Merry Christmas

Merry Christmas Everyone!

This week we had a lot planned. Every P day we ball at the YMCA for free because the guy that owns it likes the elders or something, I don't think he is Mormon. It’s just like Provo Rec. We ball with a bunch of guys that play there so it’s super fun! Then on Wednesday we went up to Iowa City for New Trainer/Trainee meeting. It’s about a 2 and a half hour drive. It was a great meeting, I also had to give a short talk. It went ok haha.  

Thursday we taught Chad, he is Probably about 30 years old, he only has one leg and doesn't ever leave his house. He is progressing slowly, we extended another baptism date to him but he doesn't see why he has to give up coffee and tea. So pray for him. Then we knocked for a few hours, then went to dinner at the Cooks.  They are an awesome family, totally normal and they are soooo funny!! They are loaded, they live in a castle! There house is sooo nice and sooo big. We ate some great food and had a great time!  

Friday we had Zone training meeting where the Zone leaders and Sister training leaders gave their reports on President and Sister Badgers training and it was so good. The spirit was super strong! Then we all went to a good buffet afterwards.

Saturday, Christmas Eve, we were told not to knock and to only go to scheduled appointments and no one had any so we went shopping and played ball at the YMCA. Me and the Zone leaders all bought the same smartwatch at Best Buy. We had to order them so they will be here this week. We’re Excited!  

Yesterday, Christmas! I woke up and ate some disgusting pancakes that my comp made. haha I told him they were good but they were really bad! Then we opened our presents. We got some sick ties and socks and warm clothes. We spent the whole day at a members playing games and eating dinner and skyping!! It was great to skype home! Super cool/weird having Jessica on the other end of the Christmas Skype call.  

Pretty great week this week. The weather has been weird. A week ago it was -4 and today its almost 60 so I broke out the short sleeves!

Have a great week everyone.

Love, Elder Anderson

Nauvoo

Another week down! Time flies as a missionary. We had a good week this week!  

Tuesday was normal and we went to the Food Pantry and did service and got a ton of food! Then Wednesday we knocked on doors and taught some lessons. We got fed a big lunch and a big dinner. I was soooo stuffed! That night we went to Quincy and stayed the night on exchanges, it was great. I went with Elder Fox and it was nice because we have a ton in common, I hope me and him are companions eventually. It was a great day, we knocked and taught a lesson to a man that says he wants to get baptized and he is progressing a lot!  

Thursday we had Zone Conference so we stayed another night in Quincy. Then woke up early and went to Nauvoo, we had Zone Conference right by the beautiful Nauvoo Temple! So we got to hear President and Sister Badger talk and the AP’s, it was a great meeting! Then we all did our funny district skits. It was great! Then we went back to Quincy and had dinner at a mexican restaurant and I got a California Burrito and it was HUGE, but I still pounded it!

We taught Terry and he is still doing really good, he hasn't smoked for a long time and he is switching to 0 nicotine vape now. We taught him the Stop Smoking Workshop and it’s a program that will help him stop smoking. He’s doing great!

It’s been pretty cold here, yesterday it got to -4 degrees and they had shortened church to just one hour because of the weather. When we got there we found that the heater had broke so it was about 40 degrees in the chapel so we all sat there and froze!  Haha and we were gonna teach seminary this morning but they canceled school for some reason. They think it’s too cold to go to school! I wish they would do that in Utah! They also canceled the Christmas Party because of the cold, there's not even really any snow just some ice!  

Anyways it was a great week and we found some new investigators, hopefully they can progress!

I love you all!  Have a great week! Also the Mississippi is frozen and looks sweet, I’ll send pics next week.

Love,

Elder Anderson

A picture I took of the Nauvoo Temple

Another Week in Hannibal

Hello family and friends!

I think we had a pretty normal week! We found a few new investigators while knocking and one of them is wanting to move to a town called Mexico, Missouri. He has been down there a lot and actually started taking the missionary lessons from the missionaries down there in the St Louis mission. They had him scheduled to be baptized last Saturday but the missionaries got taken out of the Mexico mission for some reason and somehow we just happened to knock on his door here in Hannibal! We talked with him and he didn't know much at all.  We don't know what the other missionaries were teaching, so we are gonna take him through the lessons again and his date is January 7th! And he came to church yesterday, so that was awesome!

