7-26-10

I'm excited to get home and see the bandit, I bet it's sweet.

Alright, so the baptism and an update on that! She has fallen off of the earth. The members have been calling and going to her house and anything else they can do but we finally got a hold of her... sort of. We called her phone from a private number and her boyfriend answered :S. We also went by her sisters house (where she lived) and she told us she had moved away to New York with her boyfriend which we didn't really know if we believed as we were told they didn't want to hear the gospel so maybe they're just trying to get us outta there! Well, we have NOW heard, that is false. This whole time her 4 nieces and sister DID want us to come by!! AHHH! So we're a little bummed out about that. But we're going to start lessons with them. And, she did in fact move to New York. We're thinking it was more of Gods doing that she didn't get baptized. Probably just knew she wasn't worthy and ran away -- we'll see what happens with her family though!

This week was really good, except one thing. Elder Rogers is being transferred to Avon to be assistant to the President :( We really sucked every last opportunity out of our companionship that we could though, so at least that worked out. We spoke about 75% spanish and a little english when we were together and we studied and worked hard. It's a bummer but I'm excited to see how I can do being the "veteran" in the area now. Elder Trujillo will be my new companion. I don't know much about him so I'm excited to see how everything goes!

Elder Rogers though is from Denver, CO and goes home in six months. He has a family of 6 and he's the oldest boy. His little brother just entered the MTC in Sao Paulo 3 weeks ago. He is really good with spanish and knows the grammer almost perfectly, so that was a huge help to me. I'm bummed out we're being split up, but -- all good things come to an end.

We have a few more baptismal dates.

Julio - From Ecuador

Miriam - From Ecuador (married, a few children that are grown up)

Veronica - From Argentina, the luchadora

Mendes - Brazilian

So we have plenty of work! We're excited and it's a lot to do so we'll be happy! Elsi is another one of our strong investigators so we're helping her right now a ton; hopefully she will accept baptism soon. She has been really solid in going to church etc. Her husband is a member / returned missionary and she has a 3 year old daughter.

Anyway, that's the news here from Bridgeporn... I mean, bridgeport library. You can probably guess why we call it bridgeporn.. haha

Love you!

-Elder Conner Allred

7-19-10

Ma! Tudo bem! Como vai voces?

Well this week was quite interesting. We had a pretty good week as far as new investigators -- one from Ecuador named Julio. Solid as a rock! He's a really nice guy, lives here with his sister and his kids are still down south in Ecuador. He came to church yesterday with his hair all did and a nice ironed shirt! He loved it! He especially loved priesthood meeting. Our priesthood meeting is very inviting and loving for everyone, the members are great at fellowshipping them. It's a nice change of pace after all the sriousness and kind of intensity of Sacrament Meeting haha.

Veronica is slowly quitting drinking coffee! I don't know if I told you guys or not but Veronica is the wife of German, or as known in the wrestling world, Apolo. They have been married for a while now and he was baptized in '95. He has a daughter from his previous marriage who was born into the church and just showed up at church one day. Now Veronica is taking the lessons and has a baptismal date for August 1st! She is super awesome and doing her best to stop drinking cafe. (it's easier to spell in spanish). She has been getting really bad headaches so she has just een taking it with more and more milk each day and less coffee. It's a start!! She has really changed, we can all see it. She is much more calm and collected. The whole family is actually, it's great. Veronica was actually a wrestler as well, you can seach for them on Google Apolo and Havana and you'll find them! haha, they're so sweet!

Right now we have 4 baptismal dates so we're pretty excited to have some work to do.

Yesterday was definitely interesting... Yesterday was the baptism of Mariela Cobarrubias. We had the font filled and Elder Rogers was dressed in white, ready to go. 6:00 and nobody is there! Slowly the people started to pack the place though. We had a better part of the branch there, allt he leaders showed up, and we were standing around at 6:30 saying.... Hmm.... Where's Mariela? Mabel had been at her house since 5:15 waiting for her. Elder Rogers played phone tag with Mariela and Mabel for over an hour. We still are not sure what happened, but the baptism was eventually called off. It was a really rough time for us. We were really hoping for it, Mariela hasn't talked to us since last night -- so we're not sure what's going on.

