¡y feliz cumpleaños a mi! i had a wonderful week. even more wonderful then the rest of um.. my birthday was pretty awesome! a lot better than i was expecting.. thats for sure.. so it all started on the 16th. friday night. went throughout the day with normal appointments and lessons until we had an apt with a recent convert named C. and her neighbor who she gave to us a a referral. hna C. is one of the top 3 strongest members in our ward. she was baptized right when i came on the mission and now she is stronger than ever! she has referrals, intimate questions, and always wants to know more and more. truely is one of my favorite people here. anyways, she opens the door to us and screams ¡feliz cumpleaños, Elder Anderson! and i was like, ohh thanks but actually my birthday isnt until sunday, then she was like, you told me the 16th. and i was thinking oh boy,, she planned something. so we went upstairs to here kitchen and there everyone was.. hnas e. and n., and c.'s neighbors, waiting for me! they made hot chocolate on the stove and bought me two birthday cakes! then, after we ate, hna c. gave me a birthday present which was legit.. 4 brand new pairs of socks and a bar of soap. literally exactly what i needed.. she is amazing. i have pictures with them all and my comps i will send. later that night i thought of a genious idea while i was on the pot (my oldest son just keeping it real ... good grief -Del) for my next birthday, im going to tell some of the members my birthday is on the 16th and others on the 18th! that way i can have 2 parties like i did for this year! genious, right? ;P
the next day, dads bday, (happy late birthday dad), was just a normal day. went to a families house who was super less active and i led the lesson about alma 32 with our testimonies being as seeds. and we found out that the family was having some struggles with the other members cuz they just moved from a different ward so i got to share about what we did as a family and how hard it was for us to change wards, especially mom and dad. it really helped um a lot! while we are on the subject of teaching and what not. we arent having very much success with our investigators. we have around 10-15 but the problem, as always, is going to church on sundays. we cant baptize anyone until they come to church for 5 consecutive sundays because so many people have been baptized and have never been back to church. there are even some cases where the person got baptized and didnt get confirmed cuz they never went to church at all even after the day of their baptism. really sad but it happens a lot. so we are gonna have to drop a lot of our investigators cuz they just arent progressing right now and we will start fresh with contacts and referrals.
for the day of my birthday, we have church at 1 in the stake center cuz our chapel is getting completely rebuilt. so the bishop calls me in the morning for what i thought was a happy birthday call but actually, he just asked me to give a talk in sacrament so of course i accepted it and got to work on it. i talked about missionary work obviously and the purpose of my talk was to merge Gods purpose for us as member missionaries and our own views as to what being a member missionary means. i used our missionary objective in predicad mi evangelio and moises 5:58 to merge the two purposes. i ended up talking a lot more than i thought i would and only gave the last speaker like 10 minutes to talk lol. i said thanks afterwards though. so yeah. after that half hour talk i gave, i went into the next class and hna C. was there. she was like, oh now i remember you did tell me the 18th was your birthday! lol but then i just reassured here that it was actually better to have my bday on the 16th cuz i wouldnt have had time for it on that sunday. i kind of lied but it made her feel better. and then she gave me a big hug all of the sudden which i did not expect.. i was a lil befuddled but it was ok. shes
an old woman so her intentions where in the right place lol shes so awesome.
got home and elder s. invited some other missionaries over from the zone. (one of which, named elder b., goes home in 2 weeks to mesa, arizona) so we had a cookout last night and then they all surprised me with a birthday cake! it was a sick birthday!! like i said, a ton better than what i was expecting.. just got a lil marshmellow cake from the hna whose house im writing at right now so yeah good bday! :) love you all and i will send the pics of everything that went down after district meeting in a couple hours. love ya. bye
Elder Anderson
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