Epistle and Gristle

GOOD MORNING AMERICA

Elder Skyler Andreasen, Elder of israel and servant of the Charlottesville 2nd ward of the Charlottesville Zone of the Virginia Richmond Mission of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter Day Saints, to any who are and may be interested in my dealings with God and my fellow brethren and sisters.

Mine eyes have seen the Glory of the Most High God and my heart has felt his spirit in this the week ending on the twenty-second day of April in the year two thousand and thirteen. The Glory of God is intelligence, or in other words light and truth, and the days of my week have been filled with the light and truth of the gospel.

I have seen the growth, as the growth of a seed, in Louis, son of God and investigator of the church, who has met with us the third time and understood all the words which we have spoken to him. He has assuredly comitted to be baptized and will nevertheless have much trial to pass through. He, through his faith in Jesus Christ whom The Father Hath sent, and through his repentance, shall be recognized by angels at the day he enters into the water to follow the example of this Jesus of whom we speak. His name shall be written in the book of Life, and the book of the Lamb of God.

Hymns are a prayer unto the Lord God, and in the night previous to this day we sang. IT was a dress rehearsal, but our hearts swelled and our eyes were filled with the glorious light of Christ as we bore sweet testimony of the life of the Son of God through our singings and our narrations on this subject. My voice was sustained of the Lord for the use of the Narrations and he allowed me to speak by the power of the Spirit unto the convincing of all who were present that my Grandfather was a radio announcer. I was much joyed and though we were tired and parched we rehearsed well. We feel prepared to perform in front of investigators, members, and the like, and before God and his angels we will make our plea to the people on the true doctrine of the Bible and the Book of Mormon unto their conversion and contemplation of such things. Our plan is to teach much of this people who attend.

The holy scriptures are my guide and the means of my answers from The LORD. My efforts to int.......ok this is hard I'm going to speak normally now haha holy cow. I have found so many cool things in the scriptures this week. I started the Book of Mormon again and I am reading it just studying one subject through the whole book. I have already learned so much! I also started the D&C countdown from when I had 138 days left. I would read one page a day from 138 down and at 133 I couldn't handle it any more. I can't do the numbers thing. I am now reading 2 sections a day so that I will finish it backwards then I will finish it again forwards before I come home. JUST so that I don't have to see those numbers count down. That was hard, even for 5 days.

I am stoked to come home. That makes me feel kind of guilty but I'm not working less because of it. In fact, I'm striving to work more diligently and more efficiently and the Spirit really has been with us. Transfer calls were yesterday and I am staying another 6 weeks! Elder Canova and Elder Moffett are staying too. I just know that one day my mission will end and that doesn't make me sad. It's only 2 years, we can't have more than that. There are other things we have to do! I just don't want to forget about it until the day of and then beg the Stake President not to release me.... I am going to miss it but I will be ok.

Anyway.... Ok. That's about it. I was in West VA. That was cool. We also have more and more members sharing the gospel. I can't wait until we see the return on this investment of spending time with members.

Welp, LOVE YOU ALL!!

peace and chicken grease

cash money

Elder Andreasen

P.S. I choose Christ

Bucket List

HI howdy hello!!!

 What great emails!!!!!!! Thank you. 3rd witness MOM, that was my 3rd witness. That is amazing. 

I have had a good week. We went on 2 exchanges this week. That is tiring. We have another one tonight! I'm going all the way to FRANKLIN WEST VIRGINIA! WOOT! Now I can say I have been to North Carolina, VA, and West VA. How many states have I been in? We did a cross country trip and we've driven to California. I am just wondering how many states that is. I want to go to them all one day. 

Bucket list update: this week Elder Burke asked me if I have ever made a real bucket list. I say that a lot "oh, I need to put that on my bucket list" but I haven't ever had one. So I started! On there so far I want to ride a bull, sky dive, and see the sun rise on the East Coast then set on the West Coast in one day. Any more Ideas or things I have said I should do can be emailed to me at skyler.andreasen@myldsmail.net. Thank you.

I met a man named Seven. Zach and I always talked about naming our first sons Seven. 

