Feliz Navidad

     Hey there! FELIZ NAVIDAD!! This isn´t going to be a very long letter cause I want to tell you about this week in person when I talk to you on Wednesday!! This week was a good one! Maria was baptized and confirmed and her whole family came. They are all Catholic, so it was interesting, but neat. I will tell you more about it when we talk. Also remind me to tell you about our mission Christmas party that we had on friday. I´ll send some pictures of the happenings of this week. Love you guys so much and can´t wait to talk to you all!! See you soon!

     Just wanted to share a thought I had this morning actually in my personal study... Joseph Smith, along with some of the early saints, formed Zion´s camp in 1834 in order to go from Kirtland to Missouri to help the saints that were facing persecution there. By all appearances the camp appeared a failure, but the Lord revealed in DyC 105 his reasons for the camp. The prophet Joseph said, we were never meant to go and fight in Missouri. The point was that the Lord wanted to see if the men were worthy, obedient and faithful priesthood holders. A bunch of men from Zion´s camp ended up becoming leaders in the church in later years. I applied Zion´s camp to the mission. At times we feel like we´re not accomplishing a lot, but the Lord´s purposes are different than ours. The mission is to try us, to see if we´ll be faithful to the commandments, and to prepare us to become leaders in the future. 

Hope that made sense! Love you guys so much!! Have a wonderful Christmas eve and I´ll see you soon! Chau! 

Love, Hermana Anderson

Mission Christmas party

Mission Christmas party

Maria's baptism

Great Week!

     Buenos Dias! This week was super great for us here in ¨the breezes.¨ Our mission motto lately has been ¨creer in milagros,¨ which means believe in miracles. In our training meeting with Elder Waddell he said that he liked our motto, but that maybe just as important in believing in miracles is ¨crear milagros,¨ or create miracles! This week as a zone we decided to put this into practice. As a zone President gave us the goal of 13 baptisms in the month of December. We also took on the goal of 15 baptismal invitations this week per companionship. We reached the goal and even went beyond! This week Hna Aguero and I had lots of cool experiences with invitations.

     First, we were able to put a date with Gustavo! He kept putting off a date because he said he wanted to be baptized next year in order to start the year off right. He finally accepted for Saturday the 4th of January! He is so ready and I´m so excited for him!! 

     Do you remember Hno. Quesada? Our investigator who is 82? We´ve just been waiting on his son to have an interview with the bishop to be able to baptize his dad, and yesterday he finally had his interview! At church yesterday his son, Aldo, came up to us and asked us what day his dad could be baptized! They accepted the 28th of December! Aldo also told us that he has a 16 year old niece that he would like to baptized as well. Apparently she was hearing the missions before and wanted to be baptized, but wanted her uncle Aldo to be able to baptize her. In one week we went from having one person with a baptismal date to 3, maybe even 4!! I know that faith, obedience and diligence create miracles, because these things invite the spirit, and the spirit is what creates miracles.

     We had our ward Christmas activity this weekend and it went great! We had a talent show, so our whole zone came to perform a talent for the ward. Our Christmas party with the whole mission is this Friday, and there we are going to have a ¨bottle band.¨ We are going to play Jingle Bells and Rudolph in empty coke bottles. We performed for our ward this weekend to practice and it sounded really cool! It was pretty funny and the ward loved it. We also sang some Christmas songs in English, so that was fun. Our ward is amazing!!! We have so much support from the members. At the activity one of our new investigators named Angel came and the members just flocked to him. At the party I was talking to Angel telling him about the mission and how we put everything aside for a year and a half or two years to serve the Lord. He said, ¨Wow, that must be really hard.¨ But then he thought for a minute and told me, ¨But the path of Christ isn´t easy is it?¨ What he said reminded me that even though the mission can be hard and even frustrating, we are walking the path of Christ. It was never easy for him, so why would it be easy for us! I´m glad for that little reminder from Angel.

     Welp I´m super excited to talk to you guys Christmas Day!!! I can´t wait!! I hope everything´s going well at home. I love you and miss you all. See you soon!!

Love, Hermana Anderson 

pics 

ward christmas party

last week with Elder Waddell!

Tender mercies of the Lord

     Greetings loved ones! It is so good to hear from you all!! I am SO excited that Courtney got accepted to UVU!! That makes me so happy! What did you guys end up doing for Colton´s B day? Anything fun?

