October 21, 2012

Hey guys how's it going! The baptism was really stressfull this week because she just got a job and she works all day every day but we were able to do a late one on friday night at 7 because on saturday all the church leaders were meeting in Liberia. But we got it done and it was just so awesome. She was so happy and then yesterday she recieved the holy Ghost and she just was so different. So happy. There was about 20 members at the baptism. The members here are a lot different than in the states. 

But that is so awesome that the church is recieving that many mission applications! Oh ya so I'm done with my training!!!! I will get a new companion tomorrow at the changes meeting. Nothing really changes tho now that i'm done training only that we have one hour less of companionship study. So we'll leave the house at 11 instead of 12. That's cool that you had your primary program last week. Our primary is having one the 18th of November but our primary is a lot smaller than yours haha. Probably only 20 kids in it. 

Our whole zone had interviews with president this week which was really cool. He's is such an awesome guy. We don't have that many opportunities to do service here because no one ever wants help here. The latinos are super prideful but we always ask and always try to do service. 

The winter here is november and December and it's suppose to be super super windy here during those months. Then from febuary to may it's super hot! then after that it rains the rest of the year. 

But hey there's this investigator i'm teaching here who is over the Boy scouts here and he's been giving me someboy scout stuff and i told him i would ask you guys if you could send me some badges and maybe some of those neck things or the slides for them. But anyways not much happened other than that. These are some pictures of our baptism and also some skinny jeans that Elder Reyes in our house had so we tried them on.

And one more thing is Brother Reese's name Robert Todd Reese cause if so can you ask him if he went on his mission in panama Costa Rica mission and if so if he baptized someone name Miguel Jiminez because he's in our branch and he's trying to find this guys information with that name so he can contact him. Thanks Love you guys can't wait to talk to you next week.! Pura Vida

Elder Anderson

October 8, 2012

Hey hows it going guys this week was so awesome we had our first baptism!!!! It was such an awesome experience. We have another one this next saturday with this girl named Heyli. She is the coolest person. She's 21 and has 2 kids. We just started teaching her last week and she's already in mosiah in the book of mormon. She was prepared for us because we have literally done nothing except teach her some lessons. I know that whe will be baptized next week she is so strong.

Anyways that's so cool to hear about Ashton's football game he is such a stud. Tell him to keep it up. It's so strange to think of it being cold because it is never cold here in cañas. We typically teach about10 lessons a week but we would really like to get that up. And my first package got to me but i'm just waiting on the next one thank you guys so much for the packages. Oh ya and i just have on thing to ask. If you guys could send me the scores of the eagles game with some stats and the game analysis that would be awesome.

General conference was the best it is just so much more spiritual for me out here and just a whole new meaning to it when i listened to the talks. And the announcement about the new ages that's so sick!! There's going to be so many more missionaries coming out in the next year! And we need all we can get there are so many places even in costa rica that don't have missionaries. Elder Eyrings talks and Elder Bowen of the seventy oh and Elder Holland were some of my favorite talks. But i loved all of them so much.

Um our lunch lady is doing fantastic she is such a sweet lady. And then another lady in our branch does our laundry every week which is such a blessing because it would be awful to clean all of our clothes by hand every p day. Our district leader lives in our house so he does divisions with us about every 3 weeks so ya. But anyways tell everyone that i love them and that i miss them ton's but that i'm lovin it out here so they'll just have to wait to see me in 2 months!

Love you guys!

Drake

September 30, 2012

Hey guys wow i can't believe that it's already been 4 months too. That just seems so crazy. sorry this week i won't be able to send you pictures because i don't have my cord for my camera with me. But next week i'll have a lot of photos. Today was really sweet p day we went to tamarindo beach and chilled out and played soccer and a bunch of stuff so that was sick. As for general conference the members will gather in the church where it will be projected and me and Elder Kemp will be in the office watching it in english on the computer. But for a typical day i wake up at 6:30 chill out until seven then at 7 i have my shower time for 10 minutes because there is four of us in the house. then at eight i have personal study for an hour. 9  is companionship study for 2 hours but that's only becuase i'm new usually it's only 1 hour. then at 11 i have language study where i just usually read the book of mormon in spanish. then after that we just go to our appointments or contact in the street. That's funny dad how you taught that lesson in 3rd nephi 8-11 because i just got there in my spanish BOM and it is truly inspiring. I love reading the scriptures in spanish theres just something about it. I feel like i learn so much more. Well thanks for the pictures they were really nice and ican't wait to talk to you guys next week. Hopefully you will be recieving some baptism pictures because we have it set up this saturday at 5 just before preisthood session! Well love you guys!

