HEFTY HEFTY HEFTY

Hey all! Wow wow wow what a week. It's been pretty hefty. I think my subject line is the slogan for the garbage bag brand, but I cannot Google it, so if it's not just ignore that. It's been THE craziest week of my life but so so good. I live in Maryland now! Specifically Wheaton, Maryland. Pretty cool place and I'm sure it's full of good people, none of whom I've met yet. My area is over a YSA ward! So we cover a pretty big area but we're only in charge of the 18-30 year olds who live in the area who are single and don't have kids. And they have to be interested in the gospel. Such a fun lil challenge right there. It makes Facebook finding very interesting, because we have to do some serious stalking to figure out if they meet the requirements. If they don't, sometimes we still contact them, we just have to pass them off to other missionaries and that's no fun. Still fun, but less so for us. My ward is in Potomac (puh-tōh-mic) which is singlehandedly the prettiest place I've ever been. Every house is STUNNING and some are literal mansions with white fences and acres of beautiful farmland. Ugh I love the east coast. We are a little behind Utah in fall, but in a few weeks I'm gonna cry from the prettiness cause there's SO MANY TREES. Where I live though (a little outside my area boundaries) is an apartment building called the Exchange. AKA the great and spacious building. It's 17 stories of apartments, plus a whole grocery store on the bottom floor. Kinda wild. They sell bright pink beans there. There are several other missionaries that live in the exchange. Several sets of sisters and one (?) set of elders. The sisters run laps in our sketchy apartment parking garage every morning for exercise. We've only done that once, because in the words of my companion "we always end up talking more than we end up exercising". And that's the difference between her and me. She'd rather do an ab workout. And I'd rather do anything else. I'm pretty sure that's her only flaw though. That she likes exercise. And now that I think about it that's probably more my flaw than hers. But yeah she's AMAZING!! Her name is Sister Weight and she is one heck of a missionary. She is crazy obedient, never says anything unkind except "that was stupid" when a driver cuts us off and we almost die, and is so so close to the spirit. She's pretty soft spoken, but literally cracks the best one liners. Also she mountain bikes. Wild stuff, she's so cool. She has been out on her mish for almost 8 months and she has been in this area for only two weeks. Poor girl has to tell me everything about everyone we're teaching and where we're going and she has no idea, so she's insane, working overtime to make this happen. So so grateful for her. ALSO I am in an English speaking area right now. This mission has more than double the amount of Spanish missionaries they need, so there's a whole lot of Hermanas walking around speaking English. President said he'd try to get me in a Spanish area next transfer, but for now I'm excited to be learning it all in English. And working on my Spanish every day. Anyway now into the funny things and the milagritos.

Things that made me laugh:

• my comp. Literally hilarious. My favorite thing she's said is "did you know my great uncle sculpted the statue of liberty on the Washington DC temple?" ...... angel Moroni sister weight, not quite the statue of liberty. But this Moroni is holding the gold plates in one hand and his trumpet in the other so kinda the same vibe as the green French lady in New York. I'll give it to her.
  
• insights from conference. An excerpt from my notes: "if I get stabbed, bring passalong cards". If you don't know what I'm talking about, GO WATCH CONFERENCE! 
• I am very good at smelling things and very bad at identifying those smells. I have been my whole life. But now I can for sure tell you when I'm smelling weed. That's new. My neighbors are pretty cool people. They are so kind to share their smells with us. 

• I'm serving in a YSA ward, which is quite fun, and for sure entertaining. We have notes in our phone from previous missionaries, about each of the members and our friends, and they provide interesting information. One simply said "he's in jail rn. Maybe don't contact" One of the members responded to our text and said "I'm a little busy this week, the grandkids just came over". She's supposed to be like 25??? Anyway I wasn't quite sure how to respond to that one.

• I bought a bar of soap at the store. And it REEKED it literally smelled SO profusely of puke. It smelled SO bad but I didn't notice for a second and then I tried to convince myself it didn't smell like puke and so by that time I myself smelled like puke and then I got out of the shower and Sister Weight had made breakfast and I just looked at it and gagged so so bad I almost threw up. I felt awful cause it genuinely looked good, but then I had to live with myself smelling like puke for a whole day despite my best efforts to stop it. I literally covered my whole arms in hand soap it was so bad.  Anyway there was not a single part of that story where I was laughing but it feels as though I should have.

• The Neilson Family! The Neilsons are my mission presidents, and they have five cute kids! Johnny is a senior in high school. Planning to go on a mission even though he's spent the last three years "on a mission" He's a really good kid. Then there's Kate, who draws and crafts and sells stickers and such, so I got to talk to her about that! She is so cute and her stuff is amazing! Then there's Allie. Boy obsessed, dance obsessed, and very very talkative. She asked which of the elders I had a crush on, and when I told her I was a missionary, plus I hadn't even met most of them, she was mad. I asked her if she liked any of them, and apparently that was a dumb question. When there are 30 good righteous well dressed boys in your home every week, that really takes a toll on your little 12 year old brain. She rambled off at least 7 elders she's hopelessly in love with. My favorite (I dunno if we're allowed to have favorites) is Whitney. She said I can call her Whit or Whitney so now I call her WhitOrWhitney and she cackles every time. She's 8 and just got baptized and LOVES dance and theater and is SO cute and reminds me so much of my sister Grace. Her laugh is so cute and I told her I might not be staying here my whole mission, and she literally pretended to start crying. I straight up thought she was until she started giggling. She's a good little actor and I've already told her she has to hang out with Grace when she moves back to Bountiful. Their littlest is James and he's 5 and about as chaotic as can be. He came running in their house with a frog in each hand, probably giving them shaken baby syndrome, and showing all of us. Then the frog escaped under the piano and with 18 sister missionaries in the room you can guess how that went. And the parents of course are the BEST!! Such genuinely kind people who love the Lord and love their 235 missionaries.
  

