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

10-17-11

I think Conner is on the left??

Madre,
This week has been great and it has also been very successful for us. I don't remember if I talked to you about Ashley yet but we're teaching a girl named Ashley Santana (21) and she is from Puerto Rico. She has really been catching on to the message and it has been a really spiritual experience teaching her. It's been so neat to watch her change in just the two weeks that we have been meeting. So everything was going really well and then last Friday we stopped by and she sent her sister to tell us she was sick. Then we couldn't get a hold of her all weekend. We figured she had ran into some disagreeable information online or something so we got a little worried. Last night we went over to her house at about 8:00 and she was sitting just inside the door taking a break and we could tell she had been crying. We walked in and she was happy to see us, that was a good sign! Turns out that she was in the hospital because she had a really bad headache and they found a tumor in her head. We gave her a pass on the not returning our calls and stuff obviously haha. So we administered a blessing to her and set up an appointment for Tuesday, it was really relieving to see her and see that, for the most part, she is doing alright.

So we had a great run-in with the Jews the other day! They walk around Yale a lot and they were getting people to do a peace blessing thing, I don't remember exactly what it was, but it was pretty funny when they found out that I'm "as Jewish as Moses." I told them that I have Jewish heritage from my Mom's side and they got really excited, they gave me a yarmulke and had me recite a little prayer, it was so embarrassing . I said "no, I really can't we gotta go" but they insisted . So I spoke a little Hebrew which was thanking God for the commandments and then put this fruit next to the stick and shook them. Right after I got a call from Elder Kump and he says "It's so weird, we are driving down the street and I could have sworn that I saw a Mormon Missionary with a yarmulke on his head." haha. It was interesting. Funny story though.

We have a new bishop in the ward, his name is Bishop Peterson, he can't be more than 30 years old -- he's a really good guy and I'm really excited to work with him.

10-11-11

Hey Madre,

I'm going to have to keep this e-mail short unfortunately, we have a lot to do today. But, everything has been great so far! We are teaching a girl named Ashley -- she is Puerto Rican and she has a daughter who is about a year old. Ashley read the Book of Mormon since we last saw her and actually said her first prayer in which she asked for some help. It was great to hear the answer to the prayer that she received.

This week we were fortunate enough to go to Derby and visit the Sanchez family from the Bridgeport ward -- that was a lot of fun to see them again!

The weather here is still quite warm, it's kind of nice to have a long fall -- not something we are fortunate enough to experience in Utah.

I love you very much! The new area is awesome and these last two months will be sweet! I'm sure of it!

-Elder Condork Allred

10-3-11

Famiry,

GC was great! Wasn't it? I loved all the talks, honestly. I felt like every single talk had something of great worth -- I am sure we say that every conference, but I really do look forward to reading the talks again. That's so funny you talk about Bennett, I was sitting there the whole time saying to my companion "I swear I know that guy... who is that? etc." He's my Ortho! haha. That's really neat, good for him.

The new area is a lot of fun, a lot of city and a lot of people, unfortunately not many are willing to listen. We live pretty close to Yale but we work mainly in an area called Fair Have, and it's pretty ghetto -- last night I actually had a prompting to empty my wallet before leaving the apartment, nothing happened but it was still an interesting prompting to receive. We met a woman named Norma from Ecuador, she gave us her phone number and invited us to come by whenever we are in the area. We called the number, and it's fake... great.

The ward demographic is 2-3 hispanics and a bunch of whities. It's a great ward, I just don't feel like we get the support we need though. One of the hispanic ladies who is very strong has actually been asked to go to the english ward in Woodbridge, why, I don't know? I think it's silly honestly -- if they want to build a branch, they should be sucking in all the hispanic members to this one branch, not making them leave. The ward and spanish community could go places, but I feel that most of the members being returned missionaries, look down on us in some way and don't realize that even though they have been there and done that, we are still called of God and even though we are the small and weak, we are the vessels (if we are worthy of it) of the Lord. So hopefully we can make an impression and get the ward excited.

Mike is in the field! I have read a few of his e-mails home and he has already grown so much, it's really neat.

The bike is mine, yes haha. I'm glad it made it -- I only have one wheel because the front wheel that I had has a 27", not a 700c and it was old so i figured i'd replace it when I get home anyway.

Anyway, I love you and will send more next week!
-Elder Conner Allred

p.s. anything else you want to hear in my letters? And I got the letter from Brent.