December 17
Wow, that´s awesome Dad, thanks for
the letter, That´s really cool to hear more about your mission. Were you able
to baptize a lot of people? Were you ever a leader in your mission, such as
Zone Leader or District Presidente or Asistente or algo? How was the mission
organized back then? I´m sure it´s changed a lot. It´s really cool to finally
be señor companion and be able to see the difference that I can make personally
in my area. I´ve decided to utilize a lot more the members to be able to have a
better relationship between them and the investigators, so that when the
investigatores get baptized they can already be aquianted and have a lot of
friends. It´s been cool these last few weeks to have some of the members go look
for the investigators in the morning, so that not only do we not have to do it,
we can be in another place getting other people, but the members and hte
investigator can talk and have a good relationship. Also i´ve chosen to start
doing a lot more service for the members. In the last 3 weeks we´ve done like
10-15 hours of service, which is actually quite a bit, and i´ve never seen
another missionary do so much, which I don´t say to try to brag, but I have
seen a big difference in how willing the members are when we´ve done service
for them, rather than just ask them for a million things, and have them give us
lunch. It´s been a really cool growing experience with the youth too, as we´ve
been working more with them, getting them excited for EFY and things like that,
which makes me really happy to see that I can be making a difference here in
the area personally, applying the talents and things our Heavenly Father has
given me personally. It´sreally cool to start applying the talents God has
given us, and to keep working on the things we struggle with. My new companion
is from Ecuador!! His name is Elder Harry Landires, and he´s awesome! It´s
really funny because he knows all the songs that we used to listen to when we
were younger, like Franco Devita and Luis Miguel, and sometimes we just start
singing them, which is pretty funny. It´s really cool now too that I actually
know what I´m saying and I can understand it! Thanks for all your emails.
They´ve really helped me a lot to be able to focus more, and to keep what
matters most in my priorities. Today was really cool, I started to study
something really interesting, I started to study what it takes to be a disciple
of Jesus Christ in our lives, and I started searching the scriptures and all
the other books and things, and it´s amazing how you can just get lost in the
scriptures finding little treasures. Studying that today really made me think a
lot of you Dad, and how you´re always telling me to put God First, because I
started reading a lot in Mateo and in Juan and things, and they´re always
talking about how important it is to put God first, and to love him with all
your heart. I made a cool little checklist to keep myself inline to be able to
keep the first commandment, because as I began to study, it was saying how we
need to Love God, and love our neighbors and things, and then I started
thinking, well how do we do that? How do we love God, or show our love, and for
our neighbor, and I came across a cool chain of scriptures. I found out by
keeping the commandments we love God, and it´s cool, because i´m working on a
really big project right now in my studies. It´s called PURIFY ME and what i´m
doing, is I started a list on "How to Purify and Sanctify Yourself in
God´s Standards" and what i´m going to do, is make a huge list, of the
actual, literal steps to purify and sactify yourself, but breaking it down to
the very littlest that I can. For example, Step 1 would be something like 1)
Have Faith
----To have faith you have to: (And
here i´d put how we gain faith, and how we do the steps to actually do the
steps to gain faith)
Step 2) Repent (Or something like
that, i´m just putting examples)
I´m not sure if this is making
sense, but it´s really cool. And i´m breaking it all down the most I can which
will be really cool. I want to have a huge long list of all broken down steps
of exactly how to do it. So when I finish I´ll send it to you. I´m learning so
much by doing that. Thanks for always teaching me those types of things, and
teachign me to always analyze what it is God wants me to get out of passages of
Scriptures. I didn´t include this part in my main email, but if you can please
email it to mom so she can put it into the Blog that would be great. Thanks Dad
for everything. I love you so much! I´m making a lot of cool traditions too for
when I get home, I´ve thought of a lot that i´m goign to start doing the year I
get home, which will be cool. Like every Christmas Eve everyone cooks a meal
from their mission or something. I´m really excited, it´ll be awesome. Love you
dad thanks for everythign, Have a good week. Love your son Elder Allsup
Hello, Everyone
So we had transfers, and I stayed
here in Santo Tomé, but got a new companion from Ecuador, his name is Elder
Harry Landires!! He´s almost as tall as me, and really dark, and talks pretty
different than the people here, which is pretty funny, because he´s always
asking me things in spanish, and he´s always asking me how to say things or
what things mean. Oh he´s only got like 6 months in the mission which is really
cool too. he´s the first companion I have that has a lot less time than me,
which is pretty awesome! It´s challenging, but it´s a lot of fun. It was hard
to say goodbye to my other companion Elder Martinsen, because we got really
close, and we got along really well, but i´m excited to work with Elder
Landires, and to get to work! Yesterday was pretty cool because Hermano
Machado, the guy that waited 20 years to get baptized, passed the sacrament for
the first time yesterday in church! That was pretty awesome to see how
emotional he got. And Yesterday Esteban y Miriam invited us over for lunch, and
they cooked us this huge meal with Capibara again! Here it´s called Carpincho,
i´m not sure if Capibara is the real name in english or not, maybe you can look
it up, but it was so delicious, and I gave them some of those sour warheads you
sent me last package, and oh it was hilarious. Their 3 year old little daughter
tried it first, and her face was absolutely priceless! I´m getting really
attached to these people here. I love them so much. Especially my converts. I
really see them basically as my own family now, and it´s really cool i´ll be
able to spend Christmas with them, so i´ll be spending Christmas with my own
family basically.
