"And bring them from bondage"

Living legends with Andres!

"The harvest is great, and the lab’rers are few; 
But if we’re united, we all things can do.
We’ll gather the wheat from the midst of the tares
And bring them from bondage, from sorrows and snares."
Hymn #319

I think as missionaries we have one of the coolest assignments ever; to save people from spiritual bondage and show them a better way. Of course, to be able to do that we need to be living that better way. So in the end, who is really being saved? the investigator or the missionary? I'd say both.

It's been a wonderful week, llena de Milagros! We did a lot of work with members this week, particularly the relief society president. We also had lots of really good meetings and planned some great things for our areas and our zone. We went on exchanges with the Elgin 1 sisters and it was a blast! They are wonderful missionaries and we're such good sports about going to Spanish lessons with us and sitting there confused the whole time. :) they got some authentic Mexican food though!

Exchanges- sisters Andersen and Wilson

We brought Maria with us to teach Ricardo the word of wisdom. It was awesome! She has such a strong testimony, with only a couple weeks as a member! She is my role model. She was very bold with him and told
him with all confidence that the word of wisdom changes lives. If that doesn't convince him I don't know what will! He is still being a bit stubborn though, so prayers for Ricardo would be great. Also he came to church!

Andres is doing well, though he didn't make it to church. We will be teaching him tonight with some awesome members, so hopefully we will see better success next week. He came with us to a BYU Living legends (multicultural dance group) concert and really enjoyed it. We were lucky we got to go- the stake bought tickets for us if we brought investigators. Also I saw an old friend from Mountain View high school
in the cast- that was weird.

That's about it! Thank you for your love and support and prayers!

Con amor,
Hermana Hokanson

¡Feliz cinco de mayo!

We had transfers, and I will be staying here and hmna Wixom will be my new companion! She is the one in all the pictures with dark hair. She is awesome. Life is good! Irving and Maria are baptized and everything that Satan has thrown at us has been overcome through Christ and His love.

Did you know that Wheaton college (which is about 5 min from our apartment) is one of the leading publishers of anti-Mormon material in the whole country? We've got lots of work to do here, good thing this mission is also full of the most awesome obedient missionaries ever! I love being here.

This has been a great week, lots of new member lessons with Irving and Maria. They are both set on getting Andres (Irvings cousin that lives with him) baptized. I'm not sure how interested he actually is, but he's sat in on a few lessons so we'll see how that goes. Also the other Andres (the one with a baptismal date of June3) came to church this week! He is still doing great. Sorry I teach a lot of Andreses. We confuse them all too. :)

We went to a stake Cinco de Mayo party and it was actually super cool. And two of our investigators, Azael and Rafael came! So that was awesome. And it was great to see Aurora people again.

We had a super intense lesson with Ricardo this week. We taught him at a McDonalds and he was completely under the influence. It pretty much turned into us giving him a spiritual reality check and committing him
to change his life. He has so much good desire, and so much potential. These are moments in my mission where I realize how much these people really mean to me. If I didn't care about this person, my companion
and I wouldn't have spent a 30 min car ride ranting about how frustrating he is and how much good he could do. We wouldn't have met with him in McDonalds and spent an hour just to get him to commit to one day alcohol free. We wouldn't see him as the missionary, young men's leader, or bishopric member he could be. Being a representative of Jesus Christ gives us the opportunity to feel a little bit of that Christlike love for other people. It's worth every difficult, frustrating, exhausting minute.

Well, the church is true and missionary work is the best! Talk to y'all next week!

Con mucho amor,
Hermana Hokanson

P.s. We didn't have any pictures for this week so we took some selfies for you.