Ndapedza

Well shoot guys. 

Got some stories. 

Walking down mutondo street and there was a group of a ton of kids that all know us and they were playing this game in the road so we stopped to learn the game and play with them. While we are playing, this mama walks by and I smiled and greeted her and she gave us a really interesting look and kept on her way.  A couple seconds later, She came walking back and called me over to her. When I got to her she said, "I want your Jesus"... haha I'm like, ".... okay cool so my name is--" and start trying to get to know her and she was just genuinely interested in us and wanted to know. She mentioned she knows the church and that she wanted to come, we tell her to meet us there on a friday so we can show her around. Fast forward to friday, she came..... You know how hard its been for us to get people to come to church lately.... this mama came after just meeting us haha. We show her around and she loved it! Made a lot of comments about how nice the chapel was and when we got to the baptismal font she asked if she would be baptized on Sunday haha.  At the end of the tour she was like, "I'm going to come on Sunday with my whole family." then on the way out she told us, "And with baptism, I'm ready." hahaha coolest thing ever.  She ended up getting sick Saturday evening when we passed by her place and she couldn't make it to church but she promised she would introduce us to her whole family and friends and she would tell everyone how nice the church is and how its not a bad/ satanist church hahaha. her name is Mai Diana. She's awesome. 

Also took another family on a chapel tour and they promised to come but again something came up and they couldn't but next week they have promised to be there. Chapel tours. Who woulda thought. Took me long enough to try that idea haha. 

Humbled a very converted SDA family by teaching them true doctrine.  They want us to come back. Sick. 

Twas pretty cool to meet some new families this week. Hopefully they wont stop being interested. 

I've been having a small war with the mosquitos in our house every night before I fall asleep. 

Witnessed the Mufakose ward primary program yesterday. That was a treat. We are about to baptize some kids and they all participated and we were helping them with their small talks during the week. Also, they did like music and the spoken word format with a narrator and the one who was narrating was the girl we baptized, Tanatswa. So sick. They had a different person leading the music every time they sang a song and it was so cool. Love these kids. The other day I was reading 3 Nephi when Jesus is surrounded by the children. How pure would that scene be to see in real life. Jesus Christ with tons of children sitting around him. Reading those chapters is touching. 

Saw some kid wearing an Oshkosh brand shirt. Anyone still remember that brand? Throwback when I saw that. crazy. 

In other news, a bag of chicken is going for $20 now... used to be $6. 

There it goes gang. 2 years of getting these emails abruptly comes to an end. Thanks for subscribing to my channel haha. Next Monday I probably wont email. It will be a busy day. So stay tuned for the 21st.  Can't wait to see everyone again! 

Oh yeah and "Ndapedza" means like, "I'm done" or "Im finished" haha

Lightweight feel the same way i feel when I watch the last episode of the Office. 

Aight for the last time...

Cheers,

Stay Steady Grindin'

#november21st

#seasonfinale

#hunnidgang

#amagang

Cordailly,

Elder Ander$on

 Chillin at the Chapel with Mpofu

The sister in our zone. Widdison and Nakalyowa.  Realest sisters in the mission.

 Looking thru some old random New Era we found in the house and saw this.... shout out Alexa lol

 My desk featuring my american breakfast

 President Mkhabela told us when people ask you what you did on your mission, you just show them your planners. all 17. 

 Tatenda, the rugby coach i baptized at the start of my mission. And Sister Muchekwa. My mom. the one who taught me how to cook sadza. She calls me son.

 Just outside my house. My view every morning. 

Throwback to mama Makore, Rejoice, and Wayne. They said they are coming down to Harare for our stake conference this coming Sunday to see me!!! 

Game 6

Basically lived a scene from The Other Side of Heaven. If you can recall, there's a short scene where the poly comp takes over working on this one guys farm while the main character teaches the man.  So this week we were trying to find new people and we see this mama watering her farm and we walk over and meet her and my comp takes the hose and starts watering and I sat down with her under some tree and taught her the restoration haha. So dope. She had a lot of good questions.  We've tried to go back for a return appointment a couple times but... nothing. Oh well.  Life goes on and I have a story to tell of me unintentionally, re-enacting a popular church movie. 

I find solace thinking of the agricultural parable we so commonly refer to. Planting seeds and harvesting and what not.  I feel like I've been planting tons of seeds out here that will be harvested by others many years down they line.  Basically doing all the dirty work makin it easy for my future boys. Gotchu boys. 

Met with Rungano a few times this week and she reads everything we give her. So dope.  And she's sound in understanding which makes things sooooo easy. She opened up to us a lot and told us a lot of her life problems so we provided words and scriptures of comfort which seemed to help.  She came to church again too and had a good time. She already has tons of friends. I love the members in this area.  

