Elder Joseph Anderson's Latest Letter From The Resistencia, Argentina Mission

Alrighty so Christmas is almost here and everybody is getting super excited, buying fireworks, meat, and apple cider down here in Argentina. This week it rained a ton and always before it rains here it gets super hot and super humid. On thursday before it rained that night it got up to 112 degrees!!! Yeah I thought I was going to be nothing but liquid before we got back to our apartment. Down here our schedule is a little bit different from a normal missionary. Because it gets so hot here and because there is something called the Siesta, (which is just basically a time from about 12:30pm to 5:00 pm when everything is closed and almost everybody sleeps) we go to our apartments after lunch and do our studies during the Siesta until 4:00 pm.

Well here they cut the power during the Siesta when it is super hot sometimes becuase there are too many people using too much electricity. When that happens my comp and I throw water all over ourselves and lay down on the floor to study. That is always super fun...Not. But luckily the rain has been keeping it pretty cool that last few days.

Well my comp and I are still looking for people who have been prepared by the Lord. We are working with a 16 year old named Cristian in our ward. He is so awesome, he has been inviting all of his friends to come to church and read the book of Mormon. We have taught two of his friends so far and they look super great. I hope this kid serves his mission in the states to I can freaking see him again soon. Well there isnt much more than that to write about this week. Today at 6:00 we are having a Christmas activity with our zone and it is going to be super awesome so I´ll send you some picks next week.

¡FELIZ NAVIDAD A TODOS!

-Elder Anderson

Latest Letter From Elder Jacob Anderson From the Rio de Janiero Mission

So I am loving my new comp. He is super great... He was baptized in the church when he was about 12 and didnt return until about 3 years before his mission. He is 25 years old. We are getting a long great.

We live with 2 other Elders that really helps to have other people to talk to after a busy day of work.. We are going to do really well together. We are going to set goals to have teach find and baptize more then we ever have on the mission! Its going to be great. We have another scheduled transfer here in one week so lets see if I will stay here. President told me that a lot of the areas and mission of the mission need to get to know me so dont get comfortable 0_o So are mission is doing a mission choir. Its pretty cool except that we dont get to work on Saturday or Sunday which makes it even more difficult to bring people to church and there for baptize. I had no idea that the mission was so huge. Satuday we spent 8 hours on a bus going to another part of the mission to did our Christmas show.. It was pretty fun!!

The highlight of the week was the interviews that i was able to do through out the week. Especially the last interview Sunday. It was a

34 year old women that grew up a Jehovah Wittiness. She was extremely prepared. She has been investigation for the last 4 months. We had planned to help her be baptized Sunday night. She is the baptism of the sister in our district. But saddly her bishop said somethings to her that made her want to wait until next week. Though she was not baptized yesterday i felt super honored to do her  interviews it was a great exp. She will be baptized This friday. I am so very excited for her!! The gospel refines the goodness in people. The spirit of the Lord changes us. I am soo profoundly greatful for the opportunities that are made possible through the Spirit. The changes and gifts that are made possible. Ask, work and learn to work with the spirit!! For he the true teacher. I am here to help and serve.

Oooo I am pretty excited for xmas when i can talk to me beloved family. CHAUUUUUUU

--

And they call me

Elder Anderson

For behold I am a disciple of Jesus Christ

Latest Letter From Elder Joseph Anderson From Resistencia Argentina

Well my favorite time of the year has finally arrived. THe Christmas season is just amazing, although it is just a little bit different down here in good old Resistencia. First of all instead of snowing it is now reaching the hundreds in temperature with about 70-80 percent humidity. The good knews about the heat though is that I think I am starting to lose a little bit of weight. Also during this time of year all of the fruits on the trees start to grow and we can just walk down the streets eating mangos, grapefruit, oranges, papaya, manderines, and a few other ones that I am not sure what are called. I also have eaten about three full watermelons this week :)

But the biggest reason for which I love the month of december is because it is the time when we remember the birth of our Lord and Savior Jesus Christ. We are having a lot of success finding new investigators by using the pass along cards that say He is the Gift. I feel peace and comfort in my heart everytime I tell someone I know the Jesus Christ lives and that he is our Savior. Elder Valverde and I have been working really hard this week and we have found some really good looking investigators. He is really good about helping me keep my patience because sometimes I get a little annoyed with people here but my comp is always there to help me. I am reading the Book of Mormon and Preach my Gospel like crazy. Everyday my companion and I try to become more consecrated missionaries and we can feel the Lords blessings upon us.

I hope all of you have a great week!!!

Un Abrazo

-Elder Anderson (Donde hace mucho calor)

Elder Jacob Anderson's Latest Letter From Rio de Janeiro

So this week we spent 2 day listening to Elder Aidikitais. IT was really good. I feel like i am going to be start my mission now. I have a ton of things that i need to change! The biggest thing that I took away is the God is a planner. He planned the world perfectly. He plans so well he already knows the result. We are here on the mission to learn how to make goals and then makes PLANS to achieve them. I have made a lot of goals through out the mission but i havent always had the detailed plans i needed to help me achieve those goals. I have under a year to repent and change. I will learn to be a planner and a goal setter.

I have been studying the BOM very slowly this week and i stopped to study the Tender Mercies of the Lord. The very individual and personally blessing in our lives.. I started to make a list everyday and my first thought was I need to start doing this more often, its kinda hard I am not very grateful! Then as I thought about it even more I realized that maybe my problem isnt being more greatful but I just need to be more obedient so I can receive these Tender Mercies..

Yeah maybe I just do better at them both!

--

And they call me

Elder Anderson

For behold I am a disciple of Jesus Christ

Elder Ray Vejnar's Latest Letter From the Provo MTC Media Mission

So this week I feel like things are starting to turn around for me and my companion, we have been having a little bit of a rough time finding people that want to learn about the restored gospel of Jesus Christ, but this week we got to work and looked at what we could do in order to gain more trust from our heavenly father to teach his children, and the one thing that stood out to us is that we would be a lot more organized here we had a lot of useful tools to help us out but we where not using them to the fullest that we could have used them. This turned into our thing to work on for the week, and wouldn't you know it when we got things figured out we started to find people again! We got two new investigators named Jeanie and Ruth, Jeanie is the fun one to teach right now because I have never taught someone who believes in ancient Egyptian god's. But already she is making changes in her life and we have not even begun to do things like that yet so it is great to be able to see that in her life. Ruth has been bouncing all over the place with religion and now believes that this church is true and just wants to know how to join, so we have begun teaching her and things are looking up! I believe to have the Lord trust in us we need to show Him that he can trust us! and that was my goal for this week I am glad that I have again been able to gain some trust from my heavenly father back. 

     In other news My sister, Sister Vejnar is in the MTC right now and I have become one of the biggest stalkers in the MTC right now because I have a computer I have her schedule and know right where she is supposed to be every hour of every day, so I am able to meet up with her when I want and when I think it would be an appropriate time to do so.  I have yet to snag a picture with her but I will get one before she leaves, mostly because if I do not my call home on Christmas to my mom will not be very fun haha. speaking of my mother I am very thankful to have her in my life she has been a great help on my mission and has also provided me with so many little gifts and things it is great I love you so much mom thanks a tun! also to my grandmother's who have both sent me letters and gifts that have brightened my day each time I get one! well I do not have much time left and I don't want to write to much of a book but thanks again to all who have been a support in my life! and on my mission, I wish you all the best and enjoy the Holiday Season. 

