sleep tight, don't let the bed bugs bite!‏

hello hello!

adventure of the week? BED BUGS. yes we got bed bugs. well actually we think we've had them for awhile, but we've just been sorta in denial about it and this week it got out of control. bites EVERYWHERE. haha I´m not sure which was worse, having the bed bugs, or having to naturally fumigate EVERYTHING. like its just really not that convenient here because its not like you can just throw everything in the wash real quick. haha but after lots of wasted time, bottles of bleach, and cancelled divisions with the sisters to prevent spreading them. I think we finally are rid of them. hahah hna wing will be going home with lots of little bites as souvenirs from Bolivia ;)

the holiday ¨carnival¨ has officially started here. AKA the WORST time ever to be a missionary in Bolivia. the actual holiday isn't for like 2 weeks, but they start like 3 weeks earlier and its basically just like whatever person is walking in the street gets attacked by water balloons and squirt guns. sucks for us cause we´re literally ALWAYS in the street. haha but its been super super hot this week so after you get over the pain of the balloon popping its actually kinda refreshing! 

Yesterday we had a lesson on being HAPPY. that we don't need to depend on anyone else to create our own happiness. we DECIDE to be happy in whatever circumstance we are faced with. that is something that these sweet Bolivans have taught me, you don't have to have everything going exactly your way to be able to be happy :) love you all!

love,

Hermana Andersen

January 18, 2016

Its been a pretty normal week here in Bolivia! I´ll start with a cool experience from yesterday, we have been using the records in the elders´ area book to try to find people that they were teaching before, but there arent street names or anything here, so all we have to go off of are the maps the elders have drawn in 30 seconds, usually reallly complicated. but yesterday we were looking for this lady and were seriously about to give up, but felt like we should try one more street, and we found it! she let us in and after getting to know her she told us that the night before she had a dream that 2 missionaries came back to her house to keep teaching her and she took it as an answer to her prayers, and when we showed up she said we were the outline of the people she saw in her dream! super cool!

I have been studying a talk this week by Niell F Marriott. ¨¨yielding our hearts to the Lord¨ its about accepting what the Lord wants for us and trusting that if we are doing what is right, it will all work out. sometimes I struggle telling people that dont have food to put on the table for their kids,  or have been abandoned by their husbands, or lost children, etc. that ¨everything will be okay.¨ but this talk helped me to understand that everything really is and always will be OKAY as long as we are doing the best that we can. Heavenly Father understands us and our situation and will always bless us. We might not understand today, or tomorrow, or maybe not even in this life. but if we are doing what we need to be doing everything will evenutally work out. 

¨you will have challenges and hard decisions to make throughout your life. but determine now to always do what is right and let the consequence follow, the consequence will always be for your good.¨ -Richard G. Scott

We are seeing lots of progress here! since I got here we have been able to count on about 4 or 5 families to be at church every sunday, there are lots of less actives because of bad leadership here in the past, so we have been focusing a lot on those menos actives and teaching them WHY we go to church. yesterday our assitance hit over 70, it was truly a miracle. we cant take the glory but we can say that Heavenly Father is touching lots of lives here in Santo Domingo :)

I love you all! have the best week! :)

love,

Hermana Andersen

A new less active lady we recently found. We are winning the way to her heart one pancake at a time!

We are teaching this little boys mom, he has a defect and cant walk so for her to be able to come to church we have to carry him 2 miles to church. its worth it though cause hes soo cute. hes trying to smile in this pic, not crying 

A Little Bit of Heaven

hello hello!

The week has been super awesome here! we flew into Cochabamba on Tuesday for a leadership conference that lasted all day, and there are only planes to come back in the mornings so we got to stay the night there and visit our old areas and converts! then we had 2 options.. sleep on the floor of another sisters apartment, OR sleep in the mission home... uh, I think we´ll take the mission home! let me just tell you a few amazing things about our stay in heaven: 

#1: carpet!! we took off our shoes and just let our poor little feet be so happy for a night

#2: eating cold ceral at 10 PM with President and Hermana Hansen, haha it was just like home! 

#3: no need for shower shoes!! PLUS there was a real shower door and also a real shower head and there wasn't even a risk of it electrocuting us! 

#4: the bed!! for the first time in over a year a slept in a real bed that was bigger than me (and also the bed that the apostles sleep in when they come)

#5: A/C INSIDE our room!! like if it got hot we could turn it up and when we got cold could turn it down!!

#6: waking up in the morning and going hill running up and down the temple hill - SO beautiful!

#7: WAFFLES!! we ate waffles for breakfast from a real waffle machine!!

#8: Dishwasher!! I kid you not that we literally spent 5 minutes trying to figure out how to open it before giving up and asking Hermana Hansen to come help us.. haha how embarrassing. 

#9: drinking water! we could drink the water straight from the tap and there wasn't little floating guys or anything in it! 

#10: Quiteness! we literally slept through the whole night and didn't hear a single dog barking or car engine rev or people yell!

So to sum it all up we literally felt like royalty for a day and it was the best! BUT that being said, it was also nice to get back to our humble little apartment with these people that we love so much! 

we are planning a wedding for the second week of February and the wife is going to get baptized the next day, wahoo! definitely wishing pinterest was a missionary approved website haha! 

I love you all and am so grateful for such amazing people in my life and such an amazing support system back home! have the best week! :)

love, 

Hermana Andersen :)

Happy New Year!

hey everyone!

okay so turns out that new years is actually a bigger holiday than Christmas! remember all those pigs that I said our in our area? well now there's just lots of baby pigs, cause I´ll the big ones were killed for new years eve dinner! hahah we were walking down the street and just heard this pig squealing and I told my companion ¨I think its giving birth!¨ haha we peeked our heads over the wall and definitely didn't see a pig giving birth, haha so disturbing! then we walked down the street and could hear pigs being killed in like every house! it was actually really traumatizing and I was actually really grateful that we aren't allowed to eat pig here!

we rang in the new year in our cute little apartment just the two of us! haha we were sooo tired but we couldn't just sleep on new years eve! haha so we held our eyes open and definitely regretted it the next day when the alarm went off at 630! haha our area was like a ghost town, we had an investigator fall asleep mid sentence. but we weren't even mad cause we felt the same way! 

our area is slowly but surely progressing, we have to go at a really slow pace with most of the people here because they usually don't have more than a second grade education. so we have to relate pretty  much everything to crops or sheep herding. haha but they are the most humble sweet people and I am so grateful to be here! 

Happy new year everyone! love you all so much!

love, 

Hermana Andersen