Agnosticism....It's not a disease. Who knew?

Hi Guys!

Elder Barber and I had a great week!

We knocked on a door and a guy answered and invited us in. He told us that he didn't believe in Christmas because he was Agnostic. I thought it was a disease, and I was thinking of a nice way to tell him that he could still believe in Christmas with a disease like that, but luckily Elder Barber jumped in and discussed his belief of Agnosticism with him.  I understand now. It's not a disease.   

We had the most lessons we've ever had, 8 lessons. We finished the 12 week program, and I am now not a trainee. I hope that when Elder Barber leaves and if I get to be senior companion that I will be ready to take on the area. We had an amazing lesson this week and have a new investigater. Her name is Joyce. She wants to go to church again, but hasn't been for 2 years. She is really solid. We knocked her house and she told us to come back later. We came back, but she was gone for like a month. She eventually answered the door and we taught her the restoration lesson.  We asked if when she knows these things are true if she would be baptized and she told us yes. So, that was cool. 

Here are some pictures of us eating a big venison sausage from our landlord. Have a good week!   

Thanks to the snow.....

Hi everyone!

I had a great week. Thanks to the snow, we do a lot of shoveling.   It's a good service opportunity. We also helped a lady paint her room. I'm so glad you taught me how to do that before, cause my companion didn't know how. This week we had transfer calls, and I am staying here with my companion, Elder Barber. He is the new district leader, so I can learn from him on how to be district leader someday.

It's been a great Christmas season and a great season of giving. A lady in our branch  just moved here and her and her husband are struggling financially.  Her husband is a less-active. So, the branch gave us a box of food and stuff to take over to her and she started crying. Elder Barber also gave his $75 walmart gift card to her in the box also. It's so cool to be a part of these things as a missionary.

It is 28 degrees right now. Probably the warmest it will ever get here! I did get the package and thank you for all the presents! They were awesome. I saved most of them for Christmas so I put it under the tree.  Paul, our investigator, is doing well. We showed him the church and that was good, but it is so hard to teach him. We can do it though.  He is just really smart and he makes us know our stuff. He thinks that God is a homeless hobo man wandering in the desert and in the city streets. We try to tell him that when he comes again that he will be glorified and perfected and that he will be easy to recognize. That's ok. He can believe that for now.  I hope everything is going well.  

Thank you for all the presents and stuff. They make me feel more at home during this Christmas season. Thanks so much. Have an amazing week.

Love, Elder Anderson

Hello Everybody,

I hope you all had a wonderful Thanksgiving. We went to 3 and a half dinners, and they were all wonderful, and I felt like I was home. Before this last week, I thought it would be a lonely one with Thanksgiving and all, but this week we had more dinners than ever with nonmembers and we had a great time. We felt like we were back at home and it was great. 

On Thanksgiving, we went to our neighbors house across the street and had a big dinner.  The next day we went to a lesson and a less active member had a dinner waiting for us so that was the half. On Saturday we had dinners back to back.  One was at 3 and the next one was at 6. The dinner at 6 was with a lady who came from the Philipines, but lives here. She made a lovely dinner with fish and good meat stuff. We were stuffed beyond all belief.  

We were sort of slow with lessons though this week. People were also less receptive and everything was a little slow, but that will change next week. 

Well, I still have the same companion, Elder Barber. He is from Kaysville, UT.  He came out on July 1st. Yeah we get along, and hes a great guy. He is a little OCD but have have such a good time together and we made an amazing hot chocolate recipe. President told me in our interview that he is on of the best in the mission. It's hard to send you some of our investigators emails because they don't have computers. No one here has a computer, it's really weird.

The lake is frozen over here and it will be ice-fishing season soon.Oh, and it snowed here. We have 1 foot of snow. But it warmed up to 25 degrees this whole week. It may seem cold, but its warmer than normal and we like it! Have a good week everybody,

Merry Christmas!  

Love Elder Anderson  

Single Digits (and it's only November!)

Hello friends and Family,

This week was a cold one. It was in the single digits for like 3 days. For Thanksgiving, don't worry. We are actually spending dinner at 2 non-members' houses. One of them, their names are Jim and Roxanne, (not josh and roxanne) and there will be like 20 people at that house. The other dinner will just be with the other nonmembers. They are our neighbors. Oh and I can skype at Christmas. This is the first time it is allowed. So that's cool. 

This week was a great one even though we were in Fargo three days of the week for zone meeting with President Anderson. I havn't seen him since I got out. But this week we still fit most of our lessons in and actualy improved from last week quite a bit. 

We finaly got a member to come to one our lessons. Our branch wants members at every investigater's lesson past the second lesson. Our branch president, President Christensen, told us in a meeting that on his mission when he had members present at a lesson, the investigator progressed and was fellowshipped much more. I'm so glad we have him as our Branch President. We recently taught Paul, one of our investigaters. He is a very knowledgable person of the bible and is as sharp as a whip. We taught him the plan of salvation, and he was all over the place with questions and his own experiences with random stuff. I'm always excited to teach him, but its always hard because he believes strongly in other churches and he has his own opinions about Christ and other stuff; but thats ok because we will baptize him. I wish you all the best.

And the coffee lady is doing better, but still needs help. We found out about a coffee that is word-of-wisdom-free and we will see if she likes it.  

Elder Anderson