We have gotten a lot of sun this week. On Saturday we were out all day at the downtown Mall (it's an outdoor mall) at the Chalk wall where we go every Saturday and write either "MODERN DAY PROPHET" or "FAMILIES ARE FOREVER" in big letters. This week we drew a huge temple (in yellow, sadly we didn't have white) and talked about family history. That caught some attention. People know that if you want to know about your ancestors you should ask the Mormons. So this girl came walking up and I started talking to her and we stood in that same position for an HOUR and FIFTEEN minutes. Can I tell you that only one side of my face is tan? It was so funny. What is more funny is that I was on exchange with  Elder Hopkins and Elder Canova was in Staunton and when we exchanged back the left side of his face was bright red burned, Just one side!!!! Oh my gosh we laughed so hard. He got caught up for an hour and a half talking to a Seventh Day Adventist about how Saturday is the sabbath. Man that was funny. What wasn't funny though is that we got back to our car after doing the chalk wall for about 4 hours and our car window was smashed in and Elder Canova's wallet was gone from the cup holder. Please say a prayer of thanks because my GPS was in the window and didn't get touched. I don't know how. 

In other news, Louis is doing well. We taught him 2 lessons this week and he is loving it. I swear he is a member already. He answers everything perfectly. Just kidding, he is genuine and progressing towards baptism. He took a full page of notes on the Restoration video. He is a big man. 360lbs of spiritual giant. We may or may not be using a Hoya lift in a hospital pool to do the baptism. He can't walk, but he's trying. He puts forth so much faith. He almost didn't have a ride to church and he flipped out at the handicap bus service and demanded to speak to a manager. He was offering to fork out a bunch of money to come to church. he wanted to come so bad but Saturday night he was admitted to the Martha Jefferson Hospital for Cellulitus in his legs. We went right after church to see him and gave him a blessing and he said "I'll be back in 3 or 4 days no problem." We have faith that can happen. Hopefully next week we can get him to church. 

We have been meeting a ton with the active members of the ward. We never spend more than a half hour or 45 min there and we never get too casual. We just teach and testify and invite them to do missionary work with us. This has resulted in over 20 potential referrals from the members. This means we have a list of 20 or so names of the Members and their friends and we have a specific invitation for each member to do something to share the gospel with this person whether it's invite them to learn from the missionaries or give a pass along card out or something. We never come up with the ideas we just teach and bring the spirit in then say "so you have done missionary work before, what is the next step for you? Really, you have a friend named Jan you've been thinking about? What could you do to help things along? How could we help?" All of these people have someone to share the gospel with and I feel like this is the way missionary work should be. We have only taught one friend of a member so far but it was powerful in the member's home and with that member's testimony to back what we taught. Find someone for the missionaries today! Do something small! 2 horses working together actually have 3 horsepower! Imagine if the 15 million members of the church were unified with the 65000 missionaries out right now. It would be HUGE. It would probably gather Israel.

Love you :)

Elder Andreasen
P.S. I choose Christ

I Loved Conference

HOWDY HOWDY HOWDY!

This week has been the bomb.

 During the choir practice yesterday we practiced a new song called "I am Jesus Christ" and at the end of one line it said "what a morn, glorious dawn, Christ is born" or something but the r and the n on the end of morn and born looked so much like an "m" that the first time singing it some people sang on accident "What a mom, glorious dawn, Christ is bomb" OH MAN that was funny. AND it rhymed. 

Mom, I appreciate your love and your letter. I love you so much!!!!!!!!! 

I loved conference but I am going to have to get the conference ensigns to read all of the sessions. On Saturday in between sessions, we got a call from a bishop in the area who had a member in the emergency room in a hospital near here so we left immediately. It was a good experience, nothing too traumatic. She was very appreciative of the visit and we were able to give her a book of Mormon. She hasn't been to church in a while due to her health and she hasn't been reading her scriptures so we promised her that she will at the very least feel God's love and peace from the spirit as she reads daily. She has family that she has been trying to share the gospel with and they were there as well. Good experience. We then got a call, not 3 minutes after we had returned to the church house, from a member in our ward who's husband is in an assisted living home and was having a very hard week. We went immediately again and he had been moved from his previous room because he got in a fist fight with his roommate the night before. We visit him often, but he was way different this time. He said he lost his wife 6 months ago and he tried to kill his dad 6 months ago because his dad beat him up his whole life for looking like Sylvester Stalone. He also told us later that Sylvester owned the building we were in and the heaters in it. It was so bizarre. None of that is true, haha, so we just tried to be his friend. The most real moment was when he asked for a blessing. We asked him what's been going on lately and he said "I don't even know who I am anymore" I remembered Elder Uchtdorf's talk and said "Phillippe, you are a son of GOD who is going through a rough time" and he got really quiet and said "I haven't felt like a son of God in a long time" he was teary eyed for a second, then a minute later he was back to ranting about killing people and Sylvester Stalone playing various roles in his life. WIERD. 

