Monday, December 1, 2014

The Surprise

i just got something short n sweet. but this last sunday we had people who were going to go to church. and like they alway say. "first God" or "if God wants" which are mexican words for either no or i don't promise anything. and so my comp and i were walking to pick up our investigadors and.... none of them were home or none of them opened their doors. and we went to the last house that we honestly thought that they were going to be there and we knocked and knocked for quite a while and no one answered us.... so ya know a little sad and knocked down,  we walked back to the church and my ZL came up to me and asked me how i was and i told him that i was doing good but... that our investigadores didn't come... and in that moment my DL came downstairs and told me. "elder Anderson i think you have some people up stairs in the sacrament room." So i went on up to the sacrament room and....! there were those two guys that we thought that were going to come but were not in their house. they came early!!! it was freakin awesome!!! that was definitely the highlight of my week :D:D I think i am going to get my toe operated on this week or the next just so you know:D:D:D peace. 

Elder Anderson

Monday, November 24, 2014

La Prudencia

This week was a pretty good one.  So me and my comp we have been contacting like freakin slaves this last week and we had absolutely no success in that. but one thing that i have learned here in the mission would have to be the prudencia because we kept on getting appointments with people that we contacted in the street and every time that we went over they had lied to us or in that moment they told us that they didn't want anything anymore. So... this last sunday (yesterday) we had one appointment  that honestly i did not believe that they were going to be their if we went. but... something told us that we should go yet again to this appointment. and when we got there they opened up the door and let us through and told us that they would like to prepare themselves so that they could be baptized. Honestly that was quite a shocker because i did not think that they were going to open the door. That just goes to show that God works in His time and we just have to keep doing our part until He wants things to come to pass. 

PS my new comp is soooo cool and my area is the greatest.  It is way bigger than my last area so it will take a little longer to contact every person:D:D:D 

Until the next. 

Monday, November 10, 2014

The only thing that i can think that happened this week that is worth telling is the experience that happened in this big bus. So me any my DL we were going to pick up some medicine for my ingrown toenail (which just wont go away) . and when we got on this bus was just screaming everything that mexico has to offer or if i were to explain to someone what it is like here. well... this experience pretty much sums up what it is like down here 24/7. because right when we got on the driver had a huge rum and was drunker than anything else that i have ever seen and he just kept on drinking with his buds that were there with him. and then when we walked to the back of the bus trying to get away from the man drinking we found yet another man in one of the back seats throwing up into a plastic bag(normal right?) but when he got done he didn't even tie up the bag or anything and just stuffed it under the seat (not so normal...). and then the guy that i was sitting next to had the biggest tumor on his face that i have ever seen in my whole life. and also when we were coming back the driver and his buds were just enjoying a good ol mary jane. and so that was... interesting... but yeah that was just an interesting time of this last week. Needless to say that mexico will never be America. 
Working with the less actives has been a wonderful part of my mission.  the dog i am holding is one of the less actives. they love feeling the spirit and i love bringing it to them. 

the one picture is of some fish we put in tacos and the other is a street in my area i will be leaving. i will miss all the people i have come to love. i love mexico and i love the people.

i am so grateful for all you did for me growing up. i thought i appreciated it then but for how hard it has been here in mexico i honestly don't think i was grateful enough. the hard times of a mission (not complaining) have humbled me to the point of love beyond measure for you guys. tell hudson he may never really get it until life gets hard like mine has been but to try to be grateful and not hateful like i was. me going without and seeing so many go without and being treated so bad has changed me. 

thank you for all your support while i have been here.

as for my toe, i know i have spent a boat load of money on it and wish i wasn't spending so much on it all the time, i just never get enough time to give my foot a rest from the shoe. i think the fix here is not what you said in the states, sorry for using so much extra money but i don't know what else to do, i think this is now my $5,000 dollar toe:D:D:D

wish i knew where i was going but i will tell you next week, i sure will miss the people here:D:D:D 

Monday, November 3, 2014

Brains, kidney, skin, nose, organ.

