2024: Discontinued Blog

 Dear Friends and Family,

As I find very few people reading this blog; I've decided to discontinue writing on blog.spot for the rest of our mission. I will continue to post on Facebook @ "Elizabeth Boud Anderson" for updates. I started this blog with the idea of creating a scrapbook and have found it will be easier to convert my "journal" writings into a book through other means. Message me if you have a great idea of how to do this!

Thank you for supporting and reading our blog; especially Bruce's cousin, Gerrolyn! We love our mission and will continue serving until the temple is completely finished. We plan on about another year.

We love you all and appreciate your friendship!

Lottie and Bruce

Happy New Year: HOME! Our Utah Visit

 

    Back in the arms of loved ones! We are home in Mendon for 2 weeks! It was wonderful celebrating New Year's Day with Ian & Rachel, Elise & Nick, Grandma Anderson, and the grandchildren. This is pure happiness to be with our family again! Happy 2024!

    We landed in Utah very late on December 29th. My dear brother, Tom Boud, came and picked us up at the Salt Lake Airport. We stayed overnight at his home in South Jordan. Tom was gracious enough to loan us a car to drive for the next two weeks; saving us from having to rent a car. Meg, Tom's wife, met us at the gate as she was headed off to Florida. Andrew, their son's wife just had a little girl in Florida. Meg was flying out to visit Andrew and Dominique and see the new baby. After going to bed at 02:00 a.m. we had a nice sleep from our journey. In the morning, we went and visited my brother, Jim and his wife, Linda, in Sandy. It was great to see them again and compare notes about loving Africa. Jim has built a school in Zambia for orphaned children and supplies them with food, shelter, teachers, and a home. He absolutely loves the African people and feels the joy we've felt from getting to know these humble and sweet people. We were able to show them some photos of our Zimbabwean adventures and the temple site.

    After Jim's, we were excited to go have lunch at Zupa's. Bruce was craving "lobster bisque" after a year of going without! I loved having my "nuts about berries" salad and the soup too. We then drove home excited to see our son, Ian, Rachel, and their sweet kids, Rocky and Rigby. As I drove into Cache Valley, it was good to feel we were home once more! What a blessing to be back in the arms of loved ones and feel like we were home. Ian is quite a chef and made some delicious bacon-glazed scallops for dinner. Sunday afternoon, Ian made us homemade pizza in his woodfire pizza oven. It was delicious! I'm eating way too much being back in America. We also went to see Bruce's mom, Doris. She had just moved into our little "Julia's cottage" next door. Doris was so ill and on hospice last May. We were amazed to see how well she looked and fully recovered from "near death".  She loves being back in Mendon and out of the assisted care facility. 

    Sunday it was nice to attend our old Mendon 3rd Ward and see our friends. I started crying when I saw my best friend, Karla Davidson sitting with her family. It was wonderful to rush up and hug my "sister" after the Sacrament meeting ended. We enjoyed hearing Lexie Coggins mission farewell. We also met a future Harare, Zimbabwe sister missionary, Sister Stoddard, who will be coming in February. We also visited Thayne and Susan, Bruce's brother's family, Sunday afternoon. We wanted to thank them for fixing up Doris's home and helping it to sale. They put a lot of love, sweat, and tears into repairing and cleaning it up including painting it. It sold in a week for 1.2 million. The irony is it sold to Ian's wife, Rachel's aunt, who is an Andersen. 

My baby girl's at last: Elise and Aria with Grandma Anderson, 2024.01.01

Ian made two delicious soups and I made homemade sweet rolls and bread sticks. We went and walked the loop up the Mendon's mountains with the Davidson's in the morning. It felt good to be alive again hiking up the mountain. Karla, Leslie, and I have hiked up our mountain loop for over 25+ years. It was so great to visit with them and share our experiences and catch up on our families. Karla is really like my sister instead of a friend. I am closer to her than my actual blood relatives.

4 Generations of Andersons, 2024.01.01

Stevie and Rocky like to cuddle

Bruce and mom, Doris, doing great independent in our Julia Cottage, 2024.01.11

Elise, Aria, and Nick Russo with their dogs, Bucky and Stevie, New Year's Day 2024

We enjoyed eating, opening gifts from Africa, letting the kids all pick out African print aprons, and playing games. Ian made homemade raspberry ice cream too. Wow, heaven! We just really missed Hunter and Ben's families. It's good to be home; but we miss Zimbabwe and our adopted boys are texting us daily, telling us they love and miss us too. Tomorrow night we're going over to Davidson's home to play games and have dinner with our close neighborhood friends. I also called my friend and fellow co-workers, Laura McGregor and Kimberli Hillyard from the NICU. We're going to catch up at lunch on Wednesday between the dentist, eye doctor, labs, and hair appointments.

