Thinning the Herd...And Heading to Morton!

 The big news for the week is transfer news: Elder Bennett and I are staying together (WOOO!!), but we are being moved to Morton, IL. It's super exciting, because they just got a new bishop who is really fired up to do missionary work, and Elder Bennett has served in Morton before, so he already knows a bunch of the people in the ward, so that will be a good start. Unfortunately, since we won't be at ISU anymore, it will put a damper on the hashtag efforts, but we'll see what we can do in Morton! I'm sad to be leaving Normal, but and excited to start a new adventure in a new area!

For service this week, we got to relive both my dream and nightmare as a little kid: We went to Home Sweet Home Ministries and were in charge of sorting through stuffed animals (like ten 100 pound boxes of them). We had to look at them and determine whether they were in good enough condition to sell, or if they were a collector's item, otherwise we threw them away. The dream was that there were hundreds and hundreds of stuffed animals (for those of you who don't know, I have a personal herd of stuffed animals at home), the bad news is that we had to throw 80% of them away...I did snag the best prize of the day though, I call my new homie Banona-Mon. A cool side note of working at HSHM is that a couple weeks ago, they gave all of the missionaries a gift basket with a $5 gift card to their thrift store because of the service that we've offered. We went there today, and I walked out with a pair of dress shoes and a purple Jordan shirt for free because of the gift card!

We got the opportunity to teach a couple of member families that we haven't been able to meet with before, so that was really good! We also met with a couple of different less-active members during the week. No exciting news for investigators for this week, but hopefully we'll have some good ones to report on next week in Morton!

So I've yet to keep y'all informed on my Fit For the Kingdom for the transfer--I ended the transfer with over 400 points, which is the best that I've done before! I'm really excited for the upcoming transfer, because our apartment clubhouse has a gym that we can work out at in the mornings, so exercise is going to be great!

That's pretty much all that I've got for the week, thanks for all the love and support! Let me know if there is anything that I can do for you guys!

Love,
Elder Dallas Anderson
#MovingToMorton

Gosh, Janet!

What's up to all you fans out there!?

We're hot off the charts with the drop last week, hope y'all enjoyed that! Just to let everyone know, I probably will use the word "finna" in my homecoming talk (probably both intentionally and unintentionally), because you can take me outta the hood, but you can't take the hood outta me, you know what I'm sayin'?

Good stories from this week: First, I got approval for my idea of proselyting through hashtags, so if you start seeing a trend on social media involving the missionaries, you know who got that going! We hope to start implementing it here on campus within the next week, getting the members to kick it off first. It will be interesting to see if we can get things rolling, but I'm excited!

We went on exchanges twice this week, and had good experiences with both of them! I got to work with Elder Ashcraft in the Spanish program (no "como se dice stories this time) and Elder Neve. We were able to find a bunch of potential investigators on exchanges, and on the one with Elder Neve, I don't think I've met as many crazy people in one day in my entire life...We met the most drunk person I've ever seen in my life, he was soooo out of it; we met a man that told us that he was in the Army, got blown up and thrown into a tree 45 feet away, and his scalp was barely on his head, but he got fixed up and played in the NFL the next six seasons. He also told us that he was 3rd in the world for weight-lifting, his best efforts were a 617 pound bench press, a 1500 pound squat, and a 3000 pound deadlift...Freakin' yeah right sir. We had a member look it up for us, and the world record deadlift is just over 1000 pounds. Haha, he was out of his mind too. 

We also got the biggest door slam of my mission thus far, to be honest I'm surprised that the door is still on its hinges. And we also went to one of our investigator's homes and he and his girlfriend were cussing each other out and talking about cheating with their ex's, keep in mind that all of this was one day during the same exchange. If that wasn't good enough, we went to a building that had four apartments in it, and 3 of them were blasting music; it was as if they were trying to out-do each other, it was hilarious! And if you don't know, it's tough to preach the gospel in a hallway when 2 Chainz is blaring in the apartment next door.

