August 3, 2015

Hey everyone!

Its been a pretty uneventful week here.. my companion was ¨sick¨ for a couple days.. so we had a lot of time to clean the house and wash clothes haha! but as soon as she was ready to get back at we knocked on our very first appointment´s door and were sitting on the curb waiting for them to come out and a dog comes running straight up to us and pees right on my companion. hahaha she was SO mad but I could not stop laughing. 

This week we met Isreal. he is a 17 year old whose mom died when he was 10 and since then his dad has been in and out of jail. He goes to work from 5 in the morning to 10 at night - his boss doesn't pay him but he gives him his lunch and dinner. we asked him why he´s okay with that and he told us ¨Its my only source of food, what else am I going to do?¨ he is so lost and it absolutely broke my heart talking to him and hearing his story. he latched on to our message super fast and yesterday came to church in a full suit! In all of my time here I have never had an investigator come to church dressed like that, he told us that he found it in the house from his dad´s wedding. the stories we hear here really make me think and really put all the ¨hard things¨ in my life into perspective.

Lots of prayers for our couple Nancy and Juvenal please! they were supposed to get baptized this upcoming Saturday but Juvenal took a hard fall this week and they are thinking they are going to have operate on his toe which puts a damper on all plans.. ugh its amazing the obstacles that come when we get someone committed! 

Bolivia is the country of ¨blockages´´.. whenever a group of people doesn't like something they ban together and park there cars in the middle of every stop light so that nobody can get anywhere and all public transportation shuts down. so frustrating for us because we are in the city and have to take public transportation so much! luckily it usually only lasts a few hours or a day but there is a city in our mission that has been in this for a month now, they aren't letting anyone in our out of the city until they get what they want.. including food ha so all of the stores are shut down and its a big mess and I am thanking my lucky stars I'
m not in that area! food storage has become a huge thing in the mission these past few weeks! 

I hope you are all doing well and are happy! thanks for all the support! 

Con mucho amor, 

Hermana Andersen :)

July 27, 2015

hey everyone!

It has been an adventure of a week! my companion is finishing up her mission so we are making the rounds on Pday to say bye to all the people she has gotten close to.. On monday we went to a family that has a bee farm and sells honey for a living. They were getting ready to open one of the boxes and I got the brilliant idea that I wanted to experience it. so I talked my companion into it, and they gave us suits for our top half and told us ´´dont worry, they dont sting your legs.´´ BIGGEST LIE EVER. we lasted a whole 30 seconds with the box open before they went straight to our legs and started stinging us like crazy! hahaha we dropped everything and ran as far away as possible. we each had at least 20 stings and we thought we were going to die because it hurt soo bad! they told us ´´we´re really sorry, we´ve never seen them react like this!´´ Our legs swelled up and we were waddling for a good 3 days and they continue to itch us like crazy! haha we bought every thing that could possibly help from the farmacy but there is really nothing that helped.. lets just say I never want to see another bee in my life!

we are continuing to find amazing people in this area, yesterday we found a family that is part member. the wife is inactive and the husband assisted a lot when he was a teenager but never got the chance to be baptized and he told us ´´I know that this is the true church, sometimes life just gets in the way.¨´ it was seriuolsy a miracle to find them and its amazing to see how Heavenly Father puts people like that in our path every single day!

I hope you are all doing well and got to go to a rodeo this week ;) On pioneer day I was reading President Uchtdorf´s message about how much we can learn from the pioneers and their courage to keep moving forward even through all the hard times. even as there spouses and children were dying they were singing ´´all is well!´´ Ive been thinking a lot about that this week and how even in the harderst of times we can look at the blessings that surround us, put our trust in Heavenly Father, and sing ¨all is well!´´ Attitude really is so much and the way we look at the trials we are faced with can change everything! 

love you all!

Hermana Andersen :) 

July 20, 2015

Hey everyone! 

Its been such a good week here! No super crazy experiences but so many miracles! earlier this year 2 teenagers got baptized in our area but the parents wanted nothing to do with the church.. but we have been visiting and teaching them since I got here and this week both the mom and dad accepted baptismal dates in August and they told us they want to be an eternal family!! holy it was so hard to hold back my excitement and stay calm when they told us, haha we left the house and were literally jumping up and down! Its seriously a miracle.