Elder Vejnar  

Sister Bridgette Vejnar's First Mission Letter From the MTC Inroute To The Oakland California Mission

So this was so not what I expected. I heard the food was gross but it's actually pretty good. I was nervous about getting a companion I wouldn't like but we have so much in common! It's awesome! We both did landscaping before our mission, we both love painting our nails, we both shower every night (which is good because I didn't want to annoy her from my habit) we both like about the same types of food, we both have blonde hair and blue eyes, her hair is a little more blonde than mine though. We share a room with one other companionship and they are also in my district but there is 6 beds so we have a lot of space. Our whole district is my companion and I, a set of sisters and a set of elders. It's awesome, in our zone we have about 10-12 elders and just us 4 sisters. So it's pretty intimidating. They are really cool thought. We usually study all morning and then a little bit after lunch and then at 2:15 we have a teacher come in and help us get ready to teach our investigators. We have 3 teachers and 4 mock investigators. Our investigators are Harley, Luke, Steven and then we will be introduced to our 4th investigator on Monday. Harley is really hard to teach, he is very shy and we only get about a 2-3 word answer when we ask him things. We invited him to say the closing prayer and he declined but I know from all the practice I've had my companion and I can get him to say the next closing prayer. Harley wants to know that God loves him and he wants to believe there is a God but he doesn't feel sure about it. Our last lesson was really awkward and embarrassing!!! My companion and I taught him about the restoration of the gospel and we had about a 10 minute lesson instead of a 20-30 minute lesson and during the closing prayer my companion called him the wrong name so I started laughing a little bit and then my companion did and Harley was just staring at us strangely! When we left we busted out into laughter, I felt so embarrassed! When we met with Steven next we were just getting to know him and tried to know what he wanted or needed to know first, so wasn't really anything big. Our lesson with Luke was A-M-A-Z-I-N-G! We also taught him on the restoration of the gospel and just so you have an idea his religious background was all over the place he has never stuck with a religion. When we told him about Joseph Smiths experience with how he knew things were right but was missing something, Luke said he could relate and he felt the church's had truth but none of them felt like home. That made the lesson even more powerful because he could relate. We invited him to say the closing prayer and he said he wasn't comfortable doing it we asked him why and reasured him that we don't care if he messes up or doesn't think he knows how God just wants to hear from him and know that he wants a relationship with him. So he said the closing prayer. We also asked him to go to church on Sunday because he went to a YSA activity before and loved it, so we thought he could go to church and see if it felt like home, we gave him a Book of Mormon and told him to keep praying and if he wanted to, to read the BOM, the reason for that is because he thought our church was just like any other church, making things up and telling what we want people to hear, so we gave him the BOM to relate it to the Bible if he wanted to. After the lesson was over we invited him to be baptized! Even though it was the first lesson, in our class we had learned that it's not hard to do, he said he wasn't sure and that he'd have to think about it, so we invited him to come to a baptism to see what its like. He said he would come and was really excited about it, on Monday we are going to teach him about the atonement. I am so excited.

This week I learned so much more about prayer than I ever thought I would. I love it here in the MTC even though it feels like I've been here for a month, the days are really long but I am excited for the decision I've made and I'm excited to get into the field. 

It still is weird to hear Elders and Sisters instead of Brothers and Sisters and its weird to be called Sister Vejnar all the time and it's hard to not call everyone guys all the time and I hate not being able to chew gum but I love this experience. I wouldn't trade it for the world.

Sister Vejnar

P.S. Pictures to come, and if you're all wondering I saw Elder Vejnar the 2nd day I was here at lunch or dinner, I cant remember, and my companions name is Sister Huefner.

Elder Joseph Anderson's Latest Letter From The Resistencia Argentina Mission

Yesterday my Companion from Peru decided to cook me one his favorite dishes, Cow-stomach sterfri....I have had cow stomach three times before in cooked three different ways and I told him that I wasn´t a huge fan but I told him that I trusted him and I would eat it if he made it. For those of you who have cooked cow stomach before (I´m not sure how big of an audience you are) It tends to stink like gym locker room when you are boiling it, so yesterday our apartment brought back some good old highschool memories of all the sports I played and all the time I spent in nasty lockerooms. The finished product wasnt too bad but I told him that it would be 10 times better with just regular meet...so there is not need to make the dish with cow stomach!!

The reason I didnt write yesterday is because all of the city buses were on strike and there is nowhere in our area to write and it rained pretty hard so we just chilled in the apartment almost all day and cooked and cleaned.

As I´m sure everybody knows, the whole month on December the church is sending our a huge message called "He is the Gift". We are going to be handing our special cards all this month and showing the small video to members and investigators. However, I´m not sure how much the people here are going to be able to relate to the video because Christmas here doesnt involve lights, presents, Santa Clause, or Christmas trees. Just fireworks and a party at midnight Christmas Eve and sleeping all Christmas day. However the true meaning of Christmas is still not really recognized her so the video are cards will help.

My companion and I have been talking to a surpirising amount of evangelicals, even a few pastores. We have also found a few good investigators that we are really excited for.

I know that the Book of Mormon is true. I read it everyday and everyday I am strengthend spiritually, mentally, and physically. I know that it contains the fullness of the gospel and that it testifies of our Lord and Savior Jesus Christ. I invite everyone to read it daily and experience the changes it makes in lives.

Love you all tons

Nos Vemos CHow CHow!!

-Elder Anderson

Elder Jacob Anderson's Latest Letter From The Rio De Janeiro Mission

So pretty funnnyy... The other day we had to go to another area to do a few interviews.. this is always good! The bus are pretty packed but when I get sit down I usually sleep. On the way back from the interviews it was kinda late so I started to "nod off." My comp told me about after 10 min of this I just fell asleep and I started to fall out of the sit. My face feel into this women's chest. Yeah thats pretty awkward. I woke up immediately and said sorry. She had been watching me doze off so she knew it was an accident and just thought it was funny. My comp thought it was pretty funny to. I just went right back to sleep...

So me and my comp just worked worked worked worked this week we taught

22 lessons with members, we taught 26 others, 11 with Less actives and found 23 new investigators. That plus the good news didnt end sunday.

Normally you have a lot of baptismal dates and then no one shows up to church. We had 8 people show up to church on Sunday. So we have 8 people that have baptismal dates and are on the right track to be baptized...Then we had a baptism Sunday night.. We walked like crazyy too. I am not sure how we managed to do everything we did. We walked at least 8 miles every single day. Some days we walked 13 miles. Its just weeks like this when I can say we were trully blessed. We have so many weeks that you just work soo hard through the week and then you feel like it all goes down the drain sunday.

Elder Aidikitais will be visiting the mission this week. So he will talk to all the zone Leaders tomorrow. Then he we spend the rest of the week speaking to the entire mission. Thursday I will teach our zone what Elder Aidikitais taught us. Should be fun.

Everyday I read The Book of Mormon I am profoundly suprised how many different ways the I can be inspired. Its pretty amazing. I will start to reading this time focusing on a few new topics. I will contiune to look for Gospel of Christ; Faith, Repentance, Baptism, Gift of the Holy Ghost and endure to the end, But I will inculding Love and Charity, Humility and Pacience. I am contunily amazed how the Book of Mormon can change our lifes. If you still havnt had the chance, Read it. If you still dont know. Ask through pray until you are completely sure that you have received an answer from God.

--

And they call me

Elder Anderson

For behold I am a disciple of Jesus Christ

Elder Joshua Anderson's latest letter from the Scottsdale Arizona Mission

So the highlight of this week was Thanksgiving! I have never eaten so much food in one day before. We first had a Thanksgiving meal with a family at 1:00pm. It was really good and we ate a lot of food. Then right after that we went to another Thanksgiving meal at 2:00PM. It was also really good but I thought that I was going to explode. Then we when to have dessert at another member's home. We spent most of our time at member's homes because we were only aloud to go teach somebody if we had a set appointment. So we did get to teach a couple people but not as much as we normally do.

Anyways, we are teaching this Native American women named Sharon. She is a little slow but is super nice and we love teacher her. We found out the last time we taught her that she was homeless for four months until a stranger come to her and told her to get in his car. luckily this guy was a saint and took her to a homeless shelter. And from there she got in contact with a case manager who found her a place to stay. The sad part is that her mother an sister live in Phoenix and would not let her live with them. But she is progressing towards baptism. It was so funny, we got to her to the Mesa temple lights and the whole time she just kept saying wow.

We are also still teaching our investigator Mereciana from West Africa. We are going to do family home evening with them and another family member in the ward tonight at the Mesa temple lights. It should be good.

Some fun contacting story is that I talked to this guy on the street and it turns out he is a pastor for another church. We talked to him about the Book of Mormon by showing him the pictures in front of the Book of Mormon and explaining them to him. He was kinda nice... then he asked me what my name was and I told him Elder Anderson. Then he wanted my first name.... and I gave it to him.... I should not have done that. He started to just call me by my first name, which I never told him he could do. Anyways, it was interesting how the whole mood changed when he started calling my first name, it didn't feel right. Next time somebody on the street asks me what my first name is I wont crack under pressure and tell them that for the next two years my first name is Elder.

well that's about all for this week!

- Elder Joshua Anderson 

Elder Ray Vejnar's latest mission letter

     So first off I would like to say sorry I missed my e mail last week I forgot to write it but last week not much happened, this week however was a lot of fun.

