12-5-11

Hey Madre:

As far as the flight home I will be home at 4:18 as I think you know and if you guys want to go out to eat, that's fine with me! I'm not too picky. Have you spoken to the Stake President about when and where I will be released? I guess afterwords we'll just go to the house and I'll cruise around for a bit haha. I don't really know what else to do haha. We can sit around and read the scriptures or something hahaha. Or go to the movies, I'd like to see Puss 'n Boots, I've heard it's great. But, I don't know if I'll be able to sit still for that long; maybe we'll save that for Saturday.

I finished my home-coming talk already! I think you'll like it. Also, some of my favorite cake would be great when I get home -- with the hershy's on top. I have missed that stuff for a while now.

I'm excited to see your new Jeep! It sounds really nice. What's up with all these people getting engaged? Weird! It's crazy to see how many people have gotten engaged as I've been out. We'll see what happens. I feel like a prophet because of the Alexa business hahaha. I called that one!

This week was so stressful, as are most baptismal days but I'm going to start the letter on a different note first.

Last night we visited the Sanchez family and the Cruz family and Lopez family in derby as an early farewell to them. They are a few of the families that I worked with in Bridgeport, so it was really fun to see them again and get to visit a little and eat some great Mexican food! It was amazing!

The English speaking elders had a great week as well, they baptized their investigator, Kristin Zaichkin. She bore a great testimony about the Book of Mormon and the truthfulness of it and the overall service was a great success. The Spirit was very strong and surrounded us abundantly. She is one of the more prepared investigators and I'm excited for her to grow in the church and continue learning.

I should have just brought my journal to the library, because I've been kicking butt at keeping my journal. I haven't missed a day in the last 8 weeks! It's been really cool. Anyway, I interviewed Henry Okokpu for baptism yesterday and he is so humble and just spiritually sensitive. Whenever I asked him a question he would first think, and then give his answer, it was so great to see how seriously he takes these things and really expects himself to do them. I believe that he will be able to do a lot of good in his own life and in the lives of others. He's 18 right now, so I'm hoping that he is planning on serving a mission, because he is a very bright man and he will be a worthy priesthood holder.

So, the baptism. Last week we asked our ward council to do two things -- get a pianist, and get someone to represent the Relief Society. During church they announced the baptism.

Alicia and Roger asked Elder Standage and me to baptize them and so that was very exciting for us. The night of the interview we saw that Roger (8), his sister Karla (7), and their friend Oscar (6) wanted to sing "I am a child of God" at the baptism. Elder Standage knows how to play piano (even though he says he doesn't) so he got on the piano and I took charge of leading the children. It was awful, but so cute that we had to do it haha. We Had the kids sing that for the opening hymn, I love having the kids sing because no matter how good or bad they are, the spirit is always there. Elder Standage and I arrived at the church at about 1:00 to start filling the font and after it got about a stair high we found that the plug had some issues and was draining! So I had to strip down and get into the font to fix the drain, luckily it wasn't too big of a deal so we continued filling and we got it filled right on time. It was actually REALLY hot, too. But hey, that's better than cold!

The baptism was set for 4:00 and at 4 we had Alicia there, Roger, and a family friend, Carmen. Very disappointing. at 4:10 our ward mission leader showed up with the programs and copied them off and then shortly after the second counselor showed up. In all we had about 10 people there; no one from the Relief Society nor a pianist showed up. So Elder Standage played the piano and I conducted the music. What's important is that Alicia felt the spirit very strongly. She loved it and Roger, after emerging from the water exclaimed "I want to do that again!" to which I replied "you can tomorrow when you take the sacrament!" He's such a funny kid, he's so sharp.

After the baptism we had our finishing hymns etc. and then Carmen and a few of the others brought refreshments so we enjoyed some Arroz con Leche and some Mexican bread. It was great, but we were so busy that we never got pictures of us all in our white clothes!!! Grr! That was really a bummer.

Yesterday we showed up to church and apparently the bishop had forgotten about the baptism and we were told that "it seems like a lot of people just forgot." I let the 2nd counselor know (and I hope this wasn't out of line) that "I [was] very disappointed in the ward council because we couldn't even get the two things we asked for. It was very poorly played out and I don't want to see that again." After that fiasco, Alicia and Roger were then confirmed (we switched spots, so I confirmed Roger) and Alicia again felt the spirit very strongly. It was so great to see them there and receive those saving ordinances.

