Merrry Christmas!

Hey everybody, How was your Christmas!?! Mine was really good, we spent all day with the awesome members here in Hondo. This Christmas was really good, it was the first year that I was really able to understand the meaning of the season.  Of course we always try to remember and dwell on the reason, it was always just words to me.  This year was different. It was awesome to understand and comprehend the full meaning of the birth of Christ. I loved it.

It was sweet to talk to you guys on the phone:)

Right now we have a sweet family set for baptism on Jan 22nd. We’re excited for them, and so is the ward.

Thanks for all you do for me. I wish I could have more time to talk, but the library closed today so were at a members house, Talk to you next week. Happy New Year!!

--
Elder Allen

The Dome House

Hey everybody, how have you all been?  I can’t believe I hit my 13 month mark already! This week has been really cool! We got to eat inside a dome bubble house! A couple in our ward invited us over for dinner. When we pulled up to the house it was just a Giant Dome! It was really cool. He gave us a nice tour of the house :) It was an interesting dinner.  We also got to eat dinner with the Bishop and his family. It was really fun. They remind me a lot of Mark and Ashley's family, I had a lot of fun.

We taught a sweet family with two really cool guys from the elders quorum. He is really excited to make changes and be baptized. The rest of his family is cool too. We’re going to be teaching them tonight at a members home, so I'm really excited for it.

On Thursday I got some sweet boots from the thrift store! Ha! Elder Johnson got some moccasins... we felt like cowboys and Indians when we got home. It was funny.

So we got our transfer calls last night, were both staying here for one more transfer! I'm excited, I love serving with Elder Johnson and I love Hondo! I'm excited for the next month and a half.  Our Christmas Conference is this Thursday, that should be really fun. It's the only time the whole mission gets together.

On Christmas we have 3 Dinners, not quite the 5 we were planning on, but 3 is good :) It should be really nice.

Thanks again for everything everyone! I hope you all have a great Christmas! I know I will :) I'll talk to you all soon, Merry Christmas!
Love,
--
Elder Allen

Miracle at Church!

Dear Everybody...

This week was pretty fun, We had the Ward Christmas Party! It was really nice to be with all the awesome members and get to know them a little better. The food was good too :)  We had invited 22 Investigators / families to attend, but not any of them showed up :( that was pretty depressing. But it's okay, things worked out. 

We had a miracle at church yesterday though! We have been talking to a less active guy that was baptized about 6 or 7 years ago.  He's 20 years old and doesn’t have a good family life. He had basically told us that he wasn't ready to come back to church, and we were wasting our time meeting with him. We were very bold with him and told him what he needed to do.  We had stopped going by because he wasn't willing to progress. Then he Came to church out of nowhere! He said he couldn’t get it out his mind that he needed to go, so he walked for 35 min- ish in the rain and the cold to come to church! He loved it and had the warmest welcome ever from the ward! He even went home with his old friends to have dinner there. He'll be coming back for sure. It was really cool to see the spirit work with him and help him do what he knew was right. Now we just need that to happen with our investigators!!

This week we found another cool kid that just moved from Vegas. He was dating a LDS girl there and going to church with her. He had met with the missionaries allot to! He was excited to see us walking down his street. He is really ready to make some changes in his life, so hopefully he'll keep the commitments we leave with him :) I'm excited for him.

That's about all I have for this week. It's really cool to see all the houses with Christmas lights on all the houses (even though there's no snow... and I think I'm okay with that) and to see people getting into the Christmas spirit. I even put up a little tree we had!  Thanks for everything everybody, talk to you next week!

Happy Thanksgiving!

Hello everybody... this week has been great! We had an awesome thanksgiving, ate lots of food, rode our bikes, and had an investigator confirmed at church!

So to start our week, we are very low on miles for this month... so we have been riding our bikes as much as we can. We only have about 20 miles a day or less besides the day we have to go to San Antonio, so we drive as little as possible, then bike around the area we park at :) It's pretty nice, but it's starting to get colder here... so that's not too fun. But we get all new miles on the 1st!  So for Thanksgiving we had 2 appointments to be at but they were both so far away!! To overcome our deli-ma we put our heads together and stared at the map seeing who lived between our appointments.  After some number crunching and phone calls, we had set up a ride with different members throughout the whole day were we didn't have to dive at all, and we would get an EXTRA dinner along the way! Dang we’re good!  Haha I'm very thankful for the members who were willing to help us out and drive us around. We had allot of good food and just about killed ourselves from over eating.  It was a good Thanksgiving.

We had a really cool elderly member who is one of the ward missionaries drive us to teach an recent convert. Haha he is so funny!!! He loves to hang out with the other old guys in the ward and sit at McDonalds all day long.  They do it all day every day.  Retired life sounds great. He drove us in his sweet Toyota Tundra to the lesson.  This ward is great ;)

We found some cool people this week that seem very elect! We taught one family twice now, and the kids are stoked for baptism!!  Were trying to get their mother involved as well, but she's not too interested at the moment... just wait until we get her to church! Ha! I'm excited for them.

Our way solid awesome Investigator who was baptized last week was confirmed yesterday. She has great Home teachers set up who are very supportive.

Thank you all for everything. I am thankful for all the prayers in my behalf. My Companion and I are getting along really well, and having lots of fun. We know we still have miracles to see in this area. I love you all, talk to you soon!

--
Elder Allen

Baptisms!

Baptisms are the best! We had a great Baptism yesterday. It was really nice. She had a lot of support from the ward.  This week was really good, we had interviews with our Mission President. He talked to us about exercising Faith to find people to teach. It's helping me a lot.

Sorry this E-mail is so short, I don't have much time today, and not much to say.  Everything in Hondo is going really well. I'm thankful for the letters I received for my year mark! I hope you all have a great Thanksgiving! I know I will, we get to have 3 dinners! Ha!

