Mission Scripture

Mission Scripture

Friday, December 26, 2014

Merry Christmas

Hello Everyone! Merry Christmas!! I can't believe it's already this time again. I'll talk to most of you on Skype tomorrow, so I'll keep this email short. I mostly just want to talk about the Book of Mormon challenge. I read Moroni 10 this morning and finished. I can tell you that I took Moroni's challenge. I prayed for a witness of the Holy Ghost that this book is true, and this promise was fulfilled. The Book of Mormon is the word of God. I know that to be true just as much as I know anything else. What an incredible experience this has been for me, and I'm so grateful that some of you joined me. My testimony of this book has become so much stronger over the past few months. I've seen miracles in myself and in others with this challenge. I'm so grateful for the Book of Mormon. It is a powerful testament of our Savior, and I don't know where I would be without it. It is my rock and the foundation of my belief, it is the reason I'm even on a mission, and it has brought me nearer to God than anything else could. I hope you have all had similar experiences over the past 120 days, and I hope that you will continue to read from the Book of Mormon. I"m excited to read from the first chapter of First Nephi tomorrow! I love you all so much! I hope you have a very Merry Christmas and that you can feel the Savior's love for you during this very special time of year! Thank you for all of your support! I've received several packages, letters and cards this week that I'm super grateful for! I love you!!! 
~Elder Allred 

Wednesday, December 17, 2014

Pictures!

ELDER ALLRED in MILLBROOK, NY

I'll probably keep this email a little short today. That way I will have some time to email some of you back individually. Everything in Poughkeepsie is wonderful. We are having a lot of success, and our teaching pool is great. One of our main investigators is a 20 year old guy named Joe. He's from Washington DC but is currently attending Marist College in Poughkeepsie. He was introduced to the church when he met his girlfriend who is also attending Marist and just happens to be Mormon! So she brought him to church, and now we're teaching him. He's really cool, and he's taking the lessons really well. It's kind of cool to be teaching someone my age. I can relate to him much better than a lot of the other investigators that I've taught. This past Friday we had our mission Christmas devotional. I love that program! It's the only time of year when the whole mission gets to come together, which is about 260 missionaries these days. It's fun to see all of your mission buddies who are serving in different areas. It's been kind of hard for me to get into the Christmas spirit this year. It might just be because we haven't had much snow yet. I'm not really sure why. It doesn't really bother me though. I really think I"m just more focused on the missionary work that I'm doing and less on the holiday. I'm sure I'll get into it more this week! This is the last week of the Book of Mormon challenge! For those of you who are reading along with me, I'm going to make a few changes to the schedule so that I can finish on Christmas Eve. So tomorrow I'm going to read Ether chapter 13. Friday I will read Ether 14-15. Saturday I will read Moroni 1-2. Sunday Moroni 3-6.. Monday Moroni 7. Tuesday Moroni 8-9. Wednesday Moroni 10. I hope that schedule makes sense. Maybe someone could post this altered schedule on the Facebook group so everyone who is reading can follow if they'd like to. The Book of Mormon challenge has been incredible! I'll wait to share my thoughts next week as we finish it out. The challenge has had a huge impact on me though. Well, like I said, this email is a little bit shorter. I'm hoping to be able to email most of you back. I love you all so much! Can't wait to see you on Skype next week!!
~Elder Allred 

