March 7, 2016

hey everyone!

The week has FLOWN by. we had to be in Cochabamba on Thursday for a leadership meeting, and now we are even farther away so we have to travel even longer, so we lost pretty much all of Wednesday-Friday.. but it was super awesome to be in cocha and be able to fill our lungs with air and not wear jackets and visit our converts! 

We were supposed to have a baptism on friday right when we got back.. but the husband refused to give her permision and no permission = no baptism. :( but cute hna Reina is super determined to get baptized cause she knows its right and we arent letting it get us down, our goal is to see him in church next to her! 

In the pic is our sweet little miracle of the week. Her name in Nilda and we found her RIGHT after leaving the appointment that we found out that we wouldn't be having the baptism. she was just standing in the street and said "hi hermanas!" so we went and talked to her, she invited us to her house and come to find out ALL her kids are members that live far away. we had a good talk and invited her to church not thinking much of it cause usually the grandmas are real catholic and are really nice to us but don't want much to do with the church.. but she showed up all by herself, stayed all 3 hours, and loved it! she makes me so happy to talk to cause she reminds me so much of my own grandma and it really is like going to "grandmas house" when we visit her. cookies and all! 

Lots of prayers for the baptism we have programmed this week! we are praying that it goes better than the last :) love you all!! have a good week! 

love, 

Hermana Andersen 

February 29, 2016

hey everyone!

This week has been a blur, we've had lots of hurdles to jump over.. but at the end of a hard week we always see lots of blessings and yesterday was a big testimony of that! My lungs are slowly adjusting to this high altitude and I am loving being here with these sweet people! 

we have a baptism programmed for this week, lots of prayers that everything will go well please! :)

I will write more next week when I have time to compose my thoughts haha!

love and miss you all! 

love,

hermana andersen

Overlooking Potosi

February 22, 2016

hey everyone!

its been a crazy week, it was the presidential election and supposedly had the potential to be dangerous, so we weren't allowed to talk to anyone in the street or knock on any doors.. and yesterday we weren't even allowed to leave the house. ha it seemed a little bit ridiculous for us cause our area was super calm, but rules are rules! 

but despite that we've had a really good week, I wish everyone could witness even a fraction of the miracles I have seen in this area - literally every single day that I've been here we've witnessed huge miracles.

Our week was filled with a service project that started out simple and turned out to be gigantic. We have a less active named Alicia, my compañera knew of her but not much about her.. so when one of our appts fell through I said ¨lets go see if she´ll let us in!¨ she opened the door literally distraught.. I've seen a lot of sad people and sad situations here, but I've never in my life seen someone that looked the way she looked. she let us in and we listened and listened and listened some more, she had just that day passed through some really really hard things because of some bad deciones that she had made and she told us that she was about to take her own life. the whole time I was just praying with all my might that we would be able to find the right words to help her. after a loong lesson on the atonement and explaining to her that all was not lost, her whole rostro (idk if thats english or spanish?) literally change. she got a smile on her face and told us ¨I'm ready to start over new¨ she we got the idea of helping her start fresh by giving her a fresh look to her house too.. but turns out you cant just go in and paint the walls.. you have to sand and I mean SAND every square inch first.. luckily we had the zone to call in to help us out and Alicia is seriously I different person.

the church is true and it really does change lives! there are so many people that we meet that think they have no way out. Pres. Uchtdorf said ¨sometimes we believe that the end of the story has already been written, when in reality, we are only in the middle chapters.¨ I love teaching these sweet people that and seeing the way their lives change when they realize that there really is so much more. 

I love you all, thanks for all the love and support! 

love, 

Hermana Andersen :)

hello potosi

hey everyone!

The new area is great! Potosi is suuper high (13000 ft) so if you close your mouth and breath through one nostril, that's pretty much how it is here. haha I tried to walk and talk and eat at the same time and had to sit down cause I almost passed out. but they warned me that I would probably be knocked out for a good week and haven't had any problems (knock on wood) so so far so good :)

The food here is also very interesting.. of the 5 days I have been here, we have had tuna straight out of the can (not even mixed with a little bit of mayonnaise or anything), liver, and cow stomach... haha my pensionista loves to play the ¨guess what you're eating¨ game and my biggest challenge is keeping a straight face when she tells me 

its also suuuper cold here! I sorta feel like I'm in Utah only without the heating. 

BUT this place is amazing. I have had countless amazing experiences just in these past few days. we are teaching some really great people of all sorts - haha we even have a hippie! I have never heard of a Mormon hippie, but he really is so interested! the only problem is he has to get legal first...

my companion is hna Cabarcas - shes from Colombia (I LOVE Colombians) I was so excited when we got our transfers because she replaced me in my first area so we have been friends for a long time and are working awesome together! 