     This week started out as just another normal week, We had one really strange lesson with someone named Jeanie. she is a nice lady that believe is the ancient Egyptian god's we talked about some of the things that she believes and some of the things that we believe and as we talked about what we believe she became more interested and more interested we got to the end of the fist lesson and asked her how she felt about what we had talked about and she said with a really big smile " I am really excited" I am as well. I think that she will take to the truth really quickly and be very open to what we have to say. we have another lesson with her next week and we will talk to her then.

     Then comes turkey day! so one thing that they do when there is a holiday is shut down all the chats that would come into mormon.org that means that we do not have anyone to talk to and none of the people we have to teach like to talk on holidays so we basically followed the schedule that the rest of the MTC had, and it was actually really cool I think that we had it a lot better than the rest of the MTC.

      So to start the morning off we went to breakfast it was not much but that is ok because we need to have room for the rest of the days food, right! Anyway strait from food we went to a devotional where Elder Bednar of the quorum or the 12 apostles and his wife spoke to us. Elder Bednar likes to do the "Q" and "A" thing when he speaks with people. He passed out 700 cell phones, and a number showed up on on the big screens. Elder Bednar told us to think of questions that we would like to ask him and text those questions to that number. Now he did not read the question that I had asked, but I did have a question in mind, and honestly I was not expecting it to be answered. None of the questions that Elder Bednar answered even came close to what my question was, but I did get an answer to my question. so I wrote down the answer to my question and just as I was thinking, well it is cool that I got my answer but that was just me thinking about it for a log time, and I finally thought up an answer that worked. Just as I thought this Elder Bednar comes in and says something like, there are hundreds of questions that I did not get to answer, but the Holy Ghost has answered them for you, that is a miracle in and of its self. This blew my mind I do not know why it did, but it did. I thought that it was really cool to think that the answers to spiritual questions come from the spirit and each time they are answered it is a miracle!

     After the devotional the MTC did a big service project in witch we packaged food for a Utah food bank, I am not sure what one it was for, that was a lot of fun and I got to do the packing and taping up boxes. I think that the best part was when who else but Elder Bednar decided that he wanted to visit, he came in and walked right past me he looked like he was in a hurry so I did not try to stop him, however he did almost bump into my solder so that was a lot of fun to help out with. Because of this service project the MTC was going to skip dinner because it was a holiday and they wanted to give all the staff the night off, so wile the rest of the MTC got sack dinners for thanksgiving we had a family take us out to dinner it was so much fun and the food was a lot better than a sack dinner I am sure. when we got back to the MTC it was movie time, the movie that they where showing was Meet the Mormons it was great and I have wanted to see that movie sense they announced the movie. once that was done the night was over and we when to bed a little early it was nice to get the extra sleep. That really raps up what Thanksgiving is like in the MTC oh yeah and the last thing that they did was on the way back to our rooms they had Christmas lights up and Christmas music playing, can you believe it they did not even wait tell Thanksgiving was over to start Christmas. :(  

     That was the week though, I love the mission every second of it and I am grateful for the chance I have to serve one. love you all and hope that your weeks and thanksgivings where as good as mine! 

Elder Vejnar

Elder Joseph Anderson's latest letter from Argentina

This week i got my knew companion Elder Valverde. He is Awesome!!!! He is 25 years old, he´s from Peru, and he cooks like a freaking iron chef. Its funny because everytime we talk to somebody he always sees a fruit/vegitable/herb... growing in their yard and he asks them if they will give us some. Then he brings it home and makes something heavenly for lunch. So far he has brought home mangos, a special type of lime, really hot peppers, leaves that smell kinda like mint but there not, and now he wants to kill one of the turtles that are all over the place here and cook them. In his last area he did it with an armadilo!!!!! I freaking love it!!! He is getting the ingedients to make me ceviche so I am super pumped for that. The only thing that sucks is when he cooks I have to wash all the dishes.

Today I am kinda tired because last night a huge storm came through our town. It rained super hard all night and even hailed really hard for like 20 minutes. The thunder here is just incredible, it penetrates to your very soul. I woke up like 8 times to what seemed to me like the end of the world.

This week has gone by pretty quickly. All of the investigators that we had have pretty much fallen off the map so we are working really hard to find new ones. We have found a few new investigators who seem like they may progress. We are working super hard with the whole zone to help everyone reach their potential.

Well I don´t have anymore time but I love you all and will talk to everyone next week!!!

-Elder Anderson (The second)

Elder Joshua Anderson's latest letter from the Scottsdale AZ mission

This week was about the same as all my other weeks. We are working more with less-actives in the ward. We got to go home teaching with some of the members to their less-active families. 

We had Zone conference this week. That is were our whole zone meets together and the President and Sister Sweeney along with the assistants to the president talked to us. They told us about how the church is about to put out this really cool video. It is called "The Gift", I think. It is a short video that is going to come out on Thanksgiving. It is just about the true meaning of Christmas. It is a really cool video. I guess the church is going to do some HUGE advertising for it. They are going to advertise the video in time square in New York City for a whole month, and on Christmas YouTube will have it as their feature video on the home page. We also have little pass along cards. We have to hand out 10 of these pass-along cards per day and then weekly we have to fill out a report on how many investigators came from handing out the pass-along cards. 

I am also excited to start taking Investigators and less-actives to the Mesa temple lights. My companion said the lights there are amazing. 

We also got to make some homemade pizza this week. My companion worked at Domino's before he come out on his mission so he threw the dough into a perfect circle. We are now going to work on making the perfect tasting crust, then we are going to try to make some sauce.

Transfers are coming up on December 8th. I have been in this area for 3 transfers so there is a pretty good chance that I will be leaving :( I hope that I go up to the mountains. Even though I love this weather, I really want so see some snow for Christmas. 

We have a couple progressing Investigators. We have also been working with a less-active family in the ward and they finally came to church yesterday, so that was really exciting. 

We have zone conference tomorrow and our zone leaders have asked us to give a training on our "focus". We are just going to share about how came up with a plan for our area and hopefully help others come up for a focus for their areas. 

That is about all I can think of for this week. I know I don't bear my testimony very much in my emails. But I know that this church is true and that it truly can bless our lives. Through the Atonement we can progress and God does have a plan for each of us! 

- Elder Joshua Anderson 

Elder Jacob Anderson's latest letter from the Rio mission

So this week was literally just crazy.. I dont even know where to start. The week just flew byyyyyyyy.. We have some crazyy crazzy investigators... Even crazy ward... and everyday is a new adventure..

Basically the missionaries that have passed by this area were/are a lot more dedicated then the members. They have over 700 registered members and about 100 people show up to church every week.. The ward is just huge... I have a pedometer that my last comp left with me when he went home. We walk over 8 miles everyday... One day we walked 17...

I hope my shoes will make it!! I think we could spend over six hours walking from one end to the other in our area.. My comp keeps telling me that we are going to start working with our brain and not our feet but for now we have been working with my feet. I try pretty hard to just do what he says. He is pretty funny and just has a ton of energy..

This week taught a lesson on Brazilian radio station. I taught a pastor inside of his church about the Book of Mormon. He is the Father of a member and we have permission. Did an unplanned division that lasted 3 days. I had to wash my clothes before i went to sleep for the next day and buy a new toothbrush.

But probably the coolest thing was a lesson I had with an Eternal Investigator. She is struggling with making a commitment and being baptizing. One time when she went to church she heard angles singing and she said it was the most beautiful thing she has ever hear. She is still doubting. So a spent a few min telling her about all the miracles that have happened during my mission. It was really cool to realize all of the extremely crazy things that have happened. Probably the coolest was my last baptism. Bruno said a prayer before he left his house that God would show him "the way." When he saw us in the street he said we glowed like the sun and he knew he needed to talk to us. When we talked to his wife a few days later. She told us that we looked like angels. She had a dream a few nights before she had met us and me and my comp were in it. In the dream she was told to do everything that we told her too.

After I told this investigator about all these crazy things that happened through the mission i realized that almost of the people who had a out of this world exp were not baptized. It was all the people who just had simple exp of prayer reading and going to church.

Sometimes we look for miracles when its the small and simple things that give us the answers that we need. Read the scriptures. The Book of Mormon is just unreal. A miracle from God that is physical proof.

Read, Pray daily and go to church.Day by day repetence is how we get better!

