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