Howdy Y'all! 

I'm being transferred!

I can't believe my time is up here in Collins Hill. It seems like I just got here yesterday! these next three days are going to be crazy! well next two anyways. I have been packing and trying to clean up the apartment! Sister Arbon is also moving out and switching apartments with the other sisters because she is becoming an STL. She's going to do awesome! I am goin...... can any one guess?? I am going to KENNESAW!! haha I am so excited! I met an Elder in the MTC who is from there and I have heard all good things about there. My new Companion is Sister Garver!! haha so she's not technically a new companion. but I am still way excited!! woot! its going to be a party, I can't believe we are serving together again.

Update on Drew: Drew did not get baptized this Saturday. it made us super sad but it was for a good reason. His finger was swollen and all purple and he said he hit it on his headboard but it looked like a bite. Drew's dad took him to the hospital, the hospital looked at it and immediately sent him to the ER, then later that night he was admitted into the Hospital this was all on Wednesday. Drew's dad was sending us updates. So the next day we went and visted him and sang him songs and talked to him about what happened. when we showed up his hand was all wrapped up and was the size of a boxing glove (the wrap around his hand anyways.) it was sad! then he told us he was about to have another procedure. They were draining all the stuff out of his hand! it was soo gross! but hey! he needed! They think it was a spider bite. the sickness/whatever it was spread though out his body, so every at noon they have to put a Transfusion? in him. a nurse comes over and does it. so please pray for him. he still wants to be baptized and can't wait until he can! I am sad I will be gone!

Tristan Got the priesthood this sunday! it was soo cool. He asked us to come in the room but sister arbon didn't want to so I didn't get to go but it sound like it was amazing! he also got his first calling as ward missionary! he's going to do awesome I just know it!

Jimmy and Heather are still doing awesome!! we just love going over there, they got us a Christmas tree on sunday so we can decorate it! it was loads of fun! they got a real live Christmas tree! which is so cool, im pretty sure I have never had one of those! plus it was lots of fun decorating it, im in the Christmas mood. haha sometimes. I was sad when we had to leave though, I hate goodbyes and they are seriously my favorite family so I don't want to leave them. I know I will keep in touch with them forever though!

 

 

Rae, oh Rae! I am going to miss her so much! she is the sweetest lady! we are happy someone is staying in the area because no one visits her except the missionaries and the J dubs. haha she is too nice to tell the Jehovah's witnesses that she was baptized into the Mormon church, she loves their company and so she won't send the away.

  

I sadly can't send pictures this week because I forgot my converter and we aren't at the library! normally the library just has a card reader but these computers don't. :( so I will send tons next week!!

I love you all! pray for me with transfers that everything will go well!! its going to be a crazy week!

Love

Sister Hanks

Hey Yall!!

yes i did get in a swimming pool no it didn't have any water in it! it was pretty funny! anywho! 

This week was a good week we had so many miracles happen and we have plenty more to go!! 

Monday night we had FHE with the Blounts. it was hilarious!! it reminds me of home the way that they do FHE. we played a fun game that you pass around booklets and you have to draw on them. lets just say im not the least talented drawer! it was hilarious! we also watched as all the Blounts tried to put spoons on their faces! their youngest just turned twelve could put three spoons on his face! it was amazing!! 

Tuesday we went over and had amazing lesson with our Investigator!.we got out of there and had three missed phone calls from Jimmy.So we called him back, he asked us how long he thought it would take him to come back to the church. i said 6 months! he said no sucker! im getting baptized tomorrow! oh and im getting the holy ghost and the aaronic priesthood too! we could not believe it!! we litereally screamed and ran around the room with joy! it was very good news to us! this month has been the Parkers month. Heather was baptized on the 1st, jimmy on the 19th and tristan on the 29th its awesome! We got out family!! 

we have been trying to talk to Tristan about Serving a mission lately! we know he is going to be an amazing missionary so we are trying to get him to serve one. any 

as i said jimmy got baptized Wednesday night. it was amazing the spirit was so strong. it was awesome! then they took us all out to O'Charly's that night. O'charlys has free pie wednesday!! its so awesome!! its not as good as village in free pie night but hey! free pie! ill take it any time! 

