Hey, I hope that you all had a great week this week.

We had a very normal week.  We walked a lot and didn't find many people to teach.  We are now officially in the finding stage of the work, with very few people that we are teaching consistently.

Lolis did get baptized on Friday.  Third time is the charm again (that is the third baptism that had waited until the third try to go under, but it's better than the first baptism that we had to try about 15 times).  She was scared to start but the third time she said that she felt a calm and all of her fear went away and that that time was easier.  And then my companion confessed that he had to push really hard the last 3 or 4 inches to get her under the water.  But it all turned out well.  And yesterday she got confirmed.  So we are excited and hope that she can keep going on this path.

Sandra already gave birth to her baby the last Saturday.  The Mexican Hospitals are not very good for giving birth but now they are both healthy and recovering.  Something about only two meals in 2 and a half days for the mom and baby did cause some problems but they are doing alright now.

Abraham is really starting to change a lot and is starting to learn how to read.  He wants to change and his desire is overcoming all of the obstacles.  Besides convincing him to come to church.  We are working on that (see the next paragraph).  He has had to tell his siblings to leave him alone about the church, he is not going to the catholic church any more and he prays daily and is asking his neighbors to help him read (even though they always say no).

His problem with coming to church is that his neighbor Rosario is hurt.  She and her sister Susana fell into a burning field a few weeks ago. They are both members but both are less active.  Rosario burned 40% of her skin in second and third degree burns and her sister Susana pulled her out of the fire and put her out.  Susana only had a few first degree burns from ashes that fell on her. Rosario is now home from the hospital but is not 100% better.  She still bleeds in a few spots and everything is a mix of Purple, red, yellow and white. It's pretty ugly but her shoulders and head and hair didn't get burned at all. The problem for us is that Abraham always wants to be there helping her and doesn't want to leave her.  We are going to try hard this week so that he can come to church next week.

The only other person that we are really teaching and that want's to keep learning and changing is Saida.  She is really great and she accepts us really well.  She doesn't know much about religion but read the pamphlet we left and accepted to get baptized.  And ready for another Surprise. She is also pregnant.  2 weeks left.  We honestly thought that she was just kinda tall and fat (due to her very obese 10 year old son ) but no she's 9 months pregnant.  They are going to do a C-section so we are looking at a baptism in July.

Other than that nobody else really accepts us.  We are trying hard to find people but we put appointments and they are never there, or they don't like to commit to an appointment.  and they all live so far away from our house so it is really hard to give follow up.  But we are trying and hopefully we can start to find some more people to teach.  We are going to put into action our plan with our AA program.

This week we are going to have a Mission conference.  Elder Pïno from the area presidency is going to come on Thursday (or Friday, nobody every likes to commit to a date) and we are going to Tampico.  We are excited and hope to learn a lot.

5 de Mayo is pretty relaxed here.  My companion is from Puebla so they do celebrate for about a week there.  But in this side of Mexico nobody celebrates really.  Just a normal day.

I hope you all have a great week and keep doing the things that you should (I recommend going to the temple, I wish I had time for that)

And hopefully I get the package on Thursday (or Friday) when we go to Tampico. If not then probably next Friday when me and my companion go for a new missionary training.

Love,

Elder Allred

More photos!

I have to agree with everyone the time is going really fast but I also agree with mom that it is moving slow.  I don´t get how it can be both but we never have much time and Sunday always gets here way too fast and then suddenly it's May, but it feels like the time is going a bit slower.  I don't get it but I guess that's how life works.

We had a baptismal interview Saturday for Lolis (I had no idea but her real name is Dolores, but they call her Lolis.  She passed and this Friday we are going to have another baptism.  We are pretty excited.  She is really excited too and I think that she is really ready to get baptized.

The good news is that I shared an experience that helped her decide to get baptized.  She and her husband fight a lot.  It doesn't help that her husband lives in the US and she lives here and then they aren't actually married.  So they fight a lot.  And we were talking about how to help them  We pulled out the Family Proclamation and read the 7th (I think, it's the big one) paragraph.  When I got to the list of 9 things to have a happy successful family I realized that we have used all of them to overcome problems that we have faced as a family.  Forgiveness, repentance, prayer, activities (opening presents is a good activity) love, faith... and the others that I don't remember right now.  So I was told by the spirit that I had to share a story.  I almost cried, Lolis did cry and it helped her a lot to realize that she can overcome all of her problems.  And I'll be honest, it has changed her a lot.  She has a very new attitude to her spouse now and it seems that he is treating her better too.  I guess that all things happen for a reason even if it's just to help someone else that is passing through a similar trial later.

