The Windows of Heaven

Mom, Dad, "Elder Allred," Brandon, Bryson, Alyssa, Ethan, and 7-year-old-Ash:

Haha me and Sister Brooks have been laughing all morning about North Korea.  Just yesterday I was talking about Tyler all proud to my district leader, that he was going on a mission but wanted to be sure he was ready first and doing it for the right reasons.  Then I read the mission call story this morning and died.  Haha we have enjoyed that.  How many likes did you get?!

Speaking of Facebook, I need your help!!!  I have definitely caught the vision of Internet Proselyting lately - I love it!!!!  We have been trying to find groups to join of some interests we have so we can post/comment and start talking to people.  I have joined a couple of Book-lovers groups and posted about one of my favorite books - the Book of Mormon. :)  I also did some browsing to find a pin-collector group, and basically the only worthwhile one I found was an Olympic Pin collector group.  So I have a fantastic idea- but I need your help at home!  I will turn you into online missionaries too! :)  I took a picture of all the little pins I have collected here (....... did I tell you I have been collecting pins?) - most of them are from Boyd's LDS Bookstore and are like the Orlando Temple or tiny golden plates or angel Moroni or whatnot (Sister Boyd loves me and always tells me when they get new pins .... probably because I always buy them!).  So I want to post that picture on this page and talk about why I like collecting pins and how I really like my pins with religious significance because they are a tiny reminder of what I believe and what I stand for.  But I can't just post this church-pin thing out of the blue in the Olympic Pin Collector page - So I need you to take a nice picture of all/the best of the Olympic pins I have in my collection and send it to me!  Then I can post them both together and it won't be as awkward.  Hopefully I can start talking to someone that way.  Another assignment, my online minions!  Will you please start looking for facebook groups/pages that would be good for me to join?  Any interests I have or things that I might like or that would be easy to post about the gospel in.  For example.  Some missionaries joined a buy/sell/trade page in Orlando and posted that they were giving out Book of Mormons for free.  They found a waaaay less-active family who wants to be taught again through that!  Anything like that.  And Spanish would be best, but is not a requirement. :)  Thanks!

Along with that, we LOVE the mormon.org profiles lately.  I want to challenge you all to make one!  Be real.  Be funny, if you are funny (and you all are).  I took some time to fix mine lately.  It is such a great resource and tool for missionary work.  Who knows, maybe there is some 15 year old who loves soccer and DBZ who will find Brandon's profile and think that maybe he can be a Mormon too!  So cool.  Good luck. :)

Also, Brandon, I don't know if I answered this before, but we can't be facebook friends because they want us to be focused here.  But I have another assignment!  I want you all to look through your friends and see if there is someone you can share a gospel message with - either a mormon message or a scripture or a meme from 'the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-Day Saints' or 'mormon.org' facebook pages.  Haha are you sick of my assignments yet?! Also, if there is someone who wants the discussions online, you can tell me and we can be friends on facebook and teach them - no matter where they live!

I titled my email this week, "the Windows of Heaven."  That is how I feel about what has happened to us lately.  In Malachi, it says that when we pay tithing we will receive blessings from the Lord that are so great that we won't have room to receive all of them!  Me and Sister Brooks have seen that so much lately.  The standard of excellence for our mission is to find 2 new Investigators every week.  That has been a struggle on my mission - especially because (or I thought, at least) we are looking for Latino people.  This month our district has been ON FIRE with finding investigators.  I am convinced it was because we set an inspired goal at the beginning of the month to find 30 new investigators as a district.  This month, me and Sister Brooks alone have found 18 - and the rest of the district has been having similar success.  This week, we were blessed with 10 new people to teach.  10 new souls that have the opportunity to choose eternal life and a life of happiness here.  I think that is the coolest thing ever.  Let me tell you.  The Lord is hastening His work.  The missionaries are stepping it up.  The members are stepping it up.  The ward council is stepping it up.  And we are seeing the miracles pour out of the windows of heaven - we can hardly receive it all!