Thursday was an eventful time! we were riding to go tracting and i wasn't wearing the best skirt i have no idea what i was thinking, but anyways i was ridingh a long when all of the sudeen my back tire stopped going and i almost flew off my bike. Pretty much my entire skirt was wrapped around my bike and i was stuck! sister arbon was pretty much a 700 feet away and could hear me yelling at her to stop. haha she says she was about to cross the light and she said "ready hanks? " she turned around and i wasn't there. she had to come back and save me! i felt bad for all the cars passing because im pretty sure everyone could see my garments. note to future sisters: ride a bike with your skirts and make sure they don't get caught. 

Saturday we had a baptism! 

we went to a church called 12 Stone on saturday as well. its really cool! and strange! they have a live band that plays songs for the first 30 mins of the service, kinda like a rock concert. and then they have a pastor who talks to them. we stuck out so bad too because no one wears church clothes they all come in jeans and tshirts and anything really. haha its so strange but hey! people go to church right?? 

Bahaha there is a little girl next to me right now, and she just said Spider Monkey's are so cute aren't they? haha nope they aren't. 

so spiritual thought for the week! i have doing a study on the Holy Ghost because i am giving the talk on it at Tristan's baptism. I found Three steps that help you recieve inspiration from the Holy Ghost. 1. Have Faith 2. Be Clean 3. Have Pure Motive ~ President Erying. 

if you do these three steps the Holy Ghost will always be there with you! 

Have a fabulous week! Remeber that God loves you and so do I!! 

Love Sister Hanks

~ Sister kafu  and I we hit up the mall together this morning and found some awesome deals!! 

~ we had to pick up our bikes and they only fit in the car with all of the seats down! so i rode in the back with them. 

~ This is the definition of Sister Arbon and I's relationship. we are always laughing! 

~ I am in a swimming pool! 

~ close to swimmers open to missionaries!!

The week I thought i had EBOLI! 

So this week has been an insane week. :) as you can tell by the caption. as a precursor! i don't have eboli its a story i will get to before the end. i just liked the title. :)

First off this week we had EXCHANGES!! crazy right? haha i thought so. Sister Arbon (who is my trainer) got to leave me which i meant i did what we call "leading out" in my area. in other words i was incharge. which really freaked me out!! Sister jacobs came with me and she is my STL which means she is over me. Really What Exchanges are... they are just making sure that we are working right, but it was still fun! First we stopped by The parkers house because the Elders had made us some Maple Bacon cookies. So stopped by there for a quick cup of lemonade and a cookie. They weren't that good but Elder Fowers wanted to make them for us so we had some. :) then we went tracting. which was aweome we got to talk to twelve people!! woot!! we knocked on doors for two hours and only twelve doors opened up to us. it was soo excited. then we went to the Tams for dinner. I love the Tams! they are this cute Chinese couple. They are from Hong Kong. Brother Tam actually served his mission in Hong Kong where is from so that way awesome. I have yet to have Chinese Food at their house. We had Chicken Cordon Blu and rice and veggies it was delicious! They invited a non-member friend for us to teach. It was really good that the other set of sisters was there because we really needed to see Rae. Heather came and Picked us up for our Team-up and off we went to visit cute little Rae. We talked to Her and Heather a little bit more about tithing. On the way back to our apartment, Heather and I were discussing Jimmy and Tristan. This family is seriously a miracle family. Sister Jacobs had heard all about jimmy and wanted to meet with him. So we went back to the Parkers for like 10 mins to talk to him. he asked the usually questions (whyd ya come? whats your testimony and have you got a boyfriend?) it turned out to actually be a super spiritual night. :) it was a great way to end it. the next morning we got up and did studies. Exchanges are hard sometimes because we really don't have set investigators right now so we didn't have any for sure lessons.  so we rode our bikes about 3 miles to Rae's Neighborhood to drop in on someone  :) We rode all the way out there, and she told us to come back next week! it was so exciting! we stopped by a couple more places and with no luck we finally headed back home.  The other Sisters picked us up and we went to Panera. Which is the exact same thing at paradise bakery in Utah. its soo good! 

