UR 20??? It's ok bbg no one has to know - Lilburn, Georgia

FOR ANYONE THAT DOESN'T ALREADY KNOW: Our mission just enforced a rule that makes it so we can't communicate with friends through Facebook Messenger anymore. Please email me instead!!! 

Weeeeeelcome back to your weekly newsletter of what goes down in Lilburn, GA!!! In this week's letter, we see miracles, changes in age, and the best supportive most loving district there ever was.

THANK YOU TO EVERYONE WHO SENT BIRTHDAY WISHES!!! I FELT SO LOVED AND APPRECIATED ️

This week was seriously so nuts but when is it not so idk here's how it went:

Monday: Birthday P-day! (The p-day before my birthday when we celebrated) So. FUN! We made banana bread and cookies together as a district and they sang to me! We played uno (my fav game ever, also the name of Andrew Dearhart's dog who only has one testicle) and also paranoia. We were laughing our heads off. We went to the Ellisons for dinner (basically every week these days) while the elders were next door at the Barons. They left us a note on our car. Then, Sister Ellison and Bishop Duffield joined us for a lesson with Aria about the priesthood! We moved her baptism to August 2nd so the ward would be able to support her better. 

Tuesday: We worked at the co-op in the kids section for 2 hours! I love tiny baby clothesssss!! We ended up back at Sister Braum's house cleaning up more legos and toys and makeup. We had dinner with Delirio Juarez and Brother Cook (she didn't take his last name). We went whiteboarding at Lilburn City Park with the elders with the question "What brings you hope?" on the board. We ended up finding two people!! They're best friends who go to church together and are also the only people in their families who go to church at all. We're excited to meet with them again! We studied at our local wendy's and discovered that it had put under new management and actually thank heaven for that. Now, it has music, lights, and the workers aren't mean!!!!!!

Wednesday: I had my last new missionary mentor meeting EVER! I'll officially be out of training next thursday! Yippee! We had a whatsapp lesson with an older gal named Revonda! She's a gem and already loves the Book of Mormon. We had a lesson at the church with a gal Amelia who is already friends with like 3 families in the ward and was taught by some sisters during covid. She's ALSO a gem and has some really good questions. We had a lesson with Marri and Malaisia for the first time in a month because they were on vacay! They came to the ward mingle!!!!! Their mom is a member and wants her kids to grow up in the church so we're teaching them! We had a member message with Patriarch Kotter and we talked all about the ways he's seen his patriarchal blessing guide his life. He's served 5 different missions and loved each of them. We dropped off a Book of Mormon to Revonda so she could read the intro and she was reading it on the front porch as we drove away! A. GEM. We meal prepped cinnamon rolls for my BIRTHDAY!

Thursday: UR 20?? BIRTHDAY BIRTHDAY!  We had our cinnamon rolls at district council along with Elder Hogan's chocolate pie! Shoutout Elder Hogan's amazing baking/cooking skills. We went to Chick Fil A for lunch! We did some stopbys and the Lord led us right where we needed to be. We found a gal named Liz and she practically threw her info at us because she thought we were just the cutest and wanted to study the scriptures with us lol. We had dinner with the Palmers. While walking up to their apartment, we walked by an active police-enforced eviction with yelling and a door being broken down. These cops were legit 7 feet tall and BUILT. They were so kind to us as we walked past them lol. At the Palmers, we ate gyoza and cheesecake with dirty frescas. Are you kidding me rn. Happy birthday to ME GUHH! I felt loved. We had a great lesson with Aria and the Palmers afterward. Then, I got to call my family and they all had party hats on! Best birthday ever. 

