P-day at the beach!!!

Church

Proselyting. Cute hat!!!

HERMANA'S CONFERENCE - PICS

2 Months!!!

Hola! Dang was this last week fast or what? Time flies... for the most part haha. Tomorrow I reach my TWO MONTH mark! ohmy goodness. Only 16 left! So first of all I wanna talk about the Hermana´s conference that we had on Friday. It honestly may have been the best day of the mish so far. It was amazing! We had lunch that Hermana Burnett made for us which was chicken salad and brownies and I got super trunky cause it reminded me of home haha and then we got our ¨"surprise letters" and I have never been so excited about anything in my life haha. When I opened it and read "love mama and daddy" I about died. That was the best. so... THANK YOU! That same day we had a lesson with Carlos and Natali and they told us about how they talked to you guys a little bit on facebook but they don´t know any english so they didn´t understand anything you said mom hahaha.

Anyways, this was a good week with a lot of hard work! It got hot... FAST! I already have some suuuper sexy tan lines. We walk outside all day and the sun is soo intense. My new hat that I bought is saving my life. Eating is even harder for me now too because it´s so hot so I`m never hungry. I'm not like losing weight like crazy or anything but from all the walking my legs are withering down to nothing. No more squats in the gym... haha you would hate it Dad! sorry ;)

This week has ben pretty interesting. We had lessons with two different prostitutes, but they were super interested in the Book of Mormon haha. Then we met this lady named Marcela who apparently sees dead people, and when we went ot her house she asked me to pray and bless her house. I didn´t really know what I was doing but I did my best. We have to go back tomorrow... I`m kind of nervous lol. But we also have another new really strong investigador now with a baptismal date! Her name is Gabriela and we have taught her the first two lessons so far. She`s awesome. She is 20 years old and has thee cutest little girl. I`m kind of scared to teach her the commandments though cause she`s got major issues with the word of wisdom as well as the law of chastity. I`ll be praying for a miracle though, cause I love her so much!

Also, this week (Saturday) we had a ward activity that us missionaries planned with a bunch of games and stuff. It was super fun. And I definitely set a good reputation for gringas and their dancing skills haha. And then yesterday was the BEST end to such a good week... Carlos and Natali finally came to church together! So now Carlos just needs to comeone more time before he can be BAPTIZED! I`m so excited. Then in a year, I get to see them sealed in the temple :) They are like family. Our lessons and family home evenings with them get me through the week.

Yesterday after church was rough. We had five hours of proselyting to do and nobody was in the streets or at home becasue of the election. it was sooo dang hot and we spent five straight hours walking in the dirt. I will be shocked if I don`t come home with skin cancer haha.

Other than that it was a really good week! We went to the beach today for a zone activity and that was super fun. I got some fun pics that I`ll send!
Love ya`ll!!

Have another amaaaazing week:)

amor,

Hermana Sanders

Photos in Uruguay!

Email - October 20th

Hola! Another week done eh? It was a long one... but it was good! We had a multi zone conference this week and that was awesome. They made me sing in the choir haha it was awesome though cause we got to see Pres. Cook and his wife. They are amazing. Hermana cook talked to us for a minute at the beginnning of the conference and I love what she said: "This is a lesson to help you throughout your life." (the mission) These three things are the best things you will learn: Put the Lord first, others second, and yourself last. I´ve been here for such a short amount of time and I already know how necessary that is! It can be soo hard sometimes, but that truly is the key to happiness right there. 

Anyways, what else happened this week... Oh yeah, I had a dream in spanish. But I was just telling some random lady in the street how much I miss my family haha. And also this week we met some crazy dog lady. She was a contact in the street so we went by her house and clapped at the gate and when she opened the door, literally fifteen dogs came running out of her house! 

We do so much walking here. So much! My shoes are already about worn out. It`s dang good thing though because I get fed so freaking much. Apparently these people have never seen anyone as skinny as me and it worries them so they give me a freaking ton of food! And they love mayo... with everything... gross. haha I`ve actually lost weight since the ccm though so that`s a good sign! The other day, we were eating at a members house and I went to use their bathroom. It didn`t have a door handle and I didn`t know how it worked so I got locked in there for a solid ten minutes. That was fun hahaha.