It was kinda cool a few weeks ago to see a scorpion and I couldn't help but take a picture.  BTW that was right in front of our house, but the owner sprays poison to keep them out so don't worry.  And if it does grab me it won't kill me.  Supposedly they are just like a bee sting here in Ebano.  So don't worry.

Another fun note, my fear of dogs is growing.  They always want to bite me.  My companion says that I just have really bad luck or that the dogs don't like gringos but I always put my companion between me and the dogs now.  The good news is that I now know that an umbrella is a really good way to scare dogs away.

We are walking plenty, sweating more.  We only made it to 48 degrees Celsius on Saturday, but we made it through the day.  Or for those of you that don´t speak Celsius we made it to 119 degrees.  And the good news is that I wasn't in Zone Valles where it did make it to 61 degrees, or 142 degrees Fahrenheit.  And it is only going to get hotter.  And if you don't believe me then I invite you to come and try it out.  The wind is hot, the sun is hot, the camel pack is hot, the shade is hot.  But we are blessed by the AC in our house.  You have to see it to believe it.  (BTW the thermometer you sent me won't be able to tell me the temperature in a few weeks, all I'll know is that it is HOT HOT HOT).

And I do use sunscreen and an umbrella because I don't want to die at such a young age.

I invite you to listen to President Monson's conference talk from October 1987 called "Missionary Memories" it's pretty good and laughed a bit. President Nelsons talk called "Self Mastery" is pretty good too, but I didn't write down which year it's from.

I know that the church is true.  I am here to help people find the Restored Gospel of Jesus Christ more than preach his church or another Religion.  I am loving learning more through the study of the scriptures and I love seeing the fulfillment of my Patriarchal blessing when it talks about my mission.  I know that God loves us and that he has a perfect plan and the center is His perfect son.  I love you.

 

Elder Brady Allred

I don´t know how but I have realized that my typing and piano playing are both improving a lot. I practice the piano for maybe half an hour a week and I type for 50 minutes each week and some how they both keep improving.  I guess that walking is good for the finger coordination or something.

I am so tired.  We worked so hard this week to just find people to teach.  No luck.  I don´t know how it works but every time I go to an area we find a lot of people the first few weeks and then we stop finding people.  And when we contact more we find less people.  Who knows why but I guess that´s just my luck.  We are still working hard and hopefully this week we have some more luck now that their 2 week long spring break is over.

We are sitting here at the computers trying to think about what we did this week.  We walked a ton. I guess that´s why my feet hurt a bit too.  And don´t worry that it is because of my shoes.  Anybody´s feet would hurt after walking as much as we did.

We did remember that Friday we had the first mutual in about 9 months in the branch.  8 YM came (we had more youth that you did for the temple).  We watched a short video from the church and then they played soccer. We are going to keep it up and we are going to train all of the youth to be good member missionaries because we have realized that the youth are more willing to help us than any other group.  Hopefully we can find some people to teach through the youth.  And the YW are going to come this week too.  They were jealous I guess.

Lolis is doing alright.  She has had some struggles with her "spouse" but we are trying to help her overcome all of that and keep moving forward to baptism.  She really likes the church and the Book of Mormon and hopefully we can pull just enough to help her keep moving forward.  She wants to but sometimes her "husband" makes it hard.

Really nothing else happened.  A lot of talking to people.  No really funny experiences there.  All of our appointments fell through except for 3 or 4.  Really nothing else happened.  The good news is that we are still excited and we have some good plans for the week. Hopefully I can report some more exciting news next week but it´s on the Lord´s time table not mine.

Keep up the good work.  Keep doing everything that you know is right.  I love the work even though we don´t find people to teach.  Hopefully God blesses us with more people in our paths this week.

I love you and pray for you every day.  Good luck in school and in sports this week.  Do what is right.

 

Elder Brady Allred

More Photos!