Friday: We studied the baptismal interview questions in preparation for Aria's interview the following morning. We weekly planned for ages in the DUUUUUUMPING rain and the lawn mower fella was hiding under the church porch so I gave him some leftover birthday cheesecake lol. We tried passing this one guy over to the elders so we called him but he ended up bashing them for an hour and then tried to set up a time to "talk" irl... so we hung up. We felt unsafe lol. We stopped by a referral from a girl named Angelica and ended up finding her! She is from Haiti and speaks Haitian creole, french, and english. She was so emotional hearing about the peace she could find at church! She was really sweet and like disney princess gorgeous holy moly! We had the most amazing lesson with Aria and we heard her BEAR HER TESTIMONY for the FIRST TIME!!! I cried. She said she finally found what she's been looking for for YEARS. Guys what SHE'S 100% TAUGHT.

Saturday: Aria passed her baptismal interview YAYAYAYAY!!!! We are so over the moon. We met her at another church building so we could shop at the clothing drive there beforehand for an outfit she can change into after her baptism! All she found was jeans lol she loves her jeans. We stopped at Starbucks for cakepops for our monthaversaries!!! We had dinner with the Alarcons and ate their yummy peruvian food. So. Freaking. Good. I got to use some of my duolingo level 7 spanish. All I said was hielo. Lolll anyway then we went to the park for some studies and saw a train!!!!!!! I love trains so much. 

Sunday: We went to church!!!!! Oh how I love relief society! We have such a good ward. Like suuuuch a good ward. We had lunch with the Ellisons (same fam as monday yes) and they made me a late birthday lunch!!!! We ate yakisoba and cookies with glitter on them. We made Aria's baptismal program which took ages but we got it done! I never knew the amount of work that goes into a baptism until now. Respect to those who have done it!!!! We did a billion member stopbys and nobody was home but that's alright. No effort is wasted. We called Aria to finalize some baptism details!! She's sooo excited. Our hearts are full! 

I love yall, the Lord loves yall!  Email me! (Don't text me on messenger rip) 

Whiteboarding at Lilburn City Park with the Elders 

Us after lesson 3/4 (trying not to spiritually fry ourselves)

Family Birthday chat

Aria has been taught all the lessons!

Glitter birthday cookies from the Ellisons

Bonus sunflower from the community garden 

Elder Hogan quoting Nacho Libre

New Car, Hurricane, and Welcome David!! - Lilburn, Georgia

Welcome back everyone. Here's another bomb email from none other than Sister Anderson.

This week was so eventful and flew by sooooo quick. 

Monday: I made banana bread first thing in the morning, then we got together as a district to make german pancakes and friendship bracelets!!!! We had dinner with the Duffields (Bishop's family) in their colonial mansion of a house. We had a great conversation about the blessings they've seen come from fasting!

Tuesday: NEW CAR YAYAYAYAY! As many of you know, we got hit and run last week. Boo. BUT, they decided to just give us a new car yippee! She's a beaut. Her name is Sheila. We went to the co-op and Sister Balls had to say bye to Beanie because silly old Beanie will be in Switzerland until after Sister Balls goes home. We took a cutie pic together tho! We got lunch at wendy's so Sister Balls could see two of her past comps who are now comps together!! They stopped to see us on the way to the doctor in our area :) We did service at an inactive member's house and literally cleaned up (played with) legos for an hour. So. Many. Legos. Wow. We made the place spotless don't you fret! We had dinner with the Casillas family. They have three little kids. I have never seen such a chatty 3-year-old. So precious. We taught them the 10 commandment hand signs!!!! They ate it up. 

Wednesday: EXCHANGES WITH SISTER HAUCK! Guys she's actually nuts but I love her so bad. She ate popcorn for breakfast and candy for lunch. We tried to do contacts and had a chopped comp study at the library before heading to QT for diet coke. We visited with Andrew, a convert of around 9 months. He had a heart attack last week and had to have a quintuple bypass. He showed us the zipper in his chest from open heart surgery. He gave us a word of wisdom lesson because that's how he ended up in this mess. Waffle house and beer. Oh Andrew. We all (Sis Hauck, Elder Hogan, Elder Alder) bawled our eyes out when he was telling his story about praying his heart out (literally) before surgery. While doing a non-chopped comp study at the library later, we saw a guy that was literally carbon copy superman. You can't tell me it wasn't him. I pranked Sister Hauck by telling her we were going to dinner with a new member in the ward (She used to serve in this ward and knows everyone already) so she wouldn't know them but secretly we were going to the ward mingle with EVERYONE! She was so excited. There's a video in my google photos with her reaction :) We had a great lesson with Aria before exchanging back!

