7 Months Down 11 to go

Hey ya'll! I'll be honest there's not a whole lot to tell ya about this week... it's a shorter week cause P day was on tuesday last week and with the new change we've had some meetings and stuff. So nothing TOO exciting has happened. Exciting things to look forward to though:) Conference is this week!! It's more exciting than Christmas man. We get to travel to Piriapolis both saturday and sunday. We're going with our ward and its gonna be way fun! Ahh I can't wait. And also we found out that this change someone from the twelve apostles is coming to our mission to speak to us. That's gonna be AWESOME.

Also, other fun news. We have a new viajante hermana that came to live with us cause the other one went home. And its the hermana that I went proseliting with my very first day here in the Uruguay. She's basically my favorite person on this planet so I'm super excited about that. We have the best house of sisters everrrr! 

Other thing... I FINALLY got the chance to go to a restaraunt! We went on P day and I got to try a chivito and it was SOO so good. I'll send pics cause it was ginormous haha. 

As far as the last few days... It's been interesting. On saturday it ended up being kind of a last minute thing and we ended up  coming into Montevideo to the hospital to get some more tests done for my health. We finished super late so the secretaries had to come pick us up and we stayed in the extra room in the Burnett's house. And we had to go to church here in Carrasco yesterday which was kind of fun and we ate lunch at these members house that all know english so it was super weird talking to them in english. After that, The Burnett's got home and they made us hamburgers for dinner and we ended up having to spend the night here with them AGAIN because we had to go back to the actual doctor today to get more of a check up. So we spent the night with the Burnett's and that was great because Elder Burnett is the most spiritual enlightened man I know so we were able to ask him all of our deep doctrine questions and i learned so much! And he also surprised me with a package from mom!! woo hoo! He saw it aat the offices so he brought it back with him to give to me. It was the biggest blessing because we didnt come here prepared with ANYTHING so it was nice to have some new clothes to change into. Thanks mama:)

As far as the medical stuff... we still have NO idea. The doctors here are pretty ridiculous. I have to go have MORE tests done this week. So we have to come back and stay the night tomorrow night and go super early in the morning on wednesday. And then come back again on Monday morning to see what the results end up being. It's gonna be an insane week and I have absolutely no idea when we'll have time to work in our area... but hopefully we can still find some investigators and help the people that we do have!

Sorry there's no cool experiences to share this week... next week will probably be a pretty lame email too but hopefully I'll at least have some more answers about my health and we will have conference to share about! yay!

I love you all so much. I'm praying for ya:)

xoxoxoxo

Have a great week!

Hermana Sanders

Pics 3/30/15

 A Real Restaurant!

 Chivitos

 At the hospital :(

 The view from my bedroom at the Burnett's

 Conference

Zone Activity

Baptisms!

 Miriam

 Analia & Family

 My Rice Krispy Treat Creation

 Random dog at the church

 My companion is the best!

We went to the Temple!

Hey everyone!! Wow, it seems like an eternity since I have emailed. It´s always so weird to have P day on Tuesdays. Changes are tomorrow, but I am sooo so happy because my companion and I are both staying in Pan de Azucar for another change together! We´re pretty dang excited.

So this week was crazy filled with all kinds of stuff. This morning we just had a zone activity and hiked up to a big cross at the top of a ¨mountain¨and that was really fun. I felt at home hiking again.

We had the birthday of the relief society and had a giant celebration in the church with lots of food and a giant cake. That was super fun! We had lots of parties in the church this week I feel like... because Hermana Alvorado is going home so we had a big going away party for her too. It was also the birthday of our ward mission leader on Sunday so he invited us over to his house for lunch and we had a big asado party with LOTS of meat and other good food. That was really fun too! 

Then of course my two baptisms on Friday! Oh man, that was a really happy day for me. Miriam and Analia are both angels and it was an amazing experience. That made my Friday a lot better after one of our investigators named Juan came out of his house yelling at us and threw a pamphlet at us that we gave him saying that he didn´t want to know anything anymore. That was kind of sad because we literally have no idea what happened.... so different just over night! But it´s okay. It happens.

We ALSO had a Hermanas conference that was awesome. We talked all about the worth of our souls and everything and had different ¨classes¨too. I had to give an exercise class and be everyones personal trainer and do an exercise plan for 30 minutes. I´m pretty sure all of the hermanas hate me now haha they all died. I thoroughly enjoyed it though!

Then... the BEST part of the week was taht WE WENT TO THE TEMPLE!!! That was thee coolest experience to do literally all of the work for someone that is part of my family. Baptism, initiatories, endowments, all of it. And I noticed that it was her birthday that day too so that was kind of cool! I can honestly say that that was by far the best day of my mission so far. It was such a spiritual experience. wow. And we also got to have our interviews with the president which I LOVE. I love talking with him. He told me that he really wants to play tennis with me too so we´re gonna set up a time that we can go do that. I´m super excited! He´s awesome.