September 24, 2012

Hey guys how's it going. This last week was pretty good. We went all over our area. We went to la cañas, la juntas which is like a hour bus drive away from our house, and tilaran which is only a 40 minute bus ride from our house. Anyways i hope that this legislation thing will go through for FIRST. I can't believe that it's already that time of the year! That's so sick about the twins those places will be awesome and they will be such great missonaries. I hope that it starts to rain or snow to put out the fires. 

The investigators our doing pretty good. we had to stop teaching a bunch of them because they weren't progressing. which that was hard but oh well they're just not ready yet. our baptism with jason will be next saturday the 6th of oct. because his dad won't be here this saturday so we had to change it. 

That's sweet to here about drew and logan. Sorry i don't have a ton of time because we went fishing today and played football and that pretty much took up all the time. Um that's so sad to hear about Tawsha. You guys need to talk to tara about the plan of salvation. That will help here immensely i know it will. Anyways thanks for the recipes but i have to go i love you guys and talk to you next week!

September 17, 2012

Hey guys time is flying by here in Costa Rica but I'm always excited for mondays to talk to you guys! To answer your question dad they were with us for about two hours and it was just so spiritual. I thought that their message was a little more personal than it would normally be. They were definitly central in missionary work.

I'll take a picture of the house this week. Um p days haha we usually play basketball and then some risk haha because there's not a ton of things close to cañas but one of these weeks we're going to go to Arenal and go look at the volcano there so that will be cool. The Spanish is getting better everyday it's super exciting to finally start understanding everything they're saying.

Um there is no cold season in Costa Rica if there was it's during your summer because there's just a rain season and a dry season. And we're going into the dry season which is suppose to be super hot. Which i am not looking forward to. Oh ya if you guys could put on facebook that everyone can still write me on dear elder it just takes a lot longer to get here but it's free so that's good. Also if you could send me pictures of all my friends that would be the best!

What are you guys going to Vegas for? that will be super fun! ya definitly take lots of pictures. Wow it sounds like President Wheeler's talk was amazing. I can't believe that he's not our stake president anymore that's just so weird! 

Anyways this last week we got a date for a baptism the 29th of september!! It's this one boy named Jason he is thirteen years old and he's in a part member family and we've just taught him that first lesson and he accepted our invitation to be baptised! I hope that this one falls through!! Anyways here are some pictures of some of our other investigators. There names are Kimberly, Sharon, and Cristian. Anyways i love and miss you guys so much! talk to you next week!

Elder Anderson

September 11, 2012

Hey guys. I was actually in San Jose the day of the earthquake and all of our zone which is such a blessing because our zone is right where the earthquake was. Nothing happened at our house tho and i think there was only deaths which is pretty good for a 7.6 i thought. So the picture of me and the girl i don't know her name haha i don't hardly anyones name it's always hermano or hermana haha. Wow that is such an amazing stake presidency that we have now and that's so cool that you guys had two general authorities. Oh ya i'm sorry i didn't write you yesterday but we were at San Jose for changes and we had a little fireside like thing with 3 general authorities but i'll tell you that at the end of this email so i can just keep you guys in suspense haha. Any ways the language is coming and it's so much easier to understand. 

For breakfast everyday i pretty much have 3 over hard eggs with orange juice and then we never really have dinner unless we're at a members house and they offer us some but that's usually on sunday. Which is fine tho because after a big lunch i never feel like eating dinner. This week we actually had 2 of our investigators come to church which was so nice since we hadn't had anyone for 3 weeks. There names our Kimberly who is 15 and Sharon 10 they are both super cool and we just hope that their mom will let them get baptized. 

Oh ya my package got here last week but for some reason the place you went through sent it to a different address than you put on the box so it was held up for a while and no one told me about it. But your package was correct. Oh ya i don't need English scriptures anymore either  because i found them so it's all good. But if you could some blades for my razor and some shaving cream would be awesome because shaving cream here is 10 $ it's crazy expensive.

Now for the General Authorities we had 2 apostles and a member of the first presidency which what President Wilkinson said had never happened in any mission that he knows of. We had President Eyring, M. Russel Ballard, and D. Todd Cristoferson. We also had President Martino of the seventy and last week on wednesday we had Elder Duncan of the seventy too. About a month ago President Eyring, Elder Ballard, and Elder Cristoferson said that they wanted to come to the Costa Rica mission and so President Wilkinson this whole time was preparing us for it but we had no idea. It was the most spiritual and amazing thing that i've ever attended. I had tears in my eyes the whole time. They truly are called of God and love all of us so much. . Usually when a general authority comes they talk to the members too but they only wanted to talk to the missionaries this time. They helped us all really realize our purpose and gave us a new desire to deliver this wonderful message to the people of Costa Rica. At the end they each stood at a door and we got to shake on of their hands. I got to shake Elder Ballards hand. They told us that Jesus would want them to shake their hands and that when we shook them to imagine that we were shaking our Saviors hand and it was so amazing. 