Thursday: What the holy hurricane. The day started out normal with District Council and Panda express. We saw Mike and Beverly from waffle house a while back at popeyes!! They recognized us and let us know they hadn't read the mormon book yet but he would now that he saw us again haha. We went to Sister Burke's house for dinner where we ate the yummiest chicken salad (chicken on top of salad not in it) and blueberry sorbet. Before we knew it, a storm had rolled in and we could barely see 5 feet outside the window because of how thick the rain was. Lightning was quite literally striking across the street and was SO LOUD. We ended up staying at Sister Burke's for two hours because heck to the no way were we going outside in that storm. We thought we were going to die when the power went out and it started getting super windy. Turns out we were in the eye of a huge storm that was traveling through the southeast. Ahhh!!! When it finally died down enough for us to leave, we drive through broken branches and saw so many trees tipped over. We couldn't get into our apartment complex for a bit because there was a tree in the road. Our power was out when we arrived home so we knocked on our sweet senior missonary neighbors to see if they were alright and if they had any flashlights. The power came back on as we were chatting with them!! They said they ate dinner by candlelight! So romantic.

Friday: Our gym door was all messed up from the storm and we couldn't get inside so we went on a walk!!! It was so niiiiice. I love being outside in the morning. We weekly planned later and the elders were on something I swear. They kept running in and out of the room pretending to kill each other, dragging each other on the floor, spinning around, burying each other with chairs, etc. Elders will be elders. We had this amazing plan to knock one billion doors, right? First door we knock we're standing there for an hour listening to this guy talk about how he loves Jesus and is a firm believer but REFUSES to call himself a christian because he says that word was made by satan. Anyways then we had yet another amazing lesson with Aria!!!!!

Saturday: DAVID GOT BAPTIZED! The Tucker Elders welcomed a new member of their ward! He is the cutest old man and has the best testimony. Aria came to it to get an idea of what hers will be like! She loved how personal and intimate it was. Sister Balls and I were inspired by our stake pres to play a game while knocking where you throw out a word to the other person before the door opens that you have to use in a first contact. For example, Sister Balls gave me the word "star" and I tied it to 3 Nephi 11:11-12. Jesus is the light and the life of the world. He showed us this when he was born, when a star appeared in the sky to guide others to him. He is our beacon!!!! Anyways I love this game. We had dinner with the Denis family and learned all about their conversion! I love hearing conversion stories, especially after hard days when we feel like our efforts were in vain. They're a great reminder that no effort is wasted. Seeds are constantly being planted and growing! 

Sunday: Sister Balls and I did a musical number in Sacrament Meeting!!!! I played violin and she sang "Savior, Redeemer of My Soul". It was so great. The Lilburn ward rarely has musical numbers so they were gushing over it lol. We had an awesome lesson with Aria after church about temples! She was so intrigued and was asking so many great questions about how she could go. She is a GEM. After church, we were doing contacts in our apartment clubhouse and there was a family watching the world cup so we got to see the first hour and a half lol. Congrats Spain! We had dinner with the Blunck family! They have four cats that kept jumping on the table but honestly I don't blame them that food was delish as freak. We had a great conversation about the influence of the holy ghost in our lives.

Thanks for tuning in! I love yall, the Lord loves yall! Email me :)

xoxo, Sister Anderson

Sister Stavast, Sister Balls, Sister Graff, Sister Anderson

Exchanges with Sister Hauck

Tree blocking our road after the storm

Ready to knock one billion doors!

Happy Baptism Day, David!

Rainbows and Funeral Food - Lilburn, Georgia

Hello guys and gals! 

