It's good to hear from you all this week.  I'm glad that you all had a great week and had lot's of spiritual experiences.  I'm glad to hear that you all enjoyed your variety of experiences.

This week was honestly a little bit rough.  Lots of ups and several downs.  We did find a few people that we are going to start teaching.  Last night we went with one of them, Marcos, and he really accepted the Book of Mormon very well.  The problem is that we can't pass with him again until Saturday.  We are going to use the cell phone to stay in contact with him this week.  We have an advantage over his Christian church for two very big reasons.  Our church is the true and living church, and it also helps that our church is closer to his house.  So maybe we will be able to help him come to church with us.

My street contacts are getting better now.  This week we had splits (we call them divisions) with our district.  I got to work with Elder Button (the elder that is the son of a friend of somebody, the one from Kentucky).  He is about to go home this transfer.  He has amazing contacts and I am trying to do it more like he does.  I hope to be able to do it because he has a lot of success.  I want to be able to have a very big teaching circle and we hope that this week we can put the work as our number one priority and find a lot of people to teach.  We are looking desperately for families so that we can teach, baptize, and then seal families.  It's a lot of work and it's not as easy as we want.

We are trying right now to have the members give away Books of Mormon to their friends, and we are hoping to be able to have a few references this week.  We have given away about 12 Books of Mormon this week and we are going to give follow up to see how it went.

We are also going to walk faster this week.  Elder Pizarro has a very relaxed attitude and I hope to be able to change that.  We are going to get home and be exhausted this week and I hope that we can be blessed with more success for doing that.

Yesterday Karen didn't show up to church.  We talked to her and even though she already passed her baptismal interview we decided that it would be best to move her baptism one week so that she can go to church one time more before getting baptized.  We want her to feel the spirit in the chapel so that she can understand why it is so important to go there, every single Sunday.

This week end I started a project for my study.  I am doing what President Nelson talked about in the General conference.  Looking for every scripture in the Book of Mormon that talks about Christ.  I am using the index and I have learned a ton in just 2 or 3 days. I highly recommend it, because it is incredible to read analyze and then mark those scriptures.  It would be a great project to do before you all go back to school in less than a month.

Love,

Elder Allred

(I normally try to edit out the typos from Brady's letters.  I decided to leave them in this week.)

please wish Conner and grandma a happy birthday for me, and anyone else that you cn think of.

This keyboard really stinks and not a lot happened this week so this letter will be a little bit shorter.

Flores is about the same size as Ebano, but it feels about 10 times smaller.  It is amazing what public transport will do for an area.  I love the buses here.  they save me so much time and energy, but we still walk plenty.  the ward has more members that come to church than we do. It was incredible to see a full sacrament meeting yessterday.  we do need to work quite a bit on reeverence and recognizing the real importance of the sacrament.

talking about the Sacrament.  this month in the Liahona (probably in tthe new era) it talked about how we can take the sacrament better.  and irealized that we should honestly remember the Sacrament every day if we are going to realy take the sacrament onn sunday.  it means so much mor tome taking the sacrament when I really think about Christ during the week and really repent of all of my eerrors during the week.  I invite youu all to study the Atonement this week and try to undersstand how ithelps youu personally.

i also testify of what mmom said.  We really do just go through the motions in the church.  but i invite you all do try to do the things for the right reasons always.  Maybe a good study and applicationn of Moroni 7 would be a great starting place.  and then follow up with Alma 5.  I think that it will change you.

elder pizarro is bolivian, he is a recent convert of a little more than a year and a half, so he has a lot of great questions about the doctrines.  I`m glad that he allready finished his training so i know that he already has the basics down and I am helping him to answer a lot of his questions about...well about anything that you cn think of.  I have honestly learned so much in these 10 months and i keep learning more every day.  Study the scriptures daily or you will fall away from the church, if not physically then spiritually.

He's really lovable and likes to talk to the people, so I am going to take advantage of that to be able to get me in nthe habbit of talking to people.

we have a ton of exmissionarie inn the ward that are willing to work, but we just need to get them to do it for themselves, i am going to see how we are going to do that.  i do see a grand potential for working with members here in the ward.

The house is iin much better condition now than it was last week.  We got out of our water bill debt, bought a fryinng pan, and got rid of most of the dust that was on the floor.  It`s now a vey different house.

We should have a baptism next week.  we are working with Karen and teaching her.  She is almost readdy and wwe are exctited.  after her baptism we have the goal to look for a family to baptize in August.  wee are going to look hard because we have nobody else in our teaching circle.  we left a ton of investigators this week that have 4 months in teaching and haven't gone to church still.  it hurt my companionn`s feelings, but we would waste a lot of timme if we keep ogining with them more than once a week.  we`ll see whaat we`ll do this week and we hope to find a few families to teach.

i amm sorry for thee horrible spelling and grammar.  it`s ont my fault.  tHis keyboard is horrible. 

i love you all and hope that you can keep doing thinngs tahat will help you get closer to God.  if youu donn`t want to do faammily history work then please do it for me.  don`t forget to pray and read the scriptures everyday.  and try to realaly understand the sabbath day observance.  it will change your weeks.

