Chapter 22: The Rameumpton

 11/24/2020

Well, today is a sad landmark, I’m now 2/3rds of the way done with my mission. It’s sad to think that the amount of time that I spent in Brazil is all that I have left to be able to touch people’s lives as a 18-20 year old missionary. It wasn’t such a hopeless feeling prospect until I hit my year mark, and then it stopped feeling like I had a lot of time left, to realizing that I only would get to do that one more time. Now it feels all to short. In reality, I should be grateful that I’m getting this feeling with eight months left, instead of only a couple like is the case for some other missionaries, I still have lots of opportunities left, but landmarks always make the time feel horribly limited. Today we taught a couple lessons which was a lot of fun. We had a mission wide meeting this morning where they shared our numbers with us as a mission, and my zone found out we were reporting the lowest numbers in the mission. Somehow, inexplicably, this always seems to happen to me. I shared my lament with some of my district members and they all remarked the same, “yeah! This keeps happening, I’m always in those areas” which actually gives me a lot of confidence that the Lord has put us here because He knows we can help this area get to be the treasured area He sees it as. On a more apostate note, I built the rameumpton out of metal folding chairs. It was about as physically stable as the proud Zoramites were in their mental states.

11/25/2020

Today was a good day. We had an incredible lesson with the Gammon family. We played a game with them called “The Gratitude Game” which is like a hot-potato style game where family members will share what they’re grateful for about each other. There was a family in our ward with a record of saying 41 things they were grateful for when the Sisters taught them, and the highest we Elders had seen before was 23. Well, we challenged the Gammon family to be 41 and they did… with 42. We were all so excited, it was an awesome moment. We got to do a lot of walking again tonight, which was fun for us, but not a lot of fun for Gomez because my walking speed is still set to ‘Brazil’. One of the Elders we share a car with was passing a kidney stone tonight, and so Collins called us telling us they were going to come out to give us a ride. Well, they live almost an hour away and don’t have the miles to use for a drive like that, so we told them that we would walk the hour to our house. It actually went really well, and we were grateful for the opportunity to destress while we walked. The Sisters were really nice to us and offered to bring our stuff to us in their car, so we didn’t even have to pack all of our stuff back home, which made for a very nice walk. The Elder who got the kidney stone is fine now.

11/26/2020

Happy Thanksgiving! Today was one of the best Thanksgivings I’ve ever had, and definitely the best one I’ve had on the mission, since last year I didn’t realize Thanksgiving had happened until a couple days after it had passed. The reason our Thanksgiving was so good today was because of the service project that we got to do as a DIstrict. This was the second time that I’d ever gotten to do service with my District, and it was a blast to get to engage with them over something so simple, yet almost trivial compared to the high stakes work we’re always obsessing about. To be forced to take a break and do something fun as a team was really nice. We had the goal of picking up trash alongside a river trail, and we didn’t have high expectations because of how well maintained it was, but fortunately we were still able to ransack a couple areas where people had left behind piles of litter. “Ransack” is probably the best term to describe what we did, because among my finds was a black trash bag sack, that I ran away with. It might have belonged to someone, I’m not sure. We managed to get SO much stuff, and I felt very useful, since I spotted so many well masked litter hideaways, and dove through thorny bushes and dense forest enclosures to get to them. At one point, we even found a partially buried sign, which was sticking out of the dirt, and when we King Arthur style yanked it out of the dirt, I’m pretty sure that we instantaneously saved like, three turtles. The amount of trash you pick up is proportional to the amount of turtles you save, so I personally saved like, 16 turtles today.

11/27/2020

Today was a lot of fun! Everyone’s still pretty busy because they’re recovering from their turkey induced comas (I guess), but Gomez and I were still able to get a lot of work done. Today was also the day that I finished the Prophet’s challenge to post on social media for seven days with the #givethanks tag. It was incredible to see just how true the Prophet’s counsel was that I would be more full of hope afterwards, gratitude does have an incredible ability to shape our lives for the better, and to help us to feel of God’s joy and love.

11/28/2020

Today was pretty busy. We had two different service projects today, one was with our Bishop and the other was with a widow in our ward. We really like doing service projects since it’s the one way that we can meet with people in public. The meeting that we had with our Bishop was also especially significant, because that was the first time that I’ve gotten meet with him in any way. We’ve had Ward councils and Sacrament meetings where we’ve seen and talked to him, but never a personalized meet-up where we were able to talk to him outside his capacities as Bishop. He introduced us to his sons today which was cool, because I had no idea who the members of his family were. Our other service project was also super successful. We were clipping tree branches and trimming bushes down. The Sister that we were helping didn’t have very many tools so we did the best with what we had. She wanted some really thick branches cut down, and had some not-very-big branch clippers to get the job done. Gomez and I remedied this by making up for our lack of leverage with brute force. He would grab one end of the handle and I would grab the other, and we would push together as hard as we could. This worked for several branches, all of them ending in loud snaps as we crushed the limbs between the clippers. Eventually Gomez and I got to a branch that was just a little to big though, and as we pushed we ended up snapping the clippers. The metal end of the clippers that was used to cut the branches snapped off. Gomez and I felt pretty good about our strength after that, but horrible that we had just damaged this widow’s tool beyond repairs. Hopefully Walmart sells some cheap since we also don’t have a lot of money to replace them… After our “service” at that Sister’s house, we walked a half hour back home, although Google says it should have been 45 minutes. We’re good at taking shortcuts, and only had to cut through one wilderness area that might have been someone’s yard, we’re not really sure. The only other significant event today was when I courageously rescued my companion from the clutches of a dangerous spider. Well, that might’ve been exaggerating. The spider was about the side of a quarter, although I did wrestle with it for a full five minutes to keep it on a piece of paper long enough for me to take it outside. I would pick it up, and it would immediately run and jump off the paper, and then I would yell at it for not being very smart since I was trying to save its life, which probably agitated it more and caused this cycle to repeat for five minutes until the spider eventually wore itself out and I was able to get it outside, much to my companion’s relief.