What a great week it was. Shorter than normal, too! Let's get right into it!

Tuesday: We met up with the other sisters in our district for waffle house before heading to the temple! Half of our district wanted to do endowments and the other half wanted to do sealings so we just went on splits accordingly lol. I love sealings so much. It was so great to be doing them again!!! We went to Talpa for $1 tacos after of course. We thrifted and played games together as a district :) We had dinner with the Stallings and James showed us all of his dinosaurs again :)

Wednesday: We had a GREAT mentoring session (Shoutout Sis Fredericks) and learned all about inviting members to do things in a way that will make them feel loved and appreciated. Ex. Inviting a member to join a lesson with a friend. We had a member message with an inactive gal and her brother that doesn't really speak english which was so freaking awkward wow but that is okay we persevere. We went knocking with an awesome chica in our ward, Delirio! She served in Mexico City and wasn't allowed to knock on her mission! She had fun doing it for the first time. We ended up finding a hispanic woman because of her. God works in the coolest ways ever. I love missionary work. We went to the ward mingle afterward and let me tell yall. People in the south can cook. And I mean it. I LIVE for the mingles. 

Thursday: Bad news: Sometime in between the hours of 9pm and 10am, someone rammed into our car then drove away. Good news: Now we get a new car on Tuesday!!!! We've literally been praying for a new car lol ours is struggling. We were a tad late to district council because of that but it's okay! I gave a training in DC about uniting with members. Our poor Tucker Elders are having a hard time with their ward. Pray for the Tucker ward to have the desire to do missionary work! We had a quick lesson with Gimena about the restoration and left her with a game to play with her sister. Their dog is so old wow. We had interviews with president and sweet little Rue Dent made me a keychain for my pros bag. That's never coming off. We saw Andy Parris at Chick-Fil-A! We ended the day with an amazing lesson with Aria joined by sweet Sister Duffield. The spirit was so strong!! Mom, remember when I would eat a big carrot before bed every night when I was little? I'm so back. I eat so many carrots these days. 

Friday: I saw a tiny fella at the gym! (See pic below) We started out the day weeding the Dahnakes porch! We found some frogs and worms and I made friends with their neighbor's cat that kind of looks like Watering Can but less fat. We arrived at the church and our sweet elders had bought us bagels. They said they knew they were my favorite. They even got asiago ones with garden vegetable cream cheese. To be loved is to be seen. We had another lesson with Aria over zoom and... SHE'S ON DATE FOR AUGUST 1ST! We are so incredibly proud of her and how far she's come. When I got here, she had just been found and was lowkey ghosting the missionaries, and now she meets with us 4x a week and is on date. Holy moly. The spirit is real. The church is true. We hate the U. 

Saturday: Sister Balls and I were both having hard days. Not good but we pushed through. We stopped by a referral we had gotten that turned out to be from someone who was married to a member in the magnolia ward! She's a gem and totally going to get baptized. We talked on her porch for 40 minutes and I lowk got heatstroke but worth it for Cadence. There was some leftover food from a funeral in the ward that the family of the deceased requested that we have. Us Lilburn companionships had family dinner at the church. I cannot emphasize how good the Lilburn ward makes banana pudding. It's something I had no clue could be so magical until my mission. I'm def gonna gain like 20 pounds but I'll try not to trust. Look at these flowers we saw while knocking!

Sunday: I LOVE SUNDAAAAYS! The sacrament is literally like if I was a toy with one of those wind up things on my back and someone just twisted it all the way up. Or like a spiritual energy drink. Guh I love it. I got to give the closing prayer in sacrament meeting!!! I was told I did a great job lol. We were sitting next to a vent where inside, there was a little something or other chewing on something. We could see something moving and hear it munching all of church. Heaven help us. We went to the library to plan our lessons because they robbed us of our comp study on Sundays effective immediately so we didn't have time already to plan them. We talked to two really silly old fellas who were talking about the rain and how we could barely see out the window because there was so much water. We had a member message with sweet, 97-year-old Geraldine Coleman who showed us her homemade quilt collection and family history books. I love when people tell me all about what's important to them. We had the best lesson with Aria over zoom joined by the Barons and afterward went to drop off her baptism calendar!!!! Our mission has started making these calendars to help people visualize what they need to do before getting baptized. She is the cutest little thing ever I love her. We saw a rainbow after the storm! (Rainbows mean covenants btw) (shes getting baptized) (pray for Aria) 

