Flooded with Water, Knowledge and Blessings...

Hola,

This week was good. I was completely soaked like five of the six days, the floods were sooo bad that they were carrying cars down the street!!!! It was crazy!

Wow, I feel like I am just super into the mission, like I write Mondays, but I haven't seen or talked to you guys in so long! That is really really unbelievable!

Well this week I have felt why is the Lord sending sooo many blessings, I have judged people and I have talked about them before, not super mean but I shouldn't talk about others at all when they aren't present! I am repenting so much and I am working my hardest to keep these changes in my life! I just felt like, why didn't I know all of these things I've been learning, starting my mission? But, I have to keep believing that it is all a purpose for the Lord, that I have learned it when He wanted me to. I haven't done the area book for a couple of days, so I was pretty planched when all the meetings we have had, have been on obedience. I have started catching up on it and will keep doing it.

This week has been something special!!! We are going to have a baptism on Friday at six. The investigator's name is Ramon! He is a great guy and loves the gospel!!! Sooo I am super happy for that!!! Also, this week has been something of a revelatory experience for me. First, I have been searching a lot in the references in the scriptures. I have seen that it really helps a lot! Search them!!!! Then, I saw something in Mosiah, about the Sons of Mosiah and Alma the Younger! It was super awesome! It says that they were desirous or however you spell it, in Spanish, it is deseosos, but they were filled with desires to do good! They were able to change these desires of doing bad to doing good, they did through the act of doing, actually putting to practice the gospel! But from their actions, they were able to do a great thing! I loved this! I thought, if we can figure out how to put actions to all of our hopes, desires, dreams etc… we are able to do everything God wants us to do. They have to be righteous desires, but they will be followed by blessings from the Lord. If we have desires, without action and prayer, they are simply empty thoughts. I know that we can achieve everything that the Lord wants us to if we can figure out the act of putting actions to our righteous desires. Also, I was able to see the importance of the Bible in the work this week. We taught someone, she had the Bible so I shared with her about the lost sheep in Luke. It was super awesome! She started to cry because she needed the spirit she felt. I felt so humbled seeing that the spirit really knows these people and not me! Please read the Book of Mormon and the Bible, together they will guide us. Please help others; follow all of the spiritual thoughts! They will always end up blessing someone! I love you all and keep doing good!! I say this in the beloved name of our Savior, Jesus Christ. Amen.

Mother, I just want you to know how much I love you and for all that do, I don't say thanks enough! I never have! I will try to do better in that. I may appear that I am putting a lot of attention in the mission, but I really am thanking Heavenly Father for you and all you do! I love you sooo much! Really, thank you! You are being an incredible mom!!! I love you more than you can imagine!! And it makes me super happy that you go to the temple often! Keep doing the Lord's work!!!

I LOVE YOU MORE!!!! AHA!

Love, Elder Hancock

At the Zoo

Floods carrying the cars down the street

Just me

Going to the Zoo Zoo Zoo ...

Hola,

We changed our p day to Tuesday this week because we went to the zoo today as a zone. It was amazing! I saw a giraffe!!! :D But my time to write is short today because of that. The area and the people are great!

We had President's interviews this week and they went really good. President had some really nice things to say to me. 

Ah… mom, don't be missing me, you only have about 9 months more of the worry game, then you don't have to anymore, I will be walking off of a plane, completely lost in America. Don't worry that your mommy days are done mom, you are going to be my mother and do mommy things until I die because we all know that you are going to live until we die, so you will be like two hundred years old. ha  You will always be my mom; sure I am going to make my own decisions but I am not going to throw you guys out of the plane. We can think of life like flying a plane, you have two pilots; they are making decisions right and left, they are trying to make it through the storm. The thing is that many don't think about how the pilots make it through the storm, it isn't from sheer practice, they are in constant contact with the ground control. We are the pilots, there will be a whole heap of storms, I know that I cannot lose contact with the ground control, or to say, you guys, You are my strength, you are important enough that the Lord told me in my patriarchal blessing, that your home and family is a safe haven, cherish that and use it or to say, visit them, and use it to get strength and guidance in life. I may not know much about life, but I know one thing, when the Lord makes something that important, I better do it! I will always make sure the family and that includes you and pappi, a VERY important part of my life. Don't worry, remember what I told you about Oliver Granger, or search all it says about him. It says that the Lord knows all, ALL of our esfuerzas, I forgot what it is in English, but He knows all of who you are, be humble, go to Him always!!!! and you will have the blessings at the last day!

