Elder D. Todd Christofferson in our Mission

Hey Ya'll!

That phrase is starting to become more comfortable to me... haha but this week was so so much better than last week!! But I want to mention the best part of my week first which was Elder D. Todd Christofferson who came to our mission! We got a huge mission picture with him( which you can probably find on the blog) then we each got to individually shake his hand and tell him where we were from. But not only him we got to shake his wifes hand, Bishop Causse( 2nd councilor in the presiding bishopric), Elder Soares( in the 1st quorm of 70), and Elder Blooth(area of 70 over Birmingham)! It was the coolest thing ever!! Then they all talked to us and i dont have time to write everything that they taught us, but I will tell you my feelings. First is that I probably felt the spirit so strongly then ive ever felt it before when Elder Christofferson got up and talked with us! It was the coolest thing to just feel Gods love through a modern apostle! Next was something that his wife told us. She said that we can only get blessing when we are prepared to receive them. Christ is waiting to give them to us but we have to be prepared to get them. And we can get more blessings than we can imagine! Then Elder Christofferson got up and bore a 2nd witness to what his wife just said! How cool is that?! I thought it was amazing:) Then the last and probably most powerful part was when Elder Christofferson bore his testimony! He said simply and powerfully that he KNOWS Christ lives!! I have no doubt in my mind that he has seen Christ personally as have all the apostles and prophets! The spirit was so incredibly strong when he said that!!

So Elder Chirstofferson coming was so amazing! It was short and I wish it couldve been longer but Im so grateful to have sat at the feet of a living apostle and heard him!! But anyways. So last saturday president Holtzaple said that each of the new missionaries will have a baptism their first transfer and will get to baptize someone. So since then ive been praying to find someone or to let someone feel the need for the gospel in their lives right now. This week we had an absolute miracle! There is a guy named John he is in his 60 or 70's that the missionaries taught before i got here. One day he just called one day and told them the gospel wasnt for him and dropped them. This past week he called out of no where and said Hey how would you like it if i got baptized on the 3rd or the 10th of March?!?! Holy cow!!!! that is such a huge miracle! So we went and taught him the next day and asked him what changed his mind. He said that he felt bad about not coming to church and he said he liked coming to church and socializing with people. Even though his personality is not social and he likes to keep to himself! We told him that he was feeling the spirit and taught him more! Wow I was so excited so ill keep ya updated. Right now it looks like he will probably get baptized on the 10th!:)

Mary the lady i told ya bout last week. We have still been teaching her. We asked her if she had any questions which she was wondering about tithing so we talked to her about that and she said she wanted to pay tithing! So we are slowly but surely working on her! Both mary and john came to church yesterday so that was awesome! Now one last thing is on friday we did splits with the district leader. He and my comp went together and I went with his comp who is Elder Prisbey. We tracted for 2 hours and actually gave 2 blessings and 5 people said they want us to come back!! And one lady asked where our church was so I told her we would come back and show her!

Lots of miricles and blesssing going on! THank you so much for your prayers and know yall are in mine!:) This church is true!

Love yall!

Love Elder Hall:)

Hey one other thing i forgot to tell ya'll! 

So if ya have time i want ya to go visit a couple of sites. One is my mormon.org profile! Go onto mormon.org and search jansen hall and read it:) the other one is the mission blog. Go onto google and type in Birmingham Alabama mission blog and it should come up! Look for the pic with our whole mission with elder christofferson! Im in the front left of the pic kneeling down:) Hope everyone gets this email:)

Love ya'll!:)

Love Elder Hall

I'm in Mississippi

Hey Ya'll!

So its kinda weird saying that im in Mississippi! haha i spent so much time saying im going to Alabama on my mission and now im in Mississippi (and Tennessee) haha. Anyway this week has been another really long week! We flew into Birmingham at about 6 or 7 on tuesday, and we went to the mission home. We had interviews with the Mission President, and the vehicle coordinator. We also had our first southern meal from a woman that works there we had ham and yams with pecans haha it was really good. But thats the only homemade southern meal ive had so far. Our area is the furthest away from Birmingham, and its the largest area in the mission. So our ward is really spread out and the members are to far to give us meals, but we did get an appt with a member to go and eat so im excited about that! But anyway i kinda got off track. Our first night we stayed in a Marriott hotel which was so so nice! Then the next morning we went to transfer meeting and found out our assignment. So after the meeting we were getting stuff in the car so we could drive out to our area. We had some troubles putting together my bike, and it took like 3 days to finally get it all the way put together right.... I think haha but for now it should work:)

