Christmas Time

Well yesterday was Christmas. Skype was awesome with the family. Although the connection wasn´t the greatest it was still pretty awesome talking to you guys. The week was pretty good, let´s see....

With the holidays, working was kinda slow. The Familia Herrera didn´t come to church yesterday so we gotta go visit them. They´ll probably be getting baptized some time in January. We actually did have one investigator in the church yesterday. It´s this way old lady named Anna Maria, we´ve been teaching her for a few weeks and out of nowhere she came to church yesterday. It was cool. 

So for christmas we passed time with the other Elders of Albardon. They bought a lot of food, so we ate food and played soccer in our front yard/dirt road on Christmas Eve. We had to be in the pench at 6:00 so we had a lot of time. It was pretty dope. And then yesterday we had church and afterwards Skype. 

This week was really hot. I don´t know what I´m going to do with all this heat.

I don´t really have that much to say..... the work continues. I´m happy with my work in Albardon. We´ve had some good success and some time in the near future I´ll be leaving.... oh no.

I hope you all pass the holidays well. Eat a lot, and then set goals to lose weight for 2017. Haha sorry this is so short but I love you all!

Love,

Elder Anderson

The Skype Session

Thank You So Much For The Package!!

My Comp is happy, too.

watermelon on Christmas Eve

 

Merry Christmas

It´s been a good week. I never know how to start these letters so here we go.

On Thursday we had another Zone Conference. President Goates taught us a cool way to get investigators to church. We used it on a new family that we found a week ago and the totally said they would come but they didn´t. But that´s life. The Zone Conference was pretty good, and the food completely destroyed me, I was sick for the weekend but today I feel good.

So on Saturday we had the Christmas devotional in Rivadavia. It turned out good. I had to play the piano for a ton of Christmas songs for a bunch of choirs, it was cool. Then i was volunteered as the piñata boy because I was the tallest one there, I had to fool a bunch of blindfolded Argentines to not let them hit the piñata. It was fun. But, Rivadavia is super far away, (2 long bus rides) so we got back to the pench at like 11, and we had a meeting with the stake presidency at 7 am. But everything turned out fine.

Investigator update. Well the Herrera family is doing well, they just gotta come to church once more (Christmas will be hard) and they can get baptized. Yesterday we visited them and they gave us a bunch of grapes. The grape season is here, TONS of grape fields in our area getting ready for the harvest. We were supposed to have a baptism this week but Julian, the grandson, didn´t come yesterday. So we´ll keep working with him. We found a pretty cool family called the Flia Gonzalez. They have 5 daughters ranging from 1-11 years. they aren´t married (surprise!) so we gotta get on that. Other than that we´ve pretty much dropped the rest of our investigators. So yeah.

Yesterday at church I was playing the piano, todo tranquilo, (all normal) and we were singing the first noel, and i totally thought there were 3 verses so when we got done I just kept on playing and I felt really dumb. Oh well. 

The other day I did a baptismal interview for this 9 year old. When I asked him about the word of wisdom he said  ´you can´t smoke... you can´t do marijuana, uhhhh and no cigarettes or alcohol.´ hahah good job dude.

That´s probably it for this week. I hope you all have a very merry christmas and remember what it´s all about! 

love,

Elder Anderson

 

Zona Chimbas

all sweaty at the Christmas devotional

San Juan national sport.... watering your dirt.

chowing down on some grapes the flia herrera gave us.

piñata boy 

our dog, tommy (follows us everywhere)

 

Albardón Week 19

Things are going way good here in Albardon. If you hadn´t heard, it´s been super hot in San Juan. I just realized that as soon as I finish up this transfer I will have had 6 transfers in San Juan and 6 in Mendoza. So maybe I´ll head over to San Luis to finish my mission. I´ll be home in 6 months. My goodness how time has flown...

Here´s a quick update on our investigators. The grandkids couldn´t come to church yesterday, and we went to go visit them, and apparently one of them is going to spend the summer in Rawson (far away.) So hopefully we´ll be able to baptize the other one (Julian) in the coming weeks. 

