So my district started out at 12 missionaries, or 6 companionships. That was the whole zone!!! so the whole week we had to make 5 phone calls every night to give good follow up to the missionaries. Then we came up with a cool plan so that they could give follow up one to another. The companionship of sisters called the other sisters. and the two companionships of Elders talked, and then one of both the sisters and the elders would call us to give us the information from both companionships. It did make it a lot easier. And then they finally (on Saturday) decided to cut the district in half. So now we are just 6 Missionaries.
Us, the sisters from Valle Verde 1 (that´s the other side of our ward), they are Sister Quispe (from Peru) and Sister Velez (from Michoacan, Mexico). They are both relatively new, but are helping us out quite a bit with the meals with the members, and in helping us know about all of the meetings in the church. We also have the Elders from Miramar 1 (that's part of Del Valle where I was mixed with a little bit more of Miramar). They are Elder Weintz (from Copper Hills, he is Nathan and Jarom's friend that was going to come to Tampico) and Elder McLean (a greenie from Canada, he is in for some heat).
We are excited to work with each of them and get to know them better.
We had a baptism in the ward on Saturday. Wednesday in the morning I did the baptismal interview and then they asked me to baptize Carmen Angelica. It was a great experience. It was a unique moment. I had a remarkable spiritual experience while baptizing her. honestly when she was in the water I did feel the Power of the Atonement flow through me into her and I felt it fill her until she was clean. It was a remarkable experience, and I know that it was the Power of Godliness in action (D&C 84:19-20)
We honestly have no active members on our side of the ward. We asked for the member lists and the bishopric gave them to us on Wednesday. Thursday we were working and we decided to pull out the lists and see if there was anybody nearby. We found two families on the list and went to look for the one. They are the only family of active members on our side of the ward!!! You can call it luck, but it was God inspiring us and directing us without us realizing it. We are going to be working with that family quite a bit and we hope to live in the same neighborhood as they do.
We still don't have a house, but like I said we are looking at that neighborhood. It's a ton of buildings that are very new and the rent is very cheap. It's convenient and there are about 1300 departments there and a ton of families to contact. We hope that somebody will answer their phone soon so that we can look at and rent soon!
Our area book (all of the records in the area, ex-investigators, members, recent converts, and all that jazz) is 5 pages, and then the member list. 2 recent converts (3 pages) and 1 investigator (Susan the daughter of a less active...she's 9) and half a page of future potential investigators. Usually its about two-two inch binders of area book!! so we are starting off from scratch. hahaha.
That means that nobody in our area has ever really been taught by, and most of them have rarely seen missionaries in the area. It's a completely new area!!! We are just contacting a ton right now.
It has been remarkable to see the spirit guiding us to talk to people. I have felt so many impressions this week to talk to certain people, and those people have almost always accepted. We have gotten to the corner and turned around and gone back to talk to people that we felt impressed to contact and they accept us. I felt like this week I was finally able to submit myself more to the Lord's will and just let him drive. On Saturday we found 6 people in less than half an hour. In 4 contacts!! Friday we found 7 new investigators and I thought that was a record, then Saturday we found 9!!
Susan (the 9 year old daughter of the less active sister) is very serious. In that it is impossible to get her to smile, and very difficult to help her want to talk. We are going to be trying very dynamic lessons cuz the sisters said that it was the only way that they could get her to start opening up. We'll see what we can do.
Yesterday was a crazy and incredible experience. It was one of the weirdest but most incredible moments of God taking control of the situation. We have church at 12 so we left the house at 11 (it took over 40 minutes to get there) while in the bus I contacted the guy next to me and when I went to write down his address I realized that I didn't have my agenda. That stunk. So I did get the address written down on a little piece of paper that I had. When we got off the bus I told my companion that I had forgotten my agenda. Guess what! He did too. So we started thinking about what appointments we had and we remembered all 4, but we didn't remember the address of the 4th, Guillermo and Yamilet (one of the miraculous couples from Saturday, because we had contacted them in the street and they gave us their address to look for). So church got out and we went to eat. We had to fix lunch with the sister before we could eat it. So at 6pm we set out to hit all of the appointments (5:00, 5:30, 6:00, and 6:30) We found the first three houses very quickly and we changed one of the appointments because they were busy, the other one wasn't home and the third one wanted to give us the pamphlet back, but we persuaded her to keep it because she hadn't prayed to know if it was true. And we went looking for the 4th one. We stopped to prayed after a small attempt to remember which street it was,and told God that if He wanted us to find them then He would have to show us a miracle. If not then we were there to do what He needed us to do. So we went wandering and we never found the house. We decided to talk to a less active sister that we had talked to the other day. Well, we got there right after they got home and we met her husband. We decided to teach the restoration to him (he is catholic) it was a very spiritual lesson and we did our best to help him see how the restoration helps him. We felt the spirit very strongly, but at the end he decided not to follow our message. What I do know is that we were supposed to go with HIM!! Maybe in a few years he will accept, or who knows, but we HAD to go there yesterday at that very hour, minutes after they had gotten home.
When we got home we had several messages, one of them was from Guillermo. He asked to move the appointment for another day, way before the time that we had had the appointment. What I decided is that if we had had the agendas or the phone we never would have gone looking for the less active sister and we never would have taught Raul (her husband). Who knows why God wanted us to go there so bad, but I know that we did the right thing.
It has been a great week. I have been living the country song "Live Like you are Dying". Really I am giving it my all every day for just in case I can´t keep going the next day. I think I am going to stay for a while right now, at least the rest of this transfer I hope, and very likely the rest of the 11 weeks. But I will always have to do what God wants. I will keep taking care of myself. Pray for my shoulders too. I love you all and thank you all for your support. I am not suffering. I am really enjoying myself right now. This is the true joy that God had promised me in the blessings that I have received. I will go and do the things which the Lord is commanding me for He will not give any commandments unto us His children unless it is for our good and He will always prepare the way.
I love you
Elder Brady Allred
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