     Well I got to be honest-- this week was full of ups and downs and had some really stressful points. I was basically worried about 2 things. 1) The baptism of Maria Fernanda and 2) President Borg emailed us all and told us that we would be getting a training from Elder Waddell of the Seventy! What´s more is that we had to prepare a 5 minute lesson on the importance of prayer in conversion to teach in front of everyone including Elder Waddell! So I was a little worried about finding time to prepare a little message about prayer. The night before the training the asistants called us and told me that Elder Waddell had chosen a few people to come in early for personal interviews, and I had been picked for an interview!! I was supposed to come with a doctrinal question in mind to ask him. So of course that night I was just laying in bed thinking about a million questions I could ask a general authority. My interview with him was so awesome!! He answered a lot of questions I had without me even asking them. He also served in Spain so his accent made me really happy haha. Here are just a few things that he mentioned in the training:

• knowing without acting is condemnation. Knowing and acting on what we know is exaltacion.
• Operative Relevance: When something has enough significance in our lives that it operates the way we act. For example the first vision: Does it have enough importance in our lives that we let it influence the way we act?
• There is no mission culture. There is only the Lord´s culture, because this is His mission and I was invited to come. The rules are not an option.
• There are ends and medios (I can´t think of the word in English! Help hah!) in the mission. Our end is that all of our converts enter the temple and are sealed.

There are so many things that he said but I don´t have time today to write everything. I learned a lot and we´ve been trying to apply everything this last week and this week. 

     Maria was going to be baptized Saturday but her mom called us Friday night and said she was sick. We went with an hermano to give her a blessing, and left the rest in the Lord´s hands. She is feeling a little better so with any luck will be baptized this Saturday!! I know there´s a reason we needed to wait, even though I may not understand why.

     Welp sorry I´m short on time, but I love you all and am SOO excited to talk to you CHRISTMAS DAY!! Where will Christmas be this year for you guys? You are allowed to call us for 5 minutes before in order to confirm when we´re gonna talk (can´t talk in English baha). I´ll give you my number and stuff next week!! Love you guys sooo much!! Sorry I don´t have much time this week. Love you! Talk to you next week!

Love, Hermana Anderson

San Cristobal

Hippy Farms and Adventures of the Sort

    Hola familia! First of all, FELIZ CUMPLEANOS Colton!! I can´t believe you´re turning 14 today! I hope you do something crazy cool and fun. Maybe watch Nacho Libre or go to that trampoline place in Kaysville, I don´t remember what it´s called ha. I love you bud!! Keep practicing spanish so that we can talk when I get back!

     

     Well yesterday we had the funnest P day I´ve had in a while. Each month we get a P day where we can leave the mission, and yesterday we drove an hour to Chancay and played baseball and football americano on the beach! We found another zone in our mission there too by coincidence and ate lunch with them. We also explored some caves and visited a ¨hippy farm¨ where a community of people live who grow their own food, don´t use technology... it was pretty interesting. We took a tour of their hare krisha temple and had to take off our shoes to walk around, but it was cool!

     This week we´ve had a great week with our investigators. Remember I told you about Maria Fernanda? The little girl who is 9 and her parents are less active? Well her mom told us that she wants Maria to be baptized THIS saturday, so we had to talk to the bishop and at first he was a little hesitant. Apparently a few things have passed between him and Maria´s dad, so there´s a little contention there. He said that it was ok for Maria to be baptized, but we have to wait for Sunday for Maria´s confirmation. That´s what normally happens, but Maria´s parents wanted it to be this saturday, the same day as her baptism. I think it´s because her parents, especially her dad, don´t want to attend church. We want the confidence of the bishop but we want to help Maria´s family too, so it´s been a little bit stressful this week. If all goes well Maria will be baptized this week by Elder Chatwin in our zone and confirmed on Sunday. Keep your fingers crossed! But more importantly, pray!!

     We had a lesson with Gustavo this week and read with him in Enos. We were talking about repentance when he looked at us and said that it was really hard for him to talk and read about repentance. So... we set up an interview with him and Elder Tuesta, our district leader. I don´t know if it was more the spirit telling me that Gustavo needed more help, or just that I didn´t know what else to do! After, Elder Tuesta told us that yes, Gustavo will need some more time and preparation, but he´s confident that in January he will be baptized. I felt so relieved! Now we know how to best help Gustavo prepare for baptism. Sometimes people need more time, but it´s all according to God´s timing. I´m learning so much more how to follow the spirit and rely on God´s will.

 

     Welp I think that´s it for this week! It looks like you guys had a fun Thanksgiving! It´s weird, it doesn´t feel like December at all cause it´s now pretty hot these days. Enjoy the snow! I love you guys SOOO much!! Thanks for always writing. This last week I read the talk in the September Ensign called something like, ¨The Grace of Christ is sufficient.¨ It is amazing and you should read it when you can. Love and miss you guys!! chau!

Love, Hermana Anderson

Chancay Peru

Chancay

Beach in Chancay

Hippy farm in Chancay

Hippy farm