And hello once more. I only have great things to say about this week. I loved it and I am super animado. Las palmeras continues to be an awesome Branch of the true church. Me and my companion are getting along really well and we have learned sooooo much together. I have become a different person in a lot of good ways. I still have tons of weaknesses en todos lados but It is a lot more easy for me to recognize them and then take them to a loving Heavenly Father and apply the promise that we have in Ether 12:27. Wow the scriptures have blessed my life so much these past few days. Thank you prophets.
Wow I had almost forgotten about Jimmer. Has dad been staying a true blue Jazz fan? You guys should head out with Brad and Tracy more for those games. I promise you it is a great date haha. Speaking of which, I had the strangest but most realistic dream a couple of days ago. We had gotten home from a date with I won`t say who and the whole family was sitting on the stairs that go up to Mom`s room and you guys would not leave us alone. And of course Kyle Shupe and Heather were there to hastle me to kiss her. I felt like I was back at home again haha. As for my other dreams, mom seems to be really good friends with all of my investigators haha. My two worlds are mixing up and now mom can speak Spanish.
Babies, babies, babies!!! How fun. Tell them all congrats for me-Alex and Kelsey, Jessie. Only a few more weeks till we get to see a little Wallace, a little Shupe, and a little Anderson. Have you all thought of names yet? I could give you some pretty crazy latino names haha. Utah sounds like it is doing great and I am so glad to hear it. Keep up the good work.
This week really was awesome. We are doing a lot better with organizing our schedule and getting the important things done. Walking is pretty fun haha. Lately we have had to walk out to this one place a lot this week and it isn`t too close. Oh well, lots of good exercise. I am still with my companion but that could change really soon. It seems like they like to switch the trainers out after the first 10 weeks and that is coming up soon. I still feel like I won`t be leaving my area for a while, but who knows. I will go where the Lord tells me even if I am not way too excited about it haha. I really love my area. The people are awesome. I have made such good friends with the members, the Branch Leaders, and all the investigators. I really do feel at home!!
So Raul`s sisters, Ana and Diana, have been going to church and to all the church activities the past two months, they even went to clean the church as a service project. However, they have not been able to receive permission from their Mom to be baptized. But, drumroll...........we got it yesterday! I was shocked. I really still do not know why she suddenly changed but she started out by telling us how great we are that we left our families and homes to be here and then she asked us if we could baptize her girls. Holy awesome. I was so thrilled and relieved and their baptism will be this week. Way excited.
What else. Still thinking a ton about the blessing of the temple in our lives. I am anxious to go there with my future wife but I will have to postpone that for a couple more months or years. Well I love you all and I am thinking of you constantly. Have a great week. Wow it is already going to be February!!!!!
Elder Preston Anderson
Monday, January 30, 2012
Monday, January 23, 2012
1/23/2012
And hello once more my beloved family. Glad to hear all of the exciting news from back home as always. Kyle got his snowmobiling in...like I ever doubted it would happen. I`m a little jealous about the snow up there but we make up for it in rain in Ecuador. AHHHH five more weeks until the little ones come out. Thank goodness. Sounds like an awesome activity with the youth and the YM YW presidencies. I always loved the activities where we had all the presidency speak to the youth. I always was so inspired to keep pushing forward and every young men and every young women needs direction and encouragement like that. How amazing. We are so blessed to have had leaders in the church that have helped us to become who we are now. The gospel is so perfect and there are so many amazing organizations in the church that truly do change the world one life at a time.
So we had a truly awesome week. It started off completely crazy. Here we go....So after we got back to the house on Monday I received the assignment to me District Leader. I thought they were calling to take me out of my area and I was really about to cry because I do not want to leave. And then they told me my assignment which also really scared me. But all is well and I felt this wave of strength and revelation given to me this week. I have seen the importance of setting goals very strongly this week and it feels great to mark something off the "to-do-list" knowing that it has blessed the life of someone else. Did you know that I am still teaching English Classes? Anyways I handed out the testimonies of the Lakeview Ward Youth to the kids who go to the English Class and they all had to translate the testimonies to Spanish. The next class is that they have to write their testimonies in Spanish and we will help them put it in English. It is way fun and the youth here are awesome.