    The second week, we stayed with Elise and Nick, but all of us caught the dreaded cold and flu bug. We took time to recooperate and enjoyed Russo's beautiful new basement. On Monday, Jan. 8th, we drove to Lehi and met with the previous Zimbabwe, Harare senior missionaries. It was a great reunion at Guy and Roz Peterson's home. We also made a visit to Pres. Judd's mother, Doris and brought "virtual hugs" back for our mission leaders. 

Above: Doris Judd with Sandy Whitlock. Below: Andersons, Petersons, Lewis, Kings, and Sandy, 2023.01.08

Mark & Cheryl Ferrin, dear friends from Eden, Utah. We had lunch with them twice in Ogden,2024.01.09 Perhaps our most inspiring visit was meeting our dear friends, Mark & Cheryl Ferrin, and reaping from their wisdom. They have served 5 missions, including mission leaders in the Philippines and area authority for mission leaders as an infield representative. They always gave great advice and sent us home with $50.00 in clean $1.00 bills to share in Zimbabwe.
It was great to attend the Logan Temple again!

We took Nick, Aria, and Elise out to P.F. Changs on our last night in Utah, celebrating Elise's next birthday on February 1st. Although we were all sick; we loved being with them! 2024.01.12

My beloved brother, "Dr." Tom, we spent the first and last night in his home in South Jordan, he gave me medical advice and prescriptions, let us borrow his car for 2 weeks while in Utah, and drove us to and from the airport. Thanks, dear brother; we love you! 2024.01.13

    

Christmas in Lynchburg and Tiny Tim's Wooden Toys

 

William, Isaac, Paul, Ruth, Elisa, and Jane Anderson enjoyed their African aprons. Susan, the Highland Ward Relief Society president in Zimbabwe made all our family members African print aprons. I also had her make skirts for the girls and vests with bow ties for the grandsons. It was a fun homemade gift that helped employee her also. 2023.12.26

Merry Christmas from Lynchburg, Virginia! It was fun to participate in William and Elisa's organized Christmas Eve and Day. Elisa had planned activities throughout the day. She homeschools the children and is well-organized. We frosted sugar cookies in the afternoon. We had their traditional meal of cheese fondue for Christmas Eve and read the scriptures from Luke, Mathew, and 3 Nephi's accounts of the birth of the Christ child. They really tried to bring the true spirit of Jesus Christ's birth into the season. Every morning in December besides scripture study, they read from the scriptures and add a nativity figurine to their creche. You could feel the excitement of the children before going to bed. They each wrote a letter to Santa and left him a plate of cookies and carrots for his reindeer.  Bruce and I were exhausted since our time clocks kept getting us up at 3 and 4:00 a.m. We went to bed at 8:00 p.m. in perfect happiness and bliss to be among family again.

Six a.m. was the appointed time to meet in Jane's room upstairs before coming down to see what presents Santa had brought the night before. I was proud of myself for sleeping until 5:00 a.m. It's hard to reset your internal time clocks. Isaac and Ruth were both up so we played a little game Isaac had creatively made, even though we had no idea of the rules. Isaac kept us informed. William and Elisa held a family prayer and scripture study before beginning the festivities. Once again, we were impressed by the structure and spiritualism of this little family and the patience of the children with mom and dad. The children lined up from youngest to oldest as they descended the staircase to the magical scene of Christmas tree lights and gifts below. Santa even brought Bruce and me a stocking of treats! Santa always leaves a note for the children explaining how he's watched their every move during the year and his impressions for the year. Elisa has incorporated a lot of "Rawlins" family traditions from her childhood. I asked William if he had any "Anderson" traditions. He said, "No", we always went to Grandpa and Grandma Andersons. We did however have "breakfast burrittos" the next day, an Anderson tradition from our home. We did instill a lot of traditions as far as a formal china dinner, Santa piling up everyone's individual presents, and reading the birth of Christ from Luke 2. We loved going to Grandpa & Ma Anderson's every Christmas Eve and getting spoiled with gifts and a nice fancy meal. We continued this tradition for years even after William was married and on his own. The children were very good at watching each of us open a present one by one. William and Elisa thoughtfully gave us a large box we opened with unfinished wooden toy cars for Zimbabwean children. Bruce was brought to tears by the thoughtfulness of planning this service for the children of Africa, who virtually have nothing. I couldn't help but feel ashamed at all the gifts and overabundance of material possessions we all have compared to our newfound friends in Zimbabwe.

