April 13, 2015

hello everyone! 

Another week in the mission field! This week has been super super good - we have seen lots of progress in lots of our investigators and are so happy! 

Elsa (our blind investigator) called us Saturday night in tears because her husband came home super drunk and her 3 little kids were terrified - we talked to the bishop on Sunday and we are going to find her a room to live in and the church is going to help pay until we hear back from this institution

about when she can move in there. The even better news - after tuesday she wont be living with this man anymore which means she can get baptized and she is SO excited! we are planning for May 2nd and are so happy for her! 

We are also working with Rosmery and also her husband Juan and his whole family now! They are SO good to us and have serious desires to learn more and told us that they want to be baptized but just want to learn a little bit more first! This week we were sound asleep (we literally fall asleep the second our heads hit the pillows no matter how much noise there is outside) and we got a call from Rosmery - we answered like 80 year old grandmas so confused hahah and she was literally SO excited to tell us that her and Juan had just prayed and ¨felt something they never felt before¨ we were so happy the next day when we were actually awake and could really think about it haha! 

Transfers are next week and we are praying for one more transfer together because everything here is finally moving forward and we are working really hard with the ward here in good ol´ tiquipaya! I love this work and loving seeing how this gospel can change lives! I hope you are all doing well at home! I love you all and pray for you everyday! 

love, 

Hermana Andersen

April 6, 2015

Happy (late) Easter!!

Holidays in the mission are so different - definitely makes me think about how precious getting to spend them with the family is! But they are also super fun and unique because we know that we only get to experience them once or twice here! I showed my comp the american tradition of easter egg dying (thanks mom!) she LOVED it haha she said ´´you guys have the weirdest traditions but they are awesome!¨ The Bolivians are super lame with Easter, they don't do anything to really celebrate because all the Catholics here (pretty much everyone) celebrates on Friday, the day of Christ's death, with 12 plates of food!! We had an appointment right after lunch (full) and showed up just in time for them to start their 12 plates - oh my gosh we wanted to die. Luckily I had a plastic sack in my bag and every time they turned around we shoveled all the food we could into the sack because it is super offensive to turn down food and to not eat everything on your plate here. hahah we never wanted to touch another bite of food again in our lives by the time we got out of there.

Conference was the best! I got to watch the Saturday session in English with the other American missionaries which was awesome! Sunday we had to stay here in our area because it was "pedestrian day" and not a single car is allowed in all of Bolivia! Its actually a really cool day haha everyone is in the streets with their families and there is music and its like a big party in the street! So we took advantage of it and set up a kiosk between conference sessions and showed the little Easter clip that the church came out with and gave out free water! Super awesome turn out! Also it was so calm because we didn't have to worry about any cars - they stop for no one and nothing! Last week we were going into the city on pday to play soccer with the zone and watched a cholita get hit by a car and go flying! We were across like two lanes of freeway traffic and couldn't do anything but yell "call an ambulance!" but nobody wanted to call because whoever calls has to pay for it. Seriously so sad! Such is Bolivian life - things like that are just normal to them!

I'm so happy here and am loving everyday of this mission! I have learned more than I could have ever imagined and  am so grateful to be here in Bolivia! I pray for you all and hope you are all doing well at home!! Love you all!

Hermana Andersen :)

March 30, 2015

Hey everyone!!

Another week in Bolivia! so crazy how fast time flies here! This week has been really good - we have an investigator (Rosemary) who is 22 and we love teaching her because she is so close to our age and we can relate to her really well! but she has a super sad story - she was orphaned when she was really little and remembers nothing of her parents. she escaped the orphanage when she was a teenager, lived in the streets for awhile, and now has a husband and little 3 year old! her one life goal is to be able to find her parents. she just wants to talk to them and ask them what happened and why they abandoned her. she literally cried the whole hour telling us about our life and we left feeling so sad and wanting to help her but not know how - MIRACLE. at our pensionista there are two people eating with us only for this month who work with ID´s of bolivia!! they were able to take her information and find her uncle and she is hoping that through her uncle she can find her parents! holy cow it was so perfect and now she has even more of a desire to listen to us! the Lord works in crazy ways :) 

Saturday we got to go to the mission home to watch the womens conference! it was the best for 2 reasons - WE ATE MEXICAN FOOD and the americans got to watch the conference in english!! also we had a self defense class hahaha we learned a lot but it was seriously hilarious - me and my comp have been practicing at night hahah i think Im going to stick with running away. 

