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 =)