Sup Choros

hey fam was up. seems like yesterday i was writing. man i kind of miss you guys sometimes. but the mish is the bomb.

i really dont know what to write this week cause i dont remember anything that happened.... we found a lot of good new and future investigators this week and i think lots of them are going to progress! including two families that are really good! neither family came to the church except for one of the kids that is 11 years old but we have faith! 

we had three investigators in church yesterday including this girl that is going to be baptized this saturday! her name is trinidad and she went to general conference with her friend that is a member and after that she started talking with us. shes 37 years old and shes accepted everything from giving up coffee to paying tithing. pure gold. shell be baptized this saturday and confirmed on sunday so were pumped for that! 

on saturday we also decided in the morning that we wanted to do a ward activity that night! the bishop wasnt really down but we convinced him with some smooth talk and saturday night we had one of the families we found come to the church with like 20 members and we watched the restoration and made pancakes for everyone! american pancakes.. because chilean pancakes are crepes. but the coolest part about it all was that this grandma with her grandkids showed up! earlier in the day when we had passed by her house to invite her she had told us she couldnt continue meeting with us because her job now required her to work every day! we left pretty disappointed but it was awesome when she showed up to the church! she said after we had left she went into the kitchen and felt awful. she said she even started to cry and decided to call her boss. she begged him to let her have thursdays free so that she could continue meeting with us! she says she knows the book of mormon is the truth but she jsut feels uncomfortable coming to church still! this week were hoping we can help her overcome it because they all want to get baptized but they are just nervous to take some steps of faith! its going to happen though.

sergio came to church again but he is not any closer to baptism. he still thinks that he is too old to bwe baptized. haha but this week he told us at one point that he was thinking about it... he forgets things a lot though so we´ll see what happens. i love the guy but he needs to start progressing! but we did take a great photo with a few of the hundreds of hats that he has in his house!

im super happy with what were doing in this area and the relationship that elder rios and i have developed. we definitely have our differences and dont always agree on everything, but weve arrived at the point where we get along really well and laugh a whole lot. hes got a lot of problems and has gone through a lot in his life so i try to be patient when hes down. but hes a powerful teacher and for the most part teaches really well! 

i know i had to leave my home for two years not only to help others have this blessing in their lives that the gospel brings, but also to find out who i am. i know that i can accomplish and do hard things. i know that without jesus christ in my life i wouldnt be who i am or even have a chance or becoming anything. i also know that the wind from home is what keeps my sails up and going. thank you all for your prayers and support. these have been the hardest yet most rewarding months of my entire life and im excited to keep it going! 

-elder allred - chilean street raptor

photos- football and our zone for our zone activity last monday, elder rios trying dr pepper for the first time, and our good pal sergio

Starting Over

hey guys seems like yesterday i was writing my email from last monday. the weeks really do fly by. even though the days feel like eternity. but almost every day is really fun, and spiritually uplifting. i feel like ive hit a point in the mission where im just comfortable where im at! now thats not to say that im not working hard or that i feel like ive arrived, just that ive accepted and realized more or less that im on a mission. sometimes it still shocks me. haha its crazy how it happens really... sometimes it hit me at random that im in another hemisphere saving the souls of people who i was destined to meet! we see the lords hand in the work every. single. day. everything that we do is guided by him as long as were obedient and diligent.

a couple weeks ago our apartment was fumigated to get rid of the fleas. it didnt do anything. in fact im pretty sure it got worse. now theyre radioactive and more aggressive.

this week we pretty much started over. we had run out of investigators and people werent progressing so we dropped a lot of investigators and found a bunch of new ones! they all have their own individual needs spiritually but all of them have potential. we dont have a single investigator with a baptism date, but were gonna put a bunch this week! we have good relationships with a lot of people and have found a lot of golden investigators. 

for this month in our district we are going to study chapter 6 of preach my gospel and have a presentation every week. as ive started to study it more in depth i realize how well examples that we have in the scriptures show us how we can become more like christ. as we read their stories, and follow their promises, not only will we become more like christ but we will always be blessed and be happy! just like steph is my hero on the court and i strive to shoot, dribble, and pass like him, i also strive to do the things that my savior did while on the earth. faith is a funny thing, sometimes you dont know you have it until you take another step and see the light a little bit more ahead. if you havent seen patterns of light in youtube i highly recommend it! gosh i really do love steph though..

this week i received news from my dad that his sister had passed away. patrice was always the most loving and caring aunt in the world! i have only good memories of the times we had together and i know that the love she had for her family has helped lots more people than even she imagined to stay strong in the church. shes created a family that will last a lot longer than just this life. it will last forever. shes is now preparing this home above with lots of her other family members and i know that she will see us all again one day! thanks for everything patrice.

