1-24-11

Dear Elder Susan,

I always like to look up your new crib on google maps. This looks
like a pretty tame area...not as exciting as living across from a
liquor store.

When you told me about the people that had been receiving the lessons
for the last six years, it reminded me of a funny, tongue in cheek,
blog post I saw entitled INVESTIFAKERS aka INVENTIGATORS. Basically
when this guy was on his mission he would create (as a last resort of
course!) a fake investigator. But only under these conditions:

-Do you serve in a place where it is difficult to find people to
teach? Fake investigators temporarily fill empty teaching pool rather
than making full teaching pools overflow. If there are real
investigators to teach, you don’t need fake ones.

-Does your mission leadership make your life miserable when you have
nobody to teach? I don’t just mean a bit of tut-tutting or a thoughtful
letter: I mean accusations of unworthiness, threats to send you to the
outer reaches of the mission, a steady rotation of improving splits by
leadership, shouting, calls to explain your shortcomings publicly in
zone conferences, etc

Of course there were lots of inventive returned missionaries who
responded to this post with shenanigans of their own including:


john Says:
If this is satire, you’re a genius. If not, you’re probably a
sociopath. : ) However, when things got really slow, companions and I
did indulge in ETERNIGATORS...you know, those appointment-keeping
souls who never tire of seeing the missionaries, but just can't quite
commit....for years and years...and years...

So you might have an "eternigator" on your hands.=)

Any who, I was wondering how your old companion with OCD used to
manifest that. Just curious.
I can't believe Brinn is going to be 16! She wants a new phone for
her bday. One with a data plan etc. Not gonna happen. She still has no
interest in getting her license. Strange!

I had to speak in RS. I had to make a celestial goal for 2011and tell
about it. My goal was to be more open to things and not just think "I
can't do that or that's a bad idea, or you're an idiot" right off the
bat. So far this attitude has helped me to not escalate a couple of
arguments I was having Brinn and Scott. So that's all good.

I started my french class. Wow it's hard! Maybe my brain is too old!
My teacher seems to be the hooked on phonics type. He doesn't get too
much into the nitty gritty of conjugating, just how the words sound.
My brain doesnt connect the dots very well like that. Oh well... I'm
trying to be "open" about it =)

Not too much else is going on
Love you tons!! MOM


Oh boy oh boy!

This week was great! We are making some great strides in the ward and I'm really excited about it. Our ward mission leader has turned out not so much to be a flake, rather he just doesn't understand his calling very well -- tomorrow night we are all meeting as a presidency to read through chapter 13 in preach my gospel. We made a new mission plan (Elder Phillips and I) and we got 6 less actives to church! What's funny is all six of them we were told by the last missionary that was here "Weren't worth the time." Fail! Maybe It's because he didn't quite love them enough, but we have seen some great successes. We also have a baptismal date for this saturday, a 9 year old named Maria. She's dang smart and funny. She said she is getting really nervous but she is excited. We already had somewhat of a bad time with the english ward though. Apparently the english ward takes over the primary for the spanish ward (which I didn't know) and so the english ward primary lady interrupted our sunday school and pulled us out. Her first sentence was "So, Maria is walking around telling people she's getting baptized on Saturday. What do you know about this?" I got a little heated because of the way she approached it; we're new missionaries, we don't know how you like to do things, and we don't know who you are. BUG OFF! I snapped back a little bit and probably shouldn't have but I told her that we both just got here and it should be a good thing she is excited about her baptism. The lady said she wanted to know because when the spanish branch fails, they can pick up the slack because that's what happens in the spanish branch (according to her) but, Elder Phillips and I are on top of it, so I told her not to worry about it, we can handle it. It was frustrating though. Now I remember why I was sent spanish speaking. Don't have baptismal clothes? Psh, we'll just sew somthing together! That's how it is in the spanish branches! haha.

We're working with a few great inactives in the ward, I hate that word "inactive" but I guess that's all there is to it. One of them is named Amanda, she wanted to serve a mission but life happened and she wasn't able to but she has an amazing testimony and we're going to see what we can do to get her called as a ward missionary. I think she would be great for Christina, they're both Dominican and Amanda really wants to help us with missionary work. She really understands the atonement and the sacrifice of Jesus Christ / taking leaps of faith. Really awesome.

Another is Cynthia, Maria's sister. She has an attitude, but I know that deep down, she wants to do what's right. She is a really nice girl but I'm worried that the ward might offend her if they're too hard on her for not "having her priorities straight." To be honest, she reminds me of how I was. I just didn't want to hear anything, but deep down I just needed to be told I was needed somewhere and that people wanted me in church because they cared. She came to church though! We're praying that Maria's baptism will help her find her testimony again.

It's really hard to find people in this area, so we're running off of referrals. But, we are working with the ward a lot more. The Branch President is awesome, he's busy but awesome. Every member (all 6 haha) seem excited to help us out. We just need a little organization and I think we'll be good to go!

I had a hard time yesterday for some reason, not sure why, but I fasted and had comfort spoken to my mind. It was an interesting morning, but I felt like I did a lot of good at church and I feel much better knowing that I'm needed in the branch again. I like being the go to guy, instead of the back-up in Central Falls. I did love that place, but it's nice to be needed every once in a while.

Well, I love you and I'm praying for you. Keep me up to date on your French classes... Booooo. French is a dying language haha. Take Portuguese or spanish! That's just my input, but you unfortunately have your free agency haha. Love you!

-Elder Conner Allred