Jose Mateo did get baptized. It was a little rough for my second baptism. Zander was much easier to baptize. But once we sat him down in the chair it did get much easier to do. The good news is that he got all wet, I did too, but I didn't hurt my back in the process.  His memory and his retention are improving remarkably fast. Hopefully it continues that way.

Blanca is progressing to her baptismal date on the 5th of May. She is a little bit nervous and feels like she doesn't know everything yet.  But she is now closing her business on Sundays and she is done drinking Coffee.  She is getting there and we hope to lift her confidence in these days.

Florencio is getting there.  He is almost ready to accept a baptismal date.  Every time we talk to him he says (without our asking) that baptism is important and a commandment.  Someday he will get baptized.  So we are going to try to put a date with him for May 12th. He reads a lot, and remembers just about everything he reads.  He has some health problems with platelets and so he doesn't work and is almost always home.  We are seeing a lot of progress and soon I think that he will start to progress more. He has already gone to church 3 times!

We are still finding people with potential but nobody has gone to church yet and they have the tendency to hide the next time we go after putting a baptismal date and then we never see them again, unless it's watching them run into the house when we walk down the street.   Sometimes I feel like Alma and Amulek who went out of the prison and everybody went running like a sheep before lions.

We've been praying a lot, walking a lot, and doing a ton of splits with the zone. We are trying to help everybody to have a vision of what they want but sometimes we struggle a bit to communicate that.  It's hard to be a leader in the mission and it's even harder to do it as the Lord instructs us in D&C 121:36-45, but it's definitely a lifetime practice to be able to do that exactly how the Lord wants, but I've sure learned a lot in the mission.

This week was pretty good just not with a lot of super big experiences.  I'll send the baptismal picture when I get a computer that wants to work with me better.  This week we have stake conference too, that should be great Elder Roman from the 70 comes. They get a lot more visits from the 70 here in Mexico.

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

Elder Allred

This week Jose Mateo passed his baptismal interview. It was great. He is ready to go for Saturday.  It was kinda funny cuz he couldn't remember one of his daughter's names. He said I have six kids, five girls and one boy. And he then listed five names. And said I don't know which one I'm forgetting. So we left him to think on it. Sunday we were waiting for him in church. We called him after sacrament meeting to ask where he was, cuz he had already told us that he was on his way and he told us that he ended up in the center of Altamira. He took the right bus but in the wrong direction. So he got to church at 1, and church starts at 9 and ends at 12.  So we went to priesthood with the other ward. But it was really funny when he got there. He was there with a ton of bags. He then told me that he had remembered his other daughter's name when he was passing by her house in the bus in Altamira. so he went to visit her. And she gave him a ton of stuff that he had left there. That was why he had so many bags.  It was a very funny experience, but he is very sincere in his desires to change his life and come unto Christ.

We also put the specific prayers into practice once again. And each time we did find what we had asked for.  We still haven't seen much progress but we still have to go back for the first appointment. But we do have a few families in almost in our teaching circle now.  Alfredo and his family, and Guisela and her kids,and Esmeralda and her daughter and parents.  Hopefully we will see one of these families progress. (or two or all of them.)  But it is definitely something that I will be putting in practice for the rest of my mission and probably all of my life.  It is true that we can ask God to guide us to the people that need us, and that applies as much to members as it does to missionaries. President Nelson talked about that in conference and it is a true principle. You can receive personal revelation every day.

The Chavez Family is getting there. They are taking it one step at a time. They at least have the Book of  Mormon now and they are starting to read it. We watched the movie Joseph Smith the Prophet of the Restoration the other day with them. They are starting to consider the idea of modern prophets, but it is a very gradual process.  We are getting there.

Blanca is also getting there.  She is reading and accepts very well all of the commitment. We did have to push back her baptismal date a week cuz she didn't go to church yesterday, but we explained the Sabbath Day again and that she can obtain more faith so that she can obey the commandments completely. She is making a lot of changes, but we are still waiting for her to ask God to know the truth. Maybe we will take her to the temple waiting room next week so that she can have her moment of peace to find her answer.

I love you all and hope that you have a great week.  Thank you for everything!!!!

Elder Brady Allred

It's great to hear from all of you and to hear that you all enjoyed your full week vacation. It's funny cuz everybody here in Mexico had 2 weeks of vacation for spring break.  Keep up the good work and enjoy your time.

The good news is that my eye had a full recovery.  I can now see like an eagle once again.  It is great to know that God is protecting and saving his missionaries from worse problems.

Well this week Blanca is the investigator that is progressing most.  She was the only one that came to church yesterday.  She is very interested in just about everything.  She asked us yesterday about fasting, family history work, and said that she was very confused when all of the sisters were confused about ministering in relief society. She didn't really get what was going on cuz half the relief society was not there in general conference nor when the bishop read the letter from the first presidency.  So they were all really confused.  She is reading a lot and she is starting to look into closing her business on Sundays to be able to go to church more easily.

Veronica didn't go because she was throwing up.  We are now talking to her about marriage plans so hopefully we will be able to get that to go through.  Jose Mateo never got there yesterday.  And then he didn't answer his phone.  We have no idea what happened and no idea why he didn't make it.  So we will look into that soon.  I'm sure he is alright.

I was reflecting a little bit last night and found something very interesting. 

I remembered distinctly two prayers.

