Elder Sanderson's Mission Adventure: An email and pictures

******disclaimer from Tara :) I have been giving him a hard time about his skimpy emails hence the sentence at the end. I am so excited to Skype with him next week!!!!!****

Hey mom!

We're somewhat busy and somewhat warm haha, just depends on the day really! It's been about 35-40 lately which is practically the Caribbean for us! But then on other days, we about freeze to death I think. The last two days have been extra rough. On Saturday we had 3 ward Christmas parties and they were at 9am, 10am, and 6pm. They were a lot of fun (kinda) but after the first two my stomach just wasn't feeling well at all. I felt like I had to throw up but hadn't eaten very much food at all. I've been a little under the weather because of the cold, but it hadn't been anything like this! I had a really hard time walking around on Saturday and was not feeling like another party at all. But we still went and I just tried to show the members how excited we are about the work. I didn't sleep at all on Saturday night, and felt even worse on Sunday. The nausea hadn't gone away at all and that was probably the worst part! I was on the verge of throwing up for 40 hours and couldn't ever get through with it. Finally, at about 2am this morning, I made it over that hurdle and feel a lot better after throwing up for an hour! I don't say any of that to gross you out, but because Heavenly Father really did strengthen me! there is no way I was going to make it through the weekend without His help and I was praying at least 5 times an hour I bet!

I did get grandma's packages! I opened the box, but none of the envelopes or the wrapped gifts. Those will wait until Christmas. Speaking of which, Christmas is a normal day for us, so is New Years and Christmas Eve. None of the missionaries quite know why, nobody wants to have us come teach on Christmas. We're gonna do a lot of walking that day. But, on the bright side, we get to Skype for Christmas! My companion and I have had a family that already gave us the go ahead to go to their house and Skype whenever we want that day! They are from Brazil and have also fed us twice in the last 2 weeks! Brazilian food is awesome! I love it! We will probably be skyping around noon my time. I will confirm that next week though. If you haven't already wrapped my package up, please send me my white soccer cleats! I don't want the yellow or black ones because I care about them too much haha, but the white ones please! If you already wrapped the package or if they won't fit then no worries!

We also had our Christmas Devotional this week! Elder Summerhayes of the 70 came and spoke to us! He was awesome and I really enjoyed getting to listen to him! He told us that Satan has triumphed in all other dispensations, but that he will fail in this one. He said that he could say that not as an enthusiastic statement, but as a witness and a fact. It was also great to see my old companions and friends from around the mission! Everybody was giving me a hard time about how many people know me after only 8 weeks and also about my visa. I just said that the visa will get here once the weather gets warmer haha! Our President and his wife also gave us all new journals for our Christmas present! They are black leather and have the Salt Lake Temple stamped into the front with the words, "Utah Salt Lake City Mission 2014" around it! They were awesome!

I had a chance to speak portuguese today at walmart. We were getting shampoo and this lady walked up and asked for our help finding something. She said, "I'm from Brazil and don't know how to find it". My first mistake was telling her that I spoke Portuguese haha! She spoke so fast that I could barely catch more than a few words! It was crazy! Then the lady she was with started talking to me too and I thought my brain might explode lol. But it was cool to talk to them (talk is a strong word) and I was limited to a very small vocabulary so I couldn't really communicate outside of church stuff and introductions haha!

Love you all, hope this email is long enough =p

Elder Sanderson

With his companion