Dear Family and Friends,

This week was so cool! We had Christmas stuff! It was Gnar. It all started on Tuesday. Tuesday we went caroling! It was sweet! We visited investigators and less-actives and good stuff like that. Then came Wednesday. Also known as Christmas. The FIRST thing Elder Roe and I did was open our presents!! We put our beds around our little tree that my mom sent me and we had a blast! My parents got me a George Foreman Grill! that's probably the high light of what I got but ya'll will see pictures eventually of all that. Then after that we had a big zone breakfast at this rich lady's house. there were so many missionaries there! I made the hash browns :) After that we went and had lunch with a member then Skyped! That was one of the best parts of the day. Most people said it was kinda weird to see their families. I thought it was the most baller thing ever! Maybe it's just because I like to party. Anywho. After that we watched Ephraim's Rescue. Super Good.

Another fun thing. I'm getting transferred tomorrow to a SAMOAN WARD in LONG BEACH! Yeaaaa! I'm so excited! It's gunna be a super fun time I'm sure. That's my big news for this week. I'm probably going to get fat...Worth it...

I'm so excited to go to Long Beach. there are a ton of people there! I LOVE my mission so far. It has been the best thing I've ever done with my life and it'll keep getting better and better! I love all of you! Keep it real :D

Love

Elder Sanderson

Hello Family and Friends,

This week was slow again. We worked hard though. We had some problems with sickness though. Elder Roe was sick for a few days during the week. There's a bug going around our zone right now. It's pretty rough. It only lasts a few days though. Also I had a dentists appointment so that didn't help. I'm not too upset though to be honest. Sometimes it gets to the point where I accept the fact that working hard does not always yield the fruits that I have in mind. Ideally every person I speak to will accept an invitation to learn more about the restored gospel. Ideally those people who accept the invitation will accept the invitation to be baptized. Ideally those people will follow through with that commitment and will be baptized and endure to the end. That doesn't always happen. As long as I am able to lay my head down at night knowing that I wanted to help others to come unto Christ and did my best to do so, no matter how flawed and imperfect those attempts were. Things will always get better. That is an eternal principal. Things will be better. they may not be better right when I want them to be but Heavenly Father promises us that we will be able to endure our trials and He does not lie. I know that things will improve and that we will find people to teach as long as we are obedient, as long as we work hard, and as long as we have faith. If we sow hard work and obedience we will reap success. 

I love all of ya'll. I'm so happy when I hear good things from anyone. I hope you have a great Christmas season and remember the Christ in Christmas!

Keep it real.

nosrednaS werdnA nosaJ redlE

Dear Family and Friends,

This week was slow but it's all good. We still had a good time. Elder Roe and I are all moved in to our apartment and now we finally have all the "essential" things. Such as trash cans that we didn't have before...That's cool though. We've been partying hard. They're kicking us off the computers right now so this is going to be a lame email but if you want a nice, detailed, interesting read you should pick up the Book of Mormon!

The Church is True, the Book is blue and I love every one of you!

Keeps it real.

Elder S.

Dear Family and Friends,

This week was sloooooooooooow. But that's okay. We still had fun. We moved into a new place. We got a nice condo all to ourselves so that's cool. Elder Roe and I are still together. It's hard to believe we've been comps for 4 months! I'm still here in beautiful Huntington Beach so life is great.

I've learned to true meaning of running of faith and duct tape. To be honest half the time I don't know entirely what I'm doing. We're in an area that has struggled for the last year or so and when we got here we had zero investigators and 1 month later of knocking on every door and talking to every person we see we now have.....1 investigator. Sometimes it doesn't seem to make sense at all. You would think that working hard as we can all day every day would yield a lot more fruit but that's not always true. The Lord has a bigger picture to look at sometimes and it's okay that I don't understand 100%. Some day it'll make sense and that's all that matters.

Keep being great! I love all of you!

Love 

Elder Sanderson!

Dear family and friends,

There are some events that are to transpire soon of great significance. In 1 month and 7 days, I will be able to make 1, just one, phone call. That being said we are going to have a contest to see who I get to call. I will be accepting care packages from now until December 20th. Send them to the California Long Beach Mission Office. Please stuff it to the brim with expensive delicacies and premium cracker and cheese tins. Also please place your preferred phone number inside in case I select you. Good luck to all.

I'm just kidding everyone knows I'm going to choose my parents. 

