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

Adventure of a Lifetime!!!

Hey everyone!!

Today has been crazy!! We woke up at 4 this morning to go to a place called Incachaca! Its a rain forest somewhere in Bolivia and is SO beautiful!! literally there are no words or pictures that can describe it! It rained so hard all day so we were so so wet and muddy from head to toe but it was such an adventure and so worth it! we basically had to go off roading in our mini van to get there which was sooo sketchy hahah at one point we had to abandon ship because the rocks were super slick and our van was rolling backwards down the mountain because it couldnt take the weight! hahah everything here is seriously such an adventure!

I cant even describe how many miracles we see every single day here teaching these people! I have really learned the truthfulness of ´´and thus we see that by small means the Lord brings to pass great things´´ we are currently working to find a house and some kind of work for our sweet blind investigator Elsa that I talked about last week to get her away from her crazy drunk husband. It will be a lot easier to teach her when we get her out of there too because he hates us and we have to hide from him and more than once have been chased out of the house and down the street haha the people here are CRAZY! but the bishop is helping a lot, ive really seen how amazing the church is and SO generous! truly the church of the Savior! 

My comp told me our first day that it has always been her dream to learn english, so everyday I teach her a new phrase and she can now have a simple conversation! it makes me so happy to see her progress and she is so proud of it! haha also its the best when I cant take spanish anymore and can say ´´alright lets talk english for a bit!´´

Also a lot of the old people here speak Quechua which is seriously a crazy language. its quite a predicament when we contact someone and learn that they only speak quechua because my comp doesn't understand it either hahah when I hear it I seriously feel like I'm in Star wars talking to those animal things!! hahah i told that to an Elder and he told me that It really is the language that they speak. I think he was kidding but he sounded pretty serious and I think I believe it! 

The mish is so hard but I feel so so blessed to be here and am so happy!! I love being able to see these sweet people´s lives change as they find the truth! I hope all is well at home! Les amo mucho!

love, 

Hna Andersen

misson lyfe

hello everyone!!

Another week in Bolivia! The past 2 days we've had to stay in the house all day because they have this thing called ´´carnival´´ here where basically everyone in Bolivia gets drunk and dances in the street and throws water everywhere! haha it actually was great we had time to clean the whole house and also had a pretty sick water fight with the elders at our pension! and the water part of the carnival started last week - little kids carry around water balloons everywhere and they would hide in the bushes and seriously bombard us on every corner because missionaries are prime targets! haha between the freakin dogs and the kids with water balloons I think we looked more like ninjas than missionaries last week!

Brinley & Hermana Callata

Also we got to go to the Cochabamba temple last week with a few other zones! seriously SO beautiful and its always so good to get to see and talk to other white missionaries in english!

Ive already been more humbled here than i could ever imagine! these people live such simple lives but are content with the things they have! we've had some super sad experiences and seen some super sad things - last week we got a new investigator who is super great, she is a young mom who recently lost her sight from a brain tumor and has 4 young kids. sunday we went to get her for church and she called from the door (most doors here are just bed sheets) that she couldn't come, we asked if she is okay and she came out crying in pain. she explained to us that she was having what sounded like an appendicitis - but cant afford to go to the doctor because her husband uses the little money they do have for alcohol. she didn't want us to return with the elders for a blessing that day because her husband was home, and we haven't left the house the last 2 days so we arent sure how shes doing but I'm seriously heart broken for her - I cried the whole 3 hours of church! But we have been praying constantly are hoping everything will be okay today when we go check on her!

Things like this happen every single day here that are seriously heartbreaking, but we also so sooo many miracles every single day and it is truly amazing to see how the Lord works! I´m starting to get used to this Bolivian life and there is nowhere else I'd rather be! 

I love you alll!! Thank you for all the love and support!! 

love, Hna Andersen

Week 2 in Bolivia Done!

