We do the Haka in Singapore too! Last Zone Conference with the Mains...

This past week we went to Singapore for our zone conference so sorry for my ridiculously short responses to all your emails last week. But I will make it up to you today... hopefully... !

Singapore was a great experience for my companion and I this week!  We enjoyed our P-day in Singapore. We went to the top of the Sands which is the amazing boat hotel in Singapore. It was such a cool view of all of Singapore and we enjoy being in such an amazing foreign land. I was having some sinus or allergy problems so I got me some nice looking shades to hide my read eyes and fake tears! haha !  I got some pretty funny comments during zone conference though. While some missionaries,  including President and Sister Mains, were speaking my eyes were all watering up, not from crying though. That's not what everyone else thought- As I looked around to make sure no one was looking at me or, to at least check to see if there were other people 'crying' - some people would catch a glimpse of me and mouth to me, "Are you okay?" I would try and explain that I'm okay, but let's just say that I got plenty of people asking, "Elder Hanks, how are things? Everything okay?" Haha ! Funny and embarrassing! Hope it goes away soon! 

Our zone for the past few weeks has been putting together a presentation for our mission president and his wife (this being their last Zone Conference before they leave back home)-  that being the Hakka. For the past few weeks we have been practicing the words and the dance and it was all building up to Tuesday's zone conference. Everyone was outside taking a zone conference picture when two of our zone members, one native to New Zealand and the other of Polynesian background, called out the Hakka cry. You could basically say, "JB zone ASSEMBLE!" It was a great and  President and Sister mains really loved it- In fact, I think everyone loved it. 

Thanks for the great stories about my Great Grandpa Murri! I totally guessed it was my ancestor (by luck) & so did the other missionaries in my group. They all said "this has Elder Hanks written all over it!" So thanks for sending that! 

Zone conference and MLC were great spiritual builders. We talked a lot about the doctrine of Christ as taught in the Book of Mormon, 2 Nephi 31. The Spirit was very strong and to see our mission president give his testimony to us was just another realization that time is short. I have come to re-realize the importance of opening my mouth and do as the apostle M. Russell Ballard taught us a few weeks ago,  via a video to us missionaries in the Singapore mission, "to tell someone about it."

Another training we received recently in MLC was about the gift of tongues. It's not about studying the language every minute of every day. It's not about stressing every night over the mission language, it's about loving the people and those you serve. It was a great lesson to learn even for me who is a 'veteran' missionary. I can always try and improve in the gift of tongues -  loving the people who I am with.

I love my mission and my companion. He is great and with him at my side, I am going to try and make the most of all I can get with him because I can learn a lot from him. I love the words that my dad shared with me in this week's email. He invited me to not worry too much about going home and doing my best to focus on the mission. Especially now, where I have come to know time and time again the truthfulness of the Book of Mormon, it seems silly to think about anything else than to share the Book of Mormon with others. 

Short story of the week. We went out to a super far part of our area. While there we were struggling to find a way back to our home because it was getting late and the buses had stopped running in that part of town. While waiting on Elder Baer to call a taxi  a man was just standing there waiting for his own taxi. I talked to him and engaged in conversation. As we talked, we got around to what I was doing in Malaysia. I shared with him our purpose and the Book of Mormon. This man was Hindu, but his wife was Christian. When he heard that it was another Testament of Jesus Christ he was excited and really wanted to share it with his wife. He gave me his information and took the Book. What a cool and great experience to be able to share that with him. 

Also, one more story sorry!  It was a good week of sharing the gospel! While on exchanges this week Elder Pierce and I were waiting for a taxi(again I know) and while we were standing there I saw an elderly man looking at us. I approached him and told him who I was, he told me he was also Christian from Sarawak. He then, before I could say anything to him, expressed a concern he had about Christianity. He said (in Chinese), "You know, the problem with churches today is that they are not all perfect. In the Bible it speaks of John who says that although he is baptizing by water there will be another who baptized later by fire." I was blown away.... I looked at him and said, "Well, in our church, the Church of Jesus Christ, we baptize by water and by fire, or the Holy Ghost." He looked shocked. He asked me, "Really?" I said, "Really." I told him that I knew he was a genuine seeker of the truth and, "You just found the truth." He asked, "I found it?" "You found it." "I found it?" "You found it." He was blown away. We exchanged information and his information was sent to the Sarawak missionaries. So cool.

