"and the Lamanites shall blossom as the rose"

It has been, yet again, the best week ever!!!!!  So many awesome and miraculous things have occurred! :)

First, let's just get this out of the way:  Mom, you asked some questions in your letter that I should probably address about coming home.  Here we go!  

I have a lot of mixed feelings.  In a letter I got from President and Sister Berry, I liked the way they said it.  They said they were sure we all had a lot of "tender and mixed feelings," and boy is that the truth!  I am happy to have served a mission.  I am very happy thinking of all of the good times I have had, my past companions, my old areas, the people I have worked with, and the miracles I have seen.  At the same time, I feel nostalgic (classic me) thinking about all of those same things!  I feel proud of what I have done.  I also wonder if I could have done more.  I am excited to be at home with all of you in my beautiful state for Christmas.  I am also sad to leave my home and all of my family in my beautiful state next week.  It has been such a sacred and wonderful experience to be a missionary for the Lord Jesus Christ.  This is such a beautiful place for me.  I know it needs to end; it is how it is supposed to be.  There are a lot more things for me to do in life.  But it is so special to be a missionary. So special.  I can't really explain how I feel, but I tried my best.


On the other hand, I am totally anxious about coming home (surprised, anyone?).  I don't know why, but I am kind of scared too!  It is just going to be an interesting change in dynamic.  I am glad that we will be busy because it is Christmas; it would be horrible to come home in like the middle of summer where nothing is going on! 

Anyway, that is how it is going inside of my head I guess.  I am excited to see you - not going to lie!!

So back to this week of amazing miracles!!

I have really been trying to focus lately.  Because of that effort, I believe, we have been the recipients of blessings pouring out of the windows of heaven!!  A lot of these blessings also have to do with the "He is the Gift" initiative.  I hope you have seen the video.

A. is doing, well, ok.  Please pray for him to have the desire to change his life so he can be baptized!  He came to the Christmas devotional at the Church last night, which was awesome.  He is really cool.

D. is also doing alright.  We had an awesome lesson with her this week, where we were able to answer some of her questions about the purpose of her life with the Book of Mormon and the Plan of Salvation.  Wow, isn't the Gospel wonderful?!  Always has been, always will be! Back to how I feel about coming home, I am glad I learned to love the Gospel before my mission.  I have changed so much, but living the Gospel was always a part of me.  Thanks for raising me that way, Mom and Dad!  It will make it easier re-adjusting to normal life. Anyway, please pray for D. that we can meet with her again!!

So we have been attempting to share the He is the Gift video with basically anything that breaths and has two legs.  It has brought so many miracles!!  One of these was M and E.  We found E taking a smoke outside of her house.  Her apartment complex was one that Sister Hernandez has felt like we should be finding in (thankfully - we have 5 new investigators in that complex!).  Anyway, we asked if we could share a short video about Christ and Christmas and she agreed.  We went inside and met M, her son-in-law.  They loved the video.  We bridged into our purpose and introduced them to the Book of Mormon.  They loved it.  M was asking all kinds of awesome questions about the Book, and he was thrilled to have it.  After our lesson, Sister Hernandez went to the bathroom and in that 5 minutes I covered Word of Wisdom, Law of Chastity, and eternal marriage with them because of the questions they were asking!!!!  Haha they are so prepared.  M specifically.  We talked to him yesterday to confirm our appointment for tonight, and he said he had been reading and had questions.  He also said in our lesson that we could come by every day during the week because he only worked on weekends (haha we will have to teach Sabbath Day soon).  MIRACLES!!!

The next day, or maybe a couple days later, in personal study I was stuck.  I didn't really feel like studying the things I was thinking of for our lessons.  I wanted to feel the Spirit and be guided by Him, so I prayed for direction and opened Preach My Gospel to a random page.  It was Former Investigators.  Haha I smiled and was confused because it was so random, but read it anyway.  I was really moved and excited about doing visiting past investigators from what I read, but it was still just random.  Later that night, we had an appointment fall through and ended up doing some finding in a complex that we are rarely in.  I remembered what I had read this morning, and we remembered a former that we had thought about before in the complex.  Apparently, he had requested the missionaries to come online.  At his house, we found his mother and father, whose daughter is getting sealed in the temple in January!! Part-member miracle!!!  We will be teaching E. and R. again later this week. :)  Personal study miracles!!

Also, we had found M. walking in her complex and shared the video with her.  We set an appointment and went back to see her.  We were able to teach her and her son, B., and they both accepted baptismal dates for January 24th.  They are so very prepared, especially B.  He wants to change his life forever and get closer to God.

Last but not least, last night we were doing some walking around the said miracle complex sharing the video.  We walked to this strip in the complex, but no one was outside.  We were about to go back and find more people (usually talking to people outside is more effective than knocking doors), but we figured we were there for a reason and decided to knock on the two doors with lights on.  Let's just say, one minute we were out on the street and the next minute we were sitting on a couch looking at mission pictures!!  L let us in her home and told us her children were members (her granddaughter piped up, "I'm a mormon!").  Her son served a mission in the Dominican Republic (she showed us the pictures).  She has never been baptized, and misses going to church here. We taught her yesterday and will be teaching her again this week!

Seriously, it has been the best week ever.  Thank you for your prayers.  Our companionship has been doing great this week too.  I tried to serve, and the love followed. :)

I also got to do a training this week on the Spirit of Elijah with Sister Hernandez.  It was awesome.  If you don't have a testimony of the Spirit of Elijah yet, get it now!

I love life.  I love you all.  Have the best week ever.  Talk to you soon.


Love, Hermana Allred