Wednesday March 27, 2013 (week 2)

     Hola familia! Como estan? So you got my letter about my yellow fever shot? Yeah that was lame, but at least I got it taken care of. Thanks so much for the bread mom!! I decided to be nice and share it with my district and we LOVED it! I've had a few people write me asking about my blog, so I was wondering if you've been putting the link on facebook? That would be great if you could! And I hope you've all been getting my letters! If you wrote me one I've at least written you back once, so hopefully they're getting to you! Also, Brynn asked me to send a package for her on Monday but I didn't get to it today. So, the package should get to Karina soon (I think that's who it's going to). It was sad saying godbye to Brynn again, but she was so ready and excited to go! She's gonna be amazing.

     I forgot to tell you a funny story that happened last week. We had only been here a few days when we left our keys in our room when we went to shower, so we got locked out of our room! We were standing in the hall just trying to figure out what to do, then I thought, oh yeah, we need to pray! So we prayed then our other district hermanas came walking into the residence hall and we asked them to go to the front desk and get a spare key for us. That night we taught Eduardo about prayer, so we mentioned how prayer had helped us out earlier and we know that God hears us. So that was cool! Speaking of Eduardo, we finished teaching him last week and we set a baptism date with him! Even though it wasn't real it was so exciting!! So the next day after we all finished teaching him he came walking into our classroom speaking English and saying "hi ya'll!" We were like.....what? You spoke English that whole time?! So Eduardo, who is really Hno. Bean, is now our teacher! We've got two teachers now, Hno. Rockwood and Hno. Bean. I like them both, but they've got a little different teaching styles. It was mega awkward with Hno. Bean at first cause he was still Eduardo to us. But it's all good now. He is now our new investigator, Jose. I'm afriad I'm going to forget and call him by the wrong name! And tomorrow we're teaching Hno. Rockwood who is pretending to be a guy named Jhonatan (yes that's spelled right). Hopefully I can remember all their names!

     Another cool experience I had was yesterday in the TRC. Yesterday was our first time with the TRC, and that's where you go and teach members who aren't pretending to be anybody but themselves. I absolutely loved it! First, we taught a lady named Sister Sandstrom. We were talking about the Spirit, so I had us turn to Joh
n 14 and we read the verse about how Christ's peace is different than the peace the world gives. Sister Sandstrom starting crying and told us that 6 years ago her daughter was killed in a car crash, and this scripture has always given her peace when she thinks of that. We both started crying then ha. It was so cool to realize that the Lord had worked through me to bring peace to this sister's life. I had no idea that that scripture meant that to her, but God did. It just reminded me that God knows and loves all of his children and he knows what we're going through. Next we taught a cute old couple named the Thompsons, and they served their missions in Bolivia and still knew Spanish. I was like, if they can do it, so can I :)

     Learning Spanish is going pretty well I think! I love learning it! I'm still working on pronunciation though, like with rolling my Rs and saying my "e"s right. My shoes are great, except my dorothy ruby red ones kind of hurt. The food here is actually pretty good! Some days it's better than others. I really like Wednesdays and Sundays because we get creamery ice cream. It's the bomb.com. One of the senior coordinators told us in the laundry room today that 375 sisters are coming in today! We heard also that 1,000 missionaries left this week! There's always so many people coming and going.

     In choir we are learning a song for next Sunday, because we're having a way cool Sacrament Meeting next Sunday. It's going to be a MTC-wide Sacrament meeting! We've been told that someone from the quorum of the twelve is going to speak to us, and he asksed us to sing "The Lord is My Shepherd," so we've been practicing for that. It's gonna be so cool!

     The pictures I attached are of my district on our Sunday temple walk. I love my district so much! We all get along and are like a family. I'll have to remember to ask Elder Fankhauser if any of his cousins or something played softball.

     Well I love you guys! Hope everything's going well back home! Have fun at Happijac mom. You'll get the hang of it. And I hope Courtney has fun in St. George! Keep writing me even if I can't write back that much. Love you and miss you!

Love, Hna. Anderson

Wednesday March 20, 2013 (week 1)

Hola mi familia!

