Week 72: Church Shopping

 Hey y'all!

It's only been a couple days since I sent my last email, and not much has happened so I will keep this one fairly short. 

Christmas night we spent with the Hornbeck family, some of my favorite people in the entire world. We ate a huge dinner and did a little gift exchange. Because half of the elders in the ward are in quarantine right now we FaceTimed them in to make them feel included. 

Saturday we went on exchanges with Elder McAllister, one of the APs in our mission. We were able to teach a cool first lesson with a girl we found over Facebook a few weeks ago. She is currently "church shopping" and as we explained Joseph Smith and the restoration she said "that sounds like me!". She is super prepared and we hope to continue to work with her.

That's it for these last couple days! 

Love and miss you all! 

Elder Anderson

 

 

Week 71: Merry Christmas!

 Hey y'all! 

And Merry Christmas! I hope you all have a wonderful day and enjoy the holidays. I am so grateful for each and every one of you and am so grateful for all your support and love over the years. This week was another fantastic week, here are a few of the highlights. 

Last week we had MLC! It was fun seeing some of my favorite missionaries all in one place. We went over and talked about some changes to the mission standards and also some of the needs of the mission. We also recieved training on some important aspects of social media content in order to find more people to teach. One important point is that we are supposed to be FINDING those who need the gospel, not CREATING them. Therefore we should focus less on entertaining, fun content with a little gospel message and focus more on uplifting spiritual content thats bound to catch the eye of someone who is curious to learn more. 

This last Tuesday we had a super special Christmas Zone Conference. We had 3 zones there, Waco, Killeen, and Cedar Park which was cool because we havent had an opportunity to have a multi-zone conference since President Fox got here. We recieved some training and then President Fox suprised us by putting Polar Express on. It was a Christmas miracle. What was super suprising to me though is how much that movie actually applies to the gospel of Jesus Christ. Throughout the whole thing I kept seeing parallels and similarities between the movie and what we teach. 

One big theme for me is forgiveness. Over and over again when he pulls the emergency brake, loses the ticket, and gets lost in Santas sack he is forgiven by the conductor and gets right back in place. No matter how much we mess up we still can be forgiven. I also like in the last scene when he cant hear the bells, but all you can hear is the loud cheering noise of the elves. Also as he tries to see through the elves to Santa he cannot because there are so many people and things in the way. Sometimes we cant see or hear Christ because we have so many worldly things blocking our view or worldy noises surrounding our ears. However, it wasnt until he made the effort to believe with all his heart that he was able to hear the bells (or Jesus Christ) and he got to see him in front of him with no distractions or blocks in his view. I never thought the Polar Express could be so spiritually enlightening to me before I became a missionary. 

Love and miss you all! Have a very Merry Christmas and Ill make sure to catch you at the next one! 

Elder Anderson

 

 

Week 70: Quad Squad

 Hey y'all! 

This was another lightening fast week in the mission field. Here are some of the highlights:

-Tuesday we had a lesson with an old interested person we found named Cory! Hes a really cool guy and had lots of questions about God and about baptism. We told him we'd meet consistently with him to help continue to answer his questions and so he can grow closer to God. 

-Wednesday we picked up our new trainee! The QUAD SQUAD officially began as Elder Hunt, Janeway and I picked up Elder Jenson. Hes from New Jersey and is a super cool guy. Hes been a huge addition to our team already and we are excited for all of the good work we are going to get done together. 

-Thursday we had a lesson with a young couple who the other elders have been teaching. We went over tithing and fasting and the blessings that have been recieved. The wife got emotional as she testified of all the blessings she has recieved in her life  because of God. She said also that she knows that this was the church she was a part of in the life before this and that she feels so at home. It was a cool testimony for sure. 

-Yesterday at church President and Sister Fox came up and joined our sacrament meeting. Afterwards we had a great meeting with him and covered a wide list of topics including the growth of the spanish group, 8 elders in the ward and some of our Facebook efforts. Everytime we talk I can just tell how in tune he is with the spirit and how much he thinks about and cares for us. 

Well those are the highlights! 

Love and miss you all!

Elder Anderson 

Week 69: QUAD

 Hey y'all! 

This week was another good one! We headed into Austin a few times for some meetings. We had lots of good lessons and kept super busy. Here are some of the highlights:

A less active member reached out to us about recieving the missionary lessons. He explained that he has been struggling with a few issues right now and he wants to fully grasp what he believes and what he doesnt believe. Hes had a good amount of trials in his life and he just wants to understand better the gospel. We were able to teach him the first lesson this week and he realized just how much he knows and has learned in his life. We hope to continue to further his faith in Christ and help him improve his life. 

We had a family night with a sister in the spanish branch and some of our investigators. We had dinner and played some games and shared a spiritual message. It was a great opportunity for the investigators to continue to learn more about the church and it sounded like they enjoyed it. 

Also Light The World has been so awesome!!! It has been such a great experience to participate in the days so far and I have seen huge blessings from it. My favorite day was definitely when we watched the Christ Child video. It was so great to remember Christ's birth and watch it in such a realistic way. 