Wednesday, December 10, 2014

#SharetheGift

Life is good here in Poughkeepsie! Elder Romo and I had an awesome week! We're getting along really well . Having a lot of fun and going some good work. I don't even know where the past two weeks went. Now Elder Romo only has three more weeks until he goes home. It will kind of be a bummer when he leaves but I'm excited to continue working with him for a few more weeks. Our area is great. We're always really busy and have plenty of opportunities to teach, which is a big blessing. A lot of missionaries think that areas upstate out of the city are tough and kind of make it an excuse to not work hard and to settle for less than they can do. Luckily that's not the case for us here. We're both working hard and seeing blessings. We had one cool experience with a less active yesterday that I'd like to tell you about. His name is Harvey. His aunt is an active member who we visit every Tuesday for lunch. (The same one who I said "mucho gusto" to last week haha). Anyway she told us that he could use a visit, so on Monday we dropped by. He wasn't home, but his wife answered the door. She took our number and said she would tell him that we came by. This happens often. We give someone our number and they say they'll call. In my experience they usually don't ever call. So, we didn't think much of it. Didn't think he would call and just kind of shrugged it off, hoping we could drop by again next week. Well, at about five o clock yesterday we got a call from Harvey. He told us his wife relayed the message to him and that he wanted us to come and visit. We asked if he was free at six thirty and he said yes! So we went over and had a great visit with him. He's from Peru (which happens to be where Elder Romo is from) and speaks Spanish. So I didn't really get to say much. I understood parts of the conversation but couldn't get the whole thing. My understanding of the Spanish language is a lot more than it was before my mission but still not enough to communicate. So I asked Elder Romo afterward how it went. He said that Harvey told him he has been feeling guilty for some of the mistakes he has made and started this week to pray for help. We showed up right on time! Now Harvey wants us to visit often and help him, and he wants his non-member wife to learn about the church. Is it coincidence that we showed up when he needed us most? No. I am convinced that there is no such thing as coincidence in the work of the Lord. He directed us to Harvey right when he needed us. The Lord has His hand in what I'm doing every single day, and it's amazing when I get to see that as clearly as I did from this experience with Harvey. I love being a missionary. I'm also really enjoying my new calling as zone leader. It's been a bit of an adjustment for me. I was a district leader in Harlem for over four months, so I was pretty comfortable with my responsibilities in that calling. One thing I've learned is that when you get comfortable, the Lord doesn't let you stay comfortable for long. If that were the case we would be missing the purpose of progression in this life. So it's good that I'm adjusting to something new. I'm learning a lot and trying to figure out how I can lead the missionaries in my zone well. I had a great opportunity to learn on Friday. Usually the last Friday of each month the mission has a mission leadership council (MLC). The purpose of MLC is so that President Morgan, his assistants, the zone leaders and the sister training leaders can meet together and council on the needs of the mission. November's MCL got pushed back a week so we went to Scarsdale on Friday to attend that meeting. It was really cool! We actually had the opportunity to have Elder Anthony D Perkins from the First Quorum of the Seventy in that meeting with us. He is a spiritual powerhouse. Since he visited our mission I studied the talks he has given in general conferences. I really enjoyed his talk from the October 2006 general conference, "The Great and Wonderful Love". I learned so much from his teaching, and it was a really cool experience to be that close to a general authority. We also had some other awesome visitors. Elder Allen, who is the head of missionary work in the entire world and a team of five other church leaders in the missionary department joined us. They talked to us about the He is the Gift initiative. The team is actually the one that worked on this project and brought it before the Quorum of the Twelve. They are visiting New York City because a lot of the focus for this initiative is in this area. The Church has purchased space is Times Square and on public transportation to advertise this initiative. If any of you haven't heard of He is the Gift yet you should definitely check it out. The main part of the initiative is a video about Christmas and how Christ was the first gift. 

http://www.mormon.org/christmas

You can also search #SharetheGift to see what people are posting about it on social media. I love the video, and we're trying to use it a lot in our teaching and finding efforts. The way that the church is using social media is so cool! I'm so grateful to be a missionary during this exciting and historical time in the church. Anyway, that's about it for this week. Life is good! I'm loving it and just trying to soak in every minute of the time that I have left to serve the Lord full time. I hope you are all doing well. I'm so grateful for each one of you, and I love you with all my heart!
~Elder Allred 

Wednesday, December 3, 2014

Mucho Gusto!

Hey family!
First thing is that I'm sorry I wasn't able to do much emailing last week. My day was pretty crazy. Left the apartment in Harlem at about 8 am to go to the city transfer meeting at a chapel in North Manhattan. Then I left from there at probably like 12:30 to go to the upstate transfer meeting in Ossining, NY. We arrived in Ossining right in the middle of a snow storm. So by the time the upstate transfer was over at about 4 we needed to start on the hour long drive to Poughkeepsie which didn't leave me much time to email you guys. So if I left any of you hanging or with unanswered  questions I'm sorry! Anyway, Poughkeepsie is great! Elder Romo is awesome. He is nearing the end of his mission now, so he will go home in about four weeks. Hopefully we can have some fun and get some good work done before that happens. We're getting along really well. I've known him since the very beginning of my mission when I was in Newtown and he was serving in the Spanish Ward in the neighboring town of Danbury. The zone leader area here in Poughkeepsie has to have at least one Spanish speaking elder because there is no Spanish Ward in Poughkeepsie. However, there are a few Spanish members of the church here and some investigators who speak Spanish.  So some of the lessons we teach are all in Spanish and I pretty much just sit there and try not to fall asleep while Elder Romo teaches. Haha. I've been getting pretty good at praying in Spanglish, and I know a few phrases now. The other day we were eating lunch that a Spanish member prepared for us, and I looked at her and said "Mucho gusto!" Apparently what I said to her was, "Nice to meet you." What I meant to say was, "Me gusto mucho." Which would essentially mean, "I like the food a lot!" She understood that I don't speak Spanish and that I was trying. It was really funny though! We live in a small town just north of Poughkeepsie called Hyde Park. Elder Romo and I live in an apartment all by ourselves. It's quiet but nice. I'm definitely way more in my element here than in the city. Driving around the small towns up here reminds me of Nephi and Ephraim and makes me realize how grateful I am for the country life. I'm happy to be here! We're also plenty busy. We have a few pretty consistent investigators that we're working with who you will hear lots more about  as I get to know them better. Thanksgiving was great! We had dinner with a family in the ward. We were at their house for close to five hours. We ended up playing chess and just chilling. It was nice to kind of kick back and relax a little, especially after the crazy day we had the day before. A couple other families had us over for pie afterwards. So no need to worry. I was well taken care of! Although nobody had my favorite chocolate cream pie it was a great day! Haha. And my birthday was great too! I got all of the packages and everything the day before, so thank you all so much! You're the best! Well that's about it for now. Life is great! It's nice to slow down a little bit again and take some deep breaths. Living in the city for almost a year wore me out! Hope you all had a wonderful Thanksgiving and you're all doing well. Love you!! 
Elder Allred