Fortaleca

Hola Familia!

 

So I remember doing all those fundraisers for coach cardoso and when I would go door to door some people would say.... "No hablo engleis"  and I would just say adios! Not anymore! That is one of my favorite things to hear now! I dont want anyone to speak english!! Cool thing is that James, luke and hyrum will be able to sell their stuff in spanish no problem as well now that they are learning spanish too!

 

Remember the first miracle that I talked to you all about? Paloma, the lady on my first day that we felt impressed to reverse and go see if she spoke spanish, is getting baptised this next week! She is sooooo PREPARED! Thanks for all the prayers for the people that are living here. I need the blessings from your prayers but the people in the field need them more and they need to be ready to listen and accept. Paloma is amazing.... like we taught her the word of wisdom last time and she immediately after said.... I drink tea and coffee but not anymore! She just accepted it like it was nothing! We were so stoked! (seeing sisters get stoked is a different matter, squeeling and such) She has come to church every sunday and just loves everything.

 

I memorized a scripture that Amber said she memorized while i was in the mtc. It is a short one but it is just amazing! Todo lo puedo en cristo que me fortalece! Phil. 4 : 13 I just love it because there is so much strength that can be found in the savior! Our strength comes from the lord! Everyday there is adversity and temptation but Christ is the Rock and never moves and no matter how the wind beats upon us as long as we hold on to the rock we cannot be carried away captive! I love wearing the missionary nametag! Everymorning I just take joy in putting it on and looking at the two names, ALLEN and JESUS CHRIST. Both names mean a lot to me! One helps me remember my family and how I need to live and work in a manner that will bring "honor to the family" : ) ! The other is Christs name which makes it so my family will be together forever and also the artist of our lasting happiness. Both names just give me that strength every day and I know that it can give each and every person that same strength as long as they ACT. Christ has said that we need to COME unto him. He is not going to come to us we have to come unto him and abandon our pride. He is standing at the door and we just have to knock. It always begins with action! That also reminded me of Grandma Allens story at the Allen reunion about prayer that she just prayed for the strength to bike against the wind, although she wanted the wind to change directions! Always ask for strength to overcome!

 

So there goes another month of my mission and I just feel it is going to fast! I will see this week where I will go next transfer. I want to stay! I could honestly stay here my whole mission and still have a ton of work to do. there is too much to do to just leave already so I hope I get to stay. Some of our investigators have been being ridiculous this week! They dont answer and they always find last minute excusses to not come to church. I was tired.... my car broke AGAIN.... My brothers uncles monkey on a fence needed my help to get down.... EXCUSES STINK!

 

The weather here has been beautiful and quite sunny really! We had some dense fog too so that was fun.

 

There is another scripture that we have been sharing with all our less actives in Alma 5 : 26-27 and it is like a BIG wake up call. Can you feel that spirit NOW? We actually got 3 families to come that I have not seen at church the 5 weeks I have been here so that was nice to see them there. We have been helping a man  to stop smoking and using tobacco and he is doing really well we figured the math and he spends just thousands of dollars a month on that stuff! He is doing well though and came to church with his wife and son as well.

-Love you all

ELder Allen

Chewie all in White!

DEAR FAMILY!

 

Another fruitfull week in the mission! We were a bit dissappointed with the number of investigators that were in attendance at church this sunday but we had a baptism after which just fires you up again!

 

This week CHEWIE got baptized and set an amazing example for his family! Presidente Bogardus performed the ordinance and Elder Keller and I gave a lesson during the program. Hermana Bogardus sang and played the piano at the same time and it was amazing! The spirit was there the whole time and I know he felt it. He is always telling us how "HIS" holy ghost keeps talking to him. He said afterwards that he just felt so light! He has come such a long way. He used to be into drugs and all this crazy stuff but know here he is being BAPTIZED! He has such a strong testimony and I am edified when I teach him everytime. Chewie is amazing and so is his family. Now we are working on his wife Stephanie who is a bit more stubborn but someday they are all going to be in that temple in Portland!

 

Before the baptism we had a fiesta for the baptism and Chewie didnt show up!!! I was so nervous that he was just not going to show or something. Turns out Stephanie was sick because she is pregnant with her third child. We had the fiesta without him and then just waited and waited. He showed up 15 min before the baptism and totally missed his own fiesta. Next step for him is the priesthood and the temple!

 

Mom and Dad thank you soooo much for raising me the way you did! I meet so many people here that just dont know what it is like to have a real functioning family. They feel lost in life and they just dont know that this is what they need. Thanks for teaching me how to be clean and not afraid to get dirty and all the little things as well.  

 

Thanks for the Scripture mastery cards too they are great and I love seeing the new ones that are out. One thing that I like about this companionship thing is that we have comp inventory and we can bring up things that are preventing us from bonding better. It works well and I was wondering if implimenting it in the family would work at all.... Instead of calling people out on something during the day then try just sitting down with them at a specific time and humbly talk about how to improve. Have you all seen the family mission plan video online? Look it up and make a plan!