--

And they call me

Elder Anderson

For behold I am a disciple of Jesus Christ

Joe's (Elder Anderson)'s latest letter from Argentina

Alright so I just got back from dropping off my Guatemalan companion at the office. Kinda sad but I am super excited for him, he is going to go to Utah in April for general conference. I told him that when I come down to Guatemala to visit all of the historical Mayan stuff he has to show me around everywhere. So for now until Wednesday for transfers I will be working in a trio with a district leader in our zone and his companion. We get along really well so the next two days shouldn't be a problem. We will be working in their area so i wont see all of my investigators most likely until Thursday.

As far as everything else goes, there hasn't been too much going on. Elder Julaj and I have found a ton of investigators but hardly any of them have phones and we have passed by for their houses but they haven't been there. Sometimes it gets kinda frustrating but we will find them sooner or later haha. There is this store next to our apartment where some Chinese people work and live and i usually try to talk to them. After talking with them a few times I have realized how much the gift of tongues has really helped me on my mission. One of the Chinese guys I try talking to has been here for two years and he can barely communicate at all in Spanish. From the little that he speaks all I have understood is that "Spanish is hard to learn". It makes me truly aware and grateful for how much the Lord really has blessed me with the gift of tongues as a missionary, and not only me but all of the missionaries around the world.

This next transfer I will most likely stay here with a new companion because President doesn't want to white wash zone leaders, but I am excited and ready to keep working with all my heart. I know that the Lord is preparing the hearts of many and it is out job to find and help them. I know that this church is true and that the Savior lives. I also know without a doubt that the Book of Mormon is the word of God.

Until next week, CHow CHow

Elder Anderson (Joe)

Elder Joseph Anderson's latest letter from Argentina

Yesterday I got to talk to my amazing family por skype and I want to let them know that I love all of them so much. John, it doesnt do you any good to look like just bieber right now because you have to wait until your 16 to date anyway, just dont come down to Argentina anytime soon because the girls will eat you alive. Anna, on the other hand, you should take advantage of the dating opportunity and go on as many dates as possible even with guys you dont like just to get free dinner and see some movies for free. Angela, it looks like you getting taller and taller by the day and my prediction is coming true...that basketball is your easiest way into college for free, so practice! Alisha, I have never seen your hair so long and pretty! I also dont remember you with glasses but your look now is gorgeous! Jordan, I always new you were a sly guy with a quick hand I it makes sense now why, because you are supposed to be a magician. keep up the pracitce and you will be the best magician ever. Mom I am glad you like the new house, it looks pretty dang sweet especially the kitchen. Perfect for when I come back and you have to teach me how to make me all of my favorite foods. ITS NOT A ONE MAN KITCHEN ANYMORE!!! haha. Dad your beard is huge and it makes me remember when you were in Iraq and you sent back pictures of you looking like a straight iraqi. Cant wait to talk to all of you again in two months.

This week Elder Julaj and I worked our buts off and we had to miracles from the Lord yesterday at church. We worked all week finding and teaching people and commiting them to come to church on sunday. On saturday night we were feeling pretty good about quite a few people who we had talked to and who had committed to be at church on Sunday. Well we show up to church on sunday morning after spending an hour and a half going by the house of each person to wake them up and "Animarles" to come to church and none of them came. HOWEVER, two of our recent converts brought there friends to church so we actually had investigators at church. Elder Julaj had made a promise to our zone that if we met a goal for certain number of new investigators found and lessons taught in one week we would have people at church. We had met the goal for both numbers and we know that the Lord blessed us with two miracles.

I know that this church is true and that in it we find true and everlasting happiness. I know that Jesus Christ lives and directs his church daily and that the leaders of the church are called and led by God.

I love you all very much and I´ll talk to you next week!

Elder Anderson (The Argentine) 

Elder Ray Vejnar's latest letter from the Prove MTC mission

      Ok so as we all know General Conference was this week and it was truly amazing, and this time around I did not half to go to the gym to watch it! I will send pictures of the mission watching conference. I think that this time the 70s of the church did an amazing job! I think that my favorite talks where by Elder Lynn G. Robbins and how we should not pretend to lower the lords standards to make us feel better but raise our standards to meet God's. I also liked Elder Uchtdorf's talk in how spiritual truths deserve spiritual answers, we get a lot of people that come and talk to us and tell us that this church cant be true because of a lack of evidence, when those things do not matter, because it is a spiritual question to know if this is Christ's church on the earth today I try to remember that all the time! and remember the answers that I have received from my heavenly father! 

      So when conference roles around the chat system is turned off and we are left with nothing to do unless we have lessons that we can teach, we had two lessons planed for after the last session of conference, and wouldn't you know it neither one showed up! We did get to reschedule with both of them, and that was a blessing but it still left us with nothing to do for the rest of that night, we took the time to study the notes we where able to take during the conference and it turned out to be a good time, We also had an investigator message us during this time and tell us that he liked the conference and that he had talked with the missionary's in his area and now has a baptism date for November 1 his name is Sean, and he lives in New York, We where also glad that we had the time to talk to him about this and answer some of his questions and make sure that this is something that he truly wants to do. I know that baptism is a really good thing but I do not want anyone to be baptized if they are going to turn around the next day and say no I don't think I want to do this anymore, It is much better to hear that these people know and want to make this a lifetime commitment to living a Christ like life! I think that study is my favorite thing to I love the gospel and the simple things that I have been able to learn out here. from people that are so ready to hear about the gospel and live it to the fullest. 

     They are staring to do construction here in the MTC and all I can really think about it is man I miss being able to work with my hands it is hard and not something that I think I would do with the rest of my life but it is something that I enjoyed doing. That is really the big things that happened this week I hope that you all had a good week! And that conference was as good for you as it was for me. Wishing you all the best,

Elder Vejnar 

Elder Joshua Anderson's latest letter from Scottesdale AZ

Not much has happened this week. We finally got one of our long-term investigators on date. He is married to two women and needs to get a divorce from one of them before he can be baptized. He doesn't live with either one of them though. He doesn't even know where one of them is... Anyways he has finally started saving up to get the divorce. We are hoping to baptize him in January. 

We also just started teaching a women named Mereciana. She is originally form west Africa and that culture still plays a big role in her life. She was a referral, so when we first met her we could tell that she was really nice. She invited us into her home immediately and fed us dinner. It was a lot of fun. now that we are teaching her she is making really great progress. We have tickets to go see the Phoenix temple open house to show her where she can be sealed to her family. 

We are also teaching a new person named Tamia. I guess she was originally a male and changed her sex. We met with her last night and she is super excited to meet with us. Last night she told us that she wanted to be baptized... We didn't really know how to respond, so I just told her that we should get through all the lessons before we get to that point. We called our mission president that night and asked him what we should do. I guess if she as had a sex changed she can't get married in this life. It is just so upsetting to see how Satan has got such a strong hold of people. There has already been so much damage that has been done it will be really really hard for Tamia to achieve Celestial glory- it is just so so so so sad. I am so grateful for parents who raised me in the church and kept me safe. They helped me stay on that straight and narrow path from the very beginning. 

On a happier note, my companion and I got to talk in sacrament meeting with our ward mission leader. We have an amazing ward mission leader and some great ward missionaries. We both gave about a five minute talk. I gave my talk with just bullet points to help me get through it. That was the first time I have ever done that and I think it went pretty well. At the end my companion and I taught the restoration to the congregation. I got to share the part about the first vision and I felt the spirit so strong. It was really amazing. I thought it would have been a good idea to share the first lesson so members could be more familiar about how we teach. It was actually really successful. We had a couple members that wanted us to come into their home and teach their friends that same thing we taught at the pulpit. I think once we showed them that the first lesson would not offend anybody in any way and that it really isn't that weird, they were more receptive to letting us teach their friends. 

Our bishop also gave us a guitar, which I have played everyday for lunch since I got it. Playing guitar is a great way to relieve stress. 

Well that's about all I have for this week. Before I finish I just want to thank my two older brothers for being a great example. You guys sound like you are really great Elders and I think it is so cool that Elder Joe Anderson is a zone leader and Elder Jacob Anderson is a district leader. I pray for you guys that you will continue to have success. 

- Elder Joshua Anderson 

Jacob's latest letter from Rio

So this week was clearly awesome... We had 2 baptisms that were just amazingly ready... First is Everton. He is 32 years old and first talked with the missionary about a year ago. When we First talked to him he had only been to church once, read the BoM a little but didn't want to be baptized. To make things short and let you know how much work we put into helping him get baptized we marked 5 baptismal dates with him. Was not until this last Saturday that it actually happened.

So when things almost fell through you can understand why we worked so hard to make it happen last..