That same day we visited one of our inactive families and when we walked in the husband who hasn't been to church since he got baptized and pretty much dedicates his life to drinking was reading the Book of Mormon! literally I thought it was staged and I just starting laughing but he was for real and he told us that he is ready to change his life! 

We ended the day with an appointment on the top of a hill that over
looks all of Cochabamba and as we were heading home we stopped to look at over the city and there were fireworks everywhere! haha we have no idea what they were celebrating because nobody said anything about a holiday and fireworks arent even legal here hahah but it was the PERFECT ending to a perfect day, and week! 

Its so true that this really is the Lord´s work and we are really just instruments in his hands, finding the people that he has prepared for us. I couldn't be more grateful to be here learning and growing and for the opportunity to truly see the difference that the gospel makes in these peoples lives. 

I hope everyone has the best week! Thanks for all the love and support from home! 

love, 
Hermana Andersen :)

July 13, 2015

Hey everyone!! 

Its been a crazy week, the pope came to bolivia this week! haha the government blocked out all of the TV stations in the whole country and played the Pope on every single channel, so all week everyone was glued to their TVs watching the pope, which made our job pretty hard! Also, someone started a crazy rumor that there were trumpets in the sky the night he was going to leave, so everyone we meet asks us if we heard the trumpets.. when we tell them no they are disgusted hahah its been crazy. 

We have realized that our safest option is to be friends with the super alcoholics that live in the street because we pass by them a million times a day.. they yell ¨hi sisters!¨ and ask us to give them pamphlets to read.. hahah whatever keeps them happy. but this week one of them approached us to ask us to give them blankets to sleep on at night, as he was talking he read my nametag and when he saw ¨Jesus Christ¨ his eyes got huge and he said ¨Oh my gosh, You are Jesus!!¨ he was seriously convinced of it hahaha and backed away slowly. We walked away dying laughing, an experience I will never forget!

As we spent an entire day this week getting rejected, yelled at, doors slammed in our face, etc. I couldn't help but think ´´I think this is why I didn't share the gospel more when I was at home´´ I was left thinking a lot about that.. ´´what crazy person leaves their family and everything they have for 2 years to come to a foreign country and be rejected?´´ the next day I found a scripture that was a definite answer to my prayers:

 ¨Blessed are ye, when men shall revile you, and persecute you, and shall say all manner of evil against you falsely for my sake, Rejoice, and be exceedingly glad: for great is your reward in heaven, for so persecuted they the prophets which were before you. Ye are the salt of the earth: but if the salt have lost his savour, wherewith shall it be salted? it is thenceforth good for nothing, but to be cast out, and to be trodden under foot of men. Ye are the light of the world. A city that is set on a hill cannot be hid, Neither do men light a candle and put it under a bushel, but on a candlestick; and it giveth light to all that are in the house. Let your light so shine before men, that they may see your good works and glorify your Father which is in heaven.´´ Matt 5:11-16

That gave me motivation to keep moving forward and reminded me that I am here because I have something that changes lives and if I can find even one person that is interested in our message after a whole day of being rejected its completely worth it. I love this work and couldn't be happier to be here!

I love you all! 

love, 

Hermana Andersen :)

#winterwonderland #happy4th‏

hello hello!

Whoever said that Cochabamba is an ¨eternal spring¨ doesn't know what spring is because we have definitely definitely been in winter weather here this week! there is even snow in the mountains! this morning we drove for 3 hours to the top of the mountain to play in the snow! haha the americans were saying ¨this is crazy¨ the whole time but it was super fun to see the latinos that have never seen snow before play and we showed them a good snowball fight :) also my goal was to take a picture with llamas... we literally had to climb a mountain straight up to find them but it was a mission accomplished so I was happy :) also on the way home we got in a fender bender and our bus driver went into video game mode to chase the guy down and everyone was screaming hahah I thought for sure we were dead!

The 4th of July has always been one of my favorite holidays but even more now that I have another country to compare it too! I love this country and these people but seriously.. nothing compares! hahah my companion is not a huge fan of americans so there wasn't much celebrating but I woke up singing american patriotic songs and she looked at me with a very serious face and said ¨I hope you don't
get assassinated today.¨ ...uh hahaha me too! luckily it rained the whole entire day and when its cold nobody leaves their house! so we didn't have any problems in the street :) 

Everything is great here and we have been working hard to find new people to teach and have definitely seen a lot of blessings and miracles everyday this week! thank you for all the love, support, and prayers! 

love, 

Hermana Andersen 

June 29, 2015

Hey Everyone!