Fuel crisis is seemingly over.  Every time we have tried to get fuel this week we didn't wait in any queue.  So happy.  Prices of everything still ridiculous though.  Looking at cereal and its going for like $15... miss me on that one. 

Heard a cool quote this week. "If you can't do great things, do small things in a great way." If you've heard it before, sorry for wasting your time. If not, enjoy.

Small things in a great way. Powerful.  Kind of hard to do small things to serve people here because in Zimbabwean culture the guest always is given like the best chairs in the house, the most food, and isn't really expected to help. Pretty much treated like kings, so whenever we offer help mostly people say no but we still try.

The result of that zone activity was an increase in finding for our zone, last week we found 70 new people as a zone and this week we found 96... Numbers dont matter but they talk for sure.  hahaha

Some drunk guy walks by us yesterday as we are knocking on a gate and says, "White man cant jump (as he points this metal rod at us). This is the GHETTO! Welcome to the GHETTO!" hahaha like dude you know how long I've been here? No welcome necessary. I am the ghetto. And I'll make you look silly on the court so off me with the jump diss. haha. I love listening to the funny things drunk people will say to us. I could write a book at this point. 

I'm only emailing one more time after today..... Still trying to process that.  I don't know why people try to say the last part of your mission goes by slow. What clock you using? Flies by.  Disappears. Evaporates. Evades. Eludes. All that jazz. 

Love you all. Stay blessed lol. 

Stay Steady Grindin'

Elder Anderson

I was feeling the suset

with the whip

Shalom the jewelry maker, bradley some crazy kid, and me with that elephant belt.

MalibU

There was one day this week where we planned for like 2 hours of finding and we stumbled upon a girl practicing tennis at the flats and we started talking to her. She's like 13 and speaks better english than me and we started playing tennis with her and then some of her friends came to watch and then before we knew it like 15 little kids all come and we start playing random games and doing this skip rope thing with them and it was a blast.  Before we left we gave all of them pamphlets and told them to take them to their families and they all ran to their different houses hahahaha. Somewhere down the line.....a few seeds will be harvested because of that.  

Went to the lake today with the zone! It was awesome. I'll attach some pictures. We bought like 8 kgs of pork and had a huge braai. It was so nice. Played some soccer and football in the grass along side a lake in Zim.  Jealous?  A lot of missionaries are struggling with being motivated and being happy so we decided to do something super fun with everyone and we think it might have worked.  Bringing back those good vibes. 

Experienced a strange power problem this week.  Lights switching on and off all night while all our neighbors houses have normal power... Weird. 

We did exchanges this week and this one girl, Rungano, was contacted by Elder Mpofu and his temporary comp for the day and she ended up coming to church on Sunday and enjoyed it! We introduced her to some members and she told us she had a great time and she was inspired.  That was a highlight of the week. Been struggling with our teaching pool right now but finally someone new to get our hopes up haha 

They raised our allotment again because the prices are going up haha. Nice one. 

Had a good lesson with Vuyelwa this week. She told us she wants to be a good mother and we read about the stripling soldiers with her and how their mothers raised them in such a way that they didn't doubt God.  Helped her to know what she can do to help her kids. Powerful.  We have worked so much with Vuyelwa I hope she comes around one day.  

Thats it for this time. Love you guys! 

Stay Steady Grindin'

Elder Anderson

Braai at the lake

Vuyelwa's brother Albert.  Love this guy

jungle around the lake

Some of the kids we met that day. 

Cooking sadza with Mom (sis mahuni) and family. 

Divine and Gracious. Sister Mahuni's kids. 

 T'was nice sitting around this fire late night with the family hahaha

Elder William. The most meek and straightforward person in the world. Love this man. 

Light The World...pffff

These days its just hilarious when these new missionaries ask me how long I've been out. lol. 

We had a zone conference this week and President Makasi was introducing light the world this year to everyone and I was just sittin there letting everything go out my other ear.  Already done two of those in Zim. Round 3 with the fam. Stay tuned.  

Woke up at 3 am to get fuel in town.  And we had to wait in a queue for like 30 mins.  Hahaha gonna have to do that every couple of days. 

Driving home one night and I look out across the city and every light is off.... pitch black. Huge power outage for like an hour then it came back.  Spooked me for a while. 

Drunk dude starts yelling at us calling me white man and other things the other day and my comp rips at him in Ndebele.  To our surprise this drunkard not only speaks Shona but also speaks Ndebele so he heard my comps insult and then got pissed off and started yelling at us following us to the car and we were just laughing hahahahaha. Love my comp. Got my back. 

