9-13-10

Mom,

I got your package!

This week has been great! I'm definitely learning some patience, and how to bite my tongue. It's been a real test for me but I think I'm doing better. My comp is really OCD! haha. It's kind of fun to play around with though. He does things without even knowing he's doing them. Like he'll go around and shut the lights off or straighten my jacket so it doesn't get wrinkles or put the toilet seat down. So just for a little fun I'll put a wrinkle in the table cloth to see how long it takes him to fix it haha. He usually gets it right away. Have you ever seen Monk? That's my companion haha. He's a great Elder. We worked really hard this week! But didn't see a WHOLE lot of success as far as new investigators. The people from Spain didn't show up to the Mexican Party :S but it was a great party still! I'll go print some pictures and send them off when I can. These computers are definitely less than I'd hope for so it's almost impossible to send pictures.

Elsi is set for baptism on the 25th of September! We announced it in church yesterday!!! WOO!

My spanish has really grown in these past two transfers. I don't really have to look up grammatical things anymore, it's mainly just words I haven't heard before. Right now I'm working with subjunctive and conditional statesments though and indirect / direct objects! Fun fun!

We ran into a bunch of JW's this week which really kills me every time. I just want to bible bash with them but that definitely won't get us anywhere. But what frustrates me is the lies they plant into people and they make people so attatched to them that you can't convince the investigators that they can use their own brains!! I asked a person studying with JWs "How do you find out an answer if you have a question?" (after reading james 1:5) She said "ask someone with more biblical information than you." AHHHH BNO!OO!O!O!I!NO! NO! FALSE! One guy told us God doesn't communicate with man anymore, so I said "Isn't God the same today yesterday and forever?" And he said "definitely!" So that made me a little dumbfounded for a second... Come again?

I feel like I'm on crazy pills! It's like I'm walking around with a backpack full of a million dollars (eternal life with God) and saying "I'd like to give you a million dollars (eternal life with God)." and they say "NOOO way, only millionaires can have a million dollars." It blows my mind! Oh well. We continue fighting I guess.
Well, not much else is going on.

I love you and miss you!!
-Elder Susan

Things are going great and I did indeed just get my new companion! Elder Cohen is his name -- his grandmother is a practicing Jew. Elder Cohen had a bar mitzvah when he was 13, then converted to Mormonism when he was 20, 3 years later, he's serving a mission! He's got a great gringo accent in his Spanish, and has OCD really bad. He's great! He's so pure hearted, does everything with pure love and dedication. We're going to have a great time. He'll be a patience challenge for me, but I'm going to just focus on loving him the best I can and I really want to, this transfer, look at him as I look at my investigators, just love him unconditionally. I think this has been my issue in the past. I'm not very patient and I like to be left alone a lot of the time, so I want to change that, I'm really excited. But nervous, because I feel like I have a lot of pride -- so hopefully I can tackle that, too!

Earl unfortunately didn't pay us a visit. I was a little bummed out to be honest. I thought it'd be cool to have some crazy news like "A boat landed on our car!!!!" but unfortunately, it rained for about 5 minutes and then the sun came out again. SNORE.We had about 3 gallons of water prepared and the car was filled with gas constantly, we have a mission safety plan which we followed closely. We prepared for the worst, but nothing happened.

All last week we had really bad traffic on Barnum Avenue. Arson struck at a HUGE abandoned factory last week, this is what I think happened. This building is a huge waste of space, it's broken down and is used for nothing except a good place to go sell drugs. I think someone lit it on fire so that the city has to tear it down on their bill so that someone can build something new. It is a nice piece of land, but nothing anyone would want to buy and then pay for to clear it up. So I have a feeling as soon as the city tears it down (which they are doing because it's now too dangerous) someone will buy the land and build something on it. Then I saw at the gas station on the front page headline it said "Officer charged for arson." Maybe you can look it up and see if that's what it was talking about. Anyway, it was a traffic headache all week!


I always get a chance to tell people about grandpa out here. It's really funny, since all these kids have babies by the time their 15 all their grandparents are only in their 50s. So when I say "My grandpa faught in WWII" They want to hear all about him! haha. To me, he's not that old haha. It's really neat to tell people about our family history, people think it's really interesting. One lady in our branch wants a picture of me with her to show that she has met an ancestor of William Clayton. haha, I told her to come to utah and every 3rd person on the street is an ancestor of him. hahaha.

Anyway, we are really excited for this week to see how things get going! Saturday we have a Mexican party at the ward. All the Mexicans are making food for us and we are going to sit around and watch them dance. This will be really good for our younger investigators. We are teaching one 17 year old (sister of one of our members, Francisco who is 30's and his oldest daughter is 12, he's from Colombia) and we are going to start teaching an 18 year old Ecuadorian and her Mother. The rest of their family is in *drumroll* SPAIN! The 18 year old was basically raised there, so hopefully she can teach me the zeta! haha. She has a really interesting mix of Latin and Spain spanish.

I'm going to give that Bannana thing a shot out here. Can you believe Saul and Emmanuel have never had a Root Beer Float.... WHAT THE HECK?! So we're going to make those next P-Day.

We went and did some service for a family, the Perez family who I think I have written about before. Saul, Alejandro, Emmanuel, and the two of us went to their house and totally revamped their backyard. It was a complete mess, dangerous too. They had weed killer just lying around, the pool was still water for MONTHS now, it was just disgusting. We threw everything out and cut the grass and cut down all the overgrown bushes. Mulched the lawn and I got the duty... nay, the honor of taking the dead squirrel out of the pool that had drowned the night before. I picked it up with a shovel and hurled it over the fence. It was nasty. Anyway, Hopefully they can just get the lawnmower out and keep it up now! I learned how to keep a lawn nice though! I learned a lot from those mexicans! haha. If you just do the little things, take an hour a week to mow the lawn it will NEVER end up like their back yard, it's that easy! It's just like the gospel. Once a week -- go to church and take the sacrament. Yeah it's a pain and it's boring sometimes. But then you won't have a life full of sin and nasty stuff that takes 4 other people to help dig you out of.


Well, I love you all. Hopefully I can get some pictures off this week.

I'm praying always. I love you!
-Elder Conner Allred