helllllooo everybody,
Thank you for every prayer, letter, words of support, etc. They mean everything to me.
i seriously cant even believe that its already september!
We were watching the Drive Safely videos this week (which are hilarious/super cheesy at the same time) and Brother Messick from our old ward is the main "police man" in the episodes. It was hilarious! All of them were filmed in Orem at the Harmons on 800 north. So funny.
I heard the Aggies lost to the Utes last Thursday. BUMMER. The bishop is a huge BYU fan and obsessed with twitter and so he texted us and told us the update of the game. The stake high council leader from our ward is a huge Utes fan and he was texting us all about it too and rubbing it in our face that we lost. haha. it was pretty hilarious and i definitely miss the football games, but im going to enjoy them that much more in 15 months. :)
I attended my first zone conference on Thursday and President Weston had some big news for us! We are all going to be starting to do missionary work via Facebook. We are one of 12 out of the 405 missions who are testing Facebook. One hour a day is going to be dedicated to finding/teaching on Facebook. We can literally teach someone a full lesson over Facebook chat and can even add a member in to the chat so that a member will be participating. Crazy, right? We will be using our Facebooks that we had before the mission and have to spend a couple hours cleaning them all up so that they are missionary appropriate. All of our pictures and past things will be hidden until we get back from our mission. All of you are going to be seeing me post random spiritual thoughts and everything, but you just wont be able to talk to me. Haha...sorry. I wont be able to comment or respond back to any of you if you send me a message, but you will still be able to see my page and i will be able to see all of yours. President told us that we will have ipads available to us within the next couple of months. That is going to change the way we teach. We can now use videos and conference talks, etc. all at our fingertips. It is going to be amazing! The work is hastening forward and we need to have every resource we can to help us.
After zone conference, we said a prayer as to decide where we should go for the short time we had before dinner. Sister MacDonald said the prayer and after we both said what we were feeling would be a good area. She said she was thinking about this man named Cory and the Durfey family, who both live on the same street. I thought of Sister Holland and the words "red door" kept popping in to my head. Well Sister Holland, Cory, and the Durfeys all lived in a similar area and so we decided to go there. We parked the car and looked around and realized the color of Cory's door. Red. A red door! We went up there and knocked and sadly he wasnt home. We were thinking that maybe this "red door prompting" may have not been a real prompting, until we noticed that about half of the doors on this street were RED! As we continued to knock on the red doors, we didnt get much success. We finally made it down to the Durfeys home (who dont have a red door, might i add) and knocked. A little back story on the Durfeys first. Sister Durfey is grandma. She really hasnt liked missionaries in the past because they have been too pushy, she is a less active and won't come to church because its too early. She has said in the past that she will start coming to the 1 o clock church when it is more convenient...yeah, right. Sis Durfey's daughter is Jenny. Jenny has 4 kids. Kendra, Juliet, Clayton, and im drawing a blank on the last girls name. Anyways, Kendra is 13, she is best friends with the Myers daughter and is always over at the Myers home when we are doing Vaughn's (the man who just got baptized) lessons with him. She has talked about being baptized before and was scared to ask her mom and grandma about it. Anyways, hopefully you are following along with all of that. Soooo, we knock on the door (note, this is probably the fourth time in the past couple of weeks we have tried to see them) and Kendra answers! She gave us big hugs and introduced us to the rest of her family. The four kids, Jenny (mom), and Grandma all came outside and talked with us for a while. Kendra told us that she had been talking to her family all about the missionaries and then she stops and turns to her grandma and asks, "Grandma, when can i be baptized?" eeeek...kinda scary. But, grandma durfey turns to her and says, "whenever you want, you just have to ask these nice missionaries when they can come over and teach you all the lessons." Long story short, we are going over tonight to teach them the first lesson! Not only are we going to teach Kendra, but we are also going to be teaching her three younger siblings as well. They are 11, 9, and the youngest daughter turns 8 this month! PERFECTION! Thats 3 convert baptisms and a whole lot of awesome! The mom, Jenny, who is a less active, is going to be sitting in on the lessons as well. We are hoping to reactivate her, so she can be that support from her family. She really needs this right now because she just got out of a seriously abusive relationship. It's really sad, but things are looking up for them and they need the atonement and the truth more than ever.
We had our first baptism on Friday! YAY! It went amazing and it was such a great night. I will say that we are happy that it is over though. Its a lot of stress trying to put on a baptism. For some reason, they put Sister MacDonald and I in charge of filling up the font. No one told us how and so we had to figure it out on our own. We finally got it figured out and they had told us that it would take 2 hours to fill up and it seemed to be filling up fast...so there must have been something wrong. Well, we filled the font up over halfway with freezing cold water...I literally had to hike my dress up, crawl in the font, and pull the plug to let the cold water drain out. We drained it about halfway and then figured out how to make it warm...it was an adventure, thats for sure. After we finished filling up the font, we raced over to the Millers for dinner, grabbed a plate of food, and raced back over to the stake center. Im sure anyone who looked at us as we were driving over thought we were crazy. We had barbecue all over our faces from the ribs and potato chips flying across the car as we raced back to the stake center to make it in time for the baptism. Im sure you can imagine. Anyways, the baptism went amazing. Vaughn came up out of the water and let out a peaceful "ahh". He feels wonderful and I was completely overcome by the spirit as he was confirmed yesterday. Bro Myers who confirmed him talked about how Vaughn and his wife would go to the temple one day and be sealed together forever. I got the chills and can not wait for that day. They are literally counting down the days until they can be sealed in the temple.
I saw someone almost choke to death this week. Yeah, that was an experience. We were all sitting around the table enjoying dinner and all of a sudden one of the guys started choking on a green bean! I didnt know what to do and just sat there trying to be calm as the people tried to give him the Heimlich. That was the first time i had seen it done in person and I hope my jaw wasnt dropped to the floor the entire time. I thought it would be no good to have three people trying to help him, so i stayed put and watched this mans face turn purple as they tried to figure out the correct way to do the Heimlich. Craziness. Luckily, it finally popped out and wow, was i grateful that that was over. Choking is scary! Chew your food. Amen.
3 Nephi 20: 8-9
8 And he said unto them: He that eateth this bread eateth of amy body to his soul; and he that drinketh of this wine drinketh of my blood to his soul; and his soul shall never hunger nor thirst, but shall be filled.
9 Now, when the multitude had all eaten and drunk, behold, they were filled with the Spirit; and they did cry out with one voice, and gave glory to Jesus, whom they both saw and heard.
Here is Christ in the Americas blessing and passing the sacrament. These scriptures are an amazing reminder of the importance of partaking of the sacrament each week. Think about why and what it means to take the sacrament. There are amazing promises for us in the blessing of the bread and the water. We are filled with the spirit when we partake and that is a blessing you can not find anywhere else. Always be worthy of the sacrament and don't just make it a habit or routine when you partake of it. Think about if Christ was there with you and he was the one giving you the sacrament to partake. This is exactly why church attendance is so important. Of course it is wonderful that we always learn more about our Savior while we are there, but the most important thing we can do is take the sacrament worthily and with a full heart.
I know this gospel is true with all of my heart. I am so grateful to be out here serving and know that this is exactly where the Lord needs me. I am here to do his will and bring these people eternal happiness with their families and father in heaven.
I love you all!
Thank you for every prayer, letter, words of support, etc. They mean everything to me.
Love,
Sister Allen
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