Everyone is on Summer vacation and so a lot of them have been helping us out a lot. Kathy and her family invited their aunt and cousins to a family night and she organized everything out and all we had to do was teach a little bit about the restoration. It went really well but they are still a little hesitant to accept a baptismal date but they all showed up to church to our surprise. It was awesome. We found a lot of new people to teach this week because of the efforts of the members; especially the youth.
One of my new responsibilities now is that I perform baptismal interviews. I have always dreaded the day when I would have to do one for fear of the language and fear if something difficult came up. But I was lucky and every one of the five interviewees were awesome. Their really are a lot of amazing people and I love talking with each and every one of them. We are starting to have a weekly activity where we go to a different neighborhood to one of the member`s houses where they have to invite someone new to join in on the spiritual activity. Tonight we are going to the Branch President`s house and I asked him yesterday what we should prepare and he just said, "nothing." He and his family are going to take care of everything. All we have to do is show up with our investigators and all good. We are so blessed with the support of the Members.
What else what else. I have found so much peace in these past few weeks as I was able to watch several movies about Jesus Christ. It is a big sacrifice what I am doing here, but two years is so short when we have an eternal outlook. I don`t want to waste another minute. Bring it on.
Well I love you all very very very very much and bueno, sigamos adelante con la fe firme en Cristo.
Elder Preston Anderson
and for Brother Flake, I would like some Beef Jerky, another thingy to hold my tie in place, and all of my other ties that I had before my mission. I don`t know why I didn`t just take all of them. Anyways, nothing besides that. I`ll keep thinking but I am all good for now.
So we had a truly awesome week. It started off completely crazy. Here we go....So after we got back to the house on Monday I received the assignment to me District Leader. I thought they were calling to take me out of my area and I was really about to cry because I do not want to leave. And then they told me my assignment which also really scared me. But all is well and I felt this wave of strength and revelation given to me this week. I have seen the importance of setting goals very strongly this week and it feels great to mark something off the "to-do-list" knowing that it has blessed the life of someone else. Did you know that I am still teaching English Classes? Anyways I handed out the testimonies of the Lakeview Ward Youth to the kids who go to the English Class and they all had to translate the testimonies to Spanish. The next class is that they have to write their testimonies in Spanish and we will help them put it in English. It is way fun and the youth here are awesome.
Everyone is on Summer vacation and so a lot of them have been helping us out a lot. Kathy and her family invited their aunt and cousins to a family night and she organized everything out and all we had to do was teach a little bit about the restoration. It went really well but they are still a little hesitant to accept a baptismal date but they all showed up to church to our surprise. It was awesome. We found a lot of new people to teach this week because of the efforts of the members; especially the youth.
One of my new responsibilities now is that I perform baptismal interviews. I have always dreaded the day when I would have to do one for fear of the language and fear if something difficult came up. But I was lucky and every one of the five interviewees were awesome. Their really are a lot of amazing people and I love talking with each and every one of them. We are starting to have a weekly activity where we go to a different neighborhood to one of the member`s houses where they have to invite someone new to join in on the spiritual activity. Tonight we are going to the Branch President`s house and I asked him yesterday what we should prepare and he just said, "nothing." He and his family are going to take care of everything. All we have to do is show up with our investigators and all good. We are so blessed with the support of the Members.
What else what else. I have found so much peace in these past few weeks as I was able to watch several movies about Jesus Christ. It is a big sacrifice what I am doing here, but two years is so short when we have an eternal outlook. I don`t want to waste another minute. Bring it on.
Well I love you all very very very very much and bueno, sigamos adelante con la fe firme en Cristo.
Elder Preston Anderson
and for Brother Flake, I would like some Beef Jerky, another thingy to hold my tie in place, and all of my other ties that I had before my mission. I don`t know why I didn`t just take all of them. Anyways, nothing besides that. I`ll keep thinking but I am all good for now.
Monday, January 16, 2012
1*16*2012
Hello Hello hello.
