Weekly Run Down

Hey Family,

   Well your letters finally did it I'm sitting here crying in the middle of the library....which is ok I think the only one who has noticed is Elder Johnson who is sitting right across from me.

    Things here are so great! We've been having some great experiences and some really difficult ones. Our miracle investigator Claude has had a hard week with everything, we taught him about the Word of Wisdom on the 4th and he said that he does not think he can quit smoking. He has been trying for years and years with no success. We promised we would help him in any way we could and then we told him that if he came to church on Sunday that he would be able to find the strength to overcome this problem and still be baptized on the 20th. Well as it can only happen in the South he said he would and did not show up....We went to his house last night and the first thing he said was wow your preacher gave a great sermon but I couldn't find you anywhere! He went to the Baptist church across the street........... AHHHH! We had to explain what that was and that he went to the wrong church. Only in the bible belt.

    Mom wanted to know what I did everyday so here it is.... I wake up, pray and then say my pacing promises. Then I work out for 30 mins, usually it is me running about 200 laps in our living room and then I get ready. After getting ready and breakfast, we study for an hour by our selves. After personal study we say our standing quotes, read 3 pages out of our white handbook and then tell each other what we learned during personal study. Ok personal study is awesome! I've never read the bible, and with a whole hour I'm able to read a chapter from the old testament the new testament the Book of Mormon and a few sections from PMG!!! Wow I'm learning so much! (oh and the old testament is SOOO gory and violent! holy Moses!!) after that we plan lessons for the appointments we have that day and then we work on the training book called my first 12 weeks. By 11:00 we go to work. the rest of the day is filled with appointments and a little bit of tracting. Since the broadcast we have a goal of only 30mins to an hour of tracting everyday at the most! We do take short breaks for lunch (which is usually in our car) and then dinner (which is either in our car or at a members home) That's pretty much our days Tuesday-Saturday.

     Last Monday I had my first opportunity to color my hair (which it was in desperate need of) so we were over at our ward mission leaders house washing our clothes and coloring our hair which was so much fun! Oh and we were over there because his wife, who is also a hair dresser, has Mondays off and refuses to let us go to the laundromats because that's where the undesirables go!

     Tuesday we had the funniest experience at a less active members home! We had gone up into her living room which she never goes into and it was really dark. All the sudden we start sniffing and it smells horrible and we're like what is that! we look down and right next to my companion is a big pile of dog poop in which we just stepped in and smeared into the carpet. Ah!! Apparently she had been dog sitting the night before and the dog, unbeknown  to her, had gone in there and pooped. We spent the next 30 mins cleaning dog poop off of our shoes and her $20,000 rug, it was hilarious! We called that our service for the week.

     On the 4th we had ZTM which is just a training meeting with our zone (I had to do a training I was so worried!!) but it was so fun because I got to see Sister Walker (my friend from Clayton) and then we went and taught a few of our investigators. We then went to dinner at our WML's home and the Elders killed a rooster of theirs that has been pooping in front of all of their doors it was so funny! We then had "lock down" because of all the drunk drivers and such that are out that night they just want missionaries inside so we hung out in our jammies and watched 17 miracles and the testaments it was awesome!

     We had an amazing experience on Friday with Dustin. We went over to his girlfriends house and had dinner and a lesson. The bishop came plus the girlfriends grandparents (who she lives with) sat in on the lesson. We taught a little about the Law of Chastity as we had planned and then we just answered all the questions they had about anything because Victoria, Dustin's girlfriend, is a recent convert. After that Bishop Ross and Victoria's grandfather gave Dustin a blessing so that he would be able to deal with his Word of Wisdom issues and any other temptations that would keep him from being baptized on Saturday. It was so spiritual and amazing!! I loved it!

       That was about it for my week. It sounds like y'all had so much fun this last week! I hope all is going well!! I love you all! Make sure those little ones don't forget who I am!

 Have a blessed day!

Love Y'all,

   Sister Kate!

PS We got 4.5 inches of rain last week....I am VERY grateful for umbrellas! It was crazy!

July 1st Letter

Hey everyone!

    Things here have been going so well! We have been teaching a lot and running around like crazy! The weather here has been crazy it seems like it's going to rain every morning, and then it chooses to either pour....and I mean pour, or it just magically clears up and we don't have to deal with it! I've been told it rains here no matter what season it is so we just keep our umbrellas in the car haha!