Ashly on the other hand unfortunately did not show up to church. We are hoping that she will be able to meet with President Evans today though and speak with him. That's a story I'll save for when I get home.

Anyway, I love you very much. I have started again in the Book of Mormon, The gathering of Israel is the theme this time around I guess. It's funny how each time you read it, it's a different theme (at least for me.) I've learned a lot about the scattering of the tribes of Israel and the reason behind that. I always thought of it as this kind of "oh no! They were wicked and Babylon destroyed them so they got scattered!" but in reality it's part of the plan of God that we might know in these days that the gospel has been restored, and more importantly (in some respects) that the second coming is near.

Have a wonderful week!
-Elder Conner Allred

11-28-11

Hey Madre!
So the whole "coming home" business hasn't really set in, and I don't think it ever will to be honest haha. It's interesting because I feel like I can talk about this or that all I want but I feel like coming home will never really happen, I'll just sit around in the apartment on transfer call night, not get a call, and I'll just stay here for at least another 6 weeks -- it's difficult to imagine anything else. At the same time, these whole two years are just blended into one big mess, 2010 and 2011 didn't really happen in my life haha.

Thanksgiving was great! We went to the Chandri's home (a puerto rican family from the singles branch) so the four of us had a nice turkey dinner! The food was amazing and we had a really great time, I really appreciate the Chandri family for having us over. Something bad happened, they have converted me -- I want a Greyhound really bad. Sarah Chandri, their daughter of 23 is a foster mom for Greyhounds because after 2 years the racers retire them and kill them, so she takes them in, fixes the behavioral problems (if any) fattens them up a little and finds homes for them. Their new one is named Oscar, a purebread greyhound and he is absolutely RIPPED! They are such cool looking dogs. The only issues he has is that he's really timid around people but he's such a good dog, he just sits next to you and relaxes and is really calm, it was neat.

After the turkey we went to Alicia's house and taught her and Roger about tithing, law of chastity, fasting, and the 10 commandments. Roger is hilarious, Elder Urrutia taught me the sign language for all of them so I do that with the kids (and everyone else, who am I kidding?) and we got to adultery and I asked "So Roger, do you know what adultery is?" And he said "Yeah of course, it means don't be rude to adults" hahaha. It was awesome. I didn't really know how to explain it softly so Alicia popped in and said "When you're married, you don't marry anyone else." So that was really easy! Alicia is great, we're really excited for her. She's one of those people that was just destined to get baptized (I guess that's everyone that gets baptized, but you know what I mean).

Friday we went to the temple and it was a great experience. I learned a lot this time around, things I'm excited to get home and talk to you about. We just did one session and then had lunch in the cafeteria <-spanish? I'd write more, but I can't! haha.

Ashly is doing well, except that she had to sleep in the park the other day with her daughter because her mom kicked her out for getting in a fight with her brother. What a mess... Ashly also got some new kittens! Of which I have sent you pictures. I look really fat in the picture, It's gross. Edit that before that goes online hahaha. We set Ashly's date back to the 10th to give her a little more time, what a great way to finish my last weekend though.

Will I stand up and damn everyone, make everyone feel uncomfortable? definitely not. But the only way people will find salvation in the Lord is through the Book of Mormon and this church. If everyone that has paid for my mission wants me to pay them back, I will happily do so; but I plan on bearing my testimony that this church is true, Joseph Smith is a prophet, and the Book of Mormon is the work of God. In reality, he that hath an ear let him hear.

I'll be finishing the Book of Mormon in Spanish today, I have 3 more pages!
I love you!
-Elder Conner Allred

11-21-11

Madre,

Well this week has been pretty grand! Ashly came to church again and she brought her sister, Julianna (14), with her. She is progressing well but you can tell that Satan has it out for her. It's really hard for her because he's turning her own family against her, but we have seen that happen before. I talked to their whole family about Utah last week and now they all want to visit Utah because it sounds so cool haha.

