Yes the highlight of this week is definately the baptism. His name is Ramon and he is 20 years old. He sister recieved the discussions about two and a half years ago and made the dicision to be baptised and then she invited the missionaries to talk to Ramon. Well he talked with the missionaries and had quite a few lessons with them but was very evangelico and wasnt interested in the church. Well after almost three years Elder Valdez and I decided to talk to him again and he agreed to make a time to visit. Well about two months from then (with a lot of trouble finding him because of school and work) he has felt the holy ghost in his life from reading the Book of Mormon, Praying to our Father in Heaven, attending the church, and keeping the commandments and now has made the decision to be baptized by someone holding the priesthood power of God. I am sooo happy for him and am looking forward to seeing him progress and prosper by living the true gospel of Jesus Christ.

This week my companion and I also worked really hard with an inactive member. She was baptized when she was 13 and she assisted church regularly. But about 4 years ago she gave birth to her son Lowti and hasn`t been to church since...until yesterday!!! YAY!! Right now she is a single mom, 24 years old with a 4 year old (crazy) and another son who is 1 and a half. She has her hand full and my companion and I could see that she really wanted to go back to church but it was too hard to come with her two kids. So we visited her three times and got to know her better. Lowti is sooo funny and really the most energetic, talkative, kid I have ever seen in my life. He really is a handfull and them some. So on Sunday we went and picked her up and helped her get to church with Lowti and Aaron (her baby). That sacrament meeting was probably one of the most entertaining and memorable meetings of my life. Up through the sacrament Lowti did pretty good. But myself and all the missionaries were sitting up in front because we did a chair number that day. So When we stood up to sink Lowti came up and stood next to me. Oh and he calls me Tiho which means uncle in spanish and I think its awesome. And well basically the rest of sacrament meeting was Lowti running around up on the stand, all through the congregation and basically being very distractive. I could tell that some people were a little annoyed with him and that his mom was very stressed. I dont have much time but I just want to say that children under the age of 8 CANNOT sin. He is not accountable for his actions but we are for ours. If we are paying atention and thinking badly about a child who is running around in church and the mom isnt doing a great job making sure he sits and listens like everybody wants there kids to do, we are in the wrong. Not the child. I fear that she might not want to come back to church because of how her son acted in sacrament meeting and I pray that she doesnt worry about it. I made sure to tell her after the meeting to not worry about it and that the Lord wants children in the church no matter how they act. There are numerous examples in the BoM of God saying that he loves children and that they are perfect. I cant say anymore But I also know that children are a light and a love in this world and I am grateful to have little kids in church. I love you all very much and thankyou for all your love and prayers!!!!!

Love Elder Anderson

This is such a small and simple phrase but I love it. Think about what on this earth(temporal) could possible be more important that returning to live with our heavenly Father.. for Eternity. I tried making a list... I couldn't think of anything. It has changed the way i look at missionary work. We have been warned that as Members of the Church that we have a responsibility to share the gospel and when we don't we will be held accountable. Specifically parents with there children and missionary's with investigators. This has changed the way that i share the gospel with people. I was under the impression that maybe some people dont read the BoM everyday, attend church. or pray often because they didnt know that It was and is a commandment from God. So as a missionary it is my job to help these people learn and change so that they maybe feel the atonement in there life. This is very difficult to do and i understand why we dont always warn people to repent.. I have a deep respect for the missionary's in the BoM that warn entire city's that they need to repent. IT is very hard to tell some that they are doing something wrong, even harder to tell them they are doing it wrong nicely. I want to be a bold missionary. When i share my Testimony with people on the street I dont leave out the part anymore that this is the "only" true gospel and only through baptism and enduring until the end will you be saved.. It is deff a lot easier to share this message with non member then a member. As I have started doing this I have been absolutely blow away with peoples knowledge of the truth and yet disregard they have for it. I have had members time and time again this week openly tell me they will not follow the commadments. This makes my heart break. I bear testimony and share scirptures and they do not care. I do not have a lot of time to expand on this and explain. But please Read your BoM daily, pray to God our eternal Father and attend church weekly...

This is only true and restored Gospel of God and only through repetence and Christ will you be able to receive Celestial Glory.

Nothing on this world is more important. Dont be scared to share it.

