This week was a really rough week with a lot of ups and downs as well.

We had a great afternoon last week.  We looked for some inactive members for a while and then we visited some recent converts.  It was a pretty normal day.

We continued working this week with the members.  Every single day we had at least one member of the ward accompany us to at least one lesson. It was great and honestly we saw great reactions from the investigators.  They respond a little bit more to the experiences of someone that has gone through Missionary Lessons to get baptized and that has a full life of experiences.  There is honestly a lot of power when there is a member present in the lesson that you can't find without them.  It adds a third, and even more convincing witness, to the truth of the things that we are teaching.  And it is also the best way to find new people to teach because the members are often very respectable and so when they introduce us to their neighbors the people seem to accept us better.

Once again I got to the bus station late for the trip to Tampico for the Leadership council.  It was horrible to go late AGAIN.  I have no Idea how that has happened twice now.  I think I am going to be better in getting there early from now on.  I have already made a lot of changes this week to avoid similar situations. But it was kind of unique to be alone for 4 and a half hours that day.  It did give me a good chance to talk to the people sitting next to me and some of them were very receptive to the message.

Nobody went to church again. Saturday night we had 3 families that had told us that they were going to go to church, but come Sunday morning nobody showed up and nobody answered their phones.  This time we went with one of the families in the afternoon and they told us that their sister in law fought with her brother and then left with the kids so they had to take care of that.  Something always happens like that.  A few weeks ago the investigators that were going to go to church had their washing machine explode Sunday morning.  And if it's not that then somebody has to be throwing up or in the hospital.  Who knows why but its giving me a lot more patience.

That is our little stand that we put in the flee market
close to our house.We gave away a ton of stuff there.

We are still teaching the same families.  The Family of Zenia is starting to do their commitments a bit.  The Hernandez family doesn't drink any more and Brother Hernandez is still reading the book of Mormon.  Antonio and Laura that I told you about a few months ago stopped smoking but haven't done anything else.  The thing that makes me most happy is that I know that every step forward is one step closer to covenants with God.  At least there is a little bit of progress, even if not that much. 

I hope that this week we can have a great spiritual experience with one of those families or somebody else at least that can help these people to come closer to God and to be better than they were before.  I hope to see someone in the church building next week.

I also learned another great lesson this week.  God will always work through imperfect servants even though this work is so important.  Sunday we got to church and started getting everything ready and guess what.  There were no sacrament cups.  So we started church 20 minutes late and the sacrament was still not ready and the cups weren't even there when we started.  It made me appreciate more that we, as imperfect mortals, will always be able to do a good enough job for God.  The only job that He had for us to do that had to be done perfectly was accomplished but the only One that was perfect.  He doesn't hope that imperfect people do a perfect job, He just expects the best that we can give.  I am so grateful to Christ who makes up the difference. There is no undone job that will stay unaccomplished at the end of everything. There is no broken heart that will not be healed and no tear of sorrow that will not be made up by 100 tears of joy.  I know that if we do the bet we can everyday to do what He asks of us it will always be enough.

Thank you for everything. Keep working hard and apply the Atonement of Jesus Christ in your lives everyday and it will all be better

.  

I love you. 

Elder Brady Allred

This week we got to work a lot with the members.  Homar one of the recent converts in the ward is really excited with his calling. The assistant to the ward mission leader.  And considering that the ward mission leader is inactive, that means that Homar is basically the ward mission leader.  We have been doing a lot of coordination with him and we are now going to have members accompanying us in almost every single day.  That will be pretty cool.  We are hoping that the members can help us to reactivate some of the less active families in the ward and then we are going to go for the inactives that only have part of the family baptized.  Hopefully that way we can find some references.

I'll tell you that I am really tired.  When the Elder went home his companion got changed to another zone.  And he was one of the district leaders, so me and my companion have had to fill in.  We are doing a lot of work to put the area book in order so that everyone that comes after us knows where to keep working.  We have been working a lot with that every night.  And beyond that we have been trying to talk to more people in the streets. It's hard. Sometimes you just don't want to talk to anyone and you feel like everyone that you talk to is just going to reject you, so I'm trying not to judge.  God is no respecter of persons, and I don't want to be because I am doing His work. I am trying to get over that.

We have been working with 2 families more than anyone else.  The Hernandez family that I was telling you about a few months ago.  We have been teaching them a lot and the dad is reading the Book of Mormon and he loves it, which is great because it took 3 months to get him started,  but as soon as he grabbed it he was hooked.  His sons are willing to listen and the three of them are willing to get baptized.  Now we have to work a bit more on his wife.  She likes us, and is willing to talk to us but she is really difficult, and she always has a lot of excuses. Hopefully we can help her to have real intent.  The husband is willing to get baptized if God answers his prayer, but we just have to help Sister Hernandez to get over her doubts.

We have also been working a lot with the Porras Family. They are some investigators that I was teaching when I got here to Lomas, but we only every found Sister Porras and she never really had all that much interest.  She likes us too but she doesn't like to read and she hasn't gone to church in years. But we found Brother Porras at home one day and found out that he does like to learn about the church and seems to have a good idea of what we teach. He loves to read. We just haven't been able to get them to church.  We are going to finish talking about the restoration and the first vision tomorrow and hopefully it can touch their hearts enough to help them decide to go to church, and to get baptized.  They are a really fun family to be with and I just hope that they can open up their hearts.

The members are willing to help us.  After some of the Ex missionaries saw us knocking doors, rumors spread.  All of the ex missionaries in the ward know that we are using our last resort, and they are now willing to help. We are starting to get some references and we hope that something will turn up from all of this work.  I guess it's true that if you see the missionaries working hard then you are going to want to work as well.