 

One of our investigators asked if there was a smoking room in the temple! Funny people we get to teach here 

 

Cool story.... so we see some latinos balling it up so we decide to turn it into a teaching opportunity. We made the bet that if we won we got to teach them a lesson from the book of mormon and if not we had to rake all their leaves. So Elder Keller and I balled them up and got a lesson out of it! THAT IS A FUN WAY TO GET LESSONS! It is weird how the latinos here dont dig soccer very much. They love football basketball and track! I have met a few soccer players though which is always fun. Another cool story is that one of our investigators, Angel had a dream like Lehi!!! He said that he dreamed that he was being baptised and that Elder Allen and Elder Keller were right there beside him! I was like BOO YA! GETTING DUNKED! I love the guy but I think he is a bit nervous to come to church. So pray for Angel!

 

The plants that we have on the fence on our property are everywhere here and the just grow like crazy. Maybe the ones at home just need more agua?!! It kills me to see these Blackberry bushes here just filled with unpicked dried up berries! If I would have been just a month earlier I could have eaten them all!

 

We are working hard on getting less actives back to church. The majority of the less actives do not attend because of hard feelings against other members of the branch. I am trying hard to find a cure to this problem and hope that our branch can have the numbers in attendance that it should. Any ideas would be appreciated! 

 

LOVE YOU ALL LOTS!

 

TILL NEXT WEEK

 

-ELDER ALLEN

BAPTISM EVERYWHERE!

AMBER I AM SO HAPPY FOR ANNA!! That just made me smile so much that whole experience that you shared. We are teaching a guy from Mexico, we call him Chewie, his nickname because his real name is just to hard for all the Americans to say! So funny. So he has been taught everything now and we are preparing for his baptism this Sunday. He is so solid and he is so ready. I love him and his family so much and it would be the coolest thing if they all could get baptised. His wife Stephanie is in the process of being taught but she is pregnant with her third child so it is often hard to teach her. Everytime we go over they feed us till we die!!! Last time we had Lengua. Chewie works at a cow butchering place and brings home the Lengua or cow tounge and we had some delicious cow tounge tacos! She is awesome and I love her kids as well. Chewie has even been asking us for extra pamplets because he has already been talking to his fellow employees about the church and how awesome it is. He is already a missionary!!!  Sad thing is that he called his mother in Mexico to tell her about his decision and she disapproves but he is going to do it anyway.

 

Funny story, I was just getting done emailing and this guy says ELDER! He is this really hairy hippie dude and comes over and shakes my hand and his hand is all wet and nasty and he says "My names mark and I am a Witch" He rolls up his sleeve to reveal a tatoo that marks his witchiness and i just said " Thats great good to meet you Mark" I didnt know how to respond to this witch... I wanted to ask him if he was a wizard but he vanished to quickly. Another lady rode by us yelling "Watch out! Brain washed dangerous Cultists!" Funny people here!

 Church was good we had like 5 investigators there which was awesome and there was like 75 people in attendance. We need more though for sure. love you all.

 

-Elder allen

The Oregon Drizzle

 Monday October 7, 2013

 

Hola Familia! I love you guys so much!

 

I got to watch all of conference and I  CANNOT GET ENOUGH!! Have to wait 6 months for the next one but it is something to really look forward to! How did you guys like it?

 

So this week we got a new car. Our "OLD" car had 25 thousand miles and was losing the shine i guess.... Because we drive everywhere in what is called the "Oregon Drizzle"! Our spanish area is huge so we need to cover a lot of ground without getting drenched so we are in a car a lot more than i would like to be. So it is the newest car I have ever been in! we got the all new chevy cruze 2014 with only 9 miles on it! still had the tags on it and everything! the church is crazy to hand that 20,000 dollar piece of merchandise to us!

 

The second week was just as good as the first. It is amazing as an ambassador of the Lord how people just open up to you and plead your help and guidence. We had two crazy amazing experiences this week where we were guided to certain people. One lady we met just outside a bus stop and as we started to talk she just told us everything, like everything. She is in a really tough situation and she told us how she had been drinking for the first time and years because of the struggles she is having and that she is terminally ill and how she doesnt want to leave her son now because he is so far away from choosing the correct things in life. Through her tears, She told us how last time she was in a crisis like this that the two mormon missionaries showed up as well, just walking down the street like we were! God knows his children and he sends us, his ambassadors to help them find the path and give them comfort. I know that we are only a tool in his hands to accomplish this work. So i asked if we could come in and share a short message with her. We shared Helaman 5:12 and I know that she felt the spirit. We have so much strength in the Christ! Sad thing is though all the people we contact that are white we have to turn them over to the white missionaries! (we are the brown ones)! I want to teach her again though!

