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