Monday, March 17, 2014

Good times!

Monday, March 17, 2014

Transfers next week!  Don’t know what will happen, last time I had a pretty good idea.  This week was great, went to the mission office on Wednesday because President wanted to talk to all the missionaries that had served in the US, so I went with my companion.  It was great, loved it.  Also got the package, it was wrapped in homeland security tape and I thought that it was the other package, which still isn’t here.  But I was very happy to get everything inside, love the pens, and the skittles and Orange slices disappeared fast, forgot how good they were. This week was great and exceeded some of our goals with lessons and references.  Was great.  Here they have a promotion for the cup of the world and it’s little coke bottles of the countries. We are making zone shirts that will be amazing.  On Tuesday I found out that one of my investigators in my last area was baptized!  It was so cool, I am so happy, and another was baptized yesterday! This week we had a couple crazy experiences.  One of our investigators is convinced that we are angels.  Yesterday we were leaving his house and a police car pulls up and cops get out and chase a couple of guys with guns drawn, so we went back inside and waited a couple of minutes.  This week we found out that we have some angels working in our area because the sisters found someone that said that Germans are teaching them, but my comp and I are the only ones here, so logically it's angels. Hope that everything is going good there, that everything went well with Gpa T.
Love y’all!

Elder Anderson



Monday, March 10, 2014

This week we had a lot of good times.  Every month the zone leaders have a special meeting called Counsel.  It was supposed to be Saturday before last, but it was moved to last Tuesday.  On Monday night I got a call being invited to join the Counsel.  So that was a lot of fun, got to go with the zone leaders and the meeting lasted all day, from 8 to 6 with an hour for lunch, we got home too late to do anything.  On Wednesday we had district/zone meeting after lunch because one of the AP´s was coming, we also bought a big tub of ice cream, which wasn't that good but it was worth 3 reais.  Last Friday I was doing splits with the other missionaries in the district and it was raining really hard, we were walking down a bunch of stairs and we saw a woman with a small child climbing the stairs, we stopped to talk to her and she was way receptive.  We gave the restoration pamphlet to her and invited her to be baptized, which she said yes, and then we asked the question that usually gets everyone, "Are you married?  Legally?"  Because here it’s 400 reais to get married, $200 US, and these people don’t have that kind of money. She said that she is legally married for the past 10 years!!!!!!!! This is a miracle here, we were so excited.  Then yesterday my companion and I went to get some investigators for church and we were already behind schedule because with a family it takes at least 30 min to walk to church, uphill too.  I prayed for a ride and as we were leaving the house a car pulled up and it was members that offered a ride and then they sat by them in sacrament and then took them around to show them where everything was! It was great.  Last night we had to go to the stake center for a fireside.  On the way home we were on the bus standing up, and the bus suddenly pulls a hard right and goes down at a 45 degree angle, it was like a roller coaster, turns out that that’s normal.  Oh well, no one died at least. On Saturday we had to cut an investigator that lost the will to read and pray and go to church, which was really sad because we liked him a lot.  We also have clouds of mosquitoes in our house and we take breaks from studies to kill a couple, we are getting really good at catching them out of the air, have lots of cool fotos to send when the computer works! 
Hope everything goes well with grandpa and with your break, love you all! 
Love ya’ll so much,
Elder Anderson



Tuesday, March 4, 2014

Strengthen our testimonies

Monday, March 3, 2014

To answer your questions, we have learned that the new mission president is President Dalton and that he has a family of 3 kids I think. One of them will come with him, she is 15 years old.  He studied at Harvard, so he is really smart, he is way excited to get here, served a mission, I think in São Paulo, but his wife doesn't speak Portuguese.  He is taller than 6 feet and President Pinho has a lot of respect and love for him already.  I am actually really excited to get to know him.  We have 8 or 10 sisters in the zone, about half, more than a third.  Did the package that I sent ya'll get there?  Hope so . . 

Anyway this week was great, got to go to the zl´s area to work,  saw the hand of Satan at work.  One of the recent converts was there and  he sporadically goes a little crazy and this time he got possessed by a demon, and went to some recent converts and told them a bunch of lies about the church that basically ruined the testimony that they had. So we went there to try and save them, they were totally without faith, don't want to pray or read or do any of the things that will help them, but what a testimony builder it was that Satan is real and how much we need to strengthen our testimonies. 

Went to the temple this week with investigator which was great, the instant that he walked in he said that he felt something that he never felt before and that it was so good.  He wants to serve a mission, but still has to get baptized, please pray that he can have the courage he needs and the strength to obey the commandments.  We also had interviews with president, which was great!  Carnaval hasn’t been really anything different, a little more dancing on the streets than usual, for example last night we were walking to the church from an appointment and there was a big group of people listening to music really loud, the sound systems fill the trunks cars, drinking beer, and eating bbq and dancing in a circle, my companion thought that it was pretty funny, especially because some of them had fake pink hair.

I am so glad that we are a family and that ya'll are mine forever, love you tons and say hi to the ward for me, and thanks to all the people that helped us out!  Love ya!

Elder Anderson