This week I have been studying a talk that I wanted to share - Its on how the small, daily things that we do in our lives (pray, go to church, read the scriptures) make such a big difference at the end of the day. Everyone knows they are important, so why doesn't everyone do them? because the consequences aren't effective immediately, just like not brushing your teeth once or twice isn't going to make your teeth fall out immediately. BUT, the consequences do come eventually! ´´start now. live a purposeful life. put the compounding power of daily disciplines in place in the important areas of your life. I promise you that in a year from now you will either be glad you started today, or you will wish you had.´´ I have learned the truthfulness of this here in Bolivia and know that the little things we do every day are so important!

HAPPY EASTER!! I hope you all have the best day - go on an easter egg hunt and eat all the american candy you possibly can! hahah the Bolivians think we are so crazy because we celebrate the resurrection of Christ with a bunny that brings eggs. Love you all!! 

love, 

Hermana Andersen

Loving Every Second!

Hola!!

This week has been super awesome and full of miracles as usual :) we've had some super great experiences and have some amazing investigators!

On Wednesday we visited our 14 year old investigator that told us the first time we visited her that she wanted to be baptized and she told us that her aunts and uncles who are super catholic have basically talked her out of every good feeling that she had before and that she was ´´just going to stay catholic for now´´. Holy cow we were SO devastated! We told her to just pray about it and the next day we fasted and prayed our hearts out - seriously harder than I've ever prayed for something in my life and on Friday when we went back she told us ´´I prayed and I felt even stronger than the first time that what you guys taught me is true and I need to keep learning no matter what my family says´´ MIRACLE.  So we are working really hard with her and just need to get her 3 assistances to church so we can baptize her! 

We also have some new investigators that are doing awesome! Getting new investigators that are super interested is the best and the worst - the best because they are actually interested, the worst because missionaries are actually therapists too and when people are interested they tell us their WHOLE life stories and the life stories here are seriously heartbreaking! Seriously every single person here has a background that makes me cry. Everything from abandonment to rape to starvation.. ah its so sad. but it makes me so grateful for the life that I have had and everything that I have been blessed with. the mission is seriously the best and I'm loving every second! :)

Another week!

Hey everyone!

Another week in Bolivia! This week has been pretty normal - normal for Bolivia hahaha sometimes I think I might not know what's normal anymore because I am just used to the Bolivian life now! but no super crazy food or super crazy drunk men to attack us so that's good!

 

This week started out super hard, the people here all want to talk about Jesus, but when it comes to following through with their commitments and finding them more than once its super hard and this week we basically had to start from scratch, minus a few that are progressing really good! I've learned that when my comp and I are working hard together and doing all we can do and putting all our trust in the Lord that is when we have success!

We have found 5 new people this week that are super super interested and have had some pretty powerful lessons - so we are expecting a super good week this week :)

This picture is with Elsa - our blind investigator that I talked about a few weeks ago - and her family. Right now we are working super hard with the bishop and a caseworker to get her into a home where they will let her live with her kids and take care of the kids until they are 18. This week the caseworker told us that they for sure want to take the kids - but aren't sure about Elsa. PLEASE PRAY FOR HER. The Bishop is fighting this super hard because she isn't safe with her husband and needs to stay with her kids. 

I love hearing everything that is going on at home! so so grateful for all the love and support! I truly have the best friends and family! Have the best week!

love, 

Hermana Andersen

#newhouse

Hey everyone!