So this week we have contacted and contacted and met with innactives and had success in little ways but not in "reportable" ways.  i know the lord is not unhappy with me but i would like a little more to be able to "report on".  one of the examples is this man named Juan who has a taco place and he pretty much makes the best tacos/carnitas that i have ever tried. And we started out going to him about 6 months ago. and he taught us how to make carnitas and all about his salsas and all that jazz, just slowly making friends with him. and then after a while he started to give us a discount on the tacos that he sold. and the longer and longer that we have gone there the tacos have just been given to us for free as he loves his missionaries. and so when ever he just sees us walking by he will just scream at us to come on over and give us like 2 tacos for free. but ya know at the beginning that was all cool but after a while he started to want me to try every type of taco that he had. and ya know it was not all that bad at the beginning. like he gave us a taco of bacon, of falopian tube, of skin with mean. ya know the normal. but then just this last week... oh dear... he just decided to top if off with a taco of. kidney, skin, nose, and the organs that he had left over... and when i saw him cutting up all of those things i was just dreading the moment of when i was going to have to put that in my mouth and act like it was soooo freakin delicious because he is always there to reassure that this taco is the best one that we have ever tried. (and  all of the other tacos that he has given us believe me. have been the most delicious tacos that i have tried here... but until this monster came....) so i took my first bite and it was not as bad as i thought as it was going to be (thank you spicy jabonero salsa).  and after i finished it he asked me how it was and i gave him the reassurance that it was so freakin good and that i would have eaten another one if i was not so darn full. ;D so haha yeah that was my great experience with one of the weirdest tacos/carnitas that i have ever eaten in my whole entire life and I hope that when i leave here the other missionaries will be  able to continue this relationship and that we will sometime be able to share what they love with him as he has continued to share what "he" loves with us:D:D:D 

and the next thing would have to be the weird quesadilla that i ate this last week (of a less active ) and by weird i mean like "brain matter weird" almost halloween weird. so we always go with this hermana esquivias to help her out so that she can sell more and get a little bit more money every week. and she usually invites us to eat a few quesadillas. but this time she had made a "specialty quesadilla" one of brain. and she insisted that i just HAD to try this quesadilla.  so... how could i say no. so she made me a quesadilla of brain matter and i just had memories of the first time that i ate brain in chimalhuacan and that made it even worse. but when i tried it. it still had the same weird texture but the flavor was not quite as bad as the first time. ( and the good ole spicy salsa really saved my life. alway does :D)  and yeah. it was not my favorite that i have ever had but at the end of the count it was not all that bad as some food here will always be like halloweenish to me:D:D

Until next time. 

 This is my comp wearing a "red headed" mask while we were visiting some less actives!

 Cosmetology  school drop out......cheers to you Berks!

 Facials with some comps...... jajaja

Monday, October 27, 2014

Protected.

One thing i want to write about is the time when we were leaving the internet cafe last week when we were done emailing. this guy came up to us and started talking. (clearly). and he is a dude around the age of 24 if i could guess. He just came up and started speaking really really good english to us. and we were both really surprised at how much english this man knew. That is when he started to explain to us about how his parents took him to the states when he was a child and he went to middle school over there and high school. But that is not any of the interesting stuff that he told us. he talked about high school football and how much he loved just ramming into people. and then he got to the whole fact as to why he is back down here in mexico. ( I can't really tell it like he told it cuz it would be kinda explicit) but i found out that he was really deep into gangs in california while in high school. and that it was this type of mexican gang that he belonged to and if it was a black man or a man of another type of race they had a problem with they just put a bullet through them. and once you do that you cant stay in the states any longer, you run to Mexico City and meet missionaries! and now if only you can imagine me looking at him and saying "oh. oh. wow. well. i can see you just gotta stand up for your mexican pride".  that was an abnormal thing for me to say. sometimes I wonder why I say things. many times words just come out that come straight from heaven i guess. With me telling him that ya just needed to stand up for that mexican pride i made it on his good list (even though i wasnt trying). and so he called over his buds and told him that i was his bud. to put it in simple american words. i am not sure why the lord wanted us to be friends but i did realize that now that we have "connected" with these guys we have lessened our chance of being robbed here because we just made friends with some of the run away killers and sketchiest guys that we have here in our area. the lord works in mysterious ways and protects us in the strangest cuz i NEVER would have said that in real life:D:D:D but yeah...we will see what fun come next week, right? with two weeks in a row of getting to know the most dangerous people in the area i would think it must be in the cards to help us make it home at night alive. i dont question the lord but "yikes" for some of the things that happen in mexico:D:D

Monday, October 20, 2014

Guns n Bibles.

