2-year old Jeter:)

Hey everyone! 

I can't believe I've already been in Harlem for two weeks! Time just goes too fast. In the beginning of my mission I set up a group email with all of the Juab guys that are on missions. This last week Spencer McPherson updated us on how he's doing down in Florida and mentioned that he's about four months from returning home. That is so crazy! After him, Jackson, and Jake Nielson go home within the next six months, it will just be that much faster as all of the other guys will start going home shortly after. My homecoming will be cool since I'm the last one. It will just be like a huge reunion because everyone will finally be back together again as RM's. Anyway, the work is good here in Harlem. We have tons of people to work with and that we're trying to get to baptism with. I'll highlight my favorite. There is a family named the Latimers that the missionaries have been teaching for a while. The dad is Justin and he's been less active for a long time. However, he has a son named CJ who I think is ten or eleven. CJ wants to get baptized and his dad wants to baptize him! So, we're trying to reactivate Justin and his wife and get CJ to baptism on July 19th. I'm so excited about this family. The coolest part is that they're huge Yankees fans. It's no surprise since they live in New York. I'm talking huge though. They have a two year old named Jeter! So, the first time I went over there I just talked to Justin about the Yankees for like twenty minutes. These are the exact kind of people I was hoping to teach out here! I can connect with them super well, and it won't be hard to get Justin to update me on how the boys are doing. Lol. More importantly I'm excited to see them continue to grow in the gospel. It will be so cool to watch Justin baptize his son. Other than that, we have lots of other people to teach. This has definitely been the busiest area of my mission. A lot of times we're actually running around from appointment to appointment instead of walking around trying to find people all day. It's so nice! It makes the days go by much faster! The ward is awesome too. There are a ton of young white families here. Everyone is super nice. Mom, you'll be happy to know that we get fed several times a week. So, you don't have to worry about me going without food lol. The other night, we ate at Sister Watson's. She is a member from Jamaica, and I had heard that she makes the best food. She made us rice and beans, and it was probably the best rice and beans I've ever had in my life. I miss the Bronx for sure. I had a lot of fun there, but I already love it here too. A couple cool things that I've noticed about Harlem is that Martin Luther King Jr and Malcolm X had a huge influence on this area. I didn't even know that. I guess I should have paid closer attention in history class. The church is actually on Malcolm X Blvd. And there are murals of Martin Luther King Jr all over the place. Another cool thing is the African influence. We pass this corner a lot of nights where there is a big group of people in African clothes and with drums and everything just dancing and playing African music. It's really cool. We're actually going down to a place on 116th Street today called the African street market to buy some cool stuff. Also, Columbia University is in my zone. We did a huge finding activity there last week. There is just so much here that I love. The one thing that I don't particularly love is the humidity and the heat. I know I always bring that back up, but it's so miserable sometimes. Enjoy the dry Utah heat for me! lol. Anyway, I'm just happy to be here. I love the area. I love the people. I love the work. Nothing to complain about here. Thanks for everything you all do to support me. I can feel your love and prayers from all the way on the other side of the nation. I love you all so much! Have a great week!

~Elder Allred 

Statue of Liberty

 Hey everyone! Harlem is so much fun! I think I was destined to live in the Hood. Haha. From the Bronx to Harlem! We live in a huge building on Broadway and 135th Street. It's just a couple avenues over from the Hudson. We run over to a football field every morning and work out right next to the river. It's so cool! Missionaries call our building "The Great and Spacious Building". I thought that was pretty funny. We estimated that there's a little over 4,000 people that live in our building alone. So, the building that I live in has almost as many people as the population of Nephi. Crazy! Elder Monson and I are having a lot of fun and the work is great. He's a great guy. I can already tell that I'll be sad when he has to go home in five weeks. 

Anyway, sorry this week's email is super short! We went to the Statue of Liberty today since Elder Monson is going home this cycle. One of the cool things that President Morgan lets us do in this mission. And since I am his companion I got to tag along! Everything is good here! I'm loving Harlem. It's getting super hot. And since we walk most places here, it's been tiring me out! The humidity is ridiculous! Haha. I'll try to write more next week. Have a great week everyone. Love you! 