How is the life back in Centerville? Everyone sounds really well and looks really fat haha. Thank you very much Paige for the picture of the pregnant ladies. I think I am more excited then they are to get those babies out. Three little ones coming so soon!!! But you all look really good and happy and I am very pleased to know that. A million thank you`s to all those who have supported me in these past few months. I got a couple more letters from the Van Wagoner Family, Mike and Kathryn Nyborg, Megan Klein and Friends, and Terry Francom. Make sure they know how grateful I am for their thoughts and prayers in my behalf. That is way awesome what the youth did with their testimonies of the Book of Mormom. The work in Centerville, Utah is blessing the work in Ecuador and in so many other parts of the world. Those little things go a long way and I am forever grateful for that.
Another week gone by and just as happy as ever. Just crossed the six month mark a few days ago and that is super weird. This week, one of the missionaries I live with heads home. We said bye yesterday and he gets on the plane tomorrow morning. I can`t imagine the feelings that one has after two years of serving as a missionary and then getting on the plane to go home. Super crazy. But we had a really good week and the fruits of our labors are starting to shine through the difficulties. There are really awesome people in our branch and I have had a lot more opportunities to get to know them more personally these past few weeks. This church is amazing and the members down here are incredible. I`ve only been here two months, but I feel really at home. I feel like I have met five thousand really good friends and I just really love all of them.
This week was pretty rainy. And really though, you have not seen rain until you go to Ecuador. It is wild. There are almost always clouds in the sky, but the rain is really unpredictable. However, when it comes, it really comes. I would say like an inch every 15 minutes. It is insane how hard it comes down. Luckily we were close to the Church one of the days it really came down, but on Saturday we were not so lucky. Oh well. I say that being wet from rain is better than being wet from sweating. The temperature has been nice these past few weeks but the humidity gets you in whatever temperature.
My companion is still super awesome. We are learning so much together as we teach and visit the amazing people here. Sometimes I let the little things bug me (you know how I am like that) but we are very, very happy and we have a good time as we serve.
So we have awesome investigators. The only problem is is that we want more of them. There are five or six right now that are really on their way to the waters of baptism but when we are not teaching these few people, we are knocking doors. This week, however, we already have three member families that invited us to their houses for a family night where they are going to invite their friends. How awesome is that? If all works out well, we will have some awesome new investigators to teach.
This week I was able to read a ton of Church stuff. The Book of Mormon, the Liahonas, and Jesus the Christ. Wow holy awesome. The words of our Prophets are without compare. This last conference was super amazing and reading over the talks again has been a huge blessing. The December Liahona is super cool, too. It has several articles about the temples and I was filled immensely with the spirit as i read them. I´m not sure exactly how it goes, but a member from Ukraine shares her feelings about the temple saying something like; It`s like you never really loved your spouse until you enter the temple with them. Wow I can`t wait until I can make promises with my wife together with the Lord. We are blessed to have so many blessings readily available in the temple. Aprovèchenlas. Really. I have got a while until I can go with my wife to the temple, but I can take part in helping others arrive to this amazing blessing.
And I will finish by telling you all how much I love you. That you are all a huge blessing to my life and to the lives of so many others. Our Savior loves all of you and I would say that he is very pleased with the direction that our family is going. Wow three more added to this awesome family. WE ARE SO UNBELIEVABLY BLESSED
And that is about it. I would send some more pictures, but this computer does not have a place for the little thing. Oh well, next week
How is the life back in Centerville? Everyone sounds really well and looks really fat haha. Thank you very much Paige for the picture of the pregnant ladies. I think I am more excited then they are to get those babies out. Three little ones coming so soon!!! But you all look really good and happy and I am very pleased to know that. A million thank you`s to all those who have supported me in these past few months. I got a couple more letters from the Van Wagoner Family, Mike and Kathryn Nyborg, Megan Klein and Friends, and Terry Francom. Make sure they know how grateful I am for their thoughts and prayers in my behalf. That is way awesome what the youth did with their testimonies of the Book of Mormom. The work in Centerville, Utah is blessing the work in Ecuador and in so many other parts of the world. Those little things go a long way and I am forever grateful for that.