--

And they call me

Elder Anderson

For behold I am a disciple of Jesus Christ

Joe's mission letter

Well I am sorry that I didnt write a letter last week but I just got caught up in a bunch of other letters and took too much time reading and responding that I didnt have enough time to wriite a big letter to everyone. 

Well not a ton has happened in the past two weeks. My companion is super trunky and he misses his home and friends and family a lot. So I try my best to cheer him up and keep him motivated but I{m not going to lie...sometimes its hard. But we are working hard in this tinny little area haha I can´t believe that I have been in this tinny area for over three months now. I feel like we have honestly taked to EVERY SINGLE PERSON! But, as always, the Lord knows best and me and my companion are here for a reason. We have been working a lot on trying to get inactive families to come back to church and also keep our recent converts active. Its made me think a lot lately about how many times it says in the scriptures Endure to the End. I remember not wanting to wake up on Sunday morning and go to church for three hours, but i am so grateful for the determination of my family and especially my parents for helping me/dragging me to church every Sunday. Now on my mission I look forward to those three hours in church every Sunday. By learning more and more about the importance of church and taking the sacrament and come to enjoy more and more the woderful oportunity that I have to participate each Sunday. I feel absolute peace when I am at church and all of my worries and things to stress over are just forgotten for three hours. Yesterday I got to give a talk on missionary work I and actually didnt feel stress before I went up to speak. The Lord is blessing me constantly with the ability to learn the language, work hard, and do all of the things I need to do that many times I don´t feel I can. I put my faith in the Lord, try my best, and he takes care of the rest.

This week we also had another baptism!!! His name is Brian and he is the nephew of Norma, who we baptised two weeks ago. He is soo awesome. He wants to serve a mission already and is ready the Book of Mormon every day! This is just one of the examples of how the Lord knows best. I feel discouraged sometimes to have to work in this tinny little area for soo long and sometimes I feel like we should just leave and go open up another area to work in. But this is not my, my companion´s, or my mission president´s work...its the Lords work and he know where we should be. If we would have left we would have never found Brian, and he might not have had the opportunity to listen to the message of the restored gospel. I am grateful for the Lord´s helping hand in everything that I do and I know that without it I would not be able to do anything. 

I am learning a lot out here on my mission and I am so grateful for the decision I made to serve. The decision to serve a mission is by far the most important decision I have made in my life up to this point. I am already a different person and I know that I will continue to learn and grow and I work hard and serve the Lord.

 This week my companion and I have another baptism planned for someone named Ramon and he is yet another example of one of God´s children who he was well aware of and prepared to hear the message that we share. The Lord ALWAYS knows best and when we put our faith and trust in him is when we will learn and grow.

Thank you all so much for your love and prayers and I cant wait to write you next week!!!

Love Elder Anderson

Gosh Don't know where to start. Let me telling about my favorite Talk by Elder Holland. The first and Great Commandment. So know that i have talked about this before but I read it fairly often and this week i fell even more in love with it. Elder Holland talks about how the apostles only spent 3 years in the service of the lord, Kind of like a mission... He says it must have been really diffcult in that short period of time to teach the apsotles all about the gospel as well as purging them from the error of there old ways. I think this is kind of like a mission. We only have 2 years to learn all the mystersy of gospel and purge our selfs of old ways.. Well After Jesus death it would be easy to imagine how hard it would be to continue the same service that you had been doing with the lord. soo basically all the apostles returned to what they were doing before they met christ... Fishing. The scriptures call peter a Master Fishermen. But with his first day and night back on the water they catch nothing. The lord appears to them and helps them catch a bunch of fish. Then says something like if i wanted fish i could have fish. I want souls. Go and convert souls on to me. Now it very difficult to be a missionary. Dont get me wrong i really do love it and its a lot of fun but it is also a lot of work and very difficult. I found my self a lot of the time thinking about returning home and going back to the easy life.. But then i realized after reading this.. I am not ready to return home.. The Lord had only such a short amount of time to with me to purge me of my old ways. Not to mention if i went home now I feel like i would be as the apostles of old and simple return back to my olds ways of fishing. I have often heard of the mission being as the best two years of your life or the best two years of the rest of your life. I think it is very important to realize the difference here. Did you contiune to use what you learned after you mission in the rest of your life or did you return to your old ways? The single and most important message the Jesus taught after his resurrecting was do missionary work. Missionary work is had been taken to a compeletly different level with the temple and genealogy work. We go on missions not becuase two years of us teaching the gospel is going to change the world. We go on missions so that we can learn how to teach the gospel, learn how to become learders, and soo so so much more. But basically we go on mission so that we may be more effective through out eternity. In our homes as fathers and mothers. Through out the the millennium. The lord wants you to serve a mission so that he can change you into the person he needs you to be. Every single persoin old and younge should be doing missionary work... Well i had more time to explain this but i want to tell you about my baptism!

