endowed member, I feel like there is so much more substance to my religion now. In YW's they always talked about how you need to always have your sight on the temple. And I understood why, but I didn't really understand why until I went through the temple.I feel like I'm living something so much more meaningful and deep now. The temple changed my life! Can't wait to go again in six months...

We also had interviews with President Samuelian this past Thursday. It was bittersweet, since this month was his last round of interviews before him and Sister Samuelian finish their mission and go home in in July. And as always, my interview with President was so good! Everything that President said in my interview, and also what he said in the priesthood blessing he gave me, was exactly what I needed to hear and what I had been praying for. It's incredible how inspired he is!

So I read this great talk this morning by Lawrence E. Corbridge of the seventy. It's titled "The Way" and it's all about Jesus Christ and how His way is the only way that leads to eternal life. I love this quote by Elder Corbridge: "Jesus Christ is the Way. He is the Light and Life, Bread and water, the Beginning and the End, the Resurrection and the Life, the Savior of the world, the Truth, and the Way. There is only one way to happiness and fulfillment. He is the Way. Every other way, any other way, whatever other way, is foolishness. ...May we have the good sense to follow Him." I love that!

I love you all and hope each of you have a great week!

Love,

Sister Hanna

Dinner with Renetta Frederick

Howdy!

Not a lot to report on this week. We did A LOT of finding again. A lot of tracting and a lot of street contacting. Which brought lots of laughs and many awkward moments, which are always fun! So we keep running into this one guy, Michael. He is nuts and probably high every time we see him. But he is so ridiculous that we always stop and talk to him. The other day he said, "If you hold your breath long enough, it kind of gives you the feeling of being high." And then he proceeded to take a deep breath, close his eyes, and tip his head back...and he just stood there holding his breath. Then he let his breath out, and said "Whoa...I just got the feeling...and I'm pretty sure that one of you girls is in love with me." ........Fat chance Michael, come to church. Haha he's slightly creepy, but not enough that we won't talk to him. He's super entertaining to be around!

Sister Hartvigsen's birthday was yesterday, so we had a lot of birthday fun with different members. Remember how I like to scare her? Well yesterday I scared her a lot, but she didn't mind it because I would just scream happy birthday at her and she was just so happy that it was her birthday that she quite enjoyed being screamed at. Videos to come, haha.

I found a cool quote! "If we see life through the lens of spirituality, we can see many examples of the works of God being furthered through the adversities of His children..." -Dallin H. Oaks. I found this quote as I was studying the story in John when Jesus heals the man born blind. When Christ and His apostles come across the blind man, they asked, "Master, who did sin, this man, or his parents, that he was born blind?" And Jesus answered saying, "Neither hath this man sinned, nor his parents: but that the works of God should be made manifest in him." Back then, the Jews had the habit of thinking that all adversity came from doing iniquity. Therefore, the apostles assumed that the man was blind because somebody had sinned. Christ, however, knew that the man's blindness wasn't the result of iniquity, but was rather a catalyst for the miracles of God to be witnessed among the people of Jerusalem. "When he had thus spoken, he spat on the ground, and made clay of the spittle, and he anointed the eyes of the blind man with the clay, and said unto him, Go, wash in the pool of Siloam. He went his way therefore, and washed, and came seeing." Elder Oaks further explained, "We are sent here to be tested. There must be opposition in all things. We are meant to learn and grow through that opposition, through meeting our challenges, and through teaching others to do the same. … The Lord will not only consecrate our afflictions for our gain, but He will use them to bless the lives of countless others. Jesus taught this lesson when He and His disciples met a man who was born blind. If we see life through the lens of spirituality, we can see many examples of the works of God being furthered through the adversities of His children. …When we understand this principle, that God offers us opportunities for blessings and blesses us through our own adversities and the adversities of others, we can understand why He has commanded us again and again to ‘thank the Lord thy God in all things’". There's also a great Bible Video for this story. I encourage all of you to watch it. It definitely pulls at the heart strings. In fact! I'll just give you the link to the video! Here you go:

https://www.lds.org/media-library/video/2011-10-066-jesus-heals-a-man-born-blind?category=bible-videos-the-life-of-jesus-christ&lang=eng

TEMPLE TRIP TOMORROW!!!!! I'm so pumped!

Love you all!

Love,
Sister Hanna

Hello!

Here is how our week went in one word: FINDING. We only have one investigator right now, so we are trying really hard to find new people to teach. We have done a lot of tracting and street contacting. The weather has been really nice, which means the public parks are full, which is the perfect setting for people hunting! Seriously though, we've been back and forth between the two parks almost everyday this past week trying to talk to people. They're all probably starting to recognize us haha. We haven't found any new investigators yet, but we have met and taught lots of different people. It's always fun to talk to people of different religions! So far we have met a few Muslims, a Quaker, a Scientologist, and lots of Jehovah's Witnesses. You would think that people devoted to their religions would be the hardest to talk to, but they are some of the nicest people that I have met! It's always fun to find the similarities between the two religions. And we can almost always agree on the fact the Jesus Christ is our Savior.

But like I said, we do have one new investigator! Her name is Becky, and I think I might have mentioned her in one of my past emails. Anyways, Becky was a referral from her LDS friends who are living in Idaho. She has a great view of the church because her Idaho friends were such great examples. She said that they would talk about the church a lot, but they never tried to push her into joining or meeting with the missionaries. But, she's come to a point in her life where she feels ready to learn more. In fact, her friends in Idaho mailed her a Book of Mormon, and she's been reading it! We have high hopes for Becky!

So this morning I read a talk by Neil L. Anderson titled, "Repent...That I May Heal You." It was a fantastic talk! I encourage all of you to look it up and read it. But he said something that I really loved: "The invitation to repent is rarely a voice of chastisement but rather a loving appeal to turn around and to 're-turn' toward God." Sadly, a lot of us view repentance as the "R" word, but really all it is is changing your heart and coming closer to Christ. Everyone's journey of repentance may be different, but the end goal is always the same.

Love you all!
Sister Hanna

PICTURES: This is Cecily. She moved into the ward a few months ago and has become one of our dearest friends. She's HILARIOUS! We love her to death! We went out to lunch with her today.

Hello!

So this weeks email is going to be pretty short! We went hiking today for zone Pday, so I don't have that much time to email. We went to a place called Silver Falls and it has a bunch of waterfalls! It was beautiful! It went from sunny to raining to hailing back to raining and then back to sunny all within the space of an hour. Oregon weather is messed up 😂 But it made the hike that much more entertaining!

So here's the craziest thing that happened to us this week! Sister Hartvigsen and I were tracting on Friday night, and we totally saw a guy get taken down and tased by the cops! It was nuts! We were walking away from a door that we had knocked on and we turn around the corner and see these two guys beating up on another guy. At first we thought we were just witnessing someone getting the heck beat out of them, and then we realized that they were cops and then all of sudden one pulls out his taser and tases the guy! We couldn't stop watching. Needless to say, we didn't finish tracting that area that night 😂

General Conference was awesome! I especially loved President Ucthdorf's and Elder Holland's talks. I loved how Elder Holland said, "Heaven is cheering you on today, tomorrow and forever." Have a great week everyone!

Love,
Sister Hanna

PICTURES: Silver Falls ~ 2 of our favorite members! Brother Zuniga (He's from New Zealand and he's completely inactive and he grows pot in his backyard but he's so awesome! The first time I saw him I thought that he was a character from Pirates of the Caribbean!) and Cecily (She's a hoot!)