December 8, 2008

-----Original Message-----
From: Ryan Allred [mailto:ryanjallred@myldsmail.net]
Sent: Monday, December 08, 2008 5:41 PM
To: Allred, Kevin
Subject: The kingdom of God or nothing!


Hey, I've only been "Dear John'd" Twice so far, thats pretty good. I expect more but it would be better if they came with a box of ice cream to help ease the pain. This week has been really good. My companion is a great guy (other than the fact that he went to Hilcrest and he thinks they have a better debate team than Madison) and he lets me play soccer on p-day. We go running and work out together every morning, even though it is freezing cold here. We are the only missionaries in our zone on bikes and it can get pretty cold here especially on my bike because my coat get pulled half way up my arm when I lean over to pedal. We have only been about 100 miles on our bike so far but it is a big area so we might get a lot of miles in later.
The members here are really great, and everyone seems to know someone in Rexburg. Someone asked me if Dad would know the Marcum family that works at the college with a daughter named Crystal? The members seem really excited about missionary work but they haven't really been tested yet. We left them all commitments to find people for us to teach so we'll see when we follow up how excited they really are. I know the Bishop is going to be great to work with, he reminds me a lot of my Father. He works hard with the members and there are a lot of less active members for him to work with. I think half of the ward is inactive. Our mission president has us do at least twenty lessons a week, most of them with the members. Our goal is to practice our lessons on people who will understand when we mess up and to help them in their misionary efforts. Eventually we hope to replace the members with investigators they give us to teach.
We don't have very many investigators yet so we are trying really hard to increase our pool through the members. We still tract every day and that's fun. We are working with a guy who is pretty much ready to be baptized, but he's on parole so we can't get him for a while. We also are teaching the husband of a recent convert. All the previous missionaries in this area said that he was not interested but his wife called us and asked us to teach him. So we set a date for the lesson with Al (the husband) and Deborah (the wife) and we invited four people to come listen. It's alway great to have members at lessons to testify, but more than two is WAY too many. I think we only got through three parts of lesson one, and we were there for two hours. One of the sisters would not stop telling stories and would not let us talk. She even went off onto some deep doctrines and killed our lesson. We were able to talk about the Book of Mormon though and the spirit was there. I think Al is ready for the gospel so it was really frustrating to not be able to really give it to him.
It would be great if I could just buy the sweater here. Just let me know how much I'm allowed to spend on it. I found I get to go tho the temple while on my mission, I'm just not sure how often yet. If I am south I go to the Sacremento Temple and If I'm up North I go to the one in Oregon. Tell Melinda good luck for me and have Ben write me about boot camp if you can.
Good Luck I love you!