I love you

Elder Brady Allred

This week I worked really hard.  I talked to more people this week than I think I've talked to in my whole mission. Almost everybody that God put in my path was a hearer of the good word of God.  But the majority of the people didn't want anything to do with it.  So I guess that only leaves us with one choice.  Change that "almost everybody" to "every single person"  Honestly talking with so many people made me really really really tired every single day.  You get really tired looking for people to teach and the mental force required to talk to them and to try to help them feel the spirit.  But it is a great feeling to get home at night and to know that I did better today than yesterday.  It's a lot of work.

We, on Friday, had a mission wide conference call with all of the zone leaders. We talked about some of the goals of the mission and how we are going to do it.  Really the goal right now is baptize 125 people in February.  To do it we have the goal of talking to everybody, being obedient to all of the rules, and having the faith necessary to harvest.  I am working on all of those.  I'm not too bad in any of them, but there is a lot of room to improve. ALWAYS!  

 You'd think that you can just change in one day.  And sometimes you do.  But what I've learned with myself, as a leader, and more than anything with the investigators that I teach is that change takes time, and a lot of it.  We have to constantly be improving in everything that we do so that we can be more like God.  I've had to learn a lot of patience.

The bad news this week is that the Elder that had a appendix, but now he doesn't, has decided to go home. Even with all of our efforts he is just determined to go home, and we can't do anything now but wait for him to be physically recovered enough.  Today they tell us when he goes.  I feel really bad for him and hope that he can get everything worked out fast.

We also had a very sad Wednesday this week.  First we heard that President Monson had passed away.  It was a very sad bit of news.  I think we all saw it coming, but he was a great man and a mighty prophet.  I know he is still working hard in the other side of the veil.  He was undoubtedly one of the Lord's elect servants in these latter days.  He left a great legacy of service for all of us to follow.  May we always follow his example and believe his testimony in the days to come.

We also received news that day that one of the recent converts in the ward had passed away.  He has also been sick since his baptism 4 months ago, and hasn't been able to go to church for that.  It was a great to know that he has been baptized and had taken the name of Christ upon him.  I think that he went to the Spirit world with good company, and maybe he and President Monson were able to exchange a few words as they entered into their rest in paradise.

It is a great comfort for all of us to have the great plan of Salvation.  We no longer have the doubt of where we go after we part this mortal life.  We know where we go, and we know how to get the best reward when we get there.  God loves us so much and his marvelous plan has everything we need to be able to receive eternal happiness in the family.  I know that families can be forever and we will have one of those eternal families.  I love you each so much and hope that you can have a very happy year.  I pray for you, and hope you continue to pray for me.  Never forget who you are.  you are each Children of God and have HIS potential for good inside of you.

I love you

Elder Brady Allred

I'd like to start by saying that this keyboard stinks, so hopefully everything is legible.

Happy new year.  It's all over.  This year I'm going home.  We get a new mission president.  I have a lot of goals that I hope to accomplish.  It was a little sad yesterday when I looked at my goals from last year and I hadn't achieved one.  There was only one of the seven that I even got close to keeping.  Hopefully this year goes better.  I have mission goals, post mission goals, and whole year goals.  It was kinda weird to think about all of that.  So I decided that I'm not going to think of the post mission goals any more until about the 2nd of September. ( I should go home the 3rd)

I'll let you know that today has been the best day of the whole year so far.  HAHHAHHA  I've been waiting all year to tell you that.

The great thing that happened today is that the other 2 elders that were living in our house moved out about an hour ago.  There is so much room now and it is much less cluttered.  I can now do all of my exercise without being cramped.  I can eat my breakfast and shower before 8 am because the 2 that took 30 minute showers just moved out.  It should be pretty calm now.

Guess what happened this week. I went the the hospital with appendicitis again.  But this time I wasn't the one that was sick.  They were the weirdest splits in my whole life.  They started Tuesday afternoon.  He has been struggling emotionally so I, as his Zone Leader, wanted to help.  I brought him to our area.  We were going to have a good day with a lot of success.  Well everything fell apart.  He started getting depressed and everything.  And so we talked to President in the night.  He just wanted to go home, and he wanted to send emails and talk to his mom the whole day.  He's still relatively new in the mission, so we thought that it was because of the Christmas season.

We talked to President for about an hour that night, because President was in the part of the mission where there isn't cell phone service all day.  We talked about goals and I was trying to help the Elder to be able to relax and set some reasonable goals, cuz he has that Mormon Perfectionism that almost every missionary has.  President gave us some recommendations and told me to stay with him for another day and I went to bed thinking that everything would be better in the morning.  Nope

He was worse.  It was crazy to see somebody tremble from anxiety for a few hours as I tried to calm him down.  As I said President didn't have service and the assistants told me to figure out what I could do to calm him down.  We played games, but he quit because he couldn't stop thinking about home and how sad he is. So we listened to conference talks.  That did help him a little bit, but not much.  He still wanted to talk to home and go home. so we talked to president again.  

And then he felt like throwing up so we went to the hospital because he felt really sick..  It was his appendix.  The funniest part was when he was laying down on the bed before the surgery and the tests and they asked are you comfortable.  He answered by throwing up a TON.  all over the bed and everything.  It was really funny.  I enjoyed talking to anybody that would come into the room for the 2 days that we were there. I felt a little like mom.  He's doing all right now and we are still a little concerned about him emotionally cuz he still wants to go home.  I remembered a lot about that hospital visit 11 years and one month ago and it was another one that I won't forget.

I'm sorry I'm short on time.  I love you all and hope you all have a great new year.  I'm excited to make these the best 8 months of my mission, and hope to do everything that I can to please the Lord.  Thank you for all of your help and support.  I love you and I know the church is true.  Have a great week and year.

Elder Brady Allred