11/29/2020

Today was a really good day. We had a goal as a mission of doubling the number of new companionships that found someone, which meant going from about 50% of people who had found someone going to about 80% (20% of our mission finding pretty regularly, so our goal was more about increasing the number of companionships that were finding rather than just increasing the number of people being found). I had been here for 13 weeks, and we hadn’t found anyone yet, but today we were able to set up an appointment with someone for tomorrow, which will be a pickup lesson and a new person. It won’t count towards this week’s finding stats since this week ended tonight at 8:30, but it was still fun to be a part of the wave of finding new people. We found through a small Facebook group, which I didn’t think was very likely in our area since we had really tried as a District for a long time to work on the Facebook groups in the surrounding area and we just weren’t finding anyone, but tonight all of our efforts paid off. Tomorrow we’ll get to have a pick up lesson.

Today more than a specific verse I wanted to share a message that we see through the book of Daniel. In addition to having a brother who was named after this prophet, this book has always stood out to me because it is such a spectacular account. Daniel was a prophet who was highly favored, and served in high positions under five different kings. Daniel much like most of us, would occasionally wonder why the Lord had picked him to receive such incredible blessings, in which case he always heard the reply, "for thou art greatly beloved". The greatest gift that we've received is that of the Atonement from Christ, in response to this great blessing all of us are left wondering, 'how can it be that Jesus Christ would make an Atonement for me? And the answer will always come to us the same as it did to Daniel, "for thou art greatly beloved". You are greatly beloved and that is a promise that I make to you in the name of Jesus Christ.

I love you all!

---

Chapter 21: Success and Exploding Keyboards

My Alphasmart keyboard that I would type up my journals on died this week, which was pretty sad, especially because I lost a couple days worth of notes. Fortunately I was able to get another keyboard today so I'll be able to go back to writing insanely long emails next week. If it somehow comes as a disappointment that I didn't write as much this week, then enjoy the break, you deserve it after getting this far through my mission's accountings. 

11/20/2020

Even though my keyboard broke, today was an awesome enough day that it merits the pain of typing out a journal entry with just my thumbs. Today we heard inspired counsel from the Prophet to utilize gratitude to help us find hope, and eventually, faith. We also received harsher COVID rules, scaling back our ability to teach in homes, but it worked out okay today. They told us that the rules would go into effect starting at 5:00 today, which I guess is when the COVID comes out? So we crammed all of our in person lessons in before five tonight when the rules would change. Yes, we had to cram them in, because today we had five lessons with members. We broke our record again! We were ecstatic to have so many lessons today, and were even more joyful when we repeatedly heard the phrase, "that was exactly what I needed today". We also got a really nice thank you from a member afterwards, thanking us for acting as more than missionaries, acting as members of their family who truly loved them and completed their home. Those were incredible words to hear.

11/22/2020

We're really starting to gain momentum in Monument. Today we taught seven lessons, blowing the record we made earlier this week of five out of the water. Seven is even a little better than what we were normally doing with nonmembers in Brazil, we would average about five or six lessons a day there, so getting seven here with our members made it feel like we were really being efficient. Our lessons would be unplanned in Brazil, all people who we would find that day, which was exciting, but not a super efficient way of working. Today we had a couple unplanned lessons, but the majority of them were planned, which was cool to see that some of the skills I'd gained from Brazil are useful here, but that we were also following a better, more well structured plan than I use to. This week we also hit the mission standard of excellence for lessons, which I wasn't sure if we would ever do. For an area that has quadrupled in the number of missionaries, we expected the area to be overwhelmed, and incapable of supporting all four companionships as far as work is concerned. Hitting the mission standard of excellence (between 15-20 lessons a week, and we got 17), is a really big deal and a testament to how our ward is grown. This is a really big landmark because it shows a lot of reactivation among members, and an overall effort on everyone's part to be more Christlike. Members taking an interest in meeting with the missionaries is an activity indicator, and so it's really cool to see that even with Coronavirus, this ward is becoming more active than they ever have been before.

I realized that my emails aren't completely accurate, they're about a 50% view of what's been happening for me. I've shared all the details of what's happening in my life, except for the lessons that I'm learning, and so I wanted to share some additional thoughts besides my regular Spiritual thought. The reason we were so successful this week was, in part, affected by one of my decisions. In Alma 26:22 we read of the account of Ammon who describes his mission experiences: Yea, he that repenteth and exerciseth faith, and bringeth forth good works, and prayeth continually without ceasing—unto such it is given to know the mysteries of God; yea, unto such it shall be given to reveal things which never have been revealed; yea, and it shall be given unto such to bring thousands of souls to repentance, even as it has been given unto us to bring these our brethren to repentance. 

This promise hit me with incredible power, I've read through this verse many times before and never had my heart touched in the same way. Why was this so significant? The area we've been working in is one of the least fruitful areas in the mission, so to feel the Holy Ghost, God Himself, make this promise to me on conditions that I repent, exercise faith, labor diligently, and pray without ceasing, that I will be an effective tool in His hands to learn, prophesy, help people find the same joy of the Gospel through repentance that I've found, is an incredible promise. The success that we found this week was proof of that promise. I had tried for 12 weeks to hit our mission standard of excellence and failed. I failed twelve times in a row before we hit this goal, something that changed the moment I started exercising my faith. Miracles follow our faith.

