La obra esta apresurando! (The work is hastening)

I really, really loved all of my letters this week!  ... Even if there was a little bribery involved!  Haha I loved them all.  I am glad that Ashlyn proudly reports in every letter that you all haven't forgotten about me. :)

This week has been AWESOME and so fascinating/a time of much growth.  So I told you last week that I am now a trainer.  On Tuesday, we went to a chapel to pick up our new companions.  Mine is Hermana Jackson.  She is from Provo, went to BYU, graduated from good ole' Timpview High School, and she is the BEST.  I don't believe I have ever met anyone who is as similar to me as she is, which is weird and fun at the same time.  We both think the same things are funny, we both are anxious about obedience, we both love the gospel and working hard for the Lord, and we both love talking to people and trying new things.  She has no fear and is already participating a bunch in lessons and contacting like a pro.  I love it!! It sure makes my job easy.

Conversely, training in Spanish is also the most stressful thing of all time.  I all of a sudden have to be the one to take the lead in speaking, starting conversations, giving lessons, and taking phone calls (those are the worst!).  As you could imagine, my Spanish is improving like crazy!!  Everyone is very patient with us.  Here is the craziest/most awesome experience I have had with the gift of tongues this week:

We took the A. family this week to a temple tour.  This is where a member of the mission presidency or Brother Herzog from Olympia takes people (mostly investigators and missionaries) around the temple grounds and talks about the history of it and about the church and what we do inside temples.  When they showed up, I realized with horror that they didn't speak English!  (.... you think I would have realized that sooner)  Sister Jackson had been out like 4 days, so I realized very quickly that I would need to translate the whole thing (I have never translated before).  The heavens opened and the gift of tongues poured down!!! I was somehow able to translate the whole thing.  It wasn't perfect by any means and I did a lot of acting out things too (I am sure you can picture this), but they loved it and said I was a very good translator.  I had so much confidence after and it has been so easy to speak ever since.  Ok, by 'so easy' I mean 'much easier' - I still have a long way to go!

Really quick, I want to tell you about the Anteq family.  Me and sister Campos visited them on one of our first days in Windy Ridge, because they were a part-member family.  We met the mother of "Hermana" Anteq, Blanca, and she said we could come back to schedule a time.  We eventually met both of them, and started teaching them family home evenings.  Hermano Anteq is a less active member, and we have since found out that Hermana has gotten very close to baptism multiple times just to be offended right before and back out.  We started teaching towards Hermano Anteq, but our last lesson took a great turn.  We talked to Hermana Anteq about baptism again.  It was very spiritual.  Hermano said that they had talked to many, many sets of Elders, and they always had an excuse.  He said since we came, he doesn't have excuses anymore.  She is getting baptized soon, hopefully on the 24th of November.  I love this.  It is their time - we all know it.  I am grateful to be there for people who just needed Hermanas.  There are lots of them waiting!

So our district leader now is named Elder Romero.  He has been an Assistant to the President since I got here, and now for his last transfer he is a district leader.  For just one district in the mission - ours! I love it.  He is very wise and helps us to be better preach my gospel missionaries.  I feel so blessed to have such an awesome leader and such an awesome companion.  

More or less, we are going to baptize everyone in Orlando!  :)  Please keep praying for all my investigators.  Thanks!  I love you all so so so much!

Love, Hermana Kara Allred

P.S. HAPPY BIRTHDAY BRANDON! 

A week of changes!

It has been a wonderful and crazy week!!!  It is transfer week yet again, my second one!  President Berry called me and Sister Campos last week and called us both to be trainers for the incoming missionaries.  As a result, I am picking up my companion fresh from Mexico tomorrow morning!  Please pray for me because I am very nervous to be starting training when I just finished mine yesterday!!  It will be good.  I am also staying in Windy Ridge, for which I am very grateful!  I am excited to start this new page of my mission, and I can't wait to be the best companionship ever and baptize every Spanish-speaking person in Orlando (and refer everyone else to the English missionaries). :)  We had a great trainers' meeting, and hopefully everything will pan out.  Also, Hna. Pellegrini sent me an email from Mexico because two of the Hermanas coming here she knows!  Haha maybe I will train one of them.  Small world.

