Christmas Skype

No letter this week, but we did get to Skype for a while on Christmas Day! Elder Anderson's image was a bit pixelated, but his voice came through loud and clear. It was great to see him and talk to him. It was the highlight of the Christmas Season for us! Here is some footage from the Skype:

Well here we are at Christmas.

It´s already Christmas, wow, where has the time gone!!!! It´s projected to be 97 degrees on Christmas.. my first ever like that.

This week was a pretty normal week, nothing really spectacular happened. We are still working and doing our best. But we did uncover a few things about the history of the branch and why it is kind of struggling. So, people have gone pretty inactive because of the branch president, because he like hardly ever does anything, which is a problem. And on Sundays the ward would probably fall apart if the missionaries weren´t there. for example, yesterday at church. I played the organ for the hymns. We blessed the sacrament. We gave talks. We even did a musical number Noche de Luz (silent night) I played the piano and E Lybbert sang. So this week we are focusing on meeting with members to talk to them specifically about their importance in contributing to the ward and coming to church on time (it starts at 9:00, but the majority are there at about 9:40.) So that´s our focus.

This upcoming week should be a pretty relaxed one. Today, Pday. Wednesday, the Mission Christmas Party. It´s gonna be dope, and the office elders have set up a bunch of stuff. Thursday in the pench at 7. Friday, Christmas pday. So yeah it should be pretty great.

We did find one woman this week to teach. Her husband died a little bit ago. We taught a menos activo family Ha nacido un salvador (a savior is born) and she just came over and listened because we taught the lesson outside. so then the next day we taught the plan of salvation, and now today were gonna teach the restoration!! should be pretty great.

Yesterday a dog came inside our pench. We left the door open and we were in our room talking and what not and then I got up and it was just in the kitchen being dumb. But haha there are like 3 street dogs that chill outside the pench. All I do is whistle and they all come runnin haha. but yeah this one in the pench is super skinny and we named it Deer because it is so big and skinny. but yeah.

I don´t know if there´s anything else. I had another intercambio with Elder Willard which was fun. He´s super old in the mission and ends in like april. I got some of his wisdom.

Have a very Happy Christmas and a merry good year. Enjoy the snow. All my white shirt´s collars are yellow haha.

Remember why we celebrate Christmas, it´s something everyone has to find out for themselves. you can teach it, but until you apply teachings they really don´t mean anything. That´s what i´ve found.

Love, Elder Anderson

The week where some stuff happened

So yeah this week was filled with ups and downs as normal. Tomorrow I hit 5 months. It´s pretty crazy cause yeah missionaries serve for 24 months and already 5 down, 19 to go!! And with time moving by muy rápido, things are going really well!!

So yeah Sunday night (last week) we found this kid named Cristian just knockin doors and what not. he´s 15. He invited us over this last thursday. We show up and his mom´s like yeah come in! and seemed super supportive. So we sat down and taught the first lesson flawlessly. (We don´t get many opportunities to do that so we took full advantage) We felt the spirit and then he recognized it and it was awesome!! he even seemed hyped to come to church. We left the lesson feeling pretty fly and like wow dude this guys gettin baptized for sure. So yeah. We set up a return cita for saturday. We show up and he´s not there and his mom and grandma are like yeah he´s not here but we´re catholic and we don´t want to waste your time. So we text him and he´s like I´m on vacation today. and then he says yeah i´m catholic and not interested in your words. and so we kept walkin and we see the little chavonaso (punk) in his yard like 15 minutes later. Haha so yeah we were close. But we WILL find the guy that is ready in Palmira. We missed the target by centimeters. But yeah. That´s an experience.

This week president challenged us to write down 5 blessings. So it´s helped us. Because we work hard every day, and some days it feels like it amounts to like zero haha. but getting back to the pench and seeing all our blessings doesn´t make it so bad. Like we had 5 citas fijadas (set appointments) fall through in a row. We were kinda frustrated but yeah, it´s really ok, because you get blessings after you do all you can do... and we see the blessings!!

We also accidentally got into a bible bash session this week. We knocked a door and a guy came out and asked what we believed (fishing for the first lesson and jose smith and the book of mormon) and then like 10 teenagers came out and backed him up. He pulled up galations 1 6 which they interpret as the bible being the only word of god. But what we did was really simple. Elder lybbert just testified about how he literally could not be in Argentina if jose smith didn´t restore the gospel of jesus christ. That pretty much ended the conversation it was pretty cool. 