I had a baptism my first baptism this week. It was sooo very exciting. We started teaching him like 4 days before the baptism? So do you remember the primary class that me and my companion taught? Yay well when we were teaching the class I was talking about the baptismal convenient and found out 2 of them were not baptized. Every since that I have been trying to get my companion to make it a priority that we get in contact with those 2 little young-lings.. He didnt think that would be effect use of our time so it was never really made it a prority even when we put on our schedule for the day. Finally last week we were out with the ward mission leader, Gabriel who recently returned from his mission. While we were out I was talking to him about we could teach those two littles boys. One he explained doesnt live in this city but basically our bishops dad is his godfather. He is who I deff thought we could baptise. The other boy, Gregore who is 11, i found out is apart of a family that we have been trying really how to reactive. We have showed up to there house twice to help the mom attend church with her family and both times she would not walk with us. Little did I know that her son was already at church. So our ward mission agreed with me and we decided to go see gregore. When we got there and started talking to the mother she was on the way out the door. I asked her if it would be alright if we taught Gregore and maybe help him prepare for baptism. She was fine with this but a little suprised we were there for Gregore and not her, she left the house. We asked Gregores older sister to go get Gregore for us please. Our ward mission leader said.. Go get gregore we need to baptise him.. I was a little in shock as this was very straight forward. When Gregore came to the door he said he wasnt feeling very well and this wasnt a very good time. The ward mission leader said thatsfine and said we are going to baptise you this saturday! okay? Gregore looked up to the sky and thought about it for about 2 seconds and said okay and walked away... Me and my companion were a little in shock.. that was 5 days away.. We hadnt even taught a lesson and we had a baptismal date and a new investigator. How does that going to work? Since Gregore is basically more active then 80 percent of the ward we didnt even know where to start teaching him the next day. The District leader said he wanted to go on split with my companion and basically just ask the baptsimal questions. Me and my companion started to plan for the baptism we decided found out saturday was super busy for the ward so we had to move the baptism to friday that means that Gregore would only have 4 days to prepare.. The day before the baptism we finished the baptismal interview and asked some things like who do you want to baptise you. He had been talking to his family about this. He wanted me and the mission leader to baptism at the same time. LIke an older person... I didnt have the heart to tell him at the moment that we wouldnt be able to do that so i told him that we would need to talk to the District Leader. I then worked out with the mission leader that i would baptise and he would give the holy ghost! So the day of the baptism was a little hectic. Me and my companion prepared the church and then about an 1 hour 30 min before the baptism we thought we better walk to Gregores house to make sure all of his family attened. We knew he would but were worried about his mom and siblings. When we finally go to his house no one was there.... We were a little worried and just thought we better hurry to the baptism.. on the way to the baptism we saw Gregores older brother just hanging out in the street... this worried us a little bit we went and talked to him and asked him if he was going to attend the baptism.. he was busy (doing nothing) and he didnt know about his family... We then started walking even faster to the church. When we were finally within site of the church we also saw Gregore his older sister and mom walking to the church as well. Our ward mission leader, Gabriel had also just arrived at the church. We all joined to gether and started talking... Gregore was very excited for both me and the mission leader to baptise him... Wow am i glad that Gabriel is a bit of a smooth talker. He explained that baptism has two parts. i would be baptizing and he would giving the gift of the holy ghost. Gregore still looked very disapointed that we both were not going to baptism but he was okay with it.

I had the keys to the church so I unlocked the church for us all to enter. The baptism was suposed to start 5 min ago...When we walked in the church it was flooded.... Me and my companion had left the baptismal fount on...  Everything is made out of tile so we didnt break anything but we started mop up the mess. Me and Gregore left to go dressed into bapismal clothes.. I found out that mine were way to small... Luckly that bishop knew about some larger clothes that me and my companion hadnt found. After i got dressed into some clothes that fit we spent some time taking pictures as we waited for more people to show up. The baptism was awesome and Gregore was soooooo happy. It felt really good.

