Wednesday, August 29, 2012

8/28/2012


Photo Number 1: Me and my companion, Elder Laurente. Super awesome

Photo Number 2: Our district, we only have 4 elders in our district, and our areas are 2 hours apart! Pretty cool, DAD - The Elder on the farthest right is from Costa Rica, San Jose! Your Mission, pretty cool! His name is Elder Alguilar

Photo Number 3: Some Photos from Zone Conference, I got to see Elder GUest, my old Companion, and Elder Santoro, my old roomate basically!

Photo Number 4: Me with The Mission President and His Wife

Photo Number 5: Me with Elder Santoro, He´s from Buenos Aires, super awesome Elder, started the mission 1 transfer after me.

Photo Number 6: Our Zone!

 

Hey, short letter this week, don´t have a lot of time, yesterday was a zone conference and we don´t really have p-day this week. But on Wednesday I got bit by a dog on my ankle... That killed and ripped a hole in my pants and sock. But i´m okay, just hurts to walk a little, but nothing major. Pretty cool story though. Also we had a lamb BBQ that a member made us two days ago. That was really good. Also I heard yesterday that my convert, Sergio, Mauricios older brother, he got the melchezidek priesthood yesterday! And he cut his hair completely and shaved and everything, and he baptized another person again!! It´s so awesome to hear that! I love you all, thanks for all your support! Stay Strong! My letter next week will be much better, Love you all





Thursday, August 23, 2012

8/21/2012


That sounds fun reading all my blogs and stuff. I know your prayers really really help, and they are very special for the people I´m teaching, so thank you so much. Being here in the mission is really an amazing experience. I really wish I could tell you everything that happens, but that´ll just have to wait till I get home.  It´s amazing how the church is the same in all parts of the world. I´m participating in the same sacred ordinances that you are during the sacrament, in the same exact form, wether there are 400 members, or 40. That´s cool Tance is going to be able to play football at Jordan, Hope everything goes well so he´ll be able to play and not have any problems.  The new puppy sounds good! Can´t wait to meet him in a year and a half! 

That´s funny about the play. I remember mom, when we went to that Three Musketeers play, and I thought it was going to be awful, but I ended up liking it quite a bit! And maybe even more when I get home.  I have been thinking alot about starting up an Argentine restaurant when we get home, me and Ben could run it like Argentines! That would be pretty cool.  And mom, about your talk, yeah it would be great to share a lot of the experiences i´ve had in the mission, to excite a lot of the future missionaries of the ward, and their families! You´ll have to go through my emails again, but that would be great. Something else that might help, this week I have been studying something really interesting, and I´m calling it, The Be of Good Cheer study search, haha.  But it´s really interesting, i´m finding all the times it says Be of Good Cheer in the scriptures, and how many times Christ says it.  I am so surprised how many times He says it, and how calm he is about it, especially in the times of urgency.  It says a ton of times, "Be of Good Cheer, and Testify of me." Read John 16:33 for all those people that are struggling and also you can read 2 Nefi 10:23. I encourage everyone to try sharing the gospel because of how many times it says in the scriptures to be of good cheer, and to testify of Christ, which would be sharing the gospel with people.  So be of good cheer everyone! This life isn´t the end. Sometimes you need to just take a second to look back and enjoy it! 

Right now i´m teaching my companion, Elder Laurente, English, and it´s the funniest thing on this earth. He is actually really good already, and he´s learning a lot. He´s had 5 gringo companions and none of htem taught him english! including Elder Taylor! So we´re learning now, and it´s coming a long great. It´s so hard not laughing as he reads.  Also, algo really cool, is when Elder Taylor was here, he taught a kid named Miguel for a long time, but he didn´t get baptized, he wasn´t ready yet, and hte other day we found him again, and he´s going to get baptized in 2 weeks! He came to church and everything, and he´s got a great friend in the church now, It´s pretty cool to see how the Lord never gives up on people.  We also have a cool investigator couple, a Mom and a daughter, and the daughter has a kid. The little kid is 5 and super smart, she´s hilarious. But the daughter and the mom had been attending a church for years, and they came to find out it really wasn´t the church of God, and they called us, and we´ve been teachign them since I got here, and they´re aweomse. So prepared. They´ve come to church both sundays i´ve been here, and they´re going to get baptized not this week, but the 1st of September.  We also have a family who listened to the missionaries a long long time ago, but never got baptized, but were really really close with the missionaries, and when the missionaries got trasnferred, they stopped listening. Anyways, it´s been 10 years since they were with those missionaries, and the other day, the dad of this family, his name is Antonion, and he´s a really big head guy in the army here, like he is a general or soemthing really high up, and lots of people know him, anyways he was having a really really bad year, and a ton of bad things had happened to him, with a million problems, until he just couldn´t take it anymore, and one night a few weeks ago, he was going to do something really really horrific, because he had a gun and everything, I think you can get the picture, anyways he was about to do soemthing really bad, and sure enough, he gets a phone call, from one of the missionaries he´d met with 10 years earlier, and that missionary helped him through that night, the missionary isn´t a missionary anymore obvously but he felt the impression to call this man, and he didn´t do anything bad. So he ended up calling us last week, and now we´re teaching his whoel family, all of them have a baptismal date, adn are going to come to church this week. What miracles we´re having! Oh, and soemthing else I found out about this area, THERE ARE MONKEYS! There is a family of monkeys here, and they are just part of the town! THey cross the streets and everything. It´s hilarious! It´s so cool! I´ll have to get a picture of them. 

