July 13, 2009

Ryan's Letter:

Subject: Life isn't about waiting for the storm to pass, Its about learning to dance in the Rain!!


Well, we have had a lot of rain in the mission lately, but Elder Hansen and I are dancing right on through it. I am still so gratefull for the oppurtunity I have to be on a mission. Every day I wake up surprised that I'm actually out here! The tender-mercies of the Lord are so great!
We have had an amazing week and I am grateful to be a part of this amazing work. All week we had a mini-missionary with us from Rocklin. He is a priest in one of their wards who is prepping for his mission so he lived with us. On Tuesday, we went to our dinner appointment early and asked if they had anyone we could visit on their street. They didn't and we are grateful they didn't because we had the oppurtunity to go tracting. We have been struggling to get the suggested one hour of tracting a day because we have just been too busy. With that oppurtunity we ended up teaching a lesson to our dinners' neighbor and getting a return appointment for Friday. On Friday we had Zone conference and I had the chance to work with President Chapman to prepare a lesson plan for that evening's lesson with Marian who was the lady we tracted into on Tuesday. The spirit was soo strong even while we planned and we were soo excited to teach her.
So we went into the lesson with my three week old companion and a 17 pre-missionary and the spirit on our side. Presidant Pendleton had advised us to only teach the first principle of the lesson(God is our Heavenly Father, The Gospel Blesses Families, and God reveals His Gospel in every Dispensation), leave her hanging, and encourage her to come to the church the next day for the rest of the lesson. It worked like a charm and she agreed to meet us at the church the next day. That is actually quite a sacrifice because our building is in a completely different city. Before she agreed to come she said, "I hope you're not trying to convert me," but she came anyway. We taught her the remainder of the lesson on Saturday in the chapel and she loved it. When we invited her to church, she asked if it would be ok is she stayed all three hours! Sweet. She still has a long way to go but I am grateful the Lord led us to her.
I am also Grateful for Dimes! Seriously. I have begun to notice Heavenly Fathers hand in even the smallest things. Last week we were riding down a street when I just happened to notice a dime stuck in the side walk. Normally, I would have rolled on but for whatever reason I stooped to pick up a dime! As I picked it up, I noticed a quarter! Then another, and another! And what a miracle, I made 85 cents!
Actually that's not the real miracle. As my companion caught up to me he said, " Im grateful you stopped, I felt impressed to knock on that door down on the corner but thought maybe we didn't have time." Cool huh? So we knocked and they weren't interested, but we gave her a card and who knows what will happen. If nothing else maybe we brightened her day or the Lord prevented us from doing something else that could have been dangerous by guiding us to her door with a dime.
Linda is doing great. She wouldn't ever say prayers with us and Elder Hansen said that if she won't say them with us she won't say them alone, so we had a whole lesson on prayer. At the beginning I told her that we wanted her to say the closing prayer but she was too afraid. Our Relief society president was their and she told Linda that if she would say it, she would help her when she needed. Linda offered a beautiful prayer and the Spirit was very stong. With all her health issues she has said a lot of prayers lately, so we encouraged her to say an all gratitude prayer and she was excited for it. And she told us she feels that God is our Physical parent now so we can move on to the next step with the Book of Mormon.
Anyway, I am grateful for all the blessings of the Gospel! Life is amazing even during the storms. Thank you soo much for sending me Jordans email. Well i love you all. Choose the right!
Elder Ryan Jay Allred!