I hope that you all had a good week this week.  We thoroughly enjoyed our time and hope that you did too.

Before anything else I'll let you all know that the baby did wait long enough for us to baptize Sandra.  We talked to her this morning and she said that today she feels like it is really close to time.  I'm glad that we got that over with before the baby came. (not that it's something to "get over with").  It went well.  We should have filled up the baptismal font another half inch or so and it would have gone in the first time.  And the second time.  But the third time we did get her all under the water.

The coolest part was that I got to go in the font while my companion baptized her.  Due to the large baby protruding from her abdomen we got permission to both enter in the font during the baptism and I got to help.  I honestly felt so much love for Sandra being in the font with her and being able to be a part of this great process.  I then got to sit really close during the confirmation because I was right there at the piano.  It was honestly a feeling of Joy that I felt in those sacred moments and moments that I will never ever forget.

Other than that it was not that great this week.

We'll start with Tuesday.  I woke up and felt like I hadn't slept at all.  It felt like it was not time for the alarm to be going off.  I got up to turn the cell phone alarm off and realized that it was actually a phone call and that it was only 10:45  I guess that explains why I felt so tired.  They called us to tell us that Tuesday we had to go to Panuco for interviews with President and that they changed the schedule for us so that we could leave at a reasonable hour.

We got up in the morning and we left the bedroom and my closet had fallen apart during the night.  Yep, so that's twice in my life that my closet has fallen apart.  It made me laugh to remember the pile of clothes that I had last time spilling out of my closet.  But we got that all taken care of.

Other than that we just looked for people to teach all week.  And we didn't have a ton of success.  We are excited for this transfer and hope to have a lot of success.  We did teach a few people like:

Abraham - He was a reference from a sister in the branch.  He has come to church twice now and he likes it there.  He's a little special needs but he loves talking to us.  I think it may take a while to teach him but he is great and really accepting us well.  I think that we will have a lot of success in teaching him.

Andrez - He was also a reference that a sister brought to church. He gets distracted really easy and it is really hard to teach him.  He also likes coming to church.  Hopefully we can find a way to help him pay attention better and help him learn more and come closer to Christ.

Lolis is also doing well.  We found out that she is scared of the water, and I mean really scared so I think that we are going to end up leaving her baptism in May.  And I'm not mad about that at all.  I think that it is great that she is willing to get baptized even if it really scares her.  She said that she isn't scared of the covenant or the commitment or anything.  Just the water.

Other than that we are still working and giving everything we have.  I'm excited to stay another 6 weeks here as you can tell by the very full Fridge and the ice cream.

Thank you for all you do.  I hope that you have a great week and keep doing the 5 things that dad said you should do.  I actually told a very similar list to my companion yesterday about the things that we should do to raise a happy obedient family.  I included love in place of tithing but I guess that tithing helps raise happy children too.

I wish I had more to write but I really don't remember much more.  Have a great week.  I love you.  Choose the right.  Have fun in school​

One new photo this week.

This week we worked hard to find people.  And we organized a baptismal service for this upcoming Saturday.  We are pretty excited because Sandra passed her baptismal interview with flying colors.  She is so ready and we are so excited.  Hopefully I can send some pictures next week without losing them in the computer.

Tuesday was a crazy day.  We had appointments all morning and didn't have a chance to return home to grab our water.  We asked an investigator for water.  I guess that my cup was a little dirty and I got a little sick Wednesday.  I guess that I pulled the good old Allred family problem at 5 am.  The rest of the day I had a very explosive situation and it made my companion laugh pretty hard all day.

We also had a training in Tampico this week and got to go there because my companion is new.  It was pretty good and we learned some very good things to apply to improve our companionship and keep having success.  We also got to eat some very tasty carne asada. Then on the bus ride home we both felt pretty sick.  Good news is that by the morning we felt great.  I guess that means I only got sick one time this week.  I also got to see Elder Crum there.  It was great to see him again and he seems to be doing well.  I'm now taller than him again.  I don't think that I'm growing but maybe a little.  I haven't noticed.  He has pictures and he's going to send them to me for next week.