We have a few other investigators that we teach and they are hard to teach because they like talking so much! Sometimes we will be at someone's house for 2 hours and only say 10 words! Then on Thursday we taught seminary.  They have about 10 kids that come at 6:30am, it was fun! On Wednesday we had District meeting and then went to TCBY ( The Country's Best Yogurt)  They have a challenge where you have to eat a whole quart of ice cream in 45 minutes, and if you do you get a gift card and they take a picture and put it on the wall.  I ate it in 10 minutes!  It was awesome!  That was my lunch!

That's about it for this week. Have a great week!

Love,

Elder Anderson

P.S.

If you want to send me a package, which I know you do! Send it straight to my house:

316 N. Hawkins Ave.

Hannibal, Missouri  63401

A sneak peek of our Christmas card

One Month Down

Hello everyone! My first full week here in Hannibal is done and it was a great week! We got 92 OYM’s (Open your mouth)  So everyone we talk to counts as an OYM. The mission goal is to get 10 OYM’s a day so 70 a week. We have done a lot of tracting this week. We have knocked on a few hundred houses! Some people are cool and tell us to come back. Some are awesome and let us in to share our message. And some come out all happy and then they see we are the missionaries so they just slam the door or slowly close the door as we are still talking haha!  

Monday nights we have family home evening with a member and its great! We have dinner, study the scriptures, play 5 crowns, and eat ice cream!  

Every Tuesday we go do service by doing volunteer work at the food pantry. We help get people their free food, and then when it’s over we get to go around and get our free food. haha its really nice!  Also a nice lady in the branch gives us $20 a week for groceries. So we eat pretty good!  We get fed dinner every tuesday night by a big young family, they have tons of little kids and they always take a picture of me and my companion and send it home to our Mom’s. Every Saturday, members invite us over for breakfast and they make a huge egg omelet. We are always stuffed and have to skip lunch. Then sometimes random families in the branch will sign up to feed us.

We don’t have a ton of investigators right now but I will tell you about a few of them. So one day last week we were led to an old couple’s house named Bobby and Kelly and they let us in and just talked our ears off the whole time. They say they are most likely gonna start going to a baptist church, but they say they will come to ours to try it out. He says how will you know if you don’t try?  So he promised us he will be there one of these weeks. Then we came back and only Kelly was home so we taught her and it was an awesome lesson, she said she had been crying earlier and then we showed up and she just felt so much peace and comfort that she wanted to cry again but a good cry. She said she knows the Book of Mormon is true. So then we told her we would come back when Bobby was there so we did the next day and he said he doesn’t want us in his house anymore but still said he would make it to church soon. We were way bummed, I was way excited to teach them.

We also teach a few people that have some mental issues from hard drugs, we keep teaching them but they aren’t progressing. We teach an awesome guy named Aaron, but he just likes to debate and says he will never get baptized, but he’s way cool so we go over there every now and then to try and soften his heart.

Then we have Sherri and Jerri.  Sherri claims she was baptized when she was 8 but we can’t find her records so we will have to baptize her again if she stops smoking. She says she can’t do it but we will keep helping her.  Jerri is her boyfriend and he is trying to better his life. He stopped doing all of his hard drugs and now just struggles with smoking and chew. They have a son named Ricky who is 7 and we plan to baptize him too, they are all on date for February 4th. They live in a motor home and are trying to get a house or an apartment. Also our branch president wants us to take it slow with them because he thinks they might just be trying to join the church to get welfare, which is something we have to watch for out here.

Everyone go to mormon.org and watch the light the world video!  Its great! I am trying to get better at summarizing my week so my emails aren’t this long haha!

I love you all and have a great week! Elder Anderson

Me and Elder Roskelley down by the river

Our house and car, it finally snowed!

Elder Roskelley at the entrance to our haunted basement =)

Bye MTC Hello Missouri!

Hello Hello everyone!!  I am now in Hannibal Missouri with my new companion Elder Roskelly from Boise Idaho.  He’s cool, a lot better than my last comp haha. We were the only ones left in our district for all of last Tuesday because all the sisters left Monday morning and the other elders left Tuesday morning. I woke up and said goodbye to Elder Crain and Elder Portilla. It was way hard saying goodbye to them they were like best friends. Well it was hard leaving the MTC, so hard that we didn't wake up to the alarm! haha We woke up to the security guard! He has a key to every room so he came in and woke us up. At first I kinda freaked, but I looked at the clock and since it’s in 24 hour time I only looked at the minutes so I thought it was 3:30 and we had a half hour.  So I’m just chillen and making sure I had everything, while my companion is running around going crazy!  I didn't think anything of it because he’s just weird like that. Then he started to get mad and told me it was 4:20 and we were supposed to be there at 4 so I threw everything in and got out of there. We jumped on the bus and went up to the airport. I didn't get to call home because my companion said that we needed to watch everyone's luggage while they all called. haha I was kinda mad but I did get to call at the mission home. We had a layover in Denver for about a half hour and then we were off to Iowa!  

