Joy = Garden Grove Strawberry Festival

Hey everyone! This week was great! As far as the work is concerned, Andrew Muirhead, a little 12 year old kid, is getting baptized on June 12! His dad, who is just returning to activity, is getting the priesthood next week and will be baptizing Andrew and his 8 year old Sister Mia the week following! We are really excited for them! The gospel blesses families, it really does! We have a new senior missionary couple in the ward, the Westergard's from Bountiful Utah! We went out with them Tuesday evening and didn't have anything set, so we just decided to make some visits. In three visits, we taught three lessons! Three times in a row, people invited us in and we were able to teach the Restoration. That never happens haha. Elder Hansen and I were in awe! That was a sweet tender mercy
from this week. 

This weekend was the Garden Grove Strawberry Festival, and president gave us permission to go, and even gave us permission to go on the rides! I guess it's a pretty big deal here. At church last week in the
Sunday school lesson, the teacher asked about the purpose of this life. A member named Ralph (who is a little mentally handicapped) said, "Well the way I see it is, Adam fell that they might be and men are that they might have JOY! God wants us to have joy! So He has given us the Garden Grove Strawberry Festival!!! It's gonna be a great experience, I'm gonna watch the parade and everyone is invited!" Haha
and Ralph was right! It was awesome!

Elder Hansen and I also went to the Cao Dai temple, where we were given a tour and learned about what CaoDaists believe. It was pretty interesting and the temple is way colorful and pretty. Essentially they believe in all religions, so they totally accepted the First Vision and everything that we believe about Christ! It was neat.
Tomorrow we have MLC and Thursday is Zone Training, so we have an exciting week ahead of us! Thanks everybody for all of your love and support and prayers. Have a fantastic week!
-Elder Francis

Am I even serving state-side?

It's been an eventful week here in sunny SoCal!  We had zone conference on Thursday, where we received training from President and Sister Taggart and his assistants. That was awesome. We learned all about being continually
converted to the gospel as missionaries. It was also sweet because we combined with my last zone, Orange, so I got to see all of my old friends!

We had a good week in our area, but Elder Hansen and I both got sick, which was kinda lame, but we were still able to go out every day and get some work done. We worked primarily with less actives this week and a lot of success and some funny stories. We met with this one lady named Heidi who is in a halfway home, and as the lesson progressed, we realized that she isn't very accountable for her actions at this point in her life. We invited her to come to church, and she said, "I would, but I'm having my baby next week."

...."Woah, we didn't realize you were pregnant!" (She obviously was
not pregnant)

"Yup!"

"How many kids do you have Heidi?"

"Well, you won't believe this, but I'm actually at 52 now! Pop em out
every 2 months!" Hahahaha and that's how the lesson went!

I was able to go on two exchanges this week, one of which was with the Vietnamese Elders in their area! So I got to learn a little Vietnamese! It was a lot of fun though, and I got to try some authentic Vietnamese food. With that and the Korean exchange I went on last week, I am getting the full cultural experience here in Cali!

On Sunday we had a missionary musical fireside, where all of the missionaries in the zone conducted a fireside teaching the restoration through music and song! Elder Hansen and I were in two musical numbers, Love at Home, which we sang with the Samoan elders and I got to learn the first verse in Samoan, and then Elder Hansen and I sang I Stand All Amazed, just the two of us haha. It was alright, but overall the fireside was great and there was a powerful spirit there. Today for Pday we went to the Asian Garden Mall! Haha Asian culture is awesome!
Have a great week everyone!
-Elder Francis
Asian garden mall!
And the missionary musical fireside!
Me and Buddha!

프랜시스 장로

안녕하 세요! 프랜시스 장로!! 
It's been a good week here in Garden Grove. We had a lot of appointments cancel/fall through, but that's just how some weeks go. We weren't able to meet with Vicky and her family this last week, which was a bummer. But we have been able to visit a lot of less actives, and the Lord has blessed us! One of the coolest experiences we had was just yesterday. We visited this recent convert named Amy. She joined the church by herself, and her husband and two kids have never been very supportive of it. She hasn't come to church lately because she's been taking care of her I'll father and she doesn't have any motivation from her family to go. We shared President Monson's talk on choices with her, and she just loved it. She opened up to us about the struggles and trials she is going through. It's times like that where I remember that I'm just a teenager and I'm totally not qualified to counsel people who've had literally like three times as much life experience as me. So we did our best, and we bore our testimonies to her of what we know to be true. The spirit was powerful and it witnessed the truth of the things that we taught, and she was comforted. This work is about the people, it is about lifting and blessing the lives of God's children. I got to go on an exchange with Elder Stumpf, who is in the Korean program, hence the Korean! It was way fun and he taught me the Korean alphabet. I wasn't able to help out much throughout the day, but I learned a lot and Elder Stumpf and I had a good time. He made me some Korean food haha and that was interesting. Other than that, not much has happened this week! This upcoming week will be a good one. We have zone conference and two exchanges, one of which I'll be in the Vietnamese area, so that'll be fun! It was my birthday the other day, so special thanks to everyone who remembered! Thanks to everyone for all the love and support! I love you all!
-Elder Francis
Elder Hansen and I did some service this week!

