Choir Practice for a 70

Well ya'll, this week was 7 months! And even after 7 months I still have experiences like this....

*Explaining Alma 32*

"All of our faith starts as a little seed. But as we pray and keep the commandments, eventually your faith will grow into a great big CAT."

Sometimes, words just don't happen the way you want them to, okay?

I got the music fine. We have a mission tour on Sept 13 and a 70 is coming so that's what I'm preparing the choir for. We have our first practice today! I'm sups excited. I'll be "directing" during the practices, but I'm pretty much the only missionary that plays the piano, so I'll be accompanying :) They'll just learn it and be on their own. It's not really a choir.... there's only like 35 American missionaries total and they won't even all be in it, so it's more of like a small group.  

[Note from Mission Office after watching them practice:

Wow!!  I can't see to write cause I am still emotional, that song is beautiful and she is more amazing than I first suspected!!  The music will lift our spirits and motivate us to be better disciples of our Savior!  Thanks again!!!]

Side note: one perk of doing double church duty is you get 2 pieces of bread on fast sunday. *fist bump*

WE FOUND PEANUT BUTTER YA'LL. It's also about $15 per jar, so that didn't happen.

This week Sister Jensen and I read an amazing talk from Elder Bednar in this month's Liahona about accepting God's will and timing. He shared an experience of a young faithful couple who had just been married, and 3 weeks later the husband found out he had cancer. At the close of a visit from Elder Bednar, the young man asked for a priesthood blessing. They started talking about faith, and Elder Bednar asked the question "Do you have the faith not to be healed?" 

 

Do we have the faith to accept the Lord's plan for us, whether it looks mortally appealing or not? It's one thing to have faith in the good things, but another to have faith in the scary ones. May we all prepare ourselves if we are ever asked to exercise the faith to "not be healed". Also, go read that talk. 

I love you all! Have a wonderful week!

Sister Hansen

Also, if you're sending another package soon, and it happens to be big enough to fit a cereal box, I definitely would not oppose to a box of Maple Brown Sugar Life. Yeah that would be pretty saihan. 

[Note to Dad] I was having a very interesting conversation with Elder Maynes (DIC president) this week about the English program here.

When the mission first opened, missionaries spent HOURS of their week in the English library preparing their lessons. Then in 2010 the program had been upgraded and improved, but still not perfect. The last couple years, each missionary has a flash drive with all the lessons they need on it. That is what I have been working on this whole summer, is upgrading and revamping those PowerPoints, which is something that I've enjoyed doing my whole life. Interesting to look at the Lord's timing to see exactly when I would be the most useful on my mission. I believe I was saved until this time, and working on these lessons is one of the big reasons. Pretty cool. 

Giant chucks of ice falling from the sky!

I vote you just post all your experiences from trek on my blog this week! So many amazing experiences.... trek is wonderful, and I wish I could have been there!

This week has been so hot!! Like, 90's. I just sweat buckets every day. Then randomly one day, it just started raining like I've never seen rain before. Then, HAIL. Giant chucks of ice falling from the sky! In about 5 minutes the roads were completely flooded, parked cars were in water above the tires, everything was completely and utterly soaked and flooded. It was insane! And I thought Utah weather was bi-polar....

We're still struggling with lessons, but this week was better. We found a lost RM less-active who miraculously decided to let us come over and teach a lesson with her non-member husband. It was super great! She's been back from her mission in Hawaii for over 10 years, and has never even talked to her husband about the church. He didn't know who Jesus Christ was, had never heard of the Holy Ghost, and had never prayed.... I love teaching all of those things. That's the cool thing about Mongolia, is we really meet people who have never heard Jesus Christ's name before. It's just a magical thing to see their eyes opened and changed when we help them recognize the spirit. I love it so much. Also, we asked Bayartuya (the wife) to bear her testimony about prayer, and it was the first time in over 10 years that she has born her testimony, let alone to her husband, and it was BEAUTIFUL. She was teaching him why we close our prayers in the name of Jesus Christ. The best was when we talked about families. Those two are so obviously in love, but are also obviously missing something. We felt inspired to talk about the temple. When we taught of how they can be together after death if they are married together in God's temple, the spirit was so strong. The temple is a powerful, wonderful place, and I can't wait until I am inside again. But I'm selfish, because I only have to go a year without the temple, and these Mongolians save up for their whole lives to go ONCE. Then they spend a week at the temple and do every single session. That's all they do. They have so much faith.