Anyways. Today was a lot of stories but hope you enjoy!
 Love, Elder Hanks

Look! I found Elder Gara at Zone Conference in Singapore! Yea! Doesn't
he look great as a missionary! 

Having miracles every week!

MAY 17, 2015 
I have a great testimony that the grace if Jesus Christ makes all the difference. I have tried to embrace as much as possible the grace of Christ as He has made the difference in our work. We had some great goals set for us this week and we set out to accomplish them with vigor. But it seems that half way through the week we got burned out a little bit. We didn't really know what happened, but we tried our best to exercise our faith in Christ and His work. In the end we worked hard and accomplished all of our goals and it was really by the mercy of God that we did. He is so good when it comes to His work. 

We had an awesome combined district meeting this past week with another district and we were trained about the love of Christ. It was a great training that helped us all gain a greater appreciation for Christ and what He does for us. The zone as a whole is doing great. We are going to hit our baptismal goal for the month which is so good! We are hyped!

JB! 

I've enjoyed this week as it has been a crazy and fun week including playing soccer with kids, finding people to teach, bringing people to church and watching a wonderful elderly sister receive baptism. She is a sweet little woman and I love her. She has a beautiful smile and her baptismal service was a great experience to witness. We watched again the video, "Because He Lives." The Spirit touched me greatly. We are doing great. We love the work we are called to do and the Lord continues to bless us with tender mercies. 

A miracle we experienced this past week was with a sweet little lady who comes from no Christian background. We have always been hesitant to invite her to church because of having so little knowledge of  Christianity, so we were basically starting from square one- who is God. While traveling to another investigators house, we passed by her house & we felt prompted to invite her to church. We knocked and she came out to greet us. We asked her if she would want to come to church and she said YES, but she didn't have a car to get there. We thought for a moment and remembered a member who is somewhat a little inactive, who lives just up the street from here. So we called him up and asked if he could take this sweet little auntie to church and he siad YES too! 

We were so happy to see her come to church and ask many questions. One time during sacrament meeting, as the member of the branch presidency was giving his talk, she heard something in his talk that she really liked so she calls up to the podium and asked a question- totally adding to the talk he was giving! She got a few looks from some of the other people, but she wasn't looking at the audience, she was looking at the branch presidency member as he then answered her question! Haha! She was so happy and so were we! She was very welcomed by the branch! So great and what a blessing! 

Miracles are happening here!  I am in Singapore today because Zone Conference is tomorrow ! Got to run! 

Love you all, 

Elder Hanks

May 10, 2105 

Pre Rugby picture- clean clothes! 

We had zone meeting this past week and that was a really fun experience as it was my first zone meeting. I love my zone and all they do. We had a fun activity the day before of rugby. Because it rained a little bit before we played we were like slipping all over the place, but we all had fun. 

The meeting itself was great as we trained the zone to have more urgency in doing the Lord's work. When we are urgent in doing the Lord's work we are successful and more effective. So the ultimate vision that we came up with, that we talked with our zone about, was the vision for every companionship in the JB zone to have 1 baptism per month. There is a lot of faith here in the zone and with that faith I know we can accomplish our zone's baptismal goal for the year. 

Elder Baer and I went to Melaka this past week to do exchanges with the elders there; Elder Lallemant and Elder Ebeling. They are two really faithful and awesome elders. I enjoyed my time there as we taught a beautiful family of Tamil people and a Chinese girl later that day. We met with that Chinese girl which was her first lesson with the elders and by the end of sharing the Restoration with her Elder Lallemant and Elder Ebeling had her commit to baptism. Sick! They are doing great work there in Melaka!

