On the Move

Good morning everyone. this week has been an exciting week full of surprises. I am going back to SImi Valley! I'll be in the YSA ward this time and I am going to live in the same complex as my old apartment. It will be fun to live with 4 Elders again, and have 4 more close by. Rumor has it that we all go play basketball at the park in the mornings! Also my new companion is Elder Hunt, and I'm pretty sure he's the second tallest missionary in the mission. So president Felix has got the two tallest together, I am stoked out of my mind! It is always really hard to leave an area when you have been there for so long. Just imagine me pantomiming ripping my heart out of my chest and smashing it with my fist a couple times then putting it back, that's what it feels like. On a more happy note David Archuleta visited our mission yesterday. President Felix was wise and didn't tell us that he was coming, because he would have had half the Elders not show up. There were a lot of different rumors on which general authority was coming to visit, so nobody believed me when I told them it was David Archuleta. I didn't actually know, but it feels really good when you guess correctly, The meeting was really good, and he is still learning how to speak publicly, but he made up for it with his songs. It was a really spiritual meeting and at the end he took pictures with all the zones. He wanted to stand next to me, and that boy is tiny. He's like the size of one of my legs. He's cool though, and now I can say that I have officially met him and talked for a minute. Everything is going well, and to I have to go pack. . .ugh.
Elder Hamson

Yes, that is David Archuleta standing to Alan's right.

Alan and his companion with Bishop Nelson.

Fun and Exhausting

Good morning everyone, another week has gone by and I still can't believe it's April. Just so you know next week is transfers, and according to my calculations I have approximately a 10% chance of staying here in SLO. I have my guesses on who my next companion will be, and the good news is that all the possibilities are exciting. Just don't send anything that will take a week to get here, because I might leave before then.
Life is great here in SLO, we have been working hard talking to a lot of people trying to find new investigators. and we have a bunch of people who are in the works, but we'll see how many turn out. Madison is still doing fine and has tons of friends in the ward. It will just take some time I think for her to start to recognize the spirit, but she is making steps in the right direction. We also set up a table in front of the institute and we had fun trying to get people to stop and talk to us. The things we said ranged from me saying: "have you ever had any questions about us mormons?" and Elder Toa saying: "can you guess what size of shoe he wears. it was fun and we had some interesting conversations.

We went on 2 exchanges this last week and those are always fun and exhausting. We don't have any this week, but there is always something to do, we never seem to get a break. That's the good part about it though, the reason my mission is the best two years of my life is because is stretches me so much. It's not always fun, but I am learning and growing and preparing myself for the rest of my life. I have thought a lot about how to help missionaries who struggle. And I decided that we need to teach the doctrine of Christ. It's kind of broad but this has been weighing on my mind, and I think that if any of us want to change for the better we need to better understand and apply the Doctrine of Christ or in other words we need to better understand and apply the Atonement.
You are all the best thank you
Elder Hamson

Happy Easter!

This week has been a great week. It started off on Tuesday we had interviews with President Felix and those were good. He is a great man and I really look up to him. On Wednesday I went on Exchanges with Elder Comin, and we stayed in San Luis Obispo. It was a great day with a lot of good work, We met a guy on the street named Cory, he was smoking and we talked for a little bit about easter and our unique message about Jesus Christ. He has never really learned about any religion, so he said we could come back. Elder Toa and I went back later in the week and had a good lesson about Faith and coming to know that God is there and that Jesus is the Christ. He is just wandering through life, and seems willing to learn, so we were excited to find him. If there is anything that I like about cigarettes, it gets people outside, so we can talk to them. We also taught all of our recent converts, and they are all doing great. On Friday Harmony was in SLO and she fed us lunch. (I love it when they do that!) She was a Less-Active that we helped come back to church when I first got here and she is now the Relief Society president in a ward in San Diego, and is also engaged. (GO Harmony!) We also had a good week with dinners 3 of them had invited a non-member friend to dinner that we got to teach, so that was great! Then on Saturday and Sunday we watched General Conference! It was a firehose of spiritual knowledge that I am still trying to swallow. One talk that really stood out to me was Wilford W. Anderson's talk about dancing. Don't get me wrong I'm not the biggest fan of dancing, but I thought it was a great way to illustrate the importance of having the spirit in our lives and not going through the motions. So my question is how do we turn up the "music" in our home? if you want another question, Who told us to read from the Book of Mormon everyday, everyday, everyday? why?
Thank you all for the support, I hope everyone had a happy Easter!
Elder Hamson

#BecauseHeLives

Well this last week was fun. Monday night we took a road trip to go stay the night with two of my past companions (the assistants) in Ventura. It was pretty much like a sleepover, I absolutely love those two. Then we had breakfast at the mission home, and it took me a while to figure out why they were serving us a bunch of green food and why everyone else had a green tie on. I guess it was st. Patrick's day or something... who knew. Then after breakfast we had MLC which was a big long wonderful revelatory experience. The church is starting #BecauseHelives soon for easter, and we got a sneak peek. It is a great video, the church is so cool. Yep, it was all good , and on Thursday we met with the zone and basically told them about everything we talked about at MLC. Along with that we met with the stake and public affairs on Wednesday, that was fine. As for the missionary work in my area, Madison said she is feeling a lot better, but she won't be back in town for another week, so we just have to be patient I guess. We did teach Isabella on Wednesday and we had an awesome lesson about repentance and how it is and should be a joyful process. Also I guess she will be visiting Provo this week, so that's cool. We have found some interesting people along the way, and I'll tell you about Jayden and Megan. They are students, and Jayden is outgoing kind of a loud personality, and Megan sometimes pipes in. We found them a month ago, but stopped by again this week. We tried to teach them the Plan of Salvation, but Jayden is all over the place and asks a bunch of random questions. Anyways Megan is a lot more interested in learning and has mormon family, so we are trying to figure out how we can separate them and teach just Megan. That is pretty much the gist of last week, and this week is gearing up to be a good one. We have 3 exchanges and a special MLC with Elder Nielson of the first quorom of the seventy. I love you all and have a fantastic week.

