January 19, 2015 Howdy

I HAD AN AWESOME WEEK. things are really starting to pick up around here in good ole Ashburn!

Tuesday. We have been asking everyone that we talk to for referrals lately. It's been pretty cool. We ask questions like, "Who do you know who has had a recent death in the family?" or "Who do you know that has struggling teenagers?" instead of "Who do you know that would be interested in this message?" and we've been seeing a lot of success. The week before we asked a guy if he knew of anyone who had suffered a death in the family, and he said that his neighbor lost his wife about six months ago. So Tuesday night we decided to go check in on that neighbor.... he was nice enough, but not interested. It's been cool to see how asking for referrals and then following up with them has brought us miracles-even if the referral that we received wasn't interested. Right As we were walking out of his apartment building, we saw a woman walking the opposite direction from us. Sis Savage and I made eye contact and then kicked it into high gear to catch up to her! It was so fun! When we were a close enough distance away, Sis Savage called out, "Hey can I give you a card to a website?" In an instant, the woman glanced back to look at us, screamed at the top of her lungs, and ran away. I mean, she BOOKED it. My first thought was that she had met missionaries before and that was her way of getting out of talking to us... So naturally I started laughing pretty hard. I just couldn't help it! We walked in the direction of where she ran, and saw her at the foot of the stairs of the apartment building with her hand over her heart. She apologized and said that she just gets scared easily. That made me laugh even harder! We introduced ourselves and she looked at our name tags. She said, "Oh, you come to talk about Jesus? Follow me!" She lead us into her apartment. Sis Savage and I tried really hard to start teaching her, but I could tell that after a few minutes the woman was getting antsy. So we made a return appointment with her for the next day adn prayed with her. MIRACLE. Her name is Hodalo and she's from West Africa. She speaks French, so I think there's a bit of a language barrier.... but luckily we have a member in our ward who is fluent in French! :)

Wednesday we had our lesson with Hodalo and her sweet girls. She has a five year old who always says things like, "Jesus is my best friend. He protects my heart." So cute. It was an okay lesson. Kinda rough, seeing that that was the first time Sis Savage and I taught a real lesson together. We'll get used to each other's teaching styles pretty quick though, so I'm not worried. It was a good lesson. We brought one of the laurel's from the ward with us, and she cried when she talked about Joseph Smith's story. It was so cool! Later that night, we got a message saying that we have some media referrals from church HQ that need to be updated. So we looked them up online and saw that we had a referral from the beginning of NOVEMBER! What. I was confused as to why I didn't get a notification about it earlier when it was sent in... Oh well. We decided to go and check on that family because they had requested a copy of the Book of Mormon! We knocked on their door and they let us right in! They're from Liberia! More Africans to teach!!! Woo! They said we could come back the next day too! MIRACLE.

Thursday and Friday we had to teach at two zone conferences. We taught for a portion in the Ashburn zone, which is our zone, on Thursday, and then on Friday we taught at the Leesburg Zone conference because all of the sisters that are within our stewardship are in that zone. President Riggs asked us to demonstrate teaching using "How To Begin Teaching" found in chapter 10 of Preach My Gospel. How to Begin Teaching is a fundamental that missionaries need to know to set expectations with investigators and get to know them while still being a professional representative of Jesus Christ in the first lesson. We made it really fun. We first demonstrated how to get to know them while purposefully forgetting to be professional about it. Then we demonstrated how to be super professional to the extreme and pretended to be robots. Finally we practice taught it the right way. We got a good laugh from our audiences both times, so I felt really good about it. :)

OH MY. Also. One of the assistants to the president has been acting REAL friendly to me lately. He goes home at the end of this transfer, and he has taken a creepy liking to me. He keeps coming up and talking to me...which I wouldn't usually mind except he's really awkward about it. Okay. Freak out moment over.