Milagritos (mini miracles):

• first off I'm not dead. The Lord really takes care of His missionaries. There's been a lot of traveling and a lot of east coast drivers so we're counting that as a miracle.

• I got to serve at a food pantry! This was a milagrito for a million reasons. First off, it was such fun service! We got to fill tons of bags with lots of different food and then give them to all the people that showed up. It was so so fun. And the best part? Almost all of them spoke spanish!! So I got the opportunity to speak Spanish to like 50 people in a row for 3 hours! I was the only sister there who spoke Spanish, and that's a very loose term, so we had some misunderstandings, but I had several full conversations in Spanish. Which was awesome. I'm sure anyone from my MTC district is currently laughing at me because they haven't spoken anything but Spanish this week, but I'm SO grateful for the opportunity to serve once a week at a place where I know I can use my Spanish. I should probably learn how to say the word bag. Can't wait to go back next week! (PS the best part about the food pantry is its at St. Camillus Church. And right next to the parking lot we give food at? There's a friary. Which I thought only existed in Robin Hood. There's real friars and monks (maybe those are the same thing??) And they come out of their cute lil brick building in their robes and hop in their car and drive off. Pretty fun stuff. My goal on the mission is for someone to be so excited they saw a real missionary, and think something like "I didn't know they actually drove cars!") But for real, all the people at st. Camillus are INCREDIBLE people, just good to the core, it's so fun working with them.

• We've had a rough week when it comes to phones. Mine hasn't been set up and I haven't been able to get wifi, because I didn't have the password until today, and there's only one Sim card per companionship. So Sister Weight had the Sim card, but the dilemma was it didn't give her any mobile data. So every time we go somewhere (cause we both don't know the area at all) we have to use Google maps, and set it up with the wifi at the place we're at, and then hope it stays working till we get back to the apartment.  And not miss any turns. Cause it won't reroute us. Problem is, on one night, we did in fact miss a turn. And we were already running late because a meeting was pretty long. And with no data and no wifi, THE PHONE REROUTED! and we were able to get home. Literally such a miracle. So grateful for the Lord looking out for us.

•  So the funny thing about missionary work now, especially in the DMV (DC, Maryland, Virginia) is we can't knock doors. Like there are literally hundreds of people surrounded by me in my apartment (who seem to like tapping our roof/their floor at 10:30 every night so we can't sleep) and I'm not allowed to tell them Jesus loves them. Kinda painful honestly. So that's why Facebook finding is SO important! This week we reached out to all the people that the sisters had been teaching before us and asked them how they were doing and such. And a few of them responded! We also contacted every member in our area. Members seem to be just as bad at responding as our friends.
  

• In the YSA ward, they have church on Sunday (obviously), FHE on Monday, Institute on Tuesday, Sports Night on Wednesday, and the missionaries have a meeting with some members of the ward every Thursday. So we are driving to the church building 5 nights a week, and it's a half hour away. BUT the temple is on the way from my apartment to my church and as you're driving on the beltway, it just appears over the trees and at night its perfectly lit up and I'm shocked every person in the DMV haven't driven themselves on over there and converted themselves right then and there. It's stunning. But do you know what's even more stunning? The inside. I actually haven't seen it but temples are pretty cool so imma make a wild guess.

•  The big no duh miracle of the week. CONFERENCE!! We got to listen to words straight from the Lord. HOW COOL IS THAT?? Me and Sister Weight watched all the sessions in our little apartment on our phones. Pretty cool stuff. We invited all of our people being taught and all our formers to conference, which was like 30 people, and we're not positive, but we think one of them watched! Go Shamar! But watching it for myself was such a miracle. There were so many repeating themes and scriptures and just so much good. ALSO me and Sister Weight made crepes on Sunday! They were pretty dang good if I'm being honest. Enough that the whole Allen side would have been proud of me. Gotta continue conference traditions amiright?

• One theme I saw in conference was LOVE!! God loves us, we get to love Him, and when we love others, there is no contention and we can be happy. One scripture that stuck out to me was "his hand is stretched out still". I love that thought and that sentiment. His hand is always stretched out to us. All He asks is that we reach up to Him, and He will pull us the rest of the way. SO grateful for His love and mercy!

Sorry that was 12 years long but I LOVE YOU ALL and I hope you had a great week! Make sure you watch or rewatch conference! And I'd love to hear from all of you!

Love, Sister Hermana Allen