AH-BI-NAH-DEE

Hellooooo everybody!! This week was so crazy. Not only did we have a ton of lessons but we had a ton of CRAZY lessons. I remember when I first got to this area, I had had one lesson with a member and one lesson with an interested friend in the first three weeks. Now we are hitting upwards of six member lessons and this week we had seven lessons with our friends. Diligence works, my friends. And also, mostly, God is just kind. But most of these lessons were just so insane, it was awesome. Most of them fall under both the funny category and the milagrito category, so I'm just gonna put them wherever I see fit. 

Also in other news, I got my itinerary this week, and so I will be flying out to Uruguay on February 4th!! I'll be leaving here around 3pm, and arrive in Montevideo around 8am. It's gonna be a party, and I'm SO pumped. 

THINGS THAT MADE ME LAUGH:

• Notice this theme throughout this email. Because of mission rules, we have to teach guys outside, and we are only teaching guys somehow right now. So I literally don't think I've warmed up once this week (especially since we don't have heating in our apartment) but it's been a party and we've made it work. The coldest lesson we had was 19 degrees, but one of our friends served a mission in Canada and she told us we weren't allowed to complain. So I'm not complaining. All I'm saying is I've worn a skirt in 19 degree weather for hours on end this week, and I'm not dead yet, so if that ain't a testament that God is real, I don't know what is. But teaching people where you can only see their eyes cause they're so bundled up, and you can still tell they're shivering, has made me laugh a lot. And don't worry, lots of lessons have been cut short so we don't kill our friends. We'd rather teach the plan of salvation rather than experience it for now. 

• We had a lesson with our friend Alan this week, and there's a lot I can't say about it, but let's just say we all got into the car after and BUSTED up laughing. And didn't stop for a full 15 minutes. His friend Andrew Joshua or Joshua Andrew, (I dunno he gave us both names and we don't know what to pick so we just pick a different one ever time. Sometimes I just say both names. Good times) he came too since he is Alan's roommate, and honestly I don't know if they learned anything. There was a lot of changing of subjects and showing us random cool things on their phones and pointing and laughing hysterically (not coming from the missionary side) and our poor member friend Brian was there, who sat on the one chair with a cushion they had in their backyard, and it had snowed the day before, so it was sopping wet, and Brian stuck it through. This man stuck a tissue he had in his pocket down on that chair, and pulled through. Poor guy. Proud of him. Oh also, Andrew Joshua pronounced Abinadi's name like ah-bi-nah-dee so honestly I'll never read Abinadi the same again. 

• We also had a lesson with our friend Solomon. Something I've learned is that missionaries are sometimes just therapists. This dude talked for a whole hour about life, and didn't give us two seconds to get a word in. I hope he feels sufficiently therapisted. Finally we just said we had to go, testified of the Book of Mormon, and asked him to read a pamphlet we gave him. We called him later that week to see if he read it, and he said "yeah... I read it. The first page. There was just..... so much.... Jesus." This was coming from a man who all his clothes have Jesus on it, and he feels its his duty to street preach about Him. So I'm not sure why one page about Jesus was a problem for him, but that sure had me laughing a bit. 

• This week, we kinda got rebuked by our mission president (our whole mission, not just us) that we need to get up and get outside and exercise in the morning. So we've been putting in extra effort to make that happen. There's a park with a tennis court down the street, so most mornings this week we've gone there and exercised. Problem is, it's icy and snowy and like negative a million degrees. So catch us at 6:40 every morning walking out the door in our coats and hats and all bundled up, just to walk in circles around a tennis court. And sometimes play pickleball if there's not snow. But if there's not snow there's ice. So then I just ice skate on my tennis shoes. Great fun honestly. So president, if I die one morning of the cold, that one's on you. 

• This week, I got in Facebook jail. I've been in half Facebook jail for a while, cause it won't let me friend people "I dont know" but it's missionary work so everyone I'm friending I dont know. So you gotta beat the system in a long and complicated way. But I got fully in Facebook jail and it wouldn't let me friend ANYONE. Turns out I had over a thousand friend requests and it told me if I didn't quit it, they'd delete friend requests and also not let me friend anyone else. But.... my phone is in spanish. So I didn't know what the heck it was saying so I ignored it. And they put me in jail. Woops. There goes the saving of souls for the next week or so. 

