This week was only slightly more eventful than last week.  But I do have to admit that I did think about Wolf Creek quite a bit on Saturday.  We were doing a service project for a less active Brother and I think that my mind took advantage of the physical activity to take a break thinking about the nice, green, and cool mountains.  The idea of the coolness was a very relaxing thought.  and I just told myself, "Next year you will be going through the same experience. But! in one year and two weeks you will be there.  So JUST WAIT!" and so I will wait another year and two weeks and not worry about it.  But, it was great to see several pictures of people and scenery.

I would like to comment that Kira is a lot taller, Zander´s hair is a very different color, and I had never noticed so much the eye colors of all of you.  And that was sad to hear about Brian and I will be praying for him as well.  It was good to see a few pictures of loved ones and I feel ready to give it all again.

This week we worked a bit more with Steve.  We invited him to get baptized and he accepted a baptismal date for September 2nd.  And then he told his friend Alan to tell us no.  He said it made him feel uncomfortable to tell us no.  But at the end of everything he is not going to get baptized for at least 2 or 3 weeks until he feels like he knows more (that´s what they always tell us).

Daniel came to church again.  We are trying to help him understand that Green Tea is not good for you because God said so.  But that's not working to well.  We are in the difficult process of getting him to start reading the Book of Mormon again to be able to strengthen his testimony of Joseph Smith and that he was a prophet when he received the Word of Wisdom from God.  But so far he hasn't read much of anything.  We were able to get him to church again after a very serious talk about faith (thank you Alma 32, it got my point through that if he didn't read or go to church he was basically uprooting his tree of faith)  I also had the great experience of being able to promise specific and much needed blessings for him and his family if he went to church.  I have never felt such certainty about the blessings of Sabbath day observance as I did in that moment when I knew that he needed those blessings and I knew that I could promise them.

We also had a very pleasant surprise yesterday.  We finished the sacrament and as I went back to my seat I saw the Elders from the other ward motion that I needed to go out.  I told my companion to come, follow me, and he followed.  We got out there and to our surprise we saw a man that we had contacted the other day waiting for us with his mom.  He apologized for getting there late but they came in and enjoyed the last 2 and a half hours of the church block.  We were remarkably surprised seeing that he was half drunk the other day when we talked to him.  But we are going to work on that and I personally think that he will progress and we will help him to stop drinking and smoking.  Some one once said "I love it when the chapel smells of cigarette smoke"  I guess we fulfilled that dream yesterday.

My companion really thought that he was going to get transferred so lucky you.  He took a ton of photos last week so I will send you a few.

We are going to play No Coma a Pedro today in a family night.  for those of you who don´t speak Spanish that's Don"t Eat Pete.  It's my first attempt so hopefully it goes over well.

Wow I feel really good now.  It was great to hear about your week and I feel super excited for this week.  Make sure to send some good pictures of wolf creek every week ;) and the family too if you want.

I love you all so much.  It's great to see that you are all growing up and enjoying so much.  I hope you all work super hard in school this year and have a great time.  Please be great examples of the believers and do everything for the right reasons.  The church is true and God and Jesus Christ live.  Read the book of Mormon and you will know that it is true.  I love you.

Elder Brady Allred

I'm excited for the Bow Hunt.  I want to see lots of pictures and lots of people.  Tell them all that I say hi.  I'm also excited because it means that the next bow hunt I will at least be there for the last part.

So I did live through a hurricane.  Technically.  So we are way inland and the hurricane took another route but it did rain quite a bit on Thursday.  There was a mission wide alert and we were all under house arrest on Thursday and we were going to be there on Friday as well.  But the hurricane took another route and didn't hit us so hard.

This week Daniel and us fought about Green tea.  He says that it is good for us and we said that it isn't.  It didn't matter how much I testified we couldn't get him to feel.  So we told him to pray about it and ask what God thinks.  Hopefully he can come to a conclusion with God.