Alicia Campos and her son Roger came to church this week too, Alicia is doing really well, I'm pretty sure that I haven't told you much about her. Alicia is from the Philippines and she married a Mexican guy here in CT. She speaks spanish pretty well and english also, but we teach her in spanish. Her son Roger is 8 years old. Her husband isn't super excited about the church, but he was able to listen in as we taught Roger the plan of salvation last week and his primary teacher told us that he was going on and on about it during class, so that was pretty cool. Alicia cooks food with her husband on the weekends at this place by the Yale hockey rink where tons of different people from all over set up little carts and sell food from their countries. It's usually 5-6 dollars and it's CHEAP! It's SO good. We go there every friday after district meeting and Alicia hooks me up haha. She's awesome.

This week we're headed to the temple and so we're preparing for that. I'm pretty excited to go and I look forward to making sure that I'm ready to serve diligently and worthily in the temple. (Hopefully I don't drive myself crazy like always). I guess we're going for a Christmas thing ( a little early, eh?) so I'm pretty excited.

These last few weeks have been a good time for reflection on my mission and also a time to do better than I have done in some areas and strive to do as I am and have done in others. It's strange to think that in only a few weeks I'll just be a normal Joe again. I'm excited to put into practice the skills that I have learned out here into my daily life and to share the gospel at home, school, work, etc. but it will be interesting to not have that mantle of a missionary. I'm nervous to see the difference that it will bring into my life but I guess it has to come at some point -- just didn't think it'd come so fast.

I'm not sure what else to tell ya this week! We'll talk in 7 days from now.

I'm going to put together my resume to send to apple, apparently if I get a job there, verizon gives an employee discount ($25 per/mo. Unlimited everything). So lets pray for that! haha.

Love you,
Elder Conner Allred

11-14-11

Madre,

Ashly came to church this week! Along with her mom, Maria, and her sisters Genesis(11), and Jaylyn(7). It was so great to have them there and it was so satisfying to finally have them come. We went over on Saturday and let them know that if they have another "emergency" to not worry about it and just go to church! Sunday rolled around and as church started we still didn't see them. We texted them and Ashly said she was going to be a little late (better late than never.) We decided to wait outside until they got there, they showed up at about 10:20 (Church started at about 9:40.) It was such an amazing thing to see not just Ashly and her Mom get out of the car, but Genesis and Jaylyn as well. It was so cool! So we walked in and got a row of seats and sat through the rest of sacrament meeting which was absolutely fantastic. The talks were on the scriptures and how to use them as a "guide" to life. After sacrament we took Ashly to the gospel principles class and elder Standage stayed with her and then I went with Maria to the Spanish class. We also took Genesis and Jaylyn to primary and Maria seemed to love that they would be taken care of during church. The class that I was in was on the last chapters of Hebrews. Maria even started to take notes as she listened, and the teacher, Sister Ruso, was very loving and kind to her.

After Relief Society we took Ashly and Maria down to get Genesis and Jaylyn and the primary president was so happy that they had come and really made them feel welcome. She told Maria "I need to ask you a favor, we really need them to be here for the primary program next week." it was so great! As we were walking towards the door Jaylyn looked up at her mom and says "Mom, I like this church." and it was just a sweet moment, it was silent for a moment and then we continued walking. It was so neat to see that connection. Children really know when they feel the spirit, it was so great. I was having a rough week, it was discouraging to see all the work we were putting into these families and not seeing much result. I felt like we were failing, but to see them come to church lifted my spirits and made me so inexplicably happy. The members were so kind to them. During sacrament meeting, Ashly's 1 yr old Jirelis was getting into someone elses crayon box and I could see Ashly was so stressed out! She couldn't reach her because she was over by me (about 4 chairs down) and I could see her kind of motioning as if to say "Get her!" I just kept watching and then the member in front of us reached into the box and handed her a crayon and something to draw on. It was so neat to see that instant love and care that people have in church. It doesn't matter who's kid it is, what's going on etc. We're all there with a single purpose and we are a single family worshiping together and working towards a similar goal.

Gotta love the not so "deep" doctrine haha. I bet it's in the same dimension, since dimensions don't really make sense anyway hahaha.

There was something else I was going to ask you, but I don't remember. Must've not been that important haha.