Another week gone by and just as happy as ever. Just crossed the six month mark a few days ago and that is super weird. This week, one of the missionaries I live with heads home. We said bye yesterday and he gets on the plane tomorrow morning. I can`t imagine the feelings that one has after two years of serving as a missionary and then getting on the plane to go home. Super crazy. But we had a really good week and the fruits of our labors are starting to shine through the difficulties. There are really awesome people in our branch and I have had a lot more opportunities to get to know them more personally these past few weeks. This church is amazing and the members down here are incredible. I`ve only been here two months, but I feel really at home. I feel like I have met five thousand really good friends and I just really love all of them.
This week was pretty rainy. And really though, you have not seen rain until you go to Ecuador. It is wild. There are almost always clouds in the sky, but the rain is really unpredictable. However, when it comes, it really comes. I would say like an inch every 15 minutes. It is insane how hard it comes down. Luckily we were close to the Church one of the days it really came down, but on Saturday we were not so lucky. Oh well. I say that being wet from rain is better than being wet from sweating. The temperature has been nice these past few weeks but the humidity gets you in whatever temperature.
My companion is still super awesome. We are learning so much together as we teach and visit the amazing people here. Sometimes I let the little things bug me (you know how I am like that) but we are very, very happy and we have a good time as we serve.
So we have awesome investigators. The only problem is is that we want more of them. There are five or six right now that are really on their way to the waters of baptism but when we are not teaching these few people, we are knocking doors. This week, however, we already have three member families that invited us to their houses for a family night where they are going to invite their friends. How awesome is that? If all works out well, we will have some awesome new investigators to teach.
This week I was able to read a ton of Church stuff. The Book of Mormon, the Liahonas, and Jesus the Christ. Wow holy awesome. The words of our Prophets are without compare. This last conference was super amazing and reading over the talks again has been a huge blessing. The December Liahona is super cool, too. It has several articles about the temples and I was filled immensely with the spirit as i read them. I´m not sure exactly how it goes, but a member from Ukraine shares her feelings about the temple saying something like; It`s like you never really loved your spouse until you enter the temple with them. Wow I can`t wait until I can make promises with my wife together with the Lord. We are blessed to have so many blessings readily available in the temple. Aprovèchenlas. Really. I have got a while until I can go with my wife to the temple, but I can take part in helping others arrive to this amazing blessing.
And I will finish by telling you all how much I love you. That you are all a huge blessing to my life and to the lives of so many others. Our Savior loves all of you and I would say that he is very pleased with the direction that our family is going. Wow three more added to this awesome family. WE ARE SO UNBELIEVABLY BLESSED
And that is about it. I would send some more pictures, but this computer does not have a place for the little thing. Oh well, next week
Monday, January 9, 2012
I would like to start off by telling you all how much I love each and every one of you. Mom and Dad, you are the best. Look at this family that you have created!!! Three young men that have served (or is serving) missions, three sealed as husband and wife in the temple, and every other one a worthy temple recommend holder. We have so many unbelievable blessings in our lives. You have to be proud and so grateful for this family. And three more to be added to the fold in just a few short months. How amazing is all of that?!!!!!
Thank you again for the letters and gifts family and friends. I just opened the package from the Reid Family. Holy nice. What did I do to deserve this love? They sent some yummy chocolates and sour patch but the best part was they sent these super awesome cards with pictures of Christ on them along with other cards with a picture of their family and their testimony of the Book of Mormon. So awesome of them to do that. It will be way useful to use as we give out some more copies of the Book of Mormon. Please send them a million thank you`s. They are very, extremely thoughtful to do such a thing. I also got the Christmas cards from the Garrabrant`s family, Terry Francom, Erika and Andrew, and the Wadley`s. Thank you so much for thinking of me!!! It was way nice that I got the letters a little late because that means that Christmas is a couple weeks longer. THANK YOU SO MUCH EVERYONE. It has been an awesome Christmas season and I feel the love of all of you very strong here in Ecuador.
So as I have said before the work here can be a little difficult. I am lead to think that our area is one of the smallest of all the areas in the world. We have had some difficulties with finding people who want to progress. We actually had a new record this week: my companion, Elder Castañeda, did not even finish saying "Buenas Tardes" before the man shook his head and said "no molesten" which means "don`t bother me." That day was one of the roughest day of my mission as we saw so many reject without even listening to the smallest portion of such a beautiful message. Oh well, we laughed it off as we walked away to knock some more doors. And the knocking has payed off. We found a really awesome 20 year old girl named Paola. She is such an awesome listener and we are already really good friends in the short time we have shared with her. She has tons of potential to progress really fast.