I love yall, the Lord loves yall!!! Email me 

xoxo, Sister Anderson

Atlanta Temple after doing sealings

I saw a tiny fella at the gym!

Aria's Baptism Calendar

Bigfoot and Oreo the Baby Chicken - Lilburn, Georgia

Hola Everyone!

What a nutso fun week. Let's get into it!

Monday: P-day! Sister Balls had yet another foot doctor appointment. More meh news. Prayers would be appreciated. We hung out as a district and celebrated Sister Jarvis' 21st with peach cobbler and ice cream!!! It was so fun. We played a new game called Five Crowns and it felt like a mix of rumikub and rook. Elder Griffin and Hoffman gave the craziest presentation on Bigfoot. I believe he exists now if that tells you anything. We ate dinner with the Ellisons and talked to Liam about starting home MTC this week! I was able to ease some of his nerves which was good :)

Tuesday: We started the day at the co-op where we yapped with Beanie about the youth group that was helping with the food pantry. They're from north carolina and are doing service every day of the summer in different places! How fun! We did lots of finding throughout the day and had dinner with Sister Flynn and Ginger :) Ginger gets her nickname from her childhood. She used to have strawberry blonde hair and her little sister couldn't say her real name so she just called her Ginger! We ate at Metro which is the cutest little diner that a recently returned missionary in our ward, Marcelo works at! He wasn't our waiter but he came over to say hi :) We dropped off some more brownies after dinner and headed to Book of Mormon study. Nobody showed so we sat and brainstormed with the elders how we could involve the ward in our work more :)

Wednesday: We headed straight for the carwash in the morning to beat the heat. We did not in fact beat the heat but oh well. Our car looked amazing. Lots of meetings and calls because we were trying to do missionary work while also not walking a ton in hopes that Sister Balls could rest her foot. We headed to the ward mingle for dinner and got to know the Bishop's wife's sister who just got back from being a mission leader in Brazil! She loved talking with us missionaries :) 

Thursday: ZONE CONFERENCE! We learned some powerful stuff. The Dents talked about applying the doctrine of Christ to every aspect of our missionary work. So great. We were trained on how to make specific plans while still in lessons to help our friends keep commitments. It was so amazing and so so so helpful. We've been using it all week :) After Zone conference, we had dinner with Maddie Hall who is such a cool lady. After dinner, we had a lesson with our friend Faty [fah-tee] who is a mom of two under two. She is excited to learn more! We ended the night with institute taught by none other than Salem Palmer himself. Shoutout humidity for fogging up my glasses every time I step outside

Friday: What a crazy day. We started our day with DC and gained some really good insight into teaching within people's concerns. Shoutout Elder Hogan. Right after lunch at Jimmy Johns, we headed to weekly planning with basically our whole district in the same building lol. At some point we all ended up making s'mores on the church stoves with giant marshmallows that someone found in the clerk's office. Someone also somehow found chocolate and graham crackers. We had a good time :) Our elders are all going through it (Elder Hogan was stung by a bee on his eyebrow and the Tucker elders' ward is giving them a hard time) so I suggested that they all give each other blessings. They didn't want to at first so I quite literally taught them a lesson on priesthood authority and promised them blessings and they whisked themselves away to a private room to give each other blessings. They came back in after with the most grateful looks in their eyes and all thanked me individually for listening to the spirit. I felt so cool guys you have no idea. We headed to dinner with sweet Jackie and she fed us the most delicious ribs I have everrrr had. Jackie knows ball. We had her make a video for our friend Aria to invite her to church and she ended up coming and they sat togetherrrr!!! (Thank you zone conference) We did a blitz with the hermanas! I went with Sister Johnson so in case someone spoke spanish, we could still teach them. So fuuuun! We found a frog in a yard!