This week went swell. I would have to say it went good because just some good ol stuff happened this last week. to start off we had a baptism, i gave away a Bible and im pretty sure one less active is part of selling illegal drugs. 

to start off i want to write about the baptism that we had this week. his name is Atzin and it was an amazing experience to be able to work with him and his dad. but his dad still is not able to be baptized because he is not married to his wife. but we have been working with Atzin for quite a while and he has really enjoyed all that we have taught him. the church still has not bought any gas so we baptized yet again in cold water :D:D i am not sure how we dont have gas to heat the water for the baptisms cuz dont we want the new members to have a "warm" welcome in the gospel?? 

the bible that i gave away this last week was to the Atzins dad. in his house he has a bible from the jehovah witnesses. i was trying to teach him that he really should get any other bible that he wanted except that one cuz they have made so many changes to that one. once he realized that they had changed so many things and he really did want to get one of the bibles that the church prints out. and so this last week we went to the temple so that we could get flu shots. and while we were there we went into the store so that we could buy some of the things we needed.  and i saw a bible and i thought that i should buy it for Atzins dad. but i doubted my thought! then right as we were about to leave i "felt like i should buy it for him again",  and i just thought... yeah what the heck. so i bought him the bible and we went on our way not thinking very much of buying it. and i was just thinking that i was going to give the bible to him like it was nothing and he was just going to thank me because he didnt have enough time to go and buy a bible. but that is not how it turned out to be. we went to his house and he opened the door and told us to come on in. and as i was passing through the door i told him that i had i gift for him. hah! that gave him a good laugh and when i gave him the bible he grabbed it with both hands and told me just how much this meant for him. he almost started to cry he was so pleased. i just gave the good ol man a hug  as i was as pleased as he was that i had listened to my prompting to buy him a bible. I told him that i was always there for him and that if he needed anything that he can call us and we will be right there to help him. so many times we dont know if it is our own thought or one given to us from heaven, obviously this one was one from heaven and not my own. this was probably the most spiritual thing that happened the entire week. no matter how small, follow!

and the last thing that i wanted to talk about would have to be the less active that i think is taking part in selling drugs. he is in a wheel chair and he always has two brohams that look like thugs behind him and one of them always calls me "homies" as we pass by. but i always have had this suspicion because i wondered how he got all of his money and paid the bills and stuff and he is always having people come up to him and talk to him about "the stuff that they will bring by later". which if you ask me is a little weird. and to top it off me and my comp were walking by him and his bodyguards and they were not in their normal spot. they were out side of a building and one of his brohams was in side and he looked at us and just as normal was WAY HAPPY to see us but this time when he waved to us he was waving with a gun. and i was just thinkin to myself.... what in the world is that man doin.... i am assuming it was nothing good (if you know what i mean) but... yeah. that was interesting to see the man that i think is already sketchy to have him wave a gun at you as you walk by. i have decided it is good to have friends low places too.....probably why he is too busy to come to church with us:D:D:D

talk to you next week, 

elder anderson

Monday, October 13, 2014

During the last couple of weeks we have been looking for new investigators. Because after this next week we are going to be runnin with nothin. But it's hard when contacts aren't a very good way to find new investigators and most of the members just tell us that they know absolutely no one because they "never leave their house" but yeah... That's where we be at right now.

But for this time around I only have one thing to write about... it's about the girl that got baptized this last Saturday.  I would just like to explain a few things about this girl. So for the last few weeks we have been teaching her and her family (her mother could not get baptized because she needs to get divorced and married)  and they have been loving every bit of the evangelio that they have heard. And when it came down to the last week and we were talking to this girl and asking her about how she felt about being baptized she told us that she didn't want to get baptized.... And that was really interesting to me and kinda shocked me. Because she has loved every moment and everything that she has  learned. So I began by asking her some questions to see if she knew some of the commandments that we had taught and she answered all of them perfectly. With that she finally got to the reason why she didn't want to get baptized. She ended up telling us that something horrible happened when she was a little girl and now she is absolutely terrified of ...........water! So when she told us that we assured her that my comp is a very strong man and that she does not have to fear. That her baptism will be done quickly. And with that and a bit more talking we saqued out another cita for her interview. And now jumping to the day of the baptism (we still don't have any gas for the pila bautismal and so we are still dunking people in ice cold water) it came time for her and my comp to do the ordinance, she kinda flipped out a bit. But we got her in the water and my comp said the prayer and he told me when he said amen the girl tensed up and didn't want to go under. But my comp just gave her a helping umph and she went under with ease. With that they left and the girl, a bit emotional, but quite happy  to have been baptized and having faced her deepest fear.  And some members came to this baptism!!! That was pretty cool. Because usually we have very little help from the members.  But... Maybe this is a start to a change that is going to happen. 

but it was a good week and there sure are a whole lot more weeks to come.