This was a crazy week!

Dear Family,

 

Usually I start kind of wanting to check my email around Sunday, but I can brush the thought aside and focus on what I'm doing that day, but this week I started wanting to check my email on Sunday and I really really wanted to.  Like super badly, so I'm really excited to hear from everyone. 

 

This was a really cool week.  We have been working with a less active girl who is coming back to church and over the past month we have just been amazed at the change in her countenance.  She was always a happy girl but as we are meeting with her we are just seeing the burden of sin just lifting from her shoulders.  It is awesome.  I it is such a testimony to me that the atonement is very real and very powerful.  Now that I think about it I feel like it really has been this testimony building week all around. 

 

We were able to go to a baptism in sister Beans old area and that was amazing, and right before that we met with a family that was baptized just a little while before we got to the area.  They are doing so good and they are really making wonderful changes in their lives.  I love seeing the gospel effect people. 

 

It has been a bit of a challenging week.  we invited an old woman to be baptized last week and she said no not at her age.  Then as we were meeting with her this week she said she had prayed about it and we can still come over but she really feels like God is happy with the beliefs that she has.  I really didn't know what to say but we are still planning on going over and visiting her still.  Also we have had to officially drop the family we had committed to baptism.  We have had 0 contact for a while now and one of the members who was friends with the family told us that baptism is causing contention in the home, so we are going to back off for a while.  Hopefully we will be able to at least meet with the dad again. 

 

we also have been meeting with a woman who has mental disabilities, and she wants to get baptized.  We have been going back and forth on whether or not she needs to get baptized and for the most part the direction from the bishop and the mission president has been that we should try and decide, which just seems like a really weighty decision. Anyway her mother who is a member had to go to the hospital right before church on Sunday because of an emergency.  We went to visit this really sweet lady yesterday and as we talked about her daughter, I could just seem how worried she was about Miriam.  This woman really believes in the blessings of the temple and wants that so badly for her daughter.  Didn't have any definite answers on whether Miriam could get baptized, but we talked about eternal families and I think that gave a lot of comfort.  I am so grateful for this gospel I know that it is so powerful, and it's true. 

 

Our big news is that we are going on exchanges this week.  We had some exchanges set up earlier this transfer but those were cancelled which was a really good thing.  But I'm not sure how I feel about these exchanges.  We got a call on Wednesday night from the zone leaders telling us we were going on a 4 day exchange.  Our exchanges are from today at 4:30 to Friday at 4:30.  Sister Bean and I really do not know what to think about it.  The zone leaders say that its a new thing President cook is trying out, and we are supposed to focus on our contacting but it really seems like we are missing something.  Our contact numbers are low, but our lessons and new investigator numbers are really high.  I'm just kind of confused and don't know what to think about it.  On the one hand I'm excited to get to know Sister Heath, because she seems really sweet, and I'm excited to work on my contacting.  I feel like I will really learn a lot.  I know I need to be looking at this exchange as a blessing, and most times I do, but then I start thinking how it feels like this exchange is a punishment and I'm going to be away from sister bean for 4 days which really stinks because it is almost guaranteed that one of us will be transferred on the 29th.  I just don't know.  I'll let you know how it goes. 

 

Well I love you all and I miss you. 

 

love,

 

Sister Allred

 

P.S. mom I'm trying to send the picture but I've been having some problems.  I'll work on it today.