Bula Bula Bula,

Thanks for the e-mail and I cannot stress how jealous I am that you had lunch with Rico, haha, man that’s sweet. Be sure to tell him hi for me every day until I get home. (Garrett is referring to one of his best buddies Jackson Everton, who returned from the Indianapolis, Indiana mission last week. What an amazing young man, so good to see him again!)

This has been a very great week, and I have been super humbled by a lot of things that have been happening. And all I can think about lately is the song "count your many blessings". Last Monday we were teaching a less-active member and at the end of the lesson we committed him to take Pres. Monson’s challenge from General Conference and make a list of all the blessings that he has in his life. Because I asked him to do this I decided that I should also follow that council from the prophet. The mission has made me realize in so many ways how blessed my life has been, I have a Mother and Father who support me in whatever, I have a strong relationship with my Sister and she is one of my best friends, I have the greatest Grandparents a kid could ask for and I have all four.  I have uncles, aunts, and cousins who are awesome and I feel like would do anything for me if I needed it, and I have the greatest group of friends that anyone could ask for and they are all examples to me. And that is just a start. I sat there for a whole hour of personal study time realizing how blessed my life has been.

I got to the end and realized something, that I had saved the greatest blessing of all for last. I have a Savior, a Redeemer, an older brother who suffered personally for me. Can anyone ask for a greater blessing? All of the time we hear people say that they wish they could have fame or fortune and I know that thought creeps into my mind sometimes, but it’s true knowledge to know that even if we had all of the fame in the world and all of the money in the world it would surmount to a perfect nothingness without a knowledge of Christ, without the belief, the hope, the faith and the testimony that He died for us so that we could live again. I cannot express with words the gratitude that I have for Him, I love Him for what he did for me. This doctrine has been confirmed to me over and over again on my mission, and I wouldn't trade it for anything. This is what I am most grateful for and I can't say it enough. I am grateful for what He has done so I can go out each day to give thanks for this wonderful blessing. I know that is the only real way we can give thanks to Him. "If ye love me, keep my commandments", "love one another", when we do this we can know for a surety that we are doing exactly what he wants we are who he wants us to be, and if we can do this I know that His grace is sufficient for us the we can receive all the Father hath.

I love this work, I love my Savior, this is His work, and this is His Kingdom here on earth. I KNOW MY SAVIOR LIVES, WHAT JOY THIS SENTENCE GIVES.

I love you all, have a good week.

Peace and blessings,

Elder Hanke

All I can add to that (through a few Mama tears) is… Happy Thanksgiving everyone! 

Picture that Garrett sent last week in the mail - The Halloweenie Mobile!

He included a couple of other pics that I won't be posting... but I will mention they went with the story he told last week of his pants blowing out! :)

(Anyone that wants to log on to the blog and turn this picture is welcome to do so! Most definitely beyond my mental capabilities tonight!) 

Bula bula,

The weeks are going by soooo fast,  I honestly cannot believe that it is Monday already the week wasn’t even that good but it still went by fast haha.

Each week Beta and Sita go south a bit to a city called Gilroy which is way too far for us to drive there, so we can’t meet them unless they come down here and they haven’t done that for two weeks now so there is really no update on them. I’ve texted with Beta a little to check on them a bit and they said that they are good and they miss us and that hopefully they will make it next week. They are super special just their whole experience of being able to come to America and  makr such good friends here who introduced them to us.  I’m just so grateful for the opportunity to teach them and get to know them.

Other big news that happened this week- on Thursday nights we teach a PMG missionary class to the young men and we have a blast but this week while we were there I bent over to pick something up and all I heard was a bust then I felt a nice breeze on my bahooki haha. I blew out the my pants, haha so we had to run home and change then come back, haha classic . But other than that it was a good time we had each of them bring some ingredients and then we made meatloaf, haha it actually turned out really good and it wasn’t too big of a mess. But like I said before I love the young men, I love jokin around with them and they are all awesome here. And then on Saturday we got permission to go and watch one of our young men play in his football game. They got wooped but he did really good, he’s a stud.

What else....we saw Bill again this week and he said that he would come to church but he never made it and we still don’t know why so that was a bummer.  He is such a sweet old man and he is way stinkin hilarious as well.

  

That’s pretty much it from here hope you all have a good week.

Peace and blessings,

Elder Hanke

Here’s another sweet email that I got from MaryTagilala on Friday.  It’s a huge comfort knowing that she seems to be Garrett’s “Fijian Mama” in Cali – what a blessing she is!

Hi Nova :),

We just had dinner with your Elder Hanke and his companion Elder Chapman this evening. They are a joy to have in our Ward and are a blessing to us out here. We love them both. Elder Hanke is well. We look after him like he is our very own :). We hope to keep him here for a long time :). Thank you for raising such a fine young Missionary to serve the Lord. You should be so proud of him :).