I love you all,

--
Elder Allen

One Year Mark!

On Thursday I'll have been on my mission for a whole YEAR! weird.

This week was way crazy, but it was way good. Elder Ward got transferred down to Eagle Pass Texas. I'm sure he's liking it down there. On Wednesday I got to work with Elder Loura. He goes home in 5 weeks from now! I've got to serve around him for a lot of my mission, he's really fun. We found a cool new investigator when we were knocking.  That night Elder Ransom came and took Elder Loura's place. Haha we did a lot of transfers this week. Hondo was Elder Ransom's first area, so he had a lot of fun talking to people in the ward and driving through the area. It was fun.

The next day we drove up to San Anton for the Transfer Meeting! I got my new Companion Elder Johnson from Rexburg Idaho! He's awesome. We've had allot of fun working together already! We’re going to baptize a lot here! On Thursday night we stayed up in San Antonio for a meeting the next day. We bunked with Elder Morgan and Elder Vasquez... they are now companions!! haha My 2nd comp and my 1st trainee are companions!  It was really fun to hang out with them and work with them in their area. 

On Friday we had a meeting for all the Trainers and Trainee's. It was nice. President bought us lunch :)

We finally got back to Hondo on Friday night, and we taught a few people. It was good. We had a confirmation this Sunday, and we'll have another baptism next Sunday!  Were trying to do as much finding as possible so when we baptize all our investigators, were not stuck in a rut... without anybody to teach!  It's hard to be balanced.

The work is going really well here. I love being a missionary, and training new missionaries! :D We are very blessed to be in this ward, and to be teaching the people we have been.

Talk to you next week!

Socket Wrenches

Hey Everybody! I had an awesome week!

On Thursday I got to make some chocolate death cake, and I shared it with some cool members that fed us dinner, it was nice. I also got to give service! Hooray for service! We went and helped out an awesome investigator and her (returning to activity) husband clean their yard so they could have a family party there after her baptism on Sunday! So, we went over there thinking to rake some grass, pick up trash and maybe mow the lawn. But when we got there the riding lawnmower wouldn't start. So to save time they called their neighbor to borrow theirs. But that one wouldn't start either!!  So I said "Give me a socket set and stand back!!" I got them Both running in 20 min! So then we rode 2 riding mowers around for half an hour or so and cut down the whole field! it was great, I got gasoline all over me and everything. Good, Good times!

On Friday we got to wake up early and drive to San Antonio for a Zone conference! Elder Claudio Zivic from the Seventy came and spoke to us. It was awesome! He didn't speak English very well, but he gave a great talk none the less. He gave our mission some really good ideas of how we can improve. Zone conferences are always fun.

On Sunday we had a baptism!  It went really nice, besides the fact that it was a half hour late... (My companion forgot to put the plug in the font all the way, haha)  But it worked out great anyway. She will receive the Gift of the Holy Ghost next Sunday by the Bishop.

Last night we got our TRANSFER CALLS!! Elder Ward will be leaving, and going down to the broader somewhere! He'll get to speak Spanish all over the place. I will be staying in Hondo, and I get to train a new missionary, again! Haha, apparently I didn't do a very good job last time, so I get to try again ;) jk I'm excited.

Well I think that's all I've got for this week, The Lord is really blessing us here, we are teaching some really cool people, and should have another baptism in 2 weeks or so!

Thanks for all your prayers, I know they are helping me work hard and effectively. I love you all!


--
Elder Allen

Bacon and "Whipped Cream"

This week in Hondo Texas was interesting.... I made some awesome Chocolate Cake, but then I burnt it :( but I still ate it :), My companion and I rode our bikes for a day, which just so happened to be the only day out of the week that it Rained! It was fun, we stayed pretty dry actually.  We ate Dinner with an awesome family who is known for pranking the missionaries... They tried to feed us Ice cream with "whipped cream" on top..... but I know my shaving cream smell from my whipped cream smell!! Couldn't fool us! Then we were driving home and almost made a few hundred pounds of bacon out of a wild hog with our truck! Lucky for him, and us, we swerved around him and nobody died. Haha it was funny, I'm usually pretty good at spotting deer in the road, but never wild boar! The Lord protected us :)

As far as the work goes, The recently baptized investigator received the Holy Ghost in sacrament meeting yesterday! That was sweet. Then Our awesome investigator bore her testimony and said how excited she is to be baptized on Nov. 6th!  Other than those two people our teaching pool is pretty small. We’re doing a lot of “finding” right now.  Hopefully we can find the prepared people the Lord has waiting for us!

I love you all, have a good week and I'll talk to you soon!


--
Elder Allen

Hondo, TX

Hello everyone! This is my first week in my new area, Hondo! I love it here. It's just like Palmyra, Cortez and Red Mesa all mixed together! This is a picture of our area. The red is our mission inside Texas, and the greet is our Area. Its Huge!!! We cover a lot of farming nothingness! It’s awesome. I get to drive a nice truck! Woohoo! My companion is Elder Ward from Chandler, Arizona. He's awesome. He's been out about 3 months or so. I'm way excited about this area, It's going to be great!

My new address is

2805 Ave U #302
Hondo, TX   78861

Thanks for all the letters and everything, I love you all! Talk to you next week!

--
Elder Allen

Transferred!

Hello everyone! This week has been great! Our progressing Investigator came to church yesterday and loved it! It was sweet. Yesterday during the 3rd hour of church the Brothers and Sisters met together and had a training on Mormon.org and the Media Blitz that the church will be doing in San Antonio. They had done these Media Blitz in other parts of the country, and they estimate that 54% of the Adults will be asked about the church and 100% of the Youth will be contacted by non-members because of the advertisement. I'm way excited. The church will be advertising on TV, Buses, Billboards, everywhere! Elder M Russell Ballard said that the church has always been preached from the town square (like Dan Jones in Wales) and now days the Internet is the Town Square. So Mormon.Org is going to be pushed like crazy! Everybody should go make a profile!!

