12/19 Letter

HEY!
Well this week wasn’t that good... :( my comp was sick Tuesday-Wed., and then I was sick Thursday-Sunday, so we didn’t get any work done at all. 
Last night was pretty cool. We went to a member’s home for dinner, it was really fun.  They got me to eat a habanera pepper, it sucked! Lol The really cool part was afterwards, I anointed (a blessing for the sick) for a blessing, it wasn’t my first one, I did many in the MTC but it was my first one in Spanish! It was pretty sweet. The man we gave it to thinks he had a stroke. Which when he described it, sounded like one. So he is going to the doctor today.
OH, another cool story; we were at an inactive member’s house eating and we asked them to read the Book of Mormon.  They said idk.  So I said, okay I will eat the spicy peppers, if you will read.  My comp got in on it as well and we ate some peppers.  We are going to check up on them this week.
Today I get to really test my Spanish. I am going on exchanges and the Elder I am going with doesn’t know English.. FUN!
OH! So President Hinkley(one of our church's past prophets) promised that if you read the Book of Mormon in the language that you are learning, by the time you finish it you will be fluent.  I made this chart to where, I will finish reading it in Spanish in 4 months and I am translating everything I read, I’m not just saying the words. I started yesterday and it is already getting allot easier to translate without looking up words or looking at my English set. I thought that was pretty sweet!  
Love and miss you,
Elder Hanes

Letter from Oklahoma

Hey Everyone!
WELL I DONT KNOW WHERE TO START!
Okay now to the area!! I am in the OKC. But I am in a Spanish branch. So remember that one area I told you about? The one that is a mini Mexico? Well that’s my area!! There are a lot of gangs. My first dinner appointment was with a family and their house was probably only 100 sqr ft. It was exactly like a house in Mexico. The food was the same as well!  It’s awesome! Every Spanish elder in the mission wants this area because the Spanish is the best. Everyone said I will be able to speak like a native at the end of this transfer! SO I am excited!  OH yea and it is bike!! lol so yea right now I am in little Mexico! I’m loving it.
We went check on an inactive member and we are going down this road to get to their apartment and at the end there is a huge water ditch. (I'll send pics) but cement, so we pick up our bikes and climb down the wall and back up the other side haha it was pretty sweet. This is about 7 pm and we start going down this darkish rd and my companion is about 10 ft in front of me and it is dead silent and then out of nowhere a big Pit comes out of the dark and starts chasing me. So I kicked it and took off,  hahaha it was AWESOME!!! Lol! This is going to be the best Greenie (brand new missionary) experience ever!
We already got a family that will probably break the three year streak!! They are so sweet; they have been to church like 10 times so we can pretty much baptise them already! I’m pumped!
It’s very cold! The wind sucks! I think it was 21* the other night when we were walking; we walk sometimes, but mostly bike. The Spanish is hard to understand bc there are so many different accents... but I will get it down. 
Love you!! Elder Hanes!
Give everyone my love!

He is in OKLAHOMA!!!

Hey, I’m here!!

I have been in the mission home all day, just got out of my interview. I find out where my area is in the morning. Tonight we are staying here at the mission home. It is pretty nice here, lots of oil rigs haha but it is nice. It’s really cold right now. One of the APs(assistant to the President) has been to Mexico and it reminds him of Mexico, so I am way pumped. Pres. Taylor told me that he likes to give the Spanish speaking missionaries chances to teach in English areas for a while to bond with everyone in the area and zone but he told me that I will be Spanish for about 6 months. So that’s good!

But I hope you like the pic! This is it for today!

LOVE YOU! MISS YOU! Elder Hanes!

Leaves the MTC Tuesday 12/6

Elder Hanes flies to Oklahoma, TUESDAY, 12/6!

Christmas

EVERYONE, please send me a note for Cameron, for Christmas. You can comment here or email me. I will put it on a paper ornament for his tree.
Thank you and have a great day! Janice

Thanksgiving week letter

HEY!!

So everything here is pretty good!  It’s normally our p-day today right.. And so they have this huge program for us today starting at 10, and its going to go till 9:45. Its going to be awesome we are going to have a big service project and stuff and hear from general authorities but instead of moving our p day we have to do all our laundry and emailing before 10. So everyone that has Thursdays as p day is in laundry room. There was a line for washers.

Uhm my Spanish is coming along. I can teach but it’s really broken Spanish.

