I´m officially finishing 5 months in the mission!!!!!!!!  It´s pretty crazy to think that I´m already almost at 25% of the way done with my time.  It is going really fast, but it is worth every second.

Victoria is really pretty. It´s really nice to see some mountains and they honestly really do look a lot like the Utah mountains.  It´s weird sometimes when I´m walking down the street and see scenery that looks so much like home.

I´m loving working here in the work.  I've been so much less stressed here with Elder Flores, because we are always joking around.  He´s from Cuernavaca Morelos, Mexico.  He's got about a year and a half in the mission field.  He's got a great testimony and is an alright teacher.  We work really hard and we're both exhausted but the time is really starting to go a lot faster and I´m loving the work a lot more.  If you enjoy what you are doing then you will never work a day of your life.  We have a lot of extra responsibilities that we're getting used to.  Elder Flores is a Zone Leader and I'm helping him a lot with everything he has to do.

We got an assignment from President Ramirez (which means from God) to look for a family.  It's an assignment for every companionship of the mission to find a family (3 or more people) and to help them get to a baptism on the 11 of March.  We worked so hard this week looking for a family.  We actually found several families and some of them have a lot of potential.  One of the most promising families is the Family Castillo.  They are already married.  They have at least 5 children with about the following ages, 20, 17, 12, 10, and a new born.  That's at least 4 kids that are old enough to be baptized and there might be one or two more.  Everyone in the family has a lot of questions, and they are very open to what we teach.  They told us that the other night they sat down to read one of the pamphlets as a family and that they noticed that there really was a lot of peace in their house when they were reading and that they want that peace always.  Pretty much they are ready to progress.  They went on a vacation this weekend but were planing on reading the three pamphlets The Restoration, the Plan of Salvation and the doctrine of Christ.  We have a lot of confidence that they are going to read them, and tomorrow we have an appointment to answer all of their questions.

We have a few other families that also have a lot of potential and we hope to put a lot of baptismal dates and to have a lot of investigators in church Sunday (it would be pretty cool to double the church attendance of 50 that we had yesterday, I´ll let you know).

This area is great, it's a whole lot more fun in the cold than in the heat.  I've been staying warm, but if there's no snow then it's not actually cold.  Everyone else is dying but I'm really loving the weather.

This week we also had  world mission training.  It was so cool to learn directly from three members of the quorum of the twelve and from all of the church mission council.  We learned a lot of things from the experience that have already helped us a lot in the missionary work.  It´s great to see improvements day to day and that God can really work on us and mold us little by little if we let him.

Really if we put our focus on the things of God then we will always see blessings in our lives.  Like President Nelson said in conference, It isn't so much our situation that decides our happiness, it´s our focus.  If we are focused 100% on Christ then we can never be sad because he has already overcome all of our problems if we just let Him help us. 

Keep doing the things that you know are right and God will always bless you.  If the temple and our covenants are the center of our lives then we will see a very big difference in all aspects of our lives.

Thank you for all of the support and love from home.

I love you.

Elder Brady Allred

Check out the new pictures on the "photos" page.

I got changed.  I´m in the Zone Victoria Norte, in the Area Carrera and with Elder Flores.  It's going to be a big change.  It´s still a big city and we get to buy at Walmart, so that´s pretty great.  Elder Flores has about a year and a half in the mission, almost all of it in Victoria and he´s been in Carrera 2 times now.  I think we´re going to get a long great and have a lot of success. (I think it will be fun because we did spend more time in the toy section than buying food)

Elder Crum got here just fine,  I had to pass by the mission office this morning and he was there.  He was talking about how hot it was, but I don´t know what he was talking about, it felt about normal to me.

Here in Victoria it´s a lot drier than in Madero.  Something to do with mountains rather than the beach.  It´s also going to get really hot if I stay here.  I've heard we can get up to 50 or 60 degrees, and yes that is in Celsius.  It also gets a bit colder but without the humidity it shouldn't be as bad.  And we shouldn't get snow either, but it´s possible, especially with prayer and fasting.  And those pictures of snow are beautiful. I want to touch it.

So with all of this we did have a pretty successful week in Nueva Cecilia.  We found a whole bunch of people and a lot of our investigators did go to chuch this week.  We would have put a few baptismal dates but we decided to leave that to the new Elders  (They took out me and Elder Marrufo).  We have all of the plans laid out and I´m planning to hear about 6 or 7 baptisms from there in a few weeks.  My companion says that we have a few good investigators that are already progressing to baptism.  I´m pretty excited to get to know them and keep helping them.