Mother's Day!

This past week has been incredible!  There is a harvesting to be done here in Garden Grove, and our efforts this last week have shown that! Garden Grove is sooooo different from Orange haha. There are a ton of crazy people, and I love it! Every day is an adventure. The dynamic of the zone is also very different from Orange too. Elder Hansen and I have pondered and prayed a lot about how we can best unite the zone, because at this point it seems that there are two different zones, the English zone and the Asian zone. The Koreans and the Viets are awesome hahaha and I love them, but so far our interactions with them have been pretty sparse.

So the work in our area this past week has gone incredibly... Day after day we have been blessed with miracle after miracle, and the Lord has filled our lives with His countless tender mercies. The greatest of which was a woman named Vicky, who was a potential in our area book that Elder Hansen and Hamby found and had been unable to contact for weeks. We felt prompted to try again, so we did on Wednesday and caught her at home! We set a return appointment for Friday. As it turns out, Wednesday and Friday are her only days off so it was totally inspired. We went back on Friday and taught her and two of her children the Restoration. They were so engaged and agreed evening we taught! We invited them to be baptized and all three accepted without hesitation!! We set the date for June 12!!! We are so excited for them and we pray that the Lord will bless them and help them keep their commitments. I've never put a family on date for baptism before! It's sooooo amazing!! God is so good.

We've had some crazy experiences this past week too. We spent about 4 hours in the emergency room on Saturday night. One of the sisters we split a ward with had an anxiety attack at our dinner appointments. We gave her a blessing and called the mission nurse, who told us to take her to the emergency room. So we caravanned over and waited with her companion in the waiting room until she was released. She's doing a lot better since then!

I got to talk to my madre yesterday! That was soooo awesome! I love you mom! Thanks everyone for all your support and prayers, have a great week everybody!

-Elder Francis

Elder Hansen and I!

See you laters! - Week 41

Well, it's been an eventful week! I found out Sat. night that I am
getting transferred.... It totally caught Elder Hackman and I off
guard. We had only been together one transfer, and we had really
gotten into a good rhythm and had set some good goals and made some
good plans to find and build our teaching pool back up after our
baptism last week. Sadly, I'm not the one that gets to carry those
plans out. So we were both kinda bummed. But I am super optimistic
about the future!! I have been assigned Garden Grove, to the Stanford
West area to be a zone leader with Elder Hansen! Elder Hansen and I
were in the same district in the MTC and he has become one of my best
friends out here in the field. This is the Disneyland mission, where
dreams do come true!! I'm so pumped for the next few transfers
together. We are gonna get work done! I'm also super excited to be
back in a family ward! The YSA ward was incredible, and I loved it so
much, but in a gospel and church that is so centered on families, it
is hard to work with only single people. I am so excited to be working
with families again. I've learned so much from the YSA ward and the
time that I got to spend there. I've made so many memories there that
I will cherish and love forever.
My least favorite part of getting transferred is saying goodbye to all
the people you've come to know and love. But being a missionary brings
with it a hope and faith that in God's plan, there are no true
goodbyes, just see you laters. One of those see you laters was to my
good friend Sister Jacobs, who I've been able to split the ward with
these past 4 and a half months. She finished her mission and is headed
back to South Carolina! She's goin to BYUI in the fall so all of my
Idahomies can say hey! The rest of the see you laters consisted of
ward members and investigators who have become good friends. That's
been a huge bonus of serving in a YSA ward in this day and age. And
thanks to social media we can stay in touch for years to come!
I'm so grateful for the time that I've been able to spend in the
Orange Hills YSA ward. The Lord has blessed me abundantly here, and
I'm so grateful for that. But I'm optimistic for all that the Lord has
in store for me here in Garden Grove! I know with all of my heart that
He has a plan for me. I love you all! Have a fantastic week!