Additionally I wanted to share a thought from a talk I liked. Elder Soares in his talk from the October 2020 General Conference shared the metaphor of a magnet, representing sin: "Metaphorically speaking, yielding to temptation is like approaching a magnet with a metal object. The magnet’s invisible force attracts the metal object and holds it tightly. The magnet loses its power over it only when the metal object is placed far from it. Therefore, just as the magnet is unable to exercise power over a faraway metal object, as we resist temptation, it fades away and loses its power over our mind and heart and, consequently, over our actions." That analogy is incredible, but and I would like to expand upon it. In this world it is impossible to remain stagnant. Just like it's impossible to truly balance a metal object to be suspended between two magnets indefinitely, so too are we always moving. Elder Soares described the magnet of sin and temptation, and the other is the magnet of Christ. As we allow ourselves to be drawn to the sweet music of the Gospel we are moving closer to the magnet of Christ. In fact, anything that we do to exercise our faith in Christ, moves us closer to him and further away from Satan. I love this analogy for a couple reasons: One is that the magnet of Christ does more than allow us to draw unto Him at quicker and quicker speeds, the magnet of Christ actually pushes away Satan and stops his magnetic fields from affecting us. As we draw close to Christ, even the loud seemingly powerful pull of the adversary is completely blocked by infinitely stronger power Christ is.

I love you all, I'm praying for you!

Elder Anderson

The pictures are of the lengths that we went to so that we could have internet during our lessons. Our house is completely shielded from data, so we climbed this mountain to have a great backdrop and data during our lessons. 

Chapter 20: Heavy Machinery

11/9/2020

Today was a great pday. It was one of the first in a very long time that we haven't really had anything going on, it's too cold to be motivated to go on a hike or something, and COVID rules don't allow for much right now anyways. So I got to spend my day studying, and talking with my family. It was very nice to have a relaxing Pday. Then we had a meeting as a Zone to discuss our goals and what we wanted to do as a Zone. The meeting was pretty slow, and definitely not the most engaging one I've been to, but we set some goals for next week so it was a productive meeting.

11/10/2020

Today was a lot of fun! We got to see the Hudsons, who I love talking to because their dad served in Manaus, and we share so many common stories and interests. We both lamented tonight over the great fruit and fish that we wish that we could be eating, but are being deprived of in the United States. He was very excited to hear about the Feijao Carioca that I got gifted, because he really misses the beans and rice we would eat everyday as well. At the end of our meeting, he very kindly gifted my comp and I a bottle of Guarana, a soda from Brazil. I excitedly called my District afterwards and told them about the treasure we had received and we all made plans to do a soda taste test on Thursday when we all get together for our District counsel. Some of the Elders had already tried Guarana, and remembered how much they loved it, which only added to the excitement of everyone else. We're going to have a very good meeting on Thursday.

11/11/2020

Today I wasn't the model of responsiblity, I completely forgot that we had a Facebook post to put up tomorrow. Fortunately we had a lesson today, and so we were able to twist the lesson into a filming session. The family that we filmed did great! We would have just put something together ourselves, but the mission decided that for these next couple of months we would only focus on members, not on missionaries, and so we're being encouraged, or rather coerced, into making videos of members and their families. That isn't a setback though, it's actually a really good thing, and it's something I've been trying to do since I was with Elder Collins. By having a majority of the posts that I've put up focused on members, we've gotten a lot more interaction from other ward members. We also had a service project with our district today. We were putting together bags of food for the homeless and it turned into one great assembly line where we organized everything as fast as humanly possible, as we had a one hour time limit thanks to COVID rules. That was a really fun service though, that's the first time that I ever got to do service with my district, so that was pretty cool. The other significant event that happened today occured as we were leaving the church. Elder Gomez was playing around with new ringtones today and finally decided on one of a small child saying, "bring, bring" (like, "ring ring" but with a little bit of a tongue roll on the "r"). That ringtone sounded perfectly normal in the daytime, but as we were walking out, we were both startled to hear a small child say "bring". It came from about waist level-the exact height a child with a voice like that would be, and I thought that there was a demon child following us since that voice came out of nowhere. It also scared Gomez, but whereas I was just startled, he actually jumped several feet to the side and screamed. He jumped so high, that's the hardest I've laughed in a long time.

11/12/2020

Today was a great day! We had a District Counsel today, and it was pretty normal except for two Sisters who had to join over Zoom since they were exposed to COVID. We (The rest of the District) also were exposed to those Sisters after they were exposed, although fortunately we don't have to quarantine since the Sisters aren't showing any symptoms. After the District Counsel, we broke out the bottle of Guarana. I checked the "Best by" date, and saw that it expired in October of last year. I didn't even know that was possible. It was a very flat soda, but still very good. We had a couple of lessons today which went even better than usual, and we posted a video that our members made on Facebook. We also got to do another service project where we used a lawnmower. We don't know if we're allowed to use a lawnmower or not, it's a gas powered tool, but apparently they're used quite frequently and no one's answered our question about it yet. Either way, we mowed the lawn for an elderly couple, so it was definitely a necessity; They're a really cute couple, they keep insisting that we're "God-sent". I mean, we are, so I guess it's not a bad summary of our mission calls.

11/13/2020

Today was a great day. We had three lessons, one of which was a birthday lesson. We might have just become Gospel entertainers? Like, entertainers, but we use the Gospel. I think it's pretty entertaining. The lessons went well. We also made family connections for like, three different families in our ward. It's really weird when you get to know everyone seperately, and then it turns out that everyone you know has ties to each other. I feel very left out; I'm not related to anyone in this ward. They should stop being related to each other to make me feel better. Collins and I have been accumulating a library of historical documents and the records of various general authorities who've spent time analyzing them. It's been going pretty well, and been some very interesting stuff. We also got some nice surprises from people in our ward. Several families brought us treats tonight, and one family even dropped off food for us which was a miracle since we ended up having to feed ourselves this week a lot more than we thought we would, and we were running pretty low on food supplies. Getting more supplies was an incredible tender mercy.

11/14/2020

Today was good! We had the coolest service project that I've ever gotten to do. We went over to Brother White's house (The White House) originally expecting to rake leaves, but when we got there his next door neighboor and son was shoving all of his fallen branches from our big winter storm a couple of weeks ago through a wood chipper. Brother White was over there helping his son out despite his advanced age, and so I think it was good that we showed up because we were able to help him and his son out at the same time. I thought that getting to use a shovel was about the most fun I could possibly have, but I was wrong, getting to send giant logs through that woodchipper and watch them disintegrate was a lot more fun. Then we got to shovel the woodchips out of the back of the truck where they were collecting, so a shovel + a woodchipper = best service ever. Everyone was very timid about the machine that would suck everything up and destroy it, but I had a lot of fun playing up close and personal with it. Playing with a woodchipper probably isn't a good habit to be in, though.

