Week 28: Rain

Hola familia y amigos!

It's going out here in Macuiltepetl! We're working really hard and seeing a ton of miracles. The Lord is really blessing our work here and we are just loving it and taking advantage of every moment.

This week it rained almost all week which was a super bummer because we had to cancel our soccer activity which is our best access to some of our friends that are coming to church. But we were able to visit them and they are still super excited about the church and everything. We have also been talking with a ton of people in the rain which I think also gives us added blessings haha.

Other than that not a lot to report on haha! We are just working really hard and have high aspirations for the next month and a half here in our area. Hopefully I will give a couple updates a little better in the future weeks haha.

Love and miss you all!

Elder Anderson

Photo!

1. my name

Week 27: Staying in Macuiltepetl

Hola familia y amigos!!!

Transfers came and we will be staying the same!! Elder Ramos and I will be going strong another transfer here in Macuiltepetl and we are super pumped for this opportunity. I also got made District Leader which will be a great service opportunity to help the other missionaries here in Xalapa. The work is going pretty strong here and we are looking forward to a ton of success this transfer. Being here 3 transfers will also bring a handful of difficulties but I look forward to getting over them and finding miracles in our work.

This week was our Zone Conference. We heard some pretty great talks from our Assistants and Mission President and received some really good counsel from the leaders of the mission. This was also the last Zone Conference of Elder Higgs and Elder Souza, two really great missionaries here and also from the other side of the ward, and we were able to do a little sendoff to them and cut the classic tie. It was a great conference and gave us an energy boost for the last week of this transfer. 

This Friday the ward also did a going away party for Elder Higgs and Elder Souza. We were able to invite and bring a few friends of ours and they had a great time meeting members and learning more about the church. At that same time we also had our Soccer Activity and were able to talk with a lot of our friends that come to play with us there too. Overall a ton of people showed us and it was a great community activity for the members of the ward and their neighbors. 

And lastly we had the awesome opportunity to have the baptism this week of our friend Juan. We met Juan walking his dog in the street with his family a little while back. My companion at the time loved dogs and asked to pet it as we began to chat with them about the church. They said they were interested, and a week later he began to come to church with us. He has made huge changes in his life since coming to know the gospel and is a great example to me of the love we need to have for the scriptures. Every time we come over he wants to dive into a chapter of the Book of Mormon and learn more about this gospel. 

All in all that was the week! Pretty busy and pretty awesome, and we are excited for more stories to come this upcoming week!

Love and miss you all!

Elder Anderson

Photos!

1. Zona Macuiltepetl!

2. Cutting the tie of Elder Higgs

3. Elder Ramos, Presidente, and I 

4. Juan and his family!

Week 26: Feliz Cumpleaños to Me!

Hola familia y amigos!!

Hit the 20 mark today!! Thanks for the birthday wishes and for all of your wonderful support. While I may be far away I feel your influence close always and I am so grateful for that.

Another week has passed here in Macuiltepetl 2 and maybe my last!! We have transfers coming up this week and so we will here if I get to stick around here a bit longer. I love it here and we have some great friends that are meeting with us. We will just have to wait and see!!

I think I have mentioned before that the ward here has a soccer activity every Friday night which always brings in a ton of members and their friends. Many of the members are inactives too which gives us a good chance to talk with them. We have really been pushing this activity with people we find as a way for them to get to know the church and the members a little bit. Sometimes we see kids playing in the street and we just go up to them and talk to them and tell them about it. This last week we were able to get a couple awesome families we met to come and they brought a ton of people. We were then able to casually talk about missionary work and the gospel with them and they were super interested. It was just a testament to me that it takes some creativity to find and teach people in missionary work. While knocking door to door works, there are many more effective ways in order to prove that we are not robots teaching lessons but real people who want to be their friends and want to make their lives better. Knocking doors and teaching lessons is an outdated way to do work. In this day and age it takes love and care and creativity in order to get people to develop a strong testimony of the gospel.

That´s all I got this week!!

Love and miss you all!

Elder Anderson

fotos!

1. the zone!

2. the district!!

3. heading home! (not really)

4. the endless pile of snacks the fam sent for christmas (we already finished it all)

Week 25: Ice Skating in Mexico

Hola familia y amigos!!!

Sorry I wasn't able to get an email out this last week and this email is going to be super short as well. A lot more to do down here in Xalapa than other areas of the mission haha. Here is a quick wrap up of the last couple weeks

- Last few weeks we have had a few challenges because many people have been leaving for the winter vacations. We have been doing a lot of contacting to try and find more people but a lot of people just aren't in their houses at the moment. We do have a couple friends that are progressing really well and will have some baptisms coming up in the next few weeks which is super exciting

-This monday we went ice skating which was super crazy. The rink wasn't great but I felt a little bit at home shredding it up on the ice like always. We also played a little bit of basketball with the other missionaries which also made me feel at home. We also went to a torta shop (tortas are like huge sandwich type things) and the guy told us that no one has ever finished his torta. He even said he'd them to us half off if we finished them. So us 4 poor missionaries with the superhuman ability to save money all downed our tortas and left. It was something else. 

Really nothing else to report on!! We are working really hard and making every day count out here! Hope everyone had a great New Years!

Love and miss you all!

Elder Anderson

Photos!

1. Ice Skating rink!

2. Ice Skating!

3. Veracruz!

4. the tortasssss