Week 12 - I Am A Happy Icicle

Heeeeeeeyyyyyyy everyone!! Greetings from the land of Fin! Or Finland. Both work!

As you all know CHRISTMAS WAS THIS WEEK! It was so great! I was able to meet with a lot of members and it was so awesome! I was so sad when it became the 26th but that's okay because Christmas will come next year too!!

Missionary work is the best! I love talking to people and that is my whole life! Finnish is still not the easiest but it gets better every day! 

Finland isn't actually that cold, at least down here in Helsinki, which is nice. The thing is the sun sets at like three and gets up at around ten so it's almost always dark, which makes me look at the sky and say 'why?' but I've been told the sun will eventually come back so woohoo.

Remember the purpose of Christmas is and always will be to celebrate the birth of Jesus Christ! He is our Savior and I promise all of you that He loves you, He died for you, and His atonement is infinite! If you come unto Him I promise you that you will feel His love. I love this gospel and I love all of you!!

--

Elder Hancock

A Huge Thanks from Sam's mom

Over the past couple of days, we've received emails and pictures from wonderful people we have never met, nor are likely to ever cross paths with.  To you who have sent pictures and emails about Elder Hancock, please accept my deepest heartfelt thanks.  I can't express how much it means to our family to know that you - and others like you - are watching over our son and brother who is so far away right now.  It makes me appreciate the grand family that we all are.  As children of our Heavenly Father, we are all in this together.  Thank you for reaching out to us.  Your kind gesture bridges the gap of continents, brings us into his mission, and makes us feel close to Finland.  With the gift of emails like yours, this world is not that big of a place, and we feel so privileged to be a part of the work of spreading the good news of Jesus Christ and his restored church.  Merry Christmas!

Week 11 - It's Pretty Cold But That's Okay

Hello friends and family! This week was so awesome, and filled with great work. 

First off, I love Finland. It is so beautiful here and like I said, it's cold, but that just brings a sort of magic with it that I can't really explain. Helsinki is wonderful and I love it here!

So this week we were able to give a lesson to our investigator who was going to get baptized but then decided not to. We had a great discussion on faith and his own feelings and I loved it. We also had a lesson with a recent convert, who is one of the humblest people I've ever met, about hope, Christmas, and preparing him to go to the temple. It was so lovely! I love the people here.

This Christmas I hope we can all concentrate on charity and love. Charity suffereth long, and is kind and seeketh not her own. Remember this Christmas that Christ is the reason we can live with our families forever, but what does that mean to us if we aren't treating our families like Christ would? Sometimes I think it's easy to be kind to friends or even strangers, like Christ would, but he also held his mother in the highest esteem, and I know that he treated his family with that same esteem as well.

I love you all so much, Helsinki is wonderful, and make the place you are for Christmas wonderful too! In Paul's epistle to the Philippians he says 'Not that I speak in respect of want, for I have learned, in whatsoever state I am in, therewith to be content'. As we let Christ into our lives we can feel that rest and peace as well - if you remember, Paul was in a jail when he said that. Let us all do the same this Christmas season, and indeed, forever after.

I love being a representative of Christ. Christ said that He Himself is the Light of the world, and as we seek to light the world by emulating our Savior's example this holiday season, remember that if we have done it unto the least of these our brethren, we have done it unto Christ.

My testimony is of Jesus Christ. I know that He lives. 

I love you all!

--

Elder Hancock

HELSINKI IS SO GORGEOUS

Me and Elder Childers!

Candid moment at Forum today

Week 10 - Helsinki froze over!

Hahaha I'm funny. This week has been so flipping stellar! A little more detail than last week - I got assigned to Helsinki!! Yooo and it's awesome. I'm in the Neiytslpolku ward (Helsinki 3rd) and it's soooooo awesome. I love it! My trainer's name is Elder Childers, he's been out for six months and he's from Washington. 

This week has been the best of my mission by far. I love it. Yes, Finland is way cold, yes, Finns are really quiet, yes, Finnish is ridiculously hard and sometimes I feel really inadequate, but this is amazing. I've already fallen in love with Helsinki and the people here. 

We had a baptismal commitment when I got here but it fell through the morning of. It was sad, but I have faith that our investigator will continue to progress and eventually reach that point of his conversion. 

I have officially seen the sun a total of two times here! It's pretty much always cloudy or nighttime. Haha it's like I'm living in a snowglobe. I love it!

My Finnish is getting better daily. I can typically talk to people on my own, although sometimes I have to ask them to repeat what they said in simpler terms or get my trainer to help me but I'm getting better (and humbler :) ) every day. 

At Church on Sunday I got to give the opening prayer, pass the sacrament, and play the piano in priesthood! That was so exciting. I met a around 23 year old man named Saul and he's super cool, but when he said his name at first I thought he said Sauna. The two sound way similar in a Finnish accent and man it was funny.