The weeks seem to be flying by before I can even catch my breath! This week was a holiday week here - its called ´san Juan¨ and its supposedly ´´the coldest night of the year´´ here in Bolivia and everyone has a campfire on their porch and eats hot dogs! haha its actually kinda cute but holidays are always hard days here because everyone is busy and the number of drunks in the street triples! 

Yesterday we also got to go with the ward to a home for kids that are orphaned... its similar to the Christmas box house and I couldn't help but hold back tears as we talked to them and heard there stories.. it was also such a cool experience to see the ward interact and help them because even the members here have basically nothing but they are willing to give everything that they do have to help others.. thats what I love about this church! 

funny story this week.. somehow a gigantic cat entered our house (we have no idea how or how long it has been living with us because our house is completely closed off) but I was studying at my desk and my comp was in the room still and the cat literally jumped from the ceiling and scared me sooo bad. It was HUGE, I'm convinced it was a half cat half dog. I screamed and my companion came running out - she is about just as good or worse if thats possible with animals as me and started screaming ´´get it out, get it out!!¨ I screamed back ´´you get it out!¨ hahah the thing ran and hid and every time we got close it would hiss at us. we spent literally an hour trying to call it out, we even tried leaving it a trail of cheese, and eventually had to knock on the neighbor's door and ask her to come rescue us hahah how embarrassing. My hate for animals has only grown in the last 6 months! 

We are doing great here and have a lot of really promising people that we are teaching! As we were passing by a group of drunks this week the thought came to my mind ´´what does God think of them?´´ and then popped into my head a talk from a 70 in this last conference that ´´compared to God, none of us are all that different in our sins´´ we are all SO imperfect and God loves us all just the same even in our imperfections and cares a lot more about who we are and who we are trying to become than about who we once were. that helped me a lot because everyone can change and Heavenly Father loves the drunks in the street just as much as he loves me and he knows that they have the potential to change as well! ´´thanks to the atonement of Jesus Christ we can look at our previous selves and say ´´Twas I, but Tis not I.´´ KEEP MOVING FORWARD!! 

love you all! thanks for all the support! 

Hermana Andersen :)

Another week in good ole Boliva!

I am finally adjusting to city life.. other than the fact that this city is not made for tall people. hahaha I hit my head on EVERYTHING. They sell everything in little tent things and if I had a dollar for every time I smacked my head on a pole sticking out of the tent I would be loaded. hahaha the goose eggs are so real. 

Also something that I am getting used to (good or bad?) is my comp talking literally every second haha from the time she wakes up to the time we go to bed she is talking - even when she is in the bathroom and I am starting to get so used to it that I forget to keep listening!

Saturday was a super frustrating day - Pablo's baptism was programmed for 6 pm and we were at the church cleaning and preparing at about 3... we got call from him at 5:15 telling us that his daughter had disappeared and he was with the police looking for her and wouldn't be able to get baptized. turns out she ran away with her boyfriend and they still haven't been able to find her. UGH I have never felt a disappointment like that! its amazing how satan even works through other people to do everything he can from keeping baptisms away. so lots of prayers for Pablo - the people here are super superstitious and if something bad happens on a big day its a sure sign that its the wrong decision.. :(

This week we had a ¨mini MTC¨ for the future missionaries in the stake - we taught some classes and even took them out in the street and taught them how to knock doors and contact people in the street. It brought back so many memories of me before the mission and made me realize how much I have learned and grown in these 6 months and made me SO grateful for this experience! 

This week I have been studying a lot about the importance of continually learning and growing in all aspects but especially in the gospel. when we take gaining knowledge in the gospel as something of importance it shapes our WHOLE life. ¨True doctrine, understood, changes attitudes and behavior. The study of the doctrines of the gospel will improve behavior quicker than a study of behavior will improve behavior.¨ -Boyd K. Packer

When we truly understand what this gospel is all about, our desires change and our behavior and attitude is good not because we are being forced by our parents or our leaders, but because we understand what this life is really about! 

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

love, 

Hermana Andersen