Oh and Nick you´ll appreciate this., apparently they call flirty boys here cobras and girls snakes. I thought that was super funny because of the family snake joke haha!
I wrote a letter to you guys last week talking about this so you`ll hopefully get it eventually, but it talks about an amazing investigator that we have, his name is Carlos. Him and his wife have thee cutest little boy named Dante. I love them so much! Anyways, he has a baaptsimal date and everything. His first lesson was my second day here! So he has progressed really quickly. They made us a banana cake the other day. It was so cute! But don`t worry dad, it wasn`t near as good as yours;) We are having family night with them tonight and im so excited!

Well... theres my week. Not a whole lot happens here unfortunately. Not many people are interested unfortunately. It`s hard work! Oh yeah, I changed the quality of photos for my camera to take so I`m hoping I can start sending some now! keep sending pictures to me because I love them!!

I love you all so much! That`s definitely thee hardest part of the mission is being away from you guys.
Les amo!!
amor,

Hermana sanders

First email from Uruguay

Hey guys! wow it`s finally P day... It feels like it has been AGES since I`ve been able to write to you! ahh where do I even start? I`ll just start with explaining my week alittle bit. so on monday we packed and everything and then tuesday morning we had to leave to the airport at 4 am! It was the worst. it was a super short flight to Montevideo so we had all day tuesday. we had meetings and lunch and stuff and then they sent us right out to go proselyting. I went with Hermana Talbot from Washington. She`s the best! she has been out for eight months now and loves it. then, wednesday morning we had to be ready by 5 am to go to the doctor and get our blood drawn and all that good stuff. Then FINALLY, we got out trainers! My trainer/companion is Hermana Vasquez from Peru as well. Oh my goodness I love her so much. And she knows english!! I am soo grateful for that. I would be so lost and confused with a comp that doesnt know english. shes an amazing teacher. she is the sweetest and makes me "banana juice" for breakfast every morning. its just banana, milk, and sugar. honestly though, its WAY good! all of the food I have had her has been reall good. Not a good sign... I better not get fat haha. the ward members sign up to feed us for lunch every single day of the week and they cook SO MUCH FOOD! holy crap. Oh the other day though, one of the days this week, our lunch plans fell through and so I got to utilize my cookings skills. I was so stoked. we had pasta so I cooked that and then made up my own sauce... probably thee best thing i have ever made! so thats cool. Im making it when I get home. It was kind of like alfredo sauce with mushrooms and ham. so good! I`m sending pics haha. our house on the other hand... let`s just say it`s very humbling! it`s sooo small and it`s basically a cement box. It`s been pretty cold here too, so I`ve been freeeezing! we have no heat. and no hot water so showers suck pretty bad haha and I kill about six giant spiders every night. and it`s completely normal that we have a family of mice living with us right? and cockroaches all over inside the fridge is okay too yeah? hahaha oh man, I love it. It`s insane how poor the people are in this area... they are all so happy and friendly though. The members especially are so great. I love them so much. they take good care of us! all of the little girls love my light hair too so they`re always asking if they can play with it. and they think it`s so funny when i can`t understand them... haha.

Hmm... what else? My area... I love it. it`s  called el pinar and my zone is la costa. It`s a super poor area but it`s awesome. all the roads are dirt and it`s called "el pinar" for a reason. there`s lots of pine trees! it`s basically like hiking around up skyline at home all day everyday. that`s exactly how it is with little cement houses in the middle of it haha. Nobody has cars. Most people drive motos around or just bikes. there`s lots of little streams, and oh my gosh I`ve neer seen/heard so many frogs in my entire life1 there`s more frogs tahn cockroaches I`m pretty sure! I`m so sick of the rain though. cause it`s straight mud all the time. I`m soo happy I packed my rain boots...