So our appt is not the best in the mission. Its actually like the 2nd worse in the mission, but i cant complain because i feel like jordan and other missionaries outside of the U.S. have worse. So im just grateful to have a decent appt! In the south there are alot of cockroaches. I guess like the day before i came the bombed my appt and that got rid of most of them. We still find a few every now and then but its ok haha. But i learned that our appt is supposed to be like that so that we wont wanna stay there and we would want to stay out and get work done haha. Anyway my comp, Elder Galorath, is pretty cool. We get along, but dont have matching personalities, so sometimes its kinda awkward. But he has been a good trainer. We have taught a few lessons to less active members, and tracked but only got into one house and the guy spoke only spanish so i didnt really know what to say, but he said to come back next week. I feel like we could still track more or do something to find people. I feel like sometimes we waste our time doing other thing, but maybe we arent haha idk.

So now i wanna tell you about a couple of people real fast.

One is Mary. She is an older lady like 60-70. She had a baptism date for sunday, yesterday, so last week we went to go talk to her and get her ready for that. She has been taught by the missionaries for like 2 years and thought that it was finally it. When we went over, she said that her kids didnt want her too. Her kids basically talked her out of it. Which is kina a bummer. She said the other missionaries didnt teach her so we are going to go back and keep visiting and start over with the lessons so we will see what happens. We have been back a couple of times and she gave us dinner twice. She is the sweetest lady and hopefully we can get her baptized cuz she is so ready for it!

Next is ray. He is a mexican and is about 30-40. Back in may-ish his neighbors tree fell down on part of his house and recked it. They tore that part down and smashed up all the bricks. The bricks were in a huge pile in his yard and he called us and asked if we could come help him get rid of them. So on Saturday morning we went over there and helped him and his brother in law (who is also mexican and not a member) throw by hand the bricks onto the tailor and then take it to the dumb and throw them back off by hand haha we made 2 trips and it took like 4 hours but we got most of it done. Then they took us out to a Chinese buffet which was nice cuz i missed the traditional valentines day Chinese dinner. but they did ask us about the church and our mission so hopefully we can start teaching them lessons!:)

The last is a older guy we went and visited yesterday. His name is Charley. He is blind, and he is 69. He is one of the coolest, nicest, funniest old guys I have met! He went blind when he was 32. He lives in an old day care center. He is less active. We talked to him for like 2 and a half hours! He said he loves shooting, flying planes, playing the piano and guitar. He actually played the guitar for us and he is awesome:) He said that he has driven a car and motorcycle in the driveway blind, and he drove a plane strait down the runway blind! haha what a great guy! But he is a way cool guy and we are gonna try to get him to come back to church!

Well thats some people that we have taught. At church I had to introduce myself and bare my testimony. It went well. The church members are awesome! They are so nice, but the ward mission leader is kinda weird. He thinks he knows everything, and the first thing he said to me was that my eyes focus different.? haha then he said he thought I had a glass eye and i should get them checked haha but ill deal with him. O and also bro matheson who just moved into the ward, his brother is our high priest group leader! He is a cool guy and they look exactly the same!

Well I gotta go but cant wait to write next week! I know this church is true! We have a loving Heavenly Father who blesses us! Jesus Christ is our savior and atoned for us personally. When we had hard times, turn to him. He is the only one who knows what your going through and can help you! I love the gospel and love the south!

See yall next week:)

Love Elder Hall

I'm here!

Hey mom and dad and Yall!

So im here finally in the mission. Im safe and have had a good couple of nights. But this email is really short. Im just supposed to say a couple things then I can email you a big letter on pday which is Monday. Um so yesterday we had the transfer meeting where we got a new comp who is my trainer and we figured out where our area was. So my comps name is Elder Galorath. And our area is actually in Mississippi and Tennessee! Its the furthest area away from Birmingham and the biggest. Our area and town we live in is called Corinth and heres my address. 500 Dobbins St. Apt C. Corinth, MS 38834. but just wanted to tell all of you that i love you and im doing great here! So ya dont have to worry:) well ill talk to ya on Monday:)

Love ya!