This week we had one of the most awesome moments of my whole mission.  Sister Campos and I were tracting a street.  We were having not a ton of success, but it wasn't horrible either.  Just a normal day.  We saw a lady outside of her house moving a trash can and asked if we could help.  We explained who we were and what we did.  She said that she was ok, but there was an old lady inside the house that might be up to talking.  She went to ask her, and then told us it was ok for us to go in and she left with her son.  Inside we found Nancy, who was sitting at the kitchen table with her oxygen tank.  She explained to us that she had a terminal illness, and that she could live for a day, a year, or five years - she didn't know.  She got emotional as she told us how the back wall of her house wasn't finished, and her car was broken.  She said she had asked her church, of which she had been a tithing member, for help and was turned down.  She looked at us with wonder and said, "You have no idea how hard I have prayed for Jesus to send me someone who could help me.  I can't believe it.  He answers.  I can't believe He answered so fast."  Me and Hermana Campos smiled and assured her that we were the answer to her prayers.  We explained to her that we knew Elders who could help with the wall, and they could ask if there was a member in the ward who could look at her car.  We explained that the church promotes self-reliance, but also that we are always there to help each other as members.  She was very emotional and talked about how that's how churches should be, how it used to be that neighbors took care of their widows and helped out a friend in need.  We happily told her about our Prophet who took care of dozens of widows in his neighborhood when he was a local bishop.  We started to explain that even though we as missionaries did temporal service, the best service we gave was the message we carry to the world.  I asked Hna. if we had an English Book of Mormon in the car, and when Nancy hear this, she exclaimed that she had always wanted to read it.  We happily got it for her, and on the way a story occurred to me!  When we got back in her home, I asked if I could share.  I told her about my great-great-grandmother who was a widow in Germany, very sick and feeling very alone.  I told her about how Frieda prayed for help, and read a verse in Amos about the Lord sending messengers.  I told her about how the Sisters found her, she was baptized, and generations of our family have been blessed as a result.  I was so happy to have such a personal story that was so close to Nancy's experience.  Thank you, Grandma, for making us those binders!  After this, we looked at the Book of Mormon on the table.  I said, "Nancy, if we really are messengers from God then what we say is true."  I challenged her to listen to the Elders and asked her if she would be baptized if she found that it was true, and she said yes.  She was so full of the Spirit and was so grateful for the answer to her prayers.  I told her about another of my family members, my Nonnie who was baptized when she was 80 (she is only like 72, so this is a piece of cake for her! haha).  She said that we were glowing, and we probably were because we were so full of the message we had and our purpose.  Things like that really do happen on missions! The Olympia Elders are now meeting with her.

Also, this week we had a 'noche de hispanidad,' which was AWESOME!!!!!!!!  It was a ward activity where everyone represents their country of heritage with food, dance, artifacts, clothes, everything!!! I loved loved LOVED to be there with everyone, and to be a little part of all that Latino goodness.  I love to kind of be a part of it.  I feel the Spirit when I see people living their heritage and honoring their ancestors.  

I love the mission!!!!!!!!!!!! It is awesome!!!!!  And I love love love you all too!!!!!!!!!!  Thanks for always being there and examples to me.  Talk to you soon.

Love, Hermana Allred

Fall in Florida

(Kara thought this was a funny picture of all the people who came to watch the Saturday morning session of General Conference in Spanish.  Yes, it is just her :))

 (Same room, different occasion.  Relief Society party.)

I hope you have had the greatest week of all time!  The work is going so, so well here in Windy Ridge.  I love it so much!!  Here are some funny/awesome experiences, as usual. :)

First off, by one of the roads that we travel on quite often is an amusement park.  Now, when you think of Orlando amusement parks, you probably think of Disneyworld, Universal Studios, Seaworld, etc.  However, this park is a little different and also a little more typical of Orlando: Holy Land.  Yes, this is not a joke.  It is a Bible-themed amusement park.  This is what I am up against here - people who spend their weekend in Holy Land. When you pass it you can see the tail of Jonah's whale and a big colosseum thing and this massive Bible mural.  Seriously?!  Strangest thing of all time.  Classic Bible belt.

