Sugar cane and the sugar mill.  The air smells like sugar!

You should all be very jealous of me right now because i am serving in paradise, haha and im a missionary, so that is always a blessing! :) but i really really love this area! its is so tropical and i'm starting to feel the humidity, haha oh boy! there are "mountains" all around us completely covered in bush and the ocean and beaches are really close by. its so beautiful!  it is also so diverse here, there are aboriginals, people from islands all around australia, samoans, tongans, tahitians, fijians, and a lot from papa new guinea and the torres straight islands (islands inbetween australia and papa new guinea). but the people here are so humble and receptive to the gospel! we also share a car with the sisters but we haven't been able to use it because they live in our area and their area is far away so we have been walking, a lot. but i really like it! it feels good to walk all day and then at night my feet are just killing me that i can't walk anymore, thats when i know that I worked my hardest :) and we also get to talk to a lot of people on the streets by doing that! This past week we were able to get 7 new investigators and we have a lot of people we are teaching as well, so i'm really excited! 

So sister Yee is the best! she is seriously the sweetest person on the planet and she is such a powerful teacher! She is also very funny and so thoughtful! i dont think i could ever get mad at her, even if i wanted to. haha but she is 24 and she has an older sister and a younger brother. she goes home in february and she is on her 3rd transfer up here in cairns so i might only get to be with her for 2 transfers :( but we are going to make the most of them! she is a hard worker and she is so easy to get along with! we have already witnessed so many miracles together and ive already learned so much from her example! 

we have this one investigator named Song, she is from china and she lives in this huge mansion up on a hill that overlooks all of cairns, its so beautiful. but its kind of hard because she doesn't speak much english and she doesn't have a belief in God but luckily Sister Yee knows chinese so we try to teach her in english so we can help her learn but when she doesn't understand me sister yee translates for her. but its been awesome to see her progress and start to read the book of mormon! but im excited to start teaching people more so I can see them progress and come to know for themselves that it is true, because that is the most rewarding thing ever! 

But want to hear some sad news, so this month is the month that every quarter they have interviews with president and they have zone trainings with president for everyone!, except for those up north because we are too far away. so sad! i'm not going to see president until next april probably, and he leaves in june, but its ok :) also another sad thing, we have to wait an extra week for general conference because we are so far north.

so on sunday, we went to church and i am in a branch now! so i'm going to have to get used to saying president instead of bishop and stuff like that. pretty crazy! but my whole branch is all islanders and brown people, so i'm pretty much the only blonde hair/ white person but they are awesome! I love these people!  and we have already had a couple people come out with us for lessons, they are really good about that! Also it was the primary program this week, surprisingly there wasn't one little kid that was yelling or doing anything crazy like, but it was still cute! :) but it made me miss our home ward and seeing the little girls sing but i got over the small moment of homesickness as soon as i started working hard! working hard is the best medicine ever. 

well i love you all! and i would like to invite you all to pray and ask your Heavenly Father for something that you can let go of, something that is dragging you down and holding you back from becoming more like our Savior Jesus Christ. our mission president asked us to do this awhile ago and I just love it! there is always something we can let go of, and it is only through the atonement and his enabling power that we are able to do so. i love the scripture 2 nephi 2:25 "adam fell that men might be, and men are that they might have joy." if you look in the footnotes, joy is the potential to become like our Heavenly Father. that is true joy! putting off the natural man and having that eternal perspective that we can be with our Heavenly Father again as long as we use the atonement. i would also like to invite you to think about what the atonement means to you, and if you aren't quite sure, then study and pray for understanding and then apply the atonement, everyday. everyday. everyday. all day. :) and if you don't know how to apply the atonement, pray, and ask your Heavenly Father, and the spirit will tell you. i can promise you that. and i can promise you that you will be happier and feel the spirit more in your life as you do that! i cannot begin to express how happy i am right now! i love my Savior and for what he has done for me and for all of us! His love is infinite, and will never be able to pay him back but i can do my best, and use his atonement to show him my willingness to become more like him! 

well i love you allll soooooooo much!!!!! and sorry my emails are always so scattered and crazy, but i hope that you all have a great week! LOVE YOUS!!!!!!!! 