This week we really took the Area Book apart as we searched for some old investigators that we could recontact. That also paid off a ton. We went out to find Roxana and she came out and was way super friendly and we sat down Saturday night and talked about the restoration. She listens very well and we made a really strong relationship in just a short hour and she accepted the invitation to go to church super easily--which isn`t always a good thing. Often people say they will go to church just so you won`t bother them anymore. However, she completely followed through with her word. She lives really far away from the church but she woke up, got ready, and was one of the few that showed up on time. Wow she is awesome.
Our little branch here in Las Palmeras grew a ton this past Sunday. We saw a lot more Church Attendance than normal and fast and testimony meeting was amazing. I love the members here!!
So those are my stories for the week...
Wow so Kim is going to China!!! Holy crazy. I can`t imagine what she is thinking right now, but I know she is way happy!!! I´m glad she got to see Steph and all. Wow the Hintze`s are amazing. Doug and Paige made a snowman!!! How awesome!!! Don`t let the tradition die!! Well sounds like life is really moving on back in Utah. Tyler working with Kim Reid--what a great opportunity. Kyle and Paige back to Provo. Mom back in school. Dad with all of his new responsibilities. AND three babies coming soon. What a crazy family we have right now.
You guys are all awesome and I love you bunches.
p.s. tell Drewbie to send me an e-mail soon. I really want to hear from how everything is going for him.
ELDER PRESTON MICHAEL ANDERSON
Thank you again for the letters and gifts family and friends. I just opened the package from the Reid Family. Holy nice. What did I do to deserve this love? They sent some yummy chocolates and sour patch but the best part was they sent these super awesome cards with pictures of Christ on them along with other cards with a picture of their family and their testimony of the Book of Mormon. So awesome of them to do that. It will be way useful to use as we give out some more copies of the Book of Mormon. Please send them a million thank you`s. They are very, extremely thoughtful to do such a thing. I also got the Christmas cards from the Garrabrant`s family, Terry Francom, Erika and Andrew, and the Wadley`s. Thank you so much for thinking of me!!! It was way nice that I got the letters a little late because that means that Christmas is a couple weeks longer. THANK YOU SO MUCH EVERYONE. It has been an awesome Christmas season and I feel the love of all of you very strong here in Ecuador.
So as I have said before the work here can be a little difficult. I am lead to think that our area is one of the smallest of all the areas in the world. We have had some difficulties with finding people who want to progress. We actually had a new record this week: my companion, Elder Castañeda, did not even finish saying "Buenas Tardes" before the man shook his head and said "no molesten" which means "don`t bother me." That day was one of the roughest day of my mission as we saw so many reject without even listening to the smallest portion of such a beautiful message. Oh well, we laughed it off as we walked away to knock some more doors. And the knocking has payed off. We found a really awesome 20 year old girl named Paola. She is such an awesome listener and we are already really good friends in the short time we have shared with her. She has tons of potential to progress really fast.
This week we really took the Area Book apart as we searched for some old investigators that we could recontact. That also paid off a ton. We went out to find Roxana and she came out and was way super friendly and we sat down Saturday night and talked about the restoration. She listens very well and we made a really strong relationship in just a short hour and she accepted the invitation to go to church super easily--which isn`t always a good thing. Often people say they will go to church just so you won`t bother them anymore. However, she completely followed through with her word. She lives really far away from the church but she woke up, got ready, and was one of the few that showed up on time. Wow she is awesome.
Our little branch here in Las Palmeras grew a ton this past Sunday. We saw a lot more Church Attendance than normal and fast and testimony meeting was amazing. I love the members here!!
So those are my stories for the week...
Wow so Kim is going to China!!! Holy crazy. I can`t imagine what she is thinking right now, but I know she is way happy!!! I´m glad she got to see Steph and all. Wow the Hintze`s are amazing. Doug and Paige made a snowman!!! How awesome!!! Don`t let the tradition die!! Well sounds like life is really moving on back in Utah. Tyler working with Kim Reid--what a great opportunity. Kyle and Paige back to Provo. Mom back in school. Dad with all of his new responsibilities. AND three babies coming soon. What a crazy family we have right now.