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Anyways that's what has happend this week and i can't wait to talk to you guys next week.

Con Amor, Elder Anderson

September 3, 2012

Hey guys how's it going. this week has been really good we found two golden contacts that hopefully by the end of the month they will be baptized there names are Regina y Gabriela. They are so awesome. I can't believe that President Wheeler has been president for 9 years that's so crazy! Him and Sister Wheeler will do great where ever they are sent. I'm sorry to here about the lawn that's always abummer when something like that happens. I hope you guys get it all fixed. Anyways San Jose was awesome it was really nice to get to see my friends from the MTC so that was really cool. Um we didn't really have one on one interviews like i thought we would instead we all just me with President in the Chapel. He just told us that we need to always be working and to obey with exactness. President is really serious about obedience he wants this to be a clean mission which i think is great! He is such an awesome man.Ok to name our Investigators we have: Regina, Gabriela, Yareliz, Vismar, Luis, Vismar, Zeyli, Kimberly, Sharon, Corinas, Chata, Eliza, Luis, Maria, Delvin, Dennis, y Alba. They are all such awesome people they just need help going to church. This week we didn't have anyone at church again which was a bummer but that just means we have to work harder this week to get them to church. Um my package hasn't gotten here yet but i think it will be here this week. Any ways this is a picture of me with a girl in our branch. Well i have to go i love you guys talk to you next week!

August 27, 2012

Hey mom and dad i don`'t have much time so this is going to be short um this week has been pretty good we got 7 new investigators and that puts us at 14 we just can't get any of them to go to church so we can't baptise them pecause President Wilkinson has a rule that they have to go to church 3 times before they can be baptised because he wants them to be active in the church and not fall a way which is good. President is such a special person and so is his family i'm so glad to be able to serve under him. Well I'm so sorry but i have to go catch a bus back to cañas because we're in san jose and it's 3 and a half hours away from here so i'll talk to you guys next week i love you guys so much and miss you.

August 20 , 2012

Hey how's it going guys. This week i found out i had a sinus infection and was pretty sick but they got me on some antibiotics and i feel a lot better now, i just have a cough. I'm so excited to not be sick anymore because now i can start to work to my full capability. I unfortunatly do not have any baptisms this week. It's really hard to get our investigators to come to church on sunday because there not used to going to church for 3 hours and some of them live pretty far away and dont have cars. But it's all good. It's really strange now talking to people about marriage and asking them to get married and baptized in three weeks. Most of them say no that's way to fast so we just tell them it's a goal and it can be moved back if they need to but we believe that they will be prepared in three weeks. But anyways we taught this new person this week Yarelli and Willian. Willian is an inactive member and his girlfriend isn't a member but she's super receptive to our message. And they excepted to be married Sept. 8 and she would get baptised that day but we have to move it back a day because they didn't come to church this week because they had to go to her moms house unfortunatly. It always seems like they have an excuse when ever we go there. So when that happens we just always teach about the importance of going to church to them for the next lesson. A lot of people down never get married they feel like if they get married they lose a freedom or something. So that's the challenge we have with 3 out of 7 of our progressing investigators. The thing that's really hard like you said dad is contacting people in the street i don't know but that's just super hard for me because it's so fast and i can't respond fast or understand them when they talk to me fast so it's just hard. And also in our area Most of the people we contact gives us false directions to there house and false telephone numbers. Like the month before me with elder Ramirez other coompanion they had 60 contacts that month and only 2 of them were ligit so we try as hard as we can to just get references from members. Anyways i lied last week about the directions to our house when your looking at the massive catholic church in cañas look north from the back of it about three streets down theres a clinic on the north west corner and we're the house right next to it if you go north down the street one house. And the tempature you're reading in San Jose is nothing like the temperature in Cañas. Cañas is super hot all the time it's probably about 20 degrees hotter than san jose. I've been drinking a lot of water now which has really helped. Hey Let Brother  Buckley know that i got his email. Anyways love you guys! ¡Pura Vida!

Um I don't need a blanket because it's super hot at night only some fitted sheets would be nice. The picture was from today we went to a few beaches for our P day. The language is coming slowly i feel like i haven't learned that much new stuff but i've gotten a lot better at the stuff i already knew. It's really hard because they have this verb form down hear that you never learn in classes because it's slang but every bo9dy uses it. i am starting to understand it a lot better now when i don't have a headache but it's going pretty well. Um We go back for interviews next P day and i will be able to see if the package is here yet or not.

Um i probably could i just never thought about that ha ha. I'm glad to hear that kace prestwich is doing better. An That's awesome darbi got that job. I only have about 10 to 15 minutes left just so you know.

August 13, 2012

August 13, 2012

We saw some monkeys on the way to chata's house we thought it was pretty cool. Anyways thanks so much for everything. Love You guys!!! Pura Vida!!

Con Amor Elder Anderson