The whole clapping outside of houses instead of knocking ondç doors is still taking some getting used to haha. I seriously love it though! my spanish is a joke but esta bien. I had to bare my testimony in sacrament yesterday because I`m new and I was actually really surprised how well I did. and I`ve already been able to commit three people to a baptismal date! In less than a week! crazy. I have already seen so many iracles her and it`s only been a week. we have so many awesome contacts and investigators I wanna tell you about all of them! I wish I had time... that`s what letters are for :) seriously though.. MIRACLES HAPPEN! that`s what faith can do!

Okay and speaking of letters... I have bad news kind of. For some reason, in this mission we have the rule that we can only write and READ letters on P days... which means I don`t really have much time to write. and when you send letters I can only read them on mondays. And don`t use pouch anymore. It takes longer... so just send it to the mission office! And apparently packages take like three months so I`ll be waiting awhile for that... and I don`t get any extra time to email here either... rough life! But I will just enjoy every chance that I get to hear from ya`ll! I miss you so much. I hope everything is great at home in good ol`utah. I miss it.. But i`m so happy and humbled to be here!

Keep it real.

Have a good week! 

Amor,

Hermana Sanders

Hermana Sanders has arrived in Uruguay - Email from Mission President

Dear Sanders Family,

Tuesday we went to the airport in Montevideo, Uruguay, to pick up Sister Sanders and welcome her into our mission.  She arrived full of excitement and enthusiasm to get to work.

We have spent the day getting to know her, and we recognized that she will be a great asset to us here in the mission.  We know that she will bless the lives of many wonderful people.

Wednesday was transfer day and after meeting with her trainer, she headed off to her first area so that she could start “[bringing] to pass the immortality and eternal life of man.”

We are now sending you a photo that we took with her.  As you can see, she is extremely excited and ready to start.  We are so excited to have your daughter with us and hope that you receive this photo with excitement and pride in all that your daughter has done to prepare herself for the opportunity that she now has to serve the Lord for the next eighteen months.

                                                                                                          Love,

                                                                                                          The Cooks

Pics at The Montevideo Temple

Helado in Argentina

My helado :)

Even More Pics from Week #5

Nightly activities with my latina (Hermana Vasquez). She is loco ;)

And she pulled down my pants doing this! haha

ROOM 107

More Pics from week 5

 Cool Italian House

Pics From Week 5

                                                                    My latinas that left :(

 Elder Panterina

Proselyting with my companion

EMAIL From Week 5 - Argentina MTC

Hola familia! ¿Qué tal?

Guess what guys? This is my last P day in the CCM! Is that insane or what_ I can´t believe I leave so soon. I´m so excited and nervous all at the same time! If time keeps going by this fast it´s gonna feel like I´m coming home tomorrow.

Okay, is anyone as excited as I am for conference this weekend_ I mean I´m a little sad cause we can´t go proselyting saturday since it´s conference... But I don´t even care cause its CONFERENCE!! I don´t think you guys realize... I live for this kind of stuff out here haha. and it´s cool cause we all get to watch the exact same thing no matter where we are in the world:)

