I'm loving the mission so far. It's really hot here, but I'm surviving! haha. My companion's name is Hermana Nichols, and she's from Wyoming, but her family's in Utah right now. She's almost 23 years old, although she doesn't look like it. She's super fun and like a mom to me :) She's been out for 9, almost 10 months. Her first area was Rimgrove, and this is only her second area. She's definitely easy to get along with. She pushes me to do things I'm not really comfortable with, but that's good!
I'm in the Pomona North area. Our apartment is small, hot and not the best, but Hermana nichols said it's one of the better apartments. We don't have actual beds, just mattresses on the ground in the front room. it gets really hot and our AC isn't that great, so I stand in front of the AC sometimes, after we come in from outside. But i guess hna. nichols said the best things about our apartment is that we don't have bug problems. I guess the beds are gone because some hermanas had bed bugs and needed to take our beds. so, that's a big blessing.
We are a biking/walking/car/bus area, haha. We usually walk to places that are really close, or bike if we feel like it, but I just got my bike a few days ago. We use the bus to get to the church or when we need to go to the further parts of our area. Since our area is a little sketchy at night, we have to be in our car by 5PM. I was surprised at how many black people there are in our area. And there's also a lot of hispanics, haha.
I don't get my iPad until thursday, at our training meeting. I guess in our mission, you can email anytime from 10am to 6pm on p day as long as you have wifi, because it's on our iPads. the iPads are actually an awesome resource and makes your purse a lot lighter so you don't have so much to carry, haha.
I loved conference. Every single one of the talks had something for me to improve on and something to share with our investigators, new converts, and less actives. it did go by WAY too fast. Conference is definitely harder as a missionary. since no one here gets it on their tv, we had to drive to the stake center in covina. We had no ride on saturday, so we got special permission to drive our car. We almost had to wake up at 4:30 am to get ready and catch the bus! Then sunday, a member took us. Almost no one from our ward came on saturday :( Oh, btw, I'm serving in a ward, not a branch :) Two of our investigators came and watched it in spanish in the chapel and we watched with the other missionaries in english in a separate room. but, the speakers that spoke in spanish, we changed the channel to watch in spanish :) haha. On saturday, our district went to lunch at Panda express between sessions. It was quite a walk, but it was good. Then, during sessions on sundays, since no one can go buy anything and it's too far for anyone to go home and come back before the next session starts, every ward has a potluck. Latinos love food, and if you deny taking food from them, it offends them, haha. So we ate at our ward's and it was amazing. then, we visited hna. nichols' last ward and they fed us again. i had like 3 lunches--i'd be surprised if I didn't come back fat, hahaha.
I feel so bad that I've been slacking on taking pictures this week. So, I'll send your pictures of me and my comp. and our area next week. And my bike! I'll be sure to carry my camera around.
Supposedly this area has been a little slow lately with missionary work. So, we've been working a lot with less actives and new converts, and getting referrals from them. We got like 3 new investigators this week. we've been doing a lot of finding, trying to find referrals, but we usually just end up being at their homes when they're not there.
We're teaching an online investigator that hna. Nichols got through facebook. his name is Trevor. He's in Colorado going to bible college right now. she and trevor have a mutual friend. he saw that she was a mormon and fb messaged asking for a book of mormon and to learn more about the church. our skype lesson went really well and i extended my first baptismal invitation to him. he accepted! I also extended two more baptismal invitations and they also accepted. We are also teaching a new investigator named Marco. He is probably in his early 20s and lives with his mother. He's a super sweet guy and speaks english as well, so he has us do lessons in english. He accepted a baptismal invite and we have 2 more lessons set up with him tomorrow and friday! The other we found while looking for a referrall. the guy we were looking for wasn't home but his cousins were and they wanted to hear our message and a couple of them that were there accepted the invitation to be baptized. They're from hna. nichols' old area so we had to send their info to other missionaries to teach them :( but i'm learning so much! I'm running out of time, but i'll have more time next week!!!! Love you all and miss you. thank you for your prayers. we're really hoping to find some more new investigators and that our current investigators and new investigators will progress.