We also talked to Steve this week and he is going to accept to get baptized.  Hopefully the 26th he will get baptized.  He has gone to church several times now and is ready for the water.  

A young adult contacted us today and wants us to teach her.  Hope to tell you good things next week.

Nothing else has happened.  I love you and have a great week.  Sorry I ran out of time.

Love Elder Allred

P.S. The pictures are of a Taco night that we had in home, the rain storm from inside our house.  We couldn't go outside to take pictures because President would have been angry, and I also want to mention that we got really wet Friday morning from 1 cloud that floated over and drenched the city for about 20 minutes.

Other than that we honestly just talked to a whole bunch of people and got rejected a ton.

This weekend we did have a successful baptism.  Karen got baptized Saturday and yesterday I got to confirm her a member of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter day Saints.  It was a pretty unique experience one that I hope that neither she nor I will ever forget.  We have a lot of hope for her and I think that she will be a good loyal member.

This weekend nobody came to church and really all of our plans fell apart.  We had a lot of hope for these next few weeks but really all of that just fell apart yesterday.  Daniel couldn't come to church because he was babysitting his mom.  Francisco flat out didn't show up.  And all of the other investigators  that we had had a little bit of hope didn't show up either.  So we have no baptismal dates.  Several people told us that they aren't interested any more and we couldn't help them to change their minds.

We also got to do another service project on Saturday.  We cleaned up a lot (a lot as in a piece of land) and cut down a ton of really tall grass.  I'd say that I'm starting to get the hang of using the machete, and I put on band-aids this time so I didn't get a single blister.  A young man named Alan helped us and he almost cut off his finger with the machete, I had much better luck than that.

Yesterday we started talking to a less active sister and we were planning on baptizing her younger daughter Fernanda because they had told us that she had just turned nine.  The bad news for us is that she just turned 8.  The good news is that we are still going to help her mom to keep coming to church and we are still going to be partially involved in the baptism.

We also got to go to Tampico on Tuesday.  I'll just say that it was a horrible experience.  We got up at 5:00 am and ran to the bus station.  Took a 3 and a half hour bus ride and got  to Tampico at 10:17 (leaving Victoria at 7:00, so we did get there a little fast) and then I went and  signed 3 papers to renew my visa and then we ran to the bus station (this time in the literal sense) and at 10:50 we were on our way back.  We were in the offices for about 15 minutes and then 3 and a half hours later we were back in Victoria.  We had cancelled lunch and then we had to reschedule it when we got back on the bus.  It was a crazy day.

We also contacted a reference that reminds me a ton of Uncle Ed.  I will say that he has the same face, the same teeth, the same way of talking.  The only difference is that Luciano is just a little bit shorter, a little bit older, and speaks Spanish.  He was talking and I was thinking, I swear that I've talked to someone who talks like that and that looks like that and then I realized that it was Ed.  We talked to him twice and we aren't going to go back much more because it seems that he has a mental illness that impedes his learning and his memory.  For example he told us the same information about 7 times in 15 minutes about his job and his life story.  It was word for word the same.  And then he asked us on Thursday "What are you going to do tomorrow for Sunday of the Holy Week?" we told him that Friday was not Easter and I have never seen anyone so confused in my life.

We are going to work hard this week and we hope to have a lot more success.  we are going to enjoy all of the heat for these next few weeks.  You don't stop sweating here, but It makes me appreciate more the AC every night and the thought of snowmen in the back yard.  But we keep going.

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

Elder Brady Allred

This week was crazy.  We walked a ton and we talked to a lot of people.  This week we worked really hard and did have a ton more success.  We received an assignment from President Ramirez to look for, teach and then baptize a family in August and the good news is that we found two promising families this week.  One of them is the Cifuentes Family. We stopped when we saw them outside and when we said "Good morning" they actually invited us in and asked us to tell them what we do.  They gave us lemonade and we had a good 15 minute talk.  For those of you that have even the faintest idea of missionary work in Mexico in the 21st century you know that this is not normal.  We talked about the Family Proclamation and prophets and they invited us to come back today at 7:00.  They couldn't come to church because while we were there their guests (family) arrived and are going to be there for a few days, but they do want to talk to us.  hopefully we can extend a baptismal date and they will be willing to accept it.  It is a family of 5, but only 4 of them are old enough to get baptized.

