2-28-11

Family,

Did you hear Mike got his P blessing?!?!?! How cool!!

This week Elder Walkenhorst and I had a lesson with a Peruvian girl named Marcela. She has a lot of potential. She was raised in peru and went to a Highschool that was run by the 7th day adventists. She has bible knowledge but it lacks background and importance to be honest. I explained to her it's fantastic to have bible knowledge, but that gets us NOWHERE! People for the past 1500 years have been trying to figure out the bible since the great apostasy started and still have disputes. So it's frustrating to tell someone that says they are correct that they aren't. Because you really have to pull them out and have them kind of look at the whole mess from the outside in instead of inside out. We realize that people have been fighting about the bible for a long time, they also say they can "prove their points" with the bible. Yet, no one has figured out "the truth." She asked us "well if the Book of Mormon is the word of God, why doesn't anyone else read it?" I told her "Because that would mean that they are wrong! So read it!!" So we'll see what happens.

We met with the Reyes family. Sister Reyes is still taking classes from the Jehova's Witnesses. She told us that she threw away a little angel statue because the JW's told her that it was idol worship. I told her that is wrong and it's ok to have a statue, just don't pray to it... We talked about the apostasy, but I honestly don't think she wants to understand. She told us "I'm just trying to be the best person I can and do exactly what God wants" so I told her, great, come to church -- it's the 4th commandment. She didn't show up last sunday. She was offended by someone in church and that fuels some of the reason for not wanting to come, but to be honest I'm out of sympathy for this woman. If she wants to come to church she needs to do it for Herself and her Savior. People in church aren't perfect. She talked about how people are in God's house and should be good. I let her know, people, while in God's house, are not gods, so it's not going to happen all the time. I think she's just fishing for excuses! This week when we go over I'm going to let her know that we will not be coming back unless she shows some effort.

Not much else has gone on this week! Hopefully everything is going well at home. I love you all!!

Elder Conner Allred

2-23-11

Hola Familia!

Everything is going quite well, this week of course was a little crazy though as we had transfers and Elder Phillips was booted to new haven. Elder Walkenhorst is now with me! He was in the MTC with me and then returned home for a short period of time, now he's back out and we're companions! How cool!! So we're going to have a good time together I'm sure. He has really good spanish for only being out 4 months so I think we'll be a great team. Yesterday we had our transfer meeting and when we went to visit the Panduro family (the family whose statue Elder Urrutia broke) we learned that Romulo had had a stroke. He can't feel the left side of his body and has been in the hospital/therapy for about 6 weeks now. He suffered his stroke 2 days after we were last there for our last transfers. We stopped at the hospital to see him and he is very lucky I believe. He remembers everything and he can speak. It's hard for him to do so but it's possible. He can move his left side but it's numb and it lacks a lot of coordination. He's frustrated, but we helped him realize the blessings he still has even being in his condition. He is lucky to be alive. It was hard to see him, but same ol' Romulo, he was cracking jokes and making fun of us as usual haha. He is a great man. It was sad to see him say "I regret now not being baptized when I could have" but I believe he's doing the best he can. He mainly didn't get baptized because some of his family members told him they'd exile him if he got baptized -- and he even had his interviews etc. So I see much hope in his future both temporal and spiritual alike.

We arrived home last night about 7:00pm and then I got a call from President Zegarra saying they were waiting for us at the chapel! I totally forgot that we had our Book of Mormon class on Tuesdays! So we ran down and we had a nice class of 4 people and taught a class about Lehi's vision. We used the local casino, the mohegan sun, as the great and spacious building. They all got a good laugh out of that.

I didn't take my pills on Sunday, I failed to realize that I was going to run out so I got home after church and my stomach was aching. I ended up going to walgreens to pick up my perscription (thus, 6 more dollars on my account, which I think my dad is giong to handle, I believe.) and I felt a little better. We went to Amanda and Candy's house to let Elder Phillips say goodbye and then I felt it coming! I ended up throwing up, but I at least made it to the toilet. I felt really embarrassed, but Amanda said not to worry because she's been doing the same thing for about 4 months now with the baby and all. They are a great family haha, if I ahd to throw up at anyones house, I'm glad it was theirs.

