August 4, 2014 - Nationals Game

So many things happened this week! It was the BEST!

 

Monday we didn't go grocery shopping because we didn't have any money on our accounts for food. I realized that I had forgotten to pay my fast offering the past two months! AH! So I prayed to Heavenly Father and told him that I put some money aside and promised to pay it as soon as I could get to the church to get a tithing slip. I finished my prayer and told Sister Lamborn, "well, I hope that He recognizes my real intent and helps us eat this week!"

 

We didn't have any dinners set up because we had forgotten to print off our meal calendar to take ot Relief Society. (it's hard to remember-in past wards, ward missionaries all took care of meals for us so I'm not used to doing it yet) but we met a member from Mississippi who has been less active for over 20 years and she had us over for dinner on Wednesday and cooked us southern food! SHE MADE FRIED CHICKEN. And I thought of Brendan and Dayle. :) It was also really cool to see the food miracles that happened throughout the week too. One of our friends who lives at the Marque, Louie, randomly came up to us and gave us a huge container of spagetti sauce because he said he accidentally bought it and wouldn't eat it. Our sister training leaders had extra noodles and gave them to us. THEN (my favorite miracle) happened when we came in for the night to plan and a little old lady rolled up in her wheelchair and asked us to open the front door for the pizza man. For whatever reason she had ordered TWO pizzas, and in reward for helping her do something that she couldn't do, she gave us an entire pizza!!!! GOD IS SO GOOD! And I now have a testimony of paying fast offerings! I thought of the scripture from the New Testament: 31 Therefore take no thought, saying, What shall we eat? or, What shall we drink? or, Wherewithal shall we be clothed?

 32 (For after all these things do the Gentiles seek:) for your heavenly Father knoweth that ye have need of all these things.

 33 But seek ye first the kingdom of God, and his righteousness; and all these things shall be added unto you. Matthew 6:31-33

It was so cool. God has definitely been taking really good care of me.

Friday we had a half mission conference. It was a last minute thing that President and Sister Riggs and the assistants to the president put together for us. They went over the importance of obedience and consecration to the work of the Lord. So I've been working really hard to be more consecrated every day. President made a SUPER cool video of himself paralleled to Captain Moroni when he rent his clothes and made the title of liberty to fight for family, liberty, religion. President walked into the room with his suit coat that he rent in the video and he had us make a pledge to be consecrated and make our own title of liberty of things that we're on a mission fighting for. He had each missionary bring a shirt to the conference and we all RENTED our clothes! It was so fun! We left one half of our shirts with President Riggs who is going to put all of them on a pole and we took the other half with us to write our titles of liberty on them. On my half shirt, I wrote that I'm fighting for family, truth, Jesus Christ, generations past, present and future. I'm pretty excited about it.

Rented clothes!  Read above!

Saturday we got to go to the NATIONALS GAME!!!!!!! WOOOOO!!! I missed the first pitch of the game (as usual) but I MADE SURE to be in my seat for the 7th inning stretch. And then I told all the missionaries who were sitting around me that the baseball song is the Anderson family home evening song!!! They all said that my family seems awesome. HECK yes we are! :) Hahaha. I loved being there.

The DC North mission and South missions were there in the same section and I got to see one of my friends, Elder Tate Jackman, from BYU! It was really awesome! I was there when he opened his mission call at school, and I had to search him down to find him-there were about 500 missionaries there!


Elder Jackman, one of Julie's friends from BYU!  HELP ME TURN THIS!!!!

The DC South mission had a Book of Mormon blitz, where each missionary had to give away a Book of Mormon on the metro ride there, at the game, or on the metro ride home. I tried really hard to give it away on the way there, but the man I sat next to said he already had one. So that's a good thing I guess. At the end of the game, we were waiting for everyone to file out and I turned around to see a woman and her husband waiting for the misisonaries to all leave before they left. The woman, Chris, asked me what was going on and what the occasion was. So I talked to her about it and told her about missions and why we serve. And then somehow, the conversation turned to the Book of Mormon. I didn't even have to try! And I taught her about Joseph Smith and showed her the pictures in the front of the Book of Mormon copy I was holding and I gave it to her! She was more than grateful to take it! Miracle!!!! God is good. There were lots of great miracles that happened on the way to and at the game. I wrote them all in my journal, so I'll share them with you later! But my favorite one was when I talked to the seating assistant lady who stood at the top of the stairs and helped me find my seat. I started talking to her and she became my new best friend! Somewhere in the conversation she started talking about how people that come to the games are really nice to her and I said, "God is so good!" And her inner baptist came out! HAHAHA! It was great. She told me that no matter where she is, or who is talking, whenever she hears, "God is good" she stops every thing to say, "ALL THE TIME. Not some of the time, not most of the time. But ALL the time!" I told her I would start doing the same exact thing. She took my card and every time I passed her from that point on I told her "God is good!" and she said "All the time!" It was so fun!

At the Nationals Game!

Bunch of Sisters at the Nationals Game!

Lamborn and Anderson!

Nationals Stadium!

I love being a missionary. 



Sisters Duncan, Lamborn and Anderson!

I loved the pictures of the Redwoods! Those trees are HUGE!!!! It made me think of the song I learned in elementary school I think it's called This Land is Your Land...I can't remember the name exactly but now it's stuck in my head..

Brendan hugging a Redwood!

Julie send a tree hugging pic too!  She must be from Olympia!  Ha ha.

We've been working really hard and talking to EVERYONE that we see, so I know that we're going to be finding people to teach here pretty soon! We have a lot of great potential investigators who all said we can come back! I'm so happy!

I love you guys so much! I miss you, but I'm glad I'm here. I see miracles every day.

Oh wait before I sign off, I want to share with you what I learned in my studies this morning. I was studying the Christlike attribute of Obedience in PMG chapter 6. There is a study box at the end of the paragraph that talks about obedience and one of the scriptures I was directed to was Alma 57:21-27. The verse that stood out to me was verse 25. 

 25 And it came to pass that there were two hundred, out of my two thousand and sixty, who had fainted because of the loss of blood; nevertheless, according to the goodness of God, and to our great astonishment, and also the joy of our whole army, there was not one soul of them who did perish; yea, and neither was there one soul among them who had not received many wounds.

 I thought it was pretty funny how they were astonished that none of them had died. Why were they surprised? They had so much faith! But I was thinking about how they were in WAR. the result of war is death, and they trusted God so much, they didn't care if they died or not. I thought of the hymn Count Your Many Blessings. There's a line that says, "And it will surprise you what the Lord has done". It was just cool to think about how we don't really notice the miracles until after we're looking back on them. Even just looking back on the 10 months that I've served the people in Northern VA, I'm astonished to see how much the Lord has done for me! I'm so grateful for all the blessings I have. Even all the hard times have turned into blessings. It's pretty cool.

Okay that's all folks! Have a great week!

Love you!
Sister Anderson

Sister Hanson, one of Julie's previous comps just went through her last transfers
and will be going home soon!  WOW!