The other is Weverson, we have been teaching his family for a few weeks now. He lives in a home that has a list of problems like you could never even imagine. When we first arrived there he told us straight up that he didn't believe in God or Jesus Christ... So when get got baptized we were super excited.. To ensure that these guys were baptized and that wouldn't decide at the last min they didn't want to follow through. We planned the more organized baptism ever. We invited the entire world, almost. We planned to have a choir, my companion would play the violin and another Elder would play the piano. We planned to have a cake and refreshments. We gave invites to our baptisms to give to there family. We took the baptismal clothes to Everton and Weverson on Tuesday and had them try on the clothes and we took pictures with them to help them stay excited. We gave there numbers to every body we talked to during the week (members and non

members) and asked them to call Weverson and Everton and give them a para bems (congrats) for the baptismal date they had.

So Saturday Morning we teach an english. When we got there the chapel was pretty dirty and i guess the people who were responsible for cleaning it that week decided to take the week off... So my comp taught the english class. A Brazilian missionary who is trying to learning English stayed with him. While his comp and me cleaned all of the church.... about an hour half later when we finished cleaning and the english ended we tried to fill up the baptismal fount. But they have a ton of water problems so the church didnt have any water. If you know anything about baptism, you cannot baptise with out water and you kind of need a lot of it. We had non. So we made some call and in the end they said would be impossible to fill the baptismal fount or even have water in the church on Sunday. We called the bishop. We live in almost the same house as him so he is like a best friend and we talk to him about everything. We sat down with him and told him about the problem and how it was going to be solved. His brother is the Branch President of the my last area. So we decided to do it there.

Its not really a real church house there its a really bad house that they rent. It has a swimming pool behind it so they always have water.

The only problem is that you need to clean it before you enter because it gets very dirty. So we called the Elder there both of whom i love, one was actualy my first comp. So they were very winling to help. They ended up spending a few hours cleaning the pool there for us. So that was a lot of fun planning. The baptism was supposed to be at 6. At

5:30 both of baptism showed up at the church and informed them what was going to happen. at 6ish Weversons Mom and sibling stil had not arrived but everyone else had. THere was a ton of people there. The only problem is that with all the planning we did for the baptism we were not able to get people there with cars. Finally Weversons family showed up. We had 2 cars there to take everyone to the baptism. The only people that ended up going was our baptism,there

family(investigators) and the Bishop. We had 12 people at the baptism from our area. The mission of that chapel and one of there recent converts. My comp still played the violin and me and another american sang a hymn in english.. they loved it:) not because of our singing but because my comp plays really well lol.. Every at the batpism loved it and they all at the end decided that they would be baptized too. On sunday they all showed up to church all onthere own. They will all be baptized on the 25 of october. EXCITING. My comp will just stay in the water his last transfer!

--

And they call me

Elder Anderson

For behold I am a disciple of Jesus Christ

Jacob's latest letter from Rio

So first of all today was transfers. I will be staying in Saracuruna for another six weeks with Elder Olsen. I am pretty excited about that. We have been working really well together and have a ton of people who are just one week away from being baptized!

This week was general conf and it was great. I watched almost all of it in English again. I understood port but its just better watching it in English with all the American missioners. We ended missing the priesthood session. They play it Sunday morning but we were busy trying to take all of our investigators to church so we ended missing it and a little bit of the first session. We will download it and watch it in the house. I was super grateful that we could take 4 people to conf. They stayed for both sessions on Sunday and they all had personal questions that they wanted to receive answers too. All of there questions were answered which is awesome.

So last week on Tuesday i had an interview with the President. He decided to make me the new District Leader, that very day. Friday night I ended doing 6 baptismal interviews. I went there fasting so that I was sure that i could know if these people were ready! I was doing interviews for a little over 3 hours. It was a lot of work. When our Mission President does interviews he starts and 8 am and does ended until after 12 at night sometimes.. I dont know he does it..

My 4 interview I did was with an 9 year old girl named Emily. She probably understood the lessons better and was deff more excited then any other person to be baptized. After the interview I told her that she was good to go.. She was so excited to burst out of her sit and ran to told the missionary who has been teaching her. I didnt even have a chance to say a prayer with her. In her excitement she ended climbing on to her roof and literally jumping off. It was like 9 feet tall. I didnt see her fall or jump. I just heard it. I thought she was dead. The sound was awful. I soon realized that she was not dead but the way she led on the ground was just absolutely terrifying. She had broken something.. Maybe was paralyzed. I felt really weezy and could barely stand. I felt even more weezy after her mom picked her up and asked her to stand. She put weight on one foot but the other looked strange, bent and not right. Me and my companion(Elder Taylor, at the

moment) were sure that it was broken. The girl was screaming and crying... The Mom put her on the bed and left the room frustrated. THe girl needed to go to the hospital. She needed to leave to work. So the hospital was going to have to wait... I was freaking out that this lady was just going to leave her kid. We couldnt take her to the hospital so I was a little freaked out.

We ended up giving her a blessing. As soon as we put our hands on her head she stoped crying. My comp gave did the second part and told her that she would be healed according to her faith. Immediately after words She went to get of the bed. Me and my comp were still freaked out and didnt want her to move but she got up anyway and walked. As if nothing had happened. Her legged looked better so it was really a problem. A few min after she asked us if she had seen a Man in the white robe that had put his hands on her head with us. We had not, our eyes were closed, but we were sure that a miracle had happened.

The Church is true.. We have the authority and power of God!! Go to church weekly and partake of the sacrament. Read the sciptures and apply them!

--

And they call me

Elder Anderson

For behold I am a disciple of Jesus Christ

Joe's latest letter from Argentina

Last week was a pretty crazy week with district meeting, Consejo de líderes with Presidente Franco, and preparing all of our investigators for conference. My companion and I were all over the place. On thursday Presidente Franco gave a capacitación (i honestly dont know how to say that in english) for all the zone leaders and it was really amazing. For about an hour he just told us about a ton of changes that he is making to the mission and everything that will be happening. Crazy to see how different he is from our last mission president yet they are both equally amazing men in the gospel. After he talked about the mission stuff he instructed us on how to properly conduct a baptismal interview. Last friday I did a baptismal interview and it was by far the hardest one I have ever done. I have never been instucted on how to conduct a baptismal interview i just read everything it said in PME but there are situationes and cercumstances that PME doesnt cover. So while I called Presidente Franco to asked him a few questions about the person who I was interviewing he told me that there are a lot of Elders calling him about situations with Baptismal interviews and asked me if it would be a good idea to talk about it the next thursday. Of course I said yes. After he finished talking to us I leaned to my companion and told him that I needed to have that help a week ago!! The interview was very complicated and I was praying the whole time that the Lord would help me. I didnt do it perfectly but the Lord did help me and in the end everything was wroked out the way it was supposed to be.

General Conference was amazing!! I watched the whole thing in spanish again and even though I still dont understand 100 percent of everything, I understand about 95% and the other 5% I either look up or just guess. I loved hearing the talks in spanish and it definately makes a huge difference for the spanish speaking people. After the chinese guy talked and Elder Christofferson said "Buenos Días" in the micraphone, Everybody in the church got super excited for a second because they thought he was going to give his whole talk in spanish. But he didnt :( Something cool is that Elder Christofferson served in this mission back when it was part of the Rosario mission and served in my area in Corrientes. the same church and everything.

Well I dont have much more time but I am glad that we have a modern day prophet and I enjoyed greatly all of the talks that spoke about President Monson and his calling as our prophet. I dont remember who said it but I love the words that said when we lift our right had to sustain our leaders, we are committing to "seguirles callados" or quitely follow them. We must support and encourage them in their calling and do all that we can to help. Under nooo circumstances are we to critisize or speake poorly about the decisions they make.

I love this church and I know that it is not a church lead by men, but by Jesus Christ himself.

Love Elder Andrson (Joe)

Joshua's latest letter from Arizona

So this week we had some good and some bad... The good is that we got 26 other lessons, talked to 50 people, and got 8 new investigators! so that was really exciting. The sad is that we had to drop Aaron and Melissa. That's right, those investigators we thought were super solid. Turns out they were just super good actors. They acted the way we expected so they could use the benefits of the church. We found out they weren't what we thought on Thursday. 