Lolis is also doing great. We are thinking that we are going to move her baptism up a week because she is so ready.  She is really working hard and is progressing like nothing I have ever seen.  We are really excited and she is really doing well.  She told us the other day that she has made changes in her life that she has wanted to make for years and she's done it in a matter of a month.  I can testify of the power of Christ for that.

I love applying the concepts learned in conference and seeing the changes in my life.  I testify that God has prophets on the Earth again and that because of them we can have the restored church.  I testify that the Living Christ is the living head of the living church.  I know that He has a body of flesh and bones.  Through His Atonement he can help us overcome everything and helps us become more than we can without Him.

I love you and I know that we have an eternal family.  Keep doing what is right and God will bless you.  I hope you have a great week and enjoy Easter.  BTW there is no Easter bunny here.

I love you and I hope to have those pictures for next week.

Elder Allred

This week was great!!! we worked hard and we are getting there.  Really we are only teaching two people because we have been working with a lot of people for a few weeks.  We thought that conference would be a good opportunity for them to come to church at least one time.  I guess it just wasn't easy enough to make time for 2 hours this weekend.  We only had two people come to church, and one member brought one friend.  I guess that talking to and inviting everyone and asking 20 members to bring one friend to one session just wasn't enough.  We handed out over 60 invitations this week.  I guess that's what you call a "Brady Party" for every 30 people invited 1 person comes.  Typical.

The good news is that the two investigators that did come, came 3 or 4 times and were going to come to the Priesthood session too.  The only problem with that is that they are not male.  Sandra and Lolis are really excited and they are really working hard.  Sandra is going to get baptized next Saturday April 15th.  She is great and is reading and now we got her praying.  The only problem with this baptismal date is that she is now 8.15 months pregnant and is expecting for the end of April.  Hopefully nothing happens suddenly.  That would make it a little hard.  Lolis is also doing great.  She is reading and praying too.  She had some really good questions yesterday.  She felt like the talk by Joaquin E Coasta was directly for her....and I think she's right.

They are two of the best investigators that I have met in my mission and we are excited to see them progress.  They are really excited and working hard to get to baptism.  April 15 and May 6.  And good news we also are putting Baptismal dates for the 20th of May.  When my companion said that day I knew it was an important day in my life.  I´m sorry to say that it took me about 5 seconds to remember that it is one of the two most important days of my life.  We´ll see if dad remembers why...

Conference was also a highlight in my week. We also had the English subtitles for President Monson's talk.  It was rough to see him that way but it really motivates me to pass my physical limits for the work of the Lord. He could have easily sat down to give his talk, but he knew that there is no excuses to only do a job at 90% (and that is not talking bad about the other apostles that sometimes do sit down) but he gave everything that he had to help us to understand his message.

Have a great week and keep doing what you know is right.  I love you.

Elder Allred

More Photos!

Happy Monday.   This week was pretty good.  We are working hard and we are getting along great as companions.

Just a great note about this week.  I have spoken with more people in English this week than in 7 months (that's right, we're crossing the 7 month line!!!).  Everyone stops me in the streets to talk in English.  There is quite the range of English speaking ability here.  Sometimes I answer with a Utah accent and it loses them.  Other times I respond and they carry a heavy southern accent.  It's pretty cool and it's motivating my companion to learn English even faster (but it is going pretty slow, I´m being patient but he's taking his time ha ha).

Yesterday Sandra and Lolis came to church.  They got there late (after the sacrament) and left right after sacrament meeting.  But they did come.  Now we're working of two more hours, or 7 more for this weekend.

I'm really excited for the conference.  We are planning on inviting everyone and we hope to see a lot of people there.  I'm planning on good health this week.  But don't worry if I miss it. I still listen to the last conference and I know just about every talk based on how it starts.  And I'm planning on keeping up the habit.

It´s going great here.  The people are a little weird.  They'll talk to you for 3 hours but in the second that you say God, Church of Jesus Christ, Religion, Joseph Smith, Prophets, Bible or just about anything else they go running.  We're working on that, and we have some good plans.  Hopefully my idea gets approved to talk to some of the AA groups in the area and ask them to "advertise"  Hopefully they let me and hopefully it works to find some people to teach.