The title of the email comes from our dinner on Tuesday this week. We always have dinner right before MCM with the Albrechtsens (Brother Albrechtsen is the ward mission leader). We're having dinner, and there's a member from another ward eating dinner with us, and he was asked if he had any plans that night after dinner. He responded, "I have to go home teach Janet," but it sounded like, "I have to go home teach, da***t." HAHAHA, everyone at the table thought he said the latter, it was so funny! After that, we started making jokes about it, such as "Gosh Janet!"

Love you all! Thanks for all that you do, and for the emails and packages! Love you tons!

Love,

Elder Dallas Anderson

#HashtagsOnHashtags

Dandy vs Drake (The Rap Wars)

So it's finally arrived! The hot new track is dropping today, and no track is complete without official album artwork. Finna hope you enjoy it, more fun email ideas coming at ya soon!

Album Artwork (if you don't get it, look up Drake's album)

Started... [Dandy on the track]

Started from the bottom, now we here.

Started from the bottom, after 16 months, I be here.

Started from the bottom, now we here.

Started from the bottom, now the long-awaited track is here.

Startin' off this drop with somethin' clean,

MJ, 'Bron, and D-Rose, they all wanna join my team,

Cause we ballin' e'ry Preparation Day,

They call me Mr. Clutch because winning is my way.

And you know I'm always finna lookin' swag,

My man Macklemore be jealous with my skills at poppin' tags.

Now we finna move another couch, yeah here we go,

Mornin' workouts payin' off, you see these guns ain't just for show, cause we

Started from the bottom, now we here.

Started from the bottom, FFTK points all up in here.

Started from the bottom, now we here.

Started from the bottom, see my rhymin' skills are striking fear.

Supa Hot Fiya's where I'm at,

They told me, "You white boy, you don't stand a chance at rap."

I'm just brushin' off the haters as I go,

The language of the streets is just somethin' that I know.

And we're stackin' cans and boxes each Tuesday,

Service at the food pantry, we stockin' food for days.

Yeah we're workin' hard like my boi Patrick Kane,

Story stays the same through the freezing and the rain, 'cause we

Started from the bottom, now we here.

Started from the bottom, after finding service, now we're here.

Started from the bottom, now we here.

Started from the bottom, now I'm steppin' up my game in here.

You'd think we're serving in the 80s with our phones... (Yeah, it's rough)

B.o.B. and Kanye, they got nothin' on my zone.

The YSA peoples are our crew; 

Elder Bennett's hard at work, teaching kids at ISU.

Exchange in Woodridge with the Assistants,

Elder Cluff and Elder Adams in the clutch with their two cents.

President's vision's gonna take us to the top,

Baptizin' left and right, yeah we never gonna stop! Cause we

Started from the bottom, now we here.

Started from the bottom, now we findin' lots of people here.

Started from the bottom, now we here.

Started from the bottom, you'll have to wait 'til the next track gets here.

[Last name: Ever. First name: Greatest.]

*Drops mic* *Leaves stage with one arm raised*

==============

So I'm calling my man Brockbank out to step up to the mic! I want to hear him spit a rhyme or two, so I challenge him to a rap battle! Gimme the best you got Brockbank, I've got another challenge in store for you in the upcoming weeks, because I'm still not taking a loss in the #HeismanPose2k15 contest. Yeah, I'm still not bitter.

Anyways, I love you all and hope that life is treating you swell in the 801, or wherever life has taken you! Hope to hear from you all soon!

Thanks for all of your thoughts and prayers, if you could pray that we'll be able to find people to teach this week, that would be much appreciated, thanks!

Love,
Elder Dallas Anderson

#LastNameEverFirstNameGreatest

#ButImNotARapper

#ServiceNeverLookedSoFine + Other Hashtag News

#ManCrushModels at Home Sweet Home warehouse

This week was a little bit slower for us as far as teaching goes, we weren't able to meet up with Bri, and Steve just got a job as a truck driver. He'll only be in town about 1-2 days a month, so we dropped him because it will be hard to meet with him regularly. We did have the chance to meet with two less-active members in the ward this week and have lessons with them, and we had another less-active member of the YSA group that came to church! The YSA class started up this week at church, so we're hoping to get the news out and bring the rest of the crew in the future!