11/15/2020

Today was a great day. We had a couple of lessons which went really well, and my companion and I finally got to give talks. Gomez refused to go first, which was a timing problem for me. I can talk for an insanely long time, and so I'm great at adjusting my words to either be shorter or longer depending on the amount of time that I have. I've had a lot of practice with cutting my messages down in length since I'll generally overprepare with too much information (like this journal, this is very information saturated). One talk I gave I read 19 scriptures I found on a subject over a couple of days and tied them together. There wasn't any time to give my own thoughts, but that's a good example of how I usually prepare. So when Gomez said he wouldn't go first I was very nervous, knowing that there was a good chance that we wouldn't end up anywhere close to the time limit we were asked to speak for, and that's exactly what happened. We were asked to speak for 20 minutes together, he told me to leave him four minutes, and then spoke for 15. Both of our talks were really good, though, and no one seemed mad that they had to stay the extra ten minutes, so everything seemed to work out pretty well. Gomez did do an incredible job on his talk. I had planned to speak about the role of the ward in missionary work for the past four weeks and prepared specific breakdowns of what everyone's parts were and how we could be more unified and work together as a whole, but about a half hour before I gave my talk I felt prompted to throw out all of those ideas and share some thoughts on repentance. So I called our ward to repentance. I thought that they might hate us afterwards, but they actually seemed very grateful for it. A lot of people really, really liked the messages. That's always important, the more of the Savior's love that they can feel during talks, the more they seem to like it, and so I think we did a really good job.

The Spiritual thought that I wanted to share today was from Daniel Chapter 3, about Shadrach, Meshach,  and Abed-Nego. These incredible men were valiant examples of faith, in the story of how they were cast into a furnace for their beliefs, they placed faith not in their deliverance, but in their loyalty to God. They told king Nebuchadnezzar that regardless of God's omnipotent power and His will, they would choose to trust in Him.

17 If it be so, our God whom we serve is able to deliver us from the burning fiery furnace, and he will deliver us out of thine hand, O king.

18 But if not, be it known unto thee, O king, that we will not serve thy gods, nor worship the golden image which thou hast set up.

I pray that we have the same strength to resist Satan in our lives, the same strength to look unto Christ in all things, and I promise that all who exercise faith in Him will find perfect deliverance from the attacks of the adversary.

Chapter 19: "Aggressive Driving" -TiWi

11/2/2020

Today was a great Pday. We were in a rush this morning because we offered to help a man in our ward move his lathe. His 400 pound machine was getting put onto a trailer, and said the service project wouldn't take more than five minutes, but would be impossible for him to do alone, so even though it was a very short project, we still had to make the 15 minute drive out, and we ended up rushing from Walmart to get there. After we dropped off our groceries we went to a farmers market to try to find some specialty spices for me. They didn't have them, which was a letdown, but we found a basil plant that was twice the size of the one I got from Walmart, so now I have two basil plants. We also went to get Elder Gomez new shoes and a haircut. After Pday we worked on making a Facebook video for a post tomorrow, and Elder Gomez being the stud that he his, offered to share his testimony about music, and I put together a pretty great video of him playing. soon I'm going to have to invest in one of those giant camera stabilizers so we can get some really dynamic shots of him playing, stuff like zooming into the individual sweat beads on his forehead, and panning across his stomach. Our video turned out well, but we don't have data at our house to get it approved, so we'll probably have to wait until tomorrow morning when we travel to the church to submit our video.

11/3/2020

Today was Zone Conference! This was probably one of my favorite Zone Conferences ever, because our Mission President was speaking about a topic that I was very passionate about: Personal conversion and becoming better disciples of the Lord. The stuff he talked about was very cool, and I felt that I learned a lot. I was also able to contribute a lot to our Zone Conference. I got called on a lot, and I volunteered a lot, so people probably got sick of hearing my voice, but it was a really cool conference to be a part of. There were a lot of really cool trainings, I got to share my testimony frequently, and Sister Rees gave a very detailed explanation of the verses about the woman by the well that Christ visited that was spectacular. Sister Rees understands the scriptures very, very well. I would love to learn more from her. Today was also significant because we beet the "three lesson block" as in, we would teach three families a day as a maximum, we would frequently try for four lessons in a day, but someone would always cancel. So after two months of trying with this ward, we finally taught four lessons in a day. That's a new personal best for member lessons.

11/4/2020

This morning we had a service project with a widow in our ward. The service was really quick, we ended up cutting down a tree branch and cutting it into pieces, but that was it. Afterwards we employed our service to fix a broom and a bottle of super glue. I thought it was kind of silly that we drove twenty minutes to open a bottle of glue, but we had to use all of our expertise with weighted tools to break open the seal  and make it useable again, so I guess the challenge made it worth it. We also found out that she was the sister of two other members of our ward, and we were able to set up lessons with all of them, so it was a very beneficial visit. Otherwise, the most exciting thing that happened was probably the 68 giant meatballs Elder Gomez and I made up. Thanks to Sister Barnhurst we got to make them out of Elk meat, and there's enough there to last us nine meals, which was pretty awesome. It was very kind of Sister Barnhurst to give us so much meat, and I was very excited to make meatballs out of such a lean meat. Usually when I cook meatballs in the oven they're made out of ground beef with a roughly 30% fat content, so the pan ends up very greasy and the meatballs shrink a lot, but elk meat is like, 5% fat, and so these really didn't shrink and they didn't make a big mess. I made sure to tell Collins what we were up to since I did the same project with him when he was my comp, and he thought it was pretty great that I was going to make my impact on Monument [my current district] the same way that I did for Melody Lane [my first district], since Melody Lane apparently still has meatballs I made up that they haven't used yet.

