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!