"july 4th is on a sunday? what a great year to be gone" - cectra waldie

HELLO MY FAMILY!!! 

Wowwowo this week has been so crazy.  AND SO GOOD!!! 

We've done a lot more contacting this week and it's been the best.  It's hard sometimes but I know it's such important work.  And sometimes, it's super hilarious.  Like on Wednesday, we'd had a meeting and then had 2 minutes before we had to be home and decided to contact one last person, and we stumbled into this man that seemed pretty interested and was nice and had lots of questions...and then at the end he asked me if I wanted to marry a Kazakh man and told me he'd give me his son if I became Muslim.  And then we bore our testimonies and invited him to church (how to friendzone on the mission 101) and invited him to church...and he said he would come with his son so we could meet and I could become Muslim.  hahaha.  But there have been miracles too.  Like this man we met in the park who had such sincere questions about God it made my heart ache a little.  I have such a testimony that these people are our brothers and sisters!  Not even just in KZ.  Everywhere.  And we all deserve to hear the news that our King lives!  Ah man.  I just love this work okay.  Really really.

that sign says don't smoke, don't argue.  hahaha.  we loved it.

Also, on Monday, we made Korean food with a potential investigator because she's Korean, and we put three heads of garlic into one dish.  The meeting was actually good and the food was fine but there was SO MUCH GARLIC.  Can we just talk about this for a second.  I mean really.  For the next three days, everything smelled like garlic.  Clothes.  HAIR.  Hand sweat.  e v e r y t h i n g.  Congrats on knowing such accomplished individuals.

Yesterday was pretty much just a huge miracle.  After a couple of days where we had learned a lot of hard lessons and maybe pity-eaten an entire pan of cornbread too late at night, SO MANY GOOD THINGS HAPPENED.  Church was so spiritual (p.s. spoke in church yesterday and didn't make anyone's ears bleed.  Heck yeaaah) and we had so many inspiring lessons and bonded with the members here and everything was great.  We went home and during lunch, we called all the sisters that hadn't been at church that day to say we missed them and to see if they needed help.  Some of the people on that list are blatantly inactive and it was kind of scary to call some of them and be like "hey, we saw that you weren't at church today!  is everything okay?" when we know they hadn't been in like 6 years.  But we saw SO many blessings for doing it.  Every single one, super inactive or not, really appreciated it.  They laughed with us and at us when we stumbled in Russian and it was one of the sincerest experiences I've had lately and it was just so dang good.  This work has always been about the "one", you know?  And that's enough.  Right after we finished, we got a call from one of our investigators (she is seriously money.  I LOVE that woman and her clean heart and how much she needs this gospel and how she understands that and ahhhh) who "just happened to be in the area and wanted to know if we wanted to meet and maybe read the Book of Mormon and stuff."  She called us and we met and it was so needed for her and it was SUCH a good lesson.  Wowowow.  And THEN last night we had a meeting with this couple that got baptized a year ago at the Carters.  This couple is from Moscow and they're young and hip and so funny and COOL and they are pretty much just the cutest humans on the planet.  They haven't been to church for like a month and we finally got a meeting with them and I was nervous that it would be really awkward because they're really cooool and maybe we were overreacting and it wasn't something they needed and maybe they could do it on their own and stuff...but then we started and watched the Mountains to Climb video 

and were talking about faith and how we can build it and the wife just started crying and thanking us for the fact that we met with them because they knew they were inactive and wanted to be closer to the Lord and ahhhhh it was worth the run on sentence because IT JUST BROKE MY HEART.  But then it was healed because the gospel does that for all of us.  And just...things are so good.  Missionary work is the happiest and hardest thing in the world and I love every day I get a chance to do it.

LASTLY, something I've been thinking a lot about lately is love. (duh.  It's me.  duh.  duhhh.) (also, the phrase "i love love" is just as uncommon in Russian as it is in English.  not even mad.) Last week during zone conference, Sister Porter--the wife of one of the members of our area presidency--spoke and talked about this.  She talked about how missionary work is the fulfillment of the first and greatest commandment and elaborated on how "all the law hangs" on this commandment--to love God and one another.  She then showed us a sweater and a hanger and illustrated how love--the hanger--is what gives everything else shape and joy and beauty and meaning, and promised us that if we would study the Savior and about His Atonement, we would feel that in our lives and it wouldn't just be time in another country away from those we love.  It wouldn't even just be something hard.  It would be time that was beautiful and alive and that we loved because we would understand why we were there.  And it is the TRUEST THING EVER.  I've been thinking about it a lot and trying to live it and it's really hard.  But it is the best journey.  And even though I love you all with my whole heart, I know this is really important work.  Today in the Book of Mormon (p.s. won't finish it before the six month mark but my testimony of that book has grown so much the last week.  READ IT!!  LET IT CHANGE YOU!!) I was reading in Mosiah and just cried.  It was where Abinadi is bearing testimony of the Atonement and of the fact that God is merciful and we are ALL already redeemed and then was like "that's all" and was willing to die.  He gave a message of complete love and then DIED for it.  But it was that important.  He knew it and had felt that and He personally was so sure that his soul was saved from every pain only in and through Jesus Christ and His Atoning love that He was willing to die to show it to others.  THAT is faith.  That is grit and bravery and conviction and testimony.  But mostly, that is love.  And that's something we can show everyone around us, every day.  And that's enough.

I love you family.  I love you I love you I love you.  I love all you dang people that read this.  And I pray for you all the time.  Keep on keeping on and know that Heavenly Father is always ready to hear and help you.  We're going to be okay.  And that's all I have to say about that. 

All the love IN THE WORLD,

Sister Hansen