The most promising investigators we have right now are A, M, and A.  They are member referrals.  Al is the son of A and M.  They are amazing, and came to church yesterday.  Keep them in your prayers!  They are Cubanos and have been searching for peace their whole lives and haven't been able to find it.  We promised them that their search would soon come to a close. :)  

Here is a miracle with one of the new investigators this week.  Last night, we were one member-present lesson short of our district goal.  We had only one lesson planned for the rest of the evening, and that was with a member family at our dinner appointment.  On our way their, we received a phone call telling us that maybe we would want to do the Restoration at dinner - because the husband of one of the family members was not a member!  We had already planned to teach the Restoration through revelation ( :) ), so we were stoked!  We got there and talked to Michael's wife.  She said he wanted to take her to the temple and get baptized.  He was at all 3 hours of church today.  We taught a wonderful 1st lesson with the whole family and are teaching them again this week.  He will get baptized so soon.  And we miraculously hit our district member-present lesson goal. 

Our talks went absolutely great yesterday, maybe because it was Ash's birthday. ;)  It was one of the stronger experiences I have had with the gift of tongues.  I went up there with my bullet-pointed list and spoke Spanish sin pensar (without thinking).  I had to ask the Bishop for "inmortal,"  but other than that the conjugation and vocabulary flowed like it never has before.  I can speak fine, but rarely without some thought on how I should say it.  The Lord loosened my tongue so I could speak His words.  I was so nervous before, but felt that heart-pounding feeling right before that is the Lord's way of telling me that what I am about to say is from Him - that He wants me to open my mouth.  It was great.  Everyone felt the Spirit of missionary work in that meeting from the 3 talks - and one of the young women leaders commented that a young woman who hadn't really been interested in a mission before came and said she wanted to serve.  I know that He took over for us in our talks.  It was amazing.

I cannot believe everything the Lord is doing for us lately.  I had one of the happiest moments on my mission this week.  Me and Sister Brooks were just walking through a trailer park on our way to an appointment when it started to rain.  Like, really rain.  Florida rain. :)  I could not be happier to be a missionary than I was at that moment.  We were soaked to the skin but had a fire inside of the gospel.  We talked to someone and he commented that we were like a ray of sunshine in the rainy day.  I loved showing up to the women's conference that night, with hair slicked-down from the rain, a nametag, and a huge smile.  I was so proud to be a missionary.  There is nowhere in the world I should be but here.  It makes me happy.  Simple, missionary moments make me happy.  You make me happy too! :)  Have the greatest week. :)


Love, Sister Kara Allred

*Kara recieved this email today from one of her high school friends who is on a mission.

Sister Allred,

We downloaded our online training manuals and I was looking through it and saw this picture.  I think you may be famous!

"

Here is an excerpt from her letter dated July 5, 2013 relating to this very experience:

'Awkward moment number three of Monday:  Me and Hna. Nelson were prepping for one of our investigators, and a photographer man and his assistant popped in and asked if he could take a picture of our companionship.  We were like, "Um, sure!" so he snapped it and then left.  Later that day, this girl in my zone told me that the photo man was looking for me and wanted me to do a photoshoot with them on Tuesday.  Haha what is life?!  So eventually they got ahold of me and this girl from a Japanese district, and on Tuesday afternoon we tromped down to a chapel to have this weirdie photo shoot for two hours.  Haha two other girls in my zone did it as well, but in the morning.  I thought that maybe I would pop in with my change of outfits, pretend to hand out a passalong card and be done with it, but it was the biggest production ever.  They handed us over to this make-up/hair lady who totally did all of our make-up and our hair, then they brought in a British wardrobe lady who gave me this sweet pink blazer to wear, then they sat us down at these computers and had us take pictures for like 40 minutes.  Apparently they are trying to get pictures to tell people about the new rules with computers and technology.  So if you see a girl on a church website with awesome hair and a pink blazer at a computer, it is probably me.  Haha so strange.'

That's my girl, the online missionary training manual model.  So funny!