I realize that I’ve not talked very much about what I’m doing when I refer to doing “work”.
It can be summed up as sharing the Gospel of Jesus Christ with people and helping them strengthen their relationship with God.
We have 4 different topics that we teach people interested in joining the church, each focused on a different aspect of church doctrine. The topics are: the restoration of Christ’s authority, God’s plan for us, the steps we need to take to follow Christ, and the commandments that God has for us. We have a lot of liberty in how and what we teach, but it all follows those general guidelines.
A large part of what we do in Tartagal is visiting and teaching inactive members of the church and helping them come back to church and realize the blessings that come with living lives focused on the Savior.
Defining success is something that a lot of missionaries struggle with. A lot get hung up by thinking that success is simply baptizing as many people as possible. While that is definitely one aspect of it, it also feels pretty successful to watch the inactive family you’ve been visiting walk into church on Sunday. I’d have to say that success is some combination of these things and others.
Speaking of baptizing, I baptized my first person this weekend. We meet Rebeca my first week here and have been teaching her ever since. She grew up evangelically Christian, so I had a lot of fun working more scriptures from the Bible into our lessons than we normally get to. Rebeca got baptized on Saturday and on Sunday got called to be a primary teacher (teaching a class on Sunday to little kids).
Thank you for all of your support! I love you and I know that Jesus Christ loves you!
Elder Hansen