You guys are all awesome and I love you bunches.
p.s. tell Drewbie to send me an e-mail soon. I really want to hear from how everything is going for him.
ELDER PRESTON MICHAEL ANDERSON
Saturday, January 7, 2012
Thursday, January 5, 2012
January 2nd 2012
uenas tardes mi familia y feliz año!!!
I am the same as you, unbelievable that it is 2012. I have been thinking about the past year....holy crazy. I went from being a freshman in college, to a mosquito killer, then to Perù for a month and a half, and then Ecuador for four months. Not a lot of people can say that haha. Really though, this year has been amazing and I just am beyond grateful for everything.
What? Why does Kyle get this stuff from his boss? You crazy kid. I hope you all had an awesome break. Wow only two more months before three new babies!! And Dean and Rachel?! Make sure to tell them congrats for me. Dad, keep up the good work with your new calling. That is way exciting and you are going to be so happy to have the responsibilities that you have.
It is pretty exciting for the Ecuador new year. The members that lent me their cell phone to call you guys also gave us food for New Year`s Eve. More turkey and it was really sweet and yummy. We headed back around 8 30 to our house and bought some hamburgers and this really weird drink called Pony Malta. All of the missionaries (except for me) really love it. It is completely disgusting. It is some kind of unalcoholic beer and just everything about it makes me want to throw up. But the missionaries that live in my house bought 24 bottles so they made me drink a few. So I had turkey, a bunch of rice, a hamburger, some mangoes, Pony Malta, Chocolate Milk, and Orange juice. All of that in one hour. You can imagine that I didn`t feel very great afterwards. We had to be in bed at the normal time but we all woke up at 11:50 to watch the celebrations. People are completely nuts. In every intersection there were 5 or so Muñecos piled in the middle of the street. They are made like piñatas but they are huge and instead of candy inside there are fireworks. So they pile them all up and light it on fire. BOOM BOOM BOOM BOOM BOOM BOOM BOOM BOOM BOOM the whole entire night. Tons of fireworks went off in the air, too. Music on every corner as loud as it can go. I was really out of it because I was super tired and I didn`t feel so great because of all the food, but it was pretty impossible to not be awake and alert for the celebration.
Yesterday, Sunday, was a little sad. We woke up early like always and church starts at 8 for the other elders in our house and they needed help to go look for investigators to bring to church. It was a ghost town. It had rained early in the morning so no one was in the street, and everyone was either dead asleep or dead drunk. The only people that were outside were us, the police, and drunk people. It was very eery....So yeah, not very many people went to church as you can imagine.
I am not sad, please understand that, but it was very hard to see children of God just destroy themselves. I almost wish there was no such thing as New Year`s Eve. All around the world, people use it as an excuse to do grotesque things. But thank goodness, all is over. We have made it past a rough part of the year as far as missionary work goes and we are now into a pretty good part, because almost everyone is in school vacations. That means that a lot more people are going to be home and ready to hear us. It also means that we can use the members to help the work move forward. The Llaguno family is awesome. He is the Branch President and he really just does a great job with everything. His daughter Jessica is a lot like you, Mom. She is a Kindergarten teacher and is just super duber awesome. She is not afraid to talk with her friends and neighbors about the gospel and she even accompanied us out in the middle of a banana field with tons of mud to present us to one of her buddies. Gabriel and Michael are His other sons and they both are supporting us a ton. Just really, we are so blessed to be in this branch where the members are so supportive. We did a little gift exchange on Wednesday for the ward activity and we both received ties and candy. Everyone in this ward is awesome and I feel at home.
I feel like I am telling way too many stories and everything so I`ll just leave you with my testimony. I get to share my testimony all the time and it is great. However, as a missionary that is always shares the gospel all day every day, one can become a little less sincere then the first time. However, I know that what I am doing is something correct and good. Even if I don`t do it perfectly, I feel good to know that I am helping people in their lives by showing them how Jesus Christ and Heavenly Father love them in a way that we cannot understand.