Are you going to the temple weekly? Is your arm feeling better so that you can, mom? Sadly my time is coming to an end here in the cyber, so I am sorry that it's not a long letter this week. I love you all! Have a great week!!!

Love, Elder Hancock

THANK YOU THANK YOU THANK YOU

*Not much this week, to share. Our letter was a bit personal and full of good advice for this mom, so I am sharing the most wonderful part of the letter, with you.*
Mimi


the area is great always! i love it and a little thing for you guys.. . . .

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I love you! Do all the good things!

Love, Elder Hancock

Thanks Be to God

Hola,

I don't know what I have done to deserve this. I have an amazing comp; he wants to work and be good. He's becoming one of my best friends. The Ward is amazing! And the Bishop is great! I am really going to ask President what I did to get here.

Just like Alex said, I feel like I am serving in the home, it is weird! I am doing everything I can to love the people and to help them feel loved! I have been praying and I know that God will help me to help the people. That makes me happy. I have just wanted to be on my knees constantly for thanks to Heavenly Father.

In hard times, I've had the thought always come to me, from Joseph Smith teachings, he always said, sometimes the Lord has to bring us down low before he can bring us higher. I just feel like he was always watching me to see if I would just stick in there to keep representing the right. 

Sooo yesterday, it rained like crazy and I am going to send a pic that is of me in the water. This was in the street and it was up to my knees!! I love it in Victoria! Talk to you next week!

Love you all! Keep doing great things!

Love, Elder Hancock

Transfers and Blessings

Hola!

Guess where I am right now!!!! I am in Ciudad Victoria!! It is the city highest up in the mission. Papi guessed this is where I would go like three weeks ago. I have felt my whole mission that I would come here also. Maybe I need to meet someone and help share the gospel with them. I already love it here. I feel like I am in Utah. It is really like it here. It looks like home here. It isn't too humid here, a little more chilled out and dry, but still, it is Mexico, so it is automatically more humid than Utah. It was about a 4 1/2 hour ride to get here.

My new companion is Elder Puello. He is from the Dominican Republic and is a hard worker! He is awesome!!! He is Elder Parry's kid.

This week was one of the most spiritual weeks of my mission. One great thing I had this week was that a family from my first area; they went to the temple this week and it was a spiritual high for me!  President was happy to tell me that I could go and say hi to them. I could see the hand of the Lord in my life completely! They are a great family! They get happy so easy and I love that about them! When I saw the hno, we just hugged for like two minutes and we remembered that I had made a promise to go to see them at the temple if they went, I made this promise when we were in my first area! I was happy to see that even if I had forgotten the promise I made over a year ago, that the Lord remembered and was able to help this family and I to feel the spirit! AND to finish it all off in Tancol, an hno I had been working with for the whole almost eight months, got his recommend signed and he is going to the temple again with his wife, they are both returned missionaries. Soooo, I have seen the hand of the Lord in my life and in the lives of others, super this week! I feel good about the time I spent there and I see many fruits of the labor there. I am blessed. It was so hard to say goodbye to everyone, we all cried. I will miss Tancol and the wonderful people there.

I am going now, I am out of time. I love you all!!!! Have a great week and do the right things.

Love, Elder Hancock

Me and the family Crespo Cruz

Portuguese and Avocados

Hola,

Well, this is the last week of the change. I don't know what to think, I love these people, but it feels like I am leaving the house, like I have been here so long that I won't really feel how much I miss and love them, until I am gone.

I am tired and I am trying to ignore the tired and exhaustion with all I have, it's just been a good amount of test here ahhhh. I just don't want to ever feel trunky and want to go home, I want the desires to always be in my mission until the day I leave this life and even longer. I do NOT want to ever be a dead missionary! It is foe or gross and bad. I LOVE the mission with all that I have!

