Hey Family! Well another one bites the dust. I can't believe another week has flown by! I only have 8 weeks left. Well we've had some good things going this week. We had a really good fireside that will hopefully really help this ward progress, a couple investigators are doing well and will be baptized in June. I'm loving the work. Today Elder Winfield and I got to go with a senior couple all over our zone and do apartment checks. It was cool just to talk to them and learn from them and what life in America is like (they've only been out like 2 months) They said that I had a little bit of an accent but nothing too bad. We talked about cool things though and I learned a lot. The Elder had an Ipad and he let us play with it for a little. It was like being a little boy in a candy shop! I forgot what technology is like! well i've got about 0 time left to email, so I"m afraid i have to leave you here. well i love you all and thank you all for your support. if you vote for me all of your wildest dreams will come true! Love, Elder Andersen

Hey there family. Well it was good to talk to Mom and LJ last week. Sorry if I seemed boring! Or talked weird, or looked fat! Anyway, this last week has been pretty good here in Dian-ay ward. On Sunday, we had 20 more people at church than we have the past 3 weeks! Hopefully it just continues to stay that way. One of the problems we have is that people come in groups. So like one sunday a big group of people from one place will come, but then the next sunday they aren't there and a different group from a different place comes. We're really trying to help them come every sunday. Some cool things that have happened lately. A former branch president that hasn't come to church for around 7 years started coming back with his family! One of the neatest things I have seen from the rescue effort. And a huge help to the ward, because he can now help a lot of the people that became members during his time come back to church. Another thing is about this old woman we are teaching. We just call her Nanay. She is 77 years old, and her son and his family were baptized a couple months ago. She's been listening to the missionaries for a while, but never went to church or anything cause she's had a stroke before, and it's really hard for her to walk. Well for the past 2 weeks in a row she has come to church! She lives relatively close, but it still takes her a while to very very slowly walk to the church. But she has such great faith that she just continues, and she wants to be baptized! We taught her this past week and we taught about the restoration and Joseph Smith and the Book of Mormon, and then we gave her a commitment to ask God if everything we taught her is true, and then she just started praying right then and there! It was kinda funny, but really cool at the same time. She has a lot of faith. Another cool thing. We bought 2 kilos of fresh mangoes for 120 pesos (around $3) and 4 pineapples for 50 pesos (around $1.10)! Fruit is way cheap and way delicious! I'm really going to miss it when I go home.. Well we've had a lot of other cool stuff happen too. For the first time we know of, we were able to have a priests quorum! There were 5 of them that came to church, and they brought a non member friend. Then we talked about the priesthood, what it means, and what the responsibilities are, and how we can help get the other young men that are less active to church. Way cool. Then on Sunday, we are having a missionary fireside about the goals of the area presidency and how we can apply it in this ward. Things are moving along. There are still a lot of problems, a lot of members offended and what not for whatever reason, but things are continuing forward. No unhallowed hand can stop the work from progressing! Not even the fiesta and the plaza next to out house where they play annoying techno music from speakers bigger than a car all night long for 3 nights in a row! We're just a little on the sleepy side :) Right now we're in Bacolod cause I had to get a chest x ray. Don't worry, all departing missonaries have to get them. Ok well I gotta go, but I love you all and hope you're all doing well! Love Elder Andersen!

Hey Fam. Soo next week is Mother's day unless I'm mistaken. Is Mom even going to be in America? If not I guess I will just enjoy skyping with whoever is home. I'm not sure what's gonna go down. I'll probably just call you and let you know I'm on like I did last year or something. And if all else fails, I'll see you guys in two months anyway. Well this week has been.. busy! This is probably the busiest time in my whole mission. So I was only with my companion until Thursday this week, and then some elders were having some problems, so I've been working in a different area since then, but hopefully it'll all get worked out early this week. We had 2 baptisms this past weeks. Two brothers. One is 9 and the other 11. Their parents and older siblings were baptized like a month ago, but for some reason the two kids didn't get baptized with them. So that was good. Pretty much I'm just tired all the time. We get up at 6:30 and study, eat, and then we are out of the house by 11 or 12 and we don't get back until 10 sometimes cause there is no mode of transportation back to our house so we walk about 5 miles home. Then we get home, plan, shower, and if we have enough energy, eat. If not, we just sleep, and the process repeats. It's crazy but I love it. I can definitely tell the Lord helps us be able to continue and work like that. Things are getting better here in the ward. It's really cool to just have all this experience now that I can apply to the work here. I wish I knew everything I know now, before my mission! Oh well. I can't imagine not going on mission. I would be real lost I think. I've met some really hard hearted people the past couple weeks, and they've told us that they are never coming back to the church, and if we keep visiting them they will not let us in. It's really sad. I feel kind of like Mormon sometimes when he tried to help the Nephites but they were too hard. Sometimes I feel like standing on top of a mountain and shouting, "O ye fair ones.." But I know we have done our best to try and help these people and their blood is upon their own garments now. It still makes you feel really sad though. It's sad that the hardest hearted people I've met are members. Other Filipinos would never be like that. It's crazy. Well I guess that's it for me right now. Talk to you all next week! Love, Greg