So on Wednesday we went over to teach the word of wisdom and I think that it went really well. My companion and I both felt the spirit really strong, but I guess that same day we taught it Aaron went out and got really really drunk. We didn't find out until Thursday morning when we were talking with another investigator that is friends with Aaron and Melissa. Before she even knew that we had taught them the day before she was telling us about how Aaron showed up at her house really drunk talking about how he hated his wife. We were so upset to hear about that. We decided to go over there and talk to them. We didn't finally get a hold of them until Sunday. It turns out that they don't believe anything we taught. Now that his wife has found a job they are done with us.... He told us we could come back so he could tell us all about how he could us the Bible to prove us wrong. We told him that we didn't have time to Bible bash. It is really upsetting because we know how much this can help them and they are just not at all interested anymore.  

But I guess to make up for it we found two other people that seem interested in having us teach them. I hope that someday we can help them both get sealed to the temple. Something I have realized is important is to start with the end in mind. And we want them to achieve eternal live, which means our purpose is to get them to the temple! Now I'm working on praying for the gift of discernment because there are some people out there that are good at pretending to get what they want. 

well that's about all for this week!

- Elder Joshua Anderson 

Jacob's latest letter from Rio

So this weekwaspretty awesome. Everything happened almost perfectly..

Started with lunch on Saturday. It was with our Recent Convert, we baptized him 4 weeks ago.. He does piece work. He is his own boss and if he has work he does it. When he doesnt have work, he is praying to find more. Friday the day before we had lunch with them his wife was crying becuase they didnt have any money to buy food and she didnt know what she was going todo. But Edwardo (RC) explained to his wife the the lord would provide and not to worry. And he did. Edwardo explained to us the he literally received money from nothing.

Litearlly. So there were able to fix us a really really cool lunch!!

The next day in church things just went perfect. Normally before church starts we have 8-12 people that have promised they will go to church. Its normal if non of them show up.. In church we had 8 investigators...Every single house that we passed before church was ready togo.. It was awesome.. We now have 6 baptismal dates for next week. All of them are super super super firm. The only problem is that next weekend in General Conf and Elections for Brasil. So we are not sure if we should baptise them the next week, after conf geral. Which would kind of be a downer because next Monday is transfers and so there is a chance of me or my comp leaving..

I studied about somethingreally cool that i wanted to talk about but i forgot...

Faith is a principle of power!!

--

And they call me

Elder Anderson

For behold I am a disciple of Jesus Christ

Joe's latest letter from Argentina

Alrighty so another week down and I feel like its been only a day....Ahh what to write. Well last week my companion and I did some more divisiones with elders in our zone and it was a great experience. Elder miles is brand new from the mtc and this is his first transfer in the field. He is an amazing guy and a convert from Utah!! yeah la fábrica as the latinos say. His parents are members but have been inactive their whole lives and Elder miles got converted when he was 14 and stayed strong in the church up until 18 when he decided to serve a mission. Just an incredible story and really humbles me and just makes me feel like kinda a bum knowing that without my parent´s support, encouragement, and sometimes forcefulness, I might not be an active member of the church today. It makes me super grateful for my parents and family and super amazed to see and know people like Elder Miles. We have found quite a few new investigators but it is really difficult to get them to church because we live really far and we have to take two colectivos just to get there, which is kina expensive to get there and back just one time. But we are working on it and we know that the Lord will provide a way.

On Saturday we had an Argentine asado (BBQ) with our recent convert and it was pretty dang amazing. The way they do BBQ here is build a fire and wait until everything is burned down to hot coals, find some kind of metal grate thing for the grill, throw some giant chunks of meat/bone/fat (which they call costilla cut or ribs) which are meat cuts that I´m pretty sure do not exist in the states, oh and all they put on it is salt, and finally they let it cook until literally the outside is crunchy. OOOHHH YEEAHHH QUE RIICCOOO!!! and surprisingly enough it is actually amazing tasting, you just have to embrace the fat and eat it with the meat.

Anyway that's pretty much the week, I will be watching the conference in Spanish again because I am only going to watch it in Spanish three times  in my life and because i get mad respect from the Latinos when I watch it in Spanish with them instead of going to the English room with all the gringos.

Love you all

Elder Anderson (Joe)

Elder Joseph Anderson's latest letter

Well I know I said that last week went by super fast but I kid you not this week was the fastest week of my entire mission. I will try to tell everything that happened.

On tuesday we had our district meeting whre we talked about commitments and how we can do them bettr to help our investigators progress more. After the meeting my companion and I did divisiones with two elders in our zone and I was with the one who just got here last transfer. Crazy to think that it has been almost a year since I was in his posision, completely frustrated with the languag more than anything else, and now I talk to people and don´t even really notice that I am not speaking english. Man I am glad those first three months are over haha.

on wednesday we had a Zone leaders meeting with Presidente Gonsales, the Area President of south america south. It was an absolutley amazing meeting. He is just such an amazing man and so isnpired in everything that he says. I honestly have never met anybody else who has the scriptures almost memorized lik this man does. And it was cool becuase he didnt come with any notes or anything, just his scriptures and sometimes whil he was talking he would just pause for a scond, lo0ok up at the cieling and then continue as if he were recieving revelation from the Lord in that moment. He basically gave us some really good insite on the way we extend commitments and the importance of the Book of Mormon in everything that we do as missionaries.

After that on Wednesday I went on divisiones with an elder in my district who was in my district in the mtc. Crazy to see how far we have both come in a year and how quickly the year has flown by. And also, we almost got eaten by a bear-dog that really reminded me of the dogs from hungergames.

On thursday we were in divisiones all day but there were a ton of phone calls to help people from our zone come down to resistencia for the night so that they could be on time for the meeting with President Gonzales on Friday. So that was a pretty crazy night we had to organise where everyone was going to do sleepovers haha.

On Friday we had our multizone conference with Pres Gonzales and it was amazing again. He talked about our faith to hav success as missionaries.

On saturday he did divisiones again with other elders in our district and on sunday we had church and ward missionary meeting.

As far as invstigators go we had to stop passing by for pretty much all the ones we wer teaching because they are not keeping their commitments. But no worry because we have the faith to success find more.

Oh and Another story is that some little punks kids threw a rock at me and hit me in the back so I turned around and took off my backpack like I was going to fight them and they all four scattered. haha

Love you all

Elder Anderson (Joe)

Elder Jacob Anderson's Latest Letter

This week was just full of miracles. We had all kinds awesome things happen.

First of all we a member guided by the spirit to find a women he is no longer active in the church and her husband(Edwardo) had no interest.

But we ended getting the opportunity to teach Edwardo in the church.

Now his in love the church and is starting the process to get married.

Hopefully we can help him along the way so he can be baptized and have a eternal family.

Second we had a someone in the street run up to us and told us that God told him to talk to us. He explained that before he left his house he said a prayer asking God for help with his family and to give him guidance. He saw us in the street and knew that we were the answer. We taught him the church with the Bishop and the First councilor a few min after he found us. He has 3 kids all over the age of 8 and is legallly married and he came to church yesterday. Couldnt be more excited for the guy.

Me and my companion are doing GREAT. He is my favorite comp so far.

Its very interesting because he is almost dead, he is going home in 7 weeks. I am super lucky to get to serve with him we are learninga lot together. We had very different opinions how to do the work of the Lord.

I know the church is true and the blue book is too. Read it.

--

And they call me

Elder Anderson

For behold I am a disciple of Jesus Christ

Elder Joshua Anderson Latest Letter

I want to start off with saying my emails are not as exciting as my brothers... so don't expect too much, hahaha. and I can't blame the poor grammar on learning a new language... Anyways, this week went pretty well. We street contacted 75 people and our goal is to talk to 100 people this week. On Thursday we were riding to an appointment and my companion wrecked his bike, so we decided to go to a store close by so he could wash up. When we almost got to the store this homeless man from across the street started yelling at is that he just needed to hear "the word" so we decided to give him a brief message when a drunk guy came up to us and started to cuss and yell at us about how stupid we were to pick Phoenix for our mission and that we should have picked Italy or something. We never really had a chance to explain to him how it works because the homeless man started to yell and the drunk guy to give us some respect and leave. It was a little weird, but he finally left. After he was gone the homeless guy decided to preach to us for another 15 minutes. He kept thanking God for giving him personal revelation right then to understand scriptures he was trying to teach us. He told us that the reason Jesus fed the five thousand was because they were hungry, that was his personal revelation. probably the most inspiration I have seen all week... hahahaha, anyways, by the time he had finally finished "preaching" to us, all the blood on my companion's arm had become all crusty. Well that's about all the crazy I have seen this week. We are now teaching a family that is super great. We think that they will get baptized pretty soon, which is really exciting. But that's about all the news I have for this week.

