Week 83 - 2/20/2017-2/27/2017

Hey Fam and Friends!

Well, fun stories from the week. We mowed someones lawn and got on their good side. I got to ride the riding lawnmower. I figured wasn't'

disobedient because it says nothing about riding lawnmowers in the white handbook. We cranked out that yard real quick. I think we should start a lawnmowing business.

Today we are going to hunt squirrels. Not with firearms because we can't do that. We bought slingshots. We were going to buy blowguns, but couldnt figure out where to get them.

A black family gave us Popeyes yesterday. We helped them get their brand new basketball hoop put together. they wanted to pay us, but we wouldnt take the money. So they gave us some fried chicken instead.

Elder Taylor left his ipad at Walmart today. We went back when we realized it was gone and walked in and they handed it right to us.

We watched Up this last Saturday. It was at a Ward Party and we got special permission from President. Its a really cute movie and shares a good message! However, I decided that movies are a waste of my time.

I dont think I will be watching any more movies for a good minute. I felt so tired and unproductive while watching it. We had investigators there and it was good for them. They really enjoyed it and got to fellowship with the members. We played basketball with them afterwards too!

The Hardys from Vidor got sealed on Saturday. I got to talk to them briefly over the phone and they were super happy that they were going to the Temple. Super happy that they were able to be sealed!

New haircut.

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-Elder Allen

Week 82 - blip

blip.....

Week 80 - Transfers

Week 79 - 1/25/2017-2/1/2017

Hey Fam and friends!

We went to Chucks this week! Twice. It is good food, but it's not good for your digestive system. I'll send some pictures of us with Chuck and his food.

The missionary broadcast was good this week! It was a world wide broadcast and we had training from some Members of the 12 Apostles.

They've changed our daily schedule and they've changed the key indicators that we report. President Drake says that neither of them go into effect until after transfers. So all of us are very excited to get to sleep early now. For those of you that don't know, they took our nightly planning session and stuck it in the morning. Now we get home and go straight to bed after we say our prayers and write in our journals.

We took a family (district) picture. We've decided that we are each someone in the family. We have named ourselves the Williamsons after the name of each of the wards in Vidor. We've labeled each person in the district and how old they are. Enjoy!

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-Elder Allen

Week 78 - 1/17/2017-1/24/2017

Hey fam!

Its me again. Sorry to bore yall with these weekly emails. I feel like sometimes I just send the same email over and over every single week. Hopefully this one and the events of this week make up for the rest!

We had interview training this Wednesday. That's what started the rest of our eventful week. 

Friday we went on exchanges after district meeting. I left the area and went down the road.  It started to rain lightly. Then it started to rain a little bit more. Then we went to dinner at a members house. We came back out side and it was dark. We got in the car and had to go pick up some other stuff from my apartment. On the way to the apartment, the lightning started. The rain slowed down a little bit. The sky started flashing blue, which it did for the next 6 hours. 

We got to the apartment and got out to video the lightning. A lightning bolt hit the light pole down the street as we got out of the car. Scared us to death. Then a second one hit the street in the opposite direction. We got back in the car for about 30 second to wait and see what would happen. Nothing else happened except for the continuing blue flashes of light. 

We got back out of the car and proceeded to film a video. I'll try to send it out, but no promises. 

The rain comes. We run inside real quick. Then the rain turned to hail. And the lights flicker. The hail is so loud that we can barely hear each other talk inside the house. 

We stop videoing for about a minute. In that minute, we get a call from our beloved district leader saying that we need to get inside as soon as we possibly can cause a tornado touched down able a mile down the road. And it was headed for us. We were super scared, so we laid on the floor. And nothing happened for about 15 minutes, but we laid on the floor for about that long. 

Then we got up and drove home.

This week I ate a habanero pepper. And a mealworm. It was fun!

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-Elder Allen

Week - 77 - 1/9/2017 - 1/16/2017

Hey Fam!

I love all yall!

Everything is awesome! We had a good week this week. We found a bunch of new people to teach and we are excited to see where everything goes with  them.

The temperature has jumped back up to what it was three week ago and I'm thoroughly convinced that another winter has come and gone. We are back to mid 70s to low 80s. I miss the snow, so we eat ice a lot.

I wrestled another missionary today and lost pretty bad... Come to find out, he was an all American wrestler in high school. Fun stuff:)

We went to Chucks Bar B Que again. Redneck nachos. Those things are fantastic. It's a great food and one of the best inventions I've seen down here. And lemme tell you, I see some pretty great inventions.

Mobile toilets. Blue Bell Ice Cream. Gumbo. Oh, so good.

We play a lot of chair soccer down here on pdays. It's fun.

We've started helming out at the Christian Care center every Tuesday and it's a blast! The people that we serve with are great!

Pictures!

1. Self explanatory.

2. Us at Chucks after District Meeting

3. Us and two guys we contacted. They were very under the influence and were extremely happy to see us:) they got picked up by the popo later that night...

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-Elder Allen

Week 76 - 1/2/17 - 1/8/17

This week was good. We did a lot of working with the members. We are trying to teach them how to be missionaries in their own lives. It's going decent!

This is how we are doing it with them:

We will go in and being the Spirit through sharing the Joseph Smith story of some other lesson that we feel prompted to share. I've seen people in tears after we recite some of the Joseph Smith story. The spirit is super strong in the room and you can feel it. For those of you who don't know, US missionaries down here in South East Texas memorize pay off the Joseph Smith story and can and will recite it to everyone that we can. After this, we will ask them how's this knowledge of the truthfulness of the gospel has helped them in their lives. We listen to them and their experiences. That's key to them feeling the Spirit. We will ask them who they know that can use a message about this or who could use this in their lives and then we will get a few names from them and keep track of them over the next little while. We then tell them this: we aren't going to visit them.

We want them to be the ones to do something with them, whether it's praying for them, giving them a pass along card, or inviting them to church or something else among those lines. We will role play with them about what they are going to do to give them confidence that they can actually do this. Then we will follow up with them whenever we see them next.

Members in the Ward are at different stages in their missionary work.

There are 4 main stages to their missionary work.

1. Pray and fast for investigators to have spiritual experiences and for members to have missionary opportunities.

2. Provider acts of kindness to people

3. Teach their friends doctrine.

4. Invite them to act.

Every single member is at a different point in this little scale. It's our job to help them get to the next step.

It froze this week! I'll send a picture of us (My district leader, Elder Ludlow and I on exchanges) with a frozen puddle. We were super excited!

Love yall verty much! Have a great week and remember to stick to your new years resolutions!