The first was one day while we were going to an area to work, we were looking for people to teach. I remember that just before we went in to start looking I asked my companion if we could say a prayer. I said the prayer.  I said something along the lines of "Please help us to find some one that has been waiting for us. Some one that has a strong desire to know more about the Book of Mormon."  As we went that day we found Jose Mateo. We had gone to his house to look for him twice cuz we had found his name written in the area book.  That same day was the second time. And he wasn't there so we went to contact the whole street waiting for him.  And when we made it to the corner he passed behind us, and looked at us. And kept walking. So we watched him go into the house where we had been looking for him. And we said "oh, no, he is very old, I don't think he can read"  Sorry for that stereotype but that was what we thought.  So we did go back and when we got to his house he came out with the Book of Mormon and invited us in. He wanted to know more.

I didn't realize it in the moment but it was definitely an answer to my prayer. God did guide us to someone that wanted to know more about the book of Mormon.  And now he is progressing, we just have to find him again.

And I remembered the day that we were working looking for new people to teach. I remember that I had the distinct impression to go to another part of the area, cuz someone was waiting for us. And I felt like the person was waiting on the corner. When we started getting closer we decided to pray. Once again I said the prayer. I asked for God to lead us to the person that was waiting for us and that we would find them on the corner.  And that day I didn't realize that God answered that prayer too.  But we started looking, and we contacted a few corners. And we even asked for references to find out if someone had a recently passed away family member, a recent birth, even a change in employment. And we finally got one reference so we tried to look for it. We never did find that reference but we felt guided to contact another house.  And guess what. It was the corner house and Blanca came out. And now that we have been working with her, I believe that she was waiting for us, just not consciously. And the weird thing was that it was a week day and she is never home on week days, so I do not believe that it was a coincidence.

I love that God did answer those prayers and I will make sure to continue thanking Him. It strengthens my testimony that God does answer prayers, and even more when they are specific and when we show our faith through our works afterwords. I believe that this was the message from conference.  And I testify that it is true.

Thank you for all of your love and support.  Have a great week of school.  I love you all.

Love 

Elder Brady Allred

This week was great and I loved conference.  We went to all of the sessions.  It was very worth the time. I loved the new changes and I know that they are very inspired changes.  Without a doubt Russell M Nelson is God's prophet today. You can just see the mantle upon him and you hear it in his voice.  He is not the same man that he was 4 years ago, and he is not the same man that he was when this year started.  He has changed and it just shows in his countenance and in the simplicity of his talks.  They now just have a way of connecting with us and inspiring us in a way that only a true prophet can do.  I felt the spirit several times while he was talking and he seems to be stronger than ever.  I think that he will lead us into better times in the church even if outside the church everything keeps getting worse.  I have felt inspired to continue working.

I invite every one to listen to what he said and to put it in practice.  Write down your goals.  There are definitely things there for you, things that you can do better and that you will be blessed for doing. Without a doubt there are blessings for obeying the prophet's voice.  You can see it in President Nelson's example  (his talk from October and Elder Anderson's talk from October).  Follow the prophet he knows the way

So it was great to have 4 chances to take investigators to church.  Jose Mateo went once, Veronica went once with her daughter Veronica.  And Florencio came with his wife Erica.  

Jose Mateo is about the same.  We are trying to see if we can help him to have faith and to repent. In my opinion that's all we really need to help investigators to do.  There are a lot of other requirements but all of those can be completed if some one has faith in Jesus Christ and they repent.  It's just that simple, the Gospel

Veronica is getting there.  She doesn't understand much. But she has more to study than Joseph Smith so she should be able to understand it if she wants to .  We are getting there.  Her 13 year old Daughter does understand well and we hope that she can help her mom to progress.

Florencio is a pretty new investigator and it honestly surprised me a bit that he did come to church.  He has some pretty weird ideas but he is slowly taking to heart the gospel. We are getting there.  It's great to see the gospel change lives.

We have a few other investigators, Blanca and Maria Eneth, but there's not time right now to talk much about them.  It's all a work in progress.

This week I almost got my eye poked out by a balloon. I was blowing it up and it exploded. It wasn't even half full. I have no idea why that happened.  We were doing a free car wash to find people to teach. So we were in the church building and we put some balloons to draw attention.  We did end up washing about 30 cars in about 6 hours so that's pretty great.

So any way I was filling up the balloon and it exploded and hit me in the eye.  So it turned all red and I couldn't see very much out of it, it was all really blurry. So after the car wash (hey I was busy) we went to the hospital to take care of it.  I thought that it just hurt because I got hit, but when it kept burning we decided to go.

We went to the hospital and the ER doctor looked at it.  He said that my retina was fine and that I didn't have bleeding in my eye. So they talked to the oftamologist (? eye doctor, that´s the name in spanish oftamologo)  he wasn't working that day so about 2 hours later a doctor got there to check it. He did some exams and said that the protective "skin" (I don´t know if you call it skin, but the protective film) that is on my eye broke.  It's pretty much just saying that I scratched my replaceable screen protector. So he put a patch on it for 24 hours and then I have some eye drops to put in every 4 hours.  I am just about perfect again. I should have a perfect and full recovery.  My screen protector is just about replaced.  I can see great now at close distances and at far distances I almost have my perfect vision back again. But it was real rough to walk around for a day without depth perception.  I am so grateful that God does protect his missionaries.  The good news is that we found a family through the activity so it was all worth it.

I love you all and I hope that you have a great week.  Thank you for all of your prayers they do make the difference. 

Elder Brady Allred

PS follow the prophet always