Also transfers were announced yesterday! My companions and I are all staying put but we are getting a new companion making us a QUAD for the next 11 days until Elder Hunt heads off to Paraguay. So thats exciting. 

Love and miss you all! 

Elder Anderson

 

 

Week 68: #givethanks

 Hey y'all!! 

Happy Thanksgiving! This week was great but fairly uneventful.  We had a couple service activities early in the week and did lots of work online. We followed President Nelson's invitation to make social media our own gratitude journal and even carried that over into meetings with the members and stuff we posted on our local Facebook page. I have never loved social media more than these last few days with all of the gratitude posts I saw. For a second I totally forgot about all the hate and toxicity we find online sometimes. Hopefully we can carry this into Christmas and start to make a change on social media for good. 

Thanksgiving we spent with the Hornbeck family in the ward. They are so much fun and took on the daunting task of feeding our whole district, all 10 of us. They handled it with ease and I was left fighting to keep myself from sending all I had eaten right back up. So worth it though. 

Anyways that's the quick run down!! 

Love and miss y'all! 

Elder Anderson 

Week 67: Baptism of Jeancarlo!

 Hey y'all! 

This week was SUCH a good week! We had a mission tour with Elder Pieper, President of the North America Southwest area. We learned so much about the importance of daily planning and following the spirit, as well as helping those we teach get answers by themselves and become spiritually self-reliant. Too often I think of myself as being the person to answer all of the questions that our friends we are teaching have but Elder Pieper taught us to be the ones to give the resources we have so that they can find out answers themselves. These resources include prayer, gospel library and the scriptures, and local church leaders. His teachings really changed my thought process about missionary work and I hope to apply these principles in my work from here on out. 

Also the prophet's message on Friday was amazing! It was such a simple message but also such a powerful remedy for the plagues our world is dealing with at the moment. I have loved seeing so many people participating in the gratitude challenge on social media and I have loved participating as well. I am grateful for living prophets and for the direction they receive straight from God! 

However the highlight of the week was definitely the baptism of Jeancarlo! It was such a great experience to see him be baptized. He was also baptized by James, who is recently baptized himself as of September and it was cool to see him exercise his Aaronic Priesthood authority. We saw so many miracles in the process of getting Jeancarlo ready to be baptized and it was such a neat experience yesterday to be able to participate in the service. The work moves forward!! 

Love and miss you all! 

Elder Anderson 

Week 66: Teaching, Service, Miracles

 Hey y'all! 

We were very busy this week! We had lots of lessons, did some service, and saw lots of miracles like always. Here are the highlights:

-Wednesday Elder Hunt and I picked up our new missionary. His name is Elder Janeway and he's from Portland, Oregon. He loves playing basketball so he's gotten along really well with Elder Hunt and I.

-Thursday we had a lesson with the Campbells. Sister Campbell is a member but Brother Campbell is not. We shared a lesson on keeping the commandments and making the most out of this life. 

-Friday we had a powerful lesson with the Gayosso family. We retaught the Restoration and they understood is really well. The spirit was so strong and we could tell they felt it too as we spoke. We committed them to read and pray for real and they came to church with us on Sunday which was great. 

-Sunday we had a lesson with Jeancarlo and Maximo, two 11 year old boys we've been teaching. We taught them about the doctrine of Christ and we planned for them to be baptized this upcoming Sunday which is exciting. They were very excited when we asked them if they wanted to be baptized which made us happy for them. 

Overall great week! 

Love and miss you all!

Elder Anderson 

Week 65: Lots to Do in Marble Falls

 Hey y'all! 

Last night we received transfer news, Elder Hunt and I will be trio training another new missionary so that's very exciting! Always love greenies that keep the fire going in our area. This week was another solid week in Marble Falls, we had lots to do and did a lot of good! Here are the highlights:

Tuesday we had our first official lesson with Jeancarlo, an 11 year old boy who's living with a member family. He LOVES the Book of Mormon and always asks us when he's going to get baptized. He was telling us all about Alma and Amulek which is sweet because I dont even know if I knew that much at 11 years old (idk maybe I did). We taught the restoration and watched the 20 minute movie for him to see. We are excited to continue to meet with him. 

Friday we had another lesson with the Gayosso family. We taught them a little more about families and got to know some of their relatives who are visiting for the next couple months from Hidalgo, Mexico. They knew some members of the church in Mexico and want to know more about the church which is great. They also want to come to church so hopefully they do here soon. 

Anyways those were some highlights! We did some fun service as well, had some other meetings and lessons and did a lot of work on Facebook. 

Love and miss you all! 

Elder Anderson 

Week 64: Lots of Teaching!

 Hey y'all! 

This week was one of the best weeks of my mission for sure. We were super busy, all over the place getting stuff done. Here are some of the highlights.

Wednesday we had a bible study with a man named Tim who we met through Facebook through a Bible Study ad we posted a little while back. He's looking to get closer to God after a few tragedies he's had recently. We had a really good zoom lesson and he was super excited to set up another time to meet in the future. We are excited to continue to work with him. 