Man parachuting in to the Nadaam Festival

One of my tender mercies that I wrote in my journal this week was this: There have been a lot of disappointments, and frustrating things, and a lot of stuff has gone wrong. But I'm still happy. I'm still really happy, and that's because I trust in my Heavenly Father. I know exactly who I am, and I am so grateful for that. The Plan of Salvation is my tender mercy, every single day.

Zuviig song. Itgeltei bai. Hairtai shuu.
Hansen Egch

Mission Music Coordinator

SURPRISE! We moved! Sister Jensen and I are now living in the super luxurious senior couples apartment with the East Zone STLs (Bennett and Hartley) and it's been pretty fun but also a crazy couple of days!

Found these lovely ladies in the mall.

So much has happened this week. I guess the first thing I can think of is Friday we taught a WHITE GUY. IN ENGLISH. And it was way too weird. Also, turns out I'm better at teaching the gospel in Mongolian than in my native language. Who knew? It was so hard. I kept getting confused about what principle we were teaching, I talked way too much, and accidentally kept using Mongolian words. The lesson was kind of a disaster. And THAT is why God chooses our missions and not us. Because if it were the other way around I'd probably be ruining peoples lives in Kentucky right about now.

Our newest living quarters

Another cool thing this week is that Sister Harper asked me to be the "mission music coordinator"! I don't know if that's actually a thing or if she just made it up, but now I will be putting together all the musical numbers for zone training's and conferences and stuff. I'm super excited!

You've asked about couch guy a couple times, and he was gone for so long so we never met with him, but we did have a super awesome lesson with him this week! We're going to invite him to be baptized on Tuesday! He's great, and I really want to see him get the priesthood. There are just some people that you get more invested in than others, and I'm super invested in this guy.

Let's play a game! It's called, try to guess which desk is mine. *Hint: Mine is the right*

Since my STL split with Sister Wilkins, one thing we talked about was keeping a miracles/tender mercies journal. So I started doing that. Every day I'll just write a little tender mercy or miracle that happened that day. Turns out, when you start thinking about it, there are way too many to write. But I love this book because now I have a record of straight miracles from heaven. It's so cool. Our tender mercy yesterday was that we had 57 PEOPLE in Selbe!! WOW! That's the most we've had since the split. It's still been hard finding people to teach, but it's getting better, and we're building it back up. It will all be ok! Because it's all in God's hands! So as long as we're being obedient and working hard then the work will get done. The church is true. God is our loving Heavenly Father. I'd better stop there because apparently when I try to testify in English it just goes downhill :) Love you all!


Sister Hansen

We wanted to do some service and make cookies for our next door neighbors. The culture is that if you give somebody a plate or container with something on it, after you finish you return it with something else on it. So when they brought our plate back, I got really excited for a micro-second because I thought this was mac-n-cheese. Nope. Just arol (milk curds) Bon apetite.

P.S Also, we were working on some English lessons this week, and one of the lessons was about the Olympics, then it all of a sudden hit me that the Olympics are this summer!!!! I totally forgot! Are you watching them? They're in Rio this year right? I love the Olympics! Also, did you go up to the farm for Pioneer day again to play in the foam and watch fireworks? I love that. Hope you had a good day.

Moving Bricks

Hi mom and dad!

Hansen, Wilkins, cute ward missionary

We don't have anybody to meet with because they all left to the countryside for Nadaam.

You know how I have that weird thing that I start to go a little stir crazy when I stay in one place for too long? Yeah, I got a little of that this week. I have really loved being in Selbe, but the city has kind of been getting to me this week.

