To tell the truth, all English sounds really weird right now.  It never sounds right.  But hopefully you can all understand me in what I will try to share today.

First off, thank you all for you support in the last year and a half.  It really makes a big difference to know that there are a lot of people at home praying for me always.  It helps a lot to know that.  Thank you.

This week was a lot better.

We had interviews with President and then we had a 5 zone conference.  What I did learn is that we should focus more on the Book of Mormon in our work.  It is a lot more powerful when we do that.  We have been sharing scriptures from the Book of Mormon in our street contacts.  It's interesting how the people react when we share another book that is not the Bible.  Sometimes they ask a lot of questions.   Like where does it come from?  Why we would ever use a book that is not the bible.  How they can get one  (that's one of my favorites).  We have found that when we talk about the Book of Mormon people are a lot more interested in our message and the offer to visit them seems more like an offer to explain why the Book of Mormon and what it contains!   It was pretty cool to work more with that book of Scripture.

As we have been talking more about the Book of Mormon it inspired me to read it more.  I flew through the war chapters and all of Helaman in less than a week.  If I keep that up then I should finish in about 3 weeks more.  It is a more united story when you read it all together, and some times you see patterns and doctrines that you would not see other wise.  I've even learned a bit about government and society.    Really if everybody would read the Book of Mormon and live the warnings that Mormon and then Moroni give us then we would not have the problems that we have.  Really they give a great warning for all of the things that are happening.  Secret Combinations are not good, and the only way to overcome them is with the Holy Ghost and the Book of Mormon open and in our hands everyday.

Talking about that.  Gonzalo does have a strong testimony of the Book of Mormon, and we made sure of that.  We talked to him and his two kids the other day and we asked them if they have been reading.  They have been but they haven't asked if it it was true.  So we read the talk from President Nelson from the conference.,  It was great and it taught them very well.  So then we invited Gonzalo to kneel down and ask God if the Book is true (it was something that President Nelson and Elder Clayton invited us to always do last year when they came, which will have been a year on Thursday, great experience).  When we did it the spirit came in really strong.  It was really peaceful there and Gonzalo said that he felt like the book was burning in his hands.  They KNOW now that the book is very true.  And his kids finally started reading it.

The good news is that Gonzalo did get baptized on Saturday.  He sacrificed a lot of his time for the baptismal service because it took a while to get started, but it all turned out well.  He has changed a lot and now he is a whole lot happier.  His kids accepted a baptismal date for the 17th of March, and now they have started reading the Book of Mormon too.  We shared the story of Enos last night telling them to be like him and to follow their dad in his righteous ways.  hopefully they do that.

Thank you for all of your help and support.  I love each of you.  Never forget to read the Book of Mormon, it is the key to a strong testimony.

Elder Brady Allred

This week I focused a whole bunch on Faith in Jesus Christ.  I realized that even though I believe in Him and I know that He is my savior, I think that I have been forgetting to have more faith in Him while I have been working.  I think that I have been trying to do it all myself.  I had more trust in my work than in His.  So this week I changed that perspective a little bit more.  I worked hard to believe that He is working around and through me to be able to save His children.  Sometimes it is just hard to trust. Should I really talk to that person?  Was that the spirit or me?  But what I have definitely learned in these last few weeks is that if you just go for it and trust that it is always an inspiration from God, then it usually will be.  Joseph Smith said that if we follow the first impression always then 9 times out of 10 we will be right.  So I have been working on my reaction rate, trying to be a first responder.  But sometimes I don't do it.  Sometimes the natural man wins.  That always stinks, but I'm getting there.  I think that it is like a muscle.  The more that you try to use it the stronger it gets.  And the mission is the best time to exercise the muscles of faith, obedience and revelation.  I hope to go home really buff. hahaha

I've decided that Tanner Isbell and my companion are pretty much the same person just with different stories and lives.  But they are about the same in their attitudes, way of thinking, and more than anything in their way of talking.  Elder Johnson is progressing a lot and I am learning a lot by working with him.  It's a pretty great time most of the time.

The good news this week is that a brother called Gonzalo is going to get baptized on Saturday.  Wednesday we are going to have his baptismal interview to make sure that everything is ready and then on Saturday we should have a baptism.  In a few more weeks his kids should get baptized too.  Their names are Antonio and Ivone.  They finally went  to church yesterday and we are going to put a baptismal date this week so that they can start to progress more.  It is a really great family and we are excited for what it is going to bring in the close future.