I got to skype my family today and I loved talking to them. Hanks family, you are the best! Love you guys! I'm just so grateful that we have such a powerful understanding that families are forever. So you can see that picture(Nice face Max). 

Happy Mother's Day to all you mother's. A great weekend it's been for me as an investigator I taught in Miri received baptism and the gift of the Holy Ghost this weekend. And now we are looking forward to another baptism here, this week too. I'll keep you updated on that. (It's a long and fun story.)

A miracle we experienced this week was in finding, teaching and going for baptism. We had contacted a younger Indian boy a few weeks ago. He express interest in learning more about the "bible" and so we had set up an appointment with him for last Friday. We went over at the arranged time but couldn't find him there. So instead we found a friend of his who was doing homework so we talked to him for a bit until the boy we were looking for came back. He and his friend said they were busy at the time preparing for an exam and so we started to leave when he came out and said "you know, I have an hour if you guys want to talk." So we went back and talked to these 2 young men about the church. They don't have a Christian background and didn't know a lot about church stuff so we just showed them pictures from the gospel art book and answered any questions they had. When we came to a picture of Jesus Christ being baptized, I asked them if they knew what it was and if so, would they like to be baptized. They said they would like time to think about it. They continued looking through the book and when they got to the baptismal pictures in the back, I think the Spirit really touched their hearts and the looked up and said "this is what we would like to follow". So we are now working towards baptism with the first young man and his friend is now a new investigator! What a miracle! 

Love you all!

韩长老

My future car....! Please! 

Pres. Mains 

Going through immigration with thousands of other people! 

My first MLC in Singapore and we are ramping up!

May 3, 2015 

This past week my companion and I got to go to Singapore for our mission's missionary leadership council. It was such a spiritual experience and I loved being there with some of the greatest leaders in the mission including our mission president. I took away so much from that meeting and I now look forward to MLC every month. On the way back from Singapore we contacted some Mainland Chinese people in the line through immigration. We shared with them a little bit of what the church is about and they thought it was so cool. It was hard for me to understand them though,  because we would say to them,

 "我们知道这个教会是真实的。你们愿意学习这个复音能不能祝福你们的家庭吗？“  

(We know that this church is true. Are you willing to learn the polyphony (principles?)  can bless your family too – I had to google translate this &I dont think it’s quite  right! )

Then they were like, "哦！可以！没有问题。但是你们的教会是在中国里面哪里？”

(Oh! You can! No problem. But your church is in China where there)   not in china?

So it was fun stuff anyway! But we are looking forward to sharing with our zone what we learned in MLC.

We are working with our investigators towards baptism and it's going really well for them right now. Our zone is building up in urgency and effectiveness because we have an awesome zone (haha, they all are really). We are so stoked to be part of this zone and we both feel like there's a great 'stirring' in the zone. It is a great feeling and we are going to wreck this next transfer! 

As my companion and I were preparing for zone meeting this past week we were studying in Preach My Gospel chapter 1 to look for a greater purpose to share with our zone missionaries. My companion helped make a great discovery from our study. On page 2 it speaks of how our understanding of the atonement of Jesus Christ grows the greater we will feel the importance of making the gospel known to the world and all those we pass( I didn't quote it word for word, but close enough). As we were talking about it Elder Baer looked at me and said, "As you were reading that paragraph the last time a thought came to my mind. If we don't feel the importance of preaching the gospel, we don't understand the atonement." Isn't that a great insight!

We are off to our zone activity- Rugby in the rain! It's going to be insane! 

Love you all and I'm looking forward to Mother's Day skyping my family next week!

Elder Hanks

April 27, 2015 

I had to say good-bye to Miri this past week and it was a weird feeling that I have never had before leaving an area; I had a strong impression of fulfillment and satisfaction. I felt and know that leaving Miri I had done all that I could do to fulfill my purpose as a missionary there in that part of the vineyard. That was a great feeling. I do miss Miri and I hope to go back one day. 