This week was good. We had a really cool experience meeting someone. My companion and I were walking to a potential investigator's house. As we were walking we saw a guy sitting in his front yard looking pretty bummed. We walked to him and began to talk with him. After talking for a little while he mentioned that his father had died a number of years ago. We began to teach and testify about the Plan of Salvation and how we can see our loved ones again. Instantly his attitude changed. He began to open up even more saying that he used to go to church with his family but now he has nobody to go with so he doesn't go. He told us how he has a strong faith in Jesus Christ. He even opened up enough to be willing to say a prayer with us, and offer it himself. If my companion and I had not made a goal that we would talk to everyone we see we likely would never have gotten to know Richard and we never would have been able to make an impact on his life.

Being a missionary has taught me a lot of things about how to help people. There are so many ways that we can help the people around us. I love being a missionary. I love helping others to come unto Christ. I'm grateful for all the love, support, and prayers. I would encourage all of you to seek out opportunities to help other people.

I love all of you. You better being keeping it real. I'll know if you aren't

Elder Sanderson

Dearest Family and Friends,

This week was sort of slow. By that I mean very slow. It was rough but it's okay because I'm still here and I'm still a missionary! I'm going to cut to the chase this week due to lack of time. I had an experience I would like to share with all you wonderful people.

We were out knocking one afternoon and we came across a lady who had tried attending an LDS church in her youth. She was raised Catholic but wanted nothing to do with that and she thinks it was all junk, as she thinks with all religion. Don't get me wrong, she was extremely nice, she just wasn't too interested in religion. We talked for a few minutes and we testified that our message is for everyone and that she can know for herself that it's true if she has the desire to. She said that she had already tried and declined. We asked if we could do anything else for her and she said no. We left the doorstep and went on to the next. I felt like there was something more we could have done. I kept feeling prompted to go back. Finally after feeling this prompting for a few houses more, I decided we'd go back and talk more to her. We went back and I said we didn't want to bother her but I wanted to ask her a question. I asked her if she had ever tried praying and asking God if he's there. She responded "I did. It didn't work." I tried my best to tell her that I know he's there and listening but it didn't change her mind. We left again and I wondered why I had been so heavily prompted to go back but yet it yielded nothing. I realized from this experience that we are to do many good things of our own free will and others will use their own free will too. I learned that as long as I listened to the spirit the Lord will trust me with more promptings. A lesson that unfortunately I had not learned yet through experience. I've been trying to listen more intently to the spirit and I've already seen so many blessings come from it.

I'm always grateful for the love and support I feel from each and every one of you. I love you all with all my heart and I am so grateful for my friendships with you.

I would feel weird if I didn't say "keep it real" at the end of this so....

Keep it real

Elder Sanderson

Week of November 5th, 2013

Things are going pretty good. We recently had all the ward boundaries in the Huntington Beach Stake get all rearranged and we ended up getting moved from our ward/area into one that 1) neither of us have ever been to before 2) we are sharing with another companionship of Elders and a trio of Sisters and 3) have absolutely no records for so it's been a real trial of faith. It's been tough and the last few days have been the worst days ever. We don't even have enough information on the ward to know who/where the members are. We've been working hard for the last few days and we hope that we'll be able to see some miracles. I'm trying to look at it with optomism but it's a hard thing to deal with. It doesn't help that every missionary I talk to it about says that it's a great learning experience when they have no idea how stressful and frusterating it is. But maybe I just need to be humbled and listen to their advice. On a positive note we got a car so we can drive into our area, seeing as we currently live with members outside of the ward we're serving in now. Hopefully I don't sound too negative because I'm still loving the work and we're still meeting really nice people. I still have high hopes for the area that we're serving in and I'm not too worried about things not turning out well.

In a few weeks we will be having the pleasure of hearing from Elder Alan F. Packer from the 70 here in our mission. I'm so pumped to hear him and I'm also going to be singing in the choir that they're putting together for it. We're going to be singing a really cool arrangment of "Praise to the Man" and "Joseph Smith's First Prayer". It should be a really cool experience.

I'm excited to really get crackin' in this new area, we've only been assigned to it for a few days now so we haven't had much time to work. I think that in time things will improve greatly here. There are tons of miracles just waiting to happen here. I'm looking forward to finding them.

I'm so grateful for all that you do to help and support me. There's absolutely no way I could do what I'm doing without the love and support I feel.

Love,

Elder S.