11/24/13

Dear Family,                                                                                       November 22, 2013

            To night we got in early, so I thought I would start the family letter a little early. Last night we had a pie night for the branch. The sister missionaries came up with the idea, to promote missionary work. They made the invitations and passed them out to the branch. Bring a pie, bring a friend. That was their motto. It turned out to be a very fun activity. The branch got behind the idea and we had about 40 people attend. Grammy Lou and the Branch Mission President did most of the work, setting up and getting everything in order. The Sister missionaries are young and they think things somehow happen by magic. Not realizing that worthwhile things happen because a lot of work goes into it.

          I was standing talking to the branch president and a less active fellow, the branch president’s 11 year old daughter went through the pie line and brought her dad a plate of his favorite pies. After she went back to get herself a plate of pies, he commented; “When she was a baby I blessed her that she would be kind, thoughtful and loving, I wished I had thought of blessing the rest of my kids with that blessing.” I’ll have to agree, I know the rest of his four other kids, they are not that way. Later that night as things were winding down, I heard piano music coming from the Relief Society room. I looked in and there was this 11 year old, playing a piano duet with the white haired Relief Society Presidents husband. He showed her how to play a certain piece and they traded places on the piano and they played another duet. She was just as much at ease with that old man as she is with the primary kids her age. A couple of weeks ago the music people weren’t at church yet and the young mothers were tending to their babies so she got up and lead the music for Sacrament Meeting. She looks a lot like Lorin and Chelsea’s oldest daughter.
          Today Mom and I went to visit an older couple in the branch we have got to know. They are not married, she is a non-member, he has been inactive for years and divorced. But he still remembers the sister missionaries that taught him the gospel when he lived in California. He wasn’t home, so we talked to her.  She said she would like to take the missionary lessons. So we have an appointment to teach the restoration lesson tomorrow. This will be our first lesson taught so far. Pray for us.
          For some reason our mission decided to go from 10 zones to 5 zones. I’m not sure why, but traveling to zone conference has gone from 20 minutes to over 2 hours for us. One new thing that has started, there are two sister missionaries in each zone that are called as Sister Trainer Leaders (STL) that serve in each zone. They work with the Mission President’s wife and the sister missionaries in their zone. So if you thought of those sisters as zone leaders, we still have 10 zones. We just got an email yesterday that lists all the missionaries in the mission. I counted them, there are 14 couples, 86 young sisters, and 117 elders. (a total of 29 of  the elders and sisters are Spanish speaking.) Quite an army of missionaries hasting the work here in Arkansas.
          Having a nice new meeting house for the branch is really helpful. It is not a multiphase building that is intended to be built onto later. It is just a small building that will stay that way. If the branch outgrows it, they will just create another branch in an neighboring town and build another building there. There are 10 towns that attend our branch. Paragould is the largest town with a population of about 26,000 people. There are other towns in the thousands, and some are only in the hundreds. Our branch list printout is 12 pages long, it is very hard to navigate through. So last week I took a pair of scissors and cut the branch list into families. I then took card stock and a glue stick and put the list back together according to the different towns. It is so much nicer to work with now. When the Elders up at Piggott heard what I had done. They asked for a copy. Thursday the wife of a counselor of the stake president that lives in our branch asked for a copy. It’s so nice to go to a town and find all the families that live in that town. I probably could have done that on a MLS program, but I am not allowed that kind of access. Sister Hansen bakes cookies for people in the branch that have a birthday. I have to manually go through the list and find all the birthdays for that month. I’m sure MLS could generate that for me. Once you’ve been an executive secretary or ward clerk it’s hard to go back to no access to the membership programs. I’ve become close friends with the branch executive secretary but he’s old and doesn’t even know how to turn a computer on, let alone run it. I finally got a key to the branch building after I gave the branch clerk a blood and hair sample, and signed my life away.  I think the only reason I got it then was that a local theater group uses the church for play practice and they needed someone to open the building if the branch clerk was out of town.
            I’m so glad we have our own car. We do, do a lot of traveling around, the branch is about 50-60 miles long and about 20 miles wide. To day we go up to Rector to deliver some cookies to people with birthdays up there. Just got back from Rector The one lady just moved out and we couldn’t get a forwarding address. The other birthday lady was not at home. So we visited 3 other families in Rector while we were up there. Each place was a positive experience. After coming home and having lunch, we went and taught our first discussion to the Dunn’s. It went pretty good for our 1^st discussion.
          Today is now Sunday. We were surprised to see the Dunn’s come to church. The first time we met them last month they were so crippled they could barely move. He uses a cane and just shuffles around, she just had open heart surgery and uses a walker to get around. When we knocked on their door they just called out to come on in, because they couldn’t get up. Their health has been improving and now they are taking the lessons.
          Well Dad told you what we have been doing here.  Good thing that we now have our warm coats since the high today is 38 that is not very warm.  If we were back in Weiser I would be predicting snow but the weather prediction is that we will have a warming trend and it will warm up and rain.  Apparently it does get very cold here and now I am a believer.
          We have been invited to a members home for Thanksgiving.  I was surprised that a family thought of us.  It is the Edlers that invited us, he is the Elders Quorum Pres and they are originally from the Tri-cities in Washington.  We have a turkey but it is small and turkey is good no matter when you eat it.   I’m not sure about Christmas, we do have a tree that a member is loaning to us.  But I don’t think that there will very much under it.  It is hard to do any shopping since we are both together all the time.  I will have to be tricky to get something past Dad.  I really don’t think that he is even thinking Christmas.

