Bolivian Christmas!

hey everyone!

It was a super different, but also super awesome Christmas! on Christmas eve we ended up planning a big party for all the missionaries in Sucre and also a group of kids that we thought were orphans, but actually just turned out to be a group of Korean music lovers.. haha long story. but it turned out super fun and were able to contact all of them as well! 

they celebrate Christmas different here, the bigger day is the 24, they stay up until midnight and then celebrate at midnight and open presents! it was super cool because our house looks out over all of Sucre and at midnight we watched from our window fireworks throughout the whole city, super awesome and fun to have a different experience :)

also the next night we got home to find a FULL live band IN our house. haha they partied allll night... but the good news is that we get home so tired everyday we just slept right through it haha! hna wing and I are working super hard and having lots of fun too!

I love you all and I hope you had a very merry Christmas
and a happy new year :)

love,

Hermana Andersen 

Merry Christmas!

hello everyone!

its been a crazy week, but super awesome!

#1. having an american companion is AWESOME! hna wing is from highland and everyone thinks it is so crazy that they have two missionarys from the ¨holy land¨ in their ward haha. we work super hard and good together and make English jokes and american treats and its the best!!

#2. I witnessed the craziest rainstorm I've ever witnessed in my whole life this week! the weather is crazy and goes from baking hot to pouring rain in literally 2 minutes. we were super far away from the house and didn't have a single jacket when it started raining seriously so hard. we rain all the way home and by the time we got there it looked seriously like we had just jumped into a swimming pool with all our clothes on!

Life in Sucre

#3. Friday night I went outside in flip flops to get some clothes that were hanging up to dry and there was a piece of broken brick that sliced my toe right open. hahaha there was seriously so much blood and it turned into a murder scene and the people that live in our building still look at us really weird when we leave. luckily its healing slowly but surely! feet injuries are the worst!

The work is super awesome here and I am loving this area more and more everyday! we are finding lots of really awesome people and are super happy with the progress :) 

Merry Christmas from Bolivia! we taught the latinos in our district some good gingerbread house making today - Bolivian style! there aren't a lot of big Christmas traditions here, but its been fun to celebrate a little bit differently and focus a little bit more on others and a little bit less on myself and really remember the true meaning! 

I love you all!! :)

love,

hermana andersen :)

Hermana Andersen & Hermana Wing

Christmas season :)‏

hello hello!

Christmas is finally in the air here in Sucre! after hearing about so many sad experiences of Christmas last year in the mish, we talked to our zone leaders and decided to make this Christmas unforgettable! on Saturday the whole zone met up at the main park here in Sucre with our portable dvd players and we split up and contacted everyone in the park with the new Christmas Mormon message! then at the last hour we all met back up and went caroling haha it was super awesome and seriously got us in the Christmas spirit! then yesterday we got to watch the Christmas devotional broadcasted from salt lake, and after President and Hna Hansen flew in for a Christmas conference! it was super awesome and they reminded us the real reason that we celebrate Christmas, hna Hansen told us ¨Christ sacrificed his whole life for us, the least we can do for him is sacrifice one (or two) Christmases away from home¨ so true! 

This morning we also did a gift exchange with all the sisters so its finally feeling like the Christmas season! :)

Super exciting news!! my companion is leaving tomorrow, and originally I was gonna be left without a companion for 2 weeks, but my prayers were answered and President is sending me someone tomorrow... AND SHES AN AMERICAN!!! haha I LOVE all of the companions that I have had but I feel like I am entering into a whole new world being with someone that has the same culture as me, and we are gonna celebrate Christmas American style :)

We have some people really progressing that we are excited about. This week has been a little bit frustrating because there is a show here that seriously everyone watches every Wednesday and this week they showed a supposedly ¨´Mormon´´ family from the states that lives polygamy. it sounds like something so small but its made a lot of people we are teaching not want to listen to us anymore and even some members start to doubt everything. ughh freaking media. but other than that all is well here :) 

Love you all!! 

love, 

hermana andersen :)

December 7, 2015

hey everyone! 

woah so much that I could share this week, but so little time! I am loving my area and these people so much!

despite all the challenges, it really is so amazing! for example, we haven't had a bishop for the last 2 months.. and he doesn't have plans of coming back anytime soon.. hahaha #Bolivia. so that makes our work pretty complicated, also there are a lot of people that only speak quechua here, so there is a language barrier, haha I'm trying to learn but its the HARDEST language. so hard that the Book of Mormon is only 1/3 of the way translated. also almost everyone lives together but is not married.. which also makes our job hard! BUT,in spite of all of that, I have never met such amazing people in my whole life and I have also never seen so many miracles!

yesterday I was able to share my testimony in sacrament and as it is the last month of the year, reflected lots on everything that I have learned and been a part of this year. It has been absolutely UNFORGETTABLE and a year that I will cherish for my whole life. Its impossible to say how much I have learned and the way I have grown from the people that I have met and the things I have participated in, I love this work!