I wish i had more time!

--
And they call me
Elder Anderson
For behold I am a disciple of Jesus Christ 

Just pictures this week from Joe

On Saturday we had another baptism and it was pretty awesome. We have been teaching this person for a really long time and she was so ready to get baptized. This week we had transfers and I found out that I am going to be staying here for at least one more transfer with my companion. I am pretty excited but he is a little down just because our area is the smallest in the entire mission and also really difficult. We have the second largest catholic chapel in Formosa city in our area called the divino niño. So everybody pretty much is a member of this church and it is pretty hard to teach people sometimes. But there are still people that we can teach and if nothing else, there are quite a few inactive members in our area that we are in the process of helping come back to church. I´m not going to lie mission life is pretty darn hard, but when we are at our weakest is when the Lord can help us the most. I keep trying everyday to work with all my heart, might, mind, and strength so that I can stand blamess before God at the last day. I am not anywhere near perfect but I know that the Lord forgives me for my faults as long as I repent and keep moving forward always trying to do better. One of the things that is really hard out here is keeping the recent converts to the church active. So my companion and I are working on getting the members involved more. The three things that President Hinckley said are key for members to stay active in the church is first a member friend, a calling, and the nurture of the good word of god.

Sorry I dont have much more time to write and my letters are always so short, but I know that every soul is great in the eyes of God. I love the opportunity that I have to bring people unto Christ by helping them recieve the restored gospel. I know that I am not perfect and that sometimes I want to beat myself up a lof because I make mistakes but the scriptures tell us that the way to repent is to confess the sin and to forsake the sin. As long as we confess our sins shortcomings to our father in heaven and promise to try our best to forsake them (and really try our best to forsake them) God have mercy upon us and help us press forward with faith. We shouldn´t beat ourselves up over our mistakes because it doesn´t do anybody any good. We should realize them, confess them, and try our best to stop doing them. Our sincerity in repentance is based on our determination to stop doing what we know is wrong, not beating ourselves up about it and feeling really really really sorry. God knows that if we are truly sorry we will stop making the same mistake. And he also knows that it might take thousands of times of trying but he promises us help and mercy though diligence in the gospel. I am so greatful for repentance and the chance I have to humble myself before the Lord and ask for his help´as I try my best to forsake my sins or mistakes and press forward with steadfast faith in Chist. Don´t beat yourselves up over mistakes, just confess them and forsake them with faith in the Lord and Savior Jesus Christ.

I love all of you very much and I am greatful for all your love and prayers. 

Until Next week

Love Elder Anderson

Gosh Don't know where to start. Let me telling about my favorite Talk by Elder Holland. The first and Great Commandment. So know that i have talked about this before but I read it fairly often and this week i fell even more in love with it. Elder Holland talks about how the apostles only spent 3 years in the service of the lord, Kind of like a mission... He says it must have been really diffcult in that short period of time to teach the apsotles all about the gospel as well as purging them from the error of there old ways. I think this is kind of like a mission. We only have 2 years to learn all the mystersy of gospel and purge our selfs of old ways.. Well After Jesus death it would be easy to imagine how hard it would be to continue the same service that you had been doing with the lord. soo basically all the apostles returned to what they were doing before they met christ... Fishing. The scriptures call peter a Master Fishermen. But with his first day and night back on the water they catch nothing. The lord appears to them and helps them catch a bunch of fish. Then says something like if i wanted fish i could have fish. I want souls. Go and convert souls on to me. Now it very difficult to be a missionary. Dont get me wrong i really do love it and its a lot of fun but it is also a lot of work and very difficult. I found my self a lot of the time thinking about returning home and going back to the easy life.. But then i realized after reading this.. I am not ready to return home.. The Lord had only such a short amount of time to with me to purge me of my old ways. Not to mention if i went home now I feel like i would be as the apostles of old and simple return back to my olds ways of fishing. I have often heard of the mission being as the best two years of your life or the best two years of the rest of your life. I think it is very important to realize the difference here. Did you contiune to use what you learned after you mission in the rest of your life or did you return to your old ways? The single and most important message the Jesus taught after his resurrecting was do missionary work. Missionary work is had been taken to a compeletly different level with the temple and genealogy work. We go on missions not becuase two years of us teaching the gospel is going to change the world. We go on missions so that we can learn how to teach the gospel, learn how to become learders, and soo so so much more. But basically we go on mission so that we may be more effective through out eternity. In our homes as fathers and mothers. Through out the the millennium. The lord wants you to serve a mission so that he can change you into the person he needs you to be. Every single persoin old and younge should be doing missionary work... Well i had more time to explain this but i want to tell you about my baptism!

