May 20 2019
Hello Everyone!!
What's Elder Hanks's curse you might ask?? EMERGENCY
TRANSFER!!! "Again? Freaking again??" -Olan. So yeah there was another
emergency transfer! haha, so there was switching around (thankfully all my
emergency transfers were not caused by me, haha, I think President just sends
all the other missionaries to me) and I’m staying in 거제
(GeoJe) and I have a new companion! His name is Elder Giles and he's from Utah
and he's great! The work is also picking up a bit here too! (not too much, just
a little bit ;) )
Also my last companion was the District leader here, but he
left and president just decided to make me the district leader now, haha. So it
was really 갑자기 and I haven't had any District leader training, so I’m
just kinda winging it! So it's been a little more exciting week!
Church of the Week: I know a lot of you have been missing
this recently, so I realized I needed to do some exploring and find some more
churches. The church this week is.... The Puddle Church!! haha, I don't know
why it was called that, but we did have to walk through a lot of puddles that
day, so it seemed fitting!
Miracle Moment: So last night we were walking home from like
a few hours of proselyting, and we were pretty ready to get home. But we were
outside our apartment at like 8:50 and we were like "we got 10 more
minutes, let's take a walk around the block" So we were walking around and
on the way back we ran into this British Couple who had just barely gotten to
Korea. And one said he wanted to hear our message with us, the other wanted to
go get coffee with us later (got a little spoiler for her later, haha), and
they both want to learn Korean from us! So if we hadn't gone out that last 10
minutes, we wouldn't have found those British people, so it was a cool like
instant blessing!
So yeah, the gospel is freaking awesome. I know have had a
total of 9 companions already, which is quite a lot. Korea is still awesome and
beautiful. And british people are pretty cool.
Much 사랑 for you all,
Elder Hanks
Pictures (in maybe random order)
Beautiful korea
I broke my hand grip sadly (I’m just gonna say cause I was
too strong for it (; )
we had an exchange this past week and all crammed into one
room
The elders didn't have any umbrellas, so we gave them our 2
spare pink Hello Kitty umbrellas
We met this guy playing basketball, and he wanted us to take
a picture of him. Also you may think he is wearing white sleeves, but that is
in fact just a tan line, haha
May 12 2019
Hello everyone, thanks for tuning in today. It's been
another week on this island, living off of pasta, rice bowls, and eggs. So
life's good!
This past week we spent a day with a person we are trying to
get baptized, and he took us to this place called Windy Hill which is literally
just exactly what it sounds like. It's just a little hill with wind always
blowing 😂 but it was still cool. After that I also
washed his BMW with him, so hopefully I got pretty close with him.
The Breakfast Recipe you didn't know you needed: this was a
discovery I will never forget. It's quick, easy, and quite delicious. :) Here's
the secret; make some pancake batter, then put it into a rice cooker! Then you
got yourself a perfect little pancake cake! Probably nothing too special and
half of you have probably done it before, but just for those who didn't know 😉👍
Then this past week we had zone conference and the theme was
REPENTANCE. What a blessed theme! Just a good reminder to us that we all need
daily repentance for so much, and repentance has no limit, so just use it as
much as you can!
My invitation to you is to make sure you are repenting
daily! We all need it, no one in exempt. We even wrote lists of stuff that we
can repent daily for, so you can't do that too!
Love you all,
Elder Hanks
Pictures
The Windy hill 
Our person had a "light saver fight" with a
missionary who returned home but was visiting 
Just a Pic of GeoJe Island 
May 5 2019
What a week! New area! New Companion! And a whole new way of
missionary work here.
First off we had our transfer day last week, which started
off okay (as in not raining, good weather) But then it just started coming down
in rain, like really hard. And I wasn't expecting rain, so I was completely
exposed! No rain jacket, no umbrella, nothing! And the traveling took up just
about the whole day. So needless to say that transferring was not the funnest,
but that wasn't even the bad part. Apparently... when you pull your suitcases
behind you in the rain, they also tend to get wet. Also, not every suitcase is
waterproof... But thankfully my nice suit jackets took the majority of the blow
in one suitcase and my study books took the blow in the other suitcase. (But my
scriptures turned out almost completely okay, probably just being watched out
for by some angels) But needless to say, for the next few days, i just had my
books sitting in front of a fan to dry off. :)
So that was the excitement of transfer day! The new area is
pretty exciting too! It has 13 members in the branch (including the
missionaries) and is basically the smallest branch in the mission. It's gonna
be a really exciting area here with hopefully a whole lot of improvement.
Scripture time: This past week I was reading from Paul's preaching’s
and came across a scripture that said "Beware of Dogs." if you can
find that without searching it up, I’ll be impressed. Also I took it as a sign
to stay away from dogs for the next little while.
Spiritual second: So if I’m being honest, I wasn't really
excited to come to an area with such a small branch. I was confused why I was
sent here of all places, and didn't know how I felt attending a branch like
this for the next however many transfers. But I was reading an article about
President Eyering who grew up with church in his home! I can't remember his
exact quote, but he said something along the lines of how he realized church
isn't about meeting in an actual building or even about how many members there
are. He was just thankful to have the assurance he was attending the true
restored Church on the earth and be able to partake of the sacrament. That
helped change my perspective to realize what a privilege it is to serve in such
a unique area and become really close with the members, but more importantly to
just be able to attend church every week and renew my covenants.
This church is amazing!! I love it so much and can't even
describe how much it has done for me. Please take every advantage to strengthen
your personal faith. :)
Love you all so much,
Elder Hanks
Pictures
some of my study books being dried
our service in this community is helping at a special needs
center,
and there is one kid who was just always trying to escape
from us, haha. So it was really hard just trying to keep him with us
beautiful Korea
and our district meeting (we have a small district (; )