We had an awesome service experience on Tuesday at the WACC--they teamed up with another food pantry and brought in two trucks full of food. So the six Elders serving in the Normal Ward unloaded the trucks, set everything out on the serving tables, then went around with all of the people that came in to get their food. It was really neat, because there were probably close to 175 people that came through, so we got a lot of interaction as we walked around with them to help fill their orders. I'll attach a picture of a panorama of all the the food we handed out. By the end of the day, pretty much ALL of the food was gone. But here's the kicker, there was a super cool black guy named Steve Young there! I was going to get him to sign a football and take a pic for Brockbank's #HeismanPose2k16 contest (because he still should have picked one of my entries), but Steve had championships to win, and he dipped out quick.

The other service we did this week was at the Home Sweet Home warehouse, where we worked in the clothing department with Shauna, who's legit! While we were sorting through the clothing, we found some keepers to throw on for a pic. #IWearYourGranddadsClothesILookIncredible

On Saturday, we had a special MLC in Arlington Heights with Elder Suarez, the area president. What made the meeting even more special is that the leaders of the Chicago Mission were there too, so we got to meet the leaders from out east, and they were pretty cool.

Story of the week: I talked to President on the phone this week, because I had this awesome idea for finding (at least I think it's pretty awesome): since we're serving on ISU campus, a lot of the kids are going to be into social media. I proposed to President that we could start a trend with hashtags with the kids on campus, where they'd take pictures with the missionaries and post them up with a specific hashtag. I got to explain to President the purpose of a hashtag. #Winning I also got to teach him what a hashtag trend was, so my pre-mission Twitter skills are coming in in the clutch. #TeachInHashtags #TheHashtagHero President told me that he thought there was a lot of potential untapped in the social media world, and that he would talk to the Missionary Department in Salt Lake about it and get back to me. #PrayForHashtags Just call me #MrHashtag!

Love,

Elder Dallas Anderson

#MrHashtag

Working at the WACC

The new bedbug-free certified couch (left)

Oh So Happy. Oh So Humble.

Hey Mom!

This week wasn't too exciting for us, we weren't able to meet with either Bri or Steve, which is no good. The good news is that we met with Mallory and with Roxy, who are two less-active members that are both YSAs. Even better news, we told bishop last week that we wanted to start a YSA group third hour in church, and he loved the idea and called a teacher to start the class next Sunday! Pretty soon, we're hoping to have a YSA branch in the area, because that's a lot of the people that we're working with right now!

Yours truly killed the rest of the zone in bowling today with a 169! We best stop going bowling as a zone activity, because I don't want to dominate everybody too bad. #AlsoHumble The funny part is that I got a strike to start off one of the games, and one of the missionaries said to me, "That's why you're a zone leader!" Then another missionary went and got 9 of 10 pins, and the same missionary said, "That's why you're not a zone leader!" Hahaha, many are called, but few are chosen, and they are not chosen because they don't have mad bowling skills like me. #AlsoHumble

We had a killer MLC in Naperville this week, a couple of guys from the Missionary Department came in from Salt Lake and gave us some great training on working with members and planning. I left the meeting with a ton of things to implement, I'm super excited for the next couple of weeks! We have been struggling to find new investigators lately, but Brother Gonzalez introduced a new vision to the mission of having 3-6 lessons between the hours of 6PM-9PM each evening, which would mean a ton of new investigators!

For the couch story of the week, the Pontiac Sisters wanted a couch because they didn't have one in their apartment. So we got one out of the mission storage facility after MLC (not that exciting), then took it down to their apartment with the two district leaders who came to MLC with us (not that exciting). One of the district leaders knows how to pick locks, so with the Sisters knowledge that we were going to get them a couch (we didn't give them the details), we broke into their apartment--we made sure they weren't home--and set up the couch for them (pretty exciting). We also saw the member who researched bed bug info for us, and he told us that we had made a good decision keeping our couch!

I've been back on the FFTK (Fit For The Kingdom) grind, scoring a lot of good points lately! Lando knows that I'm finna be huge by the time I see him again.