I have been a bit spiritually drained but just in thanks to the Lord and in constant prayer, He will help me to prevent any getting trunky in the future. With just about every area, I have had the opportunity to have a spiritual witness as to if I will be leaving the area or not. Last change, I thought I was going to leave, because it was the natural man saying so, then when I prayed about it, I had this thought saying that I wouldn't leave and I stayed. Now, I was feeling like I could possibly stay another and when I prayed and I had the thought that I could be leaving this change. So, that is always a super spiritual experience. I love to see how the Lord can help us in all we do to prepare us for the future in all things.

I am now trying to learn Portuguese and I am actually learning pretty good how. ha ha to say como seta, you say com estais. There is a guy here who speaks Portuguese and a lot of other languages because he is in the Navy and he had to learn them for work and he has to use them frequently but Portuguese he learned in the mission. I am learning a lot from him. It is surprising how great it is to learn when the Lord gives you the gift of tongues! It isn't even that I have already learned a language, it is the pure gift of tongues and I am soooo grateful for it. I can't type any Portuguese here because the computer has to be set to Portuguese to actually type in it. I can read and understand it and listen and understand the majority of it, but the hard one is talking in it now but from having to remember so much verbs in Spanish, it is not too hard to remember more now, so that is cool. I love languages, I want to learn Italian and French also, so I am not even close to stopping learning. ha ha

Would you send me journals, but not ones like you have sent me, I want one of the boring ones like you use ha ha that just say journal on front and are usually the color of the scripts like black, maroon and blue. I would like the navy and maroon ones. I think you get them at Deseret Book. They have the spiral thing to hold them together, but then the spiral is covered so it looks nice. You have had them before, so you will know what I am talking about! I know you might be confused with my description, sorry. And if you send them in a padded folder, it costs a lot less and it gets here faster than others, like a week faster so I would recommend that. ha If you send me three I am going to try to fill them up in this last nine months or so. That is my goal.

I have to go now, my hour is up. I love you! Keep up the good work and know that I love you! Have a great week! The picture is of me and an avocado tree! All the avocados are huge like that here!

Love, Elder Hancock

P.S. Don't forget next week is changes so I don't know when I will be writing.

Congrats To The Sister And To The Mother

hola familia,

Well, I have just been seeing the rock on Alex's hand! Sister, you are now embarking on a great adventure, please I urge you with all that I have, make it a priority to be humble and love the Lord more than your husband!!! And let him love the Lord more than you. That will assure that you and your children and family will stay worthy and strong in the church all your lives!!! And lastly, GO TO THE TEMPLE AS MUCH AS POSSIBLE!!!!! You are great and congrats!

Brant and Kristy, your baby is cute. Congrats on the baby blessing! It sounds like it was a great day! :D

I was so happy to get the pictures of Katy! I almost cried from joy, seeing that Katy went thru the temple and got married there. I am so happy for her. Please tell her congrats and that I am so happy for her!

Mom, congrats on the new calling. That is great news! Even though I know you know this, I just wanted to remind you how important all callings are. A secretary is very important because the president and her counselors jobs would not be possible without a secretary to help that happen. It's like the story when Heavenly Father says to one of his kids, asking if they want to serve and of course, they scream yes! Then he assigns them to a place to serve, they immediately say, well, hey now, I don't want to serve there, no one will see me or even know that I am alive… I want to do something great. Then the Lord says, all loving and knowing all, but, I will know what you are doing, I will see everything you do, I will even bless you and help you with what you are doing. Who else needs to know about the calling you have, how it is helping my kingdom. So, I want you to know that your calling is an opportunity to serve, as I know you already know. You have told me time and time again that wherever you are serving, that is immediately the best calling ever! I know you will make everyone in the ward want to be the secretary! You are amazing and I love you more than you know and this is great news to hear!