But other than that... we taught some cool lessons, founds some cool people, and got some people to commit to being baptized! Unfortunately I won’t be here to see any of that happen because I'm getting Transferred! So Elder De La Paz and his new companion will keep the work going here, and I'll get to go to a new place :)  I'll tell you my new address and everything next week.

I love you all, thanks for all the great letters and packages I've gotten this last week! There the best!



--
Elder Allen

Puddle Jumping

Hello everybody! This week has been crazy! I got a new companion mid-transfer! Elder Vasquez and Elder De La Paz switched places. They came out together. So now I'm training Elder De La Paz. He's really cool and fun to work with.  This week has been pretty crazy. We are teaching some really cool investigators, but none of them came to church yesterday :( We even picked up a new investigator last night! The work is moving along pretty well. We have a few people set with dates to be baptized! A few people had to have their dates moved just because they won’t come to church! But that's okay... next week well get um :)

Oh man it rained so hard last night! It was crazy. We were on our way home from a teaching appointment when it started to rain, so we got a ride from a member. We loaded our bikes into his minivan. All of a sudden it just started down pouring! So much water! All the streets were flooded. We live at the bottom of a hill, and there is always alot of flooding there.  When we were going down the hill towards the puddle, we noticed there was a little Honda Prelude right in the middle with its hazards on. haha He hit the water and stalled! We just floored the van and powered through the puddle. It was crazy. So much water. It was fun. Texas is crazy :) haha just kidding.

Thanks for all the letters and everything! I love you all,

--
Elder Allen

9-11

Hello everybody! How are you all doing this week? This week has been really good for us here in Texas. We have some pretty cool investigators, but none of them came to church :( Next week well get um...
So now that I think about it... Nothing real exciting happened... We had an awesome Sacrament meeting yesterday for 9-11. That was cool. um.... That's about all that happened this week. Sorry I don't have much time or much to write about! There should be more next week.

--
Elder Allen

Fellowshipping... It Works!

This week has been awesome!! The work is going way good! We had a sweet Investigator at church yesterday, and he loved it! The members just fellowshipped him like crazy! They invited him over for dinner, and they will be at our next few appointments with him. So Sweet!

We also are teaching another guy who really wants to be baptized! We talked about it with him last night, and when we invited him he said "Well of course I do!" He's excited to stop smoking and drinking, and we are excited to help him. The only down part is, is that he's 23, and would probably do a lot better in the Singles ward, which means that we won’t get to teach him anymore, but we’ll see what happens. As longs as he receives the gospel it doesn't really matter :)

This week was really good, I love Training. Were having a lot of success. The Lord is really blessing us. I hope to have at least one baptism before I leave the area. I've been here for so long, there is a good chance I'll leave next transfer (4 weeks away) but you never know, we’ll see what happens.

Thanks for all the love and letters and support and prayers! They mean a lot to me, and I know they help.  I love you all,

--
Elder Allen

Elder Vasquez!

Hello everybody! This week has been really good! Allot of crazy thing happened this week...  We saw a kid doing the Truffle Shuffle at a pool in some apartments... Elder Vasquez tried to save a girl from getting hit by a car backing out of a drive way, but she just stared at him because she had her earphones in and didn't know what he was saying. (she didn't get hit though). And we got another flat tire on the bike this week. Good times!

The work is going pretty well, We have a few cool investigators that were excited for.  We have a few appointments set up for latter on in the week, so we’ll see how they go :)  Right now we have one person with a baptismal date for September 24th. Our second lesson with her is tomorrow, so we’ll see how she liked to Book of Mormon and everything :)

Training is really fun, Elder Vasquez is awesome. Were getting along really having a lot of fun and working hard.

Thanks for all the letters and E-mails. I love you all.

Missionaries from Utah Rule!

Hello everybody! This week has been great so far! On Thursday I got my new trainee companion! Elder Vasquez. He is straight from Provo Utah. He is awesome! He is so excited to go out and work its great! He is a really good missionary already! I really like serving with him.  We have found a few people this week that we will be stopping by again. So well see what happens! Actually yesterday we had a random lady show up to church. We talked to her afterwords and found out that she was not a member. We got her number and will go back to teach her this week! Heavenly Father really is blessing us in the Area.  This will be my 4th Transfer in Leon Valley. 6 months! It is a really good ward tho, I love serving here.

Hmmm, well I cant think of any crazy stories or anything exciting that happened to us this week... so I'll just leave it at that! Hopefully I'll have something better to talk about next week... :) Thanks everybody,


--
Elder Allen

Senior Companion!

Hello everybody! Who's your favorite possum? Anyway... This week has been crazy! First off, Saturday night Elder Loertscher crashed on his bike. He fell on his arm and scraped it up pretty good. He’s okay though. We’re going to the doctor tomorrow.  Sunday was Stake Conference. It was really good. I enjoyed it. They had a lot of recent converts share their testimonies, It was really cool!  Then Sunday night we got our transfer calls!! Elder Loertscher is moving to a new area, and I am receiving a new trainee companion! So I'll be training for the next 2 transfers in the new training program. I'm way excited but nervous too. It will be really good.  Most likely I'll be in the same area (still on a bike) for another 3 months, so it will be good, the ward here is awesome. I'm excited.

Well that's all I have this week, Thanks everybody, I love you all.

--
Elder Allen

Holy Crackers

Hello everybody! How has everyone been lately?  My week has been interesting as usual. We had a Zone meeting last Tuesday. We received instruction from our mission president through our zone leaders on how to better work with the members. It was really great. I like District meetings and Zone meetings. I always learn a lot. Haha, right after that we talked to a funny person who said he was drinking (but just a little) then he saw a vision of God and Mary in a Ritz cracker.... so we told him that he shouldn't be drinking... it was interesting. 

