Hey everybody! We had a really great week this week, had some awesome lessons, we were also home most of the week, which was an odd week for us! We won’t be home most of this week though. We met some really cool people who are just awesome. We have a zone conference this week, which should be awesome. We are really looking forward to this year and all of the awesome stuff our mission can accomplish! Hope y’all are doing well on your new years resolutions! Not too much to say this week, other than I love it here and i love all the people here too!

-Elder Andersen

thank you so much everyone for all the birthday wishes! I had a great birthday! the night before, we got to eat at the Ward’s, which was awesome, and then got lunch with the kenworthys and the petersens! and then a member took us to Texas Roadhouse for dinner! For a missionary, your life revolves around teaching and food, so it was pretty much an awesome birthday!  We also did a lot of traveling this week. We are doing great here, i’m really liking where I am at. I have really realized this last week, that on my mission i have really gained a lot of lasting friendships that I really wouldn’t trade for anything. I have done a lot of reading in the Book of Mormon, and there are some really great stories of lasting bonds, that I really didn’t notice before. I love y’all, hope you have a great new year!

-Elder Andersen

2012? is this our last happy new year? hmm

Well hope y’all had a fun Christmas and new years. didn’t do an email last week, i had just talked to my family on the phone, so i didn’t figure i needed to email, haha.

Well we had a fun new year, there were fireworks at midnight, (but only a few. mostly people are pretty redneck so they just shoot their shotguns in the air, it’s kinda scary when they shoot rifles, because you have no idea what could be coming your way.) We had a pretty fun new years eve! you’ll never guess what us fun missionaries did… we played cards. Ya not too much fun but hey at least we did something!

We actually got quite a bit of time to go out and proselyte this week which was fun, we have been working with a few pretty solid families. It was cool on Sunday because we have 4 missionaries in the ward and we helped the other companionship arrange rides for a family of 11 to come, it was awesome to see all of them walk in together. it was a pretty cool experience. We are working on getting everything set up for the new year, and I am making a DVD for senior couples encouraging more of them to go on missions, so that should be fun! Well, love y’all, have a great first week of 2012!

Well almost merry Christmas! its crazy how time flies and that we are almost at Christmas, it still feels like December just barely started. We have our Christmas Zone Conference this week. Its on Wednesday and Thursday and we have 100 DVDs to burn before Wednesday morning!  We have lots to do before then, but i for some reason am not worried that we will get it all finished. I have really grown to love the Christmas season, even though it seems like it flies by. On a mission i feel like Christmas is different, which it is, its not the traditional Christmas that i have had in the past, but its a difference that’s good. And even though I don’t get to spend it with family, like normal, its still good and still fun. I’m glad that i have had this chance to now have two Christmases away from my friends and family, because it makes me appreciate the past years just that much more. Love y’all. Have a great Christmas!

-Elder Andersen

of the year

Well, happy christmas season everyone! It’s so great how everything changes this time of year, there’s a lot of lights on at night, and everyone is in just such a great mood. I really enjoyed the christmas devotional, of course, i liked the video during President Eyring’s talk the best, y’all know me, and the movies. I hope all the other videos are as good, those would just be awesome to teach the gospel with. Well, I sang…. ya i know, crazy. We all sang (all 4 of us in the ward) in the Christmas program, and we weren’t even forced to! Aren’t y’all proud of us? It was funny too, Brother Wing came up to me before it and asked if I would help him work "spotlights" for the performers, haha, those were the sorriest excuses for spotlights, but it actually turned out a lot better than i would have thought, and I sang, so that’s saying something. We had a new office couple arrive this week, the Wards, they are way cool, nicest people ever. The Hogans go home tomorrow, so it will be sad to see them go, but we are way excited to have the Wards. Well this week we have, places to go, people to see, and miles to burn… and not enough time to do it all. Love y’all!

Well everyone, we had a great thanksgiving week. It’s finally getting cold here, and a lot of the leaves have fallen. I really want to say how grateful I am for everything that I have been given, as a missionary and otherwise. I have been doing a lot of car swapping lately and car-share forming and I have realized just how blessed we are to have so many cars and things of that nature so that we can work so much more effectively. We had a great week, and I really love where I am and what I’m doing. Thank you all for all of your love and support. I really don’t have much more time this week, but I wanted to tell y’all how much I am thankful for what I have. have a great week!