We are going to keep looking for a lot of new people to teach.  We have to have a lot of faith to really be able to find people to teach.  I guess that I am going to have to try to just swing to be able to get it all right.  It's like baseball.  Just swing.  And later you can worry about getting it right.

We also had the zone leader conference this week.  It was pretty great and we got to hear from President Ramirez.  I learned a lot there.  What I really liked was when we talked about D&C 121:41-45.  Really it is important that we be that kind of leader.  We have to be patient and loving.  We can't force the other people around us to do what we want.  Really Christ is the kind of leader that is described in those verses.  We have to love the people that we serve, and make sure that they know it. Like President Monson says, it's not enough to just assume that they know that we love them, we have to tell them so.  So I am going to try to do that more and I invite each of you to do the same in your callings and in your relationships with others.  Really the patience is one of the most important things to show that love.  Charity is long suffering (or patient).

I love the Book of Mormon and everything that it teaches.  Really most of their problems that they had could have been a lot easier to solve if the people had love one for another, or if they would us the principles taught in the Family Proclamation,  la fe, de la oración, del arrepentimiento, del perdón, del respeto, del amor, de la compasión, del trabajo y de las actividades recreativas edificantes.  Those are really important and I know that whatever problems we have they can be solved by using those principles.

Faith and repentance always work together.  When we increase one we have to increase the other.  They are really like the two sides of a penny.  When you grab one you grab both.  If you only grab one side and don't move the other then you will never be able to pick the penny up.  So I invite each of you to look into your lives and see the ways that you can increase your faith and repent more.  It will really make a difference in your life and everything will be so much easier.  I lived it this week.

Thank you all for your prayers.  I honestly did feel that constant help.  Please keep praying for me,   It is a true testimony of prayer to have received all of that help this week.

I love you all and thank you so much for your help and support.  Have a great week this week and don't forget to read your scriptures every day.

Love,

Elder Allred

To tell the truth this week was really rough.  I think that changing areas affected me a whole lot more than it had the other times.  It's not that I'm in an unproductive area.  It's not that I don't get along well with my companion.  It's not that I'm uncomfortable in the situations.  It's just that it took me out of my comfort zone a bit.  I think that I was really comfortable in Lomas and I didn't want to change areas very much, so I think it just shook me up a bit more than I expected.  Who know's why but it was a rough week.

We did have some great teaching experiences.  We teach really well together and think almost in the same way.   We are able to explain things so simply and so straightforward that I can honestly say that I've never felt so good teaching in my whole mission.

We've also been contacting a ton. I've learned that I have to be a little bit more assertive in the contacts, making sure that the people really know what we have to offer.  I have been trying to make sure that if there is even the slightest chance that they might progress to try to get an appointment so that we can try to pass by another day.  We have actually found a few people to teach that way.  Maybe we only teach them once, but at least that plants a seed in their heart for the future missionaries to harvest.

Honestly, it's a pretty small and a very humble area, especially in comparison to Lomas.  So that is kinda cool.  It is a more accepting part of the mission and It is actually one of the areas and zones that baptize most.  So I do have the responsibility to keep that going in the area and in the zone.  I am training the other zone leader as well, but I think that now he's going pretty well.  So I hope he keeps it up.

We were going to have several people in church yesterday, but it was incredible that nobody showed up to church.  We even passed by for all of them.  I guess that better luck next week.

I hope that this week I will be able to find something to be able to change me or my situation a little bit.  I guess I just have to trust what mom told me that they said in the conference.  “God doesn’t give us what we can handle.  He helps us handle what we are given.”  I think I'll study faith a bit more this week and try to get some more of that.  Wish me luck and pray for me a lot.  I need it.

I love you a lot and hope to be able to continue focusing on the important things for these last months of my mission.

Thank you for everything.  Keep studying and keep praying.  I love you.

Love,

Elder Allred

I got changed to Zona Ampliacion.  That is in Madero once again.  And my area is Del Valle 1.  It looks like a great area with a lot of potential.  I hope that we can work hard and see more people progress than in Lomas

This week in Lomas I was honestly rejected more frequently and more harshly than any other week in my whole mission.  I have never run into so many people with as hard of hearts as this week..  Hopefully we could plant some very good seeds in some hearts that will someday produce the fruit of the Gospel.  But at least for right now I haven't gotten to see  much of that.