A Crazy Week

Dear Family and Friends,
This week has been interesting for sure. It started off crazy with transfers, and after a lot of driving and swapping bikes and luggage we managed to get everyone and their luggage back to their areas. Although one companionship left their phone in Ventura, and they were white washing into an area they had never been to. We gave them detailed directions and prayed really hard that they didn't get lost. Their district leader would check on them every once in a while, and they managed without a phone until we got it to them a couple days ago. We were able to teach Madison twice this week and she is still great. Her biggest concern is if God is really there, I guess she hasn't really gotten an answer about anything. This was the focus of our lessons and she definitely wants to know and is willing to try which is great. The bad news is she got really sick and went home to Santa Ana and we won't see her for another couple weeks. We do plan on meeting with Beth though this week, so we will see how she is doing. We have a bunch of meetings this week and we have been doing a lot to prepare for those. We have MLC on Tuesday, Stake report and public affairs meeting on Wednesday, then zone meeting on Thursday Then after that we take a break until next month. They don't usually fall on the the same week, but transfers messed with everything. But the saddest part about this last week is we found out that Brother Lo is moving to Sacramento. He is our Ward mission leader and he has been phenomenal. I have gotten really close with him over the last few months, and I could totally see us hanging out after the mission. So it feels like I'm losing a good friend and the ward won't be the same, but I'll get over it and baptize everybody anyway. Thank you all for being awesome and I added a picture of us and Peter Lo

It's All About That Bass

Great news, Elder Toa and I are staying for another transfer! I really like working with him and we both have some musical talent so that makes it fun. Our ward chorister found out that I can play a few songs on the organ, and the person who normally plays the piano was out of town this weekend. So I had fun playing the Organ in sacrament meeting, I can only play like 7 hymns, but that's about all you need:) Oh, and when she asked us what I was going to do for the intermediate hymn Elder Toa volunteered us to sing a special musical number. I was a little grumpy at first, but it actually sounded pretty good. Needless to say Sunday was a little nerve racking, but it all turned out. Looking back it was fun
We had a good week with missionary work as well, we were able to contact a couple of people on the ward list who were willing to meet with us and come to church they just needed an invitation. All of our recent converts are doing great and we are still meeting consistently with them. Madison is doing awesome. She still doesn't feel like she has an answer on whether or not it's all true yet, but that hasn't stopped her from being involved and keeping commitments. This last week there was only one day where she didn't have contact with anyone from the church. She came to FHE on monday, we had a lesson on Wednesday, she read from the Book of Mormon with a member on Thursday, we had another lesson on Friday, Saturday we had dinner with her and two other members and we read a chapter together and she was at church on Sunday. Our other two investigators couldn't meet with us this week. Unfortunately we aren't as high on their priority list, but they still have a lot of future potential.
Lately I have been thinking a lot about teaching who we are and not what we know. It has been good to make sure I am applying all of the things that I am teaching about in my own life. It doesn't always translate directly over, but basically I am always inviting people to learn and improve so I am really striving to do the same. I hope we can all more fully live what we know to be true.
Elder Hamson

Meet Eat Greet

Dear everyone, this week has been a great week. Also next week is transfers, I want to stay here forever, but we will see what happens. This area is doing awesome, I absolutely love it. We taught Madison this week and she is so awesome. She has a lot of really good questions and really wants to learn and is committed to know for sure. Her only set back that I can see in the future is her family, because she isn't sure what they will think. She has made friends with Isabella though who is a recent convert who's family was apposed to her getting baptized. It has been really good to have her there and Madison came to church on Sunday. We have two appointments scheduled with her next week and we plan on setting her with a date, so that is super exciting! Then Beth didn't make it to sacrament meeting, but she came to the meal afterward so it was great to see her there. I think she enjoys more of the social aspect of the church at this point, but the spiritual understanding will come. We meet with her this week and our focus is going to be to help her gain that spiritual understanding. Then we had dinner with Joselyn, who the member invited, and it went great. She wants to start learning more, but is hard to pin down. We should meet this week and all three of our investigators have a ton of potential, so we are both really excited. I also went on a couple of Exchanges in the midst of all this, and this next week is setting itself up to be a great one. Also Sunday was pretty cool, after church we had MEG(Meet Eat Greet) so we all ate together. After that Chris Burkard did a presentation about some of his photo adventures, and a preview of his TED talk he is going to give on March 17. I guess he is kind of famous or something, so now I can say I met him and gave him a High five, so that's cool. Hopefully that sums up the week good enough. Thank you all for your support.
Elder Hamson