Much love,

Mary :)

She also sent this picture – yea!

And HAPPY BIRTHDAY to Kyndra, Sharly, Easton, Krista, Grandma Von, Kynlee… hope I didn’t miss anyone!J

Continued thoughts and prayers with Diana, Jeff and those cute 5 K’s.

Hope everyone has a great week – so grateful for all of our family and friends!

Hello out there everyone…

Okay, I know – I’m about to be fired as the official blogger for Elder Hanke!  I’m taking applications for the position….if you know of anyone that would like the job, please let me know. :)  (There’s nowhere to go but up, right?)

Enjoy the notes below – short but sweet.  And just FYI – we’ve received two letters from Garrett’s Mission President over the last week with his release date(s).  The first one said February 21, 2013; the second one said, “My apologies, but the correct release date for Elder Hanke is April 3, 2013”.  And then when I emailed with Garrett on Monday he told me it’s up in the air… so we’ll see what comes of that.

Enjoy these notes, and my apologies for the delay! 

Love to you all, thank you so much for your support of Elder Hanke.

This is the day we ref'd the youth volleyball tourney. These are my boys Lopetti and Garvin.

(Garvin is also the one who cuts my hair.)

A usual lunch of leftovers:  KFC, deep fried fish head, and Lu (roro leaves cooked with coconut milk, onions and corned beef). 

A group of us missionaries down at Fisherman's Warf. (Yeah, that's my boy with his eyes closed!)

On October 27^th, we received this letter in the mail with a few pictures (above):

Noqu Matuuvale Lolomas,

These are the receipts for the eye exams. They said to just sent them in to get reimbursement. (Gar got his eyes examined and ended up with contacts – he said it’s great to see the street signs when he’s driving.)

Thanks for the support you have given to me lately.  It means a lot to me and Elder Chapman.

Hope all is well. We are good here. No baptisms yet but I think God realized how easy it was for me to get them in Fiji so he’s makin it extra hard here, haha. I’m just lookin forward to each day as a learning experience and hopefully we can make something happen here.

Hope you have a good Halloween, we’re planning on one.

Peace and blessings.

Love,

Your Baby Boy

October 29, 2012

Bula Bula Bula

So the week went well no complaints here. We were able to meet with most of our investigators and they are doing good.

Last week little Sita participated in the Ward’s primary program. They are like part of the Ward but they are still waiting for the permission from the father, and he is in Japan right now so that isn't very easy. But we will keep working with them to get them into a covenant with Heavenly Father. When we invited Sita to be baptized yesterday she just had the biggest grin on her face and she wanted to be baptized right now haha. I know she will be soon. Beta has some challenges to overcome first but I think she wants to as well the only problem is that they stay in Gilroy during the week which is around 2 hours away from us so we can only see them on the weekends when they come here. But we will keep on prayin for them.

And Bill is also doing good, he is thinking about having the Bishop (his brother) marry him to his girlfriend which is interesting, we have really funny lessons with this guy he is older and hard of hearing so it makes our conversations pretty funny sometimes and Elder Chapman is a quiet guy so it’s extra funny with him. But right now he basically said that he would get baptized if he didn’t have a girlfriend but since he does he doesn't want to do anything that will rock the boat at all so he's gunna take this process slow. Which is kind of frustrating for us to try and slow down but you gotta do what you gotta do.

Have a great week.  Happy Birthday Dad!

Peace and blessings,

Elder Hanke

November 5, 2012

So this last week was pretty crazy we had a lot goin on.

First of all I just want to remind you about how nuts being in downtown San Francisco is on a bike dressed like we are, haha, I can’t even explain it. It's definitely a one of a kind experience haha.  So the first thing that we did last Monday was go to this huge Methodist church right in the middle of the hairiest part of the city where Monday through Friday they serve breakfast lunch and dinner to the homeless. So we went there and gave our service during the lunch hour and that was easily the craziest 4 hours of my life. First we had to help with the preparation then while they were eating we were bus boys and then we had to clean up after. Haha I can't even tell you how bad I was sweating and how many grey hairs I developed just from those few hours.  Hundreds of homeless in a pretty small cafeteria all gettin in fights and yelling and trying to take stuff that isn’t theirs. It was sooo funny and I can’t wait to do it again.

But ultimately what I’m getting at is that service is the best. That was really one of the most intense positions I’ve ever been in and I wasn’t a very big fan in the moment, but the opportunity to serve is always the best opportunity.  It felt so good to help those people and after it was all over I felt a huge sense of gratitude for the blessings that I have and I just pray that I will remember always what the Lord has given me and all the blessings we all have and then realize that the only way real way we can say thank you is by giving back. I know that if we help others we are teaming up with God to accomplish His goal of blessings his children.

Sorry it’s short, love ya'll.

Peace and blessings,

Elder Hanke