Saturday: HAPPY 4TH! Being a missionary on a holiday is SO HARD. Nobody is home and every business is closed so finding people to teach is really difficult. We had to be home by 8pm for safety reasons so we knew we'd have one less hour to work outside. I got to call my dad for his birthday!! Happy 56 papacito! I found a fluffy caterpillar at the park that looked like a wasp. I was so confused. We stopped by so many people and knocked so many doors and literally not one person was home. We pleaded to God in prayer to lead us where we needed to be and I got the strongest prompting literally ever that just said GO HOME. We followed it right away and headed home. After about 10 minutes of being home, it started storming so bad outside. We were so greatful to have been led home before getting caught in it! We even got a panicked call from our district asking if everyone was okay. Because we were stuck at home and couldn't knock doors (Sister Balls' boot can't get wet) we called some people who had been interested a while back. We called a cool fella who got into some anti about two years ago but was willing to listen to us now. We taught him about prophets and he gave us his new address and we set up a time to meet. BAM! After the storm died down, we were able to go to the Tucker ward BBQ and mingle with the Tucker ward! We talked with an awesome lady about the plan of salvation and covenants :) After getting home at 8, we made banana muffins (see cooking vid in google photos)

Sunday: Our friend Aria came to church but felt sick so she left halfway into second hour. Sad. We slept for our whole lunch hour because we were fasting. I love Sunday naps. We stopped by an old lady in a 55+ living who wasn't home but I need to tell yall about the elevator. It sounded like a ghost lived in there. If any of yall have ever been to Lagoon in Utah, it's the sound the Rocket makes before the ride drops. Like the really loud sigh of air?? Idk but Anna if you're reading this you probs know. Anywho we went to the Britos for dinner and if you know me, you know I'm terrified of eating seafood. I ate an entire thing of salmon. It was hard but lowkey so delish at the same time. I also ate a crap ton of asparagus. Sister Brito locked her son out of the house when she though he was going to show her a bug. She screamed and ran upstairs and said she loved us and could let ourselves out. I literally love her so much lol. Apparently he wanted to show her a blackberry he found on a bush. We had a member message with the Joneses after. Brother and Sister Jones (Actual brother and sister) told us all about their travels to Israel and when it started raining, Brother Jones walked us all the way down their long driveway with an umbrella over our heads. So kind. 

Saturday: I LOVE EXCHANGESSS! I went to Berkley Lake (I'm writing this from there) and got to hang out with Sister Jarvis all day! We literally had the best day ever ngl. It was so weird but awesome. We started the day with stopbys and met the mother of the author of The Maze Runner, Sister Dashner. I was fangirling lol. We did a blitz of Lilburn so I got to go back to my own area during an exchange which was weird but fun. We knocked a street and met a fella named chris that wanted not one but TWO copies of the book of mormon. He really wanted to know where we lived. About three houses down after leaving him, we see chris running up to us telling us that he actually doesn't need two. He gave one back then asked what car we drove. Helllllp!!! We eventually got him to leave and then while walking to our car down the street, three little girls said they'd let us hold their baby chicken if we gave them pictures of Jesus. So, we held their chicken and gave them pictures of Jesus. Score. We had dinner with sweet old Brother Crawford at a mexican place. Sister Jarvis is from Mesa so she knows about mexican food. It was so fun to bond with her about Arizona!!! During one of our later stopbys, some guy was on his phone while driving and missed our car by an inch after slamming on his brakes. God kept our big old missonary van safe. We got ice cream on the way home :)

I'M SO EXCITED TO GO TO THE TEMPLE TODAY!!!!!!

I love yall, the Lord loves yall  Email me! 

xoxo, Sister Anderson

Exchanges with Sister Jarvis