We have this program called TRC it’s where church members come in and we practice teaching  lessons on them, and ours is on Fridays and for the most part its usually active members and on Saturday the guy in charge of TRC came into our building and said they had too many people there and they didn’t want to send them home, so we told him that we would go teach them. We had nothing ready to teach and we asked him what do we need to teach and he said "I don’t know" lol and we said, “ but we aren’t prepared.” and so he said, "yes you are, the Lords got your back" "when you have to teach at the spur of the moment the Lord will teach for you but if you have time to get a lesson ready and you slack off and don’t get it ready then the Lord wont help you as much" and that was really cool bc we taught two 40 minute lessons without saying anything in English. One of the guys didn’t even know Spanish, so it was way cool. And one of them said he wants to work to go on a mission! It was awesome!

We heard from Elder D. Todd Christofferson on Tuesday! It was pretty sweet! He is so funny! He stands up and was like I want to share a scripture with you. And has he was looking for it he couldn’t find it and said "don’t you hate it when the scriptures move on you" lol everyone laughed and he ended up just sharing with us what he would have done differently on his mission. And said that we need to do it better then he did. So that was way cool coming from an apostle. Elder Richard G. Scott was his mission president so he had a lot of funny stories about that as well. And I thought that was way cool.
So in about an hour we are supposed to hear from another apostle. It might be Elder Jeffery R. Holland bc they said the last two years for Thanksgiving it has been him, so that will be way good!

Oh we got our travel plans last night! I leave the 6 of Dec my flight leaves at 10. It’s so crazy!! I need more time for Spanish haha but I guess they think I am a good teach bc next Wed when the new missionaries come in they asked me and Elder Cowdin to show everyone an effective lesson with an investigator... its going to be for everyone but not at once it will be in 4 groups. So, I'm kinda nervous bc I don’t consider myself a good teacher lol and now I have to go teach for about 300 new missionaries haha wish me luck. I am getting a lot of opportunities to work with the MTC presidency so I know them, its pretty cool, Pres. Bron is awesome.

My favorite script for the week was John ch 14. It’s awesome! 

Love you and miss you all
Love Elder Hanes!

Don't Forget author: Elder Cameron Hanes

"Don’t Ever Forget"
Don’t ever forget Gods love.
Don’t ever forget Jesus Christ’s love.
Don’t ever forget Christ chose to die for our sins.
Don’t ever forget He chose to suffer for us.
Don’t ever forget He chose to go through the most pain for us.
Don’t ever forget it was His choice. That’s more love then anyone can comprehend.
Don’t ever forget His love.
Don’t ever forget.

I mean I’m pretty much an artist now, hahaha.  It was more like a testimony. 

letter from Elder Hanes

Hola mi familia!
It is cold! It snowed but melted off the ground by the end of the day.
This past week was okay. Spanish has been making me frustrated. Mainly because I feel like I should know more than I do, bc I leave in 4 weeks.
pero, yo tango un bautizado el 10 de Novembre y un mas el 20 de Novembre. este por mi inv progresando. entonses esta bueno! ahora tango 3 inv progresandos. sus numbres son Franco. Mario y Belen. Franco es muy bueno por que se bautizara. Mario es no bueno por que el es muy stubborn! Haha y nosotros just started teaching Belen and she is pretty cool. That’s some of my broken up Spanish but I know more it’s just taking too much time to keep writing in Spanish. entonses!
 As I was attending the temple last Thursday, guess who I ran into.....MICHEAL WOOD! It was awesome!!! I was like Michael Wood?? He kind of looked at me funny and goes Cameron Hanes?? And then we talked for a little while! It was awesome!!! He is actually a teacher at the CCM (Spanish Speaking MTC) so I am going to go down to his class and visit one day.
I love all of you and miss you!
Love Elder Hanes!!

this week's letter

HEY!!!

SO this week has been very good! I’m progressing in the language. I am able to teach without notes and without planning very much!  It’s so cool. I got my progressive investigator to commit to being baptized on Monday! It’s so sweet!

Uhm being zone leader is really awesome but hard, we have a lot of responsibility, but it’s all good. We got a new district(new group of missionaries) last night and my companion and I had to give their new missionary orientation last night, then tonight we are giving them their tour of the campus. That’s the easy part lol.

That’s so awesome that the cards won!

Love you all and miss you! Elder Hanes

letter this week

HEY!!
So a lot has happened. My companion and I are training all week to become the zone leaders starting Sunday. Our zone leaders are leaving out on Monday and so we were called to take their place. It’s pretty cool we are being trained by the MTC presidency and they are so cool. We are in charge of 3 or 4 districts; I can’t remember right now lol I am way excited to do it.
Uhm, Spanish is kinda moving a long/ I am speaking everything I know in Spanish in the place of the English as much as I can. It’s getting to where I will say stuff in Spanish without thinking about it. Its way cool!
It’s cold here but no snow yet, I can see my breath all day long, and today I think it’s in the high 30s and low 40s. I miss you all a ton but I know it’s worth it. I can’t wait to get into the field.
There is a hermano(teacher) here from OK city so he and I are talking all the time, he is shadowing my hermano so I see him every day. Then the other day I was in class around 9 and an Elder came running in and yelled “I heard there was an Elder in here going to OK city Spanish!" I said, "right here" , he left Tuesday for my same mission so I finally met someone that is going there!
I bought a 2 dollar hard cover B.O.M. the other day and started reading over and marking stuff as my mission B.O.M and I have found and learned so much more then I ever have, it’s so cool!!
Oh, Benjamin, I just got a new district and three of the elders are going to Puebla!
I LOVE YOU GUYS SO MUCH! MISS YOU TONS!
Amor, Elder Hanes

