"Tell Jesus I said hi!!"

Happy New Year everybody!! Woo woo!! I'm pretty crazy pumped to have the next 365 days (and a lil more) serving my Savior. 2022 is gonna bring some CRAZY stuff. I cannot wait!! First and foremost, I got the email just yesterday that I'M GOING TO URUGUAY!! Oh my heck I've never been more excited ever. I seriously cannot wait. I am going to miss the people of Maryland SO much, but we will wait to get sad until I'm leaving and just be happy for now. My departure date should be February 3rd!!! (Exactly one month from today and yes I'm freaking out). Granted, I still haven't gotten any sort of email about my visa application, so hopefully I can get that and actually go! So please send prayers my visa info will come through and I can get everything done in time! And other than that, it was a pretty normal week, so we shall get right into it! 

THINGS THAT MADE ME LAUGH:

• Okay this first part should fall under the milagro section because WE HAVE WIFI!!! We literally haven't had wifi in our apartment for 3 weeks now (give or take I've lost track of time) which has been a disaster because we drive to the church literally every day to do Facebook finding, BUT we had several different people come to the apartment to help us fix it and it's finally up and running. So YAY FOR MIRACLES!! But the last person who came, was just the most cheery dude in the whole world. I always think it's hilarious when people walk into missionary apartments who don't know who we are because we have a tiny couch, a bunch of folding plastic tables, a bunch of folding chairs, beds that are practically cots with suitcases under them, and no computer, TV, or any sort of actual normal people thing in sight. And a whole lotta pictures of Jesus. Haha, so they always ask questions and we always teach them wayyyyy more than they bargained for. So after a little bit, this dude says he's not super interested in learning more, but on his way out, he goes "Tell Jesus I said hi!!" And you bet in my prayer that night I let Heavenly Father know to tell His Son that the Comcast dude said hi. 

• So before we got our wifi fixed, we were planning one morning, and realized our best bet that day was to drive to the church in the morning and stay there literally all day. So we were out the door at 10am and we pulled back into our parking garage at 9pm. Literally 11 hours at the church. It was insane. And considering the church doesnt even have comfortable seating, it was quite the day. Pretty much every 45 minutes, we got bored and walked into a different room to sit on our phones until we got bored again and moved again. One thing that spiced that up, was we walked into one room, and there were egg shells EVERYWHERE and yellow streaks all down the wall, and it was very confusing, but someone egged the church. But just one room. And a very tiny room at that. And mostly just the chalkboard. So that was wildly exciting. Happy New Year??

• We had exchanges!! Sister Mink is literally HILARIOUS and I love her so much and she's going home soon and I beg her every chance I get to steal her whole closet. I'll keep you updated. 

• Recently, we have found out that me and Sister Winder apparently sound identical over the phone. Which is singlehandedly one of the most entertaining and useful (until it gets confusing) things in the whole world. First off, it means our new district leader was confused for a whole long time because we just sound like a person who can't get her thoughts together and is just all over the place. We knew our last district leader couldn't tell us apart so we just messed with him, and now we know this one can't either, so we have fun with it. When we're doing serious stuff every one of our comments have to start with "Hi I'm Sister Allen..." or "Hi this is Sister Winder...". When it does come in handy though is when talking to people we don't know very well. Because people get confused all the time that we all share a phone, so when another person starts talking, they always get way confused. So we've figured out if we just don't interrupt each other (which is very difficult) we can have a full on conversation talking with a person, and they think it's just one of us. So picture us hand signaling to each other to decide who will take the next sentence and trying to not share personal stories that contradict the last personal story. My personal favorite was when this guy was asking us if we grew up in the church, and so sister winder said she did, but her dad is Jewish and explained that whole thing, and then without thinking I shared my thing and said that I've been a member my whole life, and so have my parents and grandparents, and this dude just paused so long and was like ummm okayyyyyy. And then finally he goes WAIT AM I TALKING TO TWO PEOPLE??? And we DIED and then explained and we were talking over each other and he was like I've literally never been more confused in my life wow. But he told us we pulled it off until I messed up haha. So good work us. 

MILAGRITOS:

• This week was FULL of milagritos!! First off, our whole mission is very sick and very full of covid. Seriously half our mission has covid at this point so that's cool. While both me and Sister Winder both got sick this week, it was just a cold, so that is an amazing milagrito. Also prayers for our mission so that no one else gets sick and also the missionaries don't go insane at home for the next two weeks. 

• So when our ward combined with the other YSA ward, some funky stuff happened with our Area Book and literally all the records got lost so that was spooky but on Saturday we FINALLY got them back. So now we have 300 more people to contact, in addition to having a ton of friends we didn't know we had, who hadn't been talked to in a month. So the night we got them, we called them all, and every single one either answered or called us back. Which literally never happens. So now we have a heck ton of friends which is SO AWESOME!! God is good. 

• We went metro finding, and to be honest, sitting down next to a random person next to you and just striking up a conversation about religion is way harder than you'd think. But I'm getting way better at it and on New Years day, we went to the metro and it was seriously dead. Practically nobody there. But we talked to three people, all of which were YSAs, and all of which were asking us questions about being missionaries and such. So that was awesome. Also, we got invited to go to a concert with one gal who was on our way to said concert. It was only $9 so I almost said yes.  

• One night this dude called and he was speaking Spanish so I started talking to him and he knew he was calling missionaries and wanted the address and time for church on Sunday, so I told him it was at 9 and I'd text him the address (its a miracle I knew the info for the Spanish ward) and was telling me a whole story about how he works all the time, and then said he couldn't go to church. And so I was like oh because you have work? And he goes "uhh no. Because I don't have the address" and I was like ....fair point sir. Anyway I think he was drunk but I gave his info to the Spanish missionaries, even though I was very sad I couldn't teach him. He seemed so nice AND I understood his Spanish perfectly. 

• For a few weeks now, for some reason I've been thinking about tamales and how good they sound. I literally love tamales so much it's unreal. And on Thursday, our friend in the ward, Chris, came to sports night and told us that when he went home to New York, and told his mom that we had told him a few days earlier that we didn't have any Christmas plans, he got full on rebuked by his mom and she told him he should have stayed in Maryland for Christmas and let us come over. Which is hilarious, and so sweet of her to yell at him, even though we had an amazing Christmas and he shouldn't have done that. So to make up for it, she made us tamales. And intensely good ones at that. Literally the best tamales I've ever had in my life. They were unreal. So shout out to Chris' mom for making miracles happen.

SPIRITUAL THOUGHT: 

Guys. Spanish is AWESOME. I'm literally not even in a Spanish area and I'm obsessed with the language. In reading the Book of Mormon in spanish, you learn so many more concepts and the Lord teaches you so much. My favorite thing is that in Spanish, the words "to adore" and "to worship" are the exact same word. How incredible is that? What if we went to church to adore God? What if we prayed to adore Him more? What if we sang songs in adoration of Him? What if we read the scriptures and learned more about Him so we could adore Him even more? HOW COOL IS THAT?? Anyway, let's all adore God a little more this week. And if you're feeling it, learn Spanish so you can read the Book of Mormon in spanish. Your life will be blessed I swear. 

Anyway, that's about it but feel free to email me any time!! I wanna hear about your lives and whats going on!! I love you all!!

Love, Hermana Allen