It´s actually kind of pretty here.  It also feels a little bit more like Utah, without the humidity and all.  I did get the opportunity to give a talk Sunday for my first time in Spanish. I wrote my talk with pictures and it was actually pretty fun to give.  I had scriptures written down but everything else was pictures.  Everybody said that it was really good.

Nothing else really happened this week.  We had divisions with the District Leader, but that's about it.  

I´m excited for what´s to come and I´m planning on having a good time.

I love you 

Elder Brady Allred

We did have some success yesterday in investigators coming to church.  We had 4 people show up.  Adolfo and Carlos (a new investigator) didn't show up until after the sacrament which really stinks, and then a part member family showed up too.  We´re a little mad at the members of the ward who never told us about this family, especially since we've been asking and they never mentioned them.  But we're going to start teaching them this week.  The Dad is a member of about 30 years and a high priest, but his spouse and daughter are not members, but want to come to church and learn more.  Hopefully we can see some good progress there and that they really want to change their lives.

That means that Oscar and Sarai did not go to church yesterday.  They ended up out of town this week, and they´re not going to be able to get married this week either so their wedding (and subsequently their baptism) will be postponed a few weeks. Hopefully I´ll still be here, and Elder Marrufo wants to be here too, but transfers are next week so we´ll see what happens.  I really hope that I get to stay another 6 weeks cuz we´re really starting to get going.

Martin and Isidra didn't go either this Sunday, but that was because we never found them to invite them.  We talked to them yesterday night and taught Sabbath Day observance and they agreed to come to church.  Hopefully they come this Sunday (we planned with them this upcoming Sunday morning) and we´re planning on putting a baptismal date with them.  They are both reading the book of Mormon and really starting to understand and progress a lot.  We´re pretty excited.

Adolfo is doing great too.  He's also reading the book of Mormon, and he's gone to church 5 times now.  We're still helping him resolve a lot of doubts that he has about Joseph Smith, but after Gospel Principles yesterday he has a lot of questions about the plan of salvation because the teacher explained it all in about 5 minutes and left a lot of room for people to not understand.  We're going to get all of that figured out tomorrow and we're also planning on putting a baptismal date with him too.

We're starting to have a lot more success with finding people and we have a few other families that are just starting to visit with us too, and we think that they have a lot of potential.  Hopefully I do get to stay because I think that the next few months are going to be really successful and eventful with all of the investigators we're finding.

The TJ´s knocked our door the other day (TJ is short for Testigos de Jehová, or Jehovah´s Witnesses, but it is pronounced Tee Jay by all of the missionaries and because of that nobody else actually knows what it means).  We left the apartment with a lot of excitement and we actually scared the TJ.  She was pretty new to all of this and was very intimidated by us (something about being Mormon does that to people).  She gave us her pamphlet of their version of the Word of Wisdom, what we should eat and do to stay healthy.  So when they passed by coming down the stairs we tried to give them our Word of Wisdom pamphlet.  They said that they can´t accept it during their proselyting but that if we come to her house someday then we can share what we believe.  We got her address and her name and passed her reference over to the zone leaders.  It was so cool.

We also got stuck planning the ward activity last week.  The elders quorum was in charge and about 2 hours before the activity we found out that we were the only 4 elders going.  We had to plan the whole activity (mainly because the ward council told us that we had to do it all, even though it was their activity) in two hours and we actually had a great time.  It was one of the funnest ward activities I've ever gone to, and it only took two hours to plan.  Hopefully the ward does a bit more of the work next time, so that we can get a bit more work done with the investigators.

Then the funniest experience of the week.  We were in a contact and it was going really well.  Suddenly a block away one of the brothers of an old investigator came around the corner yelling.  He was yelling across the street to some people working on building a house.  Suddenly about half a block away, he stopped, still yelling across the street.  He undid his belt and his pants and started peeing in the middle of the street, all the while he was yelling across the street.  He finished his business and walked away.  It was so  weird but so funny at the same time.  We didn't really focus on the contact as much as we should have during all of that, but the contact didn't see anything and did accept an appointment.

I´m still playing the piano for the ward.  I don´t practice as much before as I would like but I can testify that God is improving my talents for the piano.  I have played several songs that are very hard not perfectly but good enough with only two or three run throughs before sacrament meeting, and I´m actually getting better and better at the piano every week.  I can testify that God will qualify who He calls.

I hope you guys have a good break this week.  I  hope that everything is going well.  I pray for you often and I hope that you keep doing the things that you know are right.  Your testimony is either growing or shrinking it never holds still so make sure that you keep it growing.

