ASL and Sweet Home Alabama (Georgia) - Lilburn, Georgia

What is up my goats and goatettes I miss yall!!!! This week was a crazy one as always. What's new. A lot of things are new actually let me tell ya about them lol. Sorry this email is miles long I collected so much lore this week. For your convenience, all major stories are highlighted in blue.

Monday was the longest P-day of my life. I was bored for the first time ever since starting my mission and I didn't know what to do with myself. Four hours of nothingness waiting for our dinner appointment with Delirio and Hayden! Their cat Dante loves to climb on the back of our chairs and give our heads a hug. It's so funny. They gave us pumpkin banana bread and my whole life was made. 

Tuesday we had our butts saved by God himself. In the gym, I got to sign with a deaf baddie!! She's a personal trainer and all of her clients have to learn ASL to talk with her. We had a great conversation about what I do every day as a missionary and she was so impressed lol. Now I have a deaf friend at my complex We had a meeting we completely forgot to prepare for so we felt awful, where we later found out president was going to be on that call... but he got hung up somewhere else. We got saved by God wow. We went to the co-op and organized more of the baby winter clothes. The little coats were so tinyyyy! We accidentally left the mission because our map took us the complete wrong way, but that is so our bad for not being more careful. We met a cool fella in panda express and we held the craziest eye contact while I testified about the sacrament. He's getting baptized next week trust. We had dinner with Sister Brackett (93yo). I asked what her fondest memory was and she lit up with joy when she had thought of it. She said "Christmas eve on my mission." She went on to tell the most tear-jerking story of all time that had us crying in Always Fresh. 

A poor family had hosted her and her companion for dinner and they held dinner in their backyard shed because they wouldn't all fit in their dining room. They had nice christmas dishes and she was surprised because they had so little money. After dinner, Sister Brackett complimented her nice dishes. The mother then told her that they were Sister Brackett's christmas present. Surprised, she asked why she'd give away such nice dishes. The mother said "I wanted you to have a nice dinner like you'd have at home, and I want you to always remember us." Who wouldn't cry at that story??????

After dinner we stopped by someone and we got the heebie jeebies like BAD... I'm talking massive baseball sized beefy wolf and juro spiders crawling in front, back, and sides of us, a loud bang in the woods, and it was getting dark. We were outta there lickity schplit yerr. 

Wednesday was a day of miracles! We went to our friend Keyon's house to finally meet him IRL and GUYS. I have never met someone so prepared to recieve the gospel. He is like the coolest fella of all time. We put him on date for baptism his first in-person lesson. He wants to serve a misson someday too?? We had a zoom call with one of our past friends that said he wanted to talk again and his heart went from hard to less hard so that was cool! We had dinner with the Smiths and they got really emotional when we taught them about the joy of repentance. It is such a great gift! Also I found a cat

Thursday started crazy right as we woke up. We found out about three missionaries that were ET'd this week. Two went home and one was changed from an Hermana to a Sister. Those three were all in our zone. We had district council and had lunch at Tito's taqueria! It was so goooooooood. We met a lovely lesbian baptist couple at zaxby's who we sat with and answered all their questions about our church. Sometimes all the teaching we do is clarification of rumors and that is okay. We got to see Laverne again for the first time in like a month since she dropped us! We stopped by to check in and she is doing much better. We convinced her to take a pic with us lol. Then of course we held hands to pray then group hugged. We drove through an active crime scene on the way to someone's house... people with gloves and clipboards and all that jazz. 

Friday I think I finally realized my divine identity as a daughter of God. We had one of the most "God sees YOU" moments of my entire life. Skip to the next paragraph for that story! We studied at burger king, weekly planned, and got bashed by an old guy over the phone. We had dinner with Andy at a mexican BBQ place. Holy so good. Emp gave the bones from the ribs she ate to Uno who was in the car waiting for us. 

We went to this hotel with our elders to give a woman and her mother priesthood blessings. Earlier, my companion had been expressing some things she had been struggling with and we were both crying when we got out of the car so the elders were concerned lol. We walked into the hotel and knocked on the door of the woman but she wasn't answering. We tried calling and could hear her phone ringing inside the room. Just then, there was a family walking down the hallway and the goat elder winn asked if they had 5 minutes. We started teaching them in the hallway when a man in a wheelchair opens his door behind us and says he wants to listen too. Once the family gave us their info and we set up another time to meet, we talked to the old man. His name is Johnny, he has lived in that hotel for 3 years and had a stroke 2 years ago. He took each of our hands one by one and he looks in our eyes and says "God loves you. All the time." Sister Empey and I are standing there bawling our eyes out as the elders stand there not bawling their eyes out. He went on to say things like "God wouldn't put you here if he didn't need you here" and "I love you like my own brothers and sisters." Once we left the hotel, Sister Empey got a blessing in the back of the elders' Rav4 and it addressed every concern she had expressed before entering the hotel. God KNOWS us. He loves us SO individually and will never EVERRRR abandon us. I have such a testimony of the love our Heavenly Father has for us. I am so grateful for the infinite atonement of Jesus Christ and the Joy I get to share with those around me because of it!!!!