        Well my dears it is time to close take care and have a good Thanksgiving

                 Love Mom and Dad

                 Sister and Elder Hansen

                 Grammy and Papa

11/18/13

Dear Family,                                                                                                   Nov. 18, 2013

            What a busy week here, we got to go and do so many things. Last Monday was Veterans Day, the library was closed. That’s where the sister missionaries go to read and write emails to their families. So they knocked on our door wondering if they could use our computer to do their emails. Well we have the computer plus Mom’s laptop so they both got to do their reading and writing at the same time. We left them and went and did out shopping. They were still here when we got back. The Relief Society President called us and asked if we could go visit her cousin that just moved into the branch. Her cousin just moved from Utah, she is staying out here taking care of her 6 yr old grandson while her daughter is deployed to kosavo. (nothing like spelling the countries name phonically) They were delightful people.

This is Mom, I don’t know where Dad was going to and he is taking his afternoon nap.  I don’t usually get a nap because he wakes up just as I am trying to take a nap.  Okay enough of that.

     This last week we went back to the Threlkeld farm and this time we rode in a combine that had a soybean head on it.(It is a 35 foot wide grain head). The soybeans are planted in 30” rows They run polypipe along the head of the head of the field and poke a hole for each row to water the field. According to the read out in the combine the beans (as they call them) were yielding about 60 bushel to the acre and were at 12-13% moisture.  This time I rode with the son Josh and had a great conversation about soybeans and about the church.  He asked questions I answered.  He could not comprehend the idea a 6 month mission let alone any other of the times.  His idea is to do mission work for maybe two or three weeks.  I ran into that in the kitchen at the Senior center.  When they found out that we are in this for 4 ½ more months they had a hard time figuring that one, then they wanted to know if we were planning on helping that long, when I assured them that we were, well the atmosphere cleared and now we are all friends.

     The birthday cookies are making a big hit here.  It is almost like most people in the Branch don’t make cookies except for Christmas.  We took some birthday cookies to this lady that lives on a primitive road with her daughter and live in boyfriend oh yes and his mother.(Actually the mothers family owns the land and the home burned down and her son Carl moved a double wide house onto the place for his mom and him to live in, the lady is a live in girlfriend and she has a girl that attends college at Arkansas State).  Anyway Carl uses this 140 acres as an reenactment place for a Roman fort and a celtic village. People from all around America and Canada come there once a year for this reenactment. Once the people enter the area they dress and do Roman things. Carl has built Roman type enclosures and buildings.  They took us to the fort.  It is overgrown with grass but it is so cool.  I could see something like this say in Germany or France when the Romans were trying to take over Europe.  There was brush, blackberry bushes, and lots of tall grass.  I brought home a creepy crawly thing on my leg but it went down the drain.  We stripped and took bathes, I didn’t want some unwelcome guest moving in.  I have tick, chigger and mosquito repellant but I didn’t know that we were going to hike to the fort. Actually we had a good path to follow so it wasn’t so bad.

     We went to a play at the Paragould high school. They wanted to know who we were there for.  Well actually we are not there for anyone the play was advertised in the paper so we decided to go.  It was called “Our Girls” it was about a rich aunt that wanted to leave money to what she thought were three girls but they were actually boys.  The boys had to dress up like girls to make her think that they were girls.  The maid was probably the funniest.  Anyway it was cute. 

    It has now turned back to hot again.  Yesterday we were on a tornado watch until 7:00pm.  Everyone was saying this is tornado weather so make sure you sit in the bathtub for protection.  But since we are the middle apartment, that is not much comfort.  Early Sunday morning we had winds that slammed against the building and pouring down rain like in buckets.   Then we had 82 degree temperatures and today is in the 70’s, it doesn’t feel like the third week of Nov.  Last week it was clear weather but it was cold so cold that I really wanted my warm coat.

