Greetings from Orlando!

It was a very awesome yet interesting week!!  Let's start with a funny story.  Yesterday, we were talking to our Zone Leaders on the phone and Sister Jackson saw something in the bathroom.  Yes, lo and behold, it was a CUCARACHA (cockroach).  It was two inches long, with huge, waving, gross antennas.  IT WAS SO GROSS!!!  How do you kill something so huge?!  We had no idea what to do.  We jumped around.  We watched it crawl into a vent in our bathroom that is hanging off the wall.  We then proceeded to duct-tape the vent to the wall so it couldn't get out!  Haha literally. Sister missionary problems.  :)

We have talked to so many good people this week.  I love that about being a missionary; just getting to talk to so many different people from so many different walks of life.  This week we started teaching a lady named Karen.  We also have Jessica and Clara, who came to church yesterday and are praying about a baptism date with us.  We are still teaching the A. family and Maria, but they are not progressing too well so we might have to drop them.  We also have a non-member lesson set up for every day this week aside from Friday!  We hope these people will accept the message and become investigators. 

Sister Jackson is so awesome, and we make great companions.  We love to go do the Lord's work and learn from all the other awesome missionaries out here.  Our district leader, Elder Romero, is awesome.  He gives us so much good advice and it is cool that we get to ask him all the questions that we have about becoming better missionaries.  It is a blessing indeed!

Here is a great story from last week that we had.  We went to visit the S. family (the one with no kitchen table), who is inactive because they cannot get to church and sister S. works on Sunday.  As we started to talk to her, she told us how she hadn't said a kneeling prayer in forever, but one day her two-year-old, Hannah, followed her around screaming "Oracion! Oracion! Oracion!" (prayer) scooting on her knees.  Sister S. kept telling her that she didn't have time, and to have her siblings say one with her.  Eventually, after Hannah persisted, Sister S. broke down crying and knelt with her daughter in a prayer.  She said she felt the Spirit so strong and was so ashamed that she was inactive.  We talked to her about this and challenged her to stop working on Sundays and also to say kneeling prayers with her family each night.  She was very emotional and said she would.  When we came back this week, we ended our message with a kneeling prayer (Hannah lead the way again).  I love these stories from her too:  Her son, Joseph, got hit by a car a few weeks ago and hurt his hip.  Sister S. told us that she prayed so so hard that he would be ok; that he wouldn't feel any pain.  When we talked to her, she said that he felt fine, but her hip had really been hurting her.  She bore a testimony about how Christ answers prayers, and how He transferred the pain to her.  What a miracle!  Also, she told us her conversion story.  Her mother was a member of the church, but Sister S. never really cared or thought she would be.  Then she started reading the Book of Mormon.  When she opened it and started to read, she saw lights coming from the book.  Soft lights that shone into the room.  She looked around and thought she must be crazy, but it was coming from the Book of Mormon!  She ran and got her neighbor to look too, and he attested to the fact.  They were amazed.  She knew it was true.  What an amazing faith-filled woman who looks for miracles and sees them!  I thought you would like that; I did!  :)

I love you all so much.  Thanks for praying for me and writing me letters.  The work is moving onward, and I love Christ so much.  He is the perfect Master.  Please watch the Finding Faith in Christ video this week.  I did, and I was so so so very touched about the wonderful love and mission of our Savior, Jesus Christ.  He is perfect and loves us.  I know that! 

Until next week!

Love, Hermana Kara Allred

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