This week was pretty busy so nothing has really changed. So to start off the week we had a dope MPL with our best member missionary Sister Carline Pierre-Jules. We taught Gertude and her kids Sterline and Fadens. They accepted the message of the Book of Mormon well. They are a super cool family and we were able to teach them many times this week and they fed us a few times too. The kids are cooler than the mom unfortunately, but they have been reading and praying! The crazy thing is that Sterline just moved from Belle Glade and she had lived there almost her whole life. I definitely knocked on her door (we checked) about a year ago when I was there. Pretty cool, I guess she gets a second chance to hear the gospel form Elder Hansen. :)
Sterline and Fadens came to church on Sunday but Gertude did not because and I quote, "I just gave birth so none of my shoes fit", lamest excuse ever! Anyway, we can tell that she is super comfortable with us because she has no hesitance on breast feeding her baby during the lessons, maybe it's just a cultural thing... I don't know.
Anyway, we had more exchanges this week as normal, I went to the Brazilian branch again and got fed a large Brazilian meal and I ate chicken Heart. It was pretty good.
Then on Thursday, we took one of the young men out with us, Paul Valcin, and he spent a whole day with us for a "mini-Mission". He seemed to have a good time, him and Elder Jean-Louis talked a lot of trash, also probably a cultural thing.
Then on Friday, I went on Exchange with Elder Lyons, the newest AP and we had a good time together. He is from Logan and will be going to USU so we will probably be seeing a lot of each other.
On Saturday we prepared our Stake Report for our early meeting on Sunday. Apparently we did a better job than we should have because they asked us to do the same report but going back over the last 2 years... But miraculously on Sunday we had 2 miracle member referrals that came to church and so they became new investigators! It was great! Then we got fed 3 times randomly, none of them from our ward... so we were very full.
Okay enough of the boring stuff here is the less boring stuff, my last thought:
"...I've come to understand something that happened to me long ago. I must have been in my early teens... And I was in a hurry... but i felt, not heard, a voice. It was an impression, which I knew then was from God. It was this thought, and close to these words: "Someday, when you know who you really are, you will be sorry you didn't use your time better." I thought then that the impression was odd, since I thought I was using my time pretty well, and I thought I knew who I was. Now, years later, I am beginning to know who I am, and who you are, and why we will be sorry if we do not invest our time well...
"One of the things that makes you a child of promise is that you know God’s promises, and you know their purpose is to bring to pass the immortality and eternal life of man. You will invest your time wisely if you value the promises. And you will value the promises when they work in your life and in the lives of people you love. And they will work when you invest your time in accepting them and offering them to others. And real investment of time happens only with sustained effort motivated by faith...
"You will gain confidence in your ability to invest your precious time well by gaining three other confidences. First, you must gain confidence that God keeps his promises. Second, you must gain god's confidence that you will always keep the promises, not that you choose to make but that he asks you to make. And third, you must help others gain confidence that God keeps his promises." (Child of Promise, Henry B. Eyring, 1986)
"You will gain confidence in your ability to invest your precious time well by gaining three other confidences. First, you must gain confidence that God keeps his promises. Second, you must gain god's confidence that you will always keep the promises, not that you choose to make but that he asks you to make. And third, you must help others gain confidence that God keeps his promises." (Child of Promise, Henry B. Eyring, 1986)
There are so many things that are vying for our attention especially in this media and tech age. We have so many "conveniences" that are supposed to make our lives faster and more efficient and therefore give us more time, however they often do the very opposite. There are so many "good" things that we could do, but that doesn't always mean that they are what we should do. Like Elder Eyring said, time is the property that God has given us and it is up to us to decide what to do with it. It is important for us to be constantly evaluating how we're are using our time because in the words of Elder Maxwell, "Sometimes hearts set so much on the things of the world must be broken."
Elder Hansen
Florida, Fort Lauderdale Mission
Haitian-ing the Work
With Paul Valcin their Mini-Missionary
Elder Hansen and Elder Lyons, future Aggies!
Checking out the sunrise on the pier
Matthew's creative ZL folders
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