I love you and hope that every thing is great.
Love Elder Allred

Everything went really well this week it was honestly an awsome week. It did get really cold but the sweater and
suit jacket that I have did the trick and then the experience I have with putting on a lot of layers at night helped too. I stayed warm enough at night so you don´t need to worry.  It is also one of the coldest January's here too, and it sounds like that in February it gets even colder so we'll see what happens.

We actually had talks yesterday too.  January 1 we had testimony meeting and yesterday we had fast Sunday, I don´t know why they did that, but it all worked out cuz the temple president ended up taking my spot speaking. (Three weeks in a row I've dodged the bullet.  Three different talks prepared, 0 given)

I´m glad to hear about Sofie too.  Tell her congratulations.

I´m glad to hear about all of the other missionaries, family, friends and neighbors.  De hecho (in fact) Jack sent me an email too this week and it´s just really cool to get the support from everybody and hear that everyone is alright.

That night that we were locked out of the house we stayed in the Zone Leader´s house because they live in the ward and like 5 minutes from our house.

I do miss the snow. Everyone here is so cold and I´m loving it.  I am honestly happier with the cold and feel an extra energy and excitement to be in the cold, it´s so much fun, but I´m looking into buying some gloves too for the next time.  I wish I could help shoveling the driveway, I really want to build a snowman, but it sounds like I can
build plenty with 3 feet of snow in college.

This week was awesome in the work.  Oscar and Sarai are still planning for their baptism next Saturday. They are old investigators that last week told us that they miss going to church and that they feel that it is missing in their life.  The ward will hopefully help us get them married and then we can get them into the water the 21st of this month.  They have already received lessons for 3 months and we stopped teaching them in December, like the first week, but now they came to us and said that they are ready to get baptized and are making the changes necessary.  I sure hope everything works out and that we can get everything reviewed for this baptism next Sunday.

Alan, the young adult that was also an old investigator has started going to chuch now too, without us teaching him or anything.  I guess his parents have softened up, and I think we may start teaching him now again too. Hopefully we can teach a bit to his parents and maybe they´ll be interested in learning more too.

Then Martin and Isidra are starting to progress too.  Martin is a Taxi Driver that we contacted a month and a half ago.  We can only find them in their house when his taxi is out front, and so we haven't taught them all that much. They are starting to show more interest though and are starting to read the Book of Mormon and to pray. Hopefully we can help them to understand the importance of Church attendance and we can get them to come to church next Sunday.

We are contacting a lot of people in the streets looking for new investigators and it´s honestly helping us a lot.  Everyone in the zone acutally saw a lot more success this week as we came out of the holiday break (break for everyone else, not for us) and hopefully we´ll really get some good teaching experiences going too.

Actually this morning we had a lesson with the Brother in Law of the Bishop, Adolfo. He is great.  He has a lot of really good questions and wants to learn more.  He has several problems that the church is helping him with and now we´re trying to help him too.  He´s very direct with his questions and sometimes he comes across angry even
though he is honestly just asking a question.  At one point this moring he said, "Ok, what is your testimony of this?" When I started to bear testimony of the Book of Mormon he said "No, I want what you´ve seen in your life"  Well I gave him what he asked for.  I bore testimony to him and it was cool to see the change in his eyes as he
felt the spirit.  My companion got the same question asked right after and it was awesome to be able to bear straight testimony of the family, the priesthood and the blessings of the church in my life with him sitting there listening with all his attention.

He´s excited to read the book of Mormon and to pray about it too.  He already has a few weeks going to chuch but this was our first time teaching him.  I sure hope everything gets worked out and that he gets an answer to his prayers.  He wants to know it´s true and I know he can get an answer.

I´m loving the work now that we are having more spiritual experiences, it´s so cool to see how the gospel can change people´s lives and I know that it is changing my life too. Thank you for all that you do. I hope you all have a great week and do everything that you know is right.

I love you
Elder Brady Allred

I hope you guys really enjoyed the new year´s party and that you have some good goals set for the new year, both spiritual and temporal goals.  As long as we keep improving God will always be happy with us.

This week went pretty well.  Wednesday we went to the stake center for the District Class.  We learned some good stuff and then came back to get to work.  We went to an appointment with a less active sister, Rosa.  We got there and talked for a few minutes.  She asked us to give a blessing to her mom so we did.  Her mom is Catholic but
everyone else in her family are members.  We talked for a minute.  The Elders used to pass by their house all of the time and talk and eat, and take naps, dance, tell jokes, and all sorts of stuff.  But she said that they never drank Coke because that was a sin for them.  So they were a little bit of missionaries not all that focused on the
work, but they have a good relationship with the missionaries.

