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 :)