Hello Family and Friends, We have had a good week. I am pretty exhausted right now! The past couple of days have been really busy. Yesterday we had Zone Conference so that is why I did not email yesterday. Today was Zone P day and that is why I am not emailing until this late in the afternoon. Zone conference was really good though. Elder Johnston and I gave a training that lasted about an hour. We trained on asking inspired questions. It went really well. I was pretty nervous, but it ended up going really well! We had really good trainings from President and Sister Forbes. They are such wonderful people! I really look up tothem! They have helped me a lot. After Zone conference instead of having everyone leave and go back to their own areas. We decided we were going to have zone p day the next day. So we had everyone go contacting in downtown Duluth for an hour and everyone taught at least one lesson. It was super cool! We then had everyone meet up at Olive Garden for dinner. The rest of the night we sent everyone off to go and see the less active members that are in the Duluth Ward that we have not been able to see yet. We had 14 elders sleeping in our apartment for the night. It was pretty crazy to be honest. For P day today we played lots of sports, live hungry hungry hippos, board games and just hung out. It was a really fun day! I love seeing missionaries in the zone. Because we are so spread out it is a little bit hard! This past week we got a training from the missionary executive counsel about some changes that will be happening around the world in missionary work. It was an amazing training that i really got a lot from. They changed what happens in the daily schedule just a little bit. Instead of planning at night we plan in the morning. A lot of little things changed! I actually really like it! They found that missionaries were becoming to stressed and they wanted to make the schedule a little bit more flexible to allow missionaries to be agents unto themselves. We had a sweet miracle with our investigator Ken. We had a lesson and we invited Erin who is a YSA going to University of Minnesota-Duluth. They connected super well and it was a really good lesson. She does not really believe in a god. She does believe in a higher power. But her faith increased and she committed to reading the Book of Mormon. Ken is 19 years old and she is going to college right now and she really likes meeting with us and learning more about the church! We are super excited for her! We sure hope that she will continue to meetwith us and progress in the gospel.More happened this week, but I don't have enough time! I will send some pictures from the past week!
Love, Elder Anderson
Hi Family and Friends, I got to go back to Thunder Bay the place where I started the mission. Man it was so cool! I love those people up there! We were there from Sunday evening until Thursday morning. It was really fun! The 4 elders that are up there have all been out for only 6 months or less so it was fun to show them some people I taught.
On Monday evening I got to go to the Holden's home for dinner. They are like my favorite family in Thunder Bay. All the little kids are so cute.Tuesday we went with the south elders (my old area). A less active/part member family I tried teaching when I was here we had the opportunity of teaching. I found out the wife in the family got baptized within that time. It was super cool! Thunder Bay has had quite a few baptisms since I was there. I was with Elder McNeil who was in Maple Grove when I was in Medicine Lake. So I already knew him and it was super fun! He is a good guy! We were able to do some tracting and we did not teach anyone, but we talked to quite a few people. In the evening we had dinner with the Forneri's another family that I missed when I was gone. They are really fun! That night I got a call from Elder Checketts our vehicle coordinator and he told me that I have been speeding to much.. So my driving privileges are suspended until March 22, a transfer and a half.. So that was a little frustrating. The speed limits are all 30 MPH here in Duluth and it's hard for me to go just 30.. Oh well, I guess I have to pay the consequence.Wednesday I went with Elder Gabrielson who is the DL up there. We had a good day. We taught a sweet lesson to this African family. We read 3 Nephi 11 when Christ appears to the Nephites . We talked about baptism when Christ teaches how it needs to be done. It was a really good lesson! We then ate at the Wigg's who are a really great family. I love them! Then Thursday morning we headed back to Duluth. We were driving forever to get here. We had a lunch at a member who lives in the middle of no where. It was good!Friday, Saturday and Sunday we had some cool things happen! We went out finding a referral and as we were getting out of the car, we saw this girl across the street. We both looked at her and then we just continued walking to our destination and we both felt prompted to go and talk to her. We ran across the street and we started talking to her and we were able to help her carry her groceries into her apartment. We found out her name is Ken and she is 20 years old. She is really nice and we have an appointment with her this Friday! She is super solid.Something I don't think I have mentioned in the emails I have sent out is that here in Duluth we have a YSA. So this past week we went to the YSA family home evening. It was fun! There is not too many YSA here that are active, but there are a lot of them to go and find here in Duluth. It has been pretty fun working in the YSA. Each week we attend institute and family home evening. I really enjoy it! Young single adults are super open about learning about the gospel or at least talking to us, so it's been pretty fun.For an update on our investigators. Joe Nelson has been driving all around for work the past week. We have been texting him and contacting him that way. This week we should have a lesson with him though! We told him to go listen to a talk called "His Grace is Sufficient" by Brad Wilcox (If you have not heard it, you need to listen to it thisweek). We have wade Kassing as our investigator, he is doing well. Not progressing too much! Other than him we dropped all of our investigators. We really are going to start over pretty much with investigators. We just need some new ones who will progress and who are prepared!I love the Duluth area. It has been fun working here so far! I can't believe it has almost been a month of serving here already! Have a wonderful week!I'll send photos once I get my camera back! Hopefully later today!Love,Elder Anderson
