*cat dies*

YALL!! HAPPY MONDAY!! Sorry this is probably like the 50th email all yall Utah folks are getting today, but I guess that's how it goes. Update! Still in Uruguay!! Straight vibing over here, I love it so so much. Spanish is wild, the people are SO good, the food is super bland until it's not and then it's really good, and the work is just coming along. 

THINGS THAT MADE ME LAUGH:

• Okay so this isn't funny it's actually kinda the worst thing to ever happen to me but it's fun I guess. So essentially a lot of people here need propane for who knows what, and so there's trucks that just drive around all day every day with propane and you can just buy it. But of course, how would you know they're driving by? So they pull some ice cream truck vibes and blast some music. Except said music is fur elise. Like. All the time. I have yet to go outside without hearing it at least once and sometimes when two of them drive by the music isn't synced up and also one or both of them is kinda pitchy, so the noise is just horrible. So yeah I will be in the apartment or in church and I think I'm hearing it, or be trying go fall asleep and all of a sudden my brain is like doo doo doo doo doo doo doo doo doo (°.°.°.°•. .•°) to that tune. Does that make sense or is that just in my head? Prolly just me. Anyway. It's fur elise. 

• Okay I would just like to preface this with Uruguay is so weird. It's in South America so you expect everyone to be Latino right? Yeah so they are, but they don't look it. There's definitely more people with dark hair here, but there are SO many blue eyed, blonde people walking around. So many cute curly haired blonde kids in church. There's even several red heads. I think I learned their history at one point of how this all happened, but I have no idea right now. So essentially I don't stick out much. AND SOMEHOW everybody knows I'm not from here. Obviously, if I started talking, they would know, but people take one look at us and start speaking to us in broken English. We probably get as many "Hello! How are you?" (Or some version of that, whatever they learned 20 years ago they they still only remember half the syllables) as we get "Hola! Como esta?". I don't know if it's the dress, or the tag, or what, but literally everybody knows. And people all the time will walk up to us and ask us where we're from. Literally can you imagine doing that in the US? That's so rude gahaha. But here? It's so funny I love it. They always ask what part of the US we're from and then say Ahh I don't know where Utah is and we say dang go figure. 

• Every night there's like crazy amounts of noises outside our window, and also it's Carnaval so it's even crazier, and last night a cat was like SCREECHING for like an hour it sounded like it was dying or something but then it stopped so either it's fine or it's dead. Woops. 

MILAGRITOS:

• Okay so this is the smallest thing ever but it was SUCH a testament to me that God loves me so so much. At mission conference, we sang Called to Serve and Hark all ye Nations (in Spanish obviously) and it was SO amazing and the spirit was just gushing out of all of us. It was amazing. I loved it. But also we're not allowed to sing in church cause covid or something I guess. And so we just listen to the piano, so all weekend for some reason I was just thinking about how sad I was we couldn't sing in church because I didn't realize how amazing it was and how much it uplifted me until we didn't have it. So I showed up to church yesterday and they made an announcement from the stake that we could now sing in church. Seriously after a full almost two years of not singing in church, this was the week they let us start doing it. And THEN the first song we sang was I Stand All Amazed, which has always been one of my favorite songs. Oh my goodness, Heavenly Father loves me so much. It was a fun little pick me up I didn't even know I needed. Also Latinos can't sing and I love them for it. 

• Okay so we had mission conference and UGH IT WAS SO GOOD!! The whole entire mission was there and Elder Godoy of the seventy was there and he and his wife spoke to us. It was incredible and I'm so grateful for it. Definitely the whole week I was praying for the gift of tongues to be able to understand what I needed to during the conference, and wow, the Lord really delivered. I missed a few things for sure, but I could understand pretty much all of it. And Elder Godoy is one of the funniest people ever, and just radiated the spirit. I'm so grateful for this gospel.

• I FINALLY got to see my friend HERMANA VINCENT!! I saw her like 4 times this week, since we're in the same zone, and a bunch of other random things, so it was SO FUN!! For all yall who don't know her, she was my roommate in college who got called to the same mission as me haha. Now we're just chilling on the other side of the world. And yes it's literally the hardest thing in the world to call each other Hermana Vincent and Allen. We are very bad at it. 1% better every day I guess. Also I got to see my friend from high school, Elder Peterson! Definitely forgot to get a picture but it was SO fun to see him! 

SPIRITUAL THOUGHT: 

Okay so essentially my personal studies this week have been SO good. It's weird. It's almost like when you pray for them to be good and for you not to fall asleep, it works. Pretty wild. Anyway I've just had so many cool insights. One of my favorites has been that Christ is just everywhere. Duh I knew that but wow. I've started marking Christ's name (any of His names) in my Libro de Mormon with a yellow marker and it's incredible. I was flipping through this week and there were just SO many marks, and I'm only in the book of Enos. It seriously felt like in tangled, when all of a sudden she sees the suns everywhere, and they've been there all along, but she just didnt notice, it was so ingrained in her life. So to relate that to Christ, I feel so grateful to have Him so ingrained into everything I do. And it's so amazing to have Him come up and realize just how grateful I am for Him and everything He has done from me. The Book of Mormon is truly a testament of Jesus Christ. The fact that I am halfway across the world from most of you is yet another testament of Him. He's incredible, so take a second this week to let Him show up and make Himself known in your life. Cause HE'S THERE!! 

- Hermana Allen