11/5/2020

Today was a lot of fun. We taught a couple different lessons, one to the Bynum family, and one to a widow in our ward. The Bynum family lesson was super sincere, it was a very good lesson and discussion. The lesson with the widow in our ward was also a lot of fun. We have a goal of having a maximum of 20 minute lessons in our mission, but as soon as we walked in the Spirit whispered that this lesson was going to be a lot longer than that, and that was okay. We ministered to the Sister according to her needs and were able to love her as the Savior would have. We also went through an entire album of photos, which was pretty impressive and took us about 50 minutes. Today was also a lot of fun because I've been working on art again to post something to our ward Facebook page, since that sparked so much missionary work last time. After posting that picture, we had a lot of people want to talk to us, and a lot of people who wanted to share it with those around them which was really cool. I'd been working on watercoloring skin tones, but had never been able to get it down before, but today I finally did it! I did a practice that went pretty well, and will be pretty excited to see how my project goes tomorrow. We also had one of the funniest experiences of my mission when we picked up the Redlands Elders after their dinner. The Elders got in the car looking very defeated and worn out, we asked them what had happened and they informed us that they had just met the crazy people in their ward. Davenport told us "had I been mute, I would have talked as much as I did during that lesson", they had hardly gotten a word in the whole night, and seeing the after effects of listening to these people talk without taking a breath for over an hour was pretty hilarious. I would attempt to describe their wide eyes and exhausted mental states, but there's little I can do to accurately convey how traumatized they were. COVID certainly has an interesting effect on some, that couple had probably only seen isolation for the last eight months, and took it all out on our poor Elders tonight.

11/6/2020

Today was a lot of fun, we got to do service with Brother Lewis for a couple of hours. We finished taking apart his backyard and cleaning out the inside out his house. He was told that there were people moving into his house tomorrow, and then tonight at 6:30 got a text from the landlord saying it was just a joke to get him going since he always procrastinates so much. It worked well enough because we got through everything that we needed to get the house officially cleaned out, so now the house is completely empty, carpets washed, walls repainted, floors shining, and all that. We got to teach a couple of lessons today, one to an elderly couple who invited us over for lunch, and one to their "little sister" another elderly woman and her grandson. The lessons went a little bit long, but were still really good. When we had lunch with the elderly couple we felt terrible, both of the members of that family have to be older than 80. Her hands would shake so bad, I offered her help probably every ten seconds, but she kept firmly insisting she was fine. I'm amazed that she's still making food when she has so little use of her hands. I don't say that to make fun of her, but out of admiration for the way that she tries to serve us, despite her age and failing muscles. There are few acts of service that have been given to us missionaries that have been as meaningful as that woman struggling to make us food to eat. I also got another taste of Brazil tonight: We had to walk to one of our service projects, and being pressed for time I started walking at my normal Brazil walking speed, only to find out that it was killing Gomez and that he couldn't keep up. Fortunately it wasn't too long of a walk, but it was fun to walk at "missionary speed" for a bit, again.

11/7/2020

Sometimes I expect as a missionary that I'm going to get to be super efficient, and never have to slow down, but today was kind of the opposite of that. Because we tried to follow the rules we ended up having to slow down on a couple different occasions and just stand around. There can't be one companionship of Elders and Sisters in the church at the same time, and so when our Elders left we would go wait outside. This morning I looked at our schedule and decided to not bring my jacket with me since we didn't have anything outside today. Well, that was fine until we went to wait outside because one of the companionships left so to keep the rules we had to wait outside. I didn't mind, but I felt bad for my comp because he got cold, even though he had a jacket on. Eventually the Sisters realized what had happened, and came to check on us, saw my comp huddled in the corner away from the wind and rain, and me studying in the rain. They were rather appalled that I wasn't wearing a jacket and made a big deal about me wearing one that they had stolen from the church's 'lost and found', despite my protests that I was "temperature proof". I don't get hot because of Manaus, and wasn't getting cold either, so I was fine. We got in contact with a lot of people today, which was really good. There were a couple of people who we hadn't ever gotten in contact with before, so we were pretty excited. The Sisters also asked us to help them with a video, their idea was to compliment us and to film our reaction, and it turns out that neither my comp nor I can take a compliment. The Sisters tried to film the video without us knowing what they were going to be doing which was tricky with the whole "companions need to be within sight and sound" rule. They filmed my comp first, and apparently he just looked confused when they complimented him, and when it was my turn there was a man in a motorized wheelchair and a racing flag sticking out the back booking it down the road and I thought it was the coolest thing ever. It made for an awesome video because as soon as the Sisters were like, "Elder Anderson, we think you're a genius" I was like, "that man is my new hero" and it totally ruined the surprise, but watching it afterwards was hilarious.

11/8/2020

Today was a lot of fun, we got to teach a few lessons, and one of them was to the Gibsons who are one of my favorite families in this ward. We visited the Gibsons for dinner, but it ended up getting very interesting because the Gibsons invited the Sisters to eat with them too, which exceeded the two household COVID rule. So Elder Gomez and I ate a very abbreviated dinner, and then left after about a half hour so that the Sisters who were running late, could have dinner with the Gibsons. It was still a really good dinner, and we got to share a message with all four of us, the Elders and the Sisters together, which was a lot of fun. Elder Bott who we share a car with has a missionary talk show, he promises that people can get Spiritually uplifted in three minutes or less, and invited me to share some brief thoughts on his show. I got to talk about missionary work, and was very honored that he wanted me to co-star in it with him. Bott has asked quite the powerful lineup of missionaries to be a part of his show, and so getting to be included in the roster was very cool for me. Bott doesn't really express emotion, so getting to teach with him is the highest praise he gives. When he asked me to teach with him I was very excited, we all tease him about his show, mostly because if you scroll from one episode to the next to the next really quickly you repeatedly hear, "I'm Elder Bott, I'm Elder Bott, I'm Elder Bott" since that's the first line of his intro and they all start the same. The video turned out really well, and we did it in one take without any planning ahead (which you can tell because I asked Bott a question partway through and he gets visibly nervous), so it was very much from the heart. I also got to talk to one of the counselors in our Mission Presidency today which was pretty cool.