I had a baptism my first baptism this week. It was sooo very exciting. We started teaching him like 4 days before the baptism? So do you remember the primary class that me and my companion taught? Yay well when we were teaching the class I was talking about the baptismal convenient and found out 2 of them were not baptized. Every since that I have been trying to get my companion to make it a priority that we get in contact with those 2 little young-lings.. He didnt think that would be effect use of our time so it was never really made it a prority even when we put on our schedule for the day. Finally last week we were out with the ward mission leader, Gabriel who recently returned from his mission. While we were out I was talking to him about we could teach those two littles boys. One he explained doesnt live in this city but basically our bishops dad is his godfather. He is who I deff thought we could baptise. The other boy, Gregore who is 11, i found out is apart of a family that we have been trying really how to reactive. We have showed up to there house twice to help the mom attend church with her family and both times she would not walk with us. Little did I know that her son was already at church. So our ward mission agreed with me and we decided to go see gregore. When we got there and started talking to the mother she was on the way out the door. I asked her if it would be alright if we taught Gregore and maybe help him prepare for baptism. She was fine with this but a little suprised we were there for Gregore and not her, she left the house. We asked Gregores older sister to go get Gregore for us please. Our ward mission leader said.. Go get gregore we need to baptise him.. I was a little in shock as this was very straight forward. When Gregore came to the door he said he wasnt feeling very well and this wasnt a very good time. The ward mission leader said thatsfine and said we are going to baptise you this saturday! okay? Gregore looked up to the sky and thought about it for about 2 seconds and said okay and walked away... Me and my companion were a little in shock.. that was 5 days away.. We hadnt even taught a lesson and we had a baptismal date and a new investigator. How does that going to work? Since Gregore is basically more active then 80 percent of the ward we didnt even know where to start teaching him the next day. The District leader said he wanted to go on split with my companion and basically just ask the baptsimal questions. Me and my companion started to plan for the baptism we decided found out saturday was super busy for the ward so we had to move the baptism to friday that means that Gregore would only have 4 days to prepare.. The day before the baptism we finished the baptismal interview and asked some things like who do you want to baptise you. He had been talking to his family about this. He wanted me and the mission leader to baptism at the same time. LIke an older person... I didnt have the heart to tell him at the moment that we wouldnt be able to do that so i told him that we would need to talk to the District Leader. I then worked out with the mission leader that i would baptise and he would give the holy ghost! So the day of the baptism was a little hectic. Me and my companion prepared the church and then about an 1 hour 30 min before the baptism we thought we better walk to Gregores house to make sure all of his family attened. We knew he would but were worried about his mom and siblings. When we finally go to his house no one was there.... We were a little worried and just thought we better hurry to the baptism.. on the way to the baptism we saw Gregores older brother just hanging out in the street... this worried us a little bit we went and talked to him and asked him if he was going to attend the baptism.. he was busy (doing nothing) and he didnt know about his family... We then started walking even faster to the church. When we were finally within site of the church we also saw Gregore his older sister and mom walking to the church as well. Our ward mission leader, Gabriel had also just arrived at the church. We all joined to gether and started talking... Gregore was very excited for both me and the mission leader to baptise him... Wow am i glad that Gabriel is a bit of a smooth talker. He explained that baptism has two parts. i would be baptizing and he would giving the gift of the holy ghost. Gregore still looked very disapointed that we both were not going to baptism but he was okay with it.

I had the keys to the church so I unlocked the church for us all to enter. The baptism was suposed to start 5 min ago...When we walked in the church it was flooded.... Me and my companion had left the baptismal fount on...  Everything is made out of tile so we didnt break anything but we started mop up the mess. Me and Gregore left to go dressed into bapismal clothes.. I found out that mine were way to small... Luckly that bishop knew about some larger clothes that me and my companion hadnt found. After i got dressed into some clothes that fit we spent some time taking pictures as we waited for more people to show up. The baptism was awesome and Gregore was soooooo happy. It felt really good.

I wish i had more time!

--
And they call me
Elder Anderson
For behold I am a disciple of Jesus Christ