Well, not much else to report, I love you very much!
Elder Conner Allred

11-7-11

Hey madre, Well those are some cool pictures! I know it's weird to think about my homecoming, think how I feel! The time literally has flown by, and as the end is near and I am starting to have to face it, I'm now trying to continue to be diligent so that when I get home I continue to be a diligent member-missionary. I hope to be the member that I ask people to be for me. But, I've got 6 weeks until then! Going to make it a good transfer. Did Bishop have a certain topic that he would like me to address? To answer your question about my spanish prof. I just hopped online and asked her if I need to take aplacement test or what I need to do. I e-mailed her in spanish and she said that i'd be fine to enter her class, so I'm excited to do so! Well this week, Ashly and her Mom, Maria didn't make it to church, they had an "emergency." It seems that theseemergencies happen on a weekly basis, it's sort of frustrating. But we did have a great lesson with Maria and we're going back this week, so we'll see what happens. We set a baptismal date with Alicia Campos and her son Roger (8). We had a very interesting experience at Alicia's last night. Alicia's daughter's birthday was last night so Alicia invited us to come over and visit, have some cake, etc and so we did and upon arriving it was great. We sat down at the table next to a couple of members that were there and said hello to the people we didn't know. Someone asked us "are you brothers? you have the same name." So we told him no and explained that "elder" is a title given to us as missionaries. We sat down and I began to speak with Carmen (a member) and then another question was "what do you guys believe?" So I said "well, basically we believe that God loves all of us and that he still speaks so he calls prophets just like he did in the old days, to speak to us and tell us His will." This started the explosion. The man said "well I believe that there are many prophets in the world." and I responded that we believe in one prophet and that he was called by God and then I shared with them a parable that I made up, it goes like this. In a far away part of South America there was a class of spanish speakers that wanted to learn english. They had a lot of desire to do so and wanted to speak as perfectly as possible. Their teacher was one of the best, if not the best, and he was patient with each of his students. The teacher one day told the students that he needed to leave for a while, he had business to do in another part of the world. After a few days of having no teacher, the students began to worry -- they wanted to know how they were going to learn english without a teacher! So one student stood up and said "I'll teach the class, the teacher has left his notes here in his desk and I will teach you according to those words that he has left." So he did so, and a lot of people enjoyed his form of teaching, but another student thought that he could teach better, so he took a group that wanted to listen to him and teach English from the teachers notes, this happened with multiple students. One day, many years later, the teacher returned. The teacher looked around his classroom and saw that the class had divided! Each different group was speaking a different language, but none of them spoke English! The teacher then began to gather those that wanted to hear him again. But some of the students were now prideful, believing that they had learned English better than the teacher could teach them. I shared this story and let them know that this is why we are here as missionaries. To let people know that the Master has once again spoken and called a prophet. The spirit was there for about 0.002 seconds and then the beer got to them and we went all the way back to square one. It was a terrible experience. Hopefully it doesn't happen again. Those experiences are never worth looking forward to. Through all this, Alicia defended the church with her testimony, it was beautiful to see. She truly does have a testimony of the Church of Jesus Christ. Not much else to update on for this week. I love you and I'll speak to you next week! -Elder Conner Allred

11-2-11

Madre and Family,

So! Busyish week this week. Well, maybe not really it just felt like it haha. We started off the week really well last week on Tuesday by getting our car towed, so that was pretty darn lame haha. We had to go to the tow-company and get it out, plus pay the $50 ticket from the state. The car had been parked during street sweeping, which is useless out here, so they towed it.

Ashly still hasn't come to church, kind of a bummer but we're doing the best we can to help her come this week. We had a really cool experience with her on monday though. Her mom came in and asked us if we celebrated Halloween, of course we told her no because it's a pagan holiday.... psyche! We let her know that yes we do and all that jazz and then she had more and more questions! We gave her a Book of Mormon and we're going to go teach her tonight with Ashly and one of our younger members is going to come with us! It was a great opportunity to share the gospel with her. It was really funny, Ashly texted us the other day and said "my mom wants you guys to text her, too. Here's her number..." haha it was really neat.

We got transfer calls and it looks like I'm going to die here in New Haven! 6 more weeks! Halloween, if you didn't guess, was really boring. We were asked to be inside by 6 and so after 6pm we basically sat inside and read and did a whole bunch o' nothin! haha. It wasn't the best, but oh well.

