Wednesday, November 4, 2015

Mexico City - Week #62

hey all, 

i hope everyone is doing good. this last week was challenging like the other few. its been a lil tough trying to find news. im hoping we see some éxito this week. so Halloween here is called dia de muerto (dead of the dead). its really cool. you will have to look up some dia de muerto sacrafices. its a huge thing to put out bananas and other food ítems for sacrafices to the dead. the ofrendas are actually pretty cool lookin though. its like the tradition we have in the US to put up a christmas tree on Christmas. also dia de muerto is like a 3 day celebration here so me and my comp went out giving Candy to lil kids in the Street last night. it was awesome because once one lil kid saw that i had Candy he would call the rest of his lil Friends and they would come mob us looking for it, it made me remember giving out Candy at home. other, than that, i cant really think of anything else.. oh yeah! i almost forgot to tell you that the comp i have right now, actually read that blog you posted of my emails and when he met me was like, are you the guy with those endless toe problems. i was proud to admit yes to him. isnt that cool though? he learned about the misión from my emails when he was living in Idaho, got to the misión, and came to find out that i would be training him. i thought that was cool anyways. i love you guys and hope you can have a wonderful week! xoxoxo

Elder Anderson

Mexico City - Week #61

hey all

been a good week this week. lots of work here in los reyes. really challenging area. we found a couple news who seemed golden this last week but they ended up falling apart and not letting us back for their families not wanting us. no worries though. just keep pushing forward. im sure we will find somebody who will stick with it this week. also, we had a meeting with elder neilson of the 70 yesterday. he capacitated us on missionary work and stuff. as a sidenote, i have had the absolute best church meetings in the mission field by far.. they blow the church meetings at home and in illinois out of the water. so if you ever think a church meeting is boring. go on the mission and you will see a whole different side to it. in this meeting the biggest emphasize was made on working with menos activos because most baptisms come through member references and menos activos have the most non member friends. not to mention helping them, the menos activos get reactivated. it was pretty cool and im excited to see if the approach the 70 taught us will work out here.
today, we went to the centro to a couple museums like ripleys believe or not museum and a wax museum. it was really cool. i will send you guys some funny pictures. we also found an olive garden there and ate such good food. i had fetuccine alfredo with chicken like i have always gotten. it was great! 
ohh so the new james bond 007 movie coming out has a part filmed in the center of mexico city. you will have to watch it and see if you can find the partalso, i have somewhat funny sotry for yall. so it was about 2 pm and we were at the church building saturday because of english clases and we had to get to an hnas house to eat because we also is at 2 everyday. so we figured we woud take a public transport van called a comve to her house because we were late and it would have been like a 40 minute walk uphill because she lives on a large hill in my area called the basurero (landfill). anyways, we got dropped off by the comve on the hill but i ended up being the wrong side. since we were already about at the height of the hnas house, we didnt want to go back down walk all the way around and then walk up again so we just started taking streets we didnt know, right on across. after about 20 minutes of walking and getting to another dead end, we realized we werent making any progress. but we notice a huge field right behind the dead end, kinda like a crater looking field with a lil dog path goin across it. we decided to take the shortcut and about 10 minutes into the trail. dogs started barking and then chasing us. as a missionary you always know that when dogs start after you, you have to run faster then your companion so of course i was at the front of the pack hauling like an angel outta heaven and the new guy, my comp, was at the back. he ended up tripping i lil bit after that and we left him in the dust. i actually didnt even know he tripped until later that day when he told me. luckily he was able to get up and start running before the dogs got to him. the next obstacle was that in order to get out of this area, you had to get up on top of like a 5 foot wall and scale across it like a rock climber to get over a chain linked fence to get back on a street. my comp actually went first for this one, he got on and then us 3 other elders got on behind him. like 20 seconds later, he fell over but landed on his feet unharmed. its hard to explain the situation we were in but it was pretty sketchy. anyways, we all got past that obstacle and walked about 20 minutes more and finally made it to the hnas house at 430 for the 2 o clock apt. luckily she was a nice hna and didnt get made. we also ate really good that day. i have a video the part of me finsishing the obstacle. i will try to send it to ya.
anyways, i also gave a talk sunday in church. went well. ive given 1 talk a month for the last three months here. hmm.. i think thats about it for this week. love you guys have a good one! xoxo


Elder Anderson

Sunday, November 1, 2015

Mexico City - Week #60

hey all,

hows it goin? i hope well. this last week was great. got to my new area with my new companion martes after changes. im now in an area called atlicpac 1 in a place called los reyes. you can prolly find los reyes on google maps. its more wide open spaces than city life. i like the change. our area is huge though.. a lot bigger than im used to. my new companion is named elder rodriguez. hes hispanic but from idaho. doesnt know any spanish which is kinda ironic lol. he gets made fun of a lot. hes gonna have a tough time the next couple months but everyone does when they start out learning the language and way of life. im helping him to the best of my abilities. i love how humble he his. hes a convert and was baptized 3 years ago. the only member in his family. his parents dont support the idea of himj being on this mission at all. he told me this last week, his dad tried to bribe him into going back home with a BMW Z4. dad, you dont wanna bribe me with anything special by chance, do ya? 😜 but all jokes aside, hes a really good guy. his home ward has helped him a ton with the living costs and moral support in the mission. his birthday is actually tomorrow and we are gonna throw him a surprise bday party in the night time with some good food and cake. (we actually planned it right in front of him) he doesnt have a clue whats going on. reminds me of myself a lil more than a year ago lol. so we are opening this area which means we start from scratch with everything. everything from knowing the streets to investigadores to knowing where the church building is. a lil tougher but nothing we cant handle. we are going to see a lot of success in these next couple months. i know it. anyways, thats about all i can think of for this week. hope you all have a good coming week and ias always, i love you guys! xoxo Elder Anderson