i had a really cool experience this week! right after our interviews that we had with president this week in the stake center, i had interchanges with one of my zone leaders elder staton! but there was a funeral for the mom of one of the brothers in my ward so i was talking with him for a sec and this one guy that was sitting down with his wife looked at my plaque and said, did you have a dad that served in concepcion chile? i said yeah and he gave me a hug and told me that he had done interchanges with him 35 years ago on his mission! turns out he lives in a ward in our stake! so i took a photo with him and hopefully you recognize him dad! he had a lot of good things to say about you!:)

it was a great and very uplifting week! today we have less time to email because were gonna go have a zone activity in some cool place in downtown viña! love all of you and hope you have a great week. christ lives, this is his church, and we are his hands on the earth.

-elder allred - chilean street raptor

Laaaaa Pascua

yoooooooo whats up everyone!? was that a great general conference weekend or what??? so many good talks it seriously felt like each session was like 10 minutes long! i loved everyones talk but if im being honest i think the chilean rocked it...! elder zaballos is such a rockstar and i loved his talk about our responsiblity that we have to make our own decisions and form our own future! we were banking and waiting on our 16 year old investigator fransisco to show up to the last session. we had called him before and he said he was going to come, but didnt show up. it was incredibly frustrating and its been tough for me to accept this one. i KNOW that if he would have been there in the stake center that that talk by elder zaballos would have gotten to him. it was perfect.

thats something that i really struggle with if im being honest. im always saying ¨thy will be done lord¨ and then the next minute im disappointed or frustrated on the inside when something doesnt go the way that I had wanted it to go. really though on the mission ive asked myself something over and over again... why is it that in the period of my life that i am living the gospel the most consistently that i am also the most conscious of my own faults and sins? its been strange to me really. but i think in part elder bednars talk on saturday answered that. its a healthy fear of god. if i dont worry about my salvation then i am not progressing anymore. if i take for granted the greatest sacrifice and act in the history of the world and cease to rely on christ in everything that i do then really i dont have love for god or christ! i have to come to the fact that i will never feel perfect. its not achievable.. but what  we strive for isnt perfection in this life. its better than what we were. obviously i cant progress unless i repent and turn from sin, but i also cant do it if i dont accept my own disabilities as part of my life here on earth.

so many of the talks answered so many questions that i had really. it was awesome. in our sector we had two investigators sergio, and german, come to the conference and they really liked it! they both are going to take a lot of work but we can do it! 

one of the things my comp has helped me realize again as kind of a refresher is the spirit of the work. i think over the past six months i had developed just a nonstop motor of wanted baptism dates and progression from investigators but somewhere along the way maybe i lost a little bit of the love and attention they deserve. maybe i lost the sight of what christ would do if he were in my place.. help people! over the past couple weeks we may not have had any baptisms or really much of anything to be honest, but we have tried to help every single person that we talked with! ive loved it and really i feel like im learning more from the new missionary than he is from me! thats good right? but weve gotten to be really good friends and are getting along really well. we spent most of the time in the streets trying to find people but also laughing this week.

this week before district meeting i was super down. i dont know why.. but i just felt a little bit sad. before we left the apartment i kneeled down and begged heavenly father to help me have energy for the meeting, not just for me, but because i knew i couldnt give advice to other people, or be an example for my comp if i was in the slumps. i didnt feel it at first. but at the end of the meeting i realized i had made it through but i was still a little down. i kneeled down again when we dropped the stuff off at the pension and asked again... and at the end of the day of a lot of work i realized i had done it!.. yet i was still a little down. i continued the process until after lunch the next day when i felt like i had wrapped my head around it and was good to go! i know that through constant and fervent prayer we can make it through hard things. im so grateful for the mission because i know that i can do hard things in the future if i depend on god and dont lose my confidence in him! 

im here to show christs love for the people of chile as best i can as if he were in my position. titles, respect from others, and number mean absolutely nothing because as it was said in general conference... god really doesnt see us all that differently. i know i am super weak, but i also know that i can improve and make those weaknesses turn into strengths. the lord promises us that in ether 12:27 if were willing to toss aside our pride. i love the lord and ive gotten to know my savior real well these last 7 months and i still know that i understand absolutely NOTHING about what he did for me. all i can do is trust and have faith that after all i could have done it will be sufficient. i know it will be.

love you all and have an awesome week. CHANGE from the things weve heard in conference and APPLY them. take elder nelsons advice and think how can i make myself a better person after hearing these things. they were spoken by prophets of god, ive never been more sure about it in my entire life. love you guys

-elder allred -chilean street raptor 

i dont know what is up with my camera. i think the memory card has a virus or something. oh well sorry <3