Letter # 38

Hey Family,

So this week has been pretty slow but has been very cool and very spiritual! This week we had Zone Conference and it was all in Spanish! It was pretty crazy to hear President Ashton talk Spanish after he has served his mission 25 years ago. He sounded very gringo (probably a lot like me) and he was actually pretty good. He knew the grammar and knew most of the words, there were very few words I didn't understand. That helps remind me that there are always things we need to work on... Right!?! The funny thing is that our Mission President was instructed to talk about our future life plans! My companion hated going through that cause he was like ughh I am going home soon and will have to do this! I was thinking and he gave us time to ponder what we want and I still feel like the C.H.P. is what I want to do. The rest of the Conference was amazing! The spirit was super strong and I definitely received alot of revelation for my life and my investigators. One thing we did was teach the Restoration, and President just happend to sit in when we were teaching it. He was falling asleep when we taught so i hope we weren't boring. I hope it was more like he was just tired :p hahah He really commented on how well we are teaching. That was one of our main focuses; to have strong powerful lessons that the spirit can testify about! So we have been practicing it, and he told us that as a mission we are doing pretty good!

This Valentine's Day wasn't too special this year. We had a party and it was supposed to start at 7. My companion and I showed up at 6:45 willing to help with something and showed up to nothing. We were the first ones there... so we set up the tables and the chairs, then all decorations and everything. The next people to show up were the other set of missionaries and after them was the sister missionaries, then the bishop showed up at about 7:30 and started stuff. The other people started showing up at about 830 and food started at about 845. I guess this always happens in our ward. The missionaries do everything and keep everything going! I don't know why, but when you tell Hispanics to be there at 7 they show up at 8 to 830. So just for future reference if you have a party tell them an hour earlier so they can been there kinda on time. haha! After that we went home and I got my package from Mom! :) Thanks!

Church this week was a little weird. The first speaker talked for 5 min so then the bishop got up and told the congregation that Sister Allen (a new missionary) and Elder Andersen will be bearing their testimonies. He did this to make up for the short first talk. So Sister Allen goes up there and doesn't know much Spanish so she talks for like 45 seconds and leaves. So I  go up feeling like I have to take a little bit longer so I bore my testimony and told a story. It was a couple of minutes, but I just think its crazy that whenever there is a time to be made up that he always calls on the missionaries to bare their testimonies. Well I don't really care about it because it's something cool to do, but the bishop expects us to do everything for him. It seems like I like him less and less every week. Hopefully while I am here I can do something to help this bishop be a better person.

Not that much in this weeks email. But I love y'all and keep up all y'all's good work!

Elder Andersen