~Elder Allred 

Harlem

~NEW COMPANION, ELDER MONSON~

 Hey everyone! So, I know that you all know today is transfer day. So, I'll tell you the news right here at the beginning. I was released as District Leader, and I've been transferred out of the Bronx to Harlem! I'm pretty sad to be leaving the Bronx. I've really loved it here. This last cycle was awesome. I got really close with a lot of the people I served with. Especially Elder Rydalch and the guys in our apartment. Elder Kohli will be going home tomorrow, and it was sad to say goodbye to him today. He's a good guy, and we've had some good times together. For his last district meeting, Elder Sevy and I put together a song for him. Since we all love country music, we decided to sing "You're Gonna Miss This" by Trace Adkins. We re-wrote the words for him and put it into a missionary version. It was really cool. I was way nervous to sing in front of the whole zone, but it turned out so well! Anyway, I don't have much time to email today, so this one isn't going to be very long. I'm excited to start working in Harlem! My new companion is named Elder Monson. He's from West Jordan. This will be his last cycle. He'll be going home at the next transfers in July. It should be a lot of fun. These next six weeks will fly by! Adjusting to the new area and watching Elder Monson prepare to go home. I'm excited to have more stories to tell you next week. Thanks for everything. Sorry for the short email this week. I love you! 

~OLMSTEAD ZONE WITH ELDER AND SISTER SNOW~ 

June 4

Hey everyone!

This week was awesome! We had our mission tour on Thursday with Elder Steven E Snow. He is a general authority in the quorum of the seventy who is currently serving as church historian. A lot of what he and his wife talked to the missionaries about was church history and personal history. They really stressed the importance of keeping journal entries, especially on a mission. Sister Snow said something that I really liked. She said that if you don't keep a journal on your mission, your children and grandchildren will only what you did. They'll know that you served a mission and where you served, but they won't know how you felt when you were there. They won't know you. Those weren't her exact words, but it was something to that effect. I really like that. I've been really dedicated to writing in my journal in the last ten months and have an entry for every single day of my mission. My entire mission story will be able to be read long after I leave this earth. My posterity will be able to know who I was and what I experienced and felt on my mission. Elder Snow also came to the Westchester, New York stake conference. This stake includes the Bronx wards and wards in New Rochelle, Scarsdale and Yonkers. It was awesome to see him speak three separate times. The stake that I am serving in just got reorganized, which is actually why Elder Snow was here. It was cool to see that process, because I've never seen it before. Since Elder Snow was on special assignment to call a new stake president here, he had a junior companion with him, Elder Kunz. Elder Kunz was just called to be an area seventy in the April General Conference. So, we got to hear him speak on Saturday and Sunday as well. Along with them, we heard from President and Sister Morgan each a couple of times. Talk about a spiritually uplifting weekend. Hearing talks from stake presidents, our mission president, general authorities and all of their wives. That's a lot of powerful talks packed into one weekend. It was awesome! I definitely filled my spiritual canteen this weekend. Now it's about taking everything that I learned and using it. You can listen to talks and receive instruction all day, but if you don't act on what you learn it doesn't mean too much. Besides that, the week was good. We didn't get the opportunity to teach too much this week, but that just happens sometimes. We're working our hardest! Some weeks are just slower than others. We did make contact with quite a few people and and got ourselves out there. We tried a new finding technique that was really cool. We went out on Saturday and played street ball at Bronx park. Nobody expected a few white guys to do much, but we killed it. We surprised everyone at how well we can play basketball and that got us talking to people. If nothing else, we got our faces out there and people know who we are now. Plus, it showed people that we're not just weird guys who walk around in white shirts and ties but that we're normal people. I'm excited to have more opportunities like this as the weather warms up. I have a funny story for  all of you. So, every Tuesday night we go to Baskin Robbins/Dunkin Donuts and get ice cream. Last night we were there and all of a sudden a fire truck pulls up outside with sirens blaring. Turns out they were just there because a guy was drunk outside and hit his head on the side of the building. That's not the funny part, though. The funny part is when the truck pulled up, five or six guys stepped out. Rather than checking out the scene and helping, one of the firemen walked right into DD and bought himself a donut. Haha! That's classic New York City fireman for ya. lol. It was super funny. Anyway, nothing else too big going on. Just getting ready for transfers next Wednesday. We'll find out Saturday night whether I will be staying here or leaving. So, you'll all know by next Wednesday! Thanks for everything guys. I love you and miss you!! 