-Elder Andersen

Hey y’all, We did a lot this last week. Took some long trips, went to Oxford MS and found an apartment there for missionaries to live, and i got to go see a few people in senatobia on the way back which was great! We haven’t been to Jackson yet, i have no idea when we are gonna get over there. But we did get to go to a baptism Saturday night of a family being baptized in Hope, AR the hometown of William Jefferson Clinton! I know, the funniest part is no one there talks about that, its like taboo! I thought that was way funny.That baptism was awesome though, the dad hadn’t been active in the church most of his life, and he was able to baptize his wife and two kids, it was so awesome! We went down there with President And Sister Petersen which made it better too! Well, it seems like there is less time in each subsequent day, it’s crazy. We never get any time to relax, except today us and the APs decided that we weren’t going to answer any calls on P-Day unless it was president, people don’t really like that, but hey, otherwise we have no P-Day, so we actually sat down and played risk for 4 hours, it was awesome! Well, love y’all

-Elder Andersen

Hey everyone!!

sorry no email last week, we bout ran outta  time. I don’t know if i told y’all before, but my companion now is Elder Corry, he’s from Cedar City, UT,  ya, just add to the list of all the utahans, no idea how to spell that. He’s really cool, he is here to recover from tailbone surgery that he had about a month ago. I was gonna tell a story that happened last week but because i ran out of time, i will tell it now. So for transfers we had to pick up one of the new missionaries at the airport because he was a visa waiter and he was coming at a different time than the rest. So we go to the airport and we sit, and we wait, and we wait, and he’s not there, so we call president, he calls salt lake, they have no idea where he is, so we just are told to sit tight and wait for the next plane, and he’s not on that one. So then they find out that he made it to Dallas, so we wait for the next one… nope not there, so we go to president’s to eat, and go back at 7:45 and he is finally there, turns out he had missed his plane, trying to talk to someone about the church, and ended up on standby to get out here! haha, what a goof! It was funny but also kinda scary at the same time.

Well this last week, we went to Quitman and Jonesboro, and this week we have to go to Jackson (yay, my old area) and Oxford, part of my old area, so that will be fun, but i’ve got to go, almost out of time, but I love y’all and have a wonderful week!

-Elder Andersen

Well, today was transfer calls day. my companion is getting transferred. We have had a crazy last week, our mission is raising in number of missionaries that we have so we are having to open a lot of areas. so, this week was spent finalizing a bunch of apartments and moving and all sorts of fun stuff like that. Unfortunately my companion, Elder Andreasen, is being transferred which really sucks, its always the ones you get along with the best that never last. But, if who I am getting is correct, I already know I will get along with him. I don’t know what Wednesday brings but all i know is the longer i am here the busier things seem to get. Which is a good thing. we have some lessons planned this week that should be really good. We met with a guy last night who seems interested in a different way than most, but should be good. Sometimes I love the fast paced work and sometimes i just get way too tired, but either way, love y’all, have a great week, and a fun Halloween!

-Elder Andersen

Well, we had a great week! We had our Specialized Training meetings this week, which is basically another word for Zone Conference, i’m not really sure why they call it that, but oh well, it’s jus the way it is. So, we had the one for the west side of the mission on Tuesday here at North Little Rock, and it was awesome. I feel like I really learned a lot. So then that night we went to memphis and stayed with the Collierville elders so we could attend the training on the East side. Well that night we had told them that we had to leave by 7:30am at the latest and that we would leave without them if they didn’t get back from working out by then. So we kept our word and since they weren’t back we left. Well, it turned out that they had forgotten their phone and their car wouldn’t start that morning, and we had jumper cables with us, so we felt bad that we actually did leave them. But then we just had a great training in memphis on wednesday as well, i actually liked that one better than the one before.

Then here’s the real fun story, so we left Memphis to come back here at 5-5:30 and what normally is a 2.5 hour drive turned into 6. We got completely stopped on the freeway behind a huge multi car accident that took them 3 hours to clean up, we were at a stand still for 3 full hours. There was fires and fire trucks and tons of ambulances, it was crazy. We were about 2 miles behind it. But the miraculous thing about it was that we know that the Lord was looking out for us. a few minutes before we hit the traffic my companion just decided randomly to pull off at a rest stop to relieve himself. We were only stopped for maybe a full 3 minutes, and had we not stopped we could have been right in the middle of all of that! We really were blessed that day.

But we have a lot of work ahead of us this week, got a bunch of missionaries to move and people to teach. love y’all, thank you for all your support and prayers!

-Elder Andersen