Saturday I got to call home for Andrew's 23rd birthday! Happy birthday pal. Love you. We had two church tours fall through then had an impromptu therapy sesh with Sister Dent in the clerk's office. Shoutout Sister Dent. We studied about the Millennium at McDonald's and wow everyone needs to go study it NOW. I learned so much. We talked to a muchacho and got politely bashed and prayed for by a guy who had real life lego hands. We had dinner with a family that has the CRAZIEST lore. I'm going to do my best to explain this. We're going to use nicknames for everyone for legal purposes. 

Brandie marries Bill, Steven is dating Brandie's BFF. Bill sleeps with Brandie's BFF. Brandie and Steven get married. Brandie's BFF's Mom marries Brandie's brother. Brandie's exBFF is now her niece. Steven's ex-girlfriend is now his niece. SWEET HOME ALABAMA

We stopped to pet a goat on the way home named Bubby. We called Aria to tell her about general conference too!

Sunday was fast sunday but we did in fact survive. We had our new friend Keyon come to church his first week, which if you've been a missionary you understand that means there's a 99% chance they're getting baptized. He is the coolest fella ever. Ashley came with Yi Ming too! Please pray for our member Jackie Watson as she has swelling on the brain and needs surgery soon. She is really nervous! We had a great lesson with Keyon after church about prophets which was perfect because general conference was the main topic of sacrament meeting. After church, we talked to 50 billion people at the park and then had lunch with the Omorogbes! They fed us west african food again and I think I'm warming up to it. The habanero rice and beans was kinda good this time tbh. I got seconds. We had a lesson with our Ethiopian goat Eshetu at the park with bro foster and we learned a little more about his backstory. He moved here alone and is currently searching for employment. He lost his job here because he got stuck in Ethiopia and took too many vacation days off. He's working on finding a warehouse job so he can move to Lilburn and come to church. What a Gem. We did a bunch of inactive member stopbys and found some cool people! 

While we were reporting in the car, this 70yo guy (what's the american version of a muchacho? lmk.) pulls up on his quad and asks if Emp is learning to drive. We explained that we were in fact in our twenties and he called us "cute as a button." In an attempt to share the gospel with him, we learned his whole life story, his wife's life story, his dog's life story, and that he likes to collect castiron. He invited us to the "museum" in his basement. We got his info for the elders to go check out the museum instead :) Good luck Hildreth and Winn! 

We ended the night with an AMAZING MLC call where we found out that we broke almost all of the mission records this week. We found 913 people as a mission. We had 412 lessons with a member participating. And we had 205 friends at sacrament meeting. THE GANM IS ON THE UPS YALL!

I love yall, the Lord loves yall! 

xoxo, Sister Anderson

Laverne

Goat!

Brother Foster and Eshetu

Sister Brackett in Always Fresh

"Thank You for Allowing Us to Be Your Daughters" - Lilburn, Georgia

Holaw. ¿Coeugh mough ehstaww? Lmk.

This week, we were stressed about a number of things but miracles came and swept some of that stress away. I think Jesus is just the raddest guy of all time and is also an actual sweetie pie. Please pray for us because we feel like chickens with our heads cut off. Thanks.

Here's my short week:

Wednesday: Finally P-day. After 9 days of praying to make it to p-day, it came. Listen, I love being a missionary but doing it for 9 days with no break at all is not for the weak. We hung out as a district for the last time and signed bye bye books with each other. We then hurried to the church building so we could teach young men's and young women's!!! We taught them how missionaries teach so they can go out into members homes and share dinner messages with them this week! How fun! We also got to watch a youth in the spanish ward open her mission call. Let me tell ya, this was like no mission call opening I have ever been to. It was set in the chapel (there were like 200 people there) and there was this big acting thing at the beginning. After 30 minutes of that, Camila opened her call to El Paso Texas spanish speaking!!! Then there was more acting and a big dinner after. Quite the event. 

