RYANS BIRTHDAY!

HEY EVERYONE! We have a BIG favor to ask you! Ryans Birthday is coming up so we asked him what he'd like us to send him, you'll read in his letter that all he REALLY wants is LETTERS!! Writing Ryan is really easy! You go to dearelder.com, enter the Cambodia, Phnom Pehn mission, press "write letter" and then enter in Elder Ryan Anderson, write Ry a letter and then press send! It's just like email but the church prints it out and puts it in the mail for you!

 For Ryans Birthday would you PLEASE take 5 minutes really quick and write him a quick letter?! He would love nothing more than to hear from those who support him! I'll make it REALLY easy! Just click the WRITE RYAN button on the side of his page and it will take you right there!!

OCT 26 2011

Hello Family!

Natalie thanks for your dear elder!

Natalie I think today is your wedding anniversary! Hope it’s a good one!

Sounds like things are still changing at home! and again I wish I could help out! it seems like the basement will be awesome! I’m glad Aaron made it to his destination ok as well! I remember when I had trouble in the LA and Hong Kong Airports and it was scary! I was the travel leader for a lot of people! And none of us had cell phones of course!  This week was a huge success for my companion and I. Since we are both un- seasoned missionaries, we are learning everyday better ways to do this missionary work thing! It’s amazing how just by getting out there and doing it every day slowly broadens your vision on how to do missionary work.  This last week I have made even more progress on my ability to work through the members and the branch to help out the church here. We are part of a revolution in Cambodia missionary work right now. We are working as hard as we can to get branches self-sustainable and running without missionaries. Especially Priesthood holders! The Mission Pres. has asked all of us to strive to find adult males to teach and bring back into activity and whatnot. Also, to teach all members about the blessings and tithing. And with Priesthood holders and tithing you know what that means? A stake, and then someday a temple! The church will explode in Cambodia if it had a temple!

We have a bunch of investigators that are progressing right now and we are learning to do other aspects of the work rather than finding and teaching. And I enjoy it. We get to prepare lessons to help members! I was reading about my responsibility for members out of the Preach My Gospel the other day and an example came to mind. It goes like this: Working with Members and less actives is like bowling. The lane is life, the ball is the person, the pins at the end are heavenly father and eternal life. The gutter is Satan and hell! The Missionaries/other members are the Bumpers! The job of the bumpers are to keep the ball from falling off into the gutter. However, the bumpers do not guide the ball all the way down the lane, they simply bump the ball in the right direction away from the gutter. Make sense right?! I thought it was pretty cool!

I have been in TaKhmao for almost 6 months now and I think I only have a few weeks left! I feel like I am just now getting to the point where I can talk to these people enough and we know each other well enough we can start doing some real work! I love all my investigators here too. Visiting a family three times a week for six months, ya kinda get attached. It’s super sad! I don’t really have much to say about the area other than that! The rides to Bakuu are fun, Elder Wright and I are having a Blast! Probably going in the top three favorite companions of the mission already! We get along so well and both are learning a lot!

Dad, I don’t know how you want me to label or mark my photos?  I don’t really have a lot of time to fuss much with anything, so I dunno?  I have had a few white shirts get ruined already so I am down to like 6 shirts. In your next box will you send the extra ones at home I had. I can get shirts cut and made here for 6 bucks a piece in the future. I don’t know what your status is for your package sending but I did have an idea for like a birthday package. You can just put the money you would send for a huge box on my debit account and I can get myself something here! Other than that, all I would really want for my birthday is mail from people at home. What do you think? Jared I heard that there is no NBA season this year! What are you going to do?!?!?!?!?  Sorry it’s short, but I’ve been trying to backup photos and every single computer in this country is a piece of garbage! I’m doing better at photo taking so the next card home should be more full! PS - what is the status of music?

Elder Ryan Anderson

OCTOBER 19TH 2011

Hello Family! Sounds like another fun week at home! Grandma Vincent I got your Letters! Thank you! 
As soon as someone finds our Aarons LDS Email please give it to me!   I wish I could be at home to help out! It seems like you are going to enjoy having an empty house but at the same time find that all your help is gone!  Mom, I loved your experience with personal revelation and how you may receive some for another time and may not know it!  It’s super cool as missionaries to hear actual experiences of revelation and being guided by the spirit!  It’s more strength for us to press on and keep pushing through those hard days and be patient with the Lord. Well, this week I don’t have very much exciting to share but that’s ok because I have my Quotes from Conference I wanted to share!  I’m not going to take much time to write down who said them and when, but I’ll let you go find and read about the ones you like.  Here we go:

