Wednesday, May 30, 2012

Happy Late Memorial Day

Dear Family,

I was so good to hear from you.  It sounds like it was a crazy but awesome week.  I love seeing the pictures and hearing about everything that you did.  Mom, can you send a picture of Rachel's dress?  I want to see that to.

This week went by really really fast and I'm not exactly sure where I want to start.  We have been having a lot of little miracles which I think has to do with the fact that sister Heath and I have been trying to have more effective weekly planning.  Weekly planning is like the bane of my existence but I think the theme this transfer is planning and fasting brings miracles. 

I think I am going through a mid mission crisis.  I'm realizing that I'm roughly half way and the idea has been freaking me out.  I'm trying ot figure out if I really have been doing everything that I possibly can do.  I'm trying really hard but I'm faced with the question of is it enough?  I'll admit Wednesday during companion study sister heath had to deal with a companion suddenly bursting into tears wondering if I was doing everything I could.  Actually it was just a rough day.  After I dried up my tears and we went out to work we contacted this man and at first it was really good. He was clear that he was not interested but he was impressed at how normal we were.  Then when we started talking to his friend about a prophet being on the earth today he kind of went off-  (I guess in retrospect we kind of burned the normal bridge with the prophet conversation.)  Any way he in a very nice way started tearing down everything that we believe in. He started throwing question/accusations at us and in a round about way told us that we were mindless sheep that only followed.  In those situations it is best just not to talk.  We tried bearing our testimony but he wasn't gong to listen and he didn't want answers to the questions he thew at us.  We wished him a good day and then walked away.  This man didn't yell at us, but he tore us down.  It was one of the harshest contacts that I have ever had and there were more tears.  It's times like that, which cause a missionary to question exactly why we are out here.  Because getting attacked like that is not exactly fun, so why am I doing this.  I thought about it a lot and I do feel sorry for that man.  Nothing, I mean absolutely nothing that he said changed the way that I think.  He did not damage my testimony in any way- in fact I know that I am doing good work here and I'm doing it not because I was raised in it but because I have had my own personal experiences that tells me, what I teach here is true.  One of the things the man said was that they only send missionaries to places where it is easy to baptize people.  HA!  I'd like to see him try to work in Del Mar.  Not so easy, but it is worth it. 

We had lessons this week with different investigators they all have very different needs and concerns.  But i thin we are getting there.  I know that as we keep working we will be able to help these people resolve their concerns and develop a personal relationship with our heavenly Father and Jesus Christ. This week I've been trying to really strengthen my relationship with them and each day we have been having experiences that tell us we are being guided.  Yesterday we were out in the morning checking on less actives. Because it was memorial day no one at all was home. They were all at the beach.  Anyway sister Heath and I said a prayer that the Lord would direct us to know where to go to use our time wisely.  We closed the prayer and we both felt like we should visit this one less active family.  They are never home, and not in our plans.  We try to stick pretty close to our plans but when we both individually felt like we needed to go we went.  Again it was really clear that the family was not at home and when were were about the leave the door opened and the daughter who lives out of town was staying alone in the house for the weekend.  We were able to visit with her and share a message with her.  It was amazing to see the Lord directing us but more then that it was amazing to see how much the Lord was aware of this girl.  She told us her history and we know that our visit was just a drop in the bucket but Heavenly Father wanted us to tell her that he loved her.  It was a nice experience. 

Oh Gosh I feel like I'm not writing anything that I had planned on writing but this is what is coming out and I don't have time to rewrite it.  Another little miracle is that we are starting to see some progression in people that we have been working with for a while.  We have a couple less active families that actually want to meet with us.  (That kind of freaks me out)  and we even have a potential investigator that we have been slowly working on.  She told us she didn't want to take the lessons and then she started coming to church on her own.  She said she is not ready to learn more about the church but then on Sunday she started asking us about how she can help her fiance believe more in God and how she can help out with the church.  She is a part member family and so her the father in law to be answered her question for us.  He said she needed to take the lessons and get baptized.  Thank you brother, Thank you. 

Anyway I think I am going to have time this week to write letters so I'm going to try and send a letter home. I love you so much.  I am so grateful that I am a part of our family.  I love you!

Sister Allred

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