Feliz año nuevo!!!
I had an AMAZING Christmas and hope you all did too!
On Christmas Eve we spent the evening at a members house, the Pace family! We had a candle lit dinner and we had "unleavened bread" (garlic Naan), fish, pomegranate seeds, and grapes and ate with our hands like Jesus would have. It was a really cool experience! We did the nativity with their family, I was the best Wiseman you ever did see haha. We ended the night by opening our Christmas Pj's that our parents sent us with their family!
Christmas day was amazing. There is no better place to be on Christmas than on your mission serving the Lord. We opened our presents from home, ate breakfast with Sonia and Alexis, and FaceTime our families!!! That was definetly a highlight even though the time seemed to go so sick. I love them! We spent the rest of the night with members and it was truly such an amazing and happy day.
The rest of this week was a little hard. Not from homesickness, but the work was pretty slow. No one seemed to be home. I think that is typical during the holidays though. The day after Christmas we got up to exercise and Hermana Esplin hurt her back pretty bad when we woke up to exercise. She already has some back problems but apparently she did a Squat wrong and did something to it. She pretty much collapsed and was in a LOT of pain! She said she was fine so we went out and did some tracting, but apparently it was still hurting pretty bad. We called our mission nurse and she said she needed to stay inside for the rest of the day and rest with ice and heat packs. So we were inside from 4:00PM to the rest of the night. We watched some church videos and I took care of her like the good companion I am (it wasn't that hard haha). I also got to write some thank you cards to the members in our branch so it turned out okay! Her back is feeling much better so we were able to work for the rest of the week.
There was one day we had an appointment with Gay Moo, a man that speaks Karen. No one answered, but a blizzard hit the night before and his driveway was full of snow. So we shoveled it for him! And to our surprise, he opened his door and invited us in! Turns out he was home after all and was sleeping. This time his wife and roommate joined us for the lesson!!!! Because we took some time to serve him and shovel the driveway, we were able to find two new people to teach. They are so humble and ready for the gospel!
On Sunday we were running late to church and we were stressed. We walked in to find out that the Branch presidency forgot to assign talks for Spanish Sacrament AGAIN (this has happened at least twice now) and they really didn't want to do fast and testimony meeting for like the 3rd week in a row. So me and Hermana Esplin gave very last minute talks. During the sacrament I was kind of panicking, so I prayed SO hard for strength and ideas for my talk. I was prompted to look up the talk from Shayne M. Bowen, and I ended up reading a long story from it and bearing my testimony about the Book of Mormon. It was like a 10 minute talk in Spanish that I hadn't prepared for at all! The gift of tongues was so real and I felt the Holy Ghost working through me and giving me strength and confidence. It was such a spiritual experience for me and I know that Heavenly Father answers prayers. Now I will be praying that our branch presidency asigns talks from now on haha.
I hope you all have an amazing new year!!! Thank you for all of your love and support! I love you!!!
Con amor,
Hermana Hansen
Pictures:
1-3: Christmas Eve dinner
4: Christmas pj's from my mom!
5: Christmas pj's from Hermana Esplin's mom
6: Skyping my family from 4 different places! Ohio, Utah, England, and Minnesota :)
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