I really do love Miri, and I'm really excited for Johor Bahru. It's in West Malaysia right on the border of Malaysia and Singapore. So whenever we go to Singapore it's by bus, no longer by plane. We will be going to Singapore, my new companion - Elder Bear and I, for our mission's MLC (mission leader conference). I'm really excited to serve the Lord and the mission as a zone leader and I already feel the great responsibility this calling has.  I know it will help inspire me to work harder than ever before.  With only about 5 months left there's nothing to lose!
 The branch here in Johor Bahru is great. It's also a small branch, but a branch of strong members. A lot of them have been to the temple and on missions so there is a powerful spirit when I am with them. I loved sacrament meeting with them as they all knew the importance of the sacrament meeting and..... well, I just love it! It's amazing! 

Elder Baer and I are getting down to the work as we were able to find some less actives that some people didn't know were in JB and teach other investigators that are on date for next month. Things are going great here in JB and I am very grateful for all the missionaries, members, investigators, and people that have been a part of my mission. 

I just want to give my deep gratitude and love to all the members and other people I met in Miri. I love you all and I will always remember you and you have changed my life.  (a few departing pictures from Miri) 

Love Elder Hanks

Miracles are happening! Transfers are happening!

April 19 2015

The work here in Miri is going forth and I am so happy to be here in Miri! Yes, it is transfer news this week but we will see if I can stay here one more transfer -  It would be so fun if I could because a lot will happen in the next six weeks! 

Our zone leaders gave us a goal last zone meeting to find and baptize 4 investigators per companionship by the beginning of June. That would be a big feat for us here in the Miri zone and also for the Miri Chinese district.We currently have 3 investigators on date for May and hope to get one more by the beginning of June. So we are pretty excited to hopefully,  achieve our goal given to us by our zone leaders! 

Our investigators are very much progressing and we are continuing to find more investigators. We are working with so many people - it's such a miracle to be here in Mir! One other cool miracle this past week has to do with referrals. 

We received word from a senior sister that there was a church referral in communication with her asking about our church, place, time, etc. We were so looking forward to meeting this man and when Sunday finally came around,  there he was standing in the church lobby! He joined us in sacrament meeting and seemed to enjoy the meeting. After the meeting was over,  another car pulled up with three of his friends!  Have I mentioned that these 4 people are living in Brunei? Brunei is like an hour to two hour drive away from the church, so what a cool exercise of faith we saw in these people! Well, continuing on, these 4 referrals,  now in the church, only had an hour so we decided to give them a tour of the church building and answer any questions. They had many great questions about missionary work and the church. At one point one of the girls that was part of the church tour commented, "You guys have a very nice church here. There is a very nice ambiance here-  it's really comfortable." (When she said that I was like, "Have a nice WHAT?" but I just said, "Thank you." haha! ) We were able to share with them a message of the Restoration and the Spirit was felt. Upon leaving the church one of them asked for materials to study during the week. We gave him a copy of Gospel Principles and he wants to come back. So cool! 

I love being a missionary. When I find myself in times of peace and quiet,  I ponder the blessings of serving a mission and the feelings I have are indescribable. I can't believe I am here, serving a mission all the way in Malaysia. I love it! I am cherishing my time here and I love every person I meet, every minute I have speaking and talking in the name of Jesus Christ with these wonderful people, and I love the continual building of my testimony.

                            

Love you all,

Elder Hanks

And the result of the transfer news is.....

I'm really excited!! I'm really excited for my new area and my new companion, Elder Baer has the BEST Chinese in the mission so I'm looking forward to learning more chinese and how to be a better missionary from him!  He is a great missionary!  I'm really looking forward to this transfer. I will miss Miri though... a lot. I'm also now a Zone Leader in JB  (Johor Bahru) 

 West Malaysia with Elder Baer.

Conference & great happenings in Miri !