On a funny note, yesterday we went exploring to meet some people in a little pueblo that is now part of our area, we had to pretty much climb a mountain to get there and the mountain had LOTS of rocks.. hahaha my companion´s skirt got snagged on a rock and ripped all the way open! hahaha literally I laughed until I cried. we were super super far from home so she just had to hold it closed the whole day. hahaha the only hard part about having an area like this is that our skirts are a real inconvenience
sometimes.

I love you all and hope everyone is enjoying the holiday season!! see you soon! 

love,

Hermana Andersen :)

November 30, 2015

hey everyone!!

Another week down, they are seriously starting to fly! Thanksgiving was just a normal day here, but on Wednesday I was on exchanges with a greenga, so we had our own celebration with a piece of Bolivian cake. haha definitely not quite the same, but it made us happy just knowing that we were celebrating the best that we could! 

Also on Wednesday the 70 that is over our mission, Elder Godoy, came to talk to us. it was super super spiritual and super awesome! something that I LOVE that he talked about is our potential in this life. he talked about how every single person has a different potential and that our only goal in life should be to fill that potential that God has given us, we cant compare ourselves to what anyone else is doing because they all have different spheres of potentials to fill. I've been thinking a lot about that and how we really cant judge anyone, because we don't know what potential they have or where they are at on their on track. 

I am loving loving loving Sucre and my area! the people are seriously amazing and so so good to us.  They seriously offer us everything they have, and the majority of the time just the thought of eating anything else makes my stomach turn, but we accept everything because its considered super rude to reject things that people offer, especially when you know that its a sacrifice for them to give it to you. I have learned so much from them and couldn't be more grateful! 

I hope everyone is doing good and enjoying the holidays! the weather here is crazy, one day we are dying of heat and the next day we are Eskimos! haha today I´m not sure if I'm in Bolivia or Utah! I love you all!! 

love,

Hermana Andersen :)

new beginnings!

hey everyone!

holy cow I have gone from complete opposite extremes! my new area is as rural as it gets, so its a big adjustment coming from the city.. but I LOVE it. two transfers ago there were 6 missionaries serving in the part that just us two have now.. haha its HUGE and super overwhelming because my companion goes home this transfer, but President is sending them home 2 weeks early so they can be home for Christmas, so I have 4 weeks to get everything down and get to know everyone! Its super overwhelming but such an adventure!

everyday is such an adventure! if we don't have set appts we say ¨¨lets climb this mountain!¨ haha its awesome becasue we have found all kinds of cool rivers and bridges and also really really amazing people! they wash their clothes in the river and seriously live like pioneers. but I've learned here that the less the people have, the more they are willing to give. they literally don't have anything but they truly live by ´´we just met 2 minutes ago, but whats mine is yours¨ its been such a cool lesson for me and as much as I love the people that I met in the city, the people here have already stolen my heart.

also there are pigs running around EVERYWHERE! hahaha its hilarious and I´d take them any day over the dogs. they are CRAZY here, like seriously so vicious and there is a rabies outbreak haha so thats fun. we've learned to carry little treats to distract them so that we can run past haha. 

HAPPY THANKSGIVING!! I have never been more grateful in my whole life for everything i have been blessed with and all the amazing people I have in my life! I love you all!! 

love, 

Hermana Andersen 

New Adventures

hello everyone!

wow what a crazy week! first big news.. transfers! I will be leaving my area, and actually leaving Cochabamba in general! My plane leaves tomorrow morning for Sucre! I am excited but also super nervous, I will be a sister training leader there, which means we are in charge of all the sisters in Sucre, we do splits with all of them and if there are problems they come to us.. haha praying for lots of non-dramatic sisters! the worst worst part about the mission is having to say goodbye to the people that I have come to love so much. its like tearing a piece of my heart out with every goodbye.

Saying bye to Henry and his sweet boys last night.
way too many tears shed!

Noemi and Junior - Junior got to baptize her
and it was super spiritual!

