Elder Anderson - January

Dear Family, The second coming is coming is coming! I can’t believe it actually snowed in St. George! The last time it snowed enough to build a snowman was when I was in 1st grade.So, it was pretty cold this week. I don’t think the actual temperature got above the single digits. The wind chill was much colder, though. I went biking yesterday, when it was like -20 degrees. If you add the wind of me riding my bike, it was probably like -30. I thought I was going to die. I could feel the fluid in my eyes starting to crystallize. My lungs were starting to freeze, and I almost died.This week was a really good week. We taught a lot of lessons and found a lot of new people to teach. On Tuesday, we had to drive to Olathe for a zone conference. Our ride bailed out on us at like 5:30 AM because of snow and freezing rain. So I ended up having to drive. But that’s okay, because I am a pro ice driver after having lived in St. George my whole life. It was like a 2 hour drive, and on the radio we kept hearing of accidents and stuff. It was pretty intense. But we made it there and back safely.We went to go see this one lady in this apartment building, and when we got to her door, her neighbor had his door open, and he and his family was just sitting there. So, when you are a missionary, what do you do? You talk to them, of course! So what did we do? We blew it, and we just went to the other persons door and knocked. She answered, and the first thing she says is, “Mormons? Aren’t you guys the ones that believe Jesus and Satan are brothers?” So, not a very good start. Needless to say, she was not interested. As we were leaving, one of the kids from the neighboring was outside the door and saw us. He said, “Are you church guys? I think we are looking for a church.” So the Holy Ghost prompted that kid to fix our mistakes for us. So we went in and talked to them for a bit and ended up teaching the first lesson to them. They are a spanish family and they are very awesome. The kids names are Destony, Gordo, Chunky, and two other kids I can’t remember. The whole week was filled with really cool experiences like that.There is this 11 yrs old girl named CJ that we are teaching. We had a lesson scheduled with her and her mom on Saturday to watch The Testaments. We got there, and the mom said that CJ was asleep and didn’t want to come out. I told her to tell CJ that if she got up, I would do a magic trick for her. I wasn’t expecting that to get her up, but her mom came back and said she was getting up. It worked out very well. Another really cool thing happened with the magic tricks. We are teaching this 9 yrs old girl named Destony. Her mom is a member, and her daughter just hasn’t been baptized yet. So we started teaching her. She is super super shy, and the whole time while we were teaching, she was like covering her whole face with her coat, except for a little slit where she could see us. She like wouldn’t talk the whole time. It was kind of awkward. At the end, I did a magic trick for her, and she really liked it (she still hardly said anything). We ended up seeing her a couple of days later, and she was the most energetic person ever! She was really talkative, and interactive. We were both very surprised at this. We had a lesson with her yesterday, and she was excited, she had done her reading assignment, and she was answering our questions. It was really cool.Well, I can’t really remember anything else to tell you. I forgot to write things down to tell you. The only other thing that stands out is that it was freakin’ cold. I have never been so cold in my life. I remember almost exactly the same time last year it was like 25 degrees, with wind chill at like 20. In fact, not once last year did it ever get this cold. The actual temperature never got to be below 0 last year. This year it has already happened most of this week, and it is only December.