    We have been working with some great people, and some people who want to make us pull our hair out! We have Wykeria and Nataysha....well let me rephrase that we have Wykeria and Nataysha's mother who is a Less Active member and we are teaching her girls on request from her which is great. The only problem is she NEVER remembers our appointments and her girls are not allowed to hear our message unless she's home (her rule not ours, we even bring a member everytime so that we won't be alone with the kids). The last time really tested my patience we had an appointment and afterwards we were going to make up an hour of studies, well she wasn't home so we told the girls to call her (she won't answer our calls) and tell her we will be back in an hour because they said she was out with her boyfriend. We went and studied and came back. They said she still wasn't home and her response to our coming over was "Ok Whatever.." I strongly dislike it when people waste others time. Candace has still fallen off the face of the earth, so we decided to let the Elders who have been teaching her to figure it out because we are getting no where.

     Now the people who make it all worth while. Claude is doing so well (the guy we found in the lone trailer at the end of a long dirt road) he is on date to be baptized and accepts everything we teach him! We are a little worried about our next lesson tomorrow on the Word of Wisdom because he smokes and drinks coffee a lot!!! ah! but we have been praying that his heart will be softened and that all will go well. Jodi and Robert have been doing pretty good as well...They fell off date because they did not come to church yesterday. Jodi had to help with a family member who was in the hospital and Robert did not get up until 11:30, so he obviously missed our 10:00 church. Our shining glory of an investigator,Dustin, was there and was so attentive during all three hours it was amazing! He is already working on his Word of Wisdom issues and we haven't even gotten to that lesson yet, yeah so easy to teach him. He will be baptized on the 13th of this month.

    We are not 100% sure how the broadcast will effect us yet. As of right now it has cut our tracting time way down and the ward has been getting even more involved. We have also started teaching the 1st lesson to active members in our ward so that they would be able to tell their friends and family about what we teach and what they need to know. Other than that we are waiting on our mission president to tell us how to handle the other changes that have taken place.

    It sounds like all is going great at home! Send me some pictures of this fearless little swimmer that Roo has turned into!!! I love and miss y'all so much!!

    Have a Blessed Day!!

   Love,

           ~Sister Anderson

Hey Y'all

Hey Everyone!

I hope all is going good out west! Things here have been good but kind of crazy! The ward here in Orangeburg is so nice. They want to help us out in any way that they can, we get fed just about every night. One of the best though is we went to a farm to have dinner and afterwards they wanted to show us the baby chicks they just got and me being the city girl that I am thought oh they probably got like 20 or 30 new chicks.......they had a shed probably as big as our basement with 3000 chicks!! ya it was crazy and then to top it off they had us hold one....I was so scared I would either drop it or it would poop in my hand! EW!! (no worries I got a picture and I'll try to send it)

We have seen many miracles and a few heartbreaks. 2 of our investigators (Wykeria and Nataysha) fell off date yesterday because they didn't come to church yesterday so ya and the other person we had (Candace) will fall off date if she doesn't contact us in some way by tomorrow! AHHHHH! But it's all good we know that as we stay obedient and do all that is good God will provide a way.

We did have one miracle this week that blew my mind! We did not like the plans we had made for that day and Sister Landon kept feeling that we should see a Less Active member that we had already planned to see an hour earlier than we planned. So we started to visit Less Actives and Recent converts near her as we worked our way to her house. We had about another half hour before we went to This less actives home so we decided to go visit a member who the bishop asked us to see. Our GPS sent us to this long dirt road. We parked and started to walk but could not find this house. We came to a cross roads and realized that we were lost. We prayed and asked Heavenly Father to show us which way we needed to go to find this member. We felt nothing and finally just decided to turn around and knock the one lone trailer we had seen on that road. This is where we found Claude. He is this sweet old man in about his 60's. We taught him about the Book of Mormon (while sitting on his front porch because we are always obedient) and he loved our message. We committed him to read and pray and set up a return appointment with him. Then we asked him to say the closing prayer, in this prayer he talked about he had been praying to God all day to show him the truth and thanked him for sending these nice ladies to see him. It was so sweet!!! I will have to let you know what happens after we see him tomorrow!