The other family is a little less promising, but I still have a lot of hope for them.  It is the family of a man called Jesus (that name is ridiculously common). He has his wife and 2 kids that live with him.  We hope to be able to find them all together this week and to be able to share a very spiritual lesson with them. 

Yesterday a man by the name of Daniel finally came to church.  He has about 6 months in teaching but has not gone to church in about 2 months.  We haven't been working a lot with him.  We have pretty much just been waiting for all of his health problems to go away so that he could come to church.  Now that he came we also put a baptismal date with him.  He already knows everything but we both thought it would be good if he could go to church 2 more times before getting baptized. He is checking to make sure that he is not going to go to a conference for Herbalife first, but if not then he will get baptized the 19th of August.

We are hoping to have a few more baptismal dates in August next week including these families.  We have been working really hard and our bodies are feeling it.  We hope not to get too tired but we are going to give it our all.  We are getting a long better and I would say that as a companionship we have a lot of trust and confidence.  Hopefully we can get a lot of work done that way.

I had a really cool experience yesterday.  The other day we contacted a man that is about 50 years old.  He works as an albañil (pretty much a construction worker, gardener, yard remodler, or what ever other type of work that you can think of). He told us in the contact that he can't even read and he really didn't show much interest.  We got there yesterday to the appointment and we started talking about him and his hopes and dreams, his family and his work.  Trying to get to know him and figure out why he needs the gospel.  We were really not all that much in the conversation.  I asked a question about his grand kids and he started to tell us about them.  In that moment I had a very interesting impression or revelation from the spirit.  It reminded me a lot of the talk that president Eyring gave in the priesthood session.  He said that one day while he was bishop the police called him and said that they had just arrested one of his members.  It was a recent convert that had crashed his car into the bank while he was drunk.  When the security guards pointed their guns at him all he said was "Don`t shoot! I`m Mormon!"  He said he was going to give him what he deserved  but when he sat down in front of him he heard the spirit say, "I`m going to let you see him how I see him."  Then he saw him as a son of God that had decided to change his life and join the church.  Well when we were there in front of him and he was talking about his grand kids I saw him as a son of God, as someone that had decided to follow Christ and come to Earth, I saw him as someone who has problems but I knew that the atonement could help him, and then I realized that if I never invited him to get baptized he would never receive the blessings of the atonement in his life.  He would never receive peace that comes only through repentance and forgiveness, he would never receive the fullness of the blessings of heaven if he were not a member of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter Day Saints, and I knew that I had to offer it to him.  So as we talked I moved the subject to baptism and then I invited him, he energetically accepted, and then after a little more explaining he accepted a baptismal date for September 3rd.  And the change that I then saw in his eyes made it all worth it.  it seemed to me like if a light had turned on inside and then I think that he felt the Spirit, only when we exercise agency correctly can we feel the spirit, and I think that he felt it and it changed him.  He accepted to try to read and we are going to go back to visit him on Wednesday.  It was a moment that marked me and I hope to try to see the other people that we teach in the same way.

I'm excited for what's ahead.  I'm glad to hear that you are all having such great experiences.  Don't forget to do Family History work and to go to the temple the most you can these weeks before school starts.  Read the scriptures everyday.  The prophet told you that you have to do it.  I love you and I'm excited to see what the next 13 months have to bring.  I love you and pray for you everyday.  And it was a relief to hear that Grandpa Hash is doing well.  I have prayed a lot for him.

I love you and am so glad to know that we are an eternal Family.

Elder Brady Allred