Love, Hermana Hansen
I'm in the Pomona North area. Our apartment is small, hot and not the best, but Hermana nichols said it's one of the better apartments. We don't have actual beds, just mattresses on the ground in the front room. it gets really hot and our AC isn't that great, so I stand in front of the AC sometimes, after we come in from outside. But i guess hna. nichols said the best things about our apartment is that we don't have bug problems. I guess the beds are gone because some hermanas had bed bugs and needed to take our beds. so, that's a big blessing.
We are a biking/walking/car/bus area, haha. We usually walk to places that are really close, or bike if we feel like it, but I just got my bike a few days ago. We use the bus to get to the church or when we need to go to the further parts of our area. Since our area is a little sketchy at night, we have to be in our car by 5PM. I was surprised at how many black people there are in our area. And there's also a lot of hispanics, haha.
I don't get my iPad until thursday, at our training meeting. I guess in our mission, you can email anytime from 10am to 6pm on p day as long as you have wifi, because it's on our iPads. the iPads are actually an awesome resource and makes your purse a lot lighter so you don't have so much to carry, haha.
I loved conference. Every single one of the talks had something for me to improve on and something to share with our investigators, new converts, and less actives. it did go by WAY too fast. Conference is definitely harder as a missionary. since no one here gets it on their tv, we had to drive to the stake center in covina. We had no ride on saturday, so we got special permission to drive our car. We almost had to wake up at 4:30 am to get ready and catch the bus! Then sunday, a member took us. Almost no one from our ward came on saturday :( Oh, btw, I'm serving in a ward, not a branch :) Two of our investigators came and watched it in spanish in the chapel and we watched with the other missionaries in english in a separate room. but, the speakers that spoke in spanish, we changed the channel to watch in spanish :) haha. On saturday, our district went to lunch at Panda express between sessions. It was quite a walk, but it was good. Then, during sessions on sundays, since no one can go buy anything and it's too far for anyone to go home and come back before the next session starts, every ward has a potluck. Latinos love food, and if you deny taking food from them, it offends them, haha. So we ate at our ward's and it was amazing. then, we visited hna. nichols' last ward and they fed us again. i had like 3 lunches--i'd be surprised if I didn't come back fat, hahaha.
I feel so bad that I've been slacking on taking pictures this week. So, I'll send your pictures of me and my comp. and our area next week. And my bike! I'll be sure to carry my camera around.
Supposedly this area has been a little slow lately with missionary work. So, we've been working a lot with less actives and new converts, and getting referrals from them. We got like 3 new investigators this week. we've been doing a lot of finding, trying to find referrals, but we usually just end up being at their homes when they're not there.
We're teaching an online investigator that hna. Nichols got through facebook. his name is Trevor. He's in Colorado going to bible college right now. she and trevor have a mutual friend. he saw that she was a mormon and fb messaged asking for a book of mormon and to learn more about the church. our skype lesson went really well and i extended my first baptismal invitation to him. he accepted! I also extended two more baptismal invitations and they also accepted. We are also teaching a new investigator named Marco. He is probably in his early 20s and lives with his mother. He's a super sweet guy and speaks english as well, so he has us do lessons in english. He accepted a baptismal invite and we have 2 more lessons set up with him tomorrow and friday! The other we found while looking for a referrall. the guy we were looking for wasn't home but his cousins were and they wanted to hear our message and a couple of them that were there accepted the invitation to be baptized. They're from hna. nichols' old area so we had to send their info to other missionaries to teach them :( but i'm learning so much! I'm running out of time, but i'll have more time next week!!!! Love you all and miss you. thank you for your prayers. we're really hoping to find some more new investigators and that our current investigators and new investigators will progress.
Love, Hermana Hansen