As far as the work goes we have been doing pretty good... We found a really cool guy yesterday and we taught him the Restoration. He loved it, it was so cool. It's always the best when the person you are teaching actually understands, and wants to act! It was great. We have an appointment to go back later this week and share more with him. He's excited to read from the Book of Mormon. He's cool.

Our mission was approved to make a Mormon.org profile, so we did! It's on there now. If you just search for Carter, then you'll find me! You should all make one too!!!!!!!!!!

Well that's about all that happened this week. I'm doing well :) Thanks for all the fasting and prayers. It really does help. I love you all
--
Elder Allen

Bitten By A Dog!

On Wednesday I went on exchanges with Elder Black. He’s really cool. He’s from Idaho. We had a lot of fun racing each other on our bikes. We were both really tired and sore the next day. Haha. We also had cake for lunch! What could be better!?! 

On Saturday we taught this way sweet investigator that just loved the restoration! He's so excited to ask for work off and come to church next Sunday. He's stoked to be baptized. We found some other cool investigators last night too. We helped him carry a bunch of boxes from his car to their new apartment.  They’re a way cool family that really needs the Gospel in their home. They loved the idea of the Book of Mormon. We’re pretty excited to go back and teach them some more. We are finding a lot of sweet people. Sadly because most of our investigators sort of fell away. But that's okay, we’re here to help the elect that are willing to act!

Haha on Saturday I got bit by a dog!!!! Stupid little rat ran up behind me and got my ankle. No blood though. I was about to kick it... when the owner came to grab him. That little dog was mean! Haha it was funny, so now I can officially say I've got bitten by a dog on my mission. Good times.

This week has been a good one. I'm excited for the success we are going to see here in this area in the next 3 weeks.

Thanks again for all the mail I get from everyone! I love hearing from all of you. Thanks for everything, I love you. Talk to ya next week.



--
Elder Allen

At Gun Point...

This week has been really event full...  on Wednesday we were knocking doors, when we knock on this one door. A kid swings the door all the way open, stands right there in the door way, points a nurf gun at us and yells "FIRE!!!!!!!!" at the top of his lungs! Haha, after yelling "fire" and holding the note for a good 6-7 seconds, he slams the door on us.  So much drama and he didn't even shoot us! Due to a lack of ammunition I suppose. LOL. A min or so latter his mom came to the door and we talked to her for a while. Unfortunately she wasn't interested.

On Thursday we found a nice little retirement home place that we’re going to volunteering at every Wednesday.  Haha. That should be pretty fun, were just going to playing board games with old people, or just visit with them, or doing whatever. It should be pretty fun. I have a feeling that were going to hear allot of "back when I was young..." story's ;)

As far as the work goes... a lot of the Families that we found last week turned out to be not so elect. But that's okay. Well keep knocking doors until we find someone who is willing to listen to our message. Our Investigators are doing really well. It’s great. We don't have any baptismal dates set yet, but we should soon. We’ll see how it goes.

Thanks for all the many prayers of support! I really appreciate it and I know it really helps.
I'll talk to you all soon, Love
--
Elder Allen

The Invertor?

This week was great, I had a great Birthday last week! I loved all the letters and awesome packages I got!! Thank you all so much.

This week we talked to a really funny kind of crazy guy. He said he was a member, but he’s old and confused, and refused to come back to church. But he talked to us for a while. He loved telling us his life stories... He said that He is a famous inventor. He said he invented the white see-thru plastic that cars use for their fluid reservoirs.  He said they used to be black so you never knew how much windshield washer fluid or brake fluid you had. So he invented white plastic.... He said his name was Rouel Travine....  He was funny.

We also helped Nathan Armstrong out with some stuff. He was going thru some really hard times and got offended pretty bad. He said he was leaving the church forever. We went by with the Elders corium president and talked to him. All his problems were resolved, he came to church yesterday and loved it. He’s awesome. It was really cool to see how he was able to humble himself and fix all the problems he was having.

Lorren is doing good, his family is giving him a hard time, but he'll be okay, we’re excited for him.

That’s about all the funny or crazy things I can think of right now... I'm doing well. I enjoyed my birthday =D and Transfers are on July 7th, so next week I’ll know if I am staying or going or getting a new companion. I'm excited.

Thanks again for everything. I love you all, talk to you later.

--

Elder Allen

Happy Birthday to me....!

This week has been really good. We have an awesome investigator named Lorren. He is so excited to be baptized!! He is set to be baptized on July 16th.  He has been to church twice now, and he brought his brother with him yesterday. Now there both interested. Other than that the rest of our investigators are going through some trouble and opposition. But they'll do fine, there just going thru a rough patch, namely Tesha and Alexis. But it will work out.

Today is my birthday, and I make cake! LOTS OF CAKE! I make Grandma Harris' supper thick chocolate pudding cake! I'm excited to go home and eat it all!!

Thank you all for the Birthday wishes! I miss you all, sorry I don't have much time to write today :( Hopefully next week will be better...)

--
Elder Allen

Zone Conference

Dear everybody...

This week has been pretty good. On Wednesday we had a Zone Conference. It was really good. The Assistants gave some training on Faith in our investigators and in our finding efforts. It was really good. It has really helped my companion and I in the work.  Then President Talked about some new mission rules and doctrine and things. His training was really good as well.

Our investigators are doing really well. They are going thru a lot of trials and tribulation. This seems to happen with all our investigators. Satan really works hard on them, but they will do good. One of them actually went to girls camp with all the other young women, so that was really cool.

