Transfers Again

Dear Family,

Thank you so much for your emails, letters, and prayers.  They really do help a lot.  This week was a good week.  We worked super hard and tomorrow is transfer day again.  I am really excited for the transfers and have a big challenge coming my way.  President Ferrin said that next transfer I will take Elder Bangerter´s place as his assistant.  Elder Bangerter is going home this week.  His parents are actually here in Brazil right now to pick him up and yesterday they came to my ward.  It was super cool.  It was kind of funny because they didn´t understand anything!  Anyways this email is going to have to be short because now I have to run pack my stuff and head to the mission office to help President with the transfers tonight and tomorrow.  Thanks again for the emails and prayers!

Love,

Elder Anderson

Temple Trip and Leadership Council

Dear Family,

This week was a super busy week but it was really good.  Yesterday we had the baptism of a lady named Vera.  She has known the church for 20 years!  Her husband has been a faithful member of the church for many years and is currently on of the leaders of the High Priest Group.  It was a lot of work from a lot of people to help here get baptized.  Yesterday she was baptized and her husband was extremely happy.  I think he barely believed what was happening!  It was a really great baptism.   On Tuesday we all woke up around 4 to take the van that we rented to the temple in Campinas.  It was really awesome.  It was nice to be able to enter into the temple again.  The Campinas temple is really big and really beautiful, especially the view outside the temple is awesome.  It is much bigger than São Paulo or San Antonio.  So we went to the 9 o´clock session, ate at the cafeteria, took some pictures, and then took the van back to Taubaté.  It was a great trip but we got back a little bit late on Tuesday.  Then we worked hard on Wednesday and the first half of Thursday.  On Thursday night my companion and I went to São Paulo and slept in the missionaries house close to the mission office.  Then on Friday we participated in the leadership counsel.  This leadership counsel was interesting because President Ferrin gave us new baptismal rules.  The rules in the past have been that a person needed to watch 2 sacrament meetings before they could be baptized.  Now the rule is that they need to watch at least 3 and that kids under the age of 16 who don´t have family in the church need to go to church for 3 months before the can be baptized!  I think this will help the mission to baptize more people who really have the desire to stay firm and strengthen the church.  However you would be suprised at how hard it was for some of the missionaries to accept these new rules.  However I think it will help the mission.  That´s the biggest news that I have for this week!

 

Love you all,

-Elder Anderson

First Week of 2014

Dear Family,

This week was a good week.  We worked super hard.  I can´t believe that it is 2014 already!!  I hope that this next year is even better than the last one!  This past week we had a special training with the President in another city so we rented a van and on Monday night all of the elders in the zone slept together.  It was pretty fun but with 14 elders in the same house it was kind of hard to manage the sleeping arragements haha.  But we all got to sleep at least a little before getting up at heading out of the house at 5:30 in the morning to go to the training.  Tonight we will have to do something similar because tomorrow at 4:30 we will take the can to the temple in Campinas!!  There are 2 temples in the state of São Paulo, one is in the city of São Paulo and the other is in the city of Campinas.  Tomorrow we will be going to the Campinas temple which is going to be awesome!  I am looking forward to going into the temple again, it has been a while since the last time I went.  Elder Zancheta and I, along with the rest of the zone, have high hopes for this week.  I hope that you are all well and that the New Years celebrations went well. Thank you so much for your prayers and support and I think that this next year will be awesome!!

 

Love you all and thanks for the emails,

-Elder Caleb Anderson