BUT, it has been an amazing last weekend here! Noemi got baptized!! seriously there was so many times during the week that we thought it wasn't going to happen. she was faced with soo many trials and I admire her so much for continuing through. we got to her house on monday night and she just had the saddest face, we asked her what was going on and she told us that her mom had been diagnosed with cancer, that the doctors arent sure what they would be able to do or how long she would live.. she just looked at us with tears streaming down her face and said ¨´hermanas, I am closer to God then I have ever been and I am doing everything right, why are these things happening to me?¨´ It was one of the first times in the mission that I was left 100% without words. we sat there me, my companion, noemi, and junior her boyfriend, and just cried. I think it was the first time in my life that I really understood what it means to ¨mourn with those that mourn¨ because it was about the only thing that we could do in that situation. we ended up sharing a scripture and explaining that the closer we are to God, the harder Satan fights. on top of that she was hospitalized and she almost lost her job. BUT she got baptized and it was a real miracle for us.

I love the mission and I love the experiences that I am having here, the things that I am learning, and the people that I have gotten to know. I love you all and am so grateful for all the love and support! 

love, 

hermana andersen :)

#2 s

another week in Bolivia!

Hello everyone!

its been a pretty normal week here, noemi is doing great and we are planning her baptism for this saturday, so we are super excited and praying super hard that everything will work out! 

My trainer is now my sister training leader, so this week we got to go on splits together which was super awesome to be together again and walk down memory lane for a whole day haha! we also had a super cool experience! we were knocking doors and this lady opened the door and was SO nice and told us to come on in! haha we just kinda stood there a little shocked cause that pretty much never happens. turns out she was one of the first members in Bolivia and has been inactive for awhile now because of some dumb little things. anyways we committed her to come to church and as we were leaving her two dogs escaped. she was serioulsy like distraught and took it as a ¨sign¨ that we were bad luck. haha we looked every where for the dogs and couldnt find them anywhere, so we went on our way and told her we´d keep our eyes out. that night we had a family night with some members and when they opened the door they said ¨come in fast because we found 2 dogs in the street and we don't want them to escape until we found their owners!¨ turns out they were this lady´s dogs and she was SO happy plus she got to know some members! the whole situation was just to perfect to be coincidence! 

the mission is awesome because we see experiences like this almost everyday and its super awesome to see how the Lord works 

lots of love from Bolivia!! I hope everyone is happy and doing well :) 

love,

Hna Andersen :)

#thisishalloween?

hey everyone! 

lots of cultural differences this week! they don't celebrate Halloween here the way we do, but yesterday was a holiday mainly for the Catholics called ¨day of the saints.¨ the people that have loved ones that have died set up these giant tables, with SO MUCH food. like everything that the person might have possibly liked to eat. and the people go from house to house and say catholic prayers for the dead people, the more prayers you say, the more food you get. hahah my companion used to be catholic so she knows all the prayers and I told her to at least get us some food! haha she didn't, but there were lots of people that saw us passing by and would give us a mountain of food and tell us to pray for their loved ones that have died! haha super different but it has been fun to see how they celebrate! 

we are seeing lots of progess in the area, and dreading transfers! haha it seems like they always come right when everything is picking up! Noami is still on date for November 14 and is doing great, she even bore her testimony in Relief Society yesterday! 

I am loving the mission and am more and more grateful everyday for all of the many blessings I have, both at home and here in Bolivia. I love you all and hope everyone is well at home! 

nos vemos pronto! :) 

love, 

Hermana Andersen 

October 26, 2015

hello everyone! 

the mission roller coaster was so real this week, I never have known so many ups and downs in my whole life!

exciting news - we recently reactivated a 20 year old kid named junior, and he has been bringing his girlfriend noemi to church, this week she accepted baptism and told us that she is ¨counting down the days!¨ so we are super excited and happy for her - lots of prayers that everything will go well!

2 of my investigators from Tiquipaya got baptized on Saturday! It was amazing to be able to see them finally enter into the waters of baptism and how happy they were! the Lord really does have his timing for everything :)

this week we were in the middle of a lesson with a super catholic grandpa and he stopped us and said ¨you guys would make some really good nuns!¨ he then spent the next 20 minutes telling us why we should be nuns and not missionaries. hahah when we told him pretty much ¨¨thanks but no thanks¨´ he got real mad and kicked us out. hahaha we left and just couldn't stop laughing at the whole situation. super weird! 

the weather here is finally cooling off! we are heading into rainy season which I could not be happier about! Its fun cause it will be super hot, rain for a few minutes to cool everything off, and then be hot again! so its a much better balance :)

happy Halloween!! I hope everyone is eating pumpkin flavored EVERYTHING! nothing sounds more delicious right now then a pumpkin shake or a big slice of pumpkin chocolate chip bread! 

love and miss you all! 

love, 

hermana andersen :)