Hey guys!
Sorry I haven't written a letter yet! When we came to Butte on Monday, it was their P-day, so I had to wait a whole week to write again. I didn't know what the address was until like Thursday! Don't get mad at me lol.
Crazy week! My first week out in the mission field. Montana is not like Utah at all lol other than the mountains and the cold. There's not very many Mormons in Montana and there's only one stake in Butte. Butte is an old old town! It's pretty big, but I guess it's the most dangerous city in Montana haha. Although where our house is, it is really safe but downtown Butte isn't safe. EVERYBODY HAS DOGS HERE, we are always getting barked at ~ Dad, you would absolutely hate that lol! Drinking, smoking, and gambling are huge problems in Butte. It seems like everybody smokes & drinks here and there are casinos everywhere! It's hard to get baptisms here and the Mission President wants at least one baptism a month. But lucky for us, we set 2 baptismal dates this week! They had me invite them to be baptized after we taught them about the Restoration and they said yes! So I'll have at least 2 baptisms under my belt by the time I leave for Brazil! Crazy!! They are kids though haha one is 11, Makya Olsen and the other is 9, Jacob Olsen. Not sure what the whole family situation is but the parents are both Mormon. I think they were just inactive and hadn't had their kids baptized yet. But still!
Teeth are not a priority for the people of Butte lol. Seems like everyone is missing teeth here haha. We'll come across people who have a full set of teeth but then we find out they are members or they're originally from Utah lol. Most of the members we talk to are really nice and we get fed pretty much every day. We live in the basement of the bishop's house. It's not too bad, I guess I can't complain at all. My companions are great. Elder Carter is from Beaver, Utah and Elder Hopkins is from Florida. They both know what they're doing but that's because they've been out forever. It's been nice to be free from drama.
We help out and do service a lot because during the day is horrible proselyting hours because people are at work. What's weird is people go to bed really early here. My companions said that people have gotten mad at them when they proselyted after 8 at night because they were about to go to bed. Weird! We help out at the Food Bank in Butte, which is run by the guy who set up the whole Mary on the Mountain so he's a big and positive influence in Butte. He's Catholic. We usually package food or wax their vans and stuff. We helped out at the Soup Kitchen too on Thursday. There are a lot of Catholics in Butte. St. Patrick's Day is a huge deal here, everybody is freaking out over it. It's like Carnaval in Brazil & I don't think we'll be allowed out on St. Patrick's Day. Everybody just wants to get plastered here haha.
I talked about this in the letter I'm going to send you but we went tracting like 4 days in the past week with no success lol. I didn't have my first rejection until yesterday because nobody would answer the door when I knocked haha. But the first door that answered was an old lady, she was such a trick and she slammed the door before I could get two words in lol. I guess I'll actually have to use words instead of just my looks to convert :/ It's usually the Catholics who are mean! They're always like "I have my Church and I don't need anything else so you're wasting your time guys. I'm not going to talk to you." Haha we always just laugh when we leave. Although, yesterday we were trying to find a less active member who was on the ward list and we went to his house, but the lady there said that he had moved a few years ago. We talked to her for awhile and she said she was Catholic but was willing to let us come back and talk to her about what our Church was about. So we are going today sometime and we're going to teach her! I'm nervous about it because she will be the first Catholic that I'll teach.
Anyways! that's about it! I think most everything else is going to be said in the letter I'll send you. BTW Where in Peru is Ben Haacke going? That little wiener, he didn't even write me to tell me haha. That's cool though.
Here is my Address:
Elder Colin Ronald Hanson
122 Renz Drive
Butte, MT 59701
Please put that on Facebook or something! I really am loving it here and I hope everything is going well back home! Love you guys so much! Eu os amo muito!!!!
Elder Colin Ronald Hanson
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