Well, my time in Warsaw is coming to a close. Tomorrow morning, I will be headed out to North Buffalo! Haha I will pretty much be right in the hood! I'm stoked! After a year in the sticks (which has been great) this is about as much of a 180 degree turn as I can make within the mission haha. I'm pretty excited about it, actually. Especially if I can be there long enough to just have one more area of my mission, and finish it all off back in the redneck lands of WNY.
I'll be trio training a visa waiter. We have seven missionaries waiting to either go to Mexico or Brazil, and they are putting us in groups of three since we don't know if the visas will come in two days or eight months. Essentially, whenever he leaves, at least we'll have two missionaries there. I'll be companions with Elder Barnes who was trained by Elder (Ben) Fordham and was in my district until a couple transfers ago. Should be just grand!
AND THERE'S A WENDY'S!!!! YES!!!
I'll be serving in the Buffalo Ward, alongside at least two other companionships. It will be quite different from Freedom or Warsaw, that's a fact.
But, I guess I will give a few updates about how my last week of Warsaw went.
Jenn keeps on doing great. She is getting way into personal study, and we pretty much just go over there and go over what she's read in the Bible, Book of Mormon, and all of our pamphlets. It's definitely all coming together for her, although she isn't too sure about the Spirit World. I had all sorts of sweet scriptures from the Bible that make it pretty clear that there's something, but now I probably won't get to give them to her! Curses! But still, she's awesome. It was pretty funny, actually. We were talking to her, and she out of nowhere said, clearly upset, "I just feel like everything I've ever been told about Mormons was wrong! I don't get why everyone has decided you're going to Hell, especially because all they do is accuse you of actually believing what the Bible says. You haven't told me any of them are going to Hell. And quick question... are you guys allowed to eat meat?" Haha it was so great. And then she started talking about essentially the Word of Wisdom, even though she didn't have a name for it, and flat out admitted that she shouldn't smoke OR DRINK COFFEE. Never had that one before.
Oh, here's a cool one. We were talking with the Crater's (from the branch) a while ago, and he told us Rob Ziegler - the family we taught a few months back - had mentioned that we hadn't been over for a while. We had assumed that would be how he wanted it, but figured that if he brought that up, we'd better head over there again. So, we did, and he ended up inviting us to go out to Letchworth State Park with the family to play Frisbee and have a barbeque. It ended up falling through because of weather, but it was really weird the change in his attitude towards us. He said, "Don't take this as I want to join your church. But that doesn't mean you guys can't talk about your stuff there, if you want." It was very peculiar. THEN, he even gave us a referral! A kid who lived down the street, he said, had his mom just die. The kid, Stephen, had apparently been the "man of the house" for a few years now, but now was living all alone. For someone who a few months ago wouldn't let our lessons be about anything but polyandry, blacks and the priesthood, and premortal life, this is quite a change.
Then, when we contacted Stephen, we had another cool realization. We already kind of knew him! Amy Vrooman had actually been talking to him and teaching him the whole Plan of Salvation! Amy'd gone to his mom's funeral, where they really emphasized that her death meant she had a separation from Christ, or something like that. Amy made sure to correct that notion, and was working on us meeting up with him, anyways. Us being referred to him by someone else was just awesome! Then, he came to church yesterday. It was just wonderful!
Oh!! And guess what!? Jimmy got permission to get interviewed for baptism!!! I don't know if I ever explained that whole situation. Essentially, he was on probation, knew he'd messed up, had repented as much as he knew how, but couldn't get baptized without permission from SLC. Well, we just got permission for our mission president to interview him! He's been ready for a solid four months, so I'm not the slightest bit worried about the interview.
Well, I should probably go so I can pack and say goodbye to people and what not. It's going to be sad to leave people like Dolly, the Boccichios, Jenn, Jimmy, the Vroomans, and a handful of others. I really hate leaving areas. But what can you do! Back to Buffalo Stake I go!
I love you, but I don't miss you!
Elder Allen
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