     We received a phone call from a lady in St Peters Mo. Fri. night.  She wanted us to go and see her friend Pat and see what we could do to help her out.  Pat’s husband has alzheimers (don’t know how to spell the word and the dictionary didn’t help) and can’t do anything.  Pat wanted someone to put a mulching blade on her riding lawn mower well Dad is pretty handy  so he replaced the blades.  She has a beautiful home on 6 acres, the house is full of at least a bzillion glass and porcelain collections of every kind.  I thought Grandma Hansen had a lot of stuff but Pat’s collection puts Grandma’s to shame.  I did pick up pinecones to put in a basket so I have something that looks like a holiday spirit.  I need some Christmas ribbon to make things look kind of festive.

     Sister Skinner will be transferred tomorrow, Sister Hill stays here until at least the next transfers.  There have been a lot of new missionaries that are coming in so Sister Hill will probably be a trainer, even though she and sister Skinner have only been out 4 months.  We knew that we were getting two new missionaries we just didn’t know which ones.  So that means that probably Elder Pederson will be transferred since he has been here the longest.  The Elders are in Piggott which is about 35 miles from here on a crooked road that is not very wide. The branch here has about ten towns within its boundries. Last week Dad took the 12 page branch list and cut it up into individual families then he pasted them onto cardstock dividing then into the different towns. So there are 4 pages of families living in Paragould, a page for Rector and Maraduke, a page for Greenway and Piggott, a page for Jonesboro and Brooklyn, and a page for Lafe and Light  and Corning, and there where two pages of people who have moved away from their listed address. It is so helpful to have the families broken down into towns.

   We now have another assignment in the Branch, we have been asked to help the men of the Branch learn how to do their home teaching.  I’m not sure how I am supposed to help with that.  I go with Bro. Edler and Dad when they do home teaching, I mostly don’t say anything. Brother Edler is the elders quorum president, his family comes from Washington State where he ran a church farm. He now has a job out here managing a non LDS farm. They have thousands of acres of potatoes and other crops they grow here. There are about 3 or 4 LDS families that have moved from the west out here, they make up the backbone of the branch.

Love all you guys, keep the letters coming. Grammy loves to get mail.

Elder and Sister Hansen,  Dad and Mom   Papa and Grammy

PS if you want to see what we are doing go to the church website lds.org, at the top click on resources, under callings click on missionary, then click on senior missionaries and they have about 6 interviews with senior missionaries that your family will love to watch, it is all about what we are doing.

Nov 10, 2013

 

Dear Family,                                                                                       Nov 10, 2013

            Here we are again, your weekly letter.  We have enjoyed all the pictures and letters from the grandchildren and especially the school pictures.  We have a wall dedicated to only drawn pictures and then another wall dedicated to photo’s.

     We have met more less actives and have gone all over so much that we are getting to be free of Gina.  I really don’t like trying to find an address in the dark especially if we have no real idea of where the people live and most addresses are not marked real well.  Going over a railroad track is a bone jarring experience, I don’t know why it can’t be smoother.

     Yesterday we went to Mr. John Miles cotton farm.  He had us go to a field and watch the picker up close, we watch them pour cotton into a machine that packed the cotton into huge bales.  He picked some cotton to show us the bolls and how it is formed.  He had a captive audience since we were in his pickup.  He even took us down to a soybean field to see if it was dry enough to combine.  He is the same age as Dad and I so it was very easy to talk and he and Dad really connected.  He wants to go out and eat as soon as his farm work is done.  We will be here long enough for that.

     We car pooled into North Little Rock to the Mission Presidents home.  There are two other couples that are serving in this area so there is no sense in taking all of our cars.  We met the Musick’s in Walnut Ridge and went down with them.  We had a great visit and best of all Dad could take a nap so he wasn’t so tired for the dinner, speakers, and interview.  There are a lot of Senior missionaries, we were surprised.  We have CES, Military relations, Service, Family history, and the Member, leadership strength which is most of us.  It was great to get together and visit and exchange ideas.  The Musick’s are leaving next week and the Browns will be headed home in Dec.

Dad here, When our mission President came out he had he had 97 missionaries, 8 of them were sisters. By next month there will be 92 Sister Missionaries, over 110 Elders and 14 Senior couples. I think “the Lord is hastening his work in its time”. We had Stake Conference today, We are part of the Memphis Tennessee Stake, which is over two hours away. Luckily they broadcast conference to 3 outlying areas. One of which was the Jonesboro AR., which is only 25 miles away. So today Grammy and I drove to Jonesboro and went to Stake Conference. The chapel was pretty full. Great meeting. Sitting behind us was a dad with two little girls and a little boy. As the meeting started the kids broke out the coloring books and crayons, they were busy all during conference, at the end of conference the dad told them to put up there books and crayons. The little boy said real load: “Yeah! we get to go home.”