In stead of this happening, I took the chance to take some family pictures of everybody that was there! Well, most everybody. So I have a little work I need you to do for me. Just touch them up a little. There's one picture of Ruths family and there's a man next to them in blue and white. If you could get him out of the picture or crop it somehow, that'd be great. But it made for a little fun while we were there. Then just shoot them back to me. There's a few pictures of Ricardo Carvalho and his daughter, you can e-mail those to me and to him (rickgol11@hotmail.com). Gracias.

Anyway. I love you!

-Elder Conner Allred

7-12-10

This week was slowish. I can't really decide. We had a lot of success with Mariela; she is getting excited for her baptism -- as are we. And we had a really great lesson with Ruth and her family / husband again. Her neice Ligia came with her non-member husband as well. We watched the Testaments and when we flipped the lights on all the women, and me, were crying. Booyeah. I love that movie, it really helps us understand the BoM and also the love of Christ in our lives. We had a great little testimony meeting afterwards and it seems as though Ligia has made a few mistakes since her baptism in December so we told her why we have repentance/confession! Not to scare you, to help you! So We are cheering her on! We're hoping the movie impacted the husbands a little bit and maybe they understand the message a little bit more, we'll see.

Our branch does something really cool that I haven't seen before. Each fast sunday at church the Elders Q. and Relief society are each given a paper that they put their name on and the families they have for visiting teaching, at the end of the month, they bring them back with the information they recieved from the family. Including, whether they talked to them on the phone or had a visit and what they know about the family. If they don't bring it back, the President(s) work with the individuals that aren't pulling the line. How neat! It's a little harsh, but it really makes it easy for everyone else and they love to do missionary work because of it.

Well, Next week is the baptism! Going to be a great week! We're going to do a little more finding this week and hopefully everything falls correctly! We don't have super crazy plans yet that I'm just going crazy about, but that could be just because I'm really tired. I'm glad it's P-Day!

I included some pictres of the apartment and one of Elder Rogers and I! Not too shabby of a place, right?!

I love you and I'm praying for each of you every day!
-Elder Conner Allred

Hi all,

The 4th was super regular, as usual. Nothing new! We came in at 9, planned, went to bed.

We have something really cool here though! REAL FIREFLIES! I have never seen them before, but they actually DO light up! It's sweet!!

This week I can't really remember what happened to be honest. All the weeks kind of merge into one big one but I'll do the best I can to remember what's been going on.

Well, Mariela has been defending the Book of Mormon at work in front of her co-workers so I think we're ok on the aspect of her getting baptized for correct reasons so that is good. And then she has been coming to church so her baptismal date is still looking good! We're pretty excited for her and doing the best we can to make sure the members are helping her out (which is super easy in our branch!)

We have another baptismal date with a part member family, the mom's name is Veronica. She is from argentina so she speaks with a Sh. Like ?Como se Shama? and Mira ashi. It's interesting. But she has also a very puerto rican accent because her husband is from the P.R. She has been meeting with us every day for the last week and she is catching on really well. They are doing the best they can to find a job though ecause that seems to be the hardest thing for them right now.

We hav a new investigator named Jose, from the P.R. as well. Jose was driving on the road the other day and slammed on his brakes to stop to talk to the English elders. Elder MacLennan and Salazar have been teaching him for about a week but I think realized last night he just doesn't know enough English for this to work, so we all went over to his house last night to meet him. He's really great, he has a bachelors degree in communications, too! He's very educated and his spanish is actually very clear. He understands things as they come to him and his daughter actually has had open heart surgery (she lives in P.R.) So he's been counting his blessings. He said after the surgery, the Jehovas Witness' told him not to do a blood transfusion and that's what made him realize that religion is balogna. He watched the Restoration DVD and said "Wow, I feel really peaceful and good." And he says he feels that while he reads the BoM, too. We're pretty sure he's prepared! We're going to set a date with him soon.