LOve,

Elder Allred

Change is great.  It was about time for some sort of change.  I didn't really care whether I went or my companion or both of us, or even if we stayed together but in another area.  I just wanted some thing to change.  And I am not in Ebano anymore.  Back to Victoria.  We'll see if I can last a while here this time.  I am in Flores Ward which is right next to Carrera so I do know a bit about the area.  We hope to be able to animate the members after some other bad experiences that they have had with missionaries.   I am going to be with Elder Pizarro.  He has three months in the mission field and has one transfer in Flores already.  He's excited and we already knew each other because he was serving in Panuco before he came here to Victoria.  We are hoping to have a lot of success here.

Well, My companion did stay in Ebano, I don't know what he's going to be able to do with that.  Seberiano lost a lot of excitement for the Gospel and the church when I told him that I was going to go.  He actually said "Oh! I guess we'll postpone the baptism then" and then he walked out of the church.  Hopefully my companion can find him and explain to him that the church is still true even though I'm not there.

Perla didn't go to church yesterday because she got sick.  I did go to say goodbye.  Hopefully she will decide to get baptized.  She still won't make the decision.  I hope that she decides to follow the example of Jesus Christ and that she can know that the church is true as well.

The pictures that I sent are from our District.  I guess there must have been an angelic ministration behind us or maybe it's a sign that we are going to be translated.  Maybe it was just a window.  But it's the picture that I got before we had to go running to get to the bus on time.  I will send more pictures when my companion sends me the few that he got.  We also took pictures with the Morales Family.  I forgot to take pictures with the other people that we visited but I will try to remember better here and I'll send more pictures.

I love you all and hope that you have a great week.  I know that the church is true and that we have the fullness of the Gospel that the other churches don't have.  They all have a part of the truth but they are missing the authority and at least part of the truth.  Thanks to Joseph Smith and the Book of Mormon all of those parts that were missing have already returned to the earth.  Like President Monson said "If you do not have a firm testimony of these things, do that which is necessary to obtain one. It is essential for you to have your own testimony in these difficult times, for the testimonies of others will carry you only so far. However, once obtained, a testimony needs to be kept vital and alive through continued obedience to the commandments of God and through daily prayer and scripture study."

I know that he is the prophet of God and that if we follow his instructions we will be able to make it through these tough times.

Elder Allred

I´m glad to hear that you are all enjoying your warm summer so much.  I am grateful for the rain that we have been getting.  Supposedly it is the rainy season right now for about 3 weeks and then it heats back up again for the Canicula, the 40 hottest days of the year (The catholic beliefs and traditions are really fun.  It´s hot for these days due to San Isidro Tadeo, who knows why but I´ll let you know if it is true or not), and then comes the real rainy season.  But last year that second rainy season never got here (Because I was already in the mission field a year ago during the rainy season).  So that's my general idea of the weather forecast.  And then we'll just repeat the whole year all over again.  And then I'll come home and dry up and be really cold.

So we are always sweating, it's fun but I think that we almost do get used to it.

This week we decided to follow President Ramirez's council.  He said that if the members don't want to help us then we are going to keep doing the missionary work while trying to help them want to help us.  And so we started doing the missionary work for ourselves and backed off a little bit on trying to get their help.  And we had a relatively good amount of success.  We talked to more people in the streets, set up a lot of appointments and then had a lot of those appointments fall through.  So we walked a ton.  We did have a lower sacrament attendance yesterday but the good news is that we are in the process of looking for more people to teach.

Seberiano also came to church yesterday.  He went with the TJ's (Spanish JW's) because he thought that the members weren't actually going to go to the conference.  So we talked to him a few times this week. He is reading the Book of Mormon and I think that he is enjoying it.  Our biggest problem with him is that his answers to our questions and his asking questions is almost impossible to understand.  My companion and I can't describe it because it literally has no sense what he is talking about most of the time.  I think that he tries to use examples to impress us but his examples make absolutely no sense whatsoever.  So we are looking for a way to find a Urim and Thumim to be able to understand him.  But we keep going and he seems to enjoy everything and maybe he will really get baptized on the 15th.

Perla is also going well.  She did enjoy the conference last Sunday, but we do have some news about her.  She and Roberto broke up Sunday after the conference.  We were trying to figure out how to help them live the Law of Chastity so that it wouldn't take a year and Roberto took care of that.  They fought a bit and then decided to break up, and they are not going to get back together it seems.  So that makes it so that Perla is living the Law of Chastity and she is now praying to know what she should do with Roberto and if she should get baptized.  She fasted yesterday and hopefully that helped her make up her mind.  Sometimes it's hard not to tell them the truth about what they should do and we have to let the spirit tell them, but in the long run it is so much better if they can learn for themselves what they should do.

I want to adopt Elder Maceda as an Allred.  He had a great Allred moment this week.  We went running for the house and I'm sorry to say that he only made it half way through the bedroom before all of his fruits and vegetables decided that it was time.  He'll make a great cousin or something, but I think he's spent too much time with me now.

I also pulled out my English scriptures yesterday to show my companion. We have more references and information at the end of our scriptures than they have in Spanish, about 4 or 5 times over.  Take advantage of it in your studies.  We have more information there than you can imagine.

I know that when we overcome our trials is when we progress most and learn more about how to be like Christ.  Don't forget to trust in Him to overcome the problems that you are all facing.  Make sure you read the Book of Mormon everyday.  If you don't then Satan will always win the fight.  Do family history and always love one another as Christ loves you.

I love you and hope that you all have a great week this week.

Elder Allred