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

January 5, 2015

Hello everyone!

What a week. I'm struggling to find the motivation to write my email
this week. Emailing is getting harder and harder....as you might've
noticed they're starting to get shorter and shorter...

We didn't find anyone this week. :( We found a lot of really great
potentials, but they were all seemed to be running out the door when
we met them and so we'll have to come back and see where their real
intent is.

Sister Christensen had her departing temple trip with President and
Sister Riggs this week. And I got to go with a sister in Manassas for
the day! Woo! That was pretty cool to check out another area in the
mission.

OH! I guess I do have something to write about. So, our district is
the Sandlot District. We named ourselves. There's an elder who looks
just like the Great Hambino. So we all found these Sandlot tshirts
that say "You're killing me smalls" on them. hahaha and we wore it to
our zone's new years eve party. For the party we got to watch How to
Train your dragon 2. It was AWESOME! It was a little embarrassing
because I got really into it.... Oops. ;) But yah. Everyone in our
district bought a shirt. Sister Christensen is Yeah-yeah. I'm Smalls.
Elder Bateman is Squints. and. I don't know who the others are. I
don't know if they all have a name from the movie ahhaha.

I got to go on an exchange with the sisters that are serving in
Centreville!!!! So I totally got to spend the day in my favorite area.
<3 I really needed that. It was really cool. I can't believe I was in
Centreville almost a whole year ago. One of the members asked me what
I loved about C-ville, and I said I love the members and all the
people I met....annd I cried. hahaha. He told me that his family
really misses me and Sister Udall, and that we were a powerhouse
companionship. It made me feel pretty good. I really love my mission!

Sorry I don't have any investigators to write about. I'm starting to
think that I'm bad luck for every area I get transferred into... but I
just need to be patient for things to start picking up again!!!

Love youall! Keep reading the Book of Mormon!
Have a great week :)
Sister Anderson

December 29, 2014

Hello there!

Since mom asked for a letter this week, I guess I'll write one. ;) I don't really have much to say, so I'm sorry about that.

It was fun to skype you all on Thursday!!!!! I can't believe Christmas has already come and gone. The holidays are always tough as a missionary, so I'm grateful they flew by! It's just hard because no one wants to schedule time for us to come over, which is slightly depressing.

Like I told you in person, we cleaned out our teaching pool. It's kinda cool to be starting from scratch just in time for the New Year though! We've been finding and are going to be finding like crazy in the next upcoming week to find people to teach. Having no one to teach is a little disheartening and I can't WAIT to find em!

Sister Christensen goes home on January 8th. She's such a trunky mess. ;) hahaha just kidding. We actually set really high goals this week and are going to work harder than we have all transfer! She's an awesome missionary because she has so much love, loves to work but is so chill at the same time. We always have fun together!

Last night we had a few door slams. They were my first since coming to Ashburn, so I guess I can't complain. One of them was a less active lady. She opened the door with a big smile, looked down at my name tag and before I could even say hello she said, "Don't ever come back here again!" and closed the door. It was so sudden and caught me off guard that I couldn't help but laugh a little. It was harder for Sister Christensen though. Also, our number one potential investigator that we had really high hopes for was really passive aggressive about setting a return appointment with us. We knocked on her door and she had her mom answer for her so she wouldn't have to talk to us. From the doorway I could see her standing in the kitchen, so I said hello, but she just half smiled back and walked away.

Our faith is just being tested right now.

Later we called our ward mission leader to give him an update about our day and I told him, "Hey, we've had so much rejection that it's our turn to have a super cool miracle happen!" It just feels a lot better to be optimistic. 

OH hey! I love being a sister training leader! This morning, a set of sisters came to our apartment for studies. During companionship study after we were done practice teaching, one of them asked, "I know this is a little off topic, but I have a few questions for you." She then went on to ask about some of the rules she was unsure about before she asked what she could do to feel like she is giving her ALL. So I was able to help her redefine her definition of success! I'm glad I was able to help her :)

Anyways. That's all for this week folks!