Anyways, I love you guys, and hope you're having a good week! Let me know if there is anything I can do for you! And the long-anticipated arrival of the single that I'm dropping will be here faster than you know.

Love,
Elder Dallas Anderson
#CountdownToDrake #CountdownToDandy

The countdown is almost over. Don't hate on Drake.
#LastNameEverFirstNameGreatest

Props for the Pass-along Card

Hey Mom!

To all y'all waiting for my rap email to drop, you'll be happy to know that I'm working on it and have made some good progress with it. It probably won't be ready for another couple of weeks as I try to finalize everything, but it's coming! #CountdownToDrake And to those who don't know what the heck I'm talking about, my mom sent an email to me a couple of weeks ago totally hating on Drake, so I've decided to back my man Drizzy up with a killer email coming out in a couple of weeks, so stay tuned! #CountdownToDandy

Just sayin' though, that is some garbage that the Sisters in Monument could go the boys' hockey game, totally not fair in the slightest! There is a junior team here in Bloomington called the Thunder, and the Elders Quorum is going to the game, but the odds of us being allowed to go are very slim.

We did some more awesome service this week, Elder Bennett and I set up a group service project for all 10 missionaries here in the Bloomington/Normal area, and on Friday, all of us went into this warehouse and sorted out and labeled cans of food, and we put together bags of beans, it was a lot of fun. We worked alongside a small group of volunteers from a local Target, and the place we did the service at made a sign that said, "Welcome Target & LDS Missionaries," so that was pretty cool! Elder Bennett and I also went back to the WACC and put together more bags of food there for those in need. It's been pretty cool, because we've started to build a really good friendship with some of the workers there--now we're talking, and they ask us about what we do as missionaries, it's been pretty cool! We also got a snowstorm this week, getting 4-5 inches of snow, so we were able to shovel it for one of the members in our ward. Unfortunately, it's warmed up to the high 30s, so it's all melted away now...

Bri was at church this week, even though she was sick, so that was awesome! The Albrechtsens (our awesome Ward Mission Leader and Relief Society President) had a group of about 8 kids from ISU come over for dinner on Thursday, including Bri, four less-active members, and three active members as well (besides Elder Bennett and me), so that was pretty sweet! We've been seeing a lot of good success lately with the college kids down here, and we've been in contact with the institute teacher to try to recruit more as well, but even better than that, Elder Bennett and I discussed it and felt like we could get a YSA group going during the 3rd hour of church. We ran the idea past Bishop, and he was all for it, so hopefully we get that group going in the next couple of weeks.

Here's the cool story of the week: So Elder Bennett and I went to Panda Express with the Normal South Elders for lunch one day after service. I've been trying to hand out a pass-along card to the people that ring me up at the register lately, so I did at Panda and didn't think too much about it. About 30 minutes later, we get a text from our bishop telling us that one of the workers at Panda had called him and told him that we'd been there and that one of us had left their bag. It turns out that it was my bag at Panda, so we got it back, but that wasn't the cool part of the story. The cool part of this story is that I didn't have any form of identification or contact information in my bag, so the ONLY possible way that the worker could contact us is by going to mormon.org (this is where that pass-along card came in handy) and figuring out the contact information for the local bishop. So to all you people out there, you never know how far a little pass-along card can go.

Sorry I don't have a lot of cool things to report on this week, I did get to drive the trailer 300 miles, but that was the only crazy thing that really happened. Hopefully I've got some good stuff to talk about next week--we've got to pick up a couch for the Sisters in Pontiac this week, so maybe I'll have another good story to tell next Monday! I'll send pics of the apartment next week, we haven't finished our interior design yet.

Love you all, hope that you're doing well! 

Love,
Elder Dallas Anderson
#NothingWasTheSame (That's from Drake, BTW)

Finding the Believers and Freezing the Bedbugs

What Up!