Letter

Following is the letter we received in our email:
HEY!
So everything here is going good, working hard. I was only district leader for the first day; all I had to do was get the mail. (the  MTC is like dorms, divided and grouped, district leaders are responsible for certain groups) 
Tuesday was actually an awesome day, we had a lot of study time, then at the end of the day we had a devotional and Elder Richard G Scott (an apostle in our church) spoke to us. It was so cool and a really awesome learning experience. He taught us a lot. 
The weather is perfect here right now. No more snow on the mountains. But in the morning it’s cold, in the afternoon it feels nice.
The Spanish is still hard. We have investigators (people that come in on a volunteer basis for roll play, to pratice the language) everyday that we have to teach. It’s a good experience but its hardddddddd.  Other than that I am doing good!
Uhm I have gained 5 pounds and I think I got a little taller.
Amor,
 Elder Cameron Hanes

If you would like to see the Missionary Training Center(MTC), where Elder Hanes is residing and receiving training until Dec. 6. go to:

http://byutv.org/watch/f95d0f6a-aa0e-4ba6-9953-e22b98b03be2

to watch a video of the MTC and what they are doing there, before the missionaries go out to the area they are serving in.

I have also posed the link to the right of this post: under Learn more.

ADDRESSES FOR EDLER HANES TO WRITE TO YOU

Hey everyone,
If you would like for him to write you, please email me your snail mail address. He has time to write letters at night. We are going to send him stamped envelopes with your addreses on them.

Take care,
Janice

Letter From Elder Hanes

Heyyy!! My first week has gone by fast! It is a lot of work and Spanish is very frustrating. We get to go to the temple after lunch; I am way excited about that! My teachers are amazing I love them. It so pretty up here, there is snow on the mountains. I have been saying my prayers in Spanish. Oh so our investigator almost said yes to getting baptized, he said he wants to learn a little more about baptism. But we are done teaching , now he becomes our teacher and he is crazy hard to understand, Hermano Redd even has a hard time understanding his accent and when he teaches us tomorrow he will only speak in Spanish so pray for me, haha, but for real, pray for me.

 Amor Elder Hanes

First letter home, via email!!!

The first day and night was so overwhelming but good; it is so crazy here. I am struggling with Spanish. We had to teach our first lesson yesterday, in Spanish, it was hard and it had to be 30 mins. I did horrible. But everyone says the first three days are the hardest and we made it past them, so, yay!

My companion is pretty cool. I am meeting some cool people. 4 guys from my zone are going to Mexico and 4 more are going to Peru. The other 4 are states side.

My zone leaders are awesome as well they are so funny. I was district leader the first day and night.

Thursdays are my personal day, we just got to do laundry today so I get to write during laundry.

Write again Thursday.

Love you guys, Elder Hanes

Please write Elder Hanes

You can write Elder Hanes, he will love the letters!
See the left corner of this blog for information on writting him.
If you use the web site, he will get those letters that day(Mon- Fri). It is easy to navigate and it is FREE.
Please remember he is a representative of the Lord, he is trying to be spiritual. Keep your letters uplifting, and motivational for him. He will love hearing news from you.
Thank you!

Elder Hanes entering the MTC

THANK YOU LARSON FAMILY!!!!

Temple Square

The Larson Family are showing Elder Hanes around Temple Square before they take him to the MTC tomorrow. THANK YOU LARSON FAMILY!

Saying goodbye is the HARDEST thing to do!!!!

PACKED

The large suitcase weighed in at 49lbs, the smaller one was 48 lbs. PHEW!!!! Just made it.

The carry on was just his TIES!!! :0)

Cameron and his TIES!!!!

He's starting to PACK!!!
He has always wanted to serve a mission, therefore, Cameron has been collecting ties for as long as I can remember. He says he has 160+ ties. He figures, stretched out end to end it would be about 3 football fields. LOL!! Just so you know, most of the ties are from a thrift store. He LOVES thrifting!

Cameron at the Temple

This was a great day!!!! He is 16 days from leaving! He is so excited!

Created blog-Janice

I am very excited to create this blog for all of you to follow Cameron's experience! Be patient with me as I learn how to do this-BLOGGING is NEW to me! :0)