Oh my dearest family,
Oh goodness, I sure do cherish the time I get to read about how you are all doing! That is so awesome that you had such a wonderful Thanksgiving. I am so grateful you were able to spend it with family! I sure do love those pictures of little Ava and daddy. I LOVED them! Have you ever had a fried turkey? We have heard about them a lot from the members here and they say it is absolutely delicious and if we tried it we wouldn't be able to have it cooked any other way! Haha. Mmm, my mouth drools thinking about sweet potatoes. They are the absolute best,... probably one of my favorites to have at Thanksgiving time! Our Thanksgiving was so fun! We got picked up at about 10:30 in the morning... so Sister Johnson and I played a little card game before we got picked up which was fun! Then we went over and hung out with their family, mostly their grand kids haha... we got along really well with them. We played battleship! We then started making our moccasins which was really fun! We didn't finish them though.. it took a lot longer than we expected, but when I get them done i'll take a picture and send them on over! Then ate... which the meal was absolutely amazing. So they have a son who is married to a chef... who happens to be a guy... but regardless, he is an amazing chef. We had smoked tukey and another kind that was just cooked in the oven. We had stuffing, mashed potatoes, sweet potatoes, a green been casserole, rolls, and they had 8 different pies! A caramel apple pie, peach pie, raspberry chiffon pie, pecan pie, lemon meringue pie, key lime pie, pumpkin pie, and a cherry cream cheese pie. How awesome is that!?! The caramel apple pie was by far my favorite! We had a blast and were fed really well. After that we drove to Rapid City to look at the lights there and unfortunately they weren't starting to show them until the day after! But we found a cute park to walk around and see the lights! It was fun! But very cold!! I'll attach a picture... as you can see, our little noses are red, like rudolph the red nosed reindeer in the picture (:
The best christmas present I could ever get is to skype you! And I'm already going to be able to do that!!! But I don't know the exact plans... I will give you a call a couple days before and tell you what time we have planned to call.... If I hear more I'll let you know! I'm excited to be able to skype and talk with the whole family though!!!!!
Things this past week were quite slow. Nobody wanted to meet with us or really talk with us because of the holidays. But that's okay! We are starting to develop a strong friendship with one of the less active families, the Millers! I really love them! They have some things that are holding them back from going to church but we are really excited to be able to help them because we feel that we can truly help them come back. Sister Miller is our absolute favorite. They bought us a Christmas tree and ornaments for our apartment! So very nice of them!!!!! But we eat at their house every Monday night! They have a daughter who is going to school in Ogden at Weber State! I'm not sure if McKay knows her, her name is Marisa Miller... I showed her a picture of Mac and I and she didn't recognize him. She is super cute though! Wink wink.... (: hahahaha. Anywho... we are going to be skyping at their house for Christmas so you'll get to meet them! But Sister Miller is coming with us to a lesson this week and we are really excited! This lesson we have planned is a guy we tracted into and we left him with a restoration pamphlet and asked him to read it and if he was interested in hearing more to give us a call! So the other day we get a call and he wants to meet and talk about it!! That's never happened to us before so we were stoked! He has a good friend that is a member of the church which has given him very positive feelings about the church. We're excited for that lesson!
This past week we met with Norma and talked about how we can build a strong foundation through prayer, scripture study, and going to church. She is keeping the commitments to read and pray but she hasn't come to church yet. We committed her to come this past sunday and she accepted the invitation very positively! So we were super excited! Unfortunately, she didn't show up and come to find out she got called into work. It makes me so frustrated how work gets in the way of everythinge!!! But we just adore her and she has so much potential!
I think that it makes complete sense when you think about God wanting to teach all of His children. That's what I am trying to help people realize... is that He loves ALL of us so it makes sense that He visited more of His children... and just knowing that would give at least me enough reason to want to read it to see if that could possibly be true. But I don't know.. I'm biased. (: But yes, the way people are able to gain the knowledge of what we share is through the Spirit and only through Him and so we need to be as obedient and faithful as we can so we can have the Spirit to testify of the truth to them!
Anyways, life is grand. Time flies by too fast though... I can't believe Thanksgiving is already over... and before I know it Christmas will be too! Only 24 more days... WHAT?! Haha that's crazy! Before I even realize I am going to be on the airplane on my way home... its insane. I'm currently in Chadron (where elders in our district are serving) because we have Zone Conference tomorrow and so we are going to carpool. But we decided to have a District P-day... so we are here in Chadron about to go hang out with the Elders in the district. It should be fun! We are excited... but yeah... then tomorrow we have Zone Conference and we'll be able to meet up with more missionaries and our Mission President and his wife to edify one another and strengthen one another as we learn how to be better missionaries. I love Zone Conferences so I am pretty excited! It's so nice being able to be around more missionaries. I love my companion but its just us in little Hot Springs, so its nice to be able to be around more Sisters and Elders. Anywho, I love you all so much and can't wait to hear from you guys this next week! Always remember the wonderful quote from our loving Prophet. "Dare to be a Mormon, dare to stand alone, dare to have a purpose firm, dare to make it known." Keep being Christlike examples and continue to pray for missionary opportunities to arise for you. I love you all and hope you have a great week!
Love,
Sister Allen
P.S. the first picture is of Sister Johnson and I with some of the Birkholz' grand kids... Erin(the cute little girl), Sean(the older boy by sister j), and Rowan(the one kneeling in front!) The second picture has us with Brother and Sister Birkholz! A goofy picture of them but we just love them a whole lot! (:
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