Elder Matt Hansen:

June 2, 2008

Hi,
My husband and I are serving in Dar es Salaam with your son -- Elder Hansen! I thought you might enjoy this picture I took of him at street-boarding a couple of weeks ago. We are enjoying working with him so much! He is such a great example and always has a cheerful, positive attitude. You should certainly be very proud of him! (and I'm sure you are!) Rest assured that we senior couples consider all these elders "our kids." But while we remind them to eat right and be safe, they teach us so much about living worthy of the spirit and following the promptings of the Holy Ghost. I forgot to mention in my last email the wonderful experience I had when my husband and I took your son and Elder Majafe to the doctor a couple weeks ago. Elder Majafe, as you may know, has been having problems with some headaches, so off we went to the doctor's office. While we were sitting in the waiting room, a man asked your son about the Church (he saw our badges). I felt the spirit so strong as Elder Hansen explained about the restoration of the gospel. Then he went out to the car to get a Book of Mormon and a few pamphlets and when he came back, he bore his testimony to the man, right there in the waiting room, that Joseph Smith was a prophet and that the gospel has been restored. The man lives a distance from Dar, so we don't know if he will ever make it to Church, but I know the Spirit was there when Elder Hansen bore testimony -- and you just never know what might happen. Thanks for "giving up" your son for 2 years -- he's a real treasure.

All the best,
Sister Sara Kenyon
Elder Barry Kenyon

June 8, 2008
Things here are going pretty good. This week has been good. One Elder in our district left for home today so every night last week we had dinner appointments, ha- it was pretty nice, we never had to cook. Then yesterday we had two dinners. One at a members house and then at the couples house. The couples here are very nice. There are two sets, the Jensen's and the Kenton's. They treat us very well and take good care of us. Our whole zone went to their house last night and (10 elders, 4 are leaving) we had dinner and then a devotional. It was really fun and very spiritual too, it felt like the MTC to me, I really liked it. This last week has been pretty busy too which is good. We have a new investigator named Emiri and he is very good. He is very excited and we have a date for him to get baptized at the end of this month so hopefully everything will work out ok. Other than that, we don't have too many investigators that are really progressing towards baptism. They are all good people but they don't want to leave their churches. The work is going well though. We got our transfer news also and I'm still here of course but my companion is leaving. My new companion is from South Africa and he will be here on Wednesday. His name is Elder Qinisile, and the "Q" is pronounced with a click so I'm gonna struggle with that. I'm excited but also pretty nervous, hopefully everything will work out ok. I'm gonna have to learn a lot more Swahili that is one thing for sure. I haven't tried cooking anything lately because I can't cook. I need some recipes, did you send any? If not, that's fine but they would be helpful. The white kid is Elder Walker and he is in Kenya now. He was in our district but not any more. That is all the exciting news from Tanzania. Things are going good and I'm doing fine and you'll hear about my new companion next week. I love you mom, thanks for everything, you're the best. Have a good week, talk to you later. Elder Hansen

PS: My companion is the one on the left in the picture where we are washing.