09-14-15 Email from Elder Anderson (Thunder Bay, Canada)

Hello everyone.  This week is my first transfer. I find out if I am staying In Thunder Bay or going somewhere in Minnesota sometime today. I am pretty excited to see what happens.

Monday: We did not have P day. Because we wanted to wait for the Zone Leaders to get here and have it with them. But me and Elder Hawkes that night went out trying to talk to people. We found some more guys
playing basketball, did another "beat ya teach ya" and we won so we taught them the restoration. Right after that these 3 high school kids showed up and asked to play us. So we got one of the guys from the first game and played 3 on 3 and we beat them. We taught them The Restoration and then we gave all of them Book of Mormons. It was awesome! It was so fun and such a good experience. I love just baring testimony on the Book of Mormon to someone new. Elder Hawkes said something cool afterwards he said " Every Time you pray before we go finding we teach someone, I love your faith" that was a real confidence booster to me.

Tuesday: We went shopping for our groceries because Monday was a holiday so literally everything was closed. Even Wal Mart like what?? Then we went and stopped by a few less active members but they were not there. So we went to this park and walked around trying to talk to people. We didn't really talk to anyone.. But it was fun because there was like a million ducks and we were playing with them hahah.

Wednesday:   I went on exchanges with Elder Percival. He is a super cool guy. He is from West Jordan, UT. We taught this guy named Matt for like 2 hours. It went well. We gave him a Book Of Mormon. We will stop by Matt sometime this week hopefully. Elder Percival helped me a  lot. He is a great missionary and I am very glad I got to go on exchanges with him.

Thursday:  It was P Day with the Zone Leaders. We went to the Mall for awhile. We then decided to go to the Church and play some basketball and soccer. It was super super fun! Right after that the Zone Leaders left back to Duluth. It was nice to have missionaries that are different for a change. We are so far away from all the other
missionaries it is just so nice to see some new ones. Next week we have a mission conference in Bloomington. That is like an 8 hour drive haha. But at least I will get to see all the other missionaries.

Friday:  We cleaned the house really good. We tend to have to clean a lot because it gets messy pretty  frequently..  haha. Then we went to a members house and helped him fix up his car for a few hours. It was
actually fun! This member is a really old guy and he loves baseball so we got talking about it and he told me that his grandfather caught a home run that Babe Ruth hit. I was so shocked. That is so cool! Later that evening our ward had a " Corn Roast " It was really fun to get to know some members better. What was even more fun though was playing around with the kids. We played games outside for a few hours.

Saturday:  We helped Bro Joe finish fixing his car. Then we helped the other Elders get ready for their baptism. We had a Baptism for someone they had been teaching. It was really cool to be apart of that! I felt the Spirit so strongly. The other Elders did such a good job with it all! She was so happy and it is so cool to see how the Gospel can change someones life.

Sunday  We went to church which was good. Then we had dinner at the Bishops house and we had Mexican food. Wow that was good!! Then we went to another Baptism for just an 8 year old kid in the ward. It was really cool to go to 2 baptisms this weekend. I wasn't having the best day though and me and Elder Hawkes just sat down and talked about it and he helped me a lot. Just by hearing his testimony and how everyone struggles as a missionary.

I am doing pretty good! It is crazy that I have already been through one transfer. So far it has gone by so so fast! I know I am where I am supposed to be, here in Thunder Bay. It may be hard, but I know I can do this. I know that the Book of Mormon is true. It is the Convincing evidence of our Gospel. I know that Prayer is real. Keep praying I
promise Heavenly Father will answer your prayers. I love everything about this Gospel and am so grateful to be sharing it with Thunder Bay. Just like the Hymn says " I know that my Redeemer Lives "

I love you all! Keep me updated on everything. I love all the emails I get from you guys! It helps me so much! Again it looks like BYU dominated in the last minute haha. Have the best week. You guys are amazing!

GO COUGS

Love,
Elder Anderson

When the Zone Leaders Came up:

09-07-15 Email from Elder Anderson (Thunder Bay, Canada)

Hello everyone. I hope that you are all doing well. I am sure that you all are doing awesome because of that BYU game. The Thunder Bay ward here has a few adults that love BYU. So that is awesome that they can update me on the games I love it!

Monday: We had P day until  6:00  like always. At 6:00 me and Elder Hawkes went to a popular park in town and we got some chalk and drew out The Plan of Salvation. He is a super good artist, so it helps since I am a terrible artist haha. We had a lot of people stop and talk to us which was super awesome. We handed out Mormon.org cards and it was just a fun time.