One time I got two people on the bus to talk to us at the same time! My companion and I were trying to figure out the best word for water bottle (whether or not we had to put the word water in partitive and what that would do to the word bottle) and they saw us struggling and helped us out! That was fun. 

Yesterday, our district caroled at a train station and this one older lady came to watch us, and at the end I went to go talk to her and she was so nice. She had seen our temple in Espoo and thought it was so pretty. Her name was Helena and we talk for a good ten minutes. It was great and I especially liked it because almost the whole discussion was in Finnish and my trainer wasn't with me! At one point she said she was a bad lady because she smokes and drinks alcohol and I was like YEEESSS TESTIFYING TIIIIMMMEEE and started talking about how Christ's healing power and atonement had helped me change so much in my life and how He could help her! When I get excited about something I start speaking pretty quickly for some reason and I was doing it in Finnish and so I was like oh boy, I'm speaking so fast, what if I mess up and get thrown off and forget what I'm saying, but I just had faith that the gift of tongues would activate in me and it totally did! It was a wonderful little miracle to me that I could talk to her and my District Leader came up to me after that and told me that after Helena and I had parted ways she had started to cry. I love her and the Finnish people and this beautiful language.

On a different note, last night I gave myself my first haircut and it was awful. Suffice to say I got a nice knitted hat from Flying Tiger Copenhagen and I keep that thing on. Oh boy, we have a dinner appointment tonight! Well, that'll make for a good story.

I love Helsinki, I love Finland, I love this Gospel and Christ and the Church and the ward I'm serving in and the little Finnish kids and the super kind older ladies and the newly married couples in our ward and my companion and my district and everyone here in this blessed land. I love Christmastime as well. I hope we can all remember that Christmas is not about getting presents or Santa or elves, but about He who was born to redeem of us our sins. I love Jesus Christ. I know that He lives.

I love you all as well! Have a wonderful week!

--

Elder Hancock

From Mom:

I got the following email today from one of the Senior sisters working in the Mission Office. It's amazing how a simple email from someone can mean so much.  I told her that it made it feel like Sam wasn't that far away after all.  I love it!

She wrote:

These are some pictures of the ward party held on Sat.  The missionaries did a skit "A Day in the Life of a Missionary".  It was very funny and so typical.    You may have seen the video that Sister Gamett put on the Missionary Moms, but I thought I would send you a couple of pictures.  We love being where the young missionaries are.  The build our testimonies and we are amazed with their knowledge of the gospel.  Your sons are working very hard to share "The Light of the World" with many people.  We love them and know they love the people of Finland.  They did a fantastic job of serving the riisi puuro (porridge) to all who attended.  They helped with the decorating and cleaned up after.

I know one of the pictures is not very clear, but the smiles are better.

Week 9 - FIIIINNNLLLLAAANNNDDD

Soooooo I made it to Finland! I have like two seconds to email, but we got up yesterday at 6 am and just got here a few hours ago! I have not slept literally at all since then so I am pretty excited to go to bed. We get our areas tomorrow and I could´nt be more excited! Also, the actual apostrophe doesn´t exist on the Finnish keyboard so sorry if that looks weird. I love you all!

--

Elder Hancock

From Mom:

My brother Jon had a flight just before Sam's, so Jon got to see him at the airport!  Jon had made him some cookies (he's a fabulous uncle) and brought him some fruit snacks, too.  Perfect.  Jon actually got there hours ahead of Elder Hancock and barely stopped to rest as he walked back and forth from Security to the Gate, looking for a group of new missionaries (they're hard to miss).  

When they didn't show up and time was running short, I played the mom-card and *cough cough* yes, called the MTC and talked to the Travel Office.  No, they weren't aware of any accidents and hadn't heard anything, so yes, the missionaries were still flying out.  In my motherly defense, it was a very icy morning with lots of reported accidents from an overnight snowstorm, and also road closures and traffic problems due to President Trump flying in at that very moment.  Obviously it all worked out.  Uncle Jon found Elder Hancock in the TSA line and got a picture.

Kudos to Uncle Jon for hunting down Elder Hancock.  The Elders were late due to traffic or something.  The kids stayed home from school, waiting to talk to big brother Sam.  We got to talk to him very briefly (thank you, Jon!) and Dad got a brief moment to talk from work, and it was worth every moment of waiting.

An hour or so later, I got a text from a stranger - who is now my new best friend, although I have no clue who he or she is - who so kindly shared a picture of the group of Elders:

The blessed Stranger texted: "These Elders were so sweet to let me stop them and make them take a picture. Such an awesome site to see these guys here at the SLC airport."