Elsy Prado from Honduras is a part member family and we're working with her to get her in the water. Her husband Luis served a mission in Sacramento Calif. and he is from Guatemala. They ahve a 5 year old daughter. They are a great family though and Elsy, after months, just told us that she feels good when she reads the BoM and is starting to realize it really IS scripture. She also loves the Doctrine and Covenants! Awesome! Their daughter though was, we're pretty sure, a victim of sexual abuse at her day care, so she is in our prayers. They are taking her to a psychologist etc this week. She's such a cutie, some people are terrible.

We had a really cool experience while tracting last week. We were walking down the street and a man was basically just telling us to take a hike but I asked him "Sir, can we at least give you a card?" and he agreed. He saw the picture of Christ descending into the Americas and asked "well, what's that?" So we explained it to him. Now, Hector is taknig the lessons and loves the Book of Mormon thus far! We're worried because he is a little shaky as far as keeping appointments, but we're pretty sure he's ready. He just got out of prison a few months ago, he was locked up for 21 years. Lucky for us, he's free and clear now so he will actually be able to get baptized! I'll fill you in as we continue to teach him.

I have come up with a new tactic, when people ask me "why are you here?" or "what do you do?" I'm going to share with them the last verses of the book of John. "if ye love me, feed my sheep." I love the Lord, his atonement for us is amazing. Look up a great talk by Brother Skousen "A Personal Search for a Meaning of the Atonement." I spent all last week in studies translating it into Spanish for a ward member. It was hard work, but good practice. You will be amazed at the things you can learn, for example: The Atonement is not So much suffering for so much sinning. He doesn't suffer more if we sin more -- He suffered enough pain and torment that the principle of the atonement is INFINITE. My favorite part of the talk is "He suffered so much that when we get to Heavens gate he will say 'Father, let them enter or I will be robbed of the reward of my labor.' and God will say 'If you really love them that much, I will do it, but not because of their righteousness, it wasn't good enough, but because of your sacrifice; I will do it." He also tells a story to help outline how this works, because Amulek tells us no one can take someone elses justice away, in that I can't die for someone else. If I commit a crime, and my companion dies for me because he thinks I still have something to do here, that doesn't meet the demands of justice. So what the atonement does for us is it meets the demands of justice in the following way. "There was a boy of about 19 years old who fell asleep in the civil war, many of his friends were killed and when he was found he was court marshalled and sentanced to die. This young man thought it was only just that he die, but as Abraham Lincoln was going to sign his death warrant a little mother came to him and said "Mr Lincoln, I am this boys mother -- when this war started I had a husband and 6 sons. First I lost my husband and then one by one I lost 5 sons. President, he knows he should die, he accepts his fate, but for my own sake save this boy. He's all I have left. Not for his sake, but for his mothers sake. And Abraham Lincoln said "For you, little mother, I'll let him live."

This is how the atonement meets the demands of justice. That is how we will be saved into the kingdom again. Not because of our righteousness, because we're still short of the glory of God. But we will be saved because Jesus Christ watches us do good things, and do the best we can to repent, and then he will be our advocate and beg with the Father that we may be saved... Because he loves us that much. I love Jesus Christ. My prayer is that he knows that I'm just trying to do the best I can. Sincerely.

Some more music would be a great gift if you can! Come Thou Fount would be great. Mo-Tab, Solos, whatever you can find. and then also a really good song by Sally Deford, Whole Again.(there's an extended verson as well) I'd love that on a CD.

Bridgeport is great! We're having a lot of fun and doing a lot of good things. I'll try to get more pictures this week! Love you!