Monday, January 14, 2019

Elder Andersen!

This week was pure heaven in sunny, sunny, SUNNY San Diego. Honestly I am loving the sun shining all through winter with a few days of rain here and there. The weather is so perfect.
Sunset cliffs:






Apart from the heavenly weather, this week was filled with some pretty sweet experiences.

First sweet experience: ENGLISH WORK FOR THE FIRST TIME!! On Thursday I had the opportunity to go on exchanges with Sister Montague (senior STL) and Sister Law (trainee of Sis. Montague&Whitaker). They're in English work so I was able to go a speak to people in a language that I know pretty well hahaha. I'll just start by saying that Spanish and English work are totally different, and I love them both for different reasons. We handed out a ton of Book of Mormons and added 3 people and so that was awesome. Also, the exchange was in Poway, and Poway is one of the "rich" areas of the mission, soooooo coming from the "ghetto" of the mission to there was like super weird. The sisters live in a little house behind some members and it was QUIET at night. It felt weird to not be hearing sirens and cars racing each other at night. It was also nice to have a non weed scented apartment for a night haha. We also got to help someone do some family history, which is really cool and I learned how to do some pretty cool stuff on the computer and all that fun stuff. Later that night, we exchanged back and I came back to my sketchy kingdom hahaha. I love city heights so much, so I was happy to be back.
This is how we heat our apartment.


Second sweet experience: ELDER ANDERSEN!!!! The long awaited day of Elder Andersen finally came and boy was it worth it. We first heard from Elder Klebingat. He talked about always leaving a good impression on people whether or not they are nice to us, and really just treating everyone we come across as Jesus would. It was a really good reminder. Next we heard from Elder Clayton. He talked about the power of the Book of Mormon and the importance it plays in conversion. He also talked about obedience. One thing that he said that really stuck out to me was "the difference between 6:30 and 6:31 is a lot more than one minute" aaaand if you know me, you know why that stuck out to me... Haha just kidding. But I really liked it, because sometimes on the mission and in life in general, it's easier to be obedient to the bigger "rules" more so than the smaller ones. I dont know why but it can be Haha. This small phrase has really helped me to be a little more aware of the smaller rules that maybe I wasn't following as closely as I should have been. THEN, we heard from the one and only Elder Andersen. He threw straight fire at us. He told us that if we were preaching the gospel in another language other than our native tongues, then we need to be reading the Book of Mormon, out loud and slowly, everyday. So, challenge accepted. I'll let you know how it goes Haha. He also roasted us about our church attendance numbers, he said our adding and baptism numbers were amazing but our church attendance number sucked, so we are going to put an emphasis on inviting everyone we meet to church this year, so hopefully we can improve that. He also mentioned that we should focus on the Hispanics and the young people to start teaching because missionaries have more success with them than anyone else. Super interesting!! The meeting was awesome and our whole mission was able to be there and shake his hand. It was such a blessing to be able to here from all 3 of them. I'm excited to start putting his words into action.
All of us with Elder Andersen.


So our mission has adopted the new dinner policy this year and we now dedicate 5-7 every night to solely finding. We have been having some really cool experiences with that and have added a few more people to start teaching, so fingers crossed that they all workout.

This morning I had the opportunity to go to the temple. I am loving the emphasis of the importance of BOTH roles in the gathering of Israel. I am so excited about all of these changes and its definitely an exciting time to be a woman in the church. I'm pretty sure the whole mission decided to go to the church also Haha, there were so many missionaries.

After the temple, we went to La Jolla cove. I am convinced that I am serving my mission in paradise, or my version of paradise. I looooove the ocean soooooo much. There's a spot that has a ton of seal and I dont know what smells worse, them or the church gym I'm currently sitting in with 40+ sweaty elders. Last week we went to sunset cliffs and oh my gosh I am so in love with that place. We got some cafe Rio and sat on the cliffs and watched the sun set. We also watched someone get engaged hahaha classic. But sunset cliffs has definitely been added to one of my favorite places ever. I will attach many photos hahaha.
 





Anyways, I'm excited for this week and to see what happens with the new people we have added. I love you all and I hope everyone has a great week!!!

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