            Our Branch President has 5 kids, the first three are girls, then he has two little boys. Last Sunday, their 3 year old boy was eating candy his teacher had given him. I commented, “You have some candy.” (he uses big words) He replied, “Yes. (then he paused and said) Well, ACTUALLY they are M&M’s. His dad said a while back the family was sitting around the dinner table and someone passed gas, and it got real quiet. The little boy blurted out “AWK-WARD”.

            Just so you know, We are busy. We are happy. We are healthy. We love the weather. We love the Branch. We love the members. We love the less active. We love non-members we have met. We love having our own car. We love our GPS. We love our nice apartment. We love having Walmart only a half mile down the road. We love having a nice chapel to meet in. We love having the sister missionaries next door.

Love Grammy and Papa.

           

11/3/13

Dear Family,

     We are starting to learn how it get around. We can usually make it home after we have been out doing missionary work, without the aid of our GPS. We still use it to find places however. As a town Paragould is about the same age as Weiser. It has grown to about 25,000 people. Still a lot of farms in this area. Monroe shock absorbers, struts, under carriage type stuff is manufactured here. The rail cars that haul grain and tanker cars are made here in Paragould. We have met men that work at both places. So far we love the weather and the people. For the most part they are on the conservative side, open and hospitable. We met a man this last week that was an old Catholic Cowboy from Illinois, back in 1996 when the church held a 150 year reenactment of the of the Mormon trail, he hired on as a horseman. By the time he arrived in Salt Lake City on the 24th of July of 1997. He was converted to the church and was baptized in Utah. Wonderful man, wonderful stories. We had him out to church today.

    Friday mom and I were out trying to find an inactive family on our list. They were not home, but their neighbor was out putting up some bird feeders, so we started up a conversation with him. He had heard of the church because he has a son in the marine corps and his son was taking the missionary lessons. His son had told him he needed to read the Book of Mormon because it's true. We asked him if he would read the Book of Mormon if we brought him one. He said yes so we went back to the apartment got a Book of Mormon and took it to him.

    We don't have to lead the Branch here, there are wonderful members doing that. We don't have to teach the missionary lessons, we have wonderful Sisters living next door that do that. We just get to drive around finding inactive members and invite them to come back to church, and many of them do, but not all. We go out into the community and meet people. We volunteer down at the senior citizens 4 days a week helping them package up 150 “meals on wheels” for elderly people who can't get out and around. We have been to the county museum twice and had wonderful visits with the hosts there. Yesterday we went to a community Craft Fair and looked at all the stuff people do. We met a lot of new people and I even bought a painting by a local artist, he's retired, just started painting 3 years ago, he is very good. I got an original 16" x 24" painting, frame and all, for $45. As we left he said now you have a painting, painted by a redneck from Arkansas. I thought. Yes, I do!

    Got a call from Brad Roberts, this last Friday, he and Lyla have been called  the Colorado, Colorado Springs Mission. I am so excited for them. They report the 9th of December to the MTC.

    Mom here.

     For the most part the people in this area are very nice.  We committed that we would reactivate two less actives a month, at first I really doubted that we would be able to accomplish that, but me of little faith, we were able to make it happen.  It was like the two that we have coming back to church was waiting for some one to show them some love and to let them how much they were needed.   The Branch President was very surprised that we were able to get them back at church.  I guess we could say at we had three because we visited with a man from the Bear Lake area who moved here and became inactive but when he saw our little red car and the Idaho license plate he had to go church to find out who we were.  To make  a long story short he now comes to church whenever his job gives him Sun. off.   Some just tell us NO! not interested "I don't need the church"  We don't argue with them we are trying to be a friend and that is all.  We are doing a birthday deal where we make a birthday card and then I make homemade cookies, now that will almost always get us into a home.  Not many turn down the cookies in fact so far no one even if they really don't care about the church has not accepted the cookies

     It is hard to believe that we have been here a month already I'm thinking that we will miss these people when we have to leave.  Today Dad was asked to go and bless a baby that has a spider bite on her leg.  We were told that it was a boil but the Mother thinks it was a bite of some kind.  These people are so poor, they have been living on government help for all their lives.  There are so many that are so poor the church is their only hope for improving their lives.  I don't know who the next two less actives will be but hopefully we will find them.  We have the whole month to find them and get them coming back to church.  We have a list of inactives  and the birthday list so between the two we should be able to find them. 

Love Elder and Sister Hansen

Mom and Dad / Grammy and Papa