Bula Bula Bula

What’s up with the fam and the friends? 

Things here are pretty alright. Oakland is such a different place, it blows my mind.  Each day we run into so many different people from so many different places, I can hardly keep up with it. It’s pretty cool though. Right now our only investigator with a baptismal date is a man named Greg. He is from Panama and is hard to understand sometimes. He has a pretty bad cigar problem but we’re helping him overcome it. He is tight though, he always comes to church and intros himself to everyone.

And we have another lady we’re teaching who is from Vietnam who is just this crazy old lady but I love her. She talks through probably 94% of the lessons we give her, so it’s super hard for us just to teach one point or anything at all because she just talks and talks and talks, hahahah. But she is doing good, she has super strong faith and it will be cool to see her grow.

There are a few others we are working with as well but nobody very close to baptism, we’re sure workin' on it though. Downtown Oakland is a sweet place, there is always something going on. I swear there’s never, NEVER a dull moment around here. There is a lake pretty much right downtown and we went there this week to find some referrals and street contact and it was pretty much the biggest waste of any three hours on my mission, hahaha. We couldn’t catch anyone from the referrals and the only person who gave us a moment of their time was this lady sittin' on the bench, but she was from the Jehovah’s Witness, so she was only interested in talking.  She wasn’t about to talk about the gospel though ha, what can ya do though, right?

Other than that things here are pretty good, all we need in our work is more people to teach, but hopefully that will come.  I gave a talk in church yesterday and really stressed the members giving us referrals, so hopefully they got the message.

Peace and blessings,

Elder Hanke

PS I can’t send pictures until you send me that wall adapter for my camera.

Happy Birthday Grandpa Mike!

Not much to report this week from Elder Hanke.  We did get to have a sweet phone call with him on Mother’s Day, which was awesome.  He sounded great… he's getting adjusted and back to his “old self”, while realizing and accepting that his mission life now is almost completely different than it was in Fiji.  This will definitely make him appreciate things in a different way than before (we can sense that already, after five short weeks in Oakland).

I did get an amazing letter for Mother’s Day also.  He wrote lots of memories from growing up, which pulled on my heartstrings, and may have possibly caused me to shed a few tears.  That is a letter that I will treasure forever!

Garrett’s “modus operandi” when it comes to email seems to be…”You send me a good email, you get one back” (with his parents at least).  J  Fortunately, Steve got an email off to Garrett in time today, because I didn’t.   Here’s the response he got back…

Dang, haha, sounds like a lot going on back there.

We have a lot going on here as well. Zone conference is tomorrow for the missionaries.  My mission president goes home sometime next month so everyone is kind of all acting weird about getting a new one, but I have no worries. Ha, the new one will be my fourth mission president!  Haha, crazy.  

We don’t teach nearly as much here as we did in Fiji.  Over there I would average like 20 something lessons a week, and here we’re blessed to get 10, but that’s alright, nothing I can do about it.

Peace and blessings,

Your son

I did chat back and forth with him a little bit, and his final response said:

Sorry, no time for a good email.  All is well, thank you for the letter you sent, it was good, and the talk thing was sweet.  Tell that guy thank you.

So… that’s all for now, folks. Hope everyone is doing well and enjoying the warmer weather!

Take care and have a good week.

This week has been pretty crazy, we have been into some pretty crazy situations this week that I didn't even know could exist.  At first when I got to Fiji I thought that breast feeding was bad, ha, but no….

It was a challenging week for sure.  We worked pretty dang hard but didn't get any results from it.  I swear we had a bunch of lessons planned and a bunch of stuff to do but I bet 80% of it fell through.  We weren't even close to our goals this week either. But all is good, there is nothing we can do about that. 

Mostly right now I miss being senior companion.  Now that I’m in my own area I’m reminded of how rough it is to just follow around your companion and not being able to give any input, really just follow around. One thing I do know is that tracting is probably the most ineffective way to work that I can think of.  Spencer Lee mentioned this to me when we talked, and now I can affirm it, ha. It’s so much easier to street contact because at the door you’re just hoping that someone will answer, but on the streets there are people already there and you don't have to wonder if they will answer. But ya, I just had to get that off my chest, ha.

My area is just downtown Oakland.  If you looked on Google earth at all the big buildings that’s where I spend my days right now.  I’m just hoping that after a few transfers here that I get transferred to the Fiji Branch for the rest of my mission, which is what seems might happen. (Funny fact though, a kid that I graduated with is here in this mission and he is in the Fiji branch right now, Porter Simmons.)

  

I’m stoked though because I do have a good story for you today.  Prayers do get answered most of the time in ways we don't realize or expect but this time is was very obvious.  All day yesterday was the worst, we didn't get any of our investigators to church then afterwards we had no lessons planned or anything so we just went through the day doing all we could to share our message, and it just wasn't gonna happen. So throughout the day we just kept praying and saying that we would keep working as hard as we could but we really just wanted one lesson, at least one more would be appreciated. But we went all the way until 8:30 with nothing and we decided to check one last house. He was there, ha, but he was smoking a big ol' stogie, but that’s alright though (don’t judge him because he sins different than us). We got him to set it down for our lesson, and we focused on baptism and receiving the Holy Ghost, then I went in and shared a scripture about how God could help him overcome but only if he wanted to and he said yes. Then we knelt down and prayed for help, and it went way good so we got a return appointment tonight to see how it went.

That’s it, that’s my piece.

Peace and blessings,

Elder Hanke

Well, this is just the mama’s humble opinion, but he sounds much better, like he’s getting back in his “missionary groove” – which is great.  And I have to say “Thanks” to Spencer Lee, who took the time to take Garrett to lunch before he left and have a good chat about serving in this mission.

And… right now I don’t even want to know what he’s referring to with the “breast feeding”comment! Enough said… right?

Hope everyone has a nice week. Thanks so much for all of your love and support! J