Thursday: Transfer day! We of course did not go because we aren't moving. It's sad not going to transfers because you can't see all your missionary friends! Don't even fret tho we had a great day still. We did a bunch of stopbys and spoke a bunch of broken spanish. We talked to a fella in Zaxby's who had just watched Heretic... IYKYK... and he was like fangirling that two missionaries came up to him irl. It was so funny. There was a guy on the way to someone's house that was singing a song at the top of his lungs then started rolling around on the street while dancing to it. When I say literally everyone is high here I mean EVERYONE Only got bashed once  

Friday: Meetings and more meetings. We had district council with our new district and they're actually really cool yay! We weekly planned and our brains were all over the place so it was really hard to stay on track but that's ok. We had to turn a bunch of people grey because we got some wise council from Elder Hildreth that we can't keep contacting people and exhausting ourselves if they aren't even responding just because we love them. GUH! It's hard to let go of people you were so sure about. We had a lovely phone lesson with Aria and she said a BANGER line in her prayer that is in fact the title of this email. ACTUAL BAR Anywho then we had another meeting from 9-10pm. It was really good though trust.

Saturday: The day started out great with the Lilburn Elders' friend Arnold getting baptized! He is so devoted and kind. We had a lesson with Marri and Malaisia and tried to put both on date, but Marri said she doesn't want to get baptized still. We still put Malaisia on date for November 8th!! She's really excited! We had a meeting with the Zone Leaders and planned Zone Focus together. We went to Ashley's house for her baptismal interview and she gave us dessert and plopped us in her massage chair until the elders arrived. Sadly, she didn't pass because the translation wasn't working quite right. We're going to try and find a solution to that. Then we caught a frog of course.

Sunday: On the way to church we were turning right onto a street when BAM WE'RE BEING SWALLOWED UP BY A STORM OF PIGEONS like they were all around our car and flying around tornado style. Naturally we started screaming bloody murder because what the freak is wrong with them. We made it to church shell-shocked. None of our friends came to church, but Relief society was so amazing. We studied a conference talk: Ministering—“That Ye Love One Another; as I Have Loved You" and it made me realize how crazy good of a ward I am in!!! It reminds me so much of Allen Ranch. It's a family. I am so grateful for wards that come together to support one another! We had a ward linger longer and talked to everyone we love and hold dear to us. A few tears of love were shed. Our goat Eshetu had to cancel his lesson so we got bashed by some Jehovahs witnesses at the park instead. Oh joy. We stopped by Meehyang Kim again (the Korean lady who was baptized at 15) and set up ministers for her!!! She showed us wedding photos and such. So cute. We had dinner with Jessica Alarcon and had the best peruvian food of course. We had a really great conversation about not listening to the adversary. We helped her with her english and she helped with our spanish! We had Zone focus with our zone and stake leadership and it was really good! There's some drama in our zone that we're trying to deal with so that put a damper on the situation but we're pushing through.

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

xoxo, Sister Anderson

Boiled peanuts

Meehyang Kim

Dessert from Ashley

Ten points if you can guess what this pic is 

Twins!

¿Cómo Se Dice Airball? - Lilburn, Georgia

 Welcome back fellas and fellitas. Do I have the email for you. 

It's been 9 days without a P-day. Let me tell you how it went. At least one of us cried every single day.

But first... TRANSFER NEWS!!!

I'M STAYING IN LILBURN!!!! 

BABY AREA FOR 4 TRANSFERS Genuinely not mad I love it here so much. Now onto my week! 

Monday was fun, we went to the Hong Kong market and I bought kimchi!! It is so dang good I love kimchi. Shoutout dad. We got an oil change and I felt so cool. Also, day 1 of my faith crisis. I was in the DUMPS and took it out on my faith for some reason. I got some wise council from president dent :) love that fella

Tuesday I cried cause I was so excited to go to the co-op and we pulled up and it was CLOSED. Guys if you knew Beanie my GOAT you would cry too. Bashed in a panda express. I was super nauseated all day so that was buns. We knocked on this one lady's door and I started filming because her little white rat dogs were scratching at the door and it legit looked like it was gonna fall over. As we were leaving she opened it and let us in. With our mega broken spanish, we established that she was a grandma to her 6 white flea-infested shihtzu doggies, catholic, and didn't know how to work her phone. I told her she needed to charge it and she looked so disappointed. "Necesitas tu cargador!!" Guys make me an hermana rn. That was a joke don't. We left that house with ten billion flea bites on our ankles and probably rabies. We had an awesome lesson with Ashley about allllll the laws. Chastity, tithing, word of wisdom, etc. Luckily her husband is a member and he's taught her the way of the Lord already. Amen hallelujah. (

Wednesday I woke up in Lawrenceville with Sister Gilsen! She is the cutesttt! We moved a big fat pile of mulch in the morning with the L-ville elders for a member in their ward. The member took us to Publix for pub subs after and I guess my mission is over. I fulfilled my sister Dani's dream of me getting a pub sub so yeah holy airball send me home alreadyyy! Actually please don't I love this place. Like so much. We got sweet treats to celebrate our exchange of coursely. When we were leaving our studies, we tried talking to this guy but he was like actively rolling a blunt in his car and his eyes were beet red so Idk if he could really understand anything we said but that's alright. We found a lovely lady named Christie who had bum knees but wanted to keep talking to us because she loves Jesus. Be like Christie yall. 

