Brady had a zone mission party on Monday, so we didn't get a letter until Tuesday.


It was awesome to talk to you guys on Sunday.  I feel so happy to see and hear that everything is good at home.  It was a little weird to come to life from the perspective of the tv.  But I really enjoyed it even if I cried through almost the whole entire thing.

Yesterday the party was pretty awesome.  We got there and played basketball and soccer.  We then broke the piñata and ate carne asada for lunch around 2.  Then we got to watch a movie.  From the emails from my friends I believe that everyone got to watch the same movie.  It was Star Wars-The Force Awakens.  It was pretty fun and I enjoyed it a lot.  All of the missionaries that have over a year and hadn't seen it were really excited.  It was pretty cool.  From there we played some volleyball and then had a white elephant.  I got some pretty cool (a little small) lion slippers.  They´re pretty alright.  Then we cleaned up and came home.  We did have some Elders from Panuco stay in our house because they weren't able to go home because it´s an hour and a half for them to get home.

I´m glad to hear that you guys had a great Christmas too.  I´m a little jealous of your breakfast caserole, but I did get to eat some pancake and cold cereal so I did enjoy that a lot.  I also ate some ice cream to finish off the night.

I am really grateful for all that the other people in the ward and in the family that they are so willing to support me on my mission.  I am so grateful that I can be out here serving God and doing the things that He would have me do.

I loved seeing the snow, It made me really happy (not as much as seeing you guys).  I am really happy about silverrush too.  That is so cool that you were able to raise all of that money in just 3 short weeks.

I am excited to get back to work today in the afternoon.  I loved the relaxing weekend that we had but I am anxious to get back into the swing of things.

Everything is great here.  I hope you have a great week and keep doing the things that you know are right.

I love you
Elder Brady Allred

More pictures! Check out the photos page.

The package has not arrived yet, but don´t worry, it´ll get here when it get´s here.

It´s ridiculously cold here too.  Last night it was supposed to get down to 9 degrees (Celsius of course) but it´s really cold with the humidity.  Luckily we don´t have the fog that soaks your clothes in seconds yet, but it´s really hard to dry clothing with the cold. We also have to hang up clothes in the house, but it´s really not big enough even though we have stuff in every room.

I am really looking forward to Christmas.  I have no idea why, but really I´m more excited about this Christmas than I ever have been in the past.  My companion is hating my excitement (I think he´s missing his family a lot, and in part a girlfriend) and he won't let me sing the Christmas hymns in companion study.  We stilll do about 3 times a week, but he doesn´t enjoy it.

I did get the testimonies and I really appreciate that.  I´ll print off some of them, and try to hand them out.

I´m excited to hear about the Silver Rush total.  It´s pretty exciting, and I´m glad all of the concerts went well and that the door looks just as good as ever.

This week was pretty good.  I´m really starting to love the work, even though it is still not going perfectly well.  We´re going to leave a few more investigators because they won´t stop drinking or doing drugs and they won´t come to church even when we talk to them like 15 times.  Yesterday the whole ward (with 2 sets of missionaries) only had 1 investigator and it was a family member of the bishop (the bishop is great).  When church started we only had about 30 people in the chapel, it did fill in though a bit by the end.

We had a Chirstmas party in the ward this week which was pretty good.  We had 15 investigators that came to this (and the other Elders had 8 investigators).  It started only an hour and a half late.  There was a nativity, a whole bunch of group performances and Santa came.  We did get to finish with dinner so that was good, but I like Dad´s Christmas parties better.

I am the ward pianist if I hadn't told you, I had to play and practice with like all of the groups for the party,  It was a bit of a pain taking time out of the work, but it improved their performance about 500%, because everyone here cannot hear the notes right.

This week on Friday we get to all come together as a Mission to eat Christmas dinner.  We´re all pretty excited to have all 150 missionaries together.  Then we get to play sports, watch a movie, and hang out as a zone on Monday, so we´re all pretty happy.

I was really happy yesterday that the Stake President got me out of speaking.  He went a little over time and so I did not end up speaking.  Hopefully they don´t move me to next Sunday, but we´ll see what happens.

I love the mission, and I´m really excited for Christmas.  I hope you have a great week and a Merry Christmas.

I love you
Elder Brady Allred

Dia Guadalupano (Day of the Virgin)
All of the Catholic´s are celebrating today, pretty crazy.

I don´t know how or why you shared the cold with me but I got it too. I´m just finishing getting over it, but mine was only for 2 days.  Hope you get well soon.