Our favorite thing we brought home was a handmade African axe from Persuade's auntie Tata's kamosa. It belonged to Persuade's father, Amos, and has his initials carved on the handle. We bought it from Auntie Tata when we went plowing with the oxen. William collects old axes and is elated with the gift.

Ruth got rollerblades so Grandpa took her outside and taught her some tricks. It's a bit chilly outside but nothing compared to Utah and there is no snow here. 2023.12.25

William worked hard and smoked an 11 lb. brisket all day and night. The next morning the Trager smoker fire went out. He was concerned about ruining the expensive piece of meat. We called our friend, Alistair Gibson, in Zimbabwe. Alistair smokes meat at the market and is an excellent chef. He gave William some good tips and saved the day for our Christmas meal. The brisket turned out perfect and was very tender. William was happy about the success of the smoked meat. We enjoyed calling the kids both days and got to talk to everyone but Hunter & Katie. We hope they all had a very Merry Christmas. We also texted a lot of our friends and temple site workers in Zimbabwe. The Muchenje's uncle died and they had a funeral on Christmas Day. To many of these Africans, it was just another day without celebration or any gifts. Persuade bought a new tuck shop and is sleeping in it every night to prevent theft. His shop was open on Christmas Day just like any other day. Recently we explained the story of the nativity and showed some church videos of Jesus Christ's birth. It was something new to Persuade, being raised without Christ in his life he wasn't familiar with the story.

The day after Christmas, we enjoyed breakfast burritos and leftovers for lunch. We started our craft service project and all the kids helped sand our "Tiny Tim's" wooden cars. We also all oiled them and made faces to make them special for each African child. We've participated in giving out these special wooden toy donations through "Eyes for Zimbabwe" and they always bring delight to African children. It will be fun to bring some wooden cars we actually helped to finish. What a thoughtful act of service William and Elisa thought of for their visiting missionary parents. We had some friends of William and Elisa's come over Tuesday and help us assemble and paint the cars. Everyone got involved and they turned out cute.

Everyone helped to sand, oil, and paint these wooden cars; then the wheels were assembled. 2023.12.26

God Bless America and A White Christmas: Ruth's Baptism

Grandchildren at last! In the arms of loved ones in Lynchburg, Virginia with William's family, 2023.12.23

After a very long 15+ hour flight, ambien twice, and three movies, we made it the the USA! It was great to be back on American soil. I couldn't hold back the tears as we walked through customs. I kept singing, "God Bless America" in my mind and the tears flowed! We got through passport control and customs just fine. We put our carry-on luggage on in Cape Town so we only had backpacks to carry. We were grateful to see all our luggage made it, including 10 lbs. of mopane worms and spices, Taona Nkala gave us to bring to his brother in Idaho.

God Bless America! We made it! Bruce was so excited to have some Phillip's crab cakes in Atlanta, 2023.12.22

We landed in Atlanta at 07:30 a.m. and unfortunately had a very long layover until 4:30 p.m. We just wanted to be done traveling but were very grateful to be in the U.S.A. We patiently waited for our hour-long flight to Roanoke, Virginia.

We landed in Roanoke a little before 6:00 p.m. eagerly awaiting to see William, our firstborn son.
We landed in Roanoke and waited for our luggage at the baggage claim. William sneaked up to us and gave us a big hug. It was great to see our son again. William and Elisa graciously offered to let us come stay and enjoy Christmas with them. Most importantly, Ruth, our granddaughter, had been waiting since November to have a Christmas baptism and have both sets of grandparents in attendance. It was so wonderful to love on these sweet grandchildren again. We haven't seen William's family since March 2022 when Isaac was baptized.

Practicing for the baptismal musical number by the Anderson family, "A Child's Prayer".

Ruth's baptism was Saturday at 10:00 a.m. at the Lynchburg Chapel. It's great to be eight! Ruth's Grandma Teresa Rawlins gave a talk on baptism, William baptized his daughter, and Grandpa Anderson (Bruce) gave a talk on the Holy Ghost. Bruce was tearful as he shared personal and mission experiences and the Spirit was felt in the meeting. Ruth looked beautiful in her new white dress full of excitement, innocence, and faith. It was a special day.

After the baptism, we were treated to a Chik-fil-A lunch, Ruth's favorite. It had been a long time since I enjoyed some Chik-fil-A nuggets and special sauce. We woke up early Sunday morning trying to get used to the time change. We wake about 3:00 a.m. trying to go back to sleep. Unfortunately, both Ruth and Paul were both up vomiting. They had been sick back on Monday and luckily were well for the baptism but then the flu bug returned. Elisa stayed home with the kids while we attended a special hour  Christmas Eve Sacrament meeting of 3 wards.