Saturday we had a whole mission conference because Elder Hallstrom of the 70 and Elder Perkins came to talk to us. They only took two hours to teach us, but it was just what I needed. Elder Perkins taught about faith and Elder Hallstrom talked about what a successful missionary is. He talked a lot about how the leaders of the church want all missionaries to be completely converted and to be true disciples of Jesus Christ. It was just cool because I've been reflecting on my mission lately and I've been able to see how much I've changed since Christ has been the center focus of everything that I do. He also talked about how returned missionaries that stay converted are always serving others-True conversion really does come when you forget about yourself and put others first- as well as reading the scriptures, praying and going to church and the temple regularly. I decided then and there that I WILL stay converted after my mission by doing all those things.

Sunday night we ran into a less active returned missionary. It was so easy to see that he let himself lose his conversion after his mission because he stopped studying the Book of Mormon and praying, which then lead him to stop going to church. So sad. But it was interesting to see him and his life right after we talked about it at the mission conference the day before.

Man, God is good. The work is still tough, but it's picking up adn I'm so grateful for it! Sis Savage is a super hard worker, and an answer to my prayers. Before transfers, I asked God to give me a hard working companion that would help me push myself on the home-stretch of my mission. I'm going to do all I possibly can! I want to come home exhausted! I want to be able to say that I left it all on the court.

Love,
Sister Anderson

January 26, 2015

Okay! Sorry, I split up my email time today so now I can email you!

I feel like a lot happened this week, but when I think back on what we did, I am having a hard time remembering! It was a tough week for me. I felt like more people were talking about me coming home than usual, so that made it really hard. Come on people-I have two whole months left!!! We taught a lot of members this week, which has been really productive because I'm finally feeling like I'm getting to know the ward.

We were looking through our area book and found a former investigator named Jamie. She was taught be elders about a year and a half ago! So we called her up and she set up an appointment with us! Woo! We invited one of our members to come with us, and we had a great first lesson with her. Sis Savage didn't think it went very well, but I thought it was great! Jamie just has a lot of issues with the Book of Mormon. She says that she needs to pray about reading it before she even cracks it open to read it... that was kinda weird. But accepted the invitation to read the into before we came back this week. She's really friendly and says that she just wants to do what God wants her to do, so we made it very clear that so long as she is open and actually reads the Book of Mormon with real intent and THEN prays about it, God will let her know that this is where she needs to be! So pray for Jamie that she'll actually read it!

We had a lesson with a member who is semi-active. She is so sweet. We decided we were going to start teaching her the missionary lessons to help her strengthen her faith. She hasn't gone to church since October. :/ So we started with the Restoration. This time we taught using the pamphlet! We gave her a copy, said a prayer and started. We had her open up to the very first page and I started talking about how the gospel blesses our fmailies. She started crying! We sat there and let her feel the spirit for a while and finally she said, "I need to come back to church. I have realy missed this." I wasn't even talking about church!!! I LOVE it when the spirit is the real teacher!!!!!! It was really powerful.

We also got into contact with another less active member who Sister Christensen and I ALWAYS tried to reach out to. Her name is Rachel and she finally was home when we stopped by. We had a good lesson with her and got to know her. Her husband isn't a member and she hasn't come to church in eight years! But she wants to meet with us at least every other week!!! Wooo!

We did a family history night with a recent convert in our ward! It was so much fun. I am learning to LOVE family history work. I can't wait to be able to find my own family names and take them to the temple. We got our recent convert started, and she said that she wouldn't be able to stop. The spirit of Elijah is STRONG. Seriously, if you haven't already, go to familysearch.org and mess around with it. Ask the family history consultants in the ward to help you get started, because once you start, it'll be hard to stop!

We had stake conference this weekend. It was all about hastening the work of salvation. President and SIster Riggs spoke, the temple president and his wife spoke, and then the stake president spoke. Every aspect of the work is being hastened and it's so exciting!! Missionary work, temple and family history work, activation and retention, you name it. The Lord is hastening all of it. They also talked a lot about ward councils- the general authority who came (can't remember his name) asked the ward council members, "wouldn't it be nice if you had two full time assistants to help you get everything done within your calling??" hahaha it was awesome. I really do want the ward to use us more! So long as we are doing the Lord's work, we are here to help!!!! :) President Riggs said that members should pray every day for opportunities to share the gospel. I'm definitely going to do that when I get home.