Blanca was someone that we had visited last week and she accepted that we could go back for a second visit.  To tell the truth the second visit was not what I hoped for.  She started telling us that the bible is perfect and that we don't need another book.  She told us that there are no such things as angels, and that if an angel should appear than we should doubt it.  We don't need prophets either.  We tried to reason a bit with her but she didn't let us talk at all.  She finished the appointment of an hour and a half talking for half an hour.  It was a little bit rough, but we left her with her Book of Mormon and she said that she is going to read it, so hopefully that can soften her heart up a bit.

The Porras family is progressing very well now.  They are reading the Book of Mormon and have already finished 1 Nephi.  So that is pretty cool.  I remember that the first time that I went there the sister said that she would never read a book because she doesn't like to read, and now she's the one that's reading the most.  She has a ton of questions about the plan of Salvation and I hope that the new missionaries can answer the questions that they have so that they can progress and get baptized.

I am now with Elder Johnson.  He's from Sacramento California.  He has about 4 months in the mission. As we have been talking we have come to the conclusion that we are almost identical.  He is also going to study Computer engineering, he ran cross country, played tennis, and about 3 other sports as a youngster.  He plays piano, he took a ton of AP classes, and only had to go to the MTC for 3 weeks as well.  It's pretty crazy. I think that we are going to work well together and I hope that we will be able to go far to do everything that God wants from us.  He seems like a great missionary and I hope to be able to help him be even better.  I am Zone Leader again and I am going to teach Elder Jones (another Elder) how to be a zone leader. So we are separated again. Hopefully it will go well in the zone.  There are 14 missionaries again, so plenty of work to do.

I am excited, there is a real teaching circle here and it looks like it is a bit more easy to find investigators.  I hope that we can keep doing that and have a lot of success.

Honestly I was very surprised yesterday to hear several members tell me things like "you are the first good missionary we've had here in a long time" or "I've learned a lot from watching you work hard without investigators" or "you always have a good attitude" or things like that.  When I started thinking about it with some of the members we realized that in my time here the members have started to accompany missionaries to visits, they have started to do their home teaching, and the ward attendance has gone up about 15 or 20 people.  And all of the members attribute that to me.  I honestly was a little sad about how little I had achieved there, but I now realized that I did have a lot of success there, and that thanks to my work the other missionaries that go now will have a much easier time.

I don't say that to brag, I say it because I was humbled to hear it, and I appreciate that even without "success" the members there will remember me as a successful missionary.  It was great to hear those complements.  And I hope to be able to achieve it again here in Del Valle

I love you all and hope you have a good week.

Love,

Elder Allred

This week was an incredible week.  The other zone leader and I started by making a zone plan on Tuesday.  What we decided that the zone needs is to focus more on our real purpose.  Invite others to come unto Christ by helping them receive the RESTORED GOSPEL... we have been missing the focus on the restoration of the Gospel.  We have been talking to everyone about the church, but according to all of the numbers this week we weren't talking to the people about the restoration of the gospel, our main message.  We found almost twice as many people, and talked to about the same quantity of people.  So that for me is a testimony that there is really more power in missionary work when we talk about the restoration.

We found a sister named Rosy this week.  She goes to the Adventist church.  They believe that the Sabbath day is still on Saturday because the 10 commandments can't be changed.  So we started talking about Peter in the first appointment and that he had the keys, about the importance of prophets, priesthood, and revelation.  And we told her that Peter, under divine direction was told to change the Sabbath day to Sunday (Acts 20:7, 1 Corinth. 16:2).  She wasn't convinced.  So we took a step back and explained to her the restoration, that God called Joseph Smith to be His prophet in these days and that he was commanded to change the Sabbath day to Sunday.  We told her about the Book of Mormon and that if it is true than the Sabbath day is Sunday because Joseph Smith is a prophet.  We answered some questions.  We found out that in her church they have a prophet that is a woman, and that she wrote a book.  But she had never read it.  We told her that by their fruits shall ye know if a prophet is true or not, so she has to read or the book of Mormon or the book of her prophet, but preferably both to know which one is really a prophet.  It seems like we left her with some doubts as to if her church is true, cuz her and her husband aren't all that convinced to start with.