As we were talking, Rosa told us a story.  She said that she was fishing one day a few weeks ago.  It was a competition (She´s a competitive fisher) and she was not having any luck.  She said that she decided to say a prayer and ask God for some help.  She said she promised 2 things in the prayer.  1 She won´t tell us.  The other was that the next time she sees missionaries in the street she´ll invite them to dinner.  Not two days later, we come walking down the street with a strong impression to talk to her.  I guess God will get her to keep her
promise.

She did give us some fish for dinner so we went to take it to the house.  We saw the neighbor outside with a foot long rat that they had killed in their house.  It was kind of disgusting but really cool too.  He killed it with a long metal pole (about 2 feet long) by poking it really hard.  I guess you've got to do what you've got to do.

We went to put the food in the fridge.  But we didn´t have the keys. We lost the keys.  We searched but never found them with any of the members or in the stake center.  I guess they probably ended up with the taxi driver (and he really didn't like us all that much for trying to contact him during the ride) so the keys are long gone.

We climbed in the window the next day and all´s well that ends well cuz we got in and have all of the keys back now (we went to a locksmith to get a key for the lock, it was honestly pretty cheep).

So with all of that under our belt we got back to work.  We went with some old investigators Oscar and Sarai, to see what they think of the Church.  We got there and to our surprise Oscar has a job and they are planning on getting married now and are excited to get baptized.  They think that they´ll get married in March, but we're planning on hurrying that up a little bit more to do it in January.

I do have a blanket now.  I saw one sitting there in the grocery store today right in our path so I bought it.  I never thought to look for it so I guess God answered your prayers by putting it right in my path.

I come home next year.

I hope you have a good week and a good year.  Keep up the good work.

I love you
Elder Brady Allred

 Brady had a zone mission party on Monday, so we didn't get a letter until Tuesday.


It was awesome to talk to you guys on Sunday.  I feel so happy to see and hear that everything is good at home.  It was a little weird to come to life from the perspective of the tv.  But I really enjoyed it even if I cried through almost the whole entire thing.

Yesterday the party was pretty awesome.  We got there and played basketball and soccer.  We then broke the piñata and ate carne asada for lunch around 2.  Then we got to watch a movie.  From the emails from my friends I believe that everyone got to watch the same movie.  It was Star Wars-The Force Awakens.  It was pretty fun and I enjoyed it a lot.  All of the missionaries that have over a year and hadn't seen it were really excited.  It was pretty cool.  From there we played some volleyball and then had a white elephant.  I got some pretty cool (a little small) lion slippers.  They´re pretty alright.  Then we cleaned up and came home.  We did have some Elders from Panuco stay in our house because they weren't able to go home because it´s an hour and a half for them to get home.

I´m glad to hear that you guys had a great Christmas too.  I´m a little jealous of your breakfast caserole, but I did get to eat some pancake and cold cereal so I did enjoy that a lot.  I also ate some ice cream to finish off the night.

I am really grateful for all that the other people in the ward and in the family that they are so willing to support me on my mission.  I am so grateful that I can be out here serving God and doing the things that He would have me do.

I loved seeing the snow, It made me really happy (not as much as seeing you guys).  I am really happy about silverrush too.  That is so cool that you were able to raise all of that money in just 3 short weeks.

I am excited to get back to work today in the afternoon.  I loved the relaxing weekend that we had but I am anxious to get back into the swing of things.

Everything is great here.  I hope you have a great week and keep doing the things that you know are right.

I love you
Elder Brady Allred

More pictures! Check out the photos page.

The package has not arrived yet, but don´t worry, it´ll get here when it get´s here.

It´s ridiculously cold here too.  Last night it was supposed to get down to 9 degrees (Celsius of course) but it´s really cold with the humidity.  Luckily we don´t have the fog that soaks your clothes in seconds yet, but it´s really hard to dry clothing with the cold. We also have to hang up clothes in the house, but it´s really not big enough even though we have stuff in every room.

I am really looking forward to Christmas.  I have no idea why, but really I´m more excited about this Christmas than I ever have been in the past.  My companion is hating my excitement (I think he´s missing his family a lot, and in part a girlfriend) and he won't let me sing the Christmas hymns in companion study.  We stilll do about 3 times a week, but he doesn´t enjoy it.