Sorry I don’t have much to say this week. I'm running out of time. Thanks for all your support and prayers! I love you all,


--
Elder Allen

Training Meeting

This week has been pretty good...   On Wednesday I got to go to a training meeting. Everyone who has been out 6 months or less got to go. The Assistants and President "trained" us for about 6 hours. It was really cool. I sat with Elder Brown, my MTC Companion. We had a lot of fun talking and seeing each other again. It was great.

We Have a few great families that we are teaching right now. The first is Robyn Sayers and her daughter Alex. They’re way cool. Robyn was baptized when she was 14, but went non-active when she turned 16. So we've been teaching them and they are progressing great! Now we just need to get Robyn and her boyfriend Ray married. But that's going to be tricky. But they are doing so good, I think it will work out just fine. They are praying about it and everything. I'm excited for them.

We’re teaching a lady named Tesha and her son Chris. Tesha has come to church twice now, and her parents are members. Her Uncle is flying down this week to be baptized by her dad, so once she sees that she’ll want to be baptized as soon as possible! She is doing well too.

The other families we are seeing are the Rubin Family and the Velasquez family. We found them a little while ago, there pretty cool. They haven't really started progressing yet, but they should by then end of this week. They have been sick and other things so we haven't been able to teach them as much as we would like.

Everything is going good here, The weather is still hot, but we haven't had any more flat tires so far, so that's good :)
Thanks for all of your prayers for me and the other missionaries from our ward.
Love,


--
Elder Allen

Memorial Day

Hello Everybody,

Today I don’t have too much time because I'm e-mailing from Best Buy, because all the libraries are closed, because it Memorial Day!! Hooray. This week has been pretty good, My companion got 2 1/2 flat tires this week... the half is because his patch from number 2 didn’t hold too well. But it was fun. We did a lot for walking for the rest of the day until we could get his bike fixed. 

We have just found 2 sweet families that we have been teaching. Well we have only taught them once each, but they are pretty cool. They have great potential to progress. We’re excited for them.  We are also teaching 2 other families that are progressing nicely. They don’t have baptismal dates yet, but they should here pretty soon, probably tonight :)

Well that’s all I can really think of to say right now, I'm getting to distracted and memorized by this fancy new computer. I'll hopefully have more time and more things to say next week. Talk to you soon!

--
Elder Allen

I Love to see the Temple......

Hello Everybody,

 This week has been kind of slow... but it was good.
On Friday we had the chance to go to the hospital and give a member a blessing. She has had a lot of medical problems, and she was in the ER. We were the only ones available, so we ran over there to help. It was really cool.
On Saturday we got to go to the temple! It was the end of our transfer, and we get to go once a transfer if we are in San Antonio. It was cool. It's been so long since I've been through... it was a great reminder for all the stuff I was starting to forget :) We also got to go to the Distribution Center and the Book Store. That was nice. I was needing some stuff.
Yesterday we got our Transfer Calls. Elder Loertscher and I are both staying here another transfer. So that will be good, I like the ward here, even though everyone we know will be moving out soon...

We have two people set with a date for baptism right now. Mike and Whitney. They are way cool. We've taught them a few times. They have a date for June 18th. They didn't make it to church yesterday, but we’re going to take them on a church tour this Tuesday, hopefully. They just need to Read and Pray!
We have a few other Investigators that we’re working with that should be coming close to baptism. We’re pretty excited for them.
A lot of our work is Less Active work. We had 2 Less Active members come to church yesterday, It was great. We got their records transferred, and they should be getting home teachers soon. Things are going pretty good here.

Thanks for all the letters and E-Mails!! I'll let you know what happens next week :) I love you all.

--
Elder Allen

Will the real Marie please stand up?

This week has been pretty crazy... On Saturday I was hungry so I bought a little pint of Ice Cream and I ate the whole thing while riding my bike within about 5 min :) I knew learning to ride with no hands would pay off!  It's just like driving a stick while talking on the phone and eating all at the same time! Anyway... Saturday night was pretty cool, we had found an old teaching record in the Area Book for a lady named Marie. So we went and knocked on the door to visit her and ask why the missionaries stopped coming by. This older guy answered the door, he looked at us and got all excited! He said "It's those guys we talked to last week!" He had us come right in. We were very confused. We asked if a Marie lived here, he said yeah she's right here. So we thought okay this is cool... so we started to teach them. They said that about a week ago in another part of the city they talked to two missionaries that were going to give them a Finding Faith in Jesus Christ DVD. But they ran out so they just gave them a pass along card with the number to call for one. Haha they were upset that we didn't bring them one... so anyway we teach them this awesome lesson and their excited to have us back this week. When we got home that night, we realized that the Marie on the teaching record was not the same Marie that lived there. Because the Marie on the teaching record lived there in 2006, and the couple that we just taught had moved in like a month ago! So that was pretty sweet. We're thankful that we found  them and we're excited to teach them.

On Thursday it was raining like crazy!! They had tornado warnings and everything! Our Mission President told us that if we heard something like a train blowing through the neighborhood, to lay down in the middle of the floor. Haha, it wasn't very bad for very long, just one or two minutes of raining really hard. The rest of the storm was just normal rain. It was fun. Good thing we got to stay inside until it was over!

That was about the most exciting thing we did this week, besides passing by a car show on Sunday that we couldn't look at! It just about killed me. Oh well. It was a good week. Oh Yeah, on Sunday we got a new Bishop and a new Elders Quorum Presidency and everything! Like I was saying before... we have 20 families moving out because they all graduated from medical school. So the ward is changing a whole lot. But it will be good.

Thanks for everything, I love you all. Talk to you next week!

--

Elder Allen

Baptism, Doughnuts and Ditches

Hello everybody.This week has been great. We Confirmed Nathan Armstrong in sacrament meeting yesterday. He had to wait a whole week to do so because he was Baptized last Sunday afternoon. I was able to do the Confirmation yesterday, it was an awesome experience. 