Don't know what else to talk about right now, my mind is going a million miles a min. because I'm looking up spanish stuff and trying to figure out my school schedule. I have already talked to my spanish teacher, Senora Rubio and she seems like a really nice lady.

Look at this cool cake a lady made in our ward for us.

Oh, and we had a 5k race. Elders Kump and Standage ran in it.

Will talk to you next monday!!

Love you,

Elder Conner Allred

10-24-11

Dear Madre,

That's really rough about the elders. We're trying to not do that here because it can be frustrating to have missionaries that aren't kind or, what's the word... I don't remember. I guess subtle would be a good word. What did they ask Brinn to do? Do they even realize that maybe she doesn't have a testimony in the first place? Kind of a good place to start, I'd say. "if ye receive not the Spirit ye shall not teach." Kinda hard to help your friends understand the gifts of the Atonement if you haven't put them into practice in your own life. I'm glad he's doing his job, but I also wish he were focusing on the core issue as well. Teach her like she were his little sister.

Don't worry, I haven't bulked up, it's just fat -- thanks for the complement though hahaha. Speaking of which, (not really) can you edit a picture for me? I'll send it to you, I just need you to remove Elder Horton and I from it.

I got my flight plans this week! Really crazy how fast these last 6 weeks have gone, let alone the last 2 years! I will be landing in Salt Lake at 4:18pm (don't remember the terminal). We leave Boston at 9:50am, go to Phoenix (6 hour flight!) and have an hour layover, but we stay on the plane, then fly to Salt Lake.

Ashley is doing very well and her tumor, she found out, is benign! It's still a drag though because it's right on her brain stem so it causes a risk of paralysis if it is removed. She still has head-aches but from what she tells us, the medicine is helping to shrink the tumor. If it does begin to grow though she can have parts of it removed but for the most part it will be there for the rest of her life. We went over the Word of Wisdom with her last week and took away her last pack of cigarettes! haha. She was very excited though and she has been keeping the Word of Wisdom for the past week or so. She's so great, she really is putting her confidence in the Lord and doing all that she can to follow the commandments. It's great to see the conversion process, that always helps to strengthen my own testimony and realize where I have been lacking.

This week I have really picked up on my Book of Mormon reading again. I went from Alma 36-Helaman 1 in about a week and I hope to finish the BoM before the end of the transfer (next Thursday). I think I'll be able to do it, it was slowing me down when I would look things up or grammar principles so now I highlight all the things I want to study in yellow, so I can go back and check on the Spanish later. It's a neat experience and it has been so great to go through these chapters again. It's been especially neat to actually enjoy the war chapters -- usually I dread them. But this time around it's been really inspiring to read about Moroni's testimony and his faith which is firm in his beliefs. I absolutely loved reading about all the things he did to "preserve his country and his freedom" and then in chapter 60-ish it says that he handed the army over to his son and went home to rest for the rest of his days. As I read that I imagined what it must have been like for him -- traveling through the wilderness for years on end and fighting constantly, not being able to have a good nights sleep because of the uncertainty of if the the Lamanites were going to find them and attack or not etc. Then finally, after all this, he received what he fought for; peace was established and he could finally go home, sit down, and take a nice long exhale. He probably slept for days. It really is an amazing story.

We met with Bishop Peterson this week and had a great talk about goals etc. and what he wants us to do as missionaries, how we can help him, and what he expect out of the members as well. So we have a few plans that we are going to try and see if we can become a little more of a "missionary-minded" ward. I think it will be a great success since most of our members are in school at Yale and are able to see new people every day and create new relationships. We're a good bunch of missionaries out here, the members, I believe, like us and see that we're not going to scare away their friends. We're going to try to use the ward-missionaries a lot more often and see if we can get them to go out and do visits on their own, if anything they can just go a fellowship. We're also looking into having Preach My Gospel classes during the second hour. We'll pick 4 or so ward missionaries and have them come to these classes where we will teach out of Preach My Gospel for a month and then rotate the group, hopefully giving them the tools they need to understand how to use Preach My Gospel and how to teach from it.

I talked to my Spanish Teacher at the U. Sent her an e-mail and she is really nice! She's from Spain and she seems like a really great lady, so that will be fun.

Well, I think that's about it for this week! I love you and I'm praying for you.

-Elder Conner Allred