Week 26!

Friends and Family,

Hello everybody! Week 2 of training was great! we had a multi-zone meeting with 3 zones of the mission, stake conference (with 5 investigators there from our ward) and 2 baptism dates!

*A big shout out going to the one and only Scott Anderson who made the first cut of BYU football tryouts #GOCOUGS!*

4 recordings this week :O haha (mom transcribe them please) !

This past Monday, with lunch, we went to the supermarket close to our house and bought a ton of food for lunch. I got a 20 and 10 dollar bills as change but my pockets were small and when we got home I realized the money wasn’t there and so we walked super fast back to the store and we found both bills sitting in the road...it was only worth about $8 American dollars, but that’s a lot of money for a poor missionary in Brazil! Then we cooked lunch and had a lot of food with sauce, and meat (pork) it was good, we fried it. Then we went to a neighborhood about 40-50 minutes away and we walked there and first we visited Clebor, Jessica and Nicee, and we had already taught a first lesson, and Jessica is a less active daughter of our ward mission leader. Clebor was really interested and sincere and we are going to visit them today which I’m excited for. Then we visited Joaby and Mara with Luis Carlos and Luzia, who are members, and we talked to them, got to know their religious history, taught a first lesson and gave them a Book of Mormon and invited them to pray about it.

Right now we are walking to a second shop to find a cable for my companions’ camera…

Tuesday we had a lunch an hour away and on the way out there was a horse tied up and I pet it. My companion was scared, he had never seen a horse before, there are none in the city where he grew up...as we were leaving we saw another horse and it started turning around and I backed up and tried to pet it again and it whipped around fast and I took off running so it didn’t kick me! Exciting… We visited Marcus, the 17 year old who had been taught before. Then we visited Lacen and his family, he believes the message is true and that it’s right but he doesn’t want to follow through and go to church...it’s tough and sad. So we’ll probably visit them again but if they don’t want to commit to pray, etc. then we can’t do anything to help them. Wednesday we had a multi-zone meeting with my old zone and 2 more and it was cool to see the church building there again. It was great. The assistants gave an incredible lesson about lots of good stuff, I took tons of notes. They talked about the pathway to baptism, teaching, commitments, invitations, church, baptism, and what we need to do as missionaries to prepare for those things. They said “You guys are the problem...find out what you can do better, improve on, and do better. You can’t blame the difficulties on things other than yourself. Be responsible and take control of things, etc.” Super great.

Thursday I was feeling bad, that morning and afternoon, not sure if it was bad water I drank or what. We had a ward activity at the church that night, we gave a spiritual message and my companion talked about integrity (which is something our mission president is really pushing in the mission), and I talked about virtue, and with that, talked about being pure inside and out. Super good and important. Friday was a full day, lunch in Captial Envinia with Sister Julia, went to the church for more practicing, planning, etc.

Friday we talked with Marcus again and Deborah, we found her from knocking doors, and it was a really good first lesson. Her boyfriend was killed during a robbery a couple of years ago and it’s super tough for her and she wants to stay committed to him and not date or marry anyone else. It will be awesome to teach her the plan of salvation. It’s such an awesome thing, the Plan of Salvation, that we can be together forever and that death is just a doorway and it’s not the end. Saturday we marked 2 baptism dates with Marcus and Jimar. They are both solid people looking for the truth and want to be better and happier. Super awesome. We visited some other people, visits to a less active, and the mother of the less active, Eliech, but she wasn’t home.

Sunday we had stake conference. Everybody met at our church building (from our ward) and we left on a bus and picked up people on the way and met at the stake center. It was huge, there were tons of people, probably 400 or 450. They had an Area Seventy there, he said “Only 20% of you are paying your tithing, and if you want to see the blessings, you need to do the prerequisites.” And it is a problem, just members following through with things… Marcus was there and liked it! Awesome! That night we visited with members and went to one of their friends houses and shared a scripture with them and marked a date to return and teach a lesson and the members came with us and it was a huge help. We’d tried to go to that house before and both times it was “oh, some other day, etc…” and with the members they were more receptive and happy. We also visited Bishop and his family and that was cool. I don’t know if it’s new or not but there’s a website called “Living Scriptures” like netflix but only super good stuff. Today is P-Day, Monday, woke up, studied, worked out, and getting ready to email!

Thursday at the activity at the church, there was a guy he’s 21, kind of less active, I started talking to him and it turns out he’s a DJ and a coordinator for a company that does music festivals, etc. A Jaguar car that I saw...belonged to him as well as other cars (he owns several cool ones, Range Rovers, and an Alpha amaro). He was in shorts, a t-shirt, and flip flops, but he’s really successful and started his business by having friends over and playing music, then asked them to come back next week and to invite their friends. He built it up to 300 people, then started worked at big events, festivals, concerts, and built it up and studied how to be a DJ, etc. It was neat to meet him.

A Venezuelan family, 8 people, 4 are members and some are really strong Catholics. We are going to try to teach them but some of them might not like it...their choice to accept it or not.

That’s all the highlights from the week. Training is going good. I just need to do more of the studying and practice more. I’m doing well, I’m happy, I’m really grateful for this opportunity to be on a mission. It’s such a blessing to serve a mission and such a big learning opportunity. I’m really glad that I decided to come out.

Tchau! Love you all!

- Elder Anderson

just one picture of some food we made this week, i need to bring my camera around more!