I´m still in the same area with the same people, Elder Marrufo.  6 more weeks and we´ll see what happens.

We had another baptism in Hidalgo this weekend, Lizbeth.  I couldn't go but it sounded like it went well.  I´ll ask for pictures.

I´m getting pretty excited about Christmas.  I don´t know why, but I´m still feeling the Christmas spirit and I bought myself a Grapefruit today because it reminds me of Christmas.

Yesterday we had Stake conference with Elder Castañeda.  He´s a 70. We can only go to the General session but his talk there was incredible and the bishop said that the other 2 were great as well.  He had us bring 60 investigators as a stake (We had 30).  He had them all stand up and then testified directly to them.  It was so cool.  I have never felt the spirit so strongly (besides one other time in my life) than when he said with tears in his eyes "I testify to you that what the missionaries are teaching you is the truth"  They felt it,
and there is no way anyone in the congregation did not.  He bore testimony so many times.  He told some incredible stories about the temple and repentance.  He said that it is not an effective church meeting unless we leave feeling like we need to repent or change something in our life.  The Stake president talked about how we need to repent.  Repentance is not just to stop sinning but to really change how you act and what you want.  It was a great Stake conference and I learned a lot.

Everything is going well we are starting to find a few more people to teach.  We have found a lot of drug addicts and drunks that say that they can hear the spirit when we speak and that they know that it is true.  But when we try to get them to do something they say no.  They hear the voice of God but they don´t follow the Good Shepherd just know that He is good.  It made me wonder how many times we do that in our life.  We know that Christ has all power and that the Church is true, but we have those things that we don´t want to change, or that we keep away from Him.  Here is a picture of our zone.  Elder Nixon back left, was the district leader but he went home today to West Jordan.  Hna Clark in the front center went home to Provo.  Everyone else stays.  (The picture did not actually attach, so hopefully he can get it to us next week.)

Hope you all have a great week.  We´ll keep going here and see what happens.

I love you
Elder Brady Allred

Where´s the Snow? 85 Degrees?

It´s still hot here.  I asked someone when the cold will get here, because occasionally we have a cold front they just laughed.  They said "Here, it´s really hot for ten months out of the year.  And then just hot for the other two months."  So I guess there will be no snow here for Christmas.

Pretty much nothing happened this week.  We worked everyday.  Found a few people to teach but nothing really happened.  We couldn´t find any of our remaining investigators so we´re hoping they were just on vacation this week.  Honestly I looked at my Journal to remember what happened this week.  Then I remembered that this week my journal took up only about 2 pages becuase nothing happened.  Usually it´s about 8 or 9 pages and some weeks 15.  so Yeah it was a pretty boring week.

Regardless, I´m enjoying my time here.  With 4 Elders in the ward we still eat together a few days out of the week so that is really fun. With Elder Martinez and Elder Button we laugh a lot.  They know how to work hard, but when we aren´t working they know how to enjoy thier time too.

I found out that Hidalgo is going to have 4 baptisms in the next few weeks of people that Elder Mondragon and I taught.  A family of 3.  Nataly and Brandon and their duaghter Melani.  I guess they finally decided to get married so we are pretty happy about that.  If I stay here (transfers next week) then I should be able to go.

Bishop Preza is really starting to do some missionary work.  He had 4 family members (Nephew, Brother in law, Grandkids) all come to church yesterday, separately.  We are starting to teach his sister.  We are very pleased with him.  His story is pretty good too.  He´s a convert of 4 years.  The day after getting sealed to his spouse (1 year after his baptism) he was called to be second counselor in the bishopbric and now he´s bishop.  He said he goes to every training or meeting that the stake has for organizations (YW YM, Relief Society.....) He´s a pretty awesome bishop that is really taking to the missionary work and helping us a ton.

Christmas day it sounds like we go to church and then go to any dinners that we are invited to.  Other than
that we stay home.  the 26th we get to play sports, watch a movie, and hang out with the zone, so we are pretty excited about that.

The Christmas devotional was pretty good last night, we only got to see about 20 or 30 minutes but we still felt the
spirit so that was great.

I´m glad to hear that the ward party went well.  About 90 people in an activity would be great, we get about 20. We do have about 150 peopleat church though, but nobody comes during the week.

Thank you for your support.  I´ll keep planting the seed while I look for the ones that other people have already planted.

Thank you for everything you do for me.  I love you so much and hope you have a very Merry Christmas.

Love
Elder Brady Allred