~Elder Allred 

El Libro de Mormon es verdad. Es verdad.

 Hey everyone! Life is good here in the Bronx. We're only two weeks away from another transfer. Typically you will stay in an area for no more than three or four cycles. Since I've already been here for three, the possibility of me leaving is getting pretty high. You never know though. My trainer was in Newtown for six cycles. I kind of hope to stay for one more. I love the Bronx so much! That would mean that half of my mission would be spent in just two areas. I guess only time will tell. I'll find out next Saturday whether I will be transferring or not. For now, I'm just trying to enjoy the last couple weeks of this cycle. The other missionaries that I'm working with are awesome. We have a lot of fun, especially with the guys that are in the apartment that I live in. I've become really good friends with Elder Kohli. I'll be really sad to see him go home. That's just how it works I guess. Before you know it, that will be me scrambling in my last two weeks of full time service. 

I went to a meeting in Scarsdale this week called Mission Leadership Council (MLC). That's once a month, and usually zone leaders and Sister Training Leaders go to receive instruction from President Morgan and the APs on how they want the mission to be led. Two or three times  a year, the District Leaders are invited as well, and this month just happened to be one of those times. They will usually also introduce any big announcements for what's coming up in the mission. They talked about details for a mission tour that we are having tomorrow and Friday. A mission tour is where a General Authority comes and stays in the mission home and speaks to all of the missionaries. This usually happens once a year for the mission. This year , Elder Steven E Snow will be visiting our mission. So, I will spend most of the day tomorrow in Manhattan at the temple for that meeting. Then on Saturday and Sunday, Elder Snow and President Morgan will attend the Westchester stake conference, which is the stake that the Bronx wards are in. Our Stake President, President Taylor, is moving back to Utah, so he will be released and the stake will be getting reorganized. I'm really excited for stake conference, because it will be held at the Yorktown chapel in Ossining. It will take me back to my days of serving up there. The other big announcement is even more exciting. President Morgan is arranging for the whole mission to go to the Yankees vs Rays game on July 2nd!!! I was going to email him soon to try and get permission, but now everyone is going! Do I not have the coolest mission in the world? As hard as it is to be a missionary, I almost feel like I'm on vacation sometimes. President Morgan lets us do some really cool things. So, be watching the game July 2nd to see about 250 white shirts and ties. the Lord knows me so well, and He's pretty darn good to me. I have one cool story before I wrap it up. When I got back from MLC, I was with Elder Hausenfluck, because he is the other District Leader in our zone. He's a Spanish speaking missionary, so we went to some Spanish appointments. I've picked up a little bit of Spanish here but not a whole lot. So, I was pretty much just sitting there not understanding the conversation. I tried to pick up a few words as he was teaching one of their investigators. From what I could gather, I knew they were talking about the Book of Mormon. I had the strongest prompting from the Spirit that I needed to speak up and say something. So, I pulled what I could from my Spanish vocabulary of about twenty words and was able to utter my testimony of the Book of Mormon. I said "Yo tengo fe en El Libro de Mormon. El Libro de Mormon es verdad. Es verdad." Which translates to I have faith in the Book of Mormon. The Book of Mormon is true. It's true." That was one of the most powerful experiences I've had on my mission. Listen to promptings from the Spirit. They will always touch someone. You or someone else. Following those promptings is so important and will always increase your spirituality. I love feeling the Spirit and being guided in the Lord's work by His hand. It really is an incredible thing to be a part of. Life is good! I'm happy and healthy and bracing myself for the long, hot, and humid summer! Love you guys! Have a great week! 

~ Elder Allred 

..just a few days with Zack?....

*****Note from Mom: I usually just put the mass email on the blog, but this week I got a bonus email later in the afternoon of a picture Elder Allred took at the Bronx Zoo today. LOVE IT:)*****

Hey everyone! 