Tuesday; We went on exchanges, and I went with Elder Johnson. We worked super hard! We went knocking on doors forever. But I am learning a lot from doing that. This one lady told us that we need to be "grateful for trees" which I don't understand.. But she yelled at us and it was super scary haha. That night I told Elder Johnson I
wanted to check by the basketball courts to see if anyone was playing so that we could do a "beat ya teach ya" we found these two guys that were mid 20's and it was perfect so we could do a 2 v 2. We started talking to them and I convinced them to play us. We started out and I did a pull up Jumper in this guys face who was 6'5. He wasn't playing tough defense though, I could tell that he was underestimating us. We were playing to 7 and we got up 5-2 eventually. I thought it was going to be so awesome because we were going to get a lesson out of this
because we were going to win. But then all the sudden the guy I was guarding decided to go Beast Mode and he started hitting tons of shots and the way he finished it was with a reverse two handed dunk.😳 I was
shocked and thought we were going to win.. We ended up getting a picture with them Ill send it to you guys. They are super cool. We are gonna meet up again. One of them seems pretty interested in coming to
church so that is awesome. I hope that he comes out one of these next few Sundays.

  Right after we got done playing with those guys we were driving home and it was about 9:00 which is almost time for us to go home. We saw two other guys playing and said lets make this night one to remember and do 2 " beat ya teach ya's " so we ended up doing a free throw shooting contest they didn't want to play an actual game. We beat them ( I beat them, my companion didn't do much haha ;) ) and we got their info and are going to stop by there house sometime this week. So Tuesday was awesome. :)

Wednesday: We had our weekly District Meeting. Which is a little bit boring but it went well. We are doing lots of " Role Plays " which I don't like to do, but help me a lot in growing as a missionary. Later in the day the other Elders we are staying with really liked our chalk idea and drawing out The Plan of Salvation so we found another park in
the city and we did it again. But this time we did a " Time Lapse " to it. ( Which I will send ) It was really so so awesome. We didn't talk to as many people as we would have liked too. But it was still good :)

Thursday: We woke up and we went to a Shelter House and helped make ome food. It was really good service and actually pretty fun too. If you don't know, I am not much of a cook. I was stirring up some meat which isn't hard at all. But then my arm got tired so I switched to my left hand ( which I am way less coordinated with ) and I ended up burning my self and flipping meat all over the kitchen. It was soooo embarrassing hahah. I'm so dumb! Then later in the evening I taught a lesson on the importance of Prophets to a new convert. It went well.

Friday: We did not do too much. We weekly planned for so long. That was not fun at all to be honest! Then we ate at a members house. They are super cool! :) Then we played some basketball at the church and we had a good amount of people show up. :)

Saturday: We didn't do much on either. We went to the library and did a lot of Mormon.org studying which was good!

Sunday: We went to Church. It is so much less stressful when we don't have to speak or teach a lesson. Later in the day we got invited to this investigators house who is Muslim. We didn't realize the whole population of Muslims in Thunder Bay would be there. When we got there it was really awkward. They eventually started talking to us and ended up being really nice. It was just very different and a little bit uncomfortable.

In my Personal studies this week I was reading a talk by Jeffrey R Holland. Called " Lord I Believe " Man it is such a powerful talk. I love having my iPad. It is so nice being able to access any talk or video. I miss home so much! But it has been getting easier. I am not as Homesick as I was before. So I am progressing. I love what I am
doing! I am in the right place. This Gospel is true. I know it. I love Jesus Christ and am so grateful for his atoning sacrifice for us. I want you to know that I am thinking of all of you. You are in my Prayers. I love the emails. They make me so happy, and are such motivation to me. Have the best week.

GO COUGS

Love,
Elder Anderson

08-31-2015 Email from Elder Anderson (Thunder Bay, Canada)

Hi everyone. I have had a good week. 

Monday: We went on exchanges for a little bit, I was with Elder Johnson and we rode to the North side of town on our bikes. It is super busy road and really scary to ride on the side of the road. They have a law that we cannot ride bikes on the sidewalk. Well we are riding by Wal Mart and I was thinking to myself " What happens when a missionary is consistently disobedient? " And in the middle of my thought I smash to the ground. My front bike tire got caught in the train tracks and I wrecked on this super busy road. Somehow both of my ankles twist hahah. It hurt really bad at the moment, it was quite embarrassing. Not that I was being disobedient or anything. Now that I think about it, its a funny experience because it was my birthday too. 