We felt like Phillipe's ex roommate Louis might need a visit and so we went to see how he was doing. He was a little shaken up but we actually stayed there and watched conference with him! After some prying he told us that his family had just gotten baptized in Maryland and that he was interested in learning. After conference (he slept through most of it, bless his heart) we had a little lesson and set him to be baptized on May 11. HOW AMAZING!!!!!? We know that The LORD prepared for Louis to meet us that day. 

I loved conference. Being gone for a session threw me off a little but I loved the Priesthood session and the whole time I was thinking "Dad and Josh are there" and that was cool. 

This week we got a new companion, Elder Moffett. He was in our zone being trained but we took over the training. :) I love that! He has been out 3 weeks and we will finish out the 12-week training program with him. 

I need to go, I love you all!!!!!!!!!!

Elder Andreasen

P.S. I choose Christ!

FUNNY..... REAL FUNNY.

You have talked about selling that house a ton I was definitely fooled for a sec. GOOD ONE!

SO today we came to a new library and in the basement they are having a booksale. I bought 4 dictionaries for 4 dollars. I have been looking for a dictionary of Etymology for a while and I found one! For a dollar! I also found a rhyming dictionary (good for freestyle rapping), a dictionary of American Sign Language, and a Meriam Webster's. I don't know if I told you.... I like words. 

We helped someone move today until like 1. Crazy. I am exhausted. I'm stressed because that took most of the preparation out of our preparation day and I can already tell we won't get everything done that we need to. That means doing wash all week with 4 of us. Hopefully I will at least get the important things done like washing the car and cleaning my desk. I have been stressed this week!!!!!!! Don't think I'm mad we had to do service on preparation day or anything helping that woman move was stress RELIEF. This has just been one of those weeks. 

Your Easter package was received and it helped. You will probably never know the irony and perfection in your timing and when that package came. Let's just say I was "Saved by the knock". 

Josh's Parents didn't come to dinner but his sister did. She is so sweet. We may have been a little intense for a first meeting but we also knew that this was one of a few chances to talk to her so we bore some pretty intense witness and I think she felt it. I hope she accepts the gospel.

We have been traveling a lot lately. We went to Richmond this week and to Staunton (pronounced Stanton). Staunton is in our zone but far away and we had exchanges there. 

To be honest, we have been doing administrative stuff all week and it's stressful and we have hardly taught anyone. We had a wonderful zone meeting on Friday and we had a representative from the stake high counsel there. How amazing! He spoke on what we can do to have unity with the members of the church (which is what the meeting was about). A theme for the whole meeting was unity. There were trainings on Planning and Member missionary work and Unity. I loved it. I felt the spirit and I was excited to be there with the whole zone. Afterwards, everyone had brought a lunch so we ate together (to help along our unity theme) then we had an activity where we sat in a circle and everyone said a strength their companion had and we all learned about each other. The idea is that if the sisters in Waynesboro have someone that would click with the missionaries in Franklin we want to get an exchange or a blitz set up to get them over there. These are EVERYONE'S investigators and everyone will be helping everyone else to invite others to come unto Christ. President Perry has called it "assists" before, like basketball assists. He has debated many times with us whether or not to report assists as a key indicator on Sunday nights. I love the Idea. Now that we all know each other in the zone we are more equipped to love each other and work in unity by helping each other. 

I went to VA Beach on saturday for Margie's baptism. WOW that was amazing. We rode down with one of the YSA sisters' recent converts and the YSA sisters. (Sister Tanner taught Margie too) and at the baptism we sang together. Margie requested that I sing the song that I first sang to her when Elder Narramore and I came to her home. We sang "Nearer My God to Thee" it was Sister Jones, Sister Tanner and I. We composed our own version of the order of the verses and when we split in parts and when we sang in unison and stuff. That was fun. Elder Canova and I sing a lot together. Hymns are powerful. We sang in our ward choir on Sunday, and we are singing in a Contata on april 28th with the stake choir. What a great activity!!!! I want to do one in our stake when I get home. It is a song and narration through the  whole book of mormon and life of Christ called "Come unto Christ". After practicing last night with the stake choir we are so excited to have the whole zone bring all of their investigators and sing in it or just attend. I will be doing the narration part, tell Grandpa Andreasen I'm trying to live up to his radio announcer days. I did sing with the choir last night though and I fell in love with the music so I'm not entirely sure if I want to narrate. 

I love you all and I can feel your support and prayers! I am trying my best to stay focused and engaged, while still realizing this will end and that it's OK that it will end. This is the only time in my life that I will be able to give my full time and attention to serving God and I am very thankful for that. 

I love you all, I hope I answered your questions..... 

Love, 

Elder Andreasen
P.S. I choose Christ