When we got there President and Sister Badger were there along with the AP’s. That was cool! Then we went to the mission home and had lunch and a meeting. Then we jumped in the van and left for Iowa city, about a 2 hour drive and we all slept. We got there and he told us who our trainers were and left. haha Hannibal is about 2 and a half hours away so we stayed the night with some elders. It was fun! Then bright and early we went and played Basketball. Then we were on our way!

When we got there we hurried over to a members house. It’s an older indian couple that feeds the missionaries a lot. They feed us for holidays and every Saturday with a big egg omelet. They cooked so much food they could have fed 50 people and they only had about 15 there. haha I ate a ton and it was good! Then we went to another members house for dinner and I didn't eat a thing. haha I was way to full! Then we went and played basketball with our district in Quincy.

The next day we taught a few lessons. Most of the people here just go straight to telling us there whole life story about how hard their lives have been and all the drugs they have been on or are on. Haha The houses some of these people live in are are so disgusting that I can’t believe people live in them. Most of the houses are small and most of Hannibal looks like a junkyard and dead this time of year and a little depressing. haha There is one thing here that is somewhat cool and that's the Mississippi river and we live pretty close to it.

We have a small branch here and most of the members are converts or people from Utah that moved here for some reason. haha I haven't figured out why you would want to live here, I guess it’s probably kind of pretty when everything's green. Well I hope you all have a good week! I will send more pictures next week. I love you all!

Love, Elder Anderson

With President and Sister Badger

Last picture MTC district all together

MTC buddies

Some final pictures from the MTC

Last picture with MTC companion =)

Hello Missouri

Two Weeks Down One to Go

Another week down in the MTC!  It’s crazy how fast time flies here!  It literally feels like it’s still the first week!  I'm learning so much everyday and sometimes it’s hard to catch everything I'm learning so I'm always writing stuff down!  We had a great morning at the temple!  It’s always nice going there.  Also I leave on the 23rd so next Wednesday at 4 am were gonna be on our way to the airport.  Our flight leaves at 7:25 and we have a layover in Denver, Colorado and then we’re on our way to Iowa.  I am the leader for all the missionaries going to Iowa so I guess I just need to keep track of all of them.  One of the elders girlfriends sent him a basketball hoop to put on our room's door so last night we were having some fun playing basketball in the room, it got pretty intense!  haha  Ever since I got here I have felt like I have known everyone, they all look so familiar it’s creepy!  It feels like deja vu, it’s weird because everyone says the same thing like we all had a dream about being here already or something, its really cool.  Its also cool how all the districts seem to get along so well, and how they were chosen so perfectly, I love my district I have made some awesome friends here.  

Yesterday we had Elder Gary E. Stephens talk to us in the Tuesday night devotional.  He gave a nice talk but in the night devotionals it is so hard for me to try and stay awake, everyone is usually pretty tired.  We are always trying to catch a break, it’s normally not too bad but two of the best districts here left yesterday morning at 3:30 and they weren't gonna go to bed. Most of the time when districts leave they just stay up all night cause everyone leaves at like 3:30 to 4:00 am.  We had to say goodbye to some super awesome elders!  It was sad saying good bye!  

We got two more TRC investigators this week and they both started off a little rough.  It’s hard trying to teach with my companion.  He always takes up the entire time and I only get to talk for a little bit. All my teachers know that he takes up too much time and won’t let me talk and they tell him to try and even it out and I tell him after every lesson but he’s not really getting better.  Even the Branch President told him.  But the first TRC investigator we had was awesome!  The first two lessons were rough but the last two were awesome and we felt the spirit so strong and he said he would get baptized!  But very few TRC investigators are not members.  His name is Johnny, we saw him on Monday and we talked to him and he is the coolest kid. haha We could be best friends because he’s so cool! haha But he told us he was mormon and showed us his garments and we all laughed and were bummed that we didn't actually get a baptism.  But he’s still awesome.