 

Another lady came up to us and said that she had a house that was filled with bad spirits and is under the influence of the devil. she asked us to come bless her home and cast out the spirits! So we get into her house and like always Elder Keller turns to me to give me the chance to do everything which I am very greatful for because I have grown a lot and it is probably what I am going to do with my trainees in the future. That was an interesting experience but I love the knowledge that we have in regards to this that we can call on the powers of heaven for ourselves. She verywell  could have blessed her home as well. She is entitled as are we all to the lords help wherever we are.

 

This man came up to us during General Conference and said "Get with the program. if it aint fun then you aint doing it right and it aint worth doing" Soo true! Everything can be done in a way to foster the spirit of God and help us find joy in what we are doing. 

 

Conference was amazing and we got some of our investigators to attend which was a blessing, chewie and his wife stephanie and lots of kids and relatives.  You can put your money on the prophets to deliver inspired and persuasive messages, and that is whay they did. I love those men so much and I admire their spiritual tenacity and I hope to be able to be more bold and filled with love all at the same time. During Elder Hollands talk I thought about RACHEL! She is going to be such a perfect spirit and she is just trapped right now in this body but she will be resurrected in all glory. I cant believe I forget that so often when I am around her. Forgive me Rachel! I LOVE YOU! gotta go!

love

Elder Allen

And so it begins! OEM in the RAIN!

My flight on a small plane that was awesome

and yeah it rains a lot at my appartment

 

I have only 20 more minutes!!!! 1 hr to email and read everything is soooo tough!

 

So first miracle! My companion is Elder Keller from Arizona and he is a probably, from what i have seen the hardest working one out there in our mission.

 

my first companion- Elder Keller

 

 

 He is now district leader so I get to call lots of people and write down the numbers and it is just good stuff. K since Elder Perrine and I arrived it has rained and rained and rained! So much rain and it never stops! I love it though it is so pretty and the leaves are starting to turn! There are oregon duck fans EVERYWHERE! Perrine got assigned down in Klamath and I am right in Eugene! We have a car that we take everywhere and I spend a good chunk of the day driving so I feel like I am not doing Real missionary work. I guess it is just different than other missions. We teach all the spanish people so we have to drive accross town for different appointments and we are not really supposed to just talk to the english people. So we will see how it goes. It was sad to see my comp of the last 6 weeks go. I love that guy!

 

Second miracle happened the first day.  Amazing experience, so I was going tracting with my new Companion, who is boss because he just abandons me on the door step so that I can grow outside my comfort zone! Anyway and we rode our bikes right past a lady sitting on her porch. A bit further down the street we looked at eachother and felt impressed to return to talk to that lady! So we did and turned around and we met Paloma! She is a pretty old lady who just barely moved from Peru like a week ago and she could not speak a word of english! That is why we have spanish elders in Eugene OR! It was great to talk to her she was talking to us about how much darkness there is in the world right now and that people are just not following the word of god anymore. So I got to place my first BOM in the mission field! It was a great first day experience and just got me pumped for the mission.

 

I finally have met a ton of our investigators and I love them already. The food that we have eaten so far is awesome stuff. That latin food in america is better than anything I had in the comedor in Mexico! So we run every morning and it is pretty chily. So about mail send it to the mission office. I forgot the address but you have it right? Yeah just send it there and they forward it to me.

 

I met Elias who is just the funniest guy and thinks that zombies are real and we got to teach him about the ressurection. It turned out to be a funny lesson because of the zombie factor... Focus people!!!

 

So what i figured is that missionaries need members to be present at their lessons and WE need to be there to help them or else we cannot teach! So be there for them! So many people we cannot teach because we need another male to enter the home. So support the localsmissionaries and see if you can get in on some of their lessons.

 

Our branch is mini! We had maybe 40 people at church and It felt so empty in this big chapel. the songs were weak but the testimony s of the people were so strong and I cannot wait to get involved and make more of a difference.

 

One of our investigators was asking us about our mission life and asked when we would be able to use electricity again! haha soo funny. We teach lots of lessons in english as well and it is hard to transition. I will start switching back adn forth and it is noo good! Oh bible bashing is of the devil but it is lots of fun I want to tell youmore about that one later but gotta go.

 

someone send me scrip mastery list please?!! thanks

 

Love ya lots

 

-Elder Allen

Welcome to OEM!

We are so happy to have your missionary here with us in the Oregon Eugene Mission.  We had great fun getting to know them  yesterday.  They are  going to be  awesome missionaries !

 The first  few weeks of training will be some of the greatest weeks of their mission!

President Young is a wonderfully spiritual and loving mission president.  He takes great care in watching over his missionaries so please know that your missionary is in very good hands!

Thanks for sending them our way!