This week went by a lot faster and felt a lot more productive because I am getting to know the people and our investigators better! The baptism was awesome!! They were so so excited and the spirit was super strong! It only started 2 hours late! haha im convinced that i was sent here to learn patience. if they tell us something starts at 7, we can plan on about 8 or 830 and i get sooo frustrated because we waste so much time waiting for meetings to start. haha the baptism was supposed to start at 5 and at 7 there was still no bishop with the baptism clothes - we couldnt take it anymore so me and my comp took off running in the pouring rain to the bishops house to get the clothes ourselves! hahaha so we are soaking wet in all the pictures but i just couldnt stop laughing because only in Bolivia!

There are so many things here I cant get used to! for example if you dont greet and kiss every single person in the room everytime you walk in the room no matter how many times you see them a day or if youve never met them, you are considered rude! even the men kiss - we obvioulsy cant kiss the men but our investigators dont understand that so we have to keep a very sturdy hand shake hahah but sometimes is almost impossible. this week we were with an investigator for the first time and he went in to kiss my cheek and I leaned back and he pulled harder hahah my companion was screaming ¨no, no, we cant!!!´´ hahah i felt like i was in a movie! he kept on trying and my companion had to pull me away hahah he was sooo mad. i dont think he´ll be getting baptized any time soon! 

also something crazy here is the transportation. when we go into the city we take truffis - mini vans and if you can fit in, youre allowed! today i broke my record of 20 people in one mini van and right now there are riots and blockages on almost every corner because next month is election month, we got stuck in a traffic jam for 2 HOURS! hahaha take my word for it that you never want to be in a mini van with 20 angry bolivians for 2 hours! it smelt sooo bad and i just had to stick my head out the window and laugh! seriously i am always laughing here because what else can you do?!

I will never every take a washing maching for granted again! haha hand washing everything is so much more work than i imagined! this week my comp. said - ´´wow you have a lot less clothes to wash this week!´´ hahah I´m making them last as long as possible! 

Along with the goodness of the gospel, im bringing the goodness of no-bake cookies to Bolivia! we couldnt get anyone in the ward to help with treats for the baptism, and we dont have an oven so it was the only thing i could think of and the Bolivans DEVOURED them! hahaha im teaching how to make them for a relief society activity this week - changing lives one cookie at a time!

love you all and hope all is well at home!! 

Hey everyone!

I am officially a real missionary! haha I am in Tiquipaya which is a little pueblo in Cochabamba. actually its huge! My companion tells me that we haven't even seen a fourth of it yet and i feel like we have walked all of Bolivia! My comp is Hna Callata, she is from Peru and is super excited for me to learn spanish better hahah shes a really good worker which is good!

This place is crazy! there are stray dogs EVERYWHERE and they hate missionaries... hahah we have to carry books of mormon in our hands so that we can hit them away when they charge us. its my worst nightmare really hahah. also the men here are super creepy and when they are drunk so scary. (close your eyes mom and dad) this week we went into a little store and there was a drunk man and my comp whispered for me to be careful and her heard her and cornered us and started throwing punches. i thought we were done for and was wishing i had some more self defense classes! luckily he got distracted and we took off running! that was one way to teach me to stay away from them haha!

i actually have really liked the food so far, our pensionista is really good but my stomach does not agree. haha ive been super sick all week, the problem is there are no public bathrooms here, so its a pretty crappy situation hahah no pun intended. also my comp tells everyone we talk to and everyone has a different disgusting magic solution that i can assure you does not help with an upset stomach, if anything it makes it worse hahah but i am grateful that they care and want to help! 

we have 2 baptisms on saturday!!! its a mom and son and they are so excited, its so cute!! i don't really count them as my own because the date was set before i got here, but we have a couple investigators right now that are really progressing which is super exciting!

I hope everything is good at home! NEVER TAKE AMERICA FOR GRANTED. haha seriously its the best. but the people here are amazing and seriously willing to give everything they have! love and miss you all!!

love, 

hermana andersen :)