Friday we had a lesson with a lady who we met over Facebook who is a member of the church but hasn't been in a really long time. She has a 3 year old son who has dealt with a lot of tragedy already in his life and she wanted us to help answer questions about God to him. It was a really good visit and she mentioned that she wanted to come back to church for her son. We are going to meet consistently with them as well. Friday night we also had a really good lesson with the Gayossos, a spanish family we've been teaching for a while. We brought the new elders and had a fun time with them. They then came to our Ward Halloween Activity the next day and had a fun time getting to know more of the ward. 

Sunday we attended the Llano branch's church service. They are a tiny branch and rent their church building from a Pentecostal church but they are strong members and their was a strong spirit in the Fast and Testimony meeting.

There were so many more miracles this week but those were the highlights! Happy Halloween y'all! 

Love and miss you all! 

Elder Anderson 

Week 63: Baptisms, Facebook, Llano Branch

 Hey y'all! 

Another saaaaweet week here in Marble Falls, Texas! We had a ton of great appointments and did a ton of online proselyting. We are seeing some great miracles out here thats for sure. This weekend our ward had two baptisms and it was a great experience to see those people take that great step. We also had a great family come to church with us and we are excited to continue to work with them. Facebook wise we have been getting creative, posting in some fun Facebook groups in normal ways. Its all about getting ourselves out and interacting in the virtual world of social media. We have focused on filling everyone we interact with with positivity and love. We have been posting to help people reflect on what they are grateful for, miracles they have seen, and things that make them happy. We are trying to cure this world one Facebook post at a time haha. 

Transfer news came out last night as well. Elder Hunt and I are staying put but we will be in a trio with an Elder Hunter and will help cover the Llano branch for the next few weeks until the next round of transfers. Not a huge change but we should have lots of fun in our trio. 

Thats all for this week! 

Love and miss you all! 

Elder Anderson

 

 

Week 62: Working Through Facebook

 Hey y'all! 

This week flew by! We were filled with activities each day and worked sooo hard. Here are some of the highlights.

Thursday and Friday we had service with a part member family in our ward. They are a super sweet older couple and we helped them move rocks and weed their gardens. Friday we also had burgers with them before service and it was lots of fun to spend time with them. We shared a couple spiritual thoughts too and it was an overall uplifting experience. 

Thursday we also had lunch with some super sweet ladies in our ward and it was a blast. One of the ladies is a classic grandma and was complaining about the millennials and all kinds of funny stuff. We were loving it. We then helped out mowing her lawn real quick to pay her back for the food. 

Yesterday we had a super uplifting zone conference. It was filled with spiritual messages with a huge emphasis on Facebook work, and more specifically working with members of the church through social media. Something I really liked was the focus on being normal and natural on social media. President Fox stressed taking time to gain trust and talk about common interests before talking about the gospel. He said its okay to be patient and form connections with people we meet through Facebook. We have been trying to apply these principles and have been seeing a ton of success.

Love and miss you all!

Elder Anderson 

Week 61: Service + Member Visits

 Hey y'all! 

This week was a super awesome week. It was jam-packed with service and member visits and all that fun stuff. Here are the highlights. 

Wednesday while doing service for some members we got a call from a lady who we had messaged on Facebook after she said she needed help moving furniture. She asked if we could come up and move some furniture for her as soon as possible so as soon as we got done we headed up there and helped move furniture into a horse trailer for her. She was a super cool lady and we got the opportunity to share a spiritual thought with her. She then put us in contact with her neighbor, who we were then able to help set up a yard sale a few days later. They are great people and were very appreciative of our service.

We also headed into Austin Thursday for a trainer follow up meeting and for interviews with president and I got to see THE Elder Dalin Clark so that was definetly a highlight for sure. 

Other than that we have been doing some good work on Facebook and meeting a ton of the members. We got to go back to church on Sunday and it was way sweet. 

Love and miss you all! 

Elder Anderson

 

 

Week 60: General Conference

 Hey y'all! 

It was a great week here in Marble Falls wrapped up by an AMAZING General Conference Weekend! Here are the highlights.

This week we spent a ton of time meeting members and getting to know them and doing some service as well. Tuesday we went and gave a blessing to an older member who recently broke his leg. It was a good experience and he was super glad to see us and chat with us. Wednesday we visited a few newer members of the church and had dinner with them and were able to teach them a bit too. Since COVID restrictions have been lifted a little bit we have been able to do a lot more in person work which is something I really had been missing. We did some drop bys too to some families in the ward and had some good conversations. We continue our efforts on social media as well and have had a decent amount of success reaching out to local people in the community. 

But the highlight of the week was definitely conference! Such a great two days of hearing from the Lord's prophet and apostles. I don't think there was one single talk that I wasn't totally blown away by. One of my favorite talks was by Elder Soares about resisting temptation. I love how we compared temptation to a magnet and said that "as we distance ourselves from temptation it loses its power over us". I think that's so true and something that is so important for our day. Satan is sending all of his tactics on us now and he is in all parts of our life. However if we distance ourselves from common spots of temptation, we will gain strength and he will not have power over us. 

I am so grateful to have a prophet and apostles on the earth who lead and guide us! Love and miss you all!

Elder Anderson

Also here's my new address :)

1301 Max Copeland Dr #615

Marble Falls, TX 78654