Keep reading the Book of Mormon!! ;) love you all!
Love,
Sister Anderson

December 18, 2014

Hey!

This week FLEW by. 

 

Monday we went to DC and took a tour of the capital. 

Tuesday was Zone Training, so Sister Christensen and I had to teach our zone for a part of the time because we are Sister Training Leaders. It was a little awkward, but I just asked tons of questions and made the missionaries talk so I didn't have to. haha! It went pretty well.

Wednesday we taught at Zone Training again for the Leesburg Zone. We're in charge of two zones... that was a lot more fun. I think the group of people in the Leesburg zone are a lot easier to get along with. 

 

Thursday we..... uhhh. Oh yeah! Everyone cancelled on us. So the only thing I can remember is knocking doors and driving around wondering if people would let us in.

 

Friday we had our Mission Christmas Conference. There was a variety show. A lot of missionaries sang Christmas songs and what not...and Sister Gray and I rapped together. IT WAS AWESOME. We got up and hummed a starting pitch to make it look like we were going to sing...and then I started beat boxing. It was awesome. We got a standing ovation at the end!!! hahahahhahahahahahaha. I still can't believe that I RAPPED in front of my entire mission! But at the same time, I feel prettyyyyy dang cool. I forgot to have someone record it for me, but I'll get a copy of it from someone who did record it so I can send it to you. 

Saturday we went all the way to Warrenton so we could go to the baptism of a girl that Sis C taught at the very beginning of her mission. It was pretty cool. 

Sunday we stopped by a few part member families. Lately I have been feeling SO strongly that we need to be in their homes on a regular basis! We stopped by one family and a lady a few years older than me answered. Her name is Cassie! She said that her family stopped going to church when she was 7. I asked if we could come back and teach her our missionary lessons, and she said we could come back next Saturday!!! :D WOOHOOO! 

So that's my week in a nutshell. Pretty great.

My companion and I get along so well. It's a miracle. I told her that before we became companions, I prayed for someone who has a lot of patience, and she told me that she prayed for someone that she could just have fun with! Both of our prayers were answered!!! It's a party. 

I'm sorry I'm lame and can't think of anything else to talk about in this email. We pretty much cleaned out our teaching pool and it's been tough but yesterday I fasted that God would help us find SOLID investigators that would keep commitments, so I'm sure we'll find lots of great people this week! 

GOOD JOB with reading the Book of Mormon!!!! Keep going! I've started a cool highlighting system these days! I highlight every time time it says the word 'faith' with blue, 'repentance' with red, 'baptism' with green and 'spirit' with yellow! :) It's helped me pay more attention to what I'm reading!

I love you all so much! Have a great week!
Love,

Sister Anderson

December 8, 2014 - Visit to DC

Sorry I'm emailing later than usual this week! Today we went into DC and took a tour of the Captial and went to the Library of Congress. It was super cool! I'm so grateful to serve in our Nation's Capital! 

 

This week went by quick! Thanks for all the birthday wishes! It was a great day :)

Tuesday we had a lesson with a Muslim lady we met. She invited two of her friends to come along. It was more of a debate... It wasn't heated or anything, but those women had no intent to really take to heart what we had to say. But it was really interesting to learn about whawt Muslim's believe. Oh and they invited US to read the Quran... It was really kind of them. Maybe when I get home I'll look more into it to learn more. I think religions are really interesting. If anything else, they help me to realize that I have been so incredibly blessed to be a part of the fulness of Christ's church!