MILAGRITOS:

• Okay so there were SO many miracle lessons this week. First off, we had a SICK lesson with our friend Joey. This one was kinda funny cause we went to the church, grabbed some plastic chairs, and sat in the parking lot of the church. In the dark. And had an insane lesson with him. The spirit was so strong. Ugh, it was awesome. And Joey is SO cool, and got tickets for the DC temple open house, and then invited us to come with him. Literally the most tender thing in the world. In addition, we were talking about our weeks at the beginning of the lesson, and Sister Weight goes "Sister Allen got some pretty exciting news" and without hesitation Joey goes "WHEN ARE YOU LEAVING TO URUGUAY??" which seriously made my whole life cause I don't think we had talked about it since our first time meeting, so yay for Joey being the nicest human in the world. 

• Okay so essentially don't even ask me how, but we got ourselves into a situation where we had a lesson with a basher. (Essentially a person who meets with missionaries just to tell them they're wrong and use the Bible to "prove" it) and so we were all nervous for this lesson, cause we knew he was a basher, but we get on the call and start talking and this dude is asking deep questions, with scriptures to prove his points, and all sorts of stuff. And oh my heck, Sister Weight knocked this out of the park. I've never seen anything like it. She validated his feelings, told him outright what he was right and wrong about, explained it in a way that made sense, but also just plain answered his questions, some of which I wouldn't have even known where to start. He had met with 10-15 different missionaries, and he said no one had ever actually answered his questions before. We literally watched him change from the beginning of the lesson, trying to prove us wrong, to the end, asking questions because he was genuinely curious and kinda shocked that she knew all the answers. And then he showed up at church the next day. It was awesome. Sister Weight is generally a pretty quiet person, so she doesn't do a whole lot of talking, but I maybe made two points and Sister Winder barely said a word. It was literally one of the coolest things I've ever seen. If anyone ever has any question about the gospel, ask this girl. She's so cool. 

• Okay okay so we had a lesson with Jairo (in a pho restaurant, which by the way pho is so insanely good I 10/10 recommend) and it was close to 3 hours long. He is on date for baptism, and we taught him the restoration again, clarifying some things and just teaching what he had forgotten. My favorite part was when we asked him what he thought about Joseph Smith and his story, he said "I don't know, I guess he just sounds a lot like me" which made me want to scream YES JAIRO HE IS cause look at all the good that came from Joseph Smith asking a question. Imagine the good that could happen if Jairo asked that same question. Pretty cool stuff. PLEASE pray for Jairo (hi-roh) so that he will keep reading the Book of Mormon and keep wanting to come closer to Jesus Christ. 

Looking back, we had SO many miracles this week. More than I can count, and definitely more than y'all want to read about in detail. Whether that was people who really needed the missionaries to reach out on the exact day we reached out, or talking to someone over Facebook, helping them become just a little more okay with themselves, or having four friends at church this week, or finding three new people, or growth within myself and my companions, or my Spanish improving, GOD IS REAL. AND HE LOVES YOU SO MUCH!! If I've learned anything from my mission so far, it is that, without a sliver of doubt, God loves His children. He loves me. And he loves YOU. Adores you even. He would do, and has done, anything and everything for you. Even when you feel lonely, even when you feel like you're on top of the world, even when life gets hard, God loves you. I don't know how to say that enough. My only complaint for my mission is that I'm not allowed to talk to every single lonely and sad and downtrodden person in this world (and all the happy ones and the in between ones). Because there are so many people out there, seeking for truth and goodness and joy, and they don't know where to find it. And for some reason, God has let me know of that. And I just wish I could share it with all 8 billion of us on this cute little floating rock. God loves His children. And that means you. Ever need a reminder of that? Email me!! 

Anyway, if I haven't mentioned it, GOD LOVES YOU!! Have SUCH a fuego week!

Love, Hermana Allen

I took like negative sixty two pictures this week so below are some of us one morning at the tennis courts when it was probably the same temperature as the bottom tip of an iceberg on mars.