April 21

Hey! I’m doing great. Life is good. The church building is coming along great and my first district meeting went well I think...There are only 4 people in my district including me...(in the cities Agrigento and Sciacca.) There are a few districts in a zone and around 8 or 9 zones in our mission, but when the mission changes there will be about 4 much bigger zones. Well this week we are getting a new member from Palermo and his wife and so we will have around 9 in church instead of 7 haha... Senior companion and district leader are easy it’s branch president that is the hard part. To supervise the building I just have to pass by every day or two to make sure they are doing what’s in the job description....good thing I know a little about construction....thanks dad . Life is good my companion and I get along pretty well. You can defiantly tell he isn’t American but he is great and likes to work hard with me. No we don’t have any ash here but we have lots of tourists that can’t fly haha.. Four English boys were in church on Sunday and three were return missionaries. That was pretty fun and they all seemed to be good kids and they sang well and we did some translating and the members loved them.
...I’m actually making home made American style burgers today :) for lunch ohh yeah. Well this week has been pretty normal. We do lots of proselyting and we walk probably around 7-10 miles a day or if it was more I wouldn’t be surprised but let’s just say I have good walking legs now. It’s starting to warm up pretty good and I have even started taking colder showers every once and a while haha. We did get some good rain on Sunday tho. Well I can’t think of a faith building story off the top of my head right now other than with the spirit two missionaries who have never taught together before or known each other can teach an almost perfect lesson with just a little planning. As long as the spirit is there everything can go great and will go great. The other is that I have been in Italy for over 8 months and I feel like 5 months ago I could communicate as well as I want to with people of the church....that’s pretty faith building for me because as long as we do our part Heavenly Father will do his and it’s a promise. To me reading the book of Mormon is faith building and the Christ like attributes in preach my gospel chapter six. Also another faith building thing for me is just sincere prayer. It’s always great if you make it a two way conversation....and it always works better if you go in to a prayer with the intent of acting on your answer before you start. I love being a missionary and focusing on the good things helps me make sure there aren’t any bad times....well doing my part is important too. But there is really no reason to be discouraged. Just because doubt and fear are a lack of faith, helps me know that if fear or doubt enters my mind my faith is too low and I need to do something to make it better, like remember the atonement of Jesus Christ. Well I don’t have much more time but the church is true and I love being a missionary. Thanks for all your support.
love you both, Anziano Hansen