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

January 18, 2016

Its been a pretty normal week here in Bolivia! I´ll start with a cool experience from yesterday, we have been using the records in the elders´ area book to try to find people that they were teaching before, but there arent street names or anything here, so all we have to go off of are the maps the elders have drawn in 30 seconds, usually reallly complicated. but yesterday we were looking for this lady and were seriously about to give up, but felt like we should try one more street, and we found it! she let us in and after getting to know her she told us that the night before she had a dream that 2 missionaries came back to her house to keep teaching her and she took it as an answer to her prayers, and when we showed up she said we were the outline of the people she saw in her dream! super cool!

I have been studying a talk this week by Niell F Marriott. ¨¨yielding our hearts to the Lord¨ its about accepting what the Lord wants for us and trusting that if we are doing what is right, it will all work out. sometimes I struggle telling people that dont have food to put on the table for their kids,  or have been abandoned by their husbands, or lost children, etc. that ¨everything will be okay.¨ but this talk helped me to understand that everything really is and always will be OKAY as long as we are doing the best that we can. Heavenly Father understands us and our situation and will always bless us. We might not understand today, or tomorrow, or maybe not even in this life. but if we are doing what we need to be doing everything will evenutally work out. 

¨you will have challenges and hard decisions to make throughout your life. but determine now to always do what is right and let the consequence follow, the consequence will always be for your good.¨ -Richard G. Scott

We are seeing lots of progress here! since I got here we have been able to count on about 4 or 5 families to be at church every sunday, there are lots of less actives because of bad leadership here in the past, so we have been focusing a lot on those menos actives and teaching them WHY we go to church. yesterday our assitance hit over 70, it was truly a miracle. we cant take the glory but we can say that Heavenly Father is touching lots of lives here in Santo Domingo :)

I love you all! have the best week! :)

love,

Hermana Andersen

A new less active lady we recently found. We are winning the way to her heart one pancake at a time!

We are teaching this little boys mom, he has a defect and cant walk so for her to be able to come to church we have to carry him 2 miles to church. its worth it though cause hes soo cute. hes trying to smile in this pic, not crying