We also taught the restoration to some less actives in the ward.  We did it with a puzzle and with the doctrines written behind the pieces.  But there were four pieces missing.  Revelation, and Priesthood power to 1 baptize, 2 give the gift of the Holy Ghost, and 3 seal families together forever.  so we went through the exercise.  And when we finished explaining it, the brother, who returned to his christian church, started to get a little angry, because the "gospel can´t be broken".  So we explained the apostasy and that it was partially lost and for the confusion of some of the Christians.  He then was a little bit illogical in some of his answers.  But then he asked how Joseph Smith died.  I can honestly say that it was one of the most powerful experiences I've had in my whole life, and without a doubt the most powerful in my mission. It was the strongest I have ever felt the spirit through my own words.  I started to tell the story and the house was full of the spirit.  And it almost made me start to cry.  My voice trembled a bit as I told the story.  I testified that Joseph Smith died as a martyr, innocent of any crime, and killed in innocent blood, unarmed and in prison.

My companion and I reflected on the experience and we have no idea why the brother did not want to accept our message.  The spirit was so strong in that moment.  His only argument that he had at the end was that we honor more Joseph Smith than Jesus Christ, even after we had shared scriptures testifying that Jesus is the Christ, and that Jesus has done more for us than Joseph Smith. It was sad that the brother could reject our message so harshly.  The good thing is that he said that it always goes that way when the missionaries talk to him.  It was my second time, but he is still really friendly with us cuz his son is in the mission. and he respects the other beliefs.  so who knows.  Maybe the next missionaries will be able to help him more than me.

We also had a lot of splits this week. One day I was with Elder Lopez in Purification.  First of all a dog tried to bite me twice, for no reason whatsoever, my sweater that I had taken off was the only thing that saved me from certain stitches.  But the other thing that happened was that we went to an appointment with a new investigator that they had.  But the most incredible thing was that we could not feel the spirit at all in the appointment.  We wanted to talk about the restoration but we could not.  I felt my mind very clouded, and the brother was not opening up very well.  We couldn't even mention the word prophet.  It is what I would call a stupor of thought.  And then I realized what it was.  I all of a sudden started telling the brother that he has a problem and that until he wants to get over it we cant help him.   I basically told him that he has an addiction (not explicitly, but very obviously) and that we can help him to overcome it, and THEN we could feel the spirit.  A little bit.  It was a very weird feeling but as soon as we left the house (we were outside for the lesson) we felt instantly better.  I talked to Elder Lopez a bit, and we have few ideas about how to help. It was another experience in which I was able to receive revelation to be able to help an investigator know that we are representatives of Jesus Christ and that we really do have his power to be able to help him.

We also explained the restoration to a brother named Eloi (blessed of God in Hebrew) that day. He knows a ton about the bible and we couldn't get anywhere in telling him about the restoration, cuz he knows the bible way better than we do.  We did show him a few scriptures that did help him to soften his heart a little bit to open up to the message.  And at the end of the appointment he asked what he would have to do if he decides that the Book of Mormon is true.  So we told him to listen to the other lessons and to do the commitments so that he can know that it is true.  "If any man will do my will he shall know of the doctrine, whether it be of man or whether I speak of myself"  He accepted to listen more to the missionaries without getting too much into the extra details about the church and the bible.

We also taught the most incredible lesson about the restoration last night to a brother called Fernando.  He accepted everything and honestly we could see the spirit explaining everything to him more than we were.  He understood perfectly what a prophet does, why we need a true church, and the whole Idea about how the Book of Mormon came to be.  And he is going to read it and try to stop drinking.  And all of that in less than 30 minutes.

 Those are just some of the experiences that we had this week as we were teaching the restoration. We hope that some of these people will decide to follow our advice to study the restored gospel and decide if it is true.  Maybe some of them will progress, but I can say that our teaching is much more powerful when focused on what makes us unique than what makes us the same.  

I know Joseph Smith was a prophet and that he did indeed see God the Father and His Son Jesus Christ and that Christ called him to restore the church and the Gospel to the earth.  Without him I would not be here. I am forever indebted to Jesus Christ for his sacrifice and I hope to be able to continue strengthening my testimony of Him and that through that testimony I will be able to overcome all of my struggles and problems. It is incredible how much these plain and precious truths make a difference.

Love,

Elder Allred