August 17, 2015

Hey everyone!

Its been a hard week here but the good news about hard weeks is that they are usually followed by really good ones! 

My companion is getting ready to head home next week and as most of you know she hasnt talked to her family since a month before she left for her mission.. her parents kicked her out when she got her call and she hasnt received one email, hasnt skyped, nothing.. so last week President gave her permission to call home to tell them when she would be coming in. she was SO scared, like shaking and crying and she told me ¨I dont think I can do it, will you talk to them¨ haha uh I was pretty scared too because Ive heard some pretty crazy stories. Her dad answered and I told him who I was, and that his daughter would be coming home next week and that I hoped he would be there to pick her up. He paused for a long time and said ¨my daughter´s coming home?? of course I will be there!¨ it was SUCH a relief and my companion got to talk to her dad for the first time in 18 months and was happier than I have ever seen her!

Also even in the hardest weeks there are lots of miracles, we have been teaching Valeria, a 10 year old for awhile now and she comes to church EVERY week and is super smart and has been wanting to get baptized for a long time, but her mom wouldnt let her. this week we were in a lesson with her and talking to her mom and she told us ¨I understand now, I want her to be baptized and I want to follow her footsteps one day¨ so we are planning for her baptism saturday! lots of prayers that everything goes well! I hope everyone is doing good, love you all!

love, 

Hermana Andersen

August 10, 2015

hey everyone!

woah I feel like this week didn't even happen! we have been soo busy and have had something every single day this week! On wednesday we got to go to the temple and had zone conference! Only being able to go to the temple every 3 months makes for 200 realllly excited missionaries when we finally get to go! Also every zone conference Hna Hansen makes us homemade chocolate chip cookies... ah definitely the highlight! 

Thursday was ´´independance day´´ in Bolivia.. hahah its definitely not a 4th of July but the Bolivians are super proud of their country! we had a ward activity all day and each organization was in charge of a department in Bolivia.. the ´´mission work´´ got Santa Cruz. It was super funny because we had to make a poster about Santa Cruz and food from Santa Cruz and have our investigators dance a ´´typical dance´´ from there.. and we obviously know nothing about Santa Cruz hahaha so we basically made everything up and didn't win any prizes but it was a fun day! 

Saturday one of my investigators from Tiquipaya got baptized and I am so lucky to be close enough that I got permission to go! Its so amazing to see how this work progresses and how sometimes people need more than just the short time we are with them to be ready but everyone has their own time and I have really seen that here!

I wanted to share a quote that President Hansen shared with us in zone conference ¨God is not waiting to love you until after you have overcome your weaknesses and bad habits. He loves you today with a full understanding of your struggles.¨ -Pres. Uchtdorf

Heavenly Father truly understands all  of us perfectly and loves us perfectly even with all our imperfections! 

I love you all and am so grateful for all the support! have the best week! 

-hermana andersen :)

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