Alarm in the ALRM (Arkansas Little Rock Mission)

Monday, April 16, 2018

Good afternoon! All is good here in Searcy Arkansas

I love it here so much. I realized that Searcy is exactly what I pictured when I thought of Arkansas before my mission. It is flat, and spread out. It's a small town with various, even smaller, towns around it. The people are humble and know about God.

However this last week has been exhausting! I have written in my journal almost every single day of my mission. When I miss a day I usually take then next night to make up for the day I lost and also that current day. However this last week I have been running around so much I have missed a few days in a row! However I am confident to get back to writing every day once I get a little more settled.

This last Friday night we had exchanges with the elders in Beebe Arkansas. I was going to be in Beebe with elder Riley for 24 hours while both of our companions were in Searcy. We had just gotten to Beebe and the other elders had left when our storm radio came on and told us that we were in a tornado warning. Neither of us had any idea what to do because we are both from the mountains. We figured we would be fine until we heard the tornado sirens start to go outside. Then we new it was serious.

We hurried to the car through the rain and we drove to a sweet members house in Beebe. She is very kind elderly lady who has a storm shelter in her garage. We arrive and spend about 30 min sitting in the garage with her and her other elderly neighbors. While listening to the news we thought the storm was blowing over but we got texted by the mission and were told to stay the night at our safe house. Sadly the only people that were going to stay the night there was a grandma and her 19 year old daughter. We quickly called our leaders and explained the situation. They asked us to spend the night in their garage. There was no where to lay down so the lady had us lay back the seats in her caddilac and we spent the whole night in there.

We spent from 11 to 6 am in that Cadillac. And we didn't sleep at all. Unfortunately the seats were uncomfortable and we couldn't fall asleep so we enjoyed the night talking to eachtoehr and laughing about where we were and how we would probably never have a situation like it again. Everything was alright and no significant damage was done in Beebe or any of the surrounding towns. Fun night though!

We got to spend a little time on Harding University campus this last week. Really pretty university owned by the church of Christ. I loved the scripture i found on a wall there.

We also had a choir musical presentation in which a lot of missionaries participated. I got to see elder Giles (My first companion). As well as elder Shelley and Perkins. Fun week though.

Elder Ogaard is awesome though and there will be more more stories and pictures with him coming soon!

Love y'all and hope you have a great week!

Elder C.R. Anderson

SEARCY ARKANSAS

Monday, April 9, 2018

Hello Everyone!

Some very exciting news this week because my time in little rock is coming to a close. It's a very exciting and sad time as well. Exciting because I am going to a new area with a new companion! Sad though because I love serving here in Little Rock with elder Merrill. It has been so rewarding! And I love the people in our branch as well as all the people in little rock.

I'm going to Searcy Arkansas! I will be serving there with Elder Ogaard.

Elder Ogaard is an amazing missionary who I have always looked up to and we are so so excited to serve together. He is a rock solid missionary and disciple of Jesus Christ. He is from Idaho and loves to wrestle. More pictures with him will be sent next week after I've been with him for a while!

Searcy is a city about an hour north of North Little Rock. It is an amazing city that has a lot of culture! It's a bummer because there is little to no Spanish speaking population in Searcy. But both Elder Ogaard and I are Spanish speaking missionaries, so we will at least be able to speak Spanish inside our companionship. We will be serving as the zone leaders for the Searcy zone which includes the cities Searcy, Beebe, Quitman, Lonoke, Cabot, Jacksonville, as well as the military base in Jacksonville. It's super spread out but really exciting! Great part of Arkansas.

My current companion Elder Merrill will be going to Batesville, Arkansas. I am definitely going to miss him. After spending 4 1/2 constant months with someone you learn everything about them. We have learned to work really well together and I have learned so much from him! I know he's going to do amazing in Batesville.

This last week we spent it working hard because neither of us knew that we were leaving until Friday night. Got a lot of good work done including a super fun branch activity for the primary kids. Guillermo took us to eat at our favorite restaurant to celebrate his birthday as well as us leaving! Love that man a lot. I am going to miss him.

More exciting news to come, and from now on it will be from Searcy! My mission President said I can expect to spend around 9 months there so I am buckled down and ready to go! Can't wait to see the miracles happen as we work hard and put our trust in the Lord.

Have an amazing week! Love you all.

Elder C.R. Anderson

PS. We had a "rim wall" in our apartment. We found all of these while in little rock. Going to miss our artwork for sure.

Hola familia!

Monday, April 2, 2018

This week was a really really good one leading up to general conference! What a special and historic weekend.

I too can add my testimony that we are led by prophets of God. Christ leads and guides this church. I am so grateful to be a member of it.

We went to the mall on Friday to try and contact some friends of ours that work in a Chinese restaurant there. One of them had expressed interest earlier in wanting to chat with us. However the man was not there so as we were leaving we gave out some cards to various Hispanics we saw. One man was a janitor for the mall. He did not have a lot of time to talk because he was working but he said if we waited until he got off work (3 hours later) he would love to talk to us. Those 3 hours passed by very slowly as we made our way through the crowds and tried to share the message of Easter with as many people as possible. His shift eventually ended though and we had a wonderful discussion with him where we talked to him about Easter and our savior. We hopefully will have more lessons with him soon!

After that it was a weekend filled with fasting and prayer and spiritual nourishment. As I was able to focus myself on the gospel and the messages shared, I found a profound clarity. I invite each of you to go to LDS.org and view a part of conference if you missed it. And if you were able to watch it, to go back and study the talks over throughout the next 6 months.

I know that Christ lives. That is an undeniable truth that has been the foundation of my testimony. His life, death, and resurrection were perfect. His atonement is eternal.

I hope that we can "all press on in the work of the Lord!" Have an amazing week and I will catch you soon! There will be transfers this coming week so that should be some very exciting news!

Elder C.R. Anderson

Exchanges with elder Gonzalez
Beautiful statue of Christ