Thursday we had district council and ate at taco bell for district lunch per elder Johnson's request. (He's been begging us all transfer) At taco bell there was a little 3-4yo girl that randomly sat next to elder Hildreth and started grabbing his arm. She then proceeded to cuss us all out and flip us off. We were BAFFLED. We took an emergency trip to the chiropractor for sister Empey which was actually so fun. The chiropractor is an lds bishop in snellville! We knocked on a woman's door and she had two ANCIENT parrots inside. She wasn't interested but she wanted to pray with us so we held hands and prayed. I love when that happens. I've held hands with so many people here lol. We had dinner with Sister Deise Brito at Talpa and had the mosy bussy tacos ever. We had a meeting with the stake and got to see our pal president dent then we went out to ice cream with the stake leaders after.

Friday was 9/11 but we quite literally heard not a peep about it because we're not online. The whole day was a fever dream though tbh. We studied at wendys and saw our homeless friend Happy! He told us he's working on getting his license soon so he can get a car and leave the state before winter hits. Pray he passes his test! We both cried out of exhaustion and dried our tears with wendy's napkins. We went to lunch with our friend Sonny and guys. Wow. We told him to come prepped with questions and WOW. We taught him everything from the plan of salvation to the law of chastity and word of wisdom. 68% of everything ever. He bought us food and we got him to commit to meeting with us again because he wants to be sealed to his wife Peggy. HOW TENDER IS THAT. THE CHURCH IS TRUE. THE BOOK IS BLUE. WE HATE THE U!! We weekly planned then had dinner with Andy Dearhart One of my favorite fellas on earth. Now I have a car show trophy signed by him and life is complete.

Saturday we caught 14 frogs. NEW RECORDDD! One legit fell out of the sky and the rest we caught with our own four hands. We got to go to the Stone Mountain district's DC because we were asked by pres to roleplay something new we're doing mission wide. It was lowk so fun because I got to play piano for the opening hymn AND the only part of the meeting that was in English was our roleplay. I'm working on my Spanish trust. We got to go to the Tucker Elders friend Emilio's baptism! Yay Emilio!!!! Welcome pal. 

Sunday was great! One of our friends came to church (the one that's on date phew) and she brought her husband who is a returning member. Love them. We taught Young women's and talked about the priesthood! We had a BALLER lesson with our Ethiopian friend,  Eshetu joined by Brother Dahneke. Simply perfect. We did some unsuccessful stopbys and met a cute kitty named Dexter. He had the sniffles poor fella! We found 3 people somehow, I think we knocked into them all. Got bashed twice (one of the bashers was naked), got called "lost souls" and "the devil's church" etc etc. Sister Emp and I are geniuses and put a roast in the crock pot in the morning so we came home to rice and pork and potatoes and onions and carrots and such for dinner.

Monday we wanted to die because it wasn't p-day like normal, so naturally we went and talked to our pal Kenney in wendy's and after he left we cried again because we're so burnt out. This new transfer can't come soon enough. I'm being so honest. We finally caved and called the elders for priesthood blessings. That was healing. We had dinner with the Barons! They told us Aria finally told her mom she got baptized and she wants to come to church??? BETTTYYYYY yall don't know how hard we've been working at her. This is a MIRACLE. 

Tuesday we realized we might not make it until wednesday. We pushed through nonetheless. We went to the co-op and got to organize the baby section (not making my baby fever any better). Beanie HATED that one or both of us might be leaving. I love that woman. We took naps during lunch per usual and did a couple stopbys before heading to the Dahnekes for dinner!!!! We played soccer with little Milo (he's 1) (we kicked a mickey ball around the kitchen) which was so fun. Love them. Then we came home and screamed over transfer news :)

How many flea bites on my ankles did I get from dogs and cats this week? Idk. Prolly like ten bajillion 

I love yall, the Lord loves yall!

xoxo, Sister Anderson

at the co-op

Baron family

Cat with a cold

Frogs and Toad

Sister Empey and Sister Anderson

Andrew Dearheart and one of his many trophies

Taco Bell with the District!

Exchanges with Sister Gilsen

The old Hispanic lady's house)