Love Elder Hall

Hey Hey

Well this week was awesome! It flew by, but at the same time it feels like ive been here for an eternity! But thats ok because I love it here and I loving being with my district and other missionaries! So ill tell ya a little about my district, we have me and my comp elder chirstensen, then we have elder scott( who i mentioned in the last email) he is from layton and his comp elder johnson who is from cache valley, just like 10 minutes away from utah state, he is a big time farmer. Then we have elder davis who is from idaho and he is 6'9. Me and him get along really well too but is tough to guard wen playing basketball hah and his comp elder bradshaw who is from st george. Then we have 4 sisters. Sister Houston and her comp sister archer which they are both kinda quiet but this past week they have been outgoing and we have really gotten to see their personalities! And lastly Sister grayson and Sister Hedelius, who by the way if Marty and Ronda get this email ask Alysa about her. Her name is Marissa Hedelius and she said she loves Alysa and was so excited i asked about her haha.

Anyways now for some stories and things I have done this week. I just got back from going to the temple, and like always it was amazing! I love it there. Every day we sit in a class for 9-11 hours and it is SOOO hard to consentrate. So im kinda glad that I leave a week from today and get out into the field! So yes this is the last email you will get from the MTC. And next week im going to call my family so I dont know if i will send a letter or not. O and just a few fun facts for the day, the group of missionaries that came in on the same day as me and are going english speaking are the last group to do 3 weeks, all the next missionaries are now 2 weeks. I have heard that it will decrease to one week then to online classes but dont know how fast they will do that. They also got a high school in Mexico and are turning that into the 2nd biggest MTC for all the spanish branches. And really exciting is that tomorrow when the new missionaries come in it will be the first time in MTC history that there will be more sister missionaries then elders! Crazy right?! But this week for our service assignment where we usually clean the buildings, me and elder Davis went and helped make beds for the sisters because they are now 6 in a room instead of 4! After that we went back to help the rest of the zone out with cleaning and they assigned us to vacuum. Elder davis was wearing a green shirt, and i was wearing my red roll tide shirt with red sweats. The vacuum's here you put on your back. But they gave us mustaches and Me and elder davis were Mario and Luigi! haha it was pretty fun! Plus after we got done we wanted pictures on our camera, so elder scott helped us take those and then out of no where came like 10 other elders and just started taking out pictures. I was kind of wierd because usually no one wants me in the picture haha but i felt famous for a moment:)

One other quick story. So we have fake investigators who are our teachers, but we teach them every day. So me and my companion were teaching one of the investigators named Paola. The time before that we invited her to read the scriptures and pray about them with her husband. So we were following up on that. Her husband was a member and she would sometimes go to church. So first asked if she went and she said yes and that they learned about how to teach the gospel to there kids. She said she was nervous to raise kids but would like to have some one day. And she said she read about nephi going to kill king laban and she said she liked how nephi even though he felt the spirit still didnt want to kill him, but he knew he had to kill one man to save thousands down the road. So I related that to her and how if she gets baptized and teaches the gospel to her family then because of one person it would effect generations down. And we asked if she knew it was true, she said yes and was excited. The spirit was so strong! And so being the dumb human that I am i went on with the lesson that we were going to teach. About 30 seconds in our teacher stands up and yells, "I cant take it anymore!" Me and my companion were both confused and said what? She asked "Why didnt you ask her to get baptized??" and then it hit me like a slap in the face! I felt so stupid! She was a golden investigator and was giving us all the hints to be baptized! We did rewind the situation and asked her to be baptized and she said yes! But boy was that a learning experience for me! Im glad it happened here instead of out in the field!

Well thats how my weeks been! I cant wait to fly out to Alabama! Keep writing me I love all your letters! I love this gospel, I know its true! We have a loving Heavenly Father who knows us all personally! His son Jesus Christ atoned for our sins so that we can all live as a happy family! Joseph Smith is a true prophet that restored the gospel of Christ back onto the earth and through him we have the Book of Mormon, and the priesthood! I love being a missionary and cant wait to go help other families become eternal!

I love you all!

Love Elder Hall:)