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
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