Chapter 16: Thank You For Teaching the Gospel

10/12/2020

Today was a great Pday. We had some struggles this morning, we went to get our flu shots and we were standing in line for two hours while they tried to wrestle with our insurance information. Because our insurance was for out of States service, it wasn't compatible in the States, and they couldn't get it to work. Fortunately I was still able to get my flu shot, but we're going to have to go back next week for Elder Gomez. We played Ultimate Frisbee with our district today, which was a lot of fun. Elder Collins and I have magically always been on the same team every time we play. We have a pretty good gig going. He throws from one endzone to the other where I'm standing. It probably wasn't great for team participation though, but that didn't mean that he had to start favoring everyone on our team and ignoring me because we were too good of a duo. We also threw the frisbee into other peoples' yards a lot, today. They were less than happy about that. Afterwards we had a little time left to talk to our families, and then we got to finish out the night by planning our training that we'll be giving on Thursday. Today was a great Pday.

10/13/2020

And so begins the reign of Anderson. Elder Gomez and I had a lot of success today. Our efforts are moving forward exponentially; They're compounding and growing. We're very hopeful that this base that we're building will be able to keep growing. We had an awesome lesson tonight where we talked about charity and joined our hearts to a new family. It was really great to be able to sit down with them, we saw them in church for the first time on Sunday, and so it was pretty cool to meet a new family and get to immediately establish a relationship with them. Other fun events today included: Getting a flu shot for Gomez, speaking Portuguese, and walking back from our dinner towards the church which was an hour away. We didn't have many difficulties when we went to the pharmacy today, Gomez got his shot done in about 15 minutes, it was pretty quick. Brother Hudson was the one that I got to speak Portuguese with. He majored in Portuguese in college and studied all five Romantic languages, so he can get by in most places that have Latin based languages. We had a fun time reminiscing about soda brands and street vendors who would walk around with handheld grills. I always wanted one of those handheld grills. Our walk back from dinner was nice, too. It's not too cold yet, so it was great to see the sunset on the mountains and all of the scenery. Our District led our nightly mission-wide devotional tonight, and there were a couple of funny quotes that came out of it. Elder Bott (one of the Elders that we share a car with) was conducting the meeting. Most people turn the time over to our Mission President to speak by saying stuff along the lines of, "following which we will hear the inspired counsel of our beloved President" or, "at which point we will turn the time over to our favorite President to hear some remarks". Elder Bott wasn't having any of that, though. He turned over the time by saying "Then if you have anything to say Pres, hit us with it!" (His country personality came off very strong in that sentence). Sister Makisini (The Sister we share the Monument ward with), blessed that Elder Gong would recover from COVID-19 in her prayer tonight, followed by, "so that he can return to... um... whatever it is that Apostles do." Which I'm pretty sure was sacriligious, but out of all of the things that Apostles do, addressing the public, rendering service, guiding the church, it was pretty funny to us that she chose that phrase "whatever it is that they do".

10/14/2020

Today was a great day! We had three lessons, which is more than I've ever had in a Stateside mission before, so this was pretty cool. All of the lessons went great, and the crowd varied a lot. We taught seniors, mid-aged families, and young children. Our lessons were going a bit long so we had to adapt partway through the day how we were going to teach our lessons. We ended up focusing on just a single principle from one of the main lessons in Preach My Gospel, and then those lessons went much quicker, and a lot better as well. We had a pretty busy day all around. We sent a lot of spiritual thoughts via text this morning to active and inactive members of our ward and got a lot of really nice messages back. Our lunch today was also great, Elder Gomez made us some Mexican style hotdogs. That was the first time I think one of my comps has ever cooked for me, so that was a nice treat. Amid all of our lessons today we had a little bit of free time between lessons, so we would stop to take pictures for like, five minutes each time. I'm glad we did because fall here is so beautiful.

10/15/2020

Today was another very busy day. We taught three lessons tonight, and did a much better job of holding ourselves to a time limit. We had a district counsel this morning where Elder Gomez and I got to give a training on having meaningful personal study. We taught people different techniques for making the most of their studies, stuff like writing down important Scriptures in a way that's meaninful and accessible to them later, as well as the ability to learn through prayer. The training went very well. We didn't have enough time afterwards to go to our houses and make food and get the other Elders there too, so we took the other Elders with us to Subway and bought them lunch, and then rushed to our service projects. Our service project was with the Nelson family, we raked a bunch of pod things their tree had been dropping. Brother Nelson expected us to work for a couple hours, and then maybe finish the rest of the project another day, but Gomez and I were done with it in a half hour. Brother Nelson was very pleased with the efficiency of our work, because it meant that he could share more stories with us. That 70 year old man has a lot of stories. Afterwards, his wife shared the recipe she had stolen from the Brazilians for Feijao with me. I was very excited, because I could never get it perfect. She was so pleased that she invited us over for a Brazilian dinner tomorrow, which means we'll be going over for a very large lunch. Also Brazilian themed, this morning I found an acai packet in our freezer from Morse, and was able to evaporate the water from it and turn it into a very thick syrup for pancakes. It was turned out great! Elder Gomez was very excited to get to try it. 