Hello everyone,Another good week here in Duluth. We had a lot of exchanges this week which was good. We went on exchanges for two days in a row in Virginia & Aitkin.We drove to Virginia on Tuesday morning. I went on exchanges with Elder Lowell. One of my best friends! We had a really cool miracle in the evening. We were looking for a less active member walking around at about 7:30 at night and we couldn't find the house, so we were kinda just standing in the middle of the road and this guy sees usthrough his window and waves. He walks out and starts talking to us, we then ask him if we can go share a message with him, he said yes. We had a great restoration lesson with him. He is a great guy and I hope the Virginia Elders continue to teach him and see him enter the waters of baptism. It was super fun being with Elder Lowell. That elder has helped me a lot!Wednesday we drove to Aitkin, MN to go on exchanges with the elders there. I went with Elder Williams. The Aitkin area is really slow right now, so our goal was to help those elders have some sweet miracles and teach some people. We went out trying to see some of the people on their NAC list and we talked to a couple of people. We taught their investigator who has a date set! We felt that we helped the elders, it was cool!We had a super cool lesson with a guy named Joe Nelson. He had referred himself to missionaries a while ago and the missionaries never contacted him. So we called him up and he asked us if we could meet up right then. So we met him at a coffee shop and he was super nice and we had a great lesson. We had a Book of Mormon sitting on the table he was like " what is that book? I'm interested in reading it." We were so excited to hear that. So we taught him what it was and he wants to meet up again. He travels a lot for work and he said that he even will call us to have lessons over the phone. This man is solid! I'll send you a picture of his house that is right off the freeway that says "God Loves you."Sunday after church we drove 4 1/2 hours to Thunder Bay. We got to stop by some people who missionaries don't usually get to see because they live so far away. Our area covers all the up until the Canadian border. Thunder Bay and Duluth are the two biggest areas in the mission! And I have the privilege to serve in both wards.Today we are in Thunder Bay and we are going to be here until Thursday to exchange with both sets of Elders. I hope that I can help them and get them in some doors that I used to get in when I served here in Thunder Bay. I love being here and going on exchanges. This transfer has already gone by so fast! Love you all! Here are some cool pictures:
1. A non member who has investigated for 20 years in Aitkin.2. On the way to Virginia we saw this sign.3. Hockey Hall of Fame.4. Lake Superior.5. The investigator Elder Lowell and I Found.6. Lake Superior again.7. Our investigators House8. A sweet dragon in Crosby.
Hello Everyone, I will be emailing a good email this week. I apologize for not updating you very well in awhile. A lot has happened since I have been in Duluth. The zone here is a lot more spread out then the Anoka Zone. We don't ever see the other missionaries in the zone! This was my first zone and the beginning of my mission when I served in Thunder Bay. When I was in Thunder Bay I always thought that it would be cool to serve in Duluth and here I am. Elder Johnston is my companion and we get a long really well. He loves sports just like I do. We both are very motivated to do the work and we have a lot of fun while doing it! He is from South Jordan, UT and he played football and soccer. He has a scholarship to play football and the University of Utah. He will be the kicker for them next season! Crazy thing is we actually met before the mission. When we won the state championship in baseball he was there and we talked for like two seconds after the game. Now we are companions! The Duluth Ward is really great. Our Ward mission leader Brother Faerber is really cool and I am excited to continue to work with him! We have a set of sister missionaries, a senior couple Elder & Sister Lindsey, and another set of elders that work in our Ward half the time. It has been pretty fun! Here in Duluth we get a truck to drive because of how steep the hill is here. I really enjoy driving it haha! We do not have a lot of investigators we are teaching right now. We do have some solid ones though! Anthony is one of our investigators who is super cool. I met him on Wednesday! He has like no money. But he still invites us over and he is like an incredible chef, so he makes us food. He loves the church and is reading the Book of Mormon, he is also reading the Doctrine & Covenants and loving it! He is a good guy. Elder Jones one of the AP's served here in Duluth like 3 months ago and he came on exchanges with me and we went to Anthony's and his girlfriend stole all of his stuff because they broke up officially and she called the cops on him and in the middle of our lesson the cops showed up at his apartment and it was pretty intense. This past Monday we drove down to Bloomington for P day to hang out with the AP's and then go to MLC on Tuesday. We went to the Lakeville chapel to play basketball with some other missionaries! That was really fun! We had some good basketball going! Tuesday we had MLC and that was really good. Some big changes are happening in missionary work around the world which is exciting! We have a missionary broadcast on the 25th and they will be announcing some new changes! I am not allowed to say what they are but I am pretty excited for these changes. I saw Elder Newbold and it was really good to talk to him again even though it had only been like a week or so. MLC is always really good, president Forbes shared a lot of good insight on certain things and I always get a lot out of it! After MLC we had a two and a half hour drive up to Duluth and we drove the STL's with us. We helped one of the sisters write her "Dear John" Letter to her boyfriend on a mission hahah poor guy. It was funny though! I am very grateful that I have this chance to serve here in Duluth. This is an area a lot of missionaries want to come to. I feel very blessed to be here! The only bad thing is, this week it is supposed to get down to -25 degrees and with the windchill -40. Now that is cold! Lake Superior makes it a lot colder here. The wind off of the lake, man it honestly just hurts. You can get frost bite if you are outside for 10-15 minutes.. How crazy is that? Right now it is not too bad. But later this week is going to be bad.. All I can say is please pray for me ;) hahaha!I can't believe that it is 2017 now. I hope that you all have set some good goals and have evaluated the past year! I have really tried to figure out what I can do to improve this year. I am excited to see changes that I can make. The savior will help us with these changes that we desire to make! I know that he can help us! Pictures1. AP's coming for an exchange in Duluth.2. Elder Newbold and I got caught in the Sister Picture at MLC3. We went to a baptism for a little boy Andrew in our Ward.4. I fell asleep on the bed and Elder Johnston took this picture hah.The rest of the photos are pictures from Duluth