Thursday we went to Centreville for a Dr appointment. They told me I have lost 14 pounds since I've started going to that Drs office in April! Woo! I still have a long way to go...But running at least a mile every day has worked wonders! That night we went to a lesson with a Hispanic lady named Angelik that we met last week. Everyone has been so incredibly flaky lately and all of our return appointments have fallen through, so I didn't have high hopes for Angelik. I didn't even want to go. But we went anyway of course. I was so glad we did! We knocked on the door and this guy answers. He was super sarcastic with us and didn't make eye contact, so when he told us the story about how Angelik had just called him and asked that he let us know that she was out with friends, I didn't believe him at all. We were about to leave when he stopped us and said, "well hey, since I've got your attention, I have a few questions for you." I got really nervous as he brought up a ton of anti material and asked if we wore that "cool underwear" and talked about how he fully supported polygamy. Honestly, anti just drives me nuts. Plus, I couldn't handle his sarcastic attitude like he was pulling a huge joke on us. So before he could go on I stopped him and said something like, "wait. Are you being for real? Because Yes I am a Mormon, but that doesn't mean I'm not a normal person who can see right through all of this!" He just looked at me and said, "no I'm totally serious!" After that, the conversation went up hill. Thank goodness! Hahaha. I told him that yes, I wear the cool underwear and I love it! we made sure the whole polygamy situation was cleared up too...We started asking him what his religious background was and who God is to him. He said he's pretty much a Buddhist because he just believes in good energy or something. Our conversation with him turned out to be a lot of fun! Eventually we were all laughing together out on his doorstep. After about 20 minutes, the door right across from him in the apartment building FLEW open and we all stopped laughing and turned to see a tiny old lady standing in the doorway with a crazy look in her eyes. I think my heart might've stopped in that moment. She said, "Tom! How dare you have a party...without inviting ME!" She then saw our name tags and said, "oh, it's just the missionaries. Okay." It was hilarious!! Turns out, the Sisters before me had knocked that building and met her. Her name is Debb and she's a Born Again Christian. Actually, she is the first Born Again Christian that was kind to me. I'm used to Born Again Christians being all sweet at first but then turning out to be not very kind because they're just trying to prove me wrong. Debb didn't do that. She asked if we could pray together and invited us and Tom over! After another 20 minutes, Angelik came over and sincerely apologized to us. Turns out she actually did call Tom and asked him to tell us that she wasn't home. Hm. It helped restore my faith in humanity! I love honest people!

 

Friday we went to Mission Leadership Council! That's where all the leadership of the mission gets together. We sat in a HUGE circle and counselled on what will help our mission progress. It was really interesting. It was from 8am-4pm.... Sooo long. After they fed us lunch, a tradition that President Riggs does with all the missionaries is to play a game of BUMP! It was so much fun! If that's what he does at every MLC, I don't mind having to go once a month! 

Missionary Leadership Council

 

 

Saturday we stopped by Warrens and he didn't answer. His roommate named Guy came home when we were about to leave and he opened the door and made Warren come out to talk to us. I guess from where Warren was sitting in his house, he just couldn't hear us knocking. And he doesn't have a doorbell. Lame! haha. But as soon as he came to the door he said he would come to church in the morning! It was a miracle becasue we've been having a really hard time trying to get into contact with him this week! 

Sunday Warren didn't come to church and he missed our appointment. So we stopped by and started talking to his neighbors that lived across the street. He saw us and came out to talk. He had a family emergency and couldn't come to church. But he told us that he gave up tea and is working on giving up coffee. He is excited about being baptized on the 27th!!! There are just a few things we will have to go over with him, but his heart seems to be in the right place. Plus, he is reading out of the Book of Mormon, so that shows how serious he is. I love Warren!!! He is such a sweet old man! He has a lot going on in his life that always seems to explode whenever he says he will come to church or do anything that will help him progress. It would be great if you all would please pray for him!!!! He needs all the prayers he can get.

 

Love you all! Keep up the good work! Keep reading the Book of Mormon! Be sure to keep me updated on where you're at! :)

I can't wait to SEE YOUR FACES IN A FEW WEEKS AAAHHHH!!!!

 

Love you!

Sister Anderson

Sister And Brigham Young.  The Capital Building has one Statue of the
most influential person of each state. 

 

 

 

 

In front of the White House.