General Conference:
Pondering on the scriptures are the key to unlocking revelation.
We have a great responsibility and opportunity to serve others in this life.
Young people today are being raised in enemy territory.
You will never make a major mistake in your life without first being warned by the Holy Ghost.
Man is nothing!
Combine all the currency in the entire world and it will still not be enough to buy even one loaf of bread in heaven.
The lord uses a different scale than man to measure the worth of a soul.
We have a covenant responsibility to seek out our ancestors.
Families and raising children is a commandment not just something we do if we have to time to do it.
Where is your faith?
Time is never for sale, its value is immeasurable, we all have the same amount of time as everyone else. (what are you doing with yours?)
Cease to be idle! And make sure that to be busy means to be productive!
It’s better to look up.
We must look up and step up, and in doing so we will cheer up!
It would be mocking the sacrifice of Jesus Christ if we expected to be forgiven without any effort on our part.
Each individual can and must share what they know by letting their light shine and speaking up!
Don’t let fear keep you from helping the ones you love.
Stand as witnesses of the name you took upon yourselves at your baptism.
Satan is real and his motives are Malicious!
We are all at war!
In this battle you cannot play for Satan and then in the championship game trade teams to the saviors side!
Be active in the church and be clean, If you’re not, Then get active and get clean!!
Men serving in callings in the church are as capable of fulfilling those callings as they are expected to be.
No other labor in the world compares to missionary work!
This very hour there are members of the church who are suffering. Do not think that this is someone else’s responsibility. We are all in this together!
There will never be enough experts to solve all the problems.
Any man within the sound of my voice should not have any doubt on what is moral and what is not!
Wherever we go, our priesthood goes with us.
Morality is not old fashioned! We are still responsible for our actions!
Our code of conduct is not negotiable.
Decisions determine our destiny, in everything that we do, are we choosing eternal life?
In reality in this life we have 2 choices and 2 consequences. Eternal life, or, a life of captivity.
Its never too hard or too late to make correct choices, your eternal destiny will not be the result of chance, but of choice.
That’s all I have! I hope you all enjoy my notes and find one that will help you!

Some other exciting news is that my family of 5 that I have been teaching was baptized this last Sunday and they are doing really well! That,  and we had transfer calls yesterday and we thought Elder Ott and I were being moved but we are both staying in Takmao for another transfer! The only one leaving is Elder Khan. He is the best Khmer Elder in the whole mission! I’m going to miss the guy!  That’s the exciting news! Mom you’ll be happy to know that I am trying to take more photos and such! I hope you will all continue to do well this week!
Love Elder Anderson! 

10-11-11

I knew you would be disappointed with my picture taking! I’m sorry! They have made it clear that we are NOT in any way supposed to look like tourists! And during the day when we are out doing some work I don’t even think about my camera! But I will try to do better! Mom I don’t have my Scriptures on me at the moment but what comes to my mind is Doctrine and Covenants 130 vs's 19-21 or something? I do have a few more things that you could send in a package. Small English Book Of Mormons like 4 of them. like tiny, tiny- a few inches by a few inches. They had them in the mtc but they don’t have them here.  I’ve already mentioned a calendar for next year probably! One with cars on it if possible, Jared knows what is up. The rain jacket you explained sounds perfect! Thanks so much for tracking that down. For whoever is helping out with music for me, I would love it if I could also get ALL the conference talks from this conference! They were all awesome! Powder drinks were good, but pink lemonade gets old fast! Can you find blue power aid?!  Sunflower seeds were awesome too!  The photos were great too. More family photos are always sweet but make sure they are regular size so I can pack them with me to lessons and stuff more easily!  A few of the missionaries here have bought electronic dictionaries that can speak words to them in khmer. You can also type in words in khmer and English to look stuff up! That would be such a time saver for me, but the ones they sell here, they try to rip us off. so maybe mom you could use your amazing online shopping skills and tell me what you find! Just an idea.  That’s all I could think of. Everything else in the last package was good!  As far as the bike goes I’ll take a video tour of it and tell you all the problems I had with it! My new bike, after fixing it 15 minutes at a time everyday, is finally up to standards and ready for full service!  My new bike I bought I needed to raise the bars on them since it’s previous owner was smaller than me. But upon trying to fix that the bars were stuck! They couldn’t do it. Great. So after a few days and thinking I went back with my old bike and the new one and I showed them very specifically that I wanted to cut this bike here and put this piece here so on and so forth. Long story short I had them take parts off my old bike and throw it on the new one. Not long after that I was riding down the street and suddenly both my tires were totally flat! Two holes in the front and two holes in the back! These bikes are money pits!! All of it has to come out of personal funds too. So right now it’s doing well. We did a full trip to Bakku and back yesterday and had no problems. Dad, its funny that you mention the basket and the bell on my bike. I can honestly say I would not be able survive without them! The Basket is to put your bag in and cover when it rains which is every day, and the bell is for my personal defense! Everyone here drives scooters and there is no drivers education! SO it’s crazy! You have to keep your eyes open at all times and ring that bell when someone isn’t seeing you! I’ve seen so many crashes already! Anyway.  I’ts so cool to hear about all the change going on at home! New callings, new Neighbors! New adventures. Mom I think an American history trip for Jared sounds cool! I just hope he'd be down for something like that. Anyway. This week went by super fast because of conference! We spent all Saturday in the city at branch 5 where they have an English branch and we watched in English! It was the first time I had ever watched all 5 sessions of conference! I have a ton I want to share with you about it but it would take me to long to do it right now. I plan to take personal study time to organize myself a little bit more in my study notes so maybe next week I'll share with you. All I have to say is that. Like always Elder Holland never lets me down. "WE ARE AT WAR!!!" Sent chills down my spine! The entire conference I had all my investigators running through my mind and even some friends and family back home. I would think, I hope this person is listening to this talk right now because it just answered a question I know they have had. It was a good break from the normal for a few days but then soon it was Monday again and its back to work. Elder Wright and I are the YOUNGEST companionship in the mission. Meaning that every companionship has someone in it that has been out longer than we have. It’s pretty cool. Believe it or no,t I had my Buddy from High School, Sam Elder come and proselyte with us. He can do that because he is AP right now. We had a ton of time to talk about the good ole days and how much things have changed! He stayed at our house that night and the next day gave us a report on what he thinks about our area and our work. Almost perfect tens across the board. He said for being so young we are doing great work and we teach well! It was a fun time! 