Hello errybody, did you have a good week? Mine was awesome! :) haha except it has gone by so fast and so much has happened... but guess what?!....so we find out if we are getting transferred on sunday night, but on saturday i was on trade offs with sister Bauman (my favorite person ever from idaho) and we get a call from the assistants. so i answer it and the AP asks me if we are full time car, so i say yes, and so he asks if we could pick someone up from the airport coming down from up north, so i say sure, so he tells me the flight number and then he says he is going to spell out the sister's name. so he starts spelling it out while i am copying it down, and i spell b r e a n n a and i think, oh the sister must have the first name as me, then he does the last name a l l and so i stop him and i was like, why are you spelling my name? i know how to spell my name, and he says because you are going to cairns! i was so shocked! but apparently they call on saturdays if you are going up to the northern zone so after I got over the shock they told me my flight was on monday at 7:15 and that it would take 2 1/2 hours so yup, now IM IN CAIRNS! (pronounced cans)  so i had to say good bye to some of my favorite people ever, which is sooo sad and so hard! but i'm so excited for this change! I guess when you go up north you have to do district meeting and zone meeting over skype (weird huh!) because all the areas are so spread out! also, everyone that comes up north stays for like 6 months so if I stay that long I will be here until my half way mark... that is so weird to think about! also that means that I wont see president or sister henderson until the transfer that they are going home, so that is super sad as well, but i could not be any more excited to be in cairns! ahahahahah! But when I was talking to all of the missionaries and senior missionaries, they were all saying that this is the best area in the whole mission!  it is also sister mewa's area that she served in last year, so thats cool! so yup, now I am with sister Yee! she is from singapore and she is 24. there are also 2 other sisters in our flat that we are sharing and one is from samoa and the other sister is from idaho! but i love having 4 sisters in a flat! plus our flat is sooo nice. ill have to send you pictures but it is really nice! but man is it beautiful here! Its soo tropical and as soon as I got out of the airport I could feel the humidity. So pretty much I have been blessed to go to the best area in my mission in the hottest part of summer! and sorry that email was all over the place... haha I will work on that :)

1. saying goodbye to sister mewa, im gonna miss her! (please write her on email, she loved your letter but her family still isn't writing her) also notice my awesome green stone necklace from new zealand that a member gave me

2 me, sister talugia, sister mcmichael, and sister yee

This week flew by! Thanks to temple p-day and staying busy! but guess what, this week we find out about transfers.. so ill be emailing you next tuesday on transfer day! but man, i am nervous.. idk what to expect! but it makes me sad if i have to leave some of these people i have come to love soooo much! but i will do whatever the Lord asks me to do! 

So funny story, this week we were visiting this old lady and we were trying to teach her about the restoration and so we gave her a pamphlet to follow along in and she just opens it up and flips through the pages and starts reading about joseph smith and how he got the preisthood and stuff and she just looks at the picture and points to joseph smith and says "that must be billy graham." or some name like that, she said he was some religious guy for way back when but it was so funny cuz she wouldn't really let me and sister mewa talk and explain who it was.. ahh man! and then she was talking about other religions that she had seen and how there was this one called the holy rollers and they would roll up in white sheets and roll down the isles of the chapel, so crazy! 

So it rained this past week but its weird, when it rains here its just like a constant mist, its hard to explain, but its crazy! also we were driving home one day and it was dark and there were so many bats flying everywhere! it was crazy! also we saw this HUGE snake skin by someones front door that was probably like 9 feet long and we got scared and ran away, it was huge! 

 But i hope all is week, and i love you allll sooo much! i pray for you everyday! and i hope that dads foot is doing well and that he is not too sore. well i LOVE YOU!!!!! have a great week! and get ready for general conference coming up! wooot wooot!!!!

love, Sister Alldredge

Soo I think I might have told you all wrong but transfers aren't until september 22nd so I'm still with sister Mewa for another week and a half! wooot wooot. But this past week was a big growing and learning week (aka hardest week of my mission so far) but its all good! :) It's all apart of that refining process as we work towards that mighty change of heart! Sister Mewa was pretty sick so we had to stay home a couple days and take it really easy because she kept having asthma attacks. It was scary! One day last week we were at ward correlation meeting and she kept coughing so i went to get her inhaler in the car and after i got it she was coughing so hard that she was uncontrollably throwing up and i didn't know what to do! so luckily our ward mission leader was there but we finally got her to calm down and use her inhaler. so pretty much this past week i have been the mom and made sure she got her rest and didn't work too hard and made sure she felt ok as i closed my eyes and patted her on the back as she threw up in the toilet and stuff like that, super fun! :) So i got to stay home and watch mormon messages and write letters and read ensigns and stuff but funny story, as i was watching a mormon message, there was one that had my mtc investigator as the main person! i was so surprised because i thought for sure he wasn't actually a member! but it was crazy! its called "fathers and son" by m russell ballard and i taught dylan for like a week in the mtc.  

 

So i sent a letter home so look forward to that! :) but sorry i don't have much to write about this week, but not very much happened, but i will be writing you in like 5 days anyways so ill have some good stories by then! :) love yous!!!!

 

love, Sister Alldredge