We also had this great referral from a LA in our area who is trying to come back. Her boyfriend, Dustin, wants to know more about the church....before I continue though I feel like I should explain their relationship. Victoria, the Less Active, has two little girls and a husband (almost ex husband) who is in prison, for what we don't know. Dustin is the girls uncle. So yes she is dating her almost ex husbands brother while he is in jail and up until last Sunday they were living together. This family is messed up!!!! Anyways, He wants to know about more of our church because he wants to marry Victoria, but she has told him that she wants her next marriage to be for eternity and if he couldn't give her that then she was leaving. We taught him the Plan of Salvation and he really liked it, we just keep worrying that he likes it because he wants to get married, not because he feels the spirit....I guess we'll find out. It was interesting though we taught him the plan of salvation first because he recently lost his dad and we felt that he needed to hear it. Any hope we gave him about his dad receiving the gospel and being able to be sealed to him, he kept hinting that he didn't have much hope of his dad accepting the gospel. It was weird!

We had Stake conference this weekend which was really fun. We got to see some of the missionaries from our stake and hear from the area 70. We had some great talks, the only problem was that the evening session on Saturday, like 90% of the talks were on marriage and how to raise a family. My companion and I looked at each other and were like well this information won't be of any use to us for a while. Oh well it was still great.

I hope y'all got to see the broadcast by the first presidency last night! I loved it plus I saw like 3 or 4 people I knew so it was amazing!!

That's about it for this week, I hope all is well and I would love to hear from y'all!!

Have a blessed day!

~Sister Anderson

1st Email to the Family

Hey family!!

    I hope all is well there! How was the cabin? Everything here has been super super busy. They threw us into the deep head first, with studying and class all day. My district is so much fun! We have 6 Elders and 6 sisters. Our sisters are off to South Carolina which is so fun since that means we all get to spend the next 18 months together and we figured out 5 of us will fly home together as well. Our Elders are off to San Antonio Texas. I got my departure date, I leave at around 1 in the morning on Monday and we fly to Georgia, where we will have a layover for a few hours then off to South Carolina, where we are hoping we can get a little rest before meeting our new companions and start the work!

    My companion is so much fun....I think I told you a little about her in my other letter. Her name is Sister Rudy, and she's from Provo. She is a dancer and went to BYU for a year. We have so much fun together and have really meshed well as companions. We have 2 "investigators" right now. One's name is Everett....No I am not kidding Everett like Colton's mission. He's 22, a student, all of his family converted to the church about 3 years ago, but he felt like he was being manipulated so he decided not to join. One of his best friends just went on a mission, so he decided to try again and see what we have to offer. We've taught him 3 times, and if all goes to plan we are going to invite him to be baptized tomorrow so figures crossed!!!! We also are teaching a woman named Claudia, she has been in America for about a year and her husband is working on his Masters degree at BYU. She is originally from Madagascar and very very committed to the Catholic church. We taught her for the first time last night and the spirit was so strong I literally walked out of the room and was proclaiming that the church was true to anyone we passed, which at the MTC is normal and people just respond with "yeah it is" or I even got a few "Testify!!" from some of our Elders heading to the South.

    All of the people are so nice here and we have so much fun. I thought you would get a kick out of the fact that all of the girls in my room always give me a hard time about how much hairspray I use. Whenever I spray it no matter how much they all start going, "Oh no look out she's flammable again!" and we all just laugh and be silly. Most of them are from Utah. There's Sister Simmons from Kaysville, Sister Madsen from West Jordan, Sister Clemons from Las Vegas and Sister Eames from a farm in Rigbey Idaho. We always lift each other up and go crazy. Like the other night when we were having room prayer and it was Sisters Simmons and Eames companionship's turn to pray and so they were asking who's turn it was to which Sister Eames confessed, "I don't even remember what I had for breakfast how am I supposed to know who is prayed last night!" At that we realized that we had done so much that none of us remembered what we had had for breakfast. It shows how much the days roll into one another.

     Being here has helped me fully understand the love that our Heavenly Father has for each one of us. I have seen how he truly knows a perfectly and knows what we need in our lives to be happy and successful. I've also seen the great power of prayer and how it can help us in every aspect of life. I can not believe how many times I've prayed since I've gotten here.....pretty sure in the last week I've prayed more than I have the rest the last three months combined. The blessings have poured out exponentially though and I can truly feel the love of Heavenly Father and Christ. I read a scripture today during personal study today that really touched me, it is Mosiah 2:41, I think you should all read it and just think of why the church is here and why we do what we do for this church!!

    I love and miss you all so much! I hope to hear from you soon!!!!

        With love

             ~Sister Anderson  

PS The church is true

PPS could you please send me my music (and include a copy of Oh My Father) I forgot it and it makes me sad!