Hope, Hoodoos and Hips

Dear family and friends,

Last night I took a walk alone in the dark.  I don’t remember the last time I felt safe enough to do that.  It’s one of the blessings of living in St. George that I don’t take for granted.  For those of you who are already thinking I’m crazy, I wasn’t totally naïve.  I remained aware of my surroundings and had my cell phone ready to call.  I’d spent all day in the hospital with Denny for his hip surgery and knowing that he was asleep for the night and in good care, I stole the moment and began to walk with no specific destination in mind.  It was a warm evening and very quiet even though we are just blocks from downtown.  I strolled across the street and began my walk around the temple grounds.  There are meandering walkways through 100 year old trees and occasional areas to sit with lovely stone benches and charming little street lights.  The temple with its white walls literally glowed against a black velvet sky.  As I walked under the lights I saw sweethearts sitting and talking, yes……just talking. :) There was a family nearby, a father with a little boy riding piggy back and a mom holding hands with a younger daughter.  There were teenagers on the temple steps talking and texting (of course!).  I felt a lot of goodness and I thought about how much I am going to miss living in the shadow of our sacred St. George temple.  In the distance I could hear laughter so I followed the voices to the nearby park.  It’s a park that takes up an entire city block with a huge lawn, play and picnic areas as well as 3 sand volleyball courts, and 6 pickle ball courts.  Amazingly at 9:30pm the courts were almost all filled with parents and kids young and old.  On my walk back I saw several people strolling the sidewalks and others leaving from the final session at the temple.  It was a wonderful peaceful walk, one that filled me with gratitude.  I know at times we all feel like the world is falling apart around us.  Even here within our beloved homeland there still seems to be so much hate, greed, selfishness and despair.  But there is goodness, and hope and love around us. It’s harder to find perhaps than it used to be, but it’s here in St. George and it is in your hometown as well.  I saw it and felt it tonight, not just on the temple grounds but I felt it in the air, I could feel it in the vast sky above. God is still with us.  He is watching over us every day and his angels are encircled around us.  His power and love was manifest so clearly to me on another evening when I caught the most beautiful sky I think I’ve ever seen, right over the Visitor’s Center and temple.  Can you see the Christus through the window?

While we have shifts each week at the historical sites, I have come to most love being right at the Temple Visitor’s Center.  I think it’s the sweet sister missionaries that bring me the most joy.  Currently we have 28 sister missionaries from the all over the world who speak over a dozen different languages.  Many of them have sacrificed much to serve and all have powerful testimonies of Christ. They work hard.  Their day begins at 7:30am with scripture study and prayer and they are not home until after 9pm.  Sometimes I don’t know how they do it, but then I’m reminded they are decades younger than us!  Recently I have come to know an amazing young sister from Tahiti named Sister Kints.  I know you’re thinking beautiful brown skin and dark eyes, but no, she was born to French parents and is blonde and blue eyed.  Growing up on the island she had never worn anything but flip flops until the mission.  Sounds perfect doesn’t it!?  Anyway, she had a wonderful experience early in her mission that I want to share.  Sister Kints was called to be French speaking but surprisingly knew no French prior to her mission.  While at the Missionary Training Center she became very discouraged trying to learn the language.  She became so discouraged that she had decided she was going to go home.  She packed and went to meet with the local leadership.  While talking together he said “You are here for a reason, you need to pray tonight and ask God what you need to do”.  She went home and prayed.  She told God that she felt completely useless.  She said “I’m here for you and I don’t know why you don’t want to help me and if you don’t help me, I’m going to go home!”  The following morning she was still very angry.  She dressed and got ready without speaking to her companion.  She wanted to go home but went to class.  When she walked in, all of a sudden she shouted out “Hello Everyone!”  Then she gasped as she had no idea how she had said that and everyone else gasped as well.  From that moment on she said it became easy to think in English. Her teachers would say “This word means this, and she would say, “yes, I know, I don’t know how I know, but I know.”  Three months later her English is not perfect but she can speak and understand everything.  After experiencing such a wonderful blessing in her life, you can imagine what a powerful light she is here in the mission field.  She still struggles with the work load and the responsibility she was recently given to be a trainer, but she is so committed.  I included a picture of her, it’s actually a selfie she took with my phone but shows the light and love of several of the missionaries serving.

This past month we had the sweet privilege of helping at the Manti Pageant.  For those who don’t know what that is, it is an outdoor play performed on the grounds of the temple in Manti, Utah which sits high on a hill.  The cast numbers over 1,000 members and the evening performances draw as many as 20,000 guests.  The play shares the story of Joseph Smith’s first vision and the Book of Mormon.  It is beautifully done.  At one point in the play, Jesus Christ appears and hundreds of cast members kneel in reverence on the lawn.  Then he calls the little children to him just like in the New Testament.  It was such a beautiful scene to see his arms stretched out in love and the children rushing to him.  That’s how I picture him and am so excited for that day when I can kneel at his feet as well.  

The following day was our P-day and since we were close to several National Parks we went to Kodachrome Basin and Bryce National Park.  It was a completely different landscape than Zions Park.  There were miles and miles of hoodoos some jetting up from ground level, others in canyons hundreds of feet below.  As a child I had seen the hoodoos in Calgary, Alberta with my parents, but these hoodoos were giant in size and a deep red orange color.  As we walked down in to the canyons you could find pine trees that had somehow found the sunlight and grown to hundreds of feet between a crevice.  There’s something that changes inside of you when you see a spectacular part of the world you’ve never seen before, especially when it’s “God made”.  I wished so much my photos could have captured the magnificence, but there’s just no way.  You have to be there to really feel it. 

We finally had the opportunity to attend a performance at the famous Tuacahn Amphitheatre just 15 minutes from us.  This outdoor theatre is built in the shadow of 1,500 foot red rock cliffs in Snow Canyon and means “Canyon of the Gods”.  We saw Peter Pan which was awesome, but really any performance would have been amazing, as the backdrop is breathtaking.  We will be seeing Tarzan and the Hunchback of Notre Dam later this summer.  Yes, we are working hard during our shifts and with the auxiliary assignments the mission gives us, but honestly….. could we be having any more fun!!!

Not so fun but necessary, was a scheduled hip surgery for Elder Hancock.  Some of you may be following this on Facebook, for those who haven’t, he’s doing really well. The doctor said the surgery was a bit more challenging because of the tightness of his muscles (he loved hearing that :) ) which have to be stretched open to get to the hip bone.  Because of that and the loss of 2 litres of blood during surgery, Denny’s recovery has been a bit slower than he planned.  He comes home today (yikes!) and hopefully I can give him the same good care the nurses have given him in the hospital.  One thing I won’t be doing is waking him up in the middle of the night to check his blood pressure or poke him with needles.  I know we’re both glad about that! 

We saw more extended family this month with a visit from the McCreadies.  They are so incredibly awesome and without a doubt our tallest family members!  Our daughter, Minta, married in to their family, which hopefully means that one day we will have some super tall descendants!  Who would have ever guessed. :)

We continue to feel so incredibly blessed to be serving a mission.  We see miracles literally every day with this work.  

God bless you all!

Denny and Leslie Hancock