Also it was nice to have fast Sunday on the first Sunday we were here because the first few days are hard but I'm definitely feeling the blessings from fasting and all the prayers so thank you. I taught Priesthood on Sunday on repentance, it was an amazing lesson the spirit was so strong it was crazy.  Me and my companion were spittin flames of the spirit the whole lesson.  The Branch President was there and everything!  Everyone was thanking me for the lesson after!  Because repentance is a huge thing as a missionary, without repenting we can’t have the spirit with us and as we continue to not repent our spiritual growth will slow down and even stop.  So I challenged everyone to add repentance to their nightly prayers! Sundays here are awesome! We have some stud missionaries here, so the lessons in priesthood are crazy good. I just had one of my very good friends from high school pass by so I ran out and jumped on him!  It was so awesome seeing him it made me so happy!!  It was Elder Steele Rapier.  I hope he rooms close to me or has the same exercise time as me so we can have some fun!  

My companion has been making me go to choir, I didn't want to go at first but I thought it would be cool and the spirit would be super strong so I went. But we sit there on hard chairs for around 2 hours and the first day was just practice!  I thought we were singing at the devotional but no!  They take choir pretty serious here so I never know what they are talking about.  But we did get to sing in front of a an Apostle so that was kinda cool but I'm not doing it again!  haha

Well I think that sums up the week pretty good!  It’s safe to say it was a great week and I love being a missionary and I can’t wait to get into the field!  I wanna bear testimony of the power of prayer and repentance!  I notice when I pray at night and in the morning, and like night and day my days are so much better.  When I don't the days are long and hard and make me homesick.  With repentance and prayer we can build our faith and have a stronger spirit with us.  So always remember to pray with a sincere heart and real intent and don't put off repentance even for smaller things as it slows down your spiritual growth.  Have an awesome week, and don't forget to email me and send packages!!

Love,  Elder Anderson

With the MTC President Burgees & his wife

Us & President Snow

The Elders in my District



Our district including the Sisters

Elder Savoi on left & Elder Talbot on right

One high flying, heel kickin Sister =)

Love this hat =)

Elder Talbot

With Elder Veach

We have been eating good here in the MTC =)

First Week Down and Trump 2016!!

It’s been a pretty good week here at the mtc.  Right when I walked in, I went straight to my room dropped off my stuff then I was off to class.  It’s been crazy, so much class time but I'm learning so much its crazy!   We teach investigators all the time and they go alright.  The first weekend here wasn’t the greatest.  The day I got here was great and I thought I was gonna love it here but the next 3 days didn’t go that well.  My companion and I don’t have much in common.  He can be so annoying but I’ve been praying a lot and it’s getting better and I'm learning how to not go insane.  If I would have been writing home last weekend it would have been all about my companion and how I was going insane.  I just mess with him now he never lets me get more then like 5 feet away so sometimes I hide from him and he will go running around looking for me.  I get a good laugh from it and that is how you survive the mtc is from humor.  But this week has gone by fast and really smooth so it’s not too bad.  I play volleyball and basketball everyday here and today we went to the temple and then played kickball out on the field.  It was fun!  

I know a lot of kids here, one of my good friends from school is in my zone and rooms close to me so it’s awesome having him here.  A couple nights ago we played bloody knuckles.  It’s a game where you spin the coin and keep it spinning by having everyone flick it and if you mess up and make it fly off the table or stop it from spinning they get to fling the coin at your knuckles and it cuts your knuckles so we all had bloody knuckles and their all scabbed over now.  But we got told to not do that because everyone was asking what happened to our knuckles.  haha It was fun!  We also have a lot of competitions back at the residents it’s always fun.  Its our time to unwind since we sit in class all day.  The food here is pretty good sometimes.  A couple days ago we got chick fil a so that was good!  And every Wednesday we get creamery ice cream.  They also have the cookies and cream milk from the creamery and that stuff is way good!  About the second day here I got a sore throat and it has led to a bad cold!  It’s made it tough here!  But I have been taking medicine and vitamin C packet things!  I’m starting to feel better.  I think.  My district is awesome!  Their all way chill so it makes it nice!  Me and my companion get to teach in priesthood on Sunday so we will see how that goes!  

I hope everyone has a good week!  

Love, Elder Anderson

My companion Elder Blau (pronounced: plow but with a B)

At the Provo temple

My district

Me in my room

MTC friends

Bloody knuckles

Day One in the MTC

Hello hello!! The first day was awesome! I'm loving it and the spirit is great! Know that I'm in good hands and having a blast!

Leaving for the MTC

One handsome young man

Family pic

He's a big guy

With the siblings

A final goodbye for 2 years at the MTC