On Tuesday we were knocking around a potential investigators house that we met, and this little Asian lady walked up to us. She was caring a little bag a pastries! She told us that we worked to hard, and we needed food. So she gave us some doughnuts. She said she owned a doughnut shop just down the road, and she had extras today. Then she walked away and wouldn't let us talk to her. She said she wasn't interested in our message. Sounds kinda sketchy I know, but I ate the doughnuts and I'm not dead =)

On Saturday my Companion Elder Loertscher crashed on his bike. We were going down this huge hill, going like 20 mph or faster, and we had to turn right on this street. I was in front and I slowed down to turn. Once I was on the road we were supposed to be on I heard Elder Loertscher's tire skidding on the pavement. I looked back and saw him going way to fast to turn, and trying to slow down. Haha he went into this front lawn with lots of nice cushy grass.... But there was a cement ditch about a foot and a half deep right in the middle!! He hit it at full speed and he flew off his bike. He landed right in the grass. It was really funny. He was okay, just a few grass stains. Later we went to the ward party and everyone was laughting and asking him how he got the grass stains on his shirt, haha!

It was nice to talk to you all yesterday! I hope everyone had a good Mothers day! Talk to you next week.

--
Elder Allen

This a email sent by a Sister in Carter's Ward.....

Hello Missionary Mothers,

My family was able to feed your wonderful sons this evening!  It was a real treat.  They have only been in our ward three weeks, and we've able to feed them twice.  They were rushing out the door to a new appointment, but I made them pose for a quick photo--even with an ice cream cone in hand.

I must tell you, they are doing GREAT work!  Everyone in our ward is commenting on how fabulous they are--truly!  They are excited, motivated and very dedicated.

Last week they had taught my next door neighbor a lesson.  They shared a book of Mormon with her. She didn't make an inital commitment to read, but said she'd be open to meeting with them again.  Well today, my husband and I were driving home from the library and saw your sons on the side of the road, so we pulled over to see if they needed any help.  They didn't, but we asked about meals and since they didn't have plans for tonight, we invited them over.  Well, the Lord works in mysterious ways because once we started eating dinner, my next door neighbor called and decided to come and join us for dinner as well!

So they were able to teach her again.  It was a nice lesson.  We'll give my neighbor a few days to process and see if she is ready for more!  We had to hurry and get your sons off because they had MORE appointments tonight.  They are working so hard!

We are so grateful for your sacrifices and sharing them with us.  They are blessing our lives grately.  I pray the Lord may in return bless you and your families.

Sincerely,

Ann-Marie Wood

Auto Zone and a Baptizm!

This week has been a crazy one... On Wednesday we went to Auto Zone to get some stuff for my companions bike. It made me really miss working on cars and things. We talked to a guy who was changing the water pump in his car, but he didn't want help. Oh well. On Thursday we knocked into a christian rap artist. He was awesome. He showed us some of his stuff he was writing. haha it was really good. He wasn't interested in our message though. haha I also knocked into a guy named George Lopez. Not the famous comedian, but same name :) We talked to a drunk guy who said that I was different than anybody else he's met before.... but he was way to drunk to know what he was talking about. So I don't know if I should be concerned or not. ha ha.
 Yesterday we had a baptism!! Nathan Armstrong was baptized. He has been being taught by the missionaries for about 2 months. He's come a long way. He quit smoking and decided to marry his girlfriend that he had been living with for the last few years. We were way excited for him. He will be confirmed next week. Hopefully we can get his wife to start coming back to church. She is a member, but has to work every Sunday and has been inactive for years. Nathan has a strong testimony though.
That's about all that happened this week. It was a good week :)

Love,

Elder Allen

Bike and Bike and Bike aaaand Bike

This week has been pretty good. We had a pretty good Easter, we just taught people as usual. Holidays don't feel like holidays here. We taught 2 mentally challenged people yesterday actually... so that was very interesting. One said she was a member. She was baptized like 10 years ago. She said she had schizophrenia (or however you spell that) and she said she had devils living inside her that kept talking to her... Then we taught an X-communicated member. She had some mental challenges to... It was a very interesting day. This week has been going good. We have one Baptism set up for Sunday night. We also have a few other people that are progressing really well. They should be getting baptized soon! We are way excited for them. That's about all I have to say this week... being on the bikes still stink but its getting better, I'm always so tired!

Thanks for all the prayers! They are really helping! I love you all.

-Elder Carter Allen

New Address!

Elder Carter Allen

2502 Babcock Road #2108

San Antonio, TX 78229

In the City!

This week has been crazy! I am now in San Antonio. I'm in the Leon Valley ward. I really miss Georgetown, but this is a cool ward, so it will be good. There is a giant Medical Center right in the middle of our area. It's basically like a Temple Square of Hospitals!! There are like 5 hospitals all in one area. Its like town square or something. There are a few buildings that are just for medical students. So our ward is full of med students, and young families. Haha actually in church they were talking about how in a few months half the ward will be graduating and moving. So it will be crazy here in a little bit. This ward is really missionary minded tho, and it great. Everyone is willing to come out and help us teach lessons and help give us rides, since WERE ON FULL TIME BIKES! ugh. I don't mind riding to much, but its just annoying when you have to go across your area to an appointment that falls thru. grrr. But whatever.

My new companion is Elder Loertscher. It sounds like learcher, strange I know. He is pretty cool, Hes from West Jordan, and hes been out for about 10 months. so 5 more than me. Wow, 5 months... crazy. At the end of this transfer I'll be at 6 and a half! weird. Elder Loertscher is ok, he is one of those number crunching chess champion type of guys. But that's ok, hes a good missionary.