Yesterday our other investigator
Celia went to church again! She´s so awesome. It´s so cool to see how prepared
she is! She has a lot of questions and things, but it´s looking really good for
her to get baptized in a week or two, so we´re really excited about that. This
last tuesday we cut the lawn of our Branch Presidente´s house, and that was
really fun. He had an electric lawn mower, which for here is like something
really big, nobody has lawn mowers, they all just use macheties and things, but
it was wierd cutting the lawn with a big chord in the way. It was actually more
like vaccuming really, which was cool. It was cool the difference we made in
the lawn, it looks great. We are also working really hard with a family called
Galvan, which is a family of like 10. They´re all members but the parents
aren´t married yet, but they´ve been together for like 20 years, they got baptized
before they got together, and she was basically forced into marraige by her
parents, and the guy she´s married to doesn´t want a divorce yet, so things are
really complicated, but we´ve been able to reactivate them, adn they have a
little special child named Guillermo, and he´s so awesome. He´s not extremely
special, but it´s hard for him to talk, but the little stud just LOVES some
people. Every time he sees us he comes running up the hill and comes and gives
us a huge hug, and he mumbles just enough to be able to hear what he´s saying,
but we got permission from the family, and from presidente and as long as he
can understand the commandments, he can get baptized, which is like his DREAM
because he´s had to watch his whole family get baptized over the years, and he
really wants to, so we´re going to see what we can do to help him out, so if
you can please pray for him and for Celia, and for Juan, Juan is a friend of
this Galvan family that´s been going to church the past year, but he hasn´t
really wanted to get baptized, but just a few days ago he told us how much he
wants to get baptized! So we´re seeing some pretty awesome blessings here right
now, and could really use all your prayers to help out! Hopefully we´re looking
at like 2-3 baptisms in the next 2 or 3 weeks, so we´re really excited!
It´s really cool to finally be señor
companion and be able to see the difference that I can make personally in my
area. I´ve decided to utilize a lot more the members to be able to have a
better relationship between them and the investigators, so that when the
investigatores get baptized they can already be aquianted and have a lot of
friends. It´s been cool these last few weeks to have some of the members go
look for the investigators in the morning, so that not only do we not have to
do it, we can be in another place getting other people, but the members and hte
investigator can talk and have a good relationship. Also i´ve chosen to start
doing a lot more service for the members. In the last 3 weeks we´ve done like
10-15 hours of service, which is actually quite a bit, and i´ve never seen
another missionary do so much, which I don´t say to try to brag, but I have
seen a big difference in how willing the members are when we´ve done service
for them, rather than just ask them for a million things, and have them give us
lunch. It´s been a really cool growing experience with the youth too, as we´ve
been working more with them, getting them excited for EFY and things like that,
which makes me really happy to see that I can be making a difference here in
the area personally, applying the talents and things our Heavenly Father has
given me personally. It´sreally cool to start applying the talents God has
given us, and to keep working on the things we struggle with. My new companion
is from Ecuador!! His name is Elder Harry Landires, and he´s awesome! It´s
really funny because he knows all the songs that we used to listen to when we
were younger, like Franco Devita and Luis Miguel, and sometimes we just start
singing them, which is pretty funny. It´s really cool now too that I actually
know what I´m saying and I can understand it! Lots of cool changes lately, and
it´s been a lot of fun. So all is well here! Apart from our pension doesn´t
have air, and in the pension at night it´s about 95 ish degrees, so it´s a
little hard to sleep in like a pool of sweat, but i´m being really blessed to
be able to just endure it. But the heat is getting here. Wow I forgot what it
was like to sweat like when I first got here in the mission. Pretty crazy. But
I love you all, thanks for everything. I´ll let you know next week what time
i´ll be calling home on Christmas! Hope all is well, and that all are doing
what they need to be doing! I´m really excited! Love you all, have a great
week. Love Elder Allsup!