The verses that I wanted to share today come from 1 Samuel 24. In this chapter we read about how David has the opportunity to smite the bloodthirsty Saul who's been chasing him and seeking his life. Yet David doesn't retaliate, rather, he replies how the Lord commanded that we reply to our adversaries with these verses:

12 The Lord judge between me and thee, and the Lord avenge me of thee: but mine hand shall not be upon thee.

13 As saith the proverb of the ancients, Wickedness proceedeth from the wicked: but mine hand shall not be upon thee.

Saul wasn't repentant, yet David still forgave him. As we forgive our wrongdoers we will find the same peace and love in our hearts that David found that allowed him to love not only his friends, but his enemies as well.

Chapter 18: A Scary Week

10/26/2020

Today was a fun Pday. Fortunately, despite the heavy snows that we had last night it melted off the roads and sidewalks pretty fast, so we were able to get to Walmart without a problem. We had a fun time doing weekly shopping, and at 8am after a freak snowstorm, missionaries were pretty much the only people inside of that building, so we all got to converse about the transformations that happened to the landscape last night. It was the first time a couple Elders and Sisters had really been in snow, so we all had fun listening to the stories of them discovering this new world. I got to talk to my old comp, Elder Liljenquist for a while via Facebook Messenger which was pretty awesome, I was very, very excited to have an opportunity to use my Portuguese, and getting to speak with him was a lot of fun. We talked about the crazy different worlds that we were serving in, and talked about times when I was a horrible companion, and slept through the night while LilJ was violently vomiting. I also got to talk to some of my old friends from Manaus and hear how they were doing. My adopted parents from Manaus and I got to do a video call for a couple of minutes which we were all very excited about. We also got to teach a lesson to the Gebhards tonight. We didn't stay for dinner, but we did enjoy the food that they sent us with, and the chance we had to talk before we had to leave. Then we got to contact our members to finish up the night. It was a great Pday.

10/27/2020

Today was a lot of fun. We got to do a service project with Brother Lewis, and that was definitely the highlight of the day. We were tearing apart his house as quickly as we possibly could, because he had to have it cleared by tomorrow, so where we were sorting things into various different piles before, different groups of stuff to go to different people, tonight we just worked as fast as possible and used our best judgement to sort between "keep" and "trash". That was probably one of the most hectic hours of my life, we moved so quickly, but we did it, we managed to clear out his house in an hour. It was a lot of fun, too, though. He told us some more about his life, his brother's death, the tragedies that had affected his family, and at the end we just told him in a very brief testimony of God's love for Him. That final 30 seconds seemed to have an incredible impact on him, and he sent us some thank you messages later, telling us he wanted to set up a time for a lesson, and of his gratitude for what we had done. It was incredible to see the joy we left him with today, and the hope that was in his eyes.

10/28/2020

Today was the best day ever! I got to go on exchanges with Elder Collins again, and we had another awesome day of memory making missionary service. We did a couple of service projects today, one was at a Uhaul where we worked very fast playing Tetris. We moved everything out of the storage unit as fast as we could, and filled up that truck in the space of about fifteen minutes. The grandpa who was moving himself out was very impressed that we were able to do so much. It was good that we went so fast because we had a lot of lessons today. Collins and I got to teach someone over a phone call lesson and a zoom lesson which was a lot of fun. The phone call lesson had some awkward gaps where we weren't sure if the phone call had dropped or what, we would talk for a bit, wait, not hear anything back from her, and then ask, "are you still there, Sally" to which she'd respond, "oh yes! I was just looking through that scripture you shared again, it sure is a good one". So it wasn't very interactive, but it was still fun. The most fun part of today had to be the other service project we did, though. We went over to this man's house to help him blow out his sprinkler lines before they froze over for the winter, and as we were pulling up Collins said, "I love this dog they have, he's a smart dog, but he's also very dumb" I just looked at him quizzically before he pointed to where the dog was standing next to this pond. The dog started barking wildly as we were pulling up, and after about ten seconds, without any warning, jumped straight into the pond. It was like, 35 degrees outside, it was freezing, and Collins explained it with, "yeah, he recognizes our car, the missionaries were always telling him to jump in, so now he does it whenever he sees us. The dog realized pretty quickly that the pond was absolutely freezing, and so later he would run up like he was going to jump in and freeze there, refusing to jump. I thought he had learned, but the dog still jumped in a couple more times. The part that made today so great though was when Collins and I got to do comp study. We were able to teach each other so much, every time we do exchanges I end up very sad that Collins and I didn't get more time together.

10/29/2020

Today was a good day. Elder Gomez and I got our hopes up that we would have a couple of lessons, but they both fell through. It was kind of disappointing, but at least we got some extra time to try to contact more of our members. We got through like, 20 families tonight, which was probably like, a third of our ward. We also had a combined district counsel today, and I invested a lot more into this one than normal. I talked a lot more about our difficulties, and was much more helpful in answering other's questions than I've been in past times. I'm kind of a rogue missionary, and so I was very surprised of how supportive others were of my answers. I don't know why I thought they wouldn't like what I had to say, I guess I'm just not used to missionaries being so supportive.