Other than that, nothing out of the usual happened! The usual stuff..OH! this Sunday I have a family of 5 being baptized! If they pass the interview! So don’t get your hopes up! I’ll let you know more about it next week. 

That’s all I have for this week family. Dad, you better leave some stuff for me to do when I get back! Don’t wear yourself out when you have two young boys who can do that! 

Love you all! Hope all is well! Love Elder Anderson

OCTOBER -4-2011

Well Family another week it is! How is everyone doing? Good I hope!

 This week has been tough! In the mission the more busy you are the easier! And for some reason this week we had a lot of stuff fall through and time we just couldn’t fill! Elder Wright and I would do our best everyday to put our heads together and think of meaningful things to do to use the Lord’s time.  We had some success but not much. Both him and I are "new" to the mission, so we are still learning all this as we go! For this next week we are going to use some of the weekly planning time to think of things to do to get more investigators and to fill in time where we don’t have appointments. Mondays from 1-6 are the worst! Nobody wants to meet us at that time and nobody even wants to talk to us! We feel so ineffective! However, it’s not just us. Talk to anyone in the mission and they will tell you the same thing. Everyone has trouble filling Mondays!  Wel,l this week we had specialized training in the city and I decided I would finally get a new bike! So I took my buddy Elder Khon, a Khmer (Cambodian) Elder who is freakin’ sweet and I wish I could take him home with me at the end of my mission! Anyway, since they love to rip-off the tall American with golden hair wearing a shirt and tie, I sent him in to do the deal. 28 Dollars baby! they were asking me for 45 a few weeks ago for the same bike! I picked it up and on my way back home after training it broke. Just like I said it would. But I got it fixed pretty quick and it hasn’t had a problem since; which is a miracle, because we rode to Bakuu as well yesterday and, of course, it dumped rain the whole way home again! Small miracle happened last night too. When it was dumping rain, we were in the dark, Elder Wrights bike has his chain fall off and it gets stuck! We are trying to fix this thing and like 15 minutes go by. We were about to give up when Elder Wright says a little prayer to himself to help us! And right then, pop I got the chain loose! His prayer then changed to THANK YOU! Now please help us to not have any more problems on the way home! And we didn’t!

Hey Mom your email just came in! I’m sorry to hear about your computer! That’s a real bummer! Jared what were you thinking hitting a hill like that before you let your big brother look over your gear first! Silly kid! Maybe a helmet next time bro? But I’m proud you had the guts to go big! That’s also important. I’ll do my best to send home hand written stuff! Next week I'll have a little list for you for the next package! I’m in need of some things you just can’t get here. Any sign of my memory card yet? I sent it a few weeks ago! I hope it makes it to you alright!  Sounds like you all have enough to keep you busy with life for the next while. 

We have actually not seen conference yet! We get to see it this weekend. They take a week to translate it into khmer so we have to wait. But on Saturday we get priesthood session and Sunday the usual. We have to ride into the city and meet with our entire zone to watch it in English. So next week be prepared to be blown away with my thoughts on conference. 

I think that’s about all I have for this week! Onward and upward Family! Brandon you’re the man! Way to stick with it and get that big 27 on the MCAT! whoot!  Love you all!

Elder Anderson