I went on an AMAZING STL split with Sister Wilkins to Unur, which is like the super ghetto of UB, and I loved it so much. It was so incredibly refreshing to get out of the city. We did a lot of service. There was one man that Sister Wilkins knew that has been trying to build a big brick wall around his property- he's not interested in the church, but Sister Wilkins still wanted to serve him. He didn't want her to help because then he felt like he would need to pay her or feed her, and he didn't have enough money or food to give. So, the day I was with her, we put on our basketball shorts under our skirts, went to his ger, and said "put us to work, and don't give us a thing." He was so grateful. So we spent about an hour throwing bricks into a giant pile so he could build this wall. I'm sure Sister Wilkins will return to help him again, but I'm so glad I got to go that day.

My Mongolian is still improving little by little every day. I'm so blessed to have never had to deal with being extremely frustrated or discouraged with my mission or my language- of course there have been hard days, and yeah it's frustrating when I don't understand what is being said, but over all, I feel like I've kept a pretty level head through it all. Prayer plays a big part in that. And studying. A lot. But, I'm getting more comfortable when people ask me questions, and I don't always need to turn to my companion for a translation any more. I don't know completely why yet, but the Lord has seen me fit to be VERY receiving of the gift of tongues, and I am so humbled because of it.

Anywho, that's a tiny snip-bit of what's been going on lately. Grandma sent an email about the amazing experience in Oklahoma, and that is so wonderful.

Mash ih hairtai shuu,
Sister Hansen

EVERYONE NEEDS TO SEE WHAT I JUST SAW

NADAAM. WOW. EVERYONE NEEDS TO SEE WHAT I JUST SAW.

Opening Ceremonies - NADAAM

Nadaam is the huge summer festival of Mongolia, and cultural overload, and it was so amazing. We were allowed to go to the opening ceremonies, and it was so incredible!! We had so much fun, and saw so many cool things! I think my mission is making me more travel hungry than ever before.... there's just too many wonderful things in the world that I need to see and experience! I've been so blessed to have experienced so many things, but I think that my mission has definitely been my greatest adventure yet :)

Genghis Khan is back!

Jensen, Hansen, Harmon, & Harker enjoying Opening Ceremonies on P-day

So, even though Nadaam was amazing, it makes it really difficult to meet with people, so our lessons have been next to nothing this week. It's been pretty frustrating to not be meeting with people and doing lots of good work, but there still have been little miracles, and next week will be a lot better.

The Eagle Huntress

Am I starting to look Mongolian?

Hahaha little fun story, some people know that the 4th of July is my favorite holiday, and I was not homesick, but a little bummed that there were no fireworks that day. But last night when we were praying before getting into bed, we heard fireworks going on outside! We opened the curtains and because our new apartment has an amazing view of the city, we were able to see the fireworks all the way from Sukhbaatar square!!! It was so cool. It was like Heavenly Father saying, "Hey, I know you're working your butt off, and I'm sorry I can't give you people to teach right now, but here's some fireworks to make you feel a little better. Happy 4th of July." Then Sister Jensen and I sang the Star Spangled Banner and went to bed, and I felt a little better :)

Let the games begin!

Don't let President and Sister Harper know we are here. OOPs that's them right behind us.

Have a great week ya'll. Love you lots. Come to Nadaam.
Sister Hansen

[Dad Question: What is the 42 book]
The 42 principle book is our lesson plan notebook. In PMG there are a total of 42 principles through chapter 3, and Pres. Benson challenged us to write a lesson plan for each one of those principles by the time he completed his mission. I had it completed in English, Mongolian, checked and edited by a Mongolian, and re-written in Mongolian by the time he left. So I can now successfully teach any principle out of PMG ch.3 :) Yay!

Mongolian parking lot.

Regarding Mongolian clothing... it wasn't required for Nadaam, although it would have been pretty fun if I would have bought something. There was a pretty top that I liked (sent a picture) but I wouldn't wear it until Tsagaan sar in Feb, so I don't want to carry it around for 6 months. I'll probably buy something around Christmastime.