December 2 Letter

Well, I have officially been out of Freedom as long as I was in Freedom! Kind of odd to think about. But, I'm here for another transfer. Elder Holmes is flying out in about two hours, and Elder Christensen is coming tomorrow morning! Should be good.

Well, it was a pretty good week! We ended up making it to Palmyra with the Asians, which was great. Haha I wish I had more to report there, but Sister Su did all of it in Chinese and never asked us questions, so I couldn't tell you what was talked about hahaha. I took some good pictures... and left my camera at home, so I'll try to remember to send those next week. Like I said, I don't know quite what all went down, but from my best judgements it wasn't quite the spiritual bang that we were hoping for, but I think it did a lot of good for them to see it in person and make what we have been talking about less abstract. Also, based on their exchange with Sister Su (again, that I have zero clue what was being said) I think they were able to get a lot of questions answered that our English wasn't quite cutting it for. So, all in all, still a great experience!

Now I'm a little nervous, though. Next week is their finals week, and they a quite literally planning on studying 24/7 for the next two weeks. Then Andrea goes to Florida for a week. Then they both go to San Francisco for two weeks... So, I'm begging them to let us meet once or twice in the next couple weeks, but I'm nervous we may not hardly see them for over a month :/

Thanksgiving was great, though. Stephen's inlaws were really cool, and they actually rent out one of their apartments to missionaries up in Alaska! Elder Holmes and I were talking about the small implications of those type of things, and how often they happen. Where a thousand little "coincidences" compile on top of each other. I mean, do I think his father-in-law is going to join the church next week because he not only rents to missionaries, but eats Thanksgiving with them? Probably not. But it could open cool opportunities in the future. Even more, I wonder the implications with Stephen. If nothing else, his inlaws have a good relationship with the Church because they know that missionaries are good tenets. Who knows what kind of contention that might have minimized between a protestant father-in-law and a soon-to-be LDS son-in-law! Small and simple things, eh?

We also had a really cool experience that is slowly developing! A week ago, we had nothing to do, it was 8:15, really cold, really dark, no one likes being tracted into at night (at all, really.. but especially at night), so we had not clue what to do. Sooo we just wandered aimlessly. Well, there were a few people outside their houses, but they were few and far between. Eventually, though, a dog came running up to us! (Dogs are straight from heaven, I promise that much.) We started talking to the owner of said dog, who mentioned after a little while that she talked to some missionaries on the bus, once. One of them, she remembered, was on crutches. Well, that didn't take us long to realize that the missionaries she talked to were Elder Hirschi and me! We talk a little more with her and ask if we could come back sometime. She says yes, and conveniently 8:00 in the evening is the perfect time for her. (She lives half a block from our apartment... you don't get better than an 8:00appointment that close to your house.)

So, this week, we went back. Well! In between our meeting her and her dog outside and the day we go over, her boyfriend has moved out and she's really trying to find something concrete to lean on. She ends up bringing up faith and religion. We didn't have to have some weird awkward transition or anything. We ended up talking about the importance of faith, how we develop faith, what faith allows, all sorts of stuff. Then we transitioned into the Plan of Salvation and the Restoration which naturally lead to the Book of Mormon. We gave her Alma 32 to read and pray about, promising her that she could know of its truthfulness herself, to which she replied "I hope that it is true..." How cool is that?!?

Well... I don't have much more to say this time around. But hey, you should all go read my latest blog post! I like this one quite a bit!

"I feel like our lives are often like a starry night. There are so many stars, it is almost impossible to differentiate one star from the next, let alone notice any new ones. Whether those stars are random distractions, genuine good uses of time, or even full-on gospel activities, it really doesn't make a difference. Less remarkable to me than the fact that the Wise Men followed the star is that they noticed the star. Let's be real, who in their right mind wouldn't go meet the infant Savior if they knew where He lay? Even Herod sought Him out. ... The problem is that I let all my other stars occupy all of my time that I never notice the new star that is trying to point me to Christ."

http://brackenallen-thinkonthesethings.blogspot.com/2013/11/seeing-new-stars.html

Well, love you, but don't miss ya!

Elder Allen