Tuesday: I went on exchanges with Elder Smith. We taught a guy named Keshuik. He is from India. He is super cool! We taught him the Restoration. I recited the "First Vision" for the first time. Then we Invited him to be Baptized. He said he would read and pray about the Book of Mormon. I got really excited about that! 

Wednesday: Every Wednesday we have a District meeting at the church with just us four missionaries. That is always good to get some training in. Around lunch time I got in my first argument on my mission. Me and Elder Smith got pretty into it. I won't go into detail. But I got pretty mad. haha! Then all the Elders just started being really annoying all the sudden. I swear just to make me mad! Sometimes I just need to be away from them, but the thing is as a missionary you always are with someone.. So this week we kinda all got sick of eachother.. We will be fine though! 

Thursday: Me and Elder Hawkes had an Idea to go to a popular park and get chalk to draw The Plan of Salvation on the concrete. We went to Wal Mart and we couldn't find any.. That was a little bit frustrating. Our car that we share between the two companionships has a certain number of miles we can use per month. Since a few weeks ago we drove to Duluth and back and took off 700 miles we didn't have any. We were meeting with the Ward Mission Leader which lives super far away. So we rode our bikes all up hill to his house. It was a super long and exhausting bike ride. But we stopped on the way there and found a cool basketball court and hung around it. We took a few pictures. My favorite picture from my mission is taken there. Ill send it! It is the one with the Backboard that says " T-Bay".

Friday: We didn't do much. We went tracting for a bit, but we couldn't find anyone to talk to. Every Friday we play basketball at 8:00. This week no one showed up to play. So that kinda sucked. But it sounds like no one on the SFHS Football team showed up either Friday night ;) Hahah, Jk!! I wish I could be at every game. That is one of the things I miss most. 

Saturday: We were not too busy this day either. Here in Thunder Bay, they have a thing called the "Rib Fest" I guess it is supposed to be the best ribs in the world. It's like a super big event that everyone goes to. Elder Smith got sick, But Elder Johnson really wanted to go see some people. So we did an emergency exchange. I went with Elder Johnson. We talked to so many people at the Rib Fest. I handed out like 15 mormon.org cards. It was pretty successful. We walked about 10 miles home. So that was kinda fun to see parts of the city that I haven't seen before. We came across these three High School age kids. One boy and two girls. They talked to us forever. They were cool. But then they started flirting with Elder Johnson and I. Even the guy. We found out he was gay! They asked a ton of questions about gays. So we talked about getting married in the temple. We are meeting with them again. They seemed Interested in learning more.

Sunday: I gave my talk on the "First Vision". It went pretty well! I was super nervous. But I found that I learn more for myself when I give a talk or teach a lesson. Later we had a member lesson and I gave a spiritual thought on prayer. Then me and Elder Hawkes met with a less active member. We talked about blessings that come from going to church. 

I love this Gospel! I have learned so much. I can't wait to keep having cool experiences. I love you all! Thanks for all the Emails! I truly enjoy them so much.

Love,

Elder Anderson

Happy Birthday, Taylor

We made a fun video to send to Taylor for his 19th birthday! Here it is:

08-24-15 Email from Elder Anderson (Thunder Bay, Canada)

Hello everyone. I am doing well! This week went by so fast it is crazy.  Monday we hiked this mountain/hill haha. We couldn't think of much else to do but it was really cool. It had a cool look out view of Lake Superior. Tuesday we cleaned the house like super good and cleaned out the car and vacuumed everything because the next day we were traveling to Duluth for a Zone Conference. Later that evening we had a Member meal. Which are always good, but they feed us so much food it is hard to handle.. Wednesday we drove all day like 8 hours in total. That was not too enjoyable. We played a few games on the way down but other than that it was pretty boring. We ate at Culvers and I always forget that Fry Sauce is only a Utah thing so I asked for it, and he obviously didn't know what it was. So I am still getting used to things haha. When we finally arrived I got to see some other missionaries which was nice. We played some board games and there was another Elder Anderson that loves baseball so we talked about that for a while. :)

Thursday we woke up and went to the Zone Conference. It was actually amazing. We got taught like 5 different things. They were all really good. I learned about " How to be a Preach My Gospel Missionary " And how to study it better. I got to see all these different Missionaries. I realized how lucky I was with my amazing companion. Cause some of the trainers other new missionaries got, were really odd..  I also learned my Mission President absolutely loves Baseball. That made me so happy! In the lesson he taught us in the end, he talked about it, and related it to the Gospel and it helped me a lot. Going away from this conference I was super motivated, I wanted to teach a lesson the next day. Friday we got up in the morning and got on the road back home which kinda sucked driving that long. But we got home at about 4:00, unpacked, ate dinner, and kinda relaxed a bit. Every friday night we go to the church and play basketball. So then we did that for a few hours. That is always fun.