I had a very spiritual experience yesterday in church.  It started off really bad.  So I play the piano in the branch and so I played the sacramental hymn. When I finished they blessed the bread and passed it.  And then I realized just as they were starting the water that they never came to me.  I was meditating a bit and didn't notice.  So they passed the water and after a lot of confusion they brought me the bread and the water.  It started as a very stressful moment when I realized I hadn't eaten the bread but then when they brought the bread and water to me the peace and the joy I felt to renew my covenants was so incredible.  I have never felt the importance in the way that I felt it yesterday.  I always knew that it was important but it took a whole new meaning to almost not be able to take it.  And then they let me talk about the Sabbath Day observance.  It was nice to add a little bit more heartfelt meaning to my testimony of the Sacrament.  It was a good experience but I don't really recommend it to everyone.

I hope you all enjoy conference and have a great spiritual week.  I pray for you.  I love you

Elder Allred

Brady sent a few more pictures this week.  Check out the photos page.

It´s going really well here.  We are starting to really get going and we have some really good plans already for the upcoming Transfer.

My favorite part about training is all of the extra help/luck that God gives us to find people to teach.  We have not had a lot of success knocking doors or talking to people in the street but we have had a ton of success with references.  Everyone that we ask for a reference gives us a reference, and then it leads to more references and more.  And almost all of these references are actually really interested in listening to us.

Our Number 1 Investigator is Sandra.  She is the wife of Efrain a returned missionary and less active.  They went to church the week before we got here and had a great head start.  Sandra is pregnant and is going to give to the light (the Spanish way to say give birth) at the end of April or the beginning of May.  She is really excited to get baptized the 15th of April and is reading everything and learns really fast.  She's really excited and everything is going really well there. 

Now I'm sure you're asking how we're going to baptize someone that is almost 9 months pregnant.  The good news is that we already have that figured out.  We've been talking to some missionaries and the plan is to put her in a chair in the font and then just tip her back and baptize her while she's sitting.  We're pretty excited for all of that.

Our next best investigator is Lolis.  She is the wife of Jonathan a member.  She just had a baby and is also reading and studying and learning really well.  Our biggest problem with her is that her "spouse" Jonathan is not actually married to her.  Surprise!!! OK, so they get married.  Nope.  The problem is that Jonathan is in the USA and he can't come back for a year and a half more.  So the Law of Chastity is a bit of a problem.  So as we've talked to our leaders about this.  We have decided that if she really does everything and actually repents then she will be able to get baptized.  So it's just a matter of repentance now and then get married as fast as is possible when Jonathan gets back.  We'll see how that all works out and hopefully it all goes well.

So something that I find a little weird.  There are public bathrooms here.  But guess what, you have to pay 5 pesos to use them.  Sometimes 4 sometimes 6.  WHO KNEW!?!?  You have to pay to use the bathroom.  It's crazy but true.

Another crazy thing.  There is no time change in the spring.  They have one time change in November.  One year forward one year back.  So guess what, we are living at the same time right now.  Yep who would have thought.  Only in November.

I dont know if you have looked up Ebano on a map but it is a pretty decent size.  We have officially walked everywhere just about.  It´s much bigger than you would think.  But we're enjoying it and my feet are feeling better today ;)

I love you guys and hope that you keep on doing the things that you know you should.

I love you

Man, this week was crazy.  We worked really hard all week and we had some pretty descent success.  We're working on contacting more people. It was really hit or miss.  We had some days that we found a ton of people and every person that we talked to accepted an appointment.  And then other days in which the people wouldn't even listen to us.  We knocked doors a lot of the week.  We had some very good experiences with that and some not so good experiences.  Sometimes the people are just so funny.

Yesterday my companion contacted a door.  The guy came out of his house.  "What are you offering?"  My companion started to talk and the guy said "well we're Catholics here"  My companion bore his testimony, and the guy said "alright" turned and walked in the door without saying anything else.  My companion looked so confused and I was laughing for like 5 minutes straight.  The guy really did not want anything.