Wednesday was the first day i got sick. ugh it was awful. I woke up all achy all over and my nose was running and i had the biggest headache.  but hey! missionary work never stops!! we exchanged back and we had one appointment that Sister Arbon and i tried to go to but they didn't answer the door. so we went to dinner with Sister Todd. I love sister todd!!  she owns her own company and her husband stays home and raises all five of her boys. :) haha its awesome. we went to this place called O'Charley's. It reminds me of like an Outback Steak house or something classy like that. Plus it has free pie wednesday and we all know i love free pie wednesday so we had to get some. Our appointment for that night canceled as well so we just enjoyed a long dinner and went to bible study!! before we went to bible study i started feeling a little down, i was missing my family a lot, sister Todd had started asking about them and we were discussing it. but i wasn't going to let the homesickness get to me. Until we went to Bible study. We were reading in Luke and i was just struggling. i didn't think i was showing it but apperently i was. I went Home later that night to find little notes in my planner that were from Elder Fowers, Elder Roy and Tristan telling me everything was going to be okay. i seriously love our Elders and tristan. they are the best! 

Thursday i woke up with a huge headache and i was achey all over!! i seriously felt like a bus had hit me. I was coughing and Sneezing and couldn't breathe AND!! the Day before we had started a District fast! so i wasn't allowed to have water or food for the next two meals!  i went back to bed for a while and later that day took a huge nap. I decided i could handle walking to the Parkers house. so i bundled up and off we went.  we showed up and the first thing he did was bring us out two huge mugs of Hot Chocolate! we had no idea what to do! we didn't want to say no, but we were fasting!! so we just decided to drink it, but we still didn't eat anything. by the end of the lesson, we came the conclusion that us and the elders are going to team teach him until the twenty ninth which is his baptism date. :) woot woot! that night for dinner we had a CEREAL PARTY!! the Kelley's went out and bought all our favorite kinds of cereal and thats what we had for dinner it was awesome!  she took us home and sister Coffee took us out for the night!  Sister Coffee figured out i was sick (no shocker there, i can't breathe and i constantly have tissues in my hand.) and took me to buy Mucinex which is awesome i think. haha then they dropped us off at the Parkers.  The first thing we got when we walked in was jimmy saying " i bought you something! Jo are you sick? you better not lie to me!" so naturally i had to tell him i was feeling under the weather and that i had no idea what to do because i had never been this sick without my mama before. Heather appeared out of nowhere and handed Sister arbon and I electic blankets and i hear jimmy say im calling your mama! The next thing i know my mom is on the phone with Jimmy and he gives the phone to heather to explain whats going on. I immediatly started crying, i was really close to bawling when in unison jimmy and tristan both said don't cry! or ill punch you in the throat! (side note: they would never do this its just an on going joke. and they hate crying!) so Here i am trying not to cry while i watch heather talk to my mom and explain that i am dying. Jimmy is also yelling I THINK SHE HAS EBOLI!  it was quite the night. I had a sore throat, runny nose, an ugly cough and an earache. I really needed to go to the Doctor. Heather finished talking to her and after a text from my mom telling me to take echinacea and Vitamin C. Tristan jumps up to go get me some from the store while jimmy is calling to get me a doctors appointment. i seriously Love this family! they are my family away from home! they tell me to not go out the next day. So i spent the next two days inside while we did companion exchanges. Sister Kafu and I hung out with Sister Arbon and Sister Kelly went out and did missionary work. we waited until 6 when jimmy got off work to take me to the Doctor. The elders came over and gave us both blessings. That was an awesome experience because the majority of my blessing wasn't about my sickness it was talking about adversity and how i need to be prepared because it is coming and its going to be hard. haha yay! that is exactly what i want to hear. so pray for me. Lots.  So to conclude this insanely long email! I went to the Doctor and he put me on two different types of meds and i have an inhaler. :) woot. I am doing loads better and i hope to start getting back out there tomorrow! there are people to talk to and lessons to teach! 

i love you all! and i hope your week is full of miracles and laughter!! 

Love Sister Hanks

~This is me after being Stuck inside for three days! i was ready to go out and save souls!! 

~ they have a store out here called the Big Bass Pro Shop. Its like Cabellas. :) we had a little too much fun in there. :) 

~ Made it to the Parkers!! you'd think that i was ready for a huge snow storm!! 

~ Chilling at the Doctors Office. :) We talked to the Doctor and The Secretary about the church. :)

~ I got an awesome Package from home. Sister Arbon and I had a fun time blowing up balloons and figuring out what my family was thankful for! Thanks guys!! i love you lots! 

Hey Y'all!