Our Area is pretty cool, the people here are really nice, and love to talk to us, witch I find really strange. I'm not used to people listing to us... But we have 1 person with a baptismal date for the 30th. The other Elders were working with him for a while. His name is Nate. Hes pretty cool. We also found someone on Friday named Brook. We taught her on Saturday and she came to church yesterday. She likes what she hears, and will probably be baptized soon, so that's exciting. Finding people to teach is really easy here. so that's good :)

But the work is going good here, and I'm excited to get to know the ward better. I hope all is well back home.

Oh yes, my new address is

2502 Babcock Road #2108

San Antonio, TX 78229

Feel free to send me a whole bunch of letters!!!!!!!

Well send everyone my love. Thanks for all the support, talk to you next week

     -Elder Allen

Just Pictures

Elder Allen sent us pictures this week.

Giving Service

This week has been awesome! On Friday (I think) we gave service to Brother Arce, our ward mission leader. It was great. We went back out to this Ranch he has. He’s the one with a house inside a barn. We helped his less active son finish the ceiling in the upstairs of this room he was building (don't worry I took pictures).  After we helped him with the room, we moved a bunch of pipe. We chained it to the bucket of his backhoe and moved it to where he wanted it. It was really fun, I miss working on the Farm!  (I’m not sure how much “work” he ever did on the farm, but it looks like you’ll have free labor when he gets home Mark.)

We are working with a few less active families. The Ransoms and the Woods.  We have been praying and fasting to know how to help these families make the right choices. The Ransoms are coming along pretty well. The Woods not so much. But we’ll keep doing our best. 

As of right now we don't have to many people that were teaching. Everybody seems to be too busy for us and our message. We are working on being more bold to people, so they will know the importance of us on their doorstep.  We’ll keep trying until we find someone that is willing to put some effort into the commitments we leave with them.

I'm learning a lot from Elder Morgan, we’re getting along great. I still love Georgetown, it’s a great place.

I hope everyone is doing well.
   -Elder Allen

Spring is here in Texas!

(It looks like his back is all better, or it will need surgery again.)

So this week has been really nice. The weather has been in the 70's, and it's also been really dry, so it feels a lot like home. Our investigators are progressing really well, so hopefully we will have a baptism or two coming up soon. Hmmm, nothing really funny happened this week. Elder Morgan and I are getting along really well, we have made a lot of inside jokes, but nothing really worth mentioning. On Thursday we had a mission wide spring cleaning party. All the Missionaries cleaned their apartments for 7 hours on Thursday. It's nice to have a clean apartment. We threw away a lot of junk. (oh that reminds me, I'm going to be sending a box home in the next few weeks full of stuff I don't need right now) well that's the only news I have for this week. I hope everybody is doing well back at home. Thanks for all the prayers and letters!

Love
  Elder Carter Allen

Elder Morgan

 My new companion is awesome! He is Elder Morgan. He's from Sacramento California! He lived in Carmichael. We looked it up on the GPS (because I had grandmas Chris' address) and he only lives like 10 miles away! So that's pretty cool. He has been out on his mission for 10 months, and he's already trained someone, who is now training. Pretty crazy, and way fun. I'm excited to serve with him.
The weather here is pretty good, right about 70 most of the day. It's pretty dry here compared to the rest of the mission I hear. The weather feels just like home to me. I'm loving it.

So that's about all I have to say about this week... our investigators are doing pretty good. still working on them. None of them came to church yesterday, so that's a bummer, but all is well. We have a bunch of potential investigators, so we're excited about that haha. Actually we talked to a guy that had a "work in progress" looking car, so I asked him about it. It was a 90's ish Pontiac Sunfire or something close to it. He had the whole interior out and had the car sitting on the ground. He's putting hydraulics on it. We talked to him about it for a while, then we started talking about the gospel, we was way interested. I'm excited to  teach him. Cynthia and Ty are doing good. Chris is doing pretty good too. We had a baptismal date set up for him, but since he didn't come to church, we'll have to move it back a little.

Thanks for all the Prayers and mail and e-Mails!! I love you all, Have a good week!

Still in Georgetown!

So, The big news!! I am staying in Georgetown, and my companion Elder Roland is leaving. We don't know where he is going, or who my new companion will be until Thursday when we actually do the switch. I'm pretty excited.  The Mission President made a change, so now every P-Day will be on a Monday, so no more of this Tuesday junk. This will be nice.

This week was really good. We helped Moe (the guy we baptized on Christmas) replace the cap and rotor in his truck. It was fun. I also got a flat tire on my bike this week. We went to a little ma and pa owned parts store and I bought some goop for my tire. It works just like new now. I love fixing things and working with my hands! It was great =D I also loved being in that parts store. It made me miss Auto Zone! I really did like working there. 

We also went and gave some service to our Ward Mission Leader. He is pretty cool haha, Bro. Arce. He's crazy, but cool. He lives like 30 min away from Georgetown, out in the boonies. It reminded me a ton of Palmyra and Lake Shore. We even stopped in a town called Weir and had lunch at a burger joint in a gas station. The town was just like Salem or Santiquin. The burger place was EXACTLY like the one in Santiquin. It was awesome. lol Elder Roland said it was the best food he's ever had, but it was just as good as the Santiquin place. I felt right at home. All the people were local ranchers and farmers. Just like driving around in Palmyra. But, I still love Utah, and still don't want to live here in Texas after my mission.
Bro Arce's house was very interesting. It was just a giant barn! HUGE! more like a warehouse or something. (I took some pictures) but it was probably close to the size of a football field.... maybe. But inside he had 2 houses. it was interesting. They just framed some walls and turned one side into a living quarter, and the other side was the same. He lived in one side, and his son lived in the other. The middle was empty for parking the cars and using it as a shop. It was pretty cool. We helped his son frame a room for the upstairs part of his house. It was pretty cool. Oh Harris, he had like 4 Border Collies! I took lots of pictures for you.

