July 8, 2019 Super Great Week!
Hey everyone! Hope you all had a great week! It was a very eventful and busy week for us!
At the beginning of the week we had a "meet and greet" with our new Mission President! President Issaguirre from Sonora Mexico. He is a super cool guy and I am very excited to be working under his direction. He is young and came with his wife and 3 kids so it is easy to see that he has a lot of energy and is excited to be here.
Later in the week we had a great success with one of our investigators! Frida who we met three weeks ago, has been super awesome! We have been teaching her and she has been going to church, but still had a few doubts. We had invited her to be baptized two times and both times she told us that she wasn´t quite ready. Then this last week, thanks to having great friendshipping in church and some amazing spiritual experiences that she had, she basically was begging us to baptize her as soon as possible! haha so next week she has her baptism and we are so excited for that.
On Saturday we had the great opportunity to go to the temple with some of our recent converts who were going for the first time! We also had Frida and another investigator come with us and it was super cool! I love going to the temple and there is literally nothing that makes me happier than seeing a recent convert in the temple. Being able to see such progress and such change in a person that they are content in the Lord´s house is really something special.
That´s about it! It was a great week here!
Thanks for all the emails and feel free to send me an update whenever!
Seeing Elder Schofield for the first time since the CCM! Love that guy so much
My hijo and I reunited :,)
President allows two strapped back packs so this is our first pic with em on!!!! woohoo
4th of July with some American stuff i guess haha
Peace
Temple with converts AND investigators!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
July 1, 2019 Hey Y'All!
Hey everybody! Hope you had a great week!
In this email I would like to share an experience I had in the last interview with my mission president, President Moucotel, before he went home and we received a new president. I believe that the advice he gave me could help a lot of missionaries and young people who are preparing for a mission.
In this interview I was explaining to President that I felt like I was having a hard time finding an internal balance. I told him that I don´t want to be the type of missionary that doesn´t care about anything, but recently I felt that because I invest so much into our investigators and that I try to have so much hope for them that they will keep their commitments, come to church, and accept our message, I find myself constantly disappointed and discouraged when they don´t do those things.
I loved the answer that President gave me and I´m going to paraphrase more or less what he said.
He told me that it is obviously a very good thing to love and care for your investigators and that we should never lose that desire for them to keep their commitments and hope the best from them, but we always have to remember the doctrine behind missionary work and in doing this we won´t become discouraged when people let us down.
He basically outlined two doctrinal points.
1. We have to respect agency. God watched 1/3 of his children leave him when they chose to follow the adversary. There were probably tears shed, but God understood that he had created the law of agency, and that it had to be respected. We must understand that everyone has their agency and quite frankly more often than not, many are going to use it incorrectly.
2. Our purpose as missionaries is to bring the Gospel UNTO the hearts of the children of men and not INTO. We can´t force anyone to accept our message. No matter how bad we want this person to soften their heart and embrace the love of Christ, we can´t obligate a single person to do it. We create the opportunity, and it is up to THEM to take advantage of it, not us. So don´t try to force someone to have desires to change and be who you want them to be.
These seem like very plain and simple truths, but I think sometimes we forget even the most basic doctrinal points when we as missionaries get so caught up in the work.
Focus on the doctrine and forget about the disappointments.
Love, Elder Anderson
Baptisms!!! Cristofer and Heidy!
June 25, 2019 New Comp AGAIN
Hey everybody! So this week I got a new companion. AGAIN. I have had 5 different companions in the last 4 weeks so I honestly feel really weird sometimes and it has thrown me for a loop but it´s been good. My new companion is Elder Castellanos from Toluca Mexico and we already knew each other in the mission and we had the same trainer so that's cool. Everything is going well here though. We are really excited for some investigators that we have!
We are especially excited for a young single mother we are teaching named Frida. She came to church for the first time this week and LOVED it. She told us how she really feels like our church is just a big family and everyone is super nice and that she felt like after years of looking she has finally found something that just feels right. Really cool.
This week some funny stuff happened as well though. We were eating with a recent convert family and the plastic chair I was sitting in decided to break and I fell straight on my back and everyone just laughed at me and didn´t help me up haha but it was funny. That was with my old companion so then when we went to visit this family again with my new companion, I told him to sit in that chair and he had no idea what had happened so the same exact thing happened to him hahaha so funny.
Also a dog almost bit my face off this week.
Love you guys all so much! The church is true! There are people all over just like Frida who are looking! It´s just up to us to give them a hand and help them feel at home!
Elder Cuellar and I go for a walk
My district
Weird wax museum
June 17, 2019 New Comp and New Area (kinda)
Hey everybody! We had a great week this week! It was Elder Santiago's and my first week here being together! We see miracles every single day here in the mission and I would like to share a little one we had this week.
We had taught a lesson to two teenage sisters the previous week, and this week we went for the second visit and their dad answered the door to greet us when we got there. We started to talk for a minute and he told us that he had read the whole pamphlet and part of the (mormon bible) that we had left with his daughters haha. He had a TON of questions and doubts, but thanks to the guide of the Holy Ghost we were able to answer them correctly enough that he wanted us to come back and talk with them again!
I am so grateful for my calling as a missionary. I think a lot about how here in my area, my companion and I are the ONLY actual representatives of Christ with the power and authority to teach his restored gospel. The people here are only going to learn of the gospel and receive the saving ordinance of baptism through US. For that reason we have to be diligent and obedient in finding those people the Lord has prepared. It really is something amazing. :)
Love you guys!
Elder Anderson
Elder Hernandez in his last transfer :(
Pres. and Sis. Maucotel
Elder Ortiz who I share a branch with
Elder Black and his "fans"