Transfers were this week! I cant believe Ive already been here a whole transfer! But I am staying in the land of the flowers and will be finishing my training with my original ¨mom!¨ I'm so happy because we are working so hard and so well together and have so much work to here that I want to do together!

this week has been CRAZY! we've had some sketchy things happen in our apartment the last few weeks and our zone leaders have been wanting us out of there but finding a livable house here that meets the mission rules is basically impossible! But this week one of our menos active families that we have been working so hard with had to leave their house - its a mom and her 3 kids and her story is seriously heart wrenching (all the stories here are - I have yet to see a husband here that supports his family and loves his wife) She couldn't afford her house anymore and we had no idea what to do. we prayed and prayed and realized ´´wait, she can afford our house!´´ SO we had 24 hours to find a good apartment and be completely moved out so that they could move in. It was seriously the craziest day but a day of MIRACLES. we have a apartment that is super pretty (bolivian standards) and has a super pretty view of Tiquipaya and I used my bargaining skills to get it down to an affordable price for the mission, our leaders approved and the next day we were out of there! We were so grateful for the Elders to move everything for us - we now have 0 uncracked mirrors in the house but it was a small price to pay for their efficiency! the price that wasn't so small to pay is that they changed our alarm clocks to 3 in the morning, we never change our alarms so they went off and we got up and started exercising - haha we were DEAD! i told my comp ´´holy cow that move seriously killed me I´m not sure I will be able to make it through the day!´´ at about 3:30 we checked our clocks are realized it was the middle of the night hahaha I was so mad. Still in the process of finding some sort of revenge. 

I love the mission experiences so much! This week we found a young 14 year old that is super interested! we were teaching her the first lesson in the dark this week - we couldn't see her face and she was so quiet the whole lesson! We were worried we had offended her but finished to the end and invited her to pray to know if what we had taught was true - that was when we realized she had been crying the whole lesson. she looked at us and said ´´I have never felt this way in my entire life - I know that what you guys just taught me is true´´ HOLY COW there are no words to describe my happiness when I heard this! Lessons like that make every hard day 100% worth it.

These people are amazing and I have been so so humbled here. There is hardly a day that goes by that I don't have to hold back my tears as I see how these people are living and how little they have. I feel like I have lived in a bubble of ungratefulness all my life - I knew poor existed but until being here really immersed in it I had no idea that it existed to this extent. I am so grateful to be here and everyday I learn more. I have been blessed with more in this short 19 years of my life than most of these people will ever see in their entire life and that breaks my heart - but I will never again take for granted everything that I have! 

I hope you are all doing well! So grateful for all the love and support! 

love, 

hermana Andersen :)

March 2, 2015

Another week in Bolivia! I cant believe that I have been here in Tiquipaya for over a month! Seriously I feel like Feberuary didnt even happen! haha never in my life has time gone by sooo fast! 

This week I ate guinea pig... haha every week I swear the food gets weirder here! the worst part was they keep the guinea pigs in a cage in the kitchen and all this time I thought they were pets! hahah until I saw it cooked on my plate and I felt like its brothers in the cage were glaring at me and I wanted to tell them ´´sorry I really am not enjoying this experience either!´´ hahah the whole time I just couldnt stop thinking about my childhood pet guinea pig Brownie - so sad haha! Ive learned 2 things about the food here: 1. never ever ask what you are eating - ignorance truly is bliss. 2. the power of hot sauce is so real! If it is on the table I am always so relieved - I may not have taste buds when I get back but I think its worth it!

These week has been amazing! we´ve found a lot of new people and seen a lot of miracles! we got a call one morning from our investigators that we thought we had lost because the people here move SO MUCH and her mother-in-law told us she had moved. but she said. ´´hermanas, why did you forget about me? I want to learn more!´´ holy cow we were so happy! haha it was like a missionarys dream come true! 

I want to share my fav scripture this week! ´´He who seeketh to save his life shall lose it, but he who loseth his life for my sake shall find it.´´ -Matthew 10:9 The only way to really find ourselves is to lose ourselves in the service of others!

I hope everyone is doing well!! love and miss you all!!

love,

Hermana Anderesn