Everything but the kitchen sink - Long Beach, California

This week was absolutely insane. I feel like I say that every week haha but it's true, missionary life is just crazy!!

This Saturday, Sister Jones flew home :(( We didn't get more than a days notice and she was out the door! I'm so glad I got to serve with her, she's an amazing missionary and I learned so much from her. I got transferred to Long Beach when she left (which totally shocked me btw haha) so now I'm in a trio for the rest of the transfer! I love both of my new companions, and one of them is Sister Davidson, who I served with at the Mormon Battalion! They're on the mission's social media team, so we have a lot to juggle between both of our areas, the social media team work and the family history team work haha. It's fun to get a taste of what they do though, it's really impressive!

THE coolest miracle happened this week! We have this friend Jay who was taught a few months ago before we were in the area, and he was on date for baptism, but had a couple things holding him back. We had been trying really hard to get in contact with him, and he was pretty insistent on not getting baptized. His heart was softened and he gave us a call on Thursday to ask if he could be baptized that Saturday! We had to figure a couple things out and unfortunately had to pass him off to the Elders in our ward because we got transferred the next day, but he is getting baptized this Saturday and I'm so excited for him!! I think it's kinda cool that the craziest miracles that I've seen on my mission are purely a result of my being in the right place at the right time, the Lord did all the work. 

We have a time slot blocked out at the Newport Beach temple every month for our missionaries to bring their recent converts and returning members to do baptisms, and we've been trying to get the mission hyped about going and utilize that tool more. One of the coolest parts about my job is that I get to help missionaries make the connection between missionary work, family history, and temple work, because it really is all one work! You can't have just one, they function as a whole. We have a few members we're working with to go to the temple trip, and that's been really fun. I love this work!

Missionary work is so great. I'm learning so much about how to rely on the Lord though all the unexpected twists and turns:)

Have a good week!! Smile at someone today! 

 Sister Anderson 

Downtown Disney for Sister Jones last pday!

Last hurrah in cypress :,)

Trio gang 

And then there were three... - Provo Utah MTC

Hey guys!! I hope everyone has had a good week 

We lost many loved ones this week. We had our last classes on Saturday and had to say goodbye to our 8 beloved elders over the past three days, which really sucked because we have become like a little family over the past few weeks. They'll all be amazing missionaries though and I wish them the best of luck out in the real world. We also lost one of our hermanas, she got the flu and is now in isolation so we adopted her companion and we're now a trio. Pretty much everyone else in the MTC left this week and it felt eerily empty for a couple days. Even the weather was sad! Pretty much as soon as they left it started snowing (which was actually really exciting for me lol) but it was gloomy and it started affecting our mood haha 

We started our historic site training this week! All the sisters in our class are either going to the Mormon Trail historic sites in Iowa/Nebraska or the Mormon Battalion with us. It's been kind of hard actually. A lot of the information we've been learning about for giving tours doesn't really pertain to us because our site is so scripted, so we don't have the creative liberty of adjusting our tours. But, we've been giving tours of the gorgeous murals in our building and that's been okay. We're learning the script slowly but surely and we're getting excited to get out there and learn how to do it for real.

We were feeling super down for a couple days and it was just hard, but we realized that we hadn't opened our scriptures at all this week! We just don't ever talk about doctrine in our historic site classes and it has definitely made a difference in how we feel. So, we decided to read a couple chapters of the Book of Mormon together as a trio and it instantly made everything better. We read in 2 Nephi 4 about how God is the rock of our salvation and it's so true! The scriptures have been my constant with everything changing and I'm learning how to rely on the word of God when life gets hard. 

2 Nephi 4:20 - My God hath been my support; he hath led me in the wilderness; and he hath preserved me upon the waters of the great deep. 

I forget what day this happened because all the days blend together but we heard fireworks from BYU one night and ran to go see them! We had a perfect view through the trees from where we were at and we watched them for about 10 minutes. Definitely a highlight of my week. 

Anyway sorry this was a long one and also kind of boring lol but I hope you all had a good week and have an amazing sabbath celebrating our Savior this week! 

Sister Anderson

Snow!

how learning our script is going 

how learning our script is going 

last classes with our amazing teachers, Sister Taylor and Sister Vorwaller 

last picture of district 3-G all together :,(

last classes with our amazing teachers, Sister Taylor and Sister Vorwaller