What a great opportunity we had to gather as a body of Saints and listen to our Prophet & Apostles! I felt the Spirit so strong & was enlightened so much by the Spirit from the messages! I wish we could do that every day as there is so much we can learn from this gospel & all of the mysteries of God. we are so fortunate to be in the world helping others to come unto repentance. From conference my faith in the principle of family has grown! It was made apparent to me how much the family matters when it come to living in pure joy. The quality & level of happiness in a family is a major indicator of how great the need is for the gospel. I feel so grateful for the perspective I have now. Listening to all the messages in conference about family also brings to mind the dangers that family  and the idea of family is under right now.  
When Elder Cook stated that the "Church has never been stronger" I thought of our members that we are working with and was grateful for the opportunity it is to work with them in this great work of the Lord. 

I watched Conference in English this time, will probably download it in Chinese
so we can listen to it again later.

Miracle this week is the amount of people we have on date for baptism this week. We taught one of our investigators at a members house with his friend there and we shared with him the Restoration that he heard once before, but this time we showed him the movie of the restoration. After watching it we discussed his previously shared desires to be baptized and we asked him, "Are your desires to be baptized still the same?" He replied, "Um yeah. There are still there, but the only question I have is when am I getting baptized. You know?" We were both so happy at his response and we helped him get on date for May 9th! What a great lesson that was. 

To continue the miracles we met with two young men who had met the missionaries once before a long time ago but haven't seen or talked to them in a while. We met with them in a member's home and we also shared with them the message of the Restoration. It was a powerful message in which we talked about the Book of Mormon, baptism, the Restoration of the true church, etc. At the end of the lesson they turned to me and said, "Hey, if we are going to be baptized it's going to be in your church. When can we get baptized?" We also put them on date for next month. What a great month it will be for our branch next month. So excited! 

Check out those British Flags! 

Pictures for this week was bowling, the circus was in town and it's from Britain so I'm just using this as a shout out to my brother who will be going to that great country to serve the Lord!  It's great! 

We had our cook make us patayas and he made it with a lot of love! 

I got a very good looking shirt from the great Sitiawan members! Thanks my friends in SITIAWAN! 

General Conference was amazing and I learned so much about the family. The family is the best!!! 

I love my family! 

Love Elder Hanks

Last weeks Easter email: 

This is a glorious day! It's Easter today and this day we received the great news that Thailand is getting a temple! We missionaries along with our Malaysian members,  and pretty much all of South East Asian members,  are rejoicing in the news of the Bangkok, Thailand temple announcement. The first I heard of the Thailand temple was this morning from a text from our senior couple sister and the joy I had from such an announcement is indescribable-  It's about time! 

Some fun things that happened this week was it was Good Friday. I never really understood Good Friday was celebrated by really anybody, but when Good Friday came around turns out it is a public holiday and everyone we talked to that day asked us what we were doing to celebrate. I constantly looked at my companion with a look of, "What's the big deal about Good Friday? Don't they know Christ still lives? That He is risen!?" 

We even had someone ask us, "Don't you Christians don't eat meat on Good Friday?" That one surprised me a little bit. 

In other news we felt a great measure of the Spirit of Elijiah in our work as we had a senior couple visit from Kuching. They are family history missionaries and so they came to do some family history with us. In preparation for their coming we went to a Chinese cemetery(pictures are attached)where they have these little slabs for all those who were cremated. The tomb stones for those not cremated are just incredible and just beautiful. Well, we tried to talk to the grounds keeper about allowing us to do some preservation work of the cemetery's records because they have almost none!!!! He was a little uncooperative and wouldn't really help us, So we called the boss over the whole cemetery, and she came over. We talked to her and you could tell the Spirit touched her heart. We then were so happy when we heard the news that we could begin to work in preserving information for now and hopefully,eventually take the names of those buried in the cemetery to the temple. We'll see -



Perhaps the Thailand temple ;). There are thousands of people in this cemetery and so what a joy it is to help them get even closer to their ordinances being done.