Saturday we woke up did our daily things and then Elder Hawkes said lets say a Prayer and ask Heavenly Father for him to prepare someone to hear our message. So we prayed and immediately started knocking doors.  I was really nervous.. People slammed the door a lot and yelled at us. A guy answered the door naked which was disgusting..  We finally saw someone that looked like they wanted to talk to us. This guy was from India. As we were walking towards each other Elder Hawkes said " You got this guy " So I went and I talked to this guy and talked about the Book of Mormon he seemed interested. We set up an appointment for Tuesday. He is taking us to StarBucks hahah. But it made super happy that we found someone to teach.  Man it is such a good feeling! 

I found out yesterday my Topic for my talk this next Sunday. " The First Vision " Which I am glad about. All four of us are speaking. We are singing " Bring the world his truth" too haha. Busy Sunday. I am having a lot of fun out here. But it was hard knowing this past Fridaynight SFHS had a football game and I couldn't be there chest painted and all. I would love to know how each of those games go.  So let me know :) 

Today is my Birthday I can't believe I am 19 years old haha. Wow! I love you all so much. Thanks for all the emails. I love hearing from all of you. Have an amazing week. Good luck Football team! 

Love,

Elder Anderson

Zone Conference in North Branch, MN

08-17-2015 Email from Elder Anderson (Thunder Bay, Canada)

Hi everyone! This week has been the toughest week of my mission. We did not have a lot of success I met a lot of people that did not want to hear anything we had to say. We were sworn at a lot and just multiple people that were so rude to us. We rode bikes a lot so that is really fun. :) I told Elder Hawkes that I want to try and teach someone that plays Basketball on the street courts, or baseball on the baseball fields. So about everyday we ride our bikes and go by the court and field. We saw two guys that looked about 20 years old playing basketball. But we were on our way to an appointment so we could not stop and talk to them.. It was a little bit frustrating. But I will keep having faith that someone will be there one of these times. :) We talk to a lot of people on the streets but most of them are drunk so it is hard to actually have a normal conversation. Lately it has been super scary out on the streets. 

This week we got encountered by a bunch of drunk people. We were riding down May, the main street after 6 (something we usually try to avoid). And this guy asked if we could talk to him. We stopped at just about the only place we would on May St where a bunch of people are mulling around at the bus stops. We quickly realized this guy sitting on the bench was crazy and we're going to leave, when another drunk guy came up to Me and asked if I had cocaine... "No." I answered. "Why you dressed up so nice then?" Only a few seconds later and we are surrounded by drunk people asking for drugs! It seriously felt like we were getting swarmed by Zombies. They came from everywhere and nowhere at the same time. The Crazy guy stood up and started yelling at them. "They ain't got cocaine!" "They church people, go on!" That lost a few of them but they kept asking for cigarettes or anything. "They ain't dealers, now get!" The ones left at this point started confronting the guy "we are going to put you in jail." "I haven't killed a man in 10 years I am not going to jail." With the opening there was we left.. Man it was one of the scariest moments of my life 

We had been struggling the whole week and so i had the thought that me and Elder Hawkes needed to pray to find someone to talk to. So we prayed and then went out on our bikes. We went to a near by golf course and we found a guy to talk to it made us both so happy. We didn't end up sharing a message with him, but we talked for about 20-30 minutes. I know that was Heavenly Father answering our prayer. Elder Hawkes has taught me that really every question that we have is in the scriptures somewhere. Personal study has been so essential for me with teaching lessons and all. I have came to love the Book of Mormon more each day I read.

I have came to know some members of the ward pretty good. There are some really nice members that I really like a lot! We have been going to members house everyday for dinner and man they feed us so much food.. We have little time for exercise so i feel like i am getting fat haha. I don't think I really am but If I keep eating at members houses everyday I will..  This past Sunday Bishop asked me and two other missionaries to speak in two weeks haha I am excited about that!

If I have learned two things out in the mission field number one : I am so grateful for what i have back home. Seriously I am so blessed. Seeing how rough some peoples lives are out here make me feel very blessed at home. All of you guys have blessed my life in some way or another and I want to thank you for that. Number two : Never judge someone by the way they look, we never know what they are going through. 

I love you all and would love to hear from all of you :) Have a great week! 

Love,

Elder Anderson

This is the view from my backyard.

This is the hoop I bought for the house.