I am laboring diligently and apparently I need to still be here because I am now going on seven months in the area. All I know is that I am feeling so much growth and I start to cry at the slightest feeling of the spirit now and I am seeing the miracles of the gospel in my life. This is where the gospel really gets fun! It's been good for me, helping elders when they are struggling and having a hard time with something. Sometimes, I forget to be asking the questions that the zone leaders want us to and I just go with what the spirit wants us to, but then I look back on the questions, and they are something that the spirit naturally told me to say, so I am super happy with the spirit!  I LOVE the work!

My pres is staying the same on all the attire and such, he is going to interview all of us on worthiness next change to see if we are worthy to have iPads and such like the First Presidency said we would have. I think it would take the place of the movie players we have now. I will be the strict one with it. The phone remains in my pocket!

Oh so, I just saw something that will make you mad, I forgot the cord to the camera!!!!!!!!!!! NNNNNNNNNOOOOOOOO ha ha I am super sorry! I know I promised pictures this week. Next week I will, cause tonight I will put the cord in the holder so it is there already for next week.

I have to go now, I love you all and keep doing the great things! I have been praying for you, to have work papi, and fasting for it too. So, I hope you get all you need! You are great! Magnify your callings to the fullest! GO TO THE TEMPLE EVERY WEEK!!!!! It is necessary! I am trying to do all that is right, all the time. Have a great week! Do all the right!

I LOVE YOU ALL!
Elder Hancock

P.S. Momma Bear, you have only ten months of wait time ha ha I know you are counting!

Wet Shoes And Having The Spirit To Guide

Sooo hello all and all,

This week has been crazy, it has been filled with little tests here and there! I learned a lot of how the spirit can help us in the callings we are given in the gospel. The week was good. Today I got to give another American who is a new missionary a blessing of comfort and strength, I felt power as I gave him the blessing, I knew that it was the Lord putting the words in my mouth. The other cool part of the day today was that along with the cool blessing is that before hand I had the thought to invite another American missionary who is a good guy and has about seven months in the mission. Anyways, I had the thought to bring him also. It was cool to see him testify of the tests he has had in his mission to help this young missionary. I was glad to see that the spirit knew that this missionary maybe just needed an experience with giving a blessing also. So I have seen alot this week, of the ways that the spirit has direct knowledge of everything that we need. In our callings we have, the Lord can bless us with the exact knowledge or with an idea of what we need to do; alot of times it doesn't come until we have thoroughly thought through all the ways we can help the person or what we can do to help Heavenly Father. Something I have seen this week is that when I am talking to the other missionaries, I pray before hand, about how I can help them and if the spirit would help me to know anything that they need to know. I had an experience really cool this week cause I was talking to a missionary and was able to ask him about a certain thing and he told me that it was his worry and wanted to know how I knew, I could just tell him that it was a thought directly from the spirit! I want this for all of you this week; I want you to search for opportunities to hear and follow the spirit! I promise you that it will guide you; now I am not saying that it will be easy or even seem possible, but it will be worth it! There are things in the mission that I am seeing, that the mission is not only just coming out here to teach for two years. In this time and these last couple months, I have learned more and more, that the Lord wants people who are just willing to do what He wants, and He calls them to the work. In other words, I have been able to see that my feelings toward my mission are completely changing and I am loving more the people I serve.

Right now we have had like three or four days of consecutive rain, I LOVE it haha the only bad thing is having to dry my shoes out at night! haha I love the mission though! Also one thing I have seen is that there is no need to whine, or complain, it is because no one ever wants to just sit and listen to a complainer all the time, the occasional is ok, but all the time is just horrible! That is the advise that I have for all future missionaries; never complain, because your comp is trying to do all he can and it just never helps to complain! A thought I had this week was very amazing, I had a thought about learning diligence in my mission, I have had the thought that I have to learn the thing now and if I don't, well then I am never going to learn it, I was certainly wrong! I thought about a comp I have had where both of us wanted to be obedient and diligent, and well, great things happened! I know that the Lord loves us and helps us!

I love you all a lot and I am sooo thankful for all you do. I pray for you every day and night! Go to the temple! You will be blessed! Have a great week!

Love, Elder Hancock