I realized this week the importance of being an example among the believers. I knew it's importance, but my testimony grew this week. There's a woman named Luz Luciano here and she had a serious gambling problem. She was at the Mohegan Sun one day and saw an Ex-Missionary playing at one of the tables, that definitely didn't help her testimony of the church, or of the words of the Prophet. It was sad to see how that one time thing changed her life for the worse! I hope that you all (my brothers and sisters little and older alike) can do as mormon says in Mormon 9 and "Condemn me not because of mine imperfection, neither my father, because of his imperfection, neither them who have written before him; but rather give thanks unto God that he hath made manifest unto you our imperfections, that ye may learn to be more wise than we have been." Learn from my mistakes, don't do the same stupid stuff that others do. Because where it puts you is not in any realm that is pleasing in the eyes of your Creator. Keep the commandments, live worthily, be diligent, attend church, read the Book of Mormon.

"1Nephi 2:20 And inasmuch as ye shall keep my commandments, ye shall prosper,"

I love you all and miss you very much!

-Elder Conner Allred

P.S. Now a charge! Share the Gospel with one person this week. It will feel very good. Secondly, CREATE A MORMON.ORG PROFILE! I want to show people here who my parents are etc. and we're using that as a proselyting tool a lot out here. Mom, if you could, please add part of your testimony in spanish so I can show that to my investigators. I could translate it for you if you need it. The shorter you make it now, the faster it gets approved. Because it needs to go through an approval process. Love you!!

2-14-11

Not much too new that has gone on this week. We're still teaching Yesena when we can but she works a lot so it's hard to get a hold of her, especially without having a phone. We taught her downstairs neighbors though and one of them is being taught by a Jehova's Witness, he is really nervous when we go over, but I told him not to be because all we're here to do is invite him to try this out for himself. I really don't like the scare tactics the Jehova's Witnesses seem to use on these poor people.

The Reyes family came to church! We had a great lesson with them and the mother started crying and stuff it went really well. The only thing that was a downer is that sister Reyes didn't like the sunday school class and so she left after that... stupid. It is frustrating, but at least she came.

Amanda didn't come to church becuase she was "tired" so we went over there and talked to her and her family, they were all still in their jammies. I'm so sick of excuses I could barf! If anyone has an excuse to miss church, I'd say it's us. But we don't!

Christina...I still don't know what's going on there, we have an apointment with her tonight, so we'll see what happens.

What else happened this week... Not too much! New London is still good ol' New London. Hopefulyl something exciting happens this week so we can update you more!

Love you!!

-Elder Conner Allred

2-7-11

I had to spend $75 as you can probably see on my credit card -- My backpack broke this week and I figured I'd spend a little more and get a waterproof backpack because it really saves the materials inside when it rains out here. I hope that was ok. My dad knows and will probably take care of it.

This week went quite well! We had some good lessons with a few less actives, one family being another of the Morel's. Ami Morel fed us lunch and we had a lesson with her. Everything went great, she said she was a little sick so she might not come to church; she didn't end up going, but we still ran into her on Sunday.... when she got home from New York... I think that's one of the most frustrating parts of missionary work! Do these people think that they're "all set" as they say out here? I feel like a parent and his children, he knows what's best for them but they don't want to listen. I think that the prophecy of Christ telling people "Apartate de mi, obrero de iniquidad, nunca te conoci" is a promise given to us as members as well if we are not willing to try to make Christ happy and proud of us. I made another stupid move, I think I need to work on patience, I got a little heated with the relief society president this week and I feel kind of bad. She was telling me all these excuses why people aren't going to want to come to a fireside because it's more gas, or it's late, or early, or they work or this that and the other. I then, firmly but quietly stated "Si quieren hablar de sacrificio, que hablen conmigo. yo lo deje todo para servir al senor. Hay otras cosas que podria estar haciendo." I could have been more tactful, but I think she actually did take to it a little, even though I was kind of a jerk. Now I'll know not to do that again. Better now than with my kids haha.

This week I used an example of a gift to explain how the atonement works with someone on the street, and I think it really helped. I said, "If I give you a gift, something that I just think you'll love, and then you take it, trash it, don't care for it, and literally just put it in the garbage, am I going to want to give you more gifts? Probably not. Do I want to? Probably, I want you to be happy, I want you to have these gifts, but unless you treat it with respect, I wouldn't give you anything else. That's how the atonement of Jesus Christ works -- he gave us a wonderful gift, now we need to show him that we appreciate it."

We got a new investigator yesterday, her name is Gisena and she is from Mexico! It's good to teach a central american again, I love teaching people from central america / south america. She has little to no knowledge of things religious so we take more time than usual to teach her so we can go step by step. Line by line, precept upon precept, as our Lord put it. We have our second lesson with her tomorrow. She's probably one of the first people that said "I'd like it if you came back" to us haha.