Susana and her son came to church again yesterday! We were pretty pumped. It was also the primary program yesterday, so it was kinda weird to have investigators there but it turned out okay. The kids just have a hard time singing along with the music (a teacher holding her phone to the microphone haha). But they did a good job.

It rained all day Wednesday and Thursday. I´ve never really ridden a bike in the rain. By the end of the day I had slung a TON of mud on my back, (like, a lot.) from the bikes. My companion was laughing pretty hard but he also slung some mud on his back so it was okay. The rain made it really humid so Friday was a sweaty disaster trying to work haha. But things always work out.

On Friday we had the Ward Christmas party. It was pretty fun. We enjoyed some all-argentine chicken from the oven, french fries and mayonaise, a couple of salads, and a lot of soda. It was all really good. This dude named Alberto (an investigator who has been investigating the church since the late 90´s) showed up and totally ate our chicken without permission. I´ve never visited the dude because all he wants to do is fight with us, but I always see him. But, maybe some day he´ll get baptized hahhaha.

Also, yesterday there was a Superclasico soccer game, Boca vs. River. (And Boca won 4-2) We were working in Campo Afuera when the game got over and we totally saw a big street fight (Campo Afuera is pretty ghetto). Soccer is life haha. 

This saturday we have a christmas devotional for the stake. The hermanas in Rivadavia basically signed me up to play the piano for the entire thing so I have some practicing to do today. God will provide hahaha.

Well I hope you are all enjoying the Christmas season and that you all remember who it´s all about. I´ve continued my study of the New Testament and I know that Christ lives! #IluminaElMundo (light the world.. i think) is a great way to celebrate and if you haven´t seen the ´25 ways in 25 days´ you should go check it out!

That´ll do it for this week. Have a good one!

love,

Elder Anderson

 

Food at the Ward Christmas Party

getting ready for the party

With the members

my mud slung back



brushing my teeth (I wonder if he can see Dumbledore's brother in that mirror?...)



the grapes are getting ripe



Art Center

 

Bring the Heat....

It was another way solid week here in the desert. It was like 42 degrees outside yesterday which in the USA is like 107 degrees. But the heat doesn´t stop us from doing some serious missionary work.

So yesterday we got transfer calls and I was hoping with all my heart to stay here in Albardon. Well long story short, I´m staying here with Elder Camargo! This will be my first area with 4 transfers, which I´m happy about. And now our investigators are all starting to progress so this transfer should be pretty solid.

We have been teaching the grandkids of a recent convert in the area for quite a while. Well they finally have starting coming to church. So if they come this week we will be baptizing them the following Saturday. So we hope they come haha. Also, the other investigators who came last week have a baptismal date for the 7th of January, the problem is the 3 can´t come to church all at the same time, because someone has to stay home and watch the house (it´s way insecure and kinda sketchy). So once they all come to church 3 times we´ll be able to baptize them. They all have 1 church attendance as of yesterday. So that´s that.

We got a letter from President Goates saying that transfers will be thrown through a loop with a new mission president.... so I´ll be coming home the week of June 13th. I don´t really know what to think about that but it makes me want to keep working until the end! Time has been flying out here in the mission.

Also this week we had a pretty dope zone meeting. The mission has set some high goals for this month so we did some leaderly motivation so we can reach our goals.

We didn´t really have a whole lot of time to work in our area this week because we had consejo and then intercambios with the assistants. It was pretty fun going and working with Elder Olorgtegui and Elder Agyin. Remember that old tie we found in the MTC? well Elder Agyin passed it to me, so I´ll have it for a little bit. I´ll attatch a photo.

Also the bishop´s wife made us some way good chicken the other day. Just thought I´d put that in here.

Other than that, things are going way good! I hope you guys all have a good week. Remember to study the scriputures and strenghten your testimony!

Love,

Elder Anderson

 

Lifting weights

the whole squad

the fridge

with the assistants

the tie is back