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

love,

hermana andersen :)

#homeless

woah..

I could write a book about this week and it still wouldn't be sufficient to sum it all up, but I will keep it short and sweet:

we spent the week saying goodbye to everyone form here that hna wing wanted to, and Thursday morning I dropped her off at the airport, I was with some of the other sisters that afternoon and get a call from the zone leaders saying ¨um we´re really sorry but you have to be out of your house tomorrow.¨ um WHAT?? my heart literally just sank because I knew that meant they were going to be taking me out of the area as well. so I spent a lonnng sleepless night packing up the whole house (missionary houses have so much crap), and the zone leaders got there in the morning to move everything out.. which left me literally homeless but luckily I called me sweet pensionista in tears telling her everything and she said ¨what are you talking about, you always have a home here!¨ so I have been staying there since Thursday with another sister that is heading home today and didn't have a companion. 

I am so emotionally drained from having to say goodbye to everyone here so suddenly, leaving the wedding and 3 baptism plans that we have in the next couple weeks kills me. but President called me last night to explain the whole situation and assured me that the elders who will be coming into open the area will be super good, so I'm just trusting in that!

I am heading to Potosi, its even further from where I'm at now, I will be the sister training leader for the sisters out there, the cool part is that with this transfer I will have gotten to know the whole mission! its about 3 1/2 hours from here in taxi, I´ll hopefully be heading out tomorrow, but that city is known for ¨strikes¨ and right now they aren't letting anyone out or in unless you want to risk it and run... hahaha it will definitely be an adventure. 

story of the week: there´s lots of houses here that are made out of ¨adobe¨ (I don't know if that's a word in English?) but its just basically like mud and on Tuesday we get to one of our investigators house and the whole thing was just a pile.. it was one of the saddest things I have seen.. we helped them clean up what they could and for now they are just living in one little room that's still standing :( so grateful for literally everything!

I love you all, thanks for all the support! 

love, 

Hermana Andersen

February 1, 2016

hello!

Not much new news this week, but we did have another cool experience with dreams! this is definitely my area of dreamers. we found this cute little lady a couple months ago, but we haven't been able to find her for a long time so we decided to leave her for a time, but yesterday we were walking down the street and we ran into her and she got this huge smile on her face and said ¨HERMANAS! I´m so glad that I ran into you, I had a dream about both of you last night and I know you have what I need, please come visit me!¨ uh you don't have to beg us twice! so we went and visited her and the next day she walked a half hour to church in the pouring rain! super awesome! 

also yesterday we were walking out the door to go to church and find this dead dog laying on our doorstep.. hahah it was quite disturbing and we just plugged our noses, closed our eyes, jumped over the dog and went to church! hahah luckily when we got home it wasn't there anymore.. we have no idea what happened to it. seriously the weirdest things happen here!

we taught this fam how to make tacos.. haha

well that's about all, I am loving the work here. we are busy planning the wedding, avoiding water balloons, and packing hna wing´s bags! I hope everyone is well at home :)

love, 

Hermana Andersen 

they actually hated them but it was fun for us! 

sleep tight, don't let the bed bugs bite!‏

hello hello!

adventure of the week? BED BUGS. yes we got bed bugs. well actually we think we've had them for awhile, but we've just been sorta in denial about it and this week it got out of control. bites EVERYWHERE. haha I´m not sure which was worse, having the bed bugs, or having to naturally fumigate EVERYTHING. like its just really not that convenient here because its not like you can just throw everything in the wash real quick. haha but after lots of wasted time, bottles of bleach, and cancelled divisions with the sisters to prevent spreading them. I think we finally are rid of them. hahah hna wing will be going home with lots of little bites as souvenirs from Bolivia ;)

the holiday ¨carnival¨ has officially started here. AKA the WORST time ever to be a missionary in Bolivia. the actual holiday isn't for like 2 weeks, but they start like 3 weeks earlier and its basically just like whatever person is walking in the street gets attacked by water balloons and squirt guns. sucks for us cause we´re literally ALWAYS in the street. haha but its been super super hot this week so after you get over the pain of the balloon popping its actually kinda refreshing! 

Yesterday we had a lesson on being HAPPY. that we don't need to depend on anyone else to create our own happiness. we DECIDE to be happy in whatever circumstance we are faced with. that is something that these sweet Bolivans have taught me, you don't have to have everything going exactly your way to be able to be happy :) love you all!

love,

Hermana Andersen