From: Ryan Jay Allred
Sent: Monday, September 06, 2010 12:21 PM
To: Allred, Kevin
Subject: My family is AMAZING!!!!
Dear everyone!
Thank you so so much! You are my favorite and I am so excited to live forever with you! I think that Heavenly Father, in His perfect love, recognized exactly the type of people I needed to support and lift me throughout my mortal experience. This morning was pretty hard on me but then I came to email and BANG, instant encouragement from the most wonderful people in the world and life is good again. I love you all!
Oh my Goodness!! Miracles, Miracles, Miracles! You are probably all sick and tired of me talking about miracles all of the time but I can't help it, they just keep coming. This week I was pretty sick for most of it but somehow we were still blessed beyond what we deserved. My favorite thing about this week was just the oppurtunity that I had to feel the spirit soo frequently, because it did come, very powerfully at times. One of my favorite days was this past wednesday when we had to stay in our apartment untill three because I was sick but we had a lessson scheduled with the Faria's and we decided to just take a DVD to watch with them. We watched "Finding Faith in Christ" ad as many of you know it has a way of inviting the spirit more than any other movie i have ever seen. I just feel soo good every time we see it, it makes me just want to love everyone perfectly and always be happy! The Faria's felt the same way. As a matter of fact tears flowed freely throughout the movie as we all enjoyed feeling Heavenly Fathers love together and realizing that no matter what we go through in this life we can find joy in our faith. The Faria's are a great example to me because of all that they face at this time. They have been members of the church for a while now and they have set a goal to go to the temple but because of some health problems they are having a hard time. They are doing it though and after feeling the Spirit as strong as we did that day they recommited themselves and they came to church this week despite physical obstacles.
After that Brother Hamblin, who we live with and who is our Ward Mission Leader, spent the evening making visits with us. We sit in soo many meetings as missionaries that it is really fun to see the friuts of them as we actually go our with the members to love those that need it. With his assistance we were able to make it into the homes of two less-active families who we had been trying with for months. Now we have appointments to begin teaching them this week. At about eight o'clock he dropped us off so we could grab our bikes and have about an hour to contact people. We decided to try by a referal named Hiedi that Brother Jensen had given us over a month ago but we had been unable to contact her. Well, you guessed it, she was home and we are going to start teaching her later on this week! We feel really good about her especially because she has met with missionaries in the past and even had a baptismal date so she is already pretty close.
We're just getting started here. So we tracted into a minister from the Seventh Day Adventist church and he accepted to take the missionary lessons because he has a lot of LDS friends. His name is Vick and he is such a nice guy, we are teaching a lot of people from the Adventist church and Vick is their leader. So we taught hima lesson on Monday and then we came back on thursday with Brother Forrest who is his nieghbor. We had a great lessons and we learned a lot from him as well. I am excited because he really doesn't know anything about the Book of Mormon and I know that can influence him in a lot of good ways now that he is at least reading it. After that Brother Forrest came with us to teacha man named Antonio. He is the father of a young man we have been teaching but he has not been interested in the past. The last time we were in his home though we invited him to meet with us and he agreed to have one meeting. The only problem is that his english is only about as good as my spanish, poco. So we took one of our trusty DVD's and switched it to spanish and let it do all of the talking. It was a lot of fun because the whole family was there along with us, Brother Forrest, and Sarah Forrest who is twelve. They started by ensuring that all of us had plenty to eat during the movie and we all had a lot of fun despite the language barrier. At the end we asked Sarah to offer the closing prayer and I have never heard a more sincere prayer in my life. I know the family felt it too as she prayed for us and for them because afterward they agreed to meet with the spanich Elders!! Allright!
Then Saturday was one of the funnest days of my mission. I was on exchanges with Elder Booth in his area and we had both had pretty slow week so we decided we were going to tear it up! Well is didn't quite work out like we planned because I woke up still feeling pretty sweet but it worked out pretty good. We started out by doing service for an older lady who they had tracted into earlier. Actually Elder booth did service but I had fun watching him. :) Then we taught her a lesson which was realy cool because in the past she has only let them do service but we taught her all about the relief socitey and now she wants to join! Then we rode around town talking to people and looking for service to do. We came accross a family moving so we helped them for a few hours. Yesterday theywent back for a BBQ with that family and they will start teaching them later this week.
Yup we had a fun day all day long but the best was in the evening for out lesson with Megan. I think I told you about her a while ago in one of my emails. She is the young lady who Elder Adams and I had tracted into and she started crying when we knocked on the door and told us she was an inactive member and she was ready to come back. Remember? Well anyway she has been active ever since and she is Loving it! So we went to teach her but she had invited one of her non-member friends to come and sit in on the lesson. His name is Billy and we found out that he had met with missionaries in the past but hadto stop when he went off to school. We had sucha spirit filled lesson with them and at the end we turned to Billy and invited him to follow the example of Jesus Christ by being baptised on October 16. The Spirit was palpable especially when he sad yes! We all paused to enjoy the feelings that were with us and then to set some goals to prepare and he is sooo excited!
Life is good and my testimony continues to grow in soo many ways. Keep it up everyone and enjoy this wonderful Journey. I love you All!!
Have a great week!
Elder Ryan J Allred
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HURRAH FOR ISRAEL!!!
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