So on Sunday I was playing the piano with the organ settings and things were just going pretty good. during the second hymn my finger like slipped and accidentally changed the settings on the piano to like a weird jazz organ thing. I was super embarassed and we sang the last 2 lines of the song with the wierdest sounding organ ever. But  all is well now. 

So the palmira train is still rollin, but just not how we thought it would be. We´re still working a ful which is good, and we will see results soon as we keep at it and keep goin. Sufrir con gozo. just make it to p day haha.

Have a good week and if you ever ask me how the people are in Argentina, just think of the famous words of Tony the Tiger.... They´rrrrre Grrreeeat!!!!

Love, Elder Anderson

just a dark selfie to brighten your day somehow.

Palmira Continues

Well, another week has flown by and things are going really great. The palmira train is startin´ to roll. We had more success this week that any other week here in Palmira. So you could say it was a good week.

On Tuesday we had a noche de hogar (family home evening) with the Familia Arenas. It was really great, and we shared the new ha nacido un salvador (a savior is born) video. So yeah it was all great except one thing. Elder Lybbert was pulling up the video and it was going really slow. I had my naipes (face cards) in my scriptures and decided to do a magic trick. It was like my best one, too. Then Hermano Arenas proceeded to pull up the teachings of Joseph Fielding Smith and how face cards are ´an abomination´ and evil in the sight of god. So yeah haha cane was dropped on me for face cards but yeah. just kinda funny.

So that family that picked us up are really cool. We visited the dad. He is a very faithful guy for the evangelico church. But he is super friendly and awesome and treated us like friends and stuff. Idk if he´ll want to listen to the message. But that´s what we´re gonna try, to visit him and incorporate our teachings. The reason he´s so faithful is he´s had a near death experience with cancer and he says his faith saved him. 

This week we had intercambios. And since Elder Lybbert is District Leader, we do it with the zone leaders. So i went with Elder Willard. He´s pretty cool and way experienced with the mission. It was good to learn a few things. And before he was zone leader, he was in Cementista B like i was (2 transfers before me). it was pretty fun to talk about the area and the members and stuff. He´s from las vegas and has 5 months left in the mission. he also served as mission secretary in the offices a while ago.

Friday we had zone conferece, which was awesome. (it was in Mendoza cetro where our old stake center was. so we felt like bosses cause we knew where everything was.) We have a goal to get 50 baptisms this month. President goates is upping the ante. We pretty much have no problems with being obedient so he didn´t drop the cane. He talked about hope, and how it applies to finding people. And gratitude how it helps with the work. So saturday rolled around and we were pretty pumped. We were searching for an antiguo investigator and we found the house, but the family´s sister´s family moved in. and they seemed interested so they let us in and we taught the first lesson!!!! mainly the mom is interested so we hope she´s reading the book of mormon!!! So yeah the lesson ended at 1:00 but that creates a problem. On Saturdays we have to be in the pench at 1 cause our lunch comes at 1. (a member pays a chef to bring us a yummy lunch.) so we RAN back after the lesson and arrived at like 1:10. and we were sure we missed it. But, we still had hope. So we wait til 1:30 and still nothing. Still had hope tho. And right as we just about threw in the towel she got there and all was well. Hope goes a long way.

We also found some younger people to teach. School is ending here, and the youth are often in their houses. we found 2 seventeen ish year olds in different places that seemed pretty interested. So like I said, the train´s starting to roll here in palmira. A little work (or a lot) goes a long way!!!! hopefully something comes of it and we can strenghten the ward!!!

Anyway I think that´s it. We´re working quite a bit and things are going good. So yeah have a good week and you guys are in my prayers!!!!!

Love, Elder Anderson

classy photo after church.

our thanksgiving dinner. milanesa, corn, carrots, mashed potatoes, bread. coke. yeah.

The zone. from left, top... Willard y Sanchez (ZLs) Carroll y Keyes (dad and son (training)) Puyol y Backstrom (porteño and dying canadian) Lybbert y Anderson (greeny fire) Bautista y Sahleen (hermanas) the Goateses, and the asistentes to the president (Vallecillo y Cahoon) they are not in the zone, they just were in the picture. there is another set of married missionaries (the rodgers) who left the conference early. #SanMartín #SmallestZonebyFar