Finding

Hey family! 

We had a really good week! President Morgan attended a mission president seminar this past week and got some inspiration for our mission. The big thing is that he made a big announcement last Monday. He has really felt the need that our mission needs to do more finding. The work is broken into different categories, depending on the activities that you are doing. There are meetings (church, conference interviews, missionary training meetings, etc.), studying, planning, teaching, service, and then there is finding. The view that most missionaries have about finding is that it's kind of a last resort kind of thing. If you don't have any teaching appointments or anything else to do, you have to resort to finding. That usually comes down to knocking door or street contacting. Just trying to talk to anyone about the gospel and getting new investigators. Like a majority of missionaries, this area is the toughest area for me. Out of all of the other responsibilities I've had in the mission, the toughest thing for me is still to approach a random person and start a conversation. Especially a conversation that leads into the gospel. I've gotten much better at it in 20 months, but I still have a long way to go. Anyway, President Morgan announced that he wants us to schedule atleast three hours of finding per companionship per day. It's been really cool to implement that this week! We've seen really positive things across our zone in the South Manhattan area. Everyone seemed to jump right on board with us in this new endeavor, which was a huge blessing! As a result of our focus in finding we ended up contacting, as a zone, about 250 more people than we did the week before. We also saw that our zone was able to teach a lot more. It was really cool for me and Elder Coburn. Up until this week I've been a little bit frustrated. We have a really good teaching pool in our area with some awesome investigators. For some reason we just haven't been able to consistently meet with all of them. It was really cool how when we started to focus our efforts in finding, we met with all of our investigators this week. When you do what the Lord asks you to do, He showers the blessings! This week is a prime example of that for me. Another cool thing from this week was that we had a regional broadcast on Sunday. Elder Kacher (of the Seventy), Sister Reeves, Elder Andersen, and Elder Hales spoke to the entire Northeastern area of the country. So congregations throughout New York and other surrounding states met in chapels on Sunday and viewed the broadcast from Salt Lake City. It was a really cool opportunity to hear from them. I learned that Elder Hales grew up in Long Island, so that was pretty cool too. Sister Reeves gave an incredible talk about repentance and the Atonement. It really touched me. She talked about how so often we get caught up in being too embarrassed to go to your Bishop when you need to repent. We put off repentance in fear of what others might think of us. We even sometimes think that what we've done is too much. That we're not worthy of forgiveness. These thoughts come from the adversary, the author of all lies. When we finally build up the courage to repent and ask for help we find that the Lord is ever so quick to forgive. I loved her talk. Then that afternoon we attended a baptism. The most unique baptism I've been to, because it was a baptism in the deaf branch. There are four Elders in our zone that work in the American Sign Language program, and it was one of our investigators who got baptized on Sunday. The Spirit in that service was so strong, and I felt so lucky to experience that and be there to support this good brother. Other than that, everything is great! We're headed to the Yankees game this afternoon!! I have the coolest mission in the world. I'll try to email a little bit more after the game. Love you all! Have a great week!

~Elder Allred