10/30/2020

Today we had interviews with President. this was probably the fastest interview I've ever had (ten minutes) but one of the most effective ones, because of how much we were able to get through. I've had a couple of really cool experiences with personal revelation: When I first came out, I had absolutely no idea what I was doing. I felt months behind where everyone was at, I had no idea what our mission's goals were or what all of the plans that everyone so frequently referenced were. Everything seemed very complicated to me, and I was unsure how I would catch up to everyone. Instead of focusing on everything I didn't have, though, I tried to listen to the promptings of the Spirit, and those promptings led me to work effectively in my area. The things Collins and I would focus on were then the things that the mission would move onto. It was incredible to see that the Spirit would guide us on how to work in our area despite all of our weaknesses. Because of the Spirit, we were able to work harmoniously with our mission. A couple of weeks ago, I felt like it was important to record a video for my Mission President focusing on helping Elders and Sisters to teach with power. It seemed like a weird prompting to follow, but I did it. Then, a couple of days ago, we got the release of what our mission was going to be focusing on for the month of November. It was exactly what I'd talked about. Maybe that exercise was just to strengthen myself, but I asked my President to watch the video I recorded and see if it's something he believes to be equally important for our mission. I might have just signed myself up for a talk in front of ~300 Elders and Sisters. The interview I had with President was also very sweet today. I got a lot more out of it than most other Elders and Sisters were afforded. I was very grateful for the time that President took to talk to me.

10/31/2020

Happy Halloween! We ran around today doing as many service projects as we could. We got to help rake leaves, spear them with pitchforks, take apart tree limbs that fell because of the snowstorm, and clean the bigger pieces to be used as firewood. We also got to teach a lesson to the Hillan family today, they gave us acai, which was an incredible treat. We were told to be home by 6:00 tonight, so at about seven we opened up our garage door, sat their doing studies, and set up a bowl of candy in our driveway for trick-or-treaters to enjoy. Elder Gomez did his studies in the dinosaur costume Brother Lewis gave to us, and that costume was like the lighthouse for trick-or-treaters, they seemed to flock to him. Probably only like, 15 kids showed up, but it was still pretty cool. We also had an opportunity to talk to our neighbors, they thought it was so cool that we as missionaries were trying to do stuff to support the neighborhood, and so we earned a lot of friends tonight. We also got to do a call with our District tonight, which was a fun way to end the spooky day.

11/1/2020

We had a great church meeting today. We actually had a lot of meetings today, and the most important one was probably our Ward Council meeting. We presented a Ward Mission Plan of how we wanted to work better in the area. Generally it's better if the Ward creates this plan, than if the missionaries do, so I tried to do a really good job of having the Ward pick the goals, and then we just helped them make plans about how to do it. Our plans ended up being centered around weekly lessons with the missionaries where the families we're meeting with invite one other family, an active family, less active, or nonmember family. We wanted to focus on maximizing our effort as families in small and simple ways that would push our families, but were still achievable. We got to teach Sunday school to the 12-14 year old class, and a couple lessons to families. One of the families we taught ended up inviting too many people, which was a good problem to have. We gave our district leader a call because the number of people who were there broke COVID rules, but it worked out because the kids left and we were able to do it outside. We also got to walk back from our dinner tonight which ended up being an hour long walk, and brought me a lot of solace, feeling like I wasn't missing out on too much from Brazil.

Today I wanted to share a message that comes from 1 Samuel 16:7, "the Lord seeth not as man seeth; for man looketh on the outward appearance, but the Lord looketh on the heart". Jesus Christ is our perfect exemplar, He teaches us how to see others. It's my promise that as we seek to see others in a more Christlike way, looking on their hearts and seeing them as God does, we'll be blessed to come to know those around us as they really are: Sons and daughters of the most high God.

Chapter 17: Snow Comes To Grand Junction

10/19/2020

Today was a lot of fun. I got a basil plant at Walmart, as soon as I saw that they had them this week I grabbed one of those. I've wanted a basil plant for a long time, so I'm going to have a great however-long-I'm-here-for. I also gave Gomez and I haircuts today and they turned out pretty great! I was very proud of how mine turned out, but felt bad for Gomez, his hair is pretty curly and so I had a hard time blending his hair with it jutting out in so many random directions, so his hair didn't turn out very well, but he was still very nice about it. We had an interesting dinner, we walked in and the Sister said, "It's cold outside, so we're going to have to eat inside" (which is against our COVID rules, and I explained that in the text we sent to them this morning). She told us we were going to have to make an exception like some of the other missionaries she knew, at which point I very bluntly told her that if we couldn't abide by the rules we would have to leave. Sitting there locked in stalemate was probably the most tense three seconds of my life before she relented and went to get a coat so that we could all eat outside. The rest of the dinner was very peaceful, and went great. We also found a surprise on our workspace today, the Sisters we share a ward with had left a bunch of cookies they'd bought for us on  our table, and left us wondering who was watching out for us. That was an incredibly Christlike thing to do, we really love those Sisters.

10/20/2020

Today was a great day. We got to teach a lesson to the Case family which was a lot of fun, every time we sit down with the Case family I end up laughing my head off about the way their siblings tease each other. They're a very loving family. Our lesson also went a completely different way than we started it off as, but we got some great things out of it, so that's what's important. We also locked ourselves out of the church (which wasn't great), I always keep my keys in my bag, and when we dropped the Elders we share a car with off at their house I was lazy and didn't want to carry my bag around with me. We realized the problem when we pulled up to the church. Fortunately the Sisters were able to bail us out without too much work on their behalves. We also had a mission devotional today. I ended up contributing a lot to that devotional so I'm sure everyone got sick of hearing from me, but I had a lot of fun. We're almost up to 270 missionaries, and so it's kind of staggering to remember the number of people who are listening every time we speak. Today Sister Case agreed to let me paint a watercolor of her family, so now I'll be very excited to have a new avenue of missionary work to pursue. Watercolors are pretty fast, so I'm hoping I can get that project done in an hour or two.