This week I have been feeling a fall fever of sorts.  Like, I really needed something seasonal.  So, last week I bought a pumpkin and a caramel-apple cake mix.  I carved the pumpkin this week after planning and have yet to make the cake, but it makes me feel a little more like it is fall here.  Haha mom, I blame this on you! :)  Sister Campos had never carved a pumpkin before, so I let her carve the other side of mine.  We had fun. :)

This week, I actually found myself craving PuertoRican beans.  I guess my stomach is expanding.  Thankfully!

So our investigators are doing great!  We had a great lesson with M. and her family using the cups that I got from Marla.  They loved it and it all makes sense to her.  The A family came to church again this week!  He said that he liked it already because he felt it was his home.  I love them.  We also had a lesson and dinner scheduled with a member referral named Z.  It turns out when we got there that she had her sister, a friend, and their families at her house!  We did't think too much of it because usually they will request to go in another room to do the lesson or something like that, but she insisted that everyone be there and participate in the message.  We taught the Restoration, and it was the most powerful lesson I have ever been in on my mission.  The Spirit was so strong as we testified to those people about Joseph Smith, a loving Father in Heaven, and the restored Power of Jesus Christ.  Everyone felt the Spirit, and we gave them a bunch of Book of Mormons to read.  Please add Z and her family to your prayers!  Also, we are trying to help and meet with a former member named M whose husband died recently.  She is old, sad, and lonely - but the Gospel is here for her if she wants to take it!  I love how the message we share sooths all wounds.  

Basically, I love this.  I love talking to people.  This week, we knocked into a man from Vietnam (my list is 47 countries long now).  He opened up and told us this huge long story about how his parents ran away from Vietnam when the communists came and how a lot of people had to run by foot into Laos and Cambodia because it was so bad.  I was captivated.  I am amazed that every person we talk to has a big, life story like that.  How exciting to talk to everyone about how the Gospel can be added to that life story.  So cool!  At the same time, being a missionary is hands-down the hardest thing ever.  It is stressful and worrisome to have such big consequences to the things we do.  However, I have been able to deal with this so much better lately!  I am trying to be good.  I am trying to be who the Lord wants me to be, and it is kind of fun. :)

Don't worry about me - I really am doing great!  I love you all and keep praying for you all the time!  Good luck with everything!!!!

All my love, Hermana Kara Allred

(The scarecrow that Kara made, I guess as part of her 'fall fever.'  She said it totally scared her companion one morning when she woke up. Ha Ha)

Kara also wrote a really sweet letter to her dad this week and I wanted to share some of it.  

To my favorite father,

        I have been thinking about you a lot this week and I wanted to write you a letter.  I love you and your letters so much.  Thank you for being the best dad ever.  Thank you for loving mom.  Thank you for being worthy of the Priesthood.  Thank you for keeping your temple covenants.  Thank you for serving a mission.  Thank you for teaching me obedience.  Thank you for loving the Lord the most, and helping me do the same.  Thank you for magnifying your callings.  Thank you for going to church and mutual ALWAYS, and expecting us to also.  Thank you for your monthly interviews.  Thank you for being the kind of father that everyone needs and scarcely anyone has.  I am realizing that more and more.  Additionally:  Thank you for teaching me how to clean a bathroom.  Oh, how these places have needed it.  Thank you for keeping our house clean.  Thank you for loving my friends.  Thanks for teaching me how to talk to people.  That is one of my greatest strengths out here, and I don't think I have told you this, but I learned it from you.  I use your jokes all the time-people love it! You just taught me to be warm and open and friendly to everyone, no matter if it was our new neighbor, the grocer, or Nonnie.  Thank you, thank you for that example.  Basically, dad, I think you are the best and I love you so much.

                                                                       Love, Hermana Allred

La Obra Misional

(The Upside Down Museum.....so awesome!!)

Hi, everyone!  

Wow it has been an awesome week!  Sorry I was kind of off in my last email, but don't worry about me. :)  It has been interesting, but me and Hna. Campos figured it out!  We are both used to being the positive companion, the one who is always optimistic.  But since we are both like that, we have been totally falling flat this transfer.  I have found myself telling myself to have a better attitude, which I don't think I have had to do many times before!  But it is good.  We tell each other 5 things about the area that we like before we go to bed, and that has been helping a lot.  And we have been a ton ton TON happier!

