This week was great. We worked really hard an found a ton of people to teach. Hopefully some of them can progress and we will be able to see some baptisms in the next couple of weeks.  Hopefully we can keep up the hard work.

I hope that all of you have been reading the Book of Mormon, praying and sincerely taking the sacrament.  I hope you all have a great week this week.

Did you read the conference talks?????  They are really great.

Love,

Elder Allred

These weeks I have started reading the conference talks from all of the Liahonas (or Ensigns for those of you that live in Utah and are spoiled with three church magazines instead of just one).  I am learning a ton and I am trying to write down some of the most powerful quotes for my investigators to be able to share some of the words of our modern day prophets to accompany our Book of Mormon prophets.  This was one of my favorites that I read this week end.

www.lds.org/general-conference/2013/10/i-will-not-fail-thee-nor-forsake-thee?lang=eng

It is a great talk. Read it , listen to it, and meditate it.  Look for one of the Ensigns from one of the recent conferences and read some of the talks.  They are our modern scripture.  It will strengthen your testimony of modern prophets, modern revelation, and modern priesthood power, and more than anything it will strengthen your testimonies of our Savior Jesus Christ.  Look for some talks and print them and share them with your friends.  Or give away some of the Ensigns, New Eras, or Friends to your non member or inactive friends.  That is a very simple, cheap and powerful way to preach the gospel.

This week was really rough in the work.  We didn't have much success and we got really tangled up in a lot of things that weren't really all that important.  But we have recommitted ourselves and I have honestly asked God to help me be better this week and I am going change.  I hope that you can all find something that you need to be better in and to do it. And I really hope that you have all be reading the Book of Mormon everyday.  If it wasn't enough that the Prophet of God told us to read it last conference, about 6 or 7 of His living apostles told us that we need to do it too.

Sorry Mom and Dad that I didn't write as much to you this week, but I was writing to my siblings because they all wrote to me this week, which hasn't happened in a long time and I told them each some things to do and stuff.  But thank you so much for what you each have done for me.  I hope that you are enjoying the school year and if there is anything that you want help in, or if you have a question I am more than willing to help you all out.

And one comment before I finish.  We are working with some great families and we are hoping that they can all progress in these weeks.  It is so great to get to know these great people and to be able to work with each of them.  I'm learning to love serving them and teaching them and I hate when I am not able to do everything perfectly to be able help them. When I mess up I feel horrible.  But I am so grateful to see that I am able to change and be forgiven of my mistakes.  I hope that some of these wonderful people can move forward on their paths towards covenants.  I hope to do my best to help each one of them, and hopefully there will be more fruits next week. Even though I know that outward fruits are not always the best sign of inward success.

I love each one of you so much and I hope the best for all of you in this week and every day.  I love you.

Elder Allred

Happy Birthday to everyone that has one this week.  Especially Jakon and Kira.  17 and 15.  Be sure to act mature and to be good people this year,

It's great to hear that you are all staying so busy.  I hope that it can stay that way.

This week  was really great.  It felt really good to finally have a companion that likes to work as hard as I do.  When it's hard for me to want to work he helps me keep going, and when he gets discouraged I'm there to help him to keep going too.  There are some great people in this area and a ton of potential for the coming weeks and months.  Hopefully we can keep everything moving and achieve a lot here in Lomas.

The ward is really great I got to know a ton of really great people this week and the whole ward is really willing to work hard with us.  I think that this week the members must have asked us for at least 15 Books of Mormon. It was something so weird, because they asked us without our asking them.  That is something that has never happened before. But I think that some really good Elders were working here and got a really good system going with the members.  Hopefully we can take advantage of that and we can help each one of the members and families to keep giving away Books of Mormon and preaching the Gospel.  They really obey the prophet in his saying "every member´s a missionary."

We had a family come to Church yesterday, the family Hernandez.  The missionaries have been teaching the family for about 2 weeks. They are neighbors of a recent convert called Guillermina.  They came to church for the first time yesterday.  The dad, the mom, and their 3 kids, (2 of which are 8 years old or older).  So we are hoping to help them progress and hoping that they are going to be prepared to get baptized on the 28th of this month. We have faith in the planning that we did last week. We were planning and trying to get to an agreement on how many people we would be able to help get to the waters of baptism this month.  We were talking about it and decided to pray.  We still didn't think the same thing.  We talked a little more and prayed again.  Still not the same.  And then we did it one more time and we both felt the spiritual confirmation that we would be able to baptize 5 people in the month of October. So we are working to be able to bring to pass that revelation that we received.  I think that that is the definition of faith.  Find out what God wants for us and then working so that it can be true, and I think that humility is very closely related with that.

Humility is not so much that I am humble before my companion or my parents or anything like that, although true humility will a lot of times be reflected in those aspects too.  Real humility is that two people will be sufficiently humble to talk about an idea and then praying about it. Or being humble before God and then doing what He wants us to do.

Thank you for everything and I love you all so much.

Elder Brady Allred

I got changed again.  What a surprise!!  I am now in Lomas, Victoria (ward, and stake)  I am with Elder Melanson.  He's from Lehi,Utah.  I sure hope you don't need a map to find where that is.  He has 15 months.  I'm super excited to learn from him seeing that he is a really great missionary and has a lot of experience with other great missionaries.  Finally someone that can teach me more about how to work hard!!!!!!

So that means that I left Daniel, Karen and Rebeca there in Flores to keep trying to go to church. I honestly am a little bit sad that most of the converts that I have had are not going to church.  I learned today that Frederico (from Hidalgo, Madero, my first area) is still super active.  He's blind and mentally impaired but he's the only one that is still active, besides Daniel who came to church yesterday.  We are still trying to help the other ones to come back and find the church again, but that is really a lot harder than retention.  Retention is easier than reactivation, every time.

So we had an eventful General conference.  We got there on Saturday and to our surprise the projector had been stolen.  Somebody had set it up the night before in the sacrament room, instead of the high security room that all of the churches have here.  That's where they guard all of the technology.  And every door in the church has a lock.  But to our surprise somebody had left it out and somebody else opened one of the windows (they broke the lock) and stole the projector and broke the door of the other bishop's office.  In the bishops office they didn't find anything of value and tried to open the security room.  But let me say, the church knows how to make a high security room.  It's impossible to open without the crazy keys that they use for those doors.

So the consequence of that was that we didn't see the first session of the conference, we only got to hear the last part of the talk of Jefferey R Holland, thanks to the modern technology called the cell phone, and we saw most of the second session.  And then they worked out a temporary replacement and that worked everything else out for us, for Sunday.

But other than that the conference was super great.  I felt a lot of love and a great message of repentance and forgiveness.  I honestly recommitted myself to study the Book of Mormon with more prayer.  I hope not to hurt anybody's feelings, but it is a lot harder for me to find time to read the Book of Mormon in the mission than at home. At home I could do it at 11 or 12 at night, but here I can't do that.  So I have missed a few days, but I have recommitted to never miss another day and to study it more than just read it.  Honestly it is a very true book and with the spirit of pray anyone can get to know Jesus Christ a whole lot more.

I'm super excited to be here and I'm excited for what is to come in these weeks that are on their way.  I am glad for what I've learned and I hope to apply it and have a lot of success here in Lomas.

I love you.

Elder Brady Allred