I did get the testimonies and I really appreciate that.  I´ll print off some of them, and try to hand them out.

I´m excited to hear about the Silver Rush total.  It´s pretty exciting, and I´m glad all of the concerts went well and that the door looks just as good as ever.

This week was pretty good.  I´m really starting to love the work, even though it is still not going perfectly well.  We´re going to leave a few more investigators because they won´t stop drinking or doing drugs and they won´t come to church even when we talk to them like 15 times.  Yesterday the whole ward (with 2 sets of missionaries) only had 1 investigator and it was a family member of the bishop (the bishop is great).  When church started we only had about 30 people in the chapel, it did fill in though a bit by the end.

We had a Chirstmas party in the ward this week which was pretty good.  We had 15 investigators that came to this (and the other Elders had 8 investigators).  It started only an hour and a half late.  There was a nativity, a whole bunch of group performances and Santa came.  We did get to finish with dinner so that was good, but I like Dad´s Christmas parties better.

I am the ward pianist if I hadn't told you, I had to play and practice with like all of the groups for the party,  It was a bit of a pain taking time out of the work, but it improved their performance about 500%, because everyone here cannot hear the notes right.

This week on Friday we get to all come together as a Mission to eat Christmas dinner.  We´re all pretty excited to have all 150 missionaries together.  Then we get to play sports, watch a movie, and hang out as a zone on Monday, so we´re all pretty happy.

I was really happy yesterday that the Stake President got me out of speaking.  He went a little over time and so I did not end up speaking.  Hopefully they don´t move me to next Sunday, but we´ll see what happens.

I love the mission, and I´m really excited for Christmas.  I hope you have a great week and a Merry Christmas.

I love you
Elder Brady Allred

Dia Guadalupano (Day of the Virgin)
All of the Catholic´s are celebrating today, pretty crazy.

I don´t know how or why you shared the cold with me but I got it too. I´m just finishing getting over it, but mine was only for 2 days.  Hope you get well soon.

I´m still in the same area with the same people, Elder Marrufo.  6 more weeks and we´ll see what happens.

We had another baptism in Hidalgo this weekend, Lizbeth.  I couldn't go but it sounded like it went well.  I´ll ask for pictures.

I´m getting pretty excited about Christmas.  I don´t know why, but I´m still feeling the Christmas spirit and I bought myself a Grapefruit today because it reminds me of Christmas.

Yesterday we had Stake conference with Elder Castañeda.  He´s a 70. We can only go to the General session but his talk there was incredible and the bishop said that the other 2 were great as well.  He had us bring 60 investigators as a stake (We had 30).  He had them all stand up and then testified directly to them.  It was so cool.  I have never felt the spirit so strongly (besides one other time in my life) than when he said with tears in his eyes "I testify to you that what the missionaries are teaching you is the truth"  They felt it,
and there is no way anyone in the congregation did not.  He bore testimony so many times.  He told some incredible stories about the temple and repentance.  He said that it is not an effective church meeting unless we leave feeling like we need to repent or change something in our life.  The Stake president talked about how we need to repent.  Repentance is not just to stop sinning but to really change how you act and what you want.  It was a great Stake conference and I learned a lot.

Everything is going well we are starting to find a few more people to teach.  We have found a lot of drug addicts and drunks that say that they can hear the spirit when we speak and that they know that it is true.  But when we try to get them to do something they say no.  They hear the voice of God but they don´t follow the Good Shepherd just know that He is good.  It made me wonder how many times we do that in our life.  We know that Christ has all power and that the Church is true, but we have those things that we don´t want to change, or that we keep away from Him.  Here is a picture of our zone.  Elder Nixon back left, was the district leader but he went home today to West Jordan.  Hna Clark in the front center went home to Provo.  Everyone else stays.  (The picture did not actually attach, so hopefully he can get it to us next week.)

Hope you all have a great week.  We´ll keep going here and see what happens.

I love you
Elder Brady Allred

Where´s the Snow? 85 Degrees?

It´s still hot here.  I asked someone when the cold will get here, because occasionally we have a cold front they just laughed.  They said "Here, it´s really hot for ten months out of the year.  And then just hot for the other two months."  So I guess there will be no snow here for Christmas.

Pretty much nothing happened this week.  We worked everyday.  Found a few people to teach but nothing really happened.  We couldn´t find any of our remaining investigators so we´re hoping they were just on vacation this week.  Honestly I looked at my Journal to remember what happened this week.  Then I remembered that this week my journal took up only about 2 pages becuase nothing happened.  Usually it´s about 8 or 9 pages and some weeks 15.  so Yeah it was a pretty boring week.