Stumbled across the war chapters in my daily feasting of the word lol.  Read something I feel like sharing.  Helaman being chased by the lamanites stops and asks the 2000 if they want to go to battle and they tell him that they know God is with them and if they trust in him, he would deliver them.  Also they shout out the mothers.  And then the best part of this is how later on it talks about how those soldiers were all saved but all of them had wounds from the battle.  I stopped reading and thought about what it must have been like, having faith in God that he would protect you and then you get wounded or some lamanite cuts you with his sword.  How easy would it be to start to doubt God. RELATE that to us today when something small goes bad even though God promises to deliver us.  Like those soldiers, just keep fighting and you'll see God keep his promise.  

I feel like Zimbabweans are really good at this.  We visited the mother of Mufakose, Gogo Zimunya, and just talked for a while about things and she said something awesome. "People are panicking because of the situation but if you really have faith in God, there is no need to panic."  Write that down. lol. Even Sister Mahuni, our mom in this area, the other day when inflation started and prices shot up, she noticed some electrical workers outside and she cooked sadza for them and fed them.  I was surprised she gave up the food but she just told us, "Everything will be okay."  I've learned a lot about patience, faith, and not thinking about yourself from these people.  

"Turning outward when the natural man would turn in." Bednar. Character of Christ. 

Finally met with Richard again and he is almost done reading the gospel principles book hahahaha man I love this guy. We talked with him a long time and I'm pretty sure he'll be baptized shortly after I leave. 

That is all. 

Stay Steady Grindin'

Elder Ander$on

Snodia the singer haha

Waiting in line for fuel. Bought a dope zim scarf

outskirts of our area. 

 Gogo Zimunya's house.  garden of eden. 

 wicked storm cloud

 Shalom. She makes jewelry and gave me something for free to give to you mom.  So sick. 

some dope elders in my zone. 

Black Friday

Not in anyway is that title trying to make a racial joke or anything.  I'll explain the title in a few moments. Well, could be a lot of a few depends on how fast you are reading.

General Conference was sweet! Although all of us watching had no idea about the natural disasters that kept being mentioned because Zim is having its own disaster.  Not sure if its natural or not but a disaster nonetheless.  I'll get to that later. Conference taught me a lot. Was quite inspired.  Made some plans to apply some things and took a surplus of notes. Also the Prophet made a shout out to Harare! Sick. Blessed day.

That just reminded me, almost 100% of the time when you meet a pastor or the wife of a pastor here, and ask them, "how are you?" they will always say, "I'm blessed and you?" kid you not evveerrryy time hahah its hilarious. Then my reply is always, "I'm blessed as well" because if I dont say it then I'm not and then I get caught into there trap. hahahahaha just joking but yeah thats just something funny I've noticed.  When people are religious, they reeeaaallly act religious. Which is a good thing and a bad thing at the same time.

Alright so the things i mentioned at the end of my last email escalated and it got to the point where the currency inflated to 400% and fuel was harder and harder to find, smaller shops started to shut down and major ones started closing at like 5pm each night, the lines were suuuper long black friday type and they were running out of bread, oil, sugar, mealie meal (the only ingredient in the staple food, sadza....), even drinks started disappearing and prices started going super high (a 2 liter thing of oil went up to $22....) and it was getting intense hahaha.  We spent a whole day as a mission buying food storage things just in case but as the week went on, things started to stabilize again and now everything is better but still not back to normal.  Its super exciting living in this situation.  Didn't affect us that bad. Even the people here are all okay nothing really bad happened. Just kinda worrisome for a couple days. Like I said, now everything is getting better so that's good.

My elephant shoes are done.  Be jealous. 

We met this guy named Organize this week! Its actually his stage name, because he is a Zim dance hall music producer..... sooo sick. He said that everyone in Zim knows him. He showed us one of his songs and it sounded like I've heard it before so he seems legit. So cool. Maybe something will happen there.

So in our small area, we have this one street that we always walk down and now eeevvery kid knows my name on that street. So sick. We pull up and when the kids see the car they start yelling, "Elder Anderson!!!" or sometimes they mess it up and say something like, Andaton or eldason or something but its a million times better then getting called white man. I love it. 

We're teaching this YSA girl named Snodia and she came to watch one of the sessions of general conference this weekend! And she can sing suuuper well so we made a plan to make a video with me playing guitar and she's going to sing haha. Making it at our next appointment. 

And thus went my week. Hope you enjoyed.  If you have any suggestions, please leave them in the suggestion box on my secretary's desk on the way out. Have a good week. Love you all. 

Stay Steady Grindin' (just realized I forgot to write that last week.)

Elder Anderson

Teaching this team.  from left to right, Blessed, Pretty, Kelvin and Lawrence. Hopefully going to baptize 3 of them.  