Easter weekend was such a wonderful time to be serving the Lord. Yeah, we have not yet watched General Conference(this weekend!) but the Spirit and reality of the Savior's resurrection was felt. We missionaries hosted an Easter Devotional Saturday night where we prepared scriptures, Bible videos, testimonies, musical numbers, and showed the new church video, "Because He Lives." A great spirit was felt. The missionaries sang a number called, "Because He Lives" in the devotional and also in all three branches sacrament meeting and it was a great way to bring the Spirit to our beloved members on this Easter week.

Another trip to the Crocodile farm

Last P-Day we went to the crocodile farm in Miri. I had been before,  but I went with all the new missionaries who have never been there before. It was a great day - it was really fun to hold a bear, a snake, and feed the crocodiles. We all somewhat realized how crazy crocodiles are and how scary they are! We all had fun feeding them chickens, but man we cringed whenever we thought about the chicken possibly being us! I got to hold a chicken over the water on a pole and string and it's so scary to see how fast the crocodiles can jump out of the water and you can't even see them! You have no idea they are sitting right below and then think about how much that can relate to our lives when it comes to sin, etc. We sometimes don't see the bad in some activities or lifestyles, until it's too late, then we see it. So be careful of those temptations because they will 'eat' you!

Drenched!

I went on exchanges this past week with our zone leader, Elder Lambert. What a cool guy! We had some great lessons and missionary experiences. We got poured on at one point in the afternoon and we both looked at each other as it poured on us and said, "Perfect time to get into someone's house." or so we thought!  It took about 5 rejections to finally find someone who let us hide under their porch roof thing. The best lesson was later that night. We were meeting with a less active and some investigators. It was all in Malay so I didn't understand much, unless my companion translated, but it was such a cool experience as we entered this little brick house with candles lit to let us learn the gospel by "candle-light." I loved it and felt such a powerful spirit with these humble people. Missionary work is true! 

One thing that Elder South and I are doing this week is first,  helping Elder South recover from a little fever he had, then working with the members some more. We want more of our members wanting to help in the Lord's work and we want to be their partner in this work. We have already felt a strong spirit from trying to work with some members and have them reach out to those we are already teaching. Things seem to building up and I can't wait to see where it all goes. 

Elder Hanks

Awesome District Youth Conference & another Elder Hanks speaking mandarin!

We have some great goals we are striving to achieve this next week and that includes working more with members. This past week we were able to do a district young men mini-mission  to allow the young men of the district to come on missions with us. We had one of our four young men in the branch come with us. He put in a great effort and it made his family pretty happy to see him come with us on a mission. We stopped by another young man's home on that day and because  he saw the other young man coming with us, he and his aunt he stays with,  have decided to try and come with us to go on a mini-mission once a week. We are very much willing and excited about this hoping this will inspire more of our young men to serve a mission. 

We are making more plans to work with members,  as we are very anxious to begin to move some of the investigators we have already begun to teach further down the progression funnel. If all goes as we planned and hope for,  we will be seeing great miracles happening in Miri as we involve our members more.

We were contacting this past week when we saw a young man standing outside of his home early in the afternoon. We said hello and introduced ourselves and what we do. He took a proselyting card and we asked him if his parents were home which they were unfortunately were not. However, he was a smart young man who invited us back to his home later that night! We did and his entire family was there where we shared the message of the Restoration. They accepted a copy of the Book of Mormon and committed to read it and pray about it. Before we left we asked if there was anything we could help them with. The father replied, "You already have." We are looking forward to teaching them next week.

My faith has grown as I have studied the idea and motivation to be more obedient and all I can say is that I have found my motivation to be obedient solely in the principle that I love my Heavenly Father.

I am loving the work of the Lord and it will continue to move forward.

Also, a big shout out to my younger brother who has been called to serve in the Leeds, England Mission speaking Mandarin Chinese. It's the best place I know for him and he's speaking the language of the Celestial Kingdom! What a great experience for him and I am so happy for him. Things are all about missionary work and how important it is to declare repentance to this world! It's the greatest thing we could ever invest ourselves in. I am so proud of my brother for his decision to serve the Lord.

I am loving the service of the Lord.

Elder Hanks