     Wow hey! My P-day is Wednesday so I had to wait a whole week to write to you guys. First of all, thanks so much for all your letters! Getting letters is the best thing ever! I really appreciate your words of advice and encouragement, I carry them with me all day! So, since it's been a week I've got a lot to write. The first couples days I got to the MTC were very overwhelming. They say it's like trying to drink from a fire hose, and that's actually pretty accurate. I thought it was ironic that the first morning here I had a shower that came out like a freezing cold fire hose ha. They didn't tell us much, they just let us loose and let us figure it out on our own. Just after I got dropped off at the curb and starting walking in with my host Sister Stabenow came running up and hugged me and we were way excited. It was soo good to see her! We live in the same residence hall on the same floor even, so I get to talk to her every night before bed. The first day we went to an orientation and met our district. It was a busy dan, I hardly had time to write in my journal. My companion's name is Hna. Madsen. She's from Sandy and we get along really well! I love all the sisters in my district. There are four of us sisters and four elders. I love my district! We all get along really well and have a lot of fun. We've learned a lot together too. Spanish has been so fun to learn. I'm so grateful for my Spanish classes I took before! I can't imagine trying to learn without that background. My teacher, Hno. Rockwood is awesome. He teaches me how to be a good teacher as well as teaching me Spanish.

     The first few days of us being here felt a little unstructured. We had some workshops about getting to know people and seeing them as our Heavenly Father sees them. Our first day we had a big group meeting where we all taught an investigator together. That was pretty cool, but I'm glad we get to do it in companionship's now. The second night we met some of the other districts in our zone and we have some hilarious elders. It's so cool that we're all here doing the same thing, and it's because we love the Lord. I've made some pretty good friends already, especially within my district and zone. Our district leader is named Elder Fankhouser, he's from Sandy too actually. All of us in our district are waiting for our visas, we were all supposed to go to Peru first. We've heard that we'll probably be here the whole six weeks from some people. Some people have told us we'll go stateside for a while. Some people told us we'll get to go to the CCM in Peru, so it's pretty much up in the air right now. We've taught three lessons to our investigator already. His name is Eduardo. The first lesson was on the third day. Everyone in our zone told us that the first lesson usually goes pretty terrible, so I wasn't really nervous because I just expected it to be a learning experience. Well, it didn't go terribly, but it could have been better ha. The Spanish for me actually came pretty easily! My comp struggled with it a little, but we had only been there for three days, so it was just a learning experience. I think each lesson has gotten better and better. I love teaching with the Spirit! It's such an amazing feeling to teach someone the gospel as a missionary when you have the Spirit. Hna. Madsen is really good at following promptings, which is something I need to work on. We will be done teaching Eduardo on Thursday I think, then after that he will become our teacher along with Hno. Rockwood. Then both of them will be our investigators. It's nerve wracking sometimes, but it's good. I love it!

     Gym time here is so much fun! The first time we did insanity, and lately we've been playing four square. We've had some really good devotionals! We had members of the seventy speak to us about using the MTC to help us learn and grow, instead of treating it like a prison basically. In the Tuesday devotional my sisters in my district and I sang in the choir and KSL came and filmed us singing! They said during conference sessions they're doing a special on the MTC, so I might be on TV. I think it will be on Saturday, but that's just a guess. You might see me on TV though!

     We do a service project once a week and I felt right at home at the Marriott center cleaning the showers with foamy Q&A haha. I also saw a T5 on the track in the gym. It made me miss BYU a little bit. From our classroom window we can see the football stadium, so that also makes me miss it.

     I've seen a lot of people I know here! I saw Sister Ensign, Elder Beyer, Sister Finneran, the Randall twins, a girl I knew from Liberty Square named Robin, and the little brother of one of my FHE brothers is in my zone. He's the little brother of Tony Gervais! That was cool when we made that connection. I also thought I saw Danny Allen here. I'm not sure if it was really him.

     I have so much more to write but we only get half an hour on email here. We got exciting news that you can email me here, but I still have only half an hour, so please keep sending me dear elders please. I love you all!! Hope things are going well. I love hearing about things going on at home. I'm excited for Courthey to get here next week! 

Love, Hma. Anderson 

P.S. Sorry I only had time to send one picture!