Our investigators are doing good, Ty Lund is still progressing, and is still working towards her baptismal date for March 12th. Cynthia is still doing okay, just waiting for some things to clear up. We found a few more families that we are excited about.

Well that's about all I have this week, I'm excited to get a new Companion, and I'm excited to stay in this area, it's great. Thanks for all the Letters!! I got like 6 letters this week!!!!!!!!!! My companion wasn't as happy as I was of course... but it was great! Thanks so much! I love hearing from all you at home. Thanks for the prayers and support!

Love
   -Elder Allen

Biking Away!

This week has been really good. I'm all better from being sick, and the weather has been pretty warm! Its great! In fact, the weather has been so good lately, that we've decided to ride our bikes a lot more, or ya know, at all :) We rode all day Friday. It was great, I loved it!! My companion, not so much though... haha. We guessed we rode about 20 miles or more that day. He was pretty tired by the end, but surprisingly I felt fine. It felt so good to do something again. We biked about 10 miles the next day. I loved it.

As far as our investigators... Ty Lund, and older lady, in her 70's, has a date for baptism on March 12th! Were so excited! She did have some problems with accepting the idea of a Latter Day Prophet, but we told her to keep reading the Book Of Mormon, and she is confident to get an answer through her prayers. She’s so cool.
She is the only Investigator that we have right now that is actually progressing. We did find an awesome Family last Sunday, and talked to them again yesterday. They really want to find a church. (It’s interesting... People in Texas pick and choose churches like teachers in an Elementary school here. So many choices, and they believe it’s the same message, just presented differently) But anyways, they like what they have heard about us, and want to come next Sunday. We are going to try to teach them a Restoration Lesson before that though. They are way cool, and we have a good family to fellowship them. It'll be good :)

I finished The Book Of Mormon in my personal studies. Our Mission President has given us each a pass along copy, and has instructed us to Mark it a specific way. Faith in red, Repentance in yellow, Baptism in orange, Holy Ghost in green, and Other/Endure to the end in blue. I just finished it. I Honestly think it was the first time I've read it all the way through. It was a really good testimony builder. I think i might start over again, or start in the bible, I'm not sure yet :)

Well that’s about all the news I have for this week... I'll be sending home allot of pictures (like 400ish [mwahaha!]) soon so you can see some of them :) Thanks again for all your love and support! I miss you all and hope everything is good back at home :)

Love-
   Elder Carter Allen

Texas Address

Until transfers....

Elder Carter Allen
2111 Austin Ave. #6103
Georgetown, TX 78626

HAPPY VALENTINES DAY!!

HAPPY VALENTINES DAY!!
  Hello everyone! Happy Valentines day! This week has been pretty good, it went by really fast! We have been doing a lot of knocking. I'm so glad I'm not sick anymore, I still have a cough, but I'm feeling much better! Thanks for all your prayers :)  This week our Ward Mission Leader is having us focus a lot on less active members. So its been fun teaching them and their families. Were trying to find ways to get them re-activated. Most of our Investigators are not really progressing. So that's no fun, but oh well, we'll keep trying. Yesterday we helped clean a members house... that was pretty weird. She is a less active recent convert. She was baptized about a year ago. She is struggling with a lot of things. When we called her and asked her if she was coming to church, she said that she had a lot to do, she would be having an inspection on Monday and she had to clean her house. So, we went by and helped clean after church. Oh boy that place was a mess. We scrubbed the walls, and I scraped all the food off the stove, and scraped the refrigerator clean. We helped her out for about an hour and a half. It was kind of fun . Hopefully we can get her coming back to church soon. Other than that we didn't do anything exciting this week... just knocking and talking to people.

Love to everyone,

Elder Allen

Plymouth Special Deluxe Sedan

This week we have been instructed to look at the new http://www.mormon.org/ It is really cool! Have you looked at it yet? It basically answers any questions any investigators might have about the Church. It is a great teaching tool. Every member is invited to make a profile. I encourage everyone to do this! Just think, you can have people look up your profile, and they can read your testimony and what not on the site. It's really cool. There is a chance that our mission will be able to make profiles as well, but for now, we aren't going to.

You would never guess what kind of Car we saw yesterday! A 1947 Plymouth Special Deluxe Sedan EXACTLY LIKE MINE!!! We even talked to the guy who owned it. It was really funny, him and his friend were working on a boat (that had the exact same engine as one of mine did) and I asked him about his car. He let me take a bunch of pictures of it. His came from Colorado too. He thought it was cool that I had one exactly like it, but his had a different motor. He was saying how it could be worth $80,000 but only if you are willing to put $100,000 into it.... The Plymouth's really aren't worth very much, at least not right now... :) It was really cool though.

Oh, this week we went on Exchanges again. This time I went with Elder Barr up in his Area, Walsh Ranch. It was okay, except it was really windy, cold, and I was way sick. No Bueno.

As for the work... not very much work happened due to the weather and me being sick. Most of our appointments fell thru as well. But we did have a few good lessons. We are teaching a guy named Robert (Bob) who is a hardcore Baptist, and the lessons are going well. He's a cool crazy old guy. One of the members here Ike Thorpe knows him, so that helps a lot to. Cynthia is still doing good, just waiting for her court date.

Yesterday was Stake Conference. That was really fun. It was a broadcast from Salt Lake. It was only for Texas, New Mexico, and Oklahoma. We got to hear from Elder Marlin K. Jenson, Sister Ann M. Dibb, Elder M. Russel Ballard and President Monson. It was really cool.

Well that's about all I have for this week. Hopefully next week will have more exciting news. Thanks for all the love and support from everyone! Tell everyone Hi for me, I love you all.

-Elder Carter Allen