- Elder Joshua Anderson 

Latest letter from Elder Joseph Anderson

Alrighty so the coolest thing that happened this week was of course our baptism!!!!!!! Man there is nothing better that a wonderful, spiritual baptismal service for someone that is ready to enter into a covenant with our Heavenly Father. The investigator´s name who got baptized is Miguel Angel and he was soooo prepared. Just a golden investigator who understands everything. I only taught him a few times before he got baptized on Saturday because my comp and his old comp are the ones that found him but the spirit that this man has is just extraordinary. The baptismal service went amazing and on Sunday he was confirmed a member of the church and received the gift of the Holy Ghost. He also gave the closing prayer in sacrament meeting and he was as if he had been a member his entire life. Just an amazing experience over all and a great spiritual boost for everyone who participated.

Well in other news this week has been another crazy week. Elder Truman and I are doing two divisions a week with the Elders in our zone and we are just all over the place. Last week I went on divisions with Elder Remund who just got here from the MTC about two weeks ago. He is from somewhere in Utah and he a freaking wiz. He is going to BYU when he gets back and he is going to study electrical engineering. I started out the day getting to know him by talking to him in English but i quickly changed over to Spanish because that way he couldn't make me feel stupid haha.

On Thursday all of the zone leaders went to the office building in Resistencia to have a capacitación from president Franco. The meeting was very very different from the ones that Presidente Heyman did but it was still amazing. One thing he told us is to make sure our investigators understand the commandment and importance of reading in the book of Mormon daily and praying daily. He told us that if our investigators do those two things daily with a sincere heart, they will want to come to church and we wont have to go out and pick them up in the morning on Sunday to bring them to church. Those things are so simple yet soo true. i know that until I started to do those two things every day with a sincere heart I didn't want to go to church and I probably would not have had in not been for my parents

Well I am out of time but I love you all and I didn't want to say this but I will...I will be coming home a year from today ;( I GOTTA GET DOWN TO BUSINESS!!!!!

Elder Anderson

Elder Ray Vejnar's latest letter from his mission

     So this week we where able to get another baptism her name is Gemma lives in England and is really fun to talk to. She has not sent any pictures yet but they should be in my next e mail home. so that was kind of the big news for today at least. 

     earlier this week I I was able to meet John he is new in the ward and the way that he decided to meet with us is to take us out to dinner! Not a lot of people do that in this mission because not a lot of people know that we can do dinners. The catch however is that the person that wants to take us to dinner needs to pick us up and drop us off at the MTC, because we only have cars on Saturday (our p day) and Sunday. and those days usually do not work for dinners. But John pulled through! he picked us up and took us to Panda Express I have not been there in a wile now so I really enjoyed it. Also one of my companions Elder Heslop had never had Panda before and it was a little to much food for him but he did like it. I always love being a part of someones first time food experiences! I don't know why but it is fun to watch there reactions to new food. Yeah so John really made the week better that is for sure! I don't know why all my good experiences have been with food this last week but I was introduced to a new place to eat by Elder Fairborn this last week called Rancoredos they make the best breakfast burritos ever! Elder Fairborn and I are becoming better friends as the days go by we both worked in construction and we both have a lot of Dr. appointments he goes to physical therapy its a long story... but the end result is because I am the most able bodied I often get elected to go with people to there Dr. appointments. I really do not mind at all because when I am out I can talk to people face to face all the time! and I get a brake from the computer and the office. I also had a Dr. appointment this last week and there is good news and bad news the good news is my A1c for those of you out there that know what that is has dropped to 8.3 so still improving! the bad new is I now see a new Dr. so I feel like I am starting all over again we will see how this goes.

     finally this week I have been studding the "effective study" section in Preach My Gospel" if you could not tell from my facebook posts. And I think the coolest thing that I have learned is that going back over things that we have already taken a look at can be a real benefit. the better we know something the easier it is for us to explain what we know. I knew a little about this from school I found that when I knew more about what I was going to present to the class the better my presentation would be. However now that I am on a mission this is much easier to see. For example this week we taught a woman by the name of Wilma from the Philippians before the lesson in companionship study we went over the first lesson again, I felt like I had been teaching that lesson with far less power than we could have been. turns out that that same night we taught Wilma the first lesson! it was amazing how much of a difference the study that morning made! Because of that I know that study is important I know that restudy is even more important! I know that Joseph Smith was a true prophet and that the book of Mormon is the word of God I love this church and I love all you out there have a good week! 

Elder Vejnar           

Elder Joseph Anderson is transferred to resistencia

Alrighty then so first of all transfers were last week on Wednesday and at about 5 oclock on Tuesday I got a call from the assistants telling me that I needed to pack because I was going to be moved to the city of Resistencia as a Zone Leader. So Wednesday morning I said goodbye to my comp and our zone leaders and header out to Resistencia on a bus which is only about a 45 minute trip from corrientes capital. Well I got the the terminal in Resistencia and the craziness had already started. 27 new missionaries came to the mission last Wednesday and our transfers are pretty crazy here. The zone leaders get an email at about 8 oclock tuesday night and they call all of their missionaries in their zone to tell them if they are being transferred or not at about 9 oclock Tuesday night. Then all of the zone leaders go to the terminal (Bus Station) in their province/area really early Wednesday morning and they coordinate where all of the missionaries are going and with who and where. And the terminal in resistencia is by far the busiest because all of the news have to pass through there and it is right in the middle of the mission so most of the other missionaries pass through there and have to take another bus to another area. Anyway right when I got there I could tell it was going to be pretty crazy and I am now the zone leader so i have to be the on who knows whats going on and how to help everybody get on the right bus at the right time. Anyway I got a hold of myself pretty quick and was able to help everything work out okay. The only problem we had was two hermanas who missed their bus because they were talking to somebody and not paying attention very well.

Well my companion´s name is Elder Truman form Missouri (yeah i know I didn't spell that right, that's what happens when you do everything in Spanish for so long) and this will be his fifth transfer in this area. He has about 18 months on the mission and he is kind of tire of this area. by the way this means I will have over a year in the mission without ever having a companion who is not from the united states. But he is a really good Elder and he makes me laugh a lot. He is really goo at telling stories. We are working hard to help our zone and I know that we are going to see a ton of success. We have 4 brand new missionaries in this zone and five white washes. kind of crazy.

But there are some really great things happening in this area and we had two investigators at church on Sunday one of which will be getting baptized this Saturday. The town is completely different from the city I have been in for 6 months and there is dirt pretty much everywhere, but the ward here is really big and that makes missionary wok a lot easier.

Well that is all I have time for this week, I am soo grateful for the gospel in my life and I know that it is true

Love Elder Anderson (Joe)

Elder Jacob Anderson Gets Mugged

So my first week with Elder Olsen has been really good!! Elder Olsen is pretty old... He has less then 3 months until he goes home. So we are learning a lot together!!

First of all... We got robbed.. That was pretty interesting.. I have never had a gun pointed at my head. It happened like this.. So this guy on the street asked us for a little bit of money becuase his buspass had broken and he didnt have money to return his house. After talking to him a little bit and decided he wasnt a drug addict and he was telling the truth we started to count the change we had so he could get home. As we were couting the change 5.35 2 teeagers run up to us and wanted started to yell, "Man i got the gun pointed at your head and i going to blow your brains out man." While he was pointing threating us his friend told us he wanted our money. I told them that we were counting money for the bus and we didnt havnt much. He called me crazy and told me to give us his money and started yell somemore how he was going to kill us. So we gave them the maybe 8 heis we had (in change) and they left. I pretty sure it was there first time becuase when i looked the guy in the house who was actually takingour stuffthe guy i felt that he was more scared then us. He was so scared he didnt ask for my watch, they didnt ask for our wallets (with a good amount of money and our cards), he didnt want our bags that had a cameras and he beleived me when i told him we didnt have cellphones.

So pretty much we collectly we have him maybe 10 heis which is less then 5 dollars.. Yeeepp thats what you called spared..

The next day we were crossing the road, we had plently of space but the car that was coming decided to speed up, even when him speeding we only had about a foot or two until we crossed the street. But i guess he didnt like that we crossed in front of him so he tried to hit us.

Literally. My companion was infront of me so it wasnt a problem for him. But he was so close to hitting me that i jumped out of the way and that still wasnt enough. Youknow when a something pass by you so fast and close you can feel the wind. I had the same feeling with the car.. and then the his sideview mirror actually hit my arm. I felt closer to death that time then when I was robbed at gun point the day before.