This week was probably one of my favorite of my whole mission yet. We had some cool experiences with teaching people. Last week, we met this guy named Ian. We were walking home one night, and he actually stopped us to talk to us. He's from Florida and staying here in the Bronx for a little while selling door to door for Vivint. He wanted to talk, because he was curious about what we do to get into people's houses. We ended up talking to him for about an hour about what we do and what we believe. He didn't give us his number or anything but he took our card. We just assumed we'd never see him again . It was a good surprise when we ran into him again on Saturday. He was sitting out in front of a Catholic Church that's right  down the street from ours. SO we stopped to say hi and talk a little bit. He was kinda discouraged because he didn't have very much luck selling that day, so it made him happy to see some friendly faces. We were actually headed to the church to do a Bible study, and he came with us. Nobody else showed up, so it was just us and him. We taught him about the Plan of Salvation. He wasn't too interested in actually committing to anything. He said he just wanted to learn more about our church so that he could be less ignorant. In any case, I felt the Spirit strongly as we were talking to him. I don't know if we'll ever see Ian again. He's a young guy though. I think he will reach a point one day where he is seriously looking back on his life and he'll wonder what his purpose is. He will think back to when he met the Mormon missionaries in the Bronx. I hope he will choose to follow the good feeling he gets from the Spirit on that day. Until then, another solid seed has been planted. So much of missionary work is just that: planting seeds in hopes that one day they will grow into something more. You hear that all the time, but I've seen so much truth to that little analogy in the past nine months. We also found a new less active member this week. He talked to us about the mission he served in Vegas. He's going through a really tough time right now. He grew up in the Bronx, lived in Utah and Idaho after his mission for nine or ten years, and just moved back because he got a divorce. Hopefully we will be able to help him. We also started teaching this Jamaican lady named Alicia and her daughter. I have high hopes for them. We just had so much fun this week. It was awesome to have Elder Rydalch's little brother, Beau, out here with us. You guys probably saw the pictures on facebook. He flew out Thursday night and stayed all the way through Monday morning. It was so cool to watch them be reunited. The bond between brothers is one that can't really be described with words. The whole weekend I was just thinking about how cool it would be if I could spend just a few days with Zack. Then I realized on Monday morning when Beau left just how hard it would be to say goodbye again for a little over two years. Elder Rydalch gets home in February of next year, and Beau won't get home from his mission in Ecuador until June of 2016. Anyway, it was a fun weekend. We had some great missionary opportunities to get Beau excited, as well as just some good normal fun. It's so cool that President Morgan allows stuff like this to happen. I am incredibly blessed to be in this mission. It really is the best mission in the whole world. Everyone will tell you that about wherever they served. That's because the Lord knows exactly where we each need to be, and I need to be here in New York New York North. Life is good. I still miss you guys like crazy. I think I'm kinda in that stage where it feels like I'll never come home. I'm sure that will pass in a couple months when I hit my year mark. I love you guys so much. Have a great week!

Love, Elder Allred

May 14

Skyping with everyone was so awesome! It was great to see you all and talk for a little bit. I really wish that we had that opportunity more often than twice a year. We're blessed with what we have though. From what I've heard, a lot of other missions are only allowed a thirty minute phone call. The Church actually wanted President Morgan to go down to thirty minutes too, but he didn't let it happen. He wanted to make sure that we had a lot of time. He takes really good care of us and makes sure that we get to do a lot of cool things. I really look up to that man and admire him for the way he leads this mission. Besides that, this week has been great. We've been teaching this guy named Eddy for a couple of weeks now. He is from Haiti and has been in the states for about twenty years. The way he was found is that a couple of sister missionaries just started talking to him on the subway down in Manhattan. He told them he had met with missionaries before when he was in Haiti and that he would be interested in meeting again. I may have already told you all of that, so if I did I'm sorry. Anyway, when we first met with him he said he had already been baptized. Come to find out this week, he was baptized into another church. He thought that when the Priesthood was restored again to the earth, that meant that every church had the authority. So, he was pretty disappointed when he found out that he needs to be baptized again. I was actually on split, so I wasn't at that lesson. Elder Rydalch said that Eddy was actually a little bit angry about it. Luckily he came to church with us still and we'll be meeting with him on Friday. Hopefully all will go well there, and he will have the desire to be baptized and active in the gospel. Being a district leader is so great! I'm loving it. My first training on Monday went really well. I was way nervous, but it turned out well. Everyone in the district is super supportive. It's a blessing to have these great missionaries here to help me with my leadership responsibilities. I really think that I'm getting way more from them than I could possibly give in return. I'm excited for this coming week. Elder Rydalch's little brother is coming to stay with us for a few days. He just got his mission call to Ecuador, and President Morgan is letting him come here before he goes. It should be way fun! I hope you all have a great week. I miss you like crazy. I love you so much! 

~Elder Allred