Today we went to DC with some of our sisters. It was so much fun! My new best friend is Sister Liu. She's from Taiwan and is HILARIOUS. I think she feels left out sometimes because her english isn't 100%, so I went up and just hung out with her...plus the other sisters were talking about how they did dance in high school and their perfect hair and nails or something...so I didn't mind leaving the conversation. Haha! We're going on exchanges with the Centreville sisters tomorrow and I get to go with Sister Liu!!! I'm way excited. We're going to have so much fun!!! :)

Well. I think that's all. Holy cow I am just freaking out over the fact that my mission is flying by. I'm doing my very best to stay focussed and work extra hard. I want to know that I gave everything to the Lord!

Well, I love you all so much! Have a wonderful week! Don't forget to pray every single day for missionary opportunities!!

Love,
Sister Anderson

January 12, 2015 New Companion Sister Savage

Sorry I am really behind in blogging for Julie.  I'm attempting to catch up.

Greetings.

Man, emailing just drains me. Lets see what happened this week......

Well Tuesday it snowed. A lot! We had to pick up our district leader and his companion for district meeting, and we were an hour late because we were stuck in traffic. It was kinda scary. Once we picked them up, Elder Bateman, who is from Utah and LOVES driving in the snow took over. Thank goodness. He had really good control of the car when we started fishtailing. There were two missionaries from our district going home this transfer: Sister Christensen and Elder Thomas. I really liked this district, so it was kinda sad to see them go. But they're pretty happy about being home, so it's good!

Wednesday we had two dinners. I was so full, I about died. We've been eating a TON of food lately and it's killing me. A while ago, I got to the point where I could only eat one helping and then I stopped because I was full. But being forced to eat TWO dinners.... it's a killer. This ward takes reallyyyy good care of us.

Thursday was transfers. I embarrassed myself pretty good this time. Not that that's an unusual thing for me. President Riggs calls out the transfers according to each zone adn then by each district within the zone. I get a small anxiety attack every time he reads the transfer assignments because I just want to know who my new companion is so badly and he always takes forever to call out my name. This time, he got to the Ashburn Zone next to last. He called out a few new assignments in some of the other districts, and then he finally got to the Sterling Park District. He called out my district leader and his new companion's name, then as soon as he called out the other two elders in my district, I knew my name was next, so I stood up where I had been sitting in the chapel. He had just called out Elder Johnson and Elder Laing, so when I stood up President Riggs stopped and looked at me. He said, "You aren't Elder Laing!" and I said, "I know I know! But my name is next!!!" Everyone turned and laughed..... I just couldn't wait any longer- I was DYING to know who my new companion was. President Riggs is a jokester, so he took his time calling out my companion's name and it about KILLED me!!! oh man. It was crazy. He finally called out "Sister Jones!" ...... no one stood up..... we don't have a sister jones in our mission!!! I started walking up the isle of the chapel toward him and he called out SISTER SAVAGE! :) phew. Finally. But yeah, it was pretty exciting.

Sister Savage is from North Logan, UT and is one of four kids. She has an older brother who is serving his mission in Berma, and she has a younger sister and a younger brother who are both in high school. She is 5'9'', sings really well, and is really funny. Before her mission she was in beauty school! One of the first things she told me is that she's a beauty school drop out! haha. She's going to go back and finish it after her mission. She's been out a year this month! The cool part about being her companion is that Sister Lamborn trained her!!! So Sister Lamborn was pretty excited to find out we are companions.

Since we've been together, we've found two new investigators. One of them is Muslim and a few days after we found him, asked us to not come over because he liked being Muslim. The other one that we found is a high school girl. She said she just barely started reading the bible with her sister in law. Pretty cool. Sister Savage and I set some pretty high goals to find lots of people this transfer. After all, it's my second to last transfer and I still need to baptize!!!!! It's going to happen. I just know it will.

Being a missionary is so fun. It's almost hard to imagine myself without my name tag on, it's just a part of who I am these days. I know I'm right where God wants me to be, and it feels so good. :)

I love you all!
Have a wonderful week
love,
Sister Anderson