Yesterday we had quite the rainstorm.  We woke up and everything was wet, we got our umbrellas and went to church. When we left if was a beautiful day, so we left our jackets home and our umbrellas.  We went to work and then it started looking rainy again.  We grabbed our umbrellas and got working again.  We were about 5 or 8 minutes from the house and it started to drizzle, I grabbed my umbrella and my companion his jacket.  And then it started to rain more.  And more.  And then there was a really cool lightning bolt.  It started on one side of the sky and then flew across the whole sky.  it made a sound something like cckckdciabooomscksocokks.  something like that.  Everything turned purple too.  And it really started to rain.  But I had to put away my umbrella because that was not the only lightning bolt that was falling from the sky.  I either had to laugh or cry so I laughed as the guy that we had just contacted drove by and said have a nice day and laughing (he was nice it was just a funny situation).  We ran to the house and got there soaked.  We gave it ten minutes while we changed into dry clothes and everything cleared up.

The attendance in the ward is about 50.  We have found members everywhere.  The branch has the members to have a ward  but nobody goes so it's only a branch.  We're working on baptizing and reactivating and hoping to have a lot of success in both aspects.  The stake patriarch (of a stake because Panuco is only a district) came yesterday to give some blessings and when he spoke in sacrament meeting he said some pretty cool stuff about the future here in Ebano.  The members and us are very excited for the potential that he saw here.

I;m 4 for four on my houses.  Four houses and four of them we have lost the keys or left the keys inside or some sort of problem.  I guess that now we are protected from losing the keys again here because we locked them inside yesterday.  We got the door open thank goodness.

It's great to hear about all of the great experiences that you guys are having.  I hope that everything is going as well there as it is here.  The time goes so fast and it is hard to get done with everything that we have to do, but we're keeping busy.

I hope you have a great week.  I love you

More pictures on the Photos page

We received this email late on Monday night.

All's Well

Hey I´ll write tomorrow I´m training and we had training all day to do that.  I´ll write you tomorrow.  Everything is great and we're really excited!


Then on Tuesday we received his weekly letter.

Well, I hope that you got my email last night.  We were busy all day with some training for us as trainers and then training for our new companions.  We got 4 new missionaries this transfer, a lot smaller than the 12 to 15 that have arrived for the last 6 or 7 transfers.  For some reason President Ramirez thought it would be a good idea for me to train one of the 2 Elders that got here yesterday.  After spending a few hours eating and in the training we got paired up with our companions.  I'm with Elder Maceda.  He's from Puebla Mexico, south of Mexico City.  We're pretty excited to get to work and we have plenty to do.

So it's my 5th transfer, 4th companion and guess what...............4th area too!!!!!  We got put in Ebano, San Luis Potosi.  That means that I am in a different state of Mexico!!!! I guess what my zone is Panuco, which means that I get to go to Veracruz for my district classes!!!  I´m getting to know some new areas.  It´s pretty cool.  We are opening Ebano after about 5 months of it being closed.  There hasn't been a ton of success here in the past but there is a lot of potential.  It really does depend on the missionaries.  We have some good plans already laid out to find people to teach.  I figure with 40,000 people in our area there should be a few people willing to listen to us.  There are people everywhere we just have to stop them and teach them, and with faith and hard work and maybe just a little bit of luck too (aka blessings from God) we should be able to have some baptisms.  We are going to give it everything we have these first two weeks so that this transfer we can have some baptisms.  We're really excited and have some great plans. (PS Ebano is a branch).

The good news is that they left my companion this time in my old area to keep working. I really appreciate that.

Well last week we went to eat on Saturday. We sat down and the sister brought what she thought was chicken.  Now there are a few options.  Maybe the chicken had steroids.  Maybe I´m going crazy. #3 the most likely is that it wasn't chicken.  It was shaped like a chicken leg/drumstick, but it was way bigger than my hand.  My best guess is that was cat.  It tasted good and something similar to chicken but it was definitely not chicken (and it wasn't turkey either).

My birthday was really good.  We worked all day and really there wasn't time to eat in a restaurant nor were we hungry enough.  It was a really good day and we had some alright success that day.

Our only thing that we have left to worry about now is the food for the rest of the week.  We´re trying to get in contact with the branch president and the relief society president.  We´re going to find them tonight and we should have food for the week.

Everything is really good and we are giving it everything that we have.  It's warm and sweaty but really good (we do have AC)

Keep up the good work and doing the things that you should.  I love you all and hope that you can all take advantage of the time and opportunities taht you have.

I love you

Elder Brady Allred