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