Also mom, can you send me some recipes of our favorite foods? Like croissant rolls and stuff? they don´t have exactly the same things here, but we can make it work i´m sure. Elder Laurente is teaching me to make a lot of foods from Peru, which are awesome, and it´ll be fun to cook for you all.  Things like chicken salad sandwhich, and croissant chicken rolls, and all that stuff please? that would be good to have. 

Something Else I found out you can put in your talk mom, is a cool quote I learned.  "If we want to talk with God, we need to pray, if we want him to talk back, we need to read the scriptures" you can adjust it to how you like it, but it´s pretty cool. 
Thanks for everything, from everyone. I love you all, thanks for your prayers and support! I love you all, Have a wonderful week. Yesterday was holiday here so that´s why I didn´t write, sorry! Love Elder Allsup

Monday, August 13, 2012

8/13/2012


Hey Everyone, I got transfered this week! I´m doing great, my new area is called Santo Tomé and it´s in the providence Corrientes! And it´s really really awesome. It´s super beautiful here, i´ve never seen so much green! My companion is Elder Laurente, he´s from Peru, and he´s super awesome, we get along really really well. The cool thing about this transfer, is that Elder Taylor, my trainer, he started his mission in this area, and when Elder Taylor was a Zone LEader, he was a Zone Leader with Elder Laurente, my companion now! So we´re always talking about all the funny stories and things we had with Elder Taylor. IT´s so awesome!  This area is about 1 hour away from EVERYONE else. IT´s like a little town in the middle of nowhwere, it reminds me of that show Eureka that you guys always watched.  But the cool thing about this area, is it´s RIGHT next to Brazil. Look up Santo Tomé on the map, and you´ll see that you can see Brazil across the river. It´s a really cool area. Super green, really pretty, tons of cool animals and new bugs, and everyone here is Brazilian and speaks Portugese which is really cool.  The branch here is really awesome too, it´s got about 40 active member right now, and you can just feel their love radiate for the missionaries. It´s really different than my other area when we didn´t feel so much the love from the members, here it´s awesome.  There are also big huge falcons that fly around here, and they´re really awesome to watch.  Somethign funny here too, is there are China Markets. It´s like smiths, but run by pure china people. So we have chinese people speaking spanish, to an American speaking spanish, trying to comunicate with eachother. It´s pretty hilarious, and we laugh every time. We have some really great people to teach right now too, which is really awesome, and we´re really excited. We´ve got like 8 baptisms lined up in the next few weeks, and we´re working really really hard to keep them all. 

                Traveling here was a little weird, I traveled alone for 2 hours, which was super different, because you´ve always got a companion right with you every second of every day, and coming here I was all alone. Pretty wierd!  Also I got to see Elder Rogers! My companion from the MTC. That was really fun. He is so awesome. But i´m really really excited for this area, and for my new companion and everything. It´s going to be a really fun transfer.

     They speak a little different here too, which will be fun to learn some Portugese and stuff.  It´s a lot cooler here too, even though it´s starting to get really hot. It supposedly rains a lot more here, which is exciting, I love the rain here. It´s really really loud and just downpours.  I´m glad you got the letters, thanks for forwarding them. 

Sunday, August 12, 2012

8/7/2012


Hey Everyone,

 Everything is pretty calm around here, not a whole lot new! This is the last week of transfers, and it looks like i´ll get transfered tomorrow. Which will be good, i´ve been here forever and I really love it and all, but it´s getting a little more difficult doing literally the same thing with the same scene with the same exact everything with the same people for like 8 months.  So i´m excited for whatever happens. I love this area so i´m not worried to stay, but it´ll be fun to go experience other areas! 
This week we found a kid named Leandro at a bus stop. He is 17 and was smoking a ton, so we decided to talk to him. He looked pretty worn out. Just the look on his face was really like he was 90 years old about to end his life or something, so we talked to him, had a few lessons with him, and he came to church yesterday, and hes really excited to get baptized. Hes really awesome, and hes going to stop smoking. His family is really catholic so we´re going to be really needing some prayers, so if you will remember to keep him in your prayers please, that would be awesome. 
 Yesterday I bore my testimony in sacrament meeting, which was a little different because of it being in spanish, but I felt like I did good, and somebody needed something I said. But the guy after me was really really tiny who bore his testimony after me, and he guy after him said "With the Elder and his height, and with the other brother, we see that the church has really hit all parts of the world, and comes in many different forms now!" and everyone started laughing, it washilarious. But I hope all is well. Sounds like the family reunion was really fun! Sounds awsesome that Tance is driving and all his friends can give people rides! Sounds like everyone is doing well, Sawyer with all her friends and stuff, and Tean with his Job, Hope all is wel, tel me if anyone needs anything. Love you all thanks for everything!
Chau Chau, Nos Vemos