Thank you for finding my Patriarchal blessing, very excited to receive it. Sorry if I didn`t answer any questions or anything. Let me know with whatever other question you might have. I love you all and have a very wonderful year. I will see you soon.
Elder Preston Michael Anderson
I am the same as you, unbelievable that it is 2012. I have been thinking about the past year....holy crazy. I went from being a freshman in college, to a mosquito killer, then to Perù for a month and a half, and then Ecuador for four months. Not a lot of people can say that haha. Really though, this year has been amazing and I just am beyond grateful for everything.
What? Why does Kyle get this stuff from his boss? You crazy kid. I hope you all had an awesome break. Wow only two more months before three new babies!! And Dean and Rachel?! Make sure to tell them congrats for me. Dad, keep up the good work with your new calling. That is way exciting and you are going to be so happy to have the responsibilities that you have.
It is pretty exciting for the Ecuador new year. The members that lent me their cell phone to call you guys also gave us food for New Year`s Eve. More turkey and it was really sweet and yummy. We headed back around 8 30 to our house and bought some hamburgers and this really weird drink called Pony Malta. All of the missionaries (except for me) really love it. It is completely disgusting. It is some kind of unalcoholic beer and just everything about it makes me want to throw up. But the missionaries that live in my house bought 24 bottles so they made me drink a few. So I had turkey, a bunch of rice, a hamburger, some mangoes, Pony Malta, Chocolate Milk, and Orange juice. All of that in one hour. You can imagine that I didn`t feel very great afterwards. We had to be in bed at the normal time but we all woke up at 11:50 to watch the celebrations. People are completely nuts. In every intersection there were 5 or so Muñecos piled in the middle of the street. They are made like piñatas but they are huge and instead of candy inside there are fireworks. So they pile them all up and light it on fire. BOOM BOOM BOOM BOOM BOOM BOOM BOOM BOOM BOOM the whole entire night. Tons of fireworks went off in the air, too. Music on every corner as loud as it can go. I was really out of it because I was super tired and I didn`t feel so great because of all the food, but it was pretty impossible to not be awake and alert for the celebration.
Yesterday, Sunday, was a little sad. We woke up early like always and church starts at 8 for the other elders in our house and they needed help to go look for investigators to bring to church. It was a ghost town. It had rained early in the morning so no one was in the street, and everyone was either dead asleep or dead drunk. The only people that were outside were us, the police, and drunk people. It was very eery....So yeah, not very many people went to church as you can imagine.
I am not sad, please understand that, but it was very hard to see children of God just destroy themselves. I almost wish there was no such thing as New Year`s Eve. All around the world, people use it as an excuse to do grotesque things. But thank goodness, all is over. We have made it past a rough part of the year as far as missionary work goes and we are now into a pretty good part, because almost everyone is in school vacations. That means that a lot more people are going to be home and ready to hear us. It also means that we can use the members to help the work move forward. The Llaguno family is awesome. He is the Branch President and he really just does a great job with everything. His daughter Jessica is a lot like you, Mom. She is a Kindergarten teacher and is just super duber awesome. She is not afraid to talk with her friends and neighbors about the gospel and she even accompanied us out in the middle of a banana field with tons of mud to present us to one of her buddies. Gabriel and Michael are His other sons and they both are supporting us a ton. Just really, we are so blessed to be in this branch where the members are so supportive. We did a little gift exchange on Wednesday for the ward activity and we both received ties and candy. Everyone in this ward is awesome and I feel at home.
I feel like I am telling way too many stories and everything so I`ll just leave you with my testimony. I get to share my testimony all the time and it is great. However, as a missionary that is always shares the gospel all day every day, one can become a little less sincere then the first time. However, I know that what I am doing is something correct and good. Even if I don`t do it perfectly, I feel good to know that I am helping people in their lives by showing them how Jesus Christ and Heavenly Father love them in a way that we cannot understand.
Thank you for finding my Patriarchal blessing, very excited to receive it. Sorry if I didn`t answer any questions or anything. Let me know with whatever other question you might have. I love you all and have a very wonderful year. I will see you soon.
Elder Preston Michael Anderson
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