Amanda hopefully gets home today. I fear that a week and a half in New York hasn't helped the repentance process, but I am praying hard. Cynthia is hopefully going to get included into the singles ward this week, but honestly I don't blame her if she doesn't as it's about a 30 mile drive whereas she can go to Quaker Hill spanish that's only 5 miles away. But, de todos modos we are hoping she will continue her path back into the fold.

I love being here, it's an eye-opener. I pray that the Lord may bless each of you this week.

LOOK FOR MISSIONARY OPPORTUNITIES!

-Elder Conner Allred

I thought you'd like these pictures of our neighbors calico who has grown quite fond of me haha. She tries to run into our apartment.

Oh and yes there's a chance I could go to boston. I may actually recieve a new mission call because our call will be the Boston Massachusetts mission. :S

1-31-11

Family,
I got the packages! Thanks so much!!!!

Tell Brinlee happy birthday!!!!! Crab Core for Life!

Everything went well this week! We actually had a great week this week as far as helping our less actives and getting the baptism together. Our meeting went really well, we had the branch presidency there and our ward mission leader -- we went through each calling and we have set up to go out with our Ward Mission Leader this week and also to have correlation. We have a ward mission plan that we wrote out and presented to them and then we also made an excel sheet of all the home teachers etc; before they were just on a white piece of paper. We got to the church about 3 hours early and found that it was actually better that way. Usually we go 2 hours or less early to get ready and even though we had more than enough time this time, it was better to have some cushion. We got there and found that we didn't have the right key so we had to find some time anyway, and then it turned out that the baptismal font needs to run for 30 min, then stop, then run for 30 min, then stop, then finalyl run again till it's full; if you want the water warm! So we had plenty of time to do that and we got the programs and everything just went great. It was a small baptism, just Maria's family and President Coats baptized her (Stake High Council) and I confirmed her on Sunday morning.

Cynthia brought a friend to church as well! Go ward missionary work! She didn't even know she was doing missionary work, either. So that shows, I think, that the ward feels comfortable introducing their friends to us. I'm really excited. Her name is Alexandria, she's 28 and she's Ecuadorian. I asked her what she does for work and she said (in english) "dealer" I said "ohhhh. de las drogas?" haha. She laughed and told me that she's a card dealer at the casino in Norwich. I still call her the Traficante though (which means drug dealer) and she thinks it's funny! She invited us over this week.

Amanda went to New York this weekend -- where her "boyfriend" is. We gave her a call and she seemed reluctant to tell us what she was up to. Turns out, she left for the whole week though! I was pretty busted up about it. Sometimes I just don't understand why people make these choices. She had just tried to fix this, and now she's going back! I had a hard time with that because I felt like we could all see that it was obviously Satan, but she couldn't.

Christina has been ignoring us for the past week, so we are probably going to drop her for a while.

Let's see, what else is new...
Really not much! Oh yeah! My mission is going to be the Boston Mass mission starting July 1st. Surprise. I had a feeling, we're down to 68 missionaries.

I haven't gotten the scriptures yet, but they should probably come today, I hope. Our mail out here has been hectic because apparently when they get a little snow, the world collapses. I'm surprised the economy here hasn't crashed yet. These crybabies haha. Everytime we talk to people they ask "Well, you probably won't be able to get to my house with all this snow." And I simply respond "In Utah, we don't shut down the world when we get an inch! Unless someone dies, school is still in session!" These past two weeks they have had school off 5 times! And some guy on the news said "WE ARE A PART OF HISTORY!!!" I'm glad they don't live in Utah, they'd cry themselves to sleep! haha.

Last night we went to the Cambell's home. Br. Cambell is a stomach Dr. Beautiful home and he's in the branch presidency. He served his mission in SLC, spanish speaking. We were talking to his boys last night (5, oldest is 11) and we asked "Who is your favorite person in the Book of Mormon?" and the oldest responded "Nephi" then the next youngest said "JESUS!" That just made us all burst into laughter, it was a darn good choice! haha.

Anyway, not much else to report this week. We had a good week at church, Rosa and Angelica brought their mom to church and she was crying all through sacrament meeting. She liked it a lot. Emili Morel came (another LA) and she brought her husband this time! So things are still going well!

I love you all, keep praying for us, we need it.

-Elder Conner Allred

address correction

Conner's zip is wrong in the previous address change post.
Correct Address:

Elder Conner Allred
67 Hawthorne Drive North #3
New London, CT 06320

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