Elder Mpofu

The Ele's hahaha 

 Saturday session of conference at the chapel. Noooo one was there and Elder Mpofu's last ward viewed it last week so this was his second time haha

Shawn. My first baptism. Wearing that chain to conference lol. 

Some kids chillin with us at the Sunday sessions. We baptized a couple at the start of my mission and the one wearing the purple hat is their daughter.  fun fact. 

Smooth Sailing

Just got our transfer news. I'm staying in my area and getting a new companion. His name is Elder Mpofu (yes, I went from Mbafu to Mpofu lol) and he's from Bulawayo. I actually served in his home ward and met his sister hahaha. Small world. But he's dope so I'm going to finish my mission in peace. Not with some square that is going to make my life hard.  I'm hyped but that means when I finish my mission, I will have spent 10 1/2 months in the same area.  

We were busy again this week. Only had 1 full day in the area.  Only taught like 5 lessons all week. Lame haha. 

One of those lessons resulted in us giving the Ruzande family a baptismal date for December! Sad i wont be there but I'll stay in touch. 

Just heard that on my last Sunday, Neil L. Andersen. is coming to visit at a stake conference thing. Inspired. 

I heard a good quote this week. "Where there is truth, there is no confusion."  Process that one. 

Well thats all I got for this week. Sorry.  Not too much happened. Only thing crazy happening is in the country like fuel is almost scarce and prices of everything is going up. Inflation is happening again. But we still chillin.  No worries for me. Still anxious to see whats going to happen.  

 My District

My G Elder Baker

Elder Oliphant. Going home. Love this guy. 

 Last day with Mbafu. RIP to the realest companionship you'll ever see.

Footlong Subway Melt, Toasted on Italian Herbs and Cheese

Last Monday after town we were on our way home and my comp saw this baba pushing a dead car with his two little girls so we whipped around and parked and helped the guy. Luckily we had two other elders with us, Elder Mutema and Elder Baker. Dope guys. But yeah we tell the girls to sit inside and we pushed the car for a kilometer until it finally started hahaha. It was uphill for most of the way.  We were dead afterwards, passed out on the floor when we got home haha.

Saw this sign posted that was advertising some church and the name of the church was, "Mufakose Power Packed Kingdom Explosive" hahahahahaha I was dying.

The sisters in our district had a baptism this week and after the service, we were helping them clean everything up and the font started flooding down the hallways and while we were sloving that problem I here this water splashing hard in the bathroom and this pipe thing burst and was spraying water all over the bathroom. So I tried to stop it and it just soaked me and then some member fixed it lol. Spent a good part of the day at that chapel.

This one member brought some neighbor kids to church and they want to be baptized. Sweet. The first girl we met is 14 and her name is Pretty haha.

Friday we had exchanges and I was with this kid named Elder Hamling from Montana. True bro. We ate pizza for lunch and I ate waaaayyy too much. Made me sick for the next day. Worth it.

The Ruzande family is still doing awesome.  The mama called their church her "old church" yesterday hahaha so she's already converted. So sick. They had a funeral in the family and couldn't come this week but they're coming next time.

had a lot of people promise us to come and they had members to help them and stuff but 0 of them came. We had no investigator at church. Slap a big darn on that turnout. Always got next week....6 more times lol. #Nov20th

After church that day we went to chill with this member family, the Mahuni's. She's our mom in this area. Not quite the Sister Makore type but still awesome. While we were talking, it started raining out of nowhere and sister Mahuni ran outside and was like, "Andason! (my name in their accent) Huya! (come)" so I came outside and she had tons of clothes drying on the line so we had to take them in before they got wet.  After typing that out it doesn't really sound interesting but at the time it was exciting

Forgot to mention the night of exchanges with Elder Hamling we noticed a white garment church doing their all night worship prayer ceremony thing near our house so we put on all black clothes and low key spied on those guys. We saw some weird stuff. Gotta commend them for that effort tho. All night worship is next level.

There's a couple random stories that came to pass this week. Hope you enjoyed. Mbafu and I got high hopes for October. Probably going to baptize a few people. 

I saw a calendar at the Mahuni's house and circled the 20th of November and then looked at how close that is and it hit me. Also got my flight plans emailed to me today.  Surreal but now it seems more like its going to happen. Not homesick at all tho. Blessed. Just have the song Finish Line by Chance the Rapper stuck in my head. Still remember the lyrics.

Love you all! God Speed.

Stay Steady Grindin'

Elder Anderson

 Us with Baker and Mutema. Love these guys. Always chilling with them.

I swear these things could have spoken to me

The aftermath of pushing that dudes car. For real that was a work out. 

Felt worse than 2 a days.

This road in town was filled with these purple trees and my comp and I were just perplexed at the beauty thereof.