Anyways, I hope ya´ll like hearing about proselyting... Because that´s always the highlight of my week! Especially this week. Ahh it was so amazing. I can´t believe it was our last one. We got a new area for this week and it was awesome! I loved it. The last area was suuuper ghetto and this area was more middle class- high end. I mean there were still some sketchy parts but there were also some REALLY nice, quite big, italian style houses. Best of all, there was an unreal helado shop that we went to meet up with some other fellow missionaries (Don´t worry I will be sending a picture of my ice cream) it was fantastic. I´ve never had helado that good before. Oh and it was funny, before we left, Hermana Britton had been talking about how skittles were her favorite candy and how sad she was that they didn´t have them here. Well, as we were out walking, I saw 2 solo packs of skittles in a little shop! So I bought them. I gave them to her when we saw them again after proselyting and she like legit teared up she was so happy haha. So that alone like totally made my day! But now lets talk about the real good stuff:) So we started off slow without a lot of success. I think because the people in this area had more money they weren´t quite as humble. Plus, I´m pretty sure everyone and their dog were very happily catholic. And let me tell ya... literally EVERYONE has a dog in the country. We knocked on millions of doors with not a whole lot of success, but then finally we knocked on the right door. A lady named Sicilia answered and talked to us about the church. She was so sweet and sincere and asked us to please come back later or another day because she had to leave but wanted to know more. So we were able to get her address for other missionaries, and we gave her a BOM and she read the intro with us and I could tell how happy and excited it made her. That was the holy ghost for sure! after knocking on door for awhile, we got sick of that so we went to a park that was in our area. Man that is the place for missionary work! We talked to this old lady named Marta. Seriously thee sweetest lady I have ever met. She was there with her daughter and grandkins. WE talked to her for al ong time about what we believed and everything she though it was so cool. Even though her daughter kept yelling at her and getting mad at her for talking to us haha. We gave her a BOM and she kept trying to pay us money and we kept saying no no it´s a gift! she thought that was pretty cool. She asked for our phone number all secretly and we told her we didn´t have one, so she was writing down hers for us, but at that point her daughter got pissed and pulled her away, so we just had to really quick hand her a card with the nearest church address on it. And she whispered to us saying that she really wanted to go on Sunday! so that was a pretty insane experience. I hope it works out for her. Then at that same park, we talked to an adorable young couple with their 2 little kids. We talked about how families can be together forever and they also accepted the BOM! They asked about when church was and everything and they gave us their number. Isn´t that insane? Heavenly Father truly has prepared these people for the Gospel! its amazing how much I love these people too. I´m gonna miss this beautiful country. But I know I will love th epeople of Uruguay thismuch too if not a million times more! Anyways, we got a few more references after that and TONS more contacts. We decided to knock on one more door on our way back to the bus and that was the best decision we´ve ever mad. His name was Facundo and he was first shocked about how ënthusiastic¨we were so he was willing to talk to us. He didn´t have much time but he was really excited to learn more. He actually asked US to return. Then after that guess who we ran into? TENNIS PLAYERS! Like actual tennis players. They were in their 20´s ish and it was a boy and a girl. They talked to me about the US Open and stuff, and they actually knew a tiny bit of english! not much though. They were interested in going to church on Sunday so that´s cool. I love proselyting so much! I have learned so much from these experiences. Those few people that were accepting of our message made all of the rejection and hatred toward us worth it. I hope that even after my mission I will be brave enough to talk to strangers about the church because you never know what can happen!

Hmmm... What else has happened this week? I sang in a quartet for the fireside we had on Sunday. That was super fun! Okay and then ya know how I said I couldn´t love anyone more than my last Latina roomies? Well... That was al ie. My new ones are the BEST!! Hermana Lemus is my fav. She is from Chile and she literally is a Latina version of me. I always tell her ¨Da me su cuerpo¨(It´s best if you don´tknow what that means lol) and she thinks it´s hilarious! She likes to make fun of me a lot too. We love talking about funny stuff, but then half the time we don´t understand eachother which makes us laugh even harder. The other night we literally stayed up an hour after we were supposed to go to sleep because we were laying in our beds and she was trying to describe a joke oto me in spanish and I understood for the most part but the jokes weren´t funny AT ALL but that made the whole situation even more funny. Then I tried to tell them a joke and I apparently said a really bad word in spanish, so that´s good. I´m officially thee most righteous missionary here hahaha.

I just really can´t believe I´m leaving here in a couple of days... I now have LESS than 17 months out here and I feel like that is no time at all! there are too many people that I want ot share the Gospel with in this short amount of time. I truly can´t take a single moment for granted out here in the mission. Same as when I come home! Life is way too precious and short for that. It is so important to live up to your full potential every moment of everyday! Always be looking for opportunities to serve others. My personal favorite: Just look for ways to put a smile on the face of each person you come in contact with. Then if you do that, how could you not be constantly smiling yourself?

Sorry I feel like I had WAY too much to say this week. Hopefully it didn´t bore ya´ll to death! Remember... THE CHURCH IS TRUE! I love all of you so much. MUCHO. P.s. Next email will be from Uruguay! Ahh!

Peace.

Amor,

Hermana Sanders

 

Oh Nick- Tengo un chiste para usted: ¡Qué es más verdadero que el Libro de Mormón? A mis caderas, ellas nunca mienten!

hahaha please tell me you get it! Shakira?? haha love you!