Dear Friends and Family,

Sorry I haven't been sending out very many of these. It's been pretty hard to find the time to email lately. Things have been real real here. Christmas is just about here and even though this crazy upside down place I'm in doesn't have any snow I'm still extremely happy to be spending another Christmas in the Great California Long Beach Mission. So far things are going great. We've had a few great experiences this week. One was when we were with a member visiting some people. Nobody was there, but as we were standing there the daughter in law rolled up and we starting talking to her and, long story short, she let us in and we taught her! It was awesome! Finding new investigators every week is possible! It's one of my favorite phases in missionary work for sure.

The hustle and bustle is continuing to pick up and I'm sure by the night before Christmas there will be many many creatures stirring around trying to get the last minute shopping done. From the stores with 50% off Christmas decorations to the BOGO sales many many people will be so focused on getting things done before Christmas that they might forget why they're really celebrating. Let's not forget why this all came to be. 

This all came to be because 2000 years ago a baby was born. Lots of babies were born before that and lots of babies have been born since and lots of babies will yet be born, but this one was different. This baby was not just another bundle of joy given to faithful parents. No, this baby was someone else. This baby had a divine destiny that reached far beyond any other baby. This baby was born of an earthly mother but a heavenly father. This baby was a promised gift, a foretold bringer of peace and goodwill. Rather than his birth being announced by just his parents, it was announced by angels. This baby was Jesus the Christ. This baby was the fulfillment of every prophet from Adam down. The birth of Jesus, like any other gift, is not something we should take for granted. "For what doth it profit a man if a gift is bestowed upon him, and he receive not the gift? Behold, he rejoices not in that which is given unto him, neither rejoices in him who is the giver of the gift." (D&C 88:33 italics added) Let us receive the gift of Jesus' birth and rejoice in Him and He who is the giver of the gift, our Father in Heaven.

I love you guys and I wish you all a very Merry Christmas. I hope you all have a fun and safe time. Have fun in the snow for me! (for those of you who are fortunate enough to have it)

Keep it real merry.

Elder Sanderson

#leavebetter

Cerritos zone!

I found out I'm leaving Cerritos and going back to Long Beach!! It's a different part though. It's the nice part. :D

Elder Sanderson

#leavebetter

Howdy!

This week was pretty hectic again. This is the last week of having two wards to cover! Woo! It'll be nice to go back to covering one ward. It's been pretty fun to cover two wards but a ton of time was spent driving around. I can't wait to get to bike around again! We also had a lot of crazy stuff happen with investigators and we had to drop some of our favorite investigators because the parents don't want them investigating and even though some of them are over 18 they want to respect what their parents say. That's a bummer but we'll be all good. 

It's starting to cool down here and stay cooled down. It still doesn't drop below 50 and it's usually in the 60's but for here that's considered cooling down. This is my favorite time of year in California. It's the bomb.

This week was a pretty trying week but here I am on Monday again! It's funny that hard weeks seem like forever at the time but looking back it goes by so fast. Heavenly Father definitely helps us through our hard times. If we are so focused on how unhappy we are it's impossible to see the positive side of a situation. There is always a positive side to things. God himself created this world so there will never ever ever be a lack of goodness. It may be hard to find, it may be small, but it will always be there. God will not allow his creations to become overwhelmed with darkness, and that even goes for you too! Remember that we're God's creations too.

Well, that's all for this week. Keep on truckin on! God will not let you fail! E moni le Talalelei!

Keep it real.

Elder Sanderson

Hey there erryone,

Things are good. The library is packed. Phones are ringing off the hook. A crazy lady is yelling at people on the phone and spraying very liberal (that is an understatement) amounts of hairspray while staring at a computer that has been on the same webpage without any change for at least the hour or so that I've been here. #SOCAL

This week was awesome. Working two wards is crazy. We've got the system for working down better now but that doesn't always fit the schedule for people we're teaching. I'm fine with that though, I'd rather have a lesson with someone than not so I'm not upset if it doesn't fit our predetermined system. Between the two wards we're doing about as much work as if we we're in 1 ward so we just need to work on being twice as effective so we can have each ward have the productivity on a ward. That'll be tough but we're going to work harder on stacking our nights with lessons so we can get as much done as possible. We're even trying to get members from each ward to do splits with us so we can cover both areas in the same day. If we do that I'm confident that we will see even more miracles. We're looking for and praying for miracles all the time. The Lord will provide!

This week our mission president encouraged us to make a "vision" for the rest of our mission. A vision is a lofty, long term, overall end state, goal that one makes to try and improve their character and accelerate their progression. For mine I decided to go with the simple phrase "Leave Better". I chose that because there's still a ton of changing for me to do while I'm out here. It's always been my goal to become the best I can be out here but the vision of "Leave Better" is going to help me to improve the most that I possibly can. I encourage all of you to "Leave Better" in whatever aspect of your life that applies to. Whether school or work or finishing some sort of assignment. If you make that a priority the Lord will shape you into who he wants you to be.

As always, I love you guys. I love my mission. You know the rest!

Keep it real.

Elder Sanderson

#leavebetter

 

 p.s. in case you haven't noticed it's kind of a big thing in this mission to use hash-tags even though we don't use social media. I know it's weird. It's just what we do in the California Long Beach Mission.

Hey Homies,

This week was pretty cool. You know just hangin out, getting a new companion halfway through the transfer and having mine get moved to a different ward because an Elder got his VISA, and covering two wards instead of just one. The usual I guess. But for real I got a new companion now! His name is Elder Sheen. He's awesome. He's also from Idaho! That's two in a row. 3 in total. His companion left a few weeks ago to go to Australia and so he was bouncing around the zone for a few weeks but they decided they would put him with me and have us cover both wards and kick Elder Stallings to another ward. It's been cool. It's actually not as bad as I first thought it would be. We just split up the wards every other day and on Sundays we just go to both! It's super cool. 5 hours of church is fun. It makes Sundays fly by super fast. It's weird.