And finally when me and my comp felt left for dead. So Saturday we decided to do a fast. Which always is a great exp. Except all of our plans afterwards fell through. SO the only thing we did saturday was WALK WALK WALK WALK. So we got home pretty tired. IN short when we got to church on sunday we didnt have lunch. But we were sure that before church ended we would have plans.. By the end of church no one offered to give us lunch. The funny part is the other set of missionarys in our ward had 3 different people that wanted to give them lunch and they were willing to give us lunch. But with the new rules we are not allowed to eat lunch with members in our ward who dont actually live in our area. So we were starting to feel a little left for dead. We literally have nothing to eat in your house on sundays becuase weonly buy food on monday and so by sunday its all gone. We really wanted to just break the rules and eat lunch witha member inthe other missionarys elder. But we didnt and finally about an hour after church ended and almost everyone had left togo home and all hope was gone. we were going to starve to death, literally was the feeling. A return mission decided to ask us if we had plans for lunch, we did and so he gave us lunch and it was awesome!!!!

Yeupp this week was pretty crazy but i had probablythe most spiritually exp of my life. WE have a less active family who is juding mmebers and soo basically i read the last paragraph on the litearlly the first page of the book of mormon and i told them "you are judging members of the church of Jesus Christ, Stop it Now (almost yelling and pounding my fist on the table)". It was really cool to feel the spiritual testify soo strongly of what was said. Both me and my companion talked about it after. It was like our heart getting hit by a train. The member who starts to joke every single we talk about the something spiritualy started to cry.

So i have decided to do everysingle part of preach my gospel. Read Eversingle scritpture and do all the activitys.. IT is awesome.. It really helps you apply things you have learned. I recomened that all of you do it.

The Chuch is true. The book is Blue and i love you!

--

And they call me

Elder Anderson

For behold I am a disciple of Jesus Christ

Elder Joshua Anderson wins the "Golden Sponge" award:

Elder Jacob Anderson's latest letter: "My hardest day."

I need to be short. buttt lets talk about one of the best worst weekends every!!! So Saturday it just started out WRONG...

The house i am living in right now is very...dirty old.. Literally falling apart... and Things are literally growing out of the wall..

Thats cool. No its not.

To make things better. Someone visited uninvited friday night. They stole me shoes.. Not cool.. They stole my X-companions towels that had his name written in them.. They stole the neighbors dog.. Normal.. I hope its still alive..

But suprisely after this I waasnt effected at all. I was still happy and ready to go. That afternoon we literally my best baptism planned of my mission. I was super excited for me and the next day Elder Holland, Yes Jeffrey R. Holland the apostolo would be coming here personally.

So i took the LZ to your baptism.. He passed the interview. I cut his hair to help him get ready be his best!! We left to go eat lunch. When we got back he decided he didnt want to be baptized (he wanted to wait).. HE baptism was planned to be in less then an hour and a half and a memeber would be there in a hour to give him a ride. We sat down prayed.. talked... prayed.. talked.. Read sciptures.. prayed..

talked.. prayed.. Scirptures.. prayed.. Talked....

In short he wasnt baptized.. Probably one of the hardest point of my mission. Working that day only slowlly went down hill.

We had planned to have the entire world(the lives inside of our area) go to church on sunday. Elder Holland was going to be there personally.

So after i apologized to our ward for not actually have a baptism. We decided to do everything possible to help everyone who already said they would go to church sunday, just remember that they still needed to go..

In short we had almost everyone give there sorry why they couldnt go... The walk home of defeat was not very fun..

But Elder Holland gave an awesome talk.. Elder Cruz was there too...

THe lord wants 10 percent of our life as. ANd he wants it when we are younge. CHoice good friends. Dont date until 16 then date smart. Serve a mission with out question. Then get married IMIDiatly after. That was his advice..

The church is true The book is blue and mormon is on the ball.

Elder Anderson

For behold I am a disciple of Jesus Christ

Latest letter from Elder Ray Vejnar

     So like always I will start with the beginning of the week, so this week as a mission we decided that we needed to talk to our mission president, he is also the president of the MTC and a very busy guy, so we did need to wait two weeks but we got a meeting with him! the purpose of this council was to discuss the role we are to play in the wards that we are over, the problem is that the chats that we take are starting to be taken by other missionary's in visitor centers around the world this leaves less and less fur us to take and less and less of a chance to find someone to teach. So we have tried going to wards to get referral's from those people in the ward. However this is not what we are told we are to do but it is our only hope in busting our success we are trying to be proactive instead of reactive. That is the reason behind this meeting with president Nali so we went in and he gave us permission to go into another stake I thought this was great, every one else in the mission feels like the meeting did not go the way they wanted it to go, but I think that the only reason for that is because the want to fix something that is not broken, I honestly don't know much about why they do not think that it is going to be successful they try to explain it to me and I still see no problems. Any way that was the meeting with president Nali.

     The next big thing that happened was Elder Cuevas the only Spanish speaking elder here at the moment got his visa and is now going back to Mexico I am not even going to try to explain why he is waiting for a visa. That is all good and well but that leaves Elder mason. Elder Mason is the most annoying elder in the mission by far! and when this happens he will need a new companionship, apparently he got to pick it and guess what? yeah I am back to having two companions. I am going to need some patients with Elder Mason now. Because of this change I am also going to be sleeping on the bottom of a bunk bed that brings back some memories. haha. But enough about that.

     Last night we found a box filled with pictures for free so we took the box and went through and took the ones we liked.I don't know how many I will keep but they are cool so I am going to keep them for now and maybe frame them later in life,or just hang them up on the walls in our room I am not sure yet. 

     The ting I learned this week comes form a Mormon Message called "come what may and love it" this was based on a talk by Elder Joseph B. Wirthlin in this talk he tells us that life is heard but the way we react to adversity can be a major factor in how happy and successful we can be in life. that is exactly what I will be trying to do over the coarse of this next companionship, As well as the rest of my life so I love the words of Elder Wirthlin's mother come what may and love it, there is just so much that we can be happy for in this life! I hope you all have a good week, I wish you the best! 

Elder Vejnar 

Pictures are of the box of pictures.

Elder Joseph Anderson's latest letter: With pictures.

Okie dokie so this week flew by pretty quickly and I we didn't really have a ton of time to work in our area. On Tuesday we went to resistencia to have a multi-zone conference with President Franco. He taught us about personal revelation and also the importance of unity in our companionship. He also taught us a little bit about the importance of the Spirit in EVERYTHING that we do. It was a very very spiritual meeting and I learned a lot. Its so interesting to experience two mission presidents and how they do things so differently. I think its cool to see how different men can be in so many different ways...yet at the same time be sooo similar with the knowledge and application of the gospel of Jesus Christ in their lives.

On Wednesday we had our reunion de distrito and we learned about planning for effectively for our investigators and focusing our studies on them. We didn't have a ton of time to work on Wednesday because of the district meeting but we were able to find a 21 year old kid named Gabriel who is golden. Literally probably the most prepared person I have ever met on my mission. He is the nicest, most sincere person ever and he is super super interested in the church and all of its teachings. On Thursday and Friday we went on divisions with the zone leaders and I went to their area to work with Elder Howlett. We had a really good time. He working in the office for 9 months with president Heyman and has sooo many stories. I love just asking him about all of the things that happened in the office with President Heyman. It would definitely be a cool experience to be able to work so closely with the President for so long and to learn from him so often.

On Saturday we had an activity at our church and Gabriel came with us. It was a football tennis tournament and churipaneada which is just sausage on bread. But he had a super fun time and there were a ton of kids that showed up. Unfortunately we aren't allowed to play but I will definitely be bringing it back to the states because it is one of the funnest looking games ever and it doesn't involve any running.

On Sunday Gabriel and Ingrid came to church. Gabriel loved it and is excite for his baptism. Ingrid has come to church 4 times now and is really enjoying it, the only problem is that we are having a really hard time helping her understand baptism and accepting a real date. On Saturday we watched the Restoration and set a firm date for the 6 of September with her. I really think she se be able to be prepared for that date.

That is pretty much everything that happened this week. We have transfers on Wednesday and I am not sure if I will still be here but probably not because I have been here for 6 months now, but anything is possible. I love you all and I know that this is the true church of Jesus Christ.

Love Elder Anderson (JOe)