10/16/2020

Today was a great day. We were very well fed by our members, they provided both lunch and dinner for us today. Our lunch was something we were really excited for, yesterday Sister Nelson invited us over for Brazilian rice and beans, and our lunch today was awesome! It felt very right to be eating such a large plate of such a familiar meal at lunchtime, which was dinnertime for the Brazilians. We had a great time listening to Brother Nelson's stories, and comparing details from where we had served. The Nelson's got two visits from the missionaries today, because they wanted to feed us lunch, but also signed up for dinner with the Sisters. We took advantage of that by acting as 'Elias's for the Sisters, setting up for the lesson they were going to share later. The Sisters were planning on talking about following the Prophet and letting God prevail, so we talked about how following the Prophet has blessed us in the past. It was pretty fun to get to coordinate what grew into being such a complex and cool lesson delivered by so many different mouths and witnesses. We also got to go to see Sister Bradley and Brother White today. They were both very excited for our visit, and really liked the message we shared. We shared a message of charity, and how charity is something that moves us to action and inspires us to help those around us; Charity brings us joy. Afterwards they gave us a tour of their house, complete with a piano that played itself. The paper that was fed through the piano was incredible to see. I had seen rolls of paper with holes punched out for notes in the past for other music box contraptions, but never for one as complex as a piano, seeing the complexity of that music sheet was incredible. I also completely forgot the word "enchilada" tonight, which wasn't good because that's what we were having for dinner, and they were really good. So I had to compliment Sister Bradley on what she made, without letting her know that I had absolutely no idea what she'd made. That was quite the battle, and had many awkward pauses as I jumped over and around using that not-very-easy-to-forget name.

10/17/2020

We had a service project this morning with the Case family. We ended up shoveling a LOT of dirt. We got to fill in a ditch which was probably my ideal service project, and everyone was very impressed by my diligence during it. Turns out, when you do this multiple times a week for service projects, you get good at it. As a side note, I'm missing a large section of skin on my thumb because we've been digging multiple times a week, but at least we're getting to help people out a lot. The only lesson that we had today was a last minute one that we hadn't planned for: We were calling some widows in our ward and came to a Sister Carter, I felt that we should share a message with her over the phone, so I read an easy to understand scripture from Psalms and then we bore testimony. She was already happy to talk to us, but after that she seemed rejuvenated and even happier. It was a really cool transformation to see. We also made another Facebook video today. We wrestled with this one for a long time, trying to get a clip of the prophet speaking. I did a lot of fighting technology before eventually giving up and adapting our video idea. It still came out pretty well, so we're excited to post it tomorrow. 

10/18/2020

Today was great, even though we ended up attending meetings for 90% of the day. Our ward had a lot of meetings, and so did our mission, so everything came together in the perfect storm, and so we ended up sitting and watching Zoom meetings on our phone for about four hours. Fortunately we also had three lessons today, or I would have just rolled over and gone back to bed had I known this morning what was coming our way. We also got a reference for the first time ever! The reference is a man who's moving out of our area (sad) but it's because of some crazy family members who've been destroying his life (way sadder), although he's seen several tender mercies in his life these past few days and says he went from questioning God's existence to undoubtedly knowing of His presence and love (we're very happy about that part). We taught lessons to the sweetest ward members today, some of who were little kids. There was one family that we had never met before, but all of their kids were spiritual giants, and they're like, 10 years old. We thought we would share a lesson with them, but they ended up teaching us. We talked about ways that they could show love to their friends, and suggested they give them notes. They then ran inside and wrote notes for us, and warmed the lump of coal I normally have for a heart. One day when I complete my missionary service, whatever "thank you" they give me is going to mean a lot less than the post-it note that girl handed me that read "thank you for teaching the Gospel". We also had some huge developments with our ward as well, we were able to start to coordinate our ward and missionary efforts which is a really big deal.

The scripture I wanted to share today comes from 3rd Nephi 27:27, "what manner of men ought ye to be? Verily I say unto you, even as I am." Christ gave the Nephites a series of commandments, all seeming incredibly difficult, but all perfectly necessary for us to become the sons and daughters we are destined to become. The commandments to not get angry, not have impure thoughts, to be perfect, seem overwhelming to the natural man in us, but it's my promise that Christ makes living these laws possible. Every day we have the opportunity anew to try to live these laws, and every day that you make that effort, you will find rest, not distress in Christ. The purpose of these laws is not to make us feel guilty for not being perfect, but to help us pattern our lives to find perfect happiness.

I love and am praying for you all!

Elder Anderson