Regardless, I´m enjoying my time here.  With 4 Elders in the ward we still eat together a few days out of the week so that is really fun. With Elder Martinez and Elder Button we laugh a lot.  They know how to work hard, but when we aren´t working they know how to enjoy thier time too.

I found out that Hidalgo is going to have 4 baptisms in the next few weeks of people that Elder Mondragon and I taught.  A family of 3.  Nataly and Brandon and their duaghter Melani.  I guess they finally decided to get married so we are pretty happy about that.  If I stay here (transfers next week) then I should be able to go.

Bishop Preza is really starting to do some missionary work.  He had 4 family members (Nephew, Brother in law, Grandkids) all come to church yesterday, separately.  We are starting to teach his sister.  We are very pleased with him.  His story is pretty good too.  He´s a convert of 4 years.  The day after getting sealed to his spouse (1 year after his baptism) he was called to be second counselor in the bishopbric and now he´s bishop.  He said he goes to every training or meeting that the stake has for organizations (YW YM, Relief Society.....) He´s a pretty awesome bishop that is really taking to the missionary work and helping us a ton.

Christmas day it sounds like we go to church and then go to any dinners that we are invited to.  Other than
that we stay home.  the 26th we get to play sports, watch a movie, and hang out with the zone, so we are pretty excited about that.

The Christmas devotional was pretty good last night, we only got to see about 20 or 30 minutes but we still felt the
spirit so that was great.

I´m glad to hear that the ward party went well.  About 90 people in an activity would be great, we get about 20. We do have about 150 peopleat church though, but nobody comes during the week.

Thank you for your support.  I´ll keep planting the seed while I look for the ones that other people have already planted.

Thank you for everything you do for me.  I love you so much and hope you have a very Merry Christmas.

Love
Elder Brady Allred

Brady sent a couple of pictures so check out the photo page.

I´m glad to hear that you guys had a great thanksgiving.  I did eat an extra bowl of cereal before bed to celebrate but it´s nothing compared to chocolate pie.  I´m glad to hear you got to play some games, and
I´m really sad that I had to miss that.

I´m getting pretty excited for Christmas, there are lights popping up all over hear.  It´s kinda neat that everyone here believes in Christ, even if they aren't members of the church.  Most people just have a
ton of lights centered around the Virgin Guadalupe (The virgin Mary, but the Mexican version that the Conquistadors used to convince all of the Lamanites to convert to Catholicism, a few months ago the Pope
said that it´s not Guadalupe, but the people don´t really care).

Honestly, this week really stunk.  We lost all of our investigators, except for like 3.  They all decided to stay Catholic or their spouse told them to stay Catholic, or they decided they don´t have time to meet with us any more.  It really stinks.  We also contacted a whole bunch of people trying to find new investigators.  We found that everyone that lives in our area is not interested in listening to us, but everyone else would love to get baptized.  Pretty much it got to the point that if  the person was interested and involved in questions (both answering and asking) then we knew that they lived in Victoria, Tampico, Altamira, Veracruz, or any number of other cities.  We sent in about 20 great references this week and the Secretary of References told us that we caused plenty of work for him this week.  But with all of this work we only found 2 people to teach, and one of them already told us that he´s not interested.  So that was pretty fun.

My companion also got a little sick this week so that cut out a little bit of efficiency and energy.  But we´re both feeling great and we´re ready to give it all this week.

I hope that you've heard about Ilumina el Mundo, or Light the World (?).  The Christmas initiative that the Church has put together.  It´s pretty cool.  It has one main video about service and how we are here in the place of Christ, and then there are 25 short videos, one for each day of December for how we can serve.  It´s pretty cool and I hope that you all get a chance to do it.

It´s going great here.  I love the food, almost everyday.  I haven´t really gone hungry yet, but only two meals a day is a bit of a struggle.  I hear in December that we get fed in almost every house and I really hope that it´s true.  I love the Pan Dulce or sweet bread that they have here, it´s really good.  I also love that I can just
buy bread from people on bicycles for really cheap and it´s really good.  Bread is so good and so cheap.

Keep doing the things that you should.  I hope you can all find someone to share the Gospel with, at school at home, in the neighborhood or in the street even.  Just talk to people and try to share the gospel.  It is part of the covenant you made to get baptized.  And the missionaries will love you more for this than for ice cream.

I love you and hope you can start having a Great Start to December.

Elder Brady Allred