I can't believe its week 8 here on the mission! i have been here for 8 weeks! woot! i have survived the worst part of the mission! we heard a statistic that 20% of Sisters go home before the first two months! thats so crazy! This week has been a week full of miracles! 

 The sunday after heathers baptism was fast sunday. we all had dinner at the Parkers and we were all joking about fast sunday. When tristan politely asked how many meals we skip we said 2 and he said easy im in. so he fasted on sunday . we were asking him how fasting went and he said it went good so we were discussing what we fast for and why we fast. then we taught the plan of salvation he really like the plan of salavtion and we got to the end and we were talking about the Kingdoms of Glory and asking him which on  he wanted to be in. He said the celetrial kingdom. I asked him, what kind of people got into the celestrial kingdom, he explained back to me the people who got baptized and stayed faithful! it was set up soo beautifully! i coudn't resist not asking him to get baptized so i did! guess what he said! he said yes!! he is on Date for November 29! how crazy is that! he only needs to come to church twice! we were telling him he needed to get work off and come to church. so we were convincing him to ask his boss. then saturday night i texted him asking him if he got work off he said he hadn't so we went to bed a little bit disappointed. so we got up the next morning and as we were weekly planning i said, you know what would be cool if tristan just showed up to church. what if he surprised us? we laughed it off as we walked inside to ward council and we actually handed Tristan off to the elders before we committed him but elder roy was sick so they were discussing investigators and tristan was brought up we told every one he was on date and he just needed to come to church but it was going to be hard because he works every sunday from 8 am to 6pm. They were discussing how the parker family is an awesome family and how they are going to change the ward. Ward council ended and we walked into the chapel to put our bags down and none of our investigators were there and sister Arbon needed to use the bathroom so we went to the bathroom and after we walked back into the sacrament room and guess who was there??? TRISTAN! it was a huge miracle! he got off work early! heather was shocked too! she said he just came home from work and said whens church? she told him 1:30 and he went and got ready! it was a miracle! 

Miracle Number 2 and 3 happened on saturday! 

Saturday is when we play soccer at 10 am. we are suppose to bring investigators to it but no one was coming and we debated on whether or not to cancel but we just decided to play. as we were playing we saw this little kid playing soccer around the fence so brother whetten went over there and asked if he wanted to play, he had to ask his dad but then he came and played! he was so good!! it was lots of fun! brother whetten said next time you do the recruiting! we had been playing no more then ten mins when another guy walked up to us and sister kelly asked him if he wanted to play he said no. i just want to watch my family play soccer. we all kinda looked at each other and shrugged our shoulders and continued playing. after a while we stopped playing and went to talk to him. His name is Dickson and he is from Nigera. he has only lived in georgia for 10 days. He comes to the church everyday for 5 house waiting for some one to talk to him. A lady came up to him earlier in the week telling him to come on sunday at 1 because that's when church is. so he kept reminding himself to come at one. Brother Whetten was like how about we give you a church tour? so we did. He sat in the sacrament room and he began to tell us how it feels like home and that we are his family and how you need to be worthy to take the sacrament! this guy is awesome! he came to church on sunday! we believe he is going to be baptized in two weeks!  

The third one happened in our apartment complex! His name is Drew he caught us washing his car and he came over to talk to us and we asked him if he wanted to come to church with us and he said yes!! it was awesome! he came to church and he liked it so much that he's coming again next week! we believe that he is also going to be baptized in two weeks! 

On Sunday it was super cool. they did the YW in Excellence program during sacrament meeting. it was so spirtitual and a lot of memories came flooding back of my years in the YW's program! each of the girls gave little talks and they sang songs and did piano songs. it was soo good. it made me remember the year the Girls and the leaders got into a competition of whoever took the best pictures! i wish i could go back. it was awesome. 

I got sick this week too. Not too sick but i had awful headaches and some days migranes and i was sneezing and coughing like crazy! i felt bad for my companion because one day i didn't want to go biking because i was struggling breathing when we were walking a ton. haha but im doing better. 

I appriciate all the prayers! My quote/spiritual thought this week is:

Once you get your House in order Everything will be perfectly fine! -Heather Parker

we were talking about the future one night and how life is really stressful. heather told us that house = you. which makes sense. Once you have everything going good for yourself as in prayer, scripture study, going to church etc. everything will be okay. Always Give 110% and God will make up the Rest! 

Stay strong! i love you all and am always praying for you! 

Love Sister Hanks