Wow I seriously have had such an amazing week. Full of both the hardest times so far in my mission as well as the best! I am so grateful for all of the blessings that the Lord has given me and for this short amount of time that I have to be in the mission serving him with all my heart. I am also so grateful for each and every one of you guys! I love and miss you so so much. Have an amazing week!

Besos,

Hermana Sanders

I'm an Aunt!!

Okay, I´m apologizing now for this week, but... I¨M AN AUNT!!! as of Wednesday:) Which means... I have a whole lot of pictures to download and print and emails to answer. So this is just a brief email to say that everything is still going GREAT! I get to go to the temple this week and have interviews with the president, and I also have two baptisms on friday! woohoo!! 

Time is flying by wayy too fast here. I can´t believe changes are already next week. Oh yeah, so remember that my P day will be on Tuesday next week instead of Monday. 

We had to go to Montevideo and do other things this week so we didn´t have much time to work in our area. So there isn´t that much to tell anyway. Next week will be full of stuff though so it´s all good!

I hope everyone has an awesome week. Love you guys:)

Hermana Sanders

Pics of the week

 My New Easter Dress

 Easter package!

Who needs a boyfriend?

The gift we made to help our investigator quit smoking.

Happy Birthday Daddy!

Hey everyone, it's Bob's birthday on the 12th! Just so ya know :)

So first off.... HAPPY BIRTHDAY DADDY!!!! Holy cow you´re an old man;) I´m so sorry I can´t be there for you´re birthday... Don´t worry I´ll still bake a cake or something that day in memory of you. and know that I love you!

Anyways, this week was good! Interesting... but good! I GOT MY EASTER PACKAGE ALREADY. That made my whole week. Mom you do wayy too much for me. The ¨who needs a boyfriend ¨shirt is the greatest hahaha I wear to bed every night now. 

This week we had thee biggest storm everrrr. So much rain and wind. Luckily when it started we were close to a members house so we went there and we ended up getting stuck inside for like 2 and a half hours... that sucked. Then we left and ran as fast as we could to a family night at our investigators house. That was an interesting, WET day. And awe my investigators are doing great. Ana Lia is getting married on the 19th and then baptized the 21st! I´m so excited for her. And Liliana is doing better and better with smoking. Still hasn´t stopped completely but she´s getting better. We made little paper ¨cigarrettes¨with little notes and scriptures on them and we took her mentos too to help her when she has the desire to smoke. And Miriam as well is amazing. She is so beyond prepared for her baptism! 

We had a zone conference this week and we found out about a lot of changes in the mission as far as our focus. Because before it was just baptize baptize baptize! and it´s ridiculous how many less active people are here in this country. People that got baptized and never came back again. So we are focusing a lot more on these people to get them back to church. Especially those with the priesthood. And now for investigators... they have to come to church three weeks for all three hours before they can be baptized. If they only come for two hours it doesn´t count. So the baptism number is gonna go down a lot and it´s gonna take a lot longer for them to get baptized but it´s a really good thing because we will have more ACTIVE converts in the church!

Oh yeah and one of the recent converts here asked me my first name so I told her and she told me that she is going to name her daughter that. She wrote down how to spell it and everything. So yeah... there´s gonna be a little Uruguayo running around with my name. pretty cool! lol

I feel like I have so much random stuff to say this week. It was a random week! I was reading in the Liahona about President Benson´s Wife Flor and apparently she served a mission in Hawaii and after she left her mom decided to serve a mission and ended up getting called to Hawaii too and they were COMPANIONS! Crazy huh? So mom... get your butt out here;)

Oh yeah and the time changed here on sunday so I got to sleep an extra hour. That was great! But yeah, now we´re only three hours different. Oh man yesterday.... I had to give a talk in church AGAIN. I talked about Jesus Christ and it actually went really well. It´s amazing how it´s just as easy to write a talk in spanish now as it is in english. It´s mostly testimony anyway, but I loved doing it! The only problem was that I got sick AGAIN on Sunday so I threw up like twice before sacrament, then I went and gave me talk, then about five minutes after I had to leave and threw up again. I´m just happy I made it through my talk! I´m so mad though because I was finally gaining a little bit of weight and then I lost it again yesterday... there´s some weird sickness going around here. everyone is throwing up haha. The hermanas in our house have been at home for a week straight. But luckily I already feel a lot better! I just need to eat more today haha.

Okay and last random thing for you dad: Hermana Bertuoli (she lives with me) was looking at all of my pictures and she told me that you look like Bruce Willis. First of all I was shocked that she knew who that was, and then that she recognized it. Cause we ALWAYS say that. So yeah that ws pretty funny.

Anyways, sorry for the randomness of this email. Kind of a crazy week! I love you all. I´m excited for pictures of my new niece next week!!! Woo!

xoxoxoxxo

Hermana Sanders

Conference with Elder Vinas

I Love My Companion!