This week we had a pretty cool finding experience. We went to visit an old potential and he turned out to be super receptive. That really hasn't happened to us a ton in this area. We were able to teaching him a little first lesson and set up another time to come back this week. It was cool to see Heavenly Father put someone who was willing to listen in our path. We've had a few of those this week. He was the only one that we actually taught, but we've been able to set up some really good return appointments for this week. We've started to sow even more and hopefully soon will come the time for reaping!

Also I had the opportunity to sing in Sacrament meeting yesterday. It was awesome. I sang hymn 97 "Lead, Kindly Light". It was planned but the person in charge of making the programs forgot, so I thought we weren't going to do it but then they announced a change in the program so it was all good. It was my first time ever singing alone at church! I was only having medium panic attacks as I walked up to the stand. It was a great experience. Hopefully I get to do it again soon!

Well, I hope ya'll have a great week and that all the things you do will be successful!! Love love love.

Keep it real.

Elder Sanderson

Dear Family and Homies,

This week was bomba. We had a lot of lessons this week and we got members involved more. That was good. Our ward is doing so good. Even the members are starting to notice that the chapel is more full. There have been a lot of less-active members returning and we've been blessed to have investigators coming to church. They all bailed this week :( but that's okay I think they'll be back next week. This week we found this awesome lady named Jojo who is just so solid. She has a strong desire to simply find out what is true and what is not. She recognizes that there must be a true church out there and that it's possible to find out which church it is. One of the questions she asked was, in effect, "which church is true and how will I know it?" Pretty sick right? She just straight fell in our lap too. She flagged us down a month ago, or something like that, and said to come visit her sometime. This week was the first time we were able to catch her at home. We brought a member with us to the first lesson even though the lesson wasn't 100% solid but it worked out and the member was perfect for her. She bore super solid testimony and Jojo felt the increase in the Spirit in her home for sure. It's so awesome to see the out pour of the spirit when strong testimony is born. Something as simple as stating a simple truth will bring the spirit more than any amount of tact or eloquence would ever bring. From what I've seen in my mission, bearing testimony that the Holy Ghost has confirmed to your heart that ____ (whatever you're testifying of) is true brings the Spirit in a way that the person listening will be able to notice it. When Emma Smith (at the time Emma Hale), the wife of the Prophet Joseph, had to decide if what Joseph claimed was true or not, she said she could tell that he believed what he said from the look in his eyes when he bore his testimony. We need to have that conviction when we share our testimonies with others. The question is, how do we get that conviction? We need to receive a witness from the Holy Ghost. It is the only way. So, ask, seek, and knock. You will receive. 

So far things have been going great. The Lord has been good. His blessings really are all around us. If you feel that the blessings are hard to see then ask God to help you recognize them. It's amazing to see what blessings are around us when we have eyes to see and ears to hear. You guys are all awesome and I'm grateful for all of you. I hope ya'll all have a great week and have fun!

Keep it real.

Elder Sanderson

Dear Friends and Family,

Hey homies. This week was pretty cool. We're still focusing a lot on doing service and stuff like that. It's been pretty cool. We helped a lady in our ward move into her new place. She's pretty crazy. She had a storage unit that was straight full of just stuff. I mean lots and lots of just stuff. I don't think she even knows what's in there. There was a cooler full of water that had a string cheese and a sock. Wut. It was so crazy. The member who was with us that had a truck turned around and said "I'm going home" when he saw how much stuff there was. It was crazy. But don't worry he wasn't a mean guy. We had already helped her for a few hours at this point so we just saved it for the next day. It was insane. And this week we're going to help her even more. She has a lot of stuff man.

We had some investigators at church. They all enjoyed it a lot but none of them could stay for class. :( Next week. We're glad that they at least took the baby steps of showing up! All of them got to meet the Bishop so that was good. Our bishop is the man! He is one of the biggest human beings I've ever seen in person. It's awesome. 

We also had a way fun Halloween Party Saturday night! There was a chili cook-off with the other ward in our building and the guy who won best chili is in our ward so that was pretty cool! I had some chili dogs. And before you get offended Mom and Dad, I got the chili without beans. To everyone else, yes, I don't prefer beans in my chili. I know I'm weird.

Things have been good here. I feel like I've been in this area since the beginning of time but at the same time I feel like this is a completely different area than when I got here. It's been fun to see how big of a change has occurred in this area. It's also fun that we don't have to share the Ward with anyone else. :D 

Halloween is the week! Woooo! Yay for having to stay inside and clean all night. -_- Halloween night is always pretty crazy here. I bet there will be missionary costumes everywhere. Boo sacrilege. Well, our apartment could definitely use the cleaning though. It'll be more of a cleansing. I feel like cleaning is too much of an understatement. There's no roaches though! We roach bombed a few weeks ago. I didn't see that many but I guess my companion saw them all the time. 

Well, everyone have a fun and safe Halloween. Watch out for monsters. They'll be everywhere. Have fun enjoying Halloween. Even if the Jehovah's Witnesses call you a pagan :)

Yesterday my companion stole my favorite phrase (keep it real)  and said it to this black guy in his 20's and he responded with "Always! Never change! Never change for nobody!". It was pretty funny. I was pretty upset because whenever I say it to people they just nod their head or something but the one time my companion says it the guy says that. Oh well. Have a great week everyone!

Keep it real

Elder Sanderson