I was so happy to get everyone's letters this week.  Haha so many came at once from home that the mission office just sent them to me in a big yellow envelope.  So thanks, that made me happy. :)

OK, let me just get this out there to the public: LET THE SISTER MISSIONARIES SERVE THEMSELVES IF YOU HAVE THEM OVER TO EAT!!!!  I figured out why all missionaries gain weight.  It is because members stuff your plate so high with beans and rice that you eat yourself sick EVERY SINGLE DAY!  Haha it is mildly miserable.  But when we can serve ourselves, it is just fine. :)  (...don't worry, I am not fat. yet!)

Um hi, so two different people have told me in this transfer that I sound like I am from a farm.  So, apparently I speak like some redneck from Utah.  ..... How embarrassing.  Haha I thought you would enjoy that.

So conference was a sorely needed blessing and an answer to many questions.  It is always fascinating to hear the prophets speak for Jesus Christ directly and personally to you.  I loved it.  I prayed all week for the gift of tongues because I thought we would be watching it in Spanish.  Saturday we didn't have anyone coming, so we got to watch it in English!  Haha I was so relieved.  Sunday morning, our investigators Brother and Sister A. came to watch, so that was in Spanish.  I really can understand, it is just harder to work and pay attention in Spanish.  But it was still good.  And they liked it!  Shall we discuss them? Let's.

Ok, so Brother A.  was a media referral for us.  He and his daughter, Evelyn, were taught by missionaries for a few weeks in Washington DC before they moved here and requested the missionaries again (us).  We are now teaching the whole family.  They are from Venezuela and are so awesome, I really think they will be baptized soon.  We have talked about baptism, and *suprise* Marta is not a Christian!  We almost fell over dead.  I can't believe that out of the billion people in Orlando who are Christians, we have found the 3 that aren't to teach!  Haha it is a skewed representation.  But anyway, she is still awesome and says she will be baptized if she feels it's right (she definitely will!).  Edwardo is a lot more open.  Whenever we teach them, I think of Grammy and Poppy.  Edwardo is a very smart man who wrote a book and seems to appreciate how the gospel just makes sense.  I picture Poppy having been kind of like that.  Also, I don't worry too much about Marta.  I remember how Poppy and mom were baptized for a full year before Grammy was - and now we are all sealed in the temple!  It gives me comfort and hope.  Evelyn and Yuhlem are YSA-ish age and really cool.  We need to talk more in depth with them specifically and see where they are at.  But a great family!

Maria is our top investigator right now.  She was a member referral, and is so so awesome.  She has 3 little kids and is keeping her commitments.  We hope she watched conference at home like she said she would!  She said that after we watched the Restoration DVD with her and her kids, that her boys started praying and asking her to pray for meals and before bed.  She teared up and was so grateful for that influence in her family.  We are excited for them to receive all the blessings the gospel has to offer!

So we really have been so good this last week.  I am learning Spanish and more about the gospel every day.  I am grateful that the Lord works through weak things to bring about miracles.  I am grateful for the advice I receive from you all in letters, and the power that comes through your prayers.  I loved especially the message of love and healing through Christ that I found in conference.  This is the beautiful truth that each of us gets to send to the world - that Jesus lives to lift us up.  We have a Friend always, even when we feel so alone.  We have someone to ease physical, emotional, or mental anguish.  There is a Balm in Gilead (that is one of my favorite phrases)!  So many people in the world need that - no, everyone in the world needs a little bit more of that.  I hope that I can live so that people can see their Friend in me.  That they can see that we can help them come closer to Him through the truth that we carry.  What an awesome call.  I challenge you, if you haven't done this already, to make a family mission plan.  They do this in wards here, and we probably have one in good old American Fork too.  I think the best ones involve daily, monthly, and annual goals.  It might help especially since so much emphasis was on member missionary work in conference!  Anyway.  I sure do love you all.  Thanks for everything.  I look up to, miss, and love you all.

Until next week!

Love, Hermana Allred

P.S.  I don't know if I told you this, but it is a riot here because no one can say 'Allred.'  Haha what?!  In Spanish, the double L makes a Y sound, so they always try to say "Ayred?"  Haha I tell them to take the L out to make it easier.  I might have told you that already, but I figured it was funny enough I would say it again anyway. :)  Bye!

(Me and all the missionaries I made shirts for. Baptize Orlando!)

(Our pet!)

(Typical day in Florida, with streets and sidewalks turned into rivers.)