10/21/2020

Today was a great day. We had service all day. We originally planned to do two different major service projects today, and then had another two sprung on us last minute. We only ended up having time for three of the four, but it was cool to have so many different options. We ended up painting, worked on building a deck, mowed the lawn, ripped out a garden, trimmed back plants, took apart another person's garden, sorted his trash into piles, and prepared his yard for the visit we're going to make with him to the dump tomorrow. The last guy who we helped was a retired army vet who's only like, 40 years old. He says he has a lot of free time on his hands, and his garden certainly showed it. He makes a lot of his soil for gardening from scratch, as well as his fertilizers. One of his fertilizers brought back an intensive memory for me: He had a bucket of fish fermenting in the sun as a liquid fertilizer for his garden. The stench of that bucket of fish sitting in the sun was incredible, and it matched exactly the smell of what I had fermenting in a bottle as a nine year old. I left a bottle that I fed with every ill natured item I could find sitting in the sun, until my mom threw it away because apparently it was a "danger to the neighborhood" and a "violation of human decency". I can't believe we threw it away now, that could have kept our garden alive for years. We also had a lesson tonight with an awesome family, although we weren't as good at being animated and excited as usual, Gomez and I were pretty tired from our service.

10/22/2020

Today was an awesome day. We had a service project early this morning with Kyle Davis, we helped him clean out his garage and get stuff to his new house. We got to learn a lot and had a great time with him, helping out in whatever ways we could. We also drove WAY out of our area to help him, which prompted a call from our Elders who were filling out the mileage log for our car tonight, "hey Elders, we're not sure how, but we added 87 miles to the car today, do you Elders know what happened?". We got to teach a couple of lessons, which was a lot of fun. One of the lessons was to our Relief Society President, and the other was to our Elders Quorum President. The lessons went well tonight, although they were so fast that we ultimately ended up leaving the families to discuss amongst themselves after we left. We were pretty pressed for time. We also had a District Counsel today. I got my Spanish and English tags, and now have missionary tags for all the languages that I've gotten to preach the Gospel in. If only the Venezuelans could see me with my Espanol tag now. Our District Counsel was a lot of fun, and I got a lot of backhanded compliments. One of the activities that we did was getting a random topic and verse from the Book of Mormon and tying them together. The topic and verse that I got were pretty far apart, but everyone loved my explanation, and afterwards someone remarked about how I'm "always perfect". Our Zone Leader who sat in for our Council today also came up and thanked me for what I was doing for my district, saying that my efforts 'don't go unnoticed'. I guess our Zone Leader's line wasn't a backhanded compliment, and the other was just a teasing line, but the impact that Gomez and I are having on our District is really significant, its surprised me to see those around us become more hopeful, because Gomez and I haven't wilted during these COVID times, we've flourished, continued to grow, and help others in any way that we can.

10/23/2020

Today was a great day! We had a fun service project where we got to help a man build a deck. He discouraged us from ever listening to the "crazy desires" of our future wives, but that project was probably one of the most counterproductive ways to do it, because I had a lot of fun (mostly just from getting to use power tools), and his wife's happiness was evident and continued to increase as we worked on the project. We also got to teach a lesson to an older widow in our ward through Zoom. One of the cooler side effects of COVID is that we've transitioned to doing a lot of lessons in an online format, and so we can visit a lot of people that we wanted to visit before, but had no way to do it. Zoom has become such a necessity for school, work, and social events that even those who dubbed themselves, "technologically challenged" before have had to become savvy enough to use these programs; So even though this technology existed before and we could use it, the older generation didn't want to learn how to use it, and so it wasn't a viable way to teach before COVID. We also went backwards on restrictions tonight. We had been allowed to gather in semi-large groups before, and now have regressed to two familiar groups, and a maximum of ten people in those groups. Fortunately we don't have any families of nine in our ward, and so it shouldn't restrict our ability to teach the members of our ward too much, but if it regresses much more we might be in some serious trouble. We might have to go back to doing all of our lessons via Zoom.

10/24/2020

Today was a lot of fun! We had a service project with Brother Lewis, and we were able to get a lot done. We took all of the trash we had piled up in his backyard and loaded it onto a trailer to take to the dump. Fortunately he didn't need our help at the dump, because that would have broken a couple of rules. We also worked on a Facebook video with a Sister in our ward for a couple of hours. She taught us how to make pizza and we filmed it, with hopes of relating it back to general conference. We haven't finished it yet, we'll get to do that tomorrow. We ran out of time when we were filming because we had another lesson afterwards, but it worked out okay. Our lesson was with a new family that had moved into the ward and so we got to meet and talk to them. Our lesson went WAY too long, but it's probably my fault for asking everyone about their conversion stories. That conversation went on for a really long time.

10/25/2020

Today was interesting. We knew that it was going to snow from the forecast, but we didn't think that it was going to stick until it froze in the morning, and by then the snow was supposed to slow down, and so we didn't think we would really see anything. However, at 4pm, after it had been raining all day, it started dumping snow and it snowed so hard that it managed to stick, despite the fact that everything was already wet. No one was prepared for this, and it ended up causing a lot of problems. Trees that hadn't lost any of their leaves yet ended up being so heavy from snow that a lot of them collapsed, knocking out powerlines for most of the city. Fortunately our house was spared from the worst of it, we had electricity (mostly). We also had a fun time trying to teach lessons tonight over the phone. We pretty much just bore testimony and hung up, it ended up being like, a two minute phone call, but it went really well. We ended up going to bed like, an hour early because it was pitch black and we didn't have power then, but it was okay, it was nice to have an excuse to go to bed early for once. I also would have made my dad very proud, I went into survival mode to protect all of our stuff, and we made it through the blackout without losing anything important.

Today I wanted to share these verses from the Gospel of John:

34 A new commandment I give unto you, That ye love one another; as I have loved you, that ye also love one another.

35 By this shall all men know that ye are my disciples, if ye have love one to another

John is a really special book, because it was addressed to us as church members. One of the things that confused me for a long time though, was the word, "new". If God is an unchanging God, the same God yesterday, today, and forever, how could anything really be "new"? God's commandments don't change, and so this can't possibly be "new". No, this isn't something new to God, it's meant to be new to us. Every time we read these words we are to renew our commitment to God. As we repent, as we renew our covenants and commitment to God, we obey this great commandment.

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