So it was a great week here in the land of Normal! We'll start it off by talking about Bri, and how awesome she is: so she was at church this week, and she told us that she might be able to hook us up and get us onto the indoor practice field at ISU, which would be legit! Brother Silvey (Bri's soccer coach at ISU) had us over for a lesson, and he was fantastic during the lesson! Bri brought up a concern about how her family probably wouldn't be too thrilled if she got baptized, and he threw it down and said that she wasn't one to let fear get in the way, and at some point she would have to decide to stand up for herself and her beliefs or let her family dictate all of her decisions. It was an awesome lesson, and Bri's come a long way just since the time we Skyped her a little while back!

We were able to get involved with three different services this week: two of them were food pantries, where we either sorted and organized the food, or helped distribute it to those that are homeless, and the other one we sorted clothing that is going to be sold in a thrift store (possible Macklemore video coming soon). We met some really awesome people, and Elder Bennett and I have set up two different service projects for the 10 missionaries in the Bloomington/Normal area in the next couple of weeks, so I'm super excited for that!

Transfer calls were Saturday, and Elder Bennett and I are staying together, and only 3 missionaries are leaving the zone, so we'll pretty much have the same zone as this last transfer, which makes me super excited! It's currently 7 degrees outside (feels like -10 with wind chill), and Elder Bennett and I have to hook up a trailer to our truck so that we can drive to Joliet tomorrow for transfers with all of the luggage for the missionaries in the two Peoria stakes. I'm kind of wondering if the Lord put me in this area because he knew I could drive a truck...

We've been doing some good finding on the ISU campus now that school is back in session (I have the idea to start a hashtag on campus--which I think would be pretty sweet, and would catch on, but I'm going to run it by President first to see what his thoughts are). If you didn't know, ISU has the largest co-ed dorms in the U.S. One of the co-ed dorms has two towers that are both 25 stories tall filled with different dorm rooms. My companion and I snuck into that building this week, went to the top floor, and started doing some tracting. It was pretty weird, because there are tons of kids in the hall that just watch you tract, and I don't know if we'll do it again or not (if we even are able to get in again), but it was cool to say that we did it!

I had the chance to go on exchanges with one of the Spanish Elders this week, and we had a few lessons that day that were in 100% Spanish, so Dallas was just sitting around trying to follow the scriptures and lessons in English on his iPad, bc he doesn't know Spanish. #ComoSeDiceWorthless Anyways, we get to the last lesson (also all in Spanish), and there's this 2-year-old that's running around throwing his toys and making noise. So I say to myself, "Forget the lesson, I ain't helpin' there anyways! I'mma go play with the kid and try to keep him quiet!" So while the lesson's going on in the kitchen, I'm in the living room playing peek-a-boo and playing cars with Hector (the 2-year-old). We played for about 45 minutes until the lesson got over, and he was laughing and kept quiet the whole time! It was definitely a win-win situation: the investigator didn't have to feel super awkward with me just sitting there, I didn't have to feel super awkward just sitting there, and I got to play cars with a little kid! Freakin' legit! #ComeSeD...ForgetThatImPlayingWithCars

If you read my last email, you heard about the crazy couch-moving experience. This week, we didn't move any couches, but Elder Bennett and I were driving, and we saw a couch sitting on the side of the road (that's where people leave things for other people to take or the city picks it up as trash). We got out and examined it, because we kind of wanted a new couch for our apartment, and it is pretty legit--two recliners, cup holders, the whole shebang! So we load this thing into our truck and go to dinner, where we had the member do a little research for us on what temperatures are sure to kill any possible bed bugs (yes Mom, you'll be happy to know that I thought it out that maybe it was on the side of the road for a reason, I didn't just say it was a score immediately). We learned that bed bugs die after exposure to subzero temperatures for 2-3 days, and guess what? With wind chill, it's felt below zero since yesterday morning, and we've kept the couch outside all day and all night yesterday, and all day and all night today, so we've scored ourself a killer couch!

I'll let my swag do the rest of the talking for this email: check out the legit Bulls joggers (along with matching Bulls tee and Bulls beanie)! I've got more picks of swag coming in the future, but I thought the couch photo and the joggers pic might overload everyone with too much style, so I'll keep it there for this week.

Love,
Elder Dallas Anderson

#MrBrightside