Field full of wild Wallabies!

Sister Alldredge and Sister Yee on their way to Gordonvale!

 They told her that cold water is best for "mossie bites" so she soaked paper towels!

Hello loved ones! How ya going? The pictures from the Halloween party were the best! Soo cute. We are having a Halloween trunk or treat with our branch this friday, im pumped! and then we are going to Yarrabah for Halloween. So this coming week is going to be great! But this past week has been another good one, mainly because President and Sister Henderson came up to Cairns! Best day ever! We got to have a district conference thing with them and also interviews with President. I sure love those two! Also, crazy enough, next week is transfers! we will find out this saturday if we are getting transferred or not and so that means p-day will be on tuesday next week. But im not going anywhere so thats good news! :) I just loove it here in Cairns! Except it is starting to get suuper humid... ha Oh well, its good for me. 

So i don't really have a ton to say about last week... but we were working as hard as we could! we saw lots of miracles and were able to even teach 13 lessons in one day! I was so exhausted by the end of the day, but its such a good feeling to just give everything we have and to do the will of the Father. Thats been a question that has been on my mind during and at the end of each day..."have i done the will of the Father today?" Its a great way for us to reflect and to have the spirit tell us what we can work on so that we can live the law of consecration. You will all have to read the talk by Tad R. Callister on being a consecrated missionary... ill find out the title, i can't remember what it is but its so good! I want more than anything to be that type of missionary and person, because in turn we are able to become more like our Savior. 

So a miracle for this week: so i think i told yall about how Patty and Thomas came to church last week and his dad who is a pastor in the Torres Strait Islands dropped them off... well the dad came to church alone this week and man, it was awesome! he enjoyed sacrament meeting and then in gospel principles, we were talking about the church of jesus christ in former times, and the lesson was so good and all of the members were testifying and at the end, john said, "i think i just might come join this church when i come back down from TI." it was so cool! ahh man, i love seeing the change of heart and the spirit working as people come to know that the church is true! 

Well i love you all! 

love, Sister Alldredge

So this is gonna be a short email... because today the zone leaders had this brilliant idea to hike "the pyramid," which is the 2nd highest mountain in queensland and its a pretty much a vertical hike and hit was sooo hot and humid that i couldn't even breath! but it was fun! so I am dead right now. I can't feel my legs hahaha  but the zone leaders said it would only take like 3 hours but it took us like 5 so i only have like a half an hour to email. so sad. :) 

This past week has been awesome!!!!! and this transfer is flying by.. oh man its crazy! We were working very hard last week and we were able to teach more than 40 lessons! We have been blessed so much and have seen many many miracles! And we know that those only come through exact obedience and hard hard work and constantly praying and listening to the spirit. But listen to this... so lately we have been talking about how we wanted to go to part our of area that is kind of far away, its actually a aboriginal reservation called Yarrabah. But we were able to go this last saturday! Because it is kindof a sketchy town, we went with this super old couple in our ward from yarrabah that everyone knows and our ward mission leader.  But it was probably the best day of my mission so far! We were able to see a lot of people thanks to the Staffords. But they are the funniest old couple ever.. oh man, i want to send you this video we took of them in the car.. but she is going blind and he has short term memory so when they told us that they could come, they said that they knew exactly where everyone lived so they could just tell us where to go, but when we got there, our mission leader asked them where to turn, and sister Stafford says, "I can't see, you tell em sweety." and he was just like "I can't remember." Oh, it was so funny! hahahah It happened like 5 times! haha but thanks to the Lord's help, we were able to go to the homes of those that we were supposed to see, And pretty much all of them let us come in and teach them a lesson! I love aborignal people, so so humble! But the drive to Yarrabah is beeautiful! as we were driving through the canyon, there was a ton of bush and rainforest around us, and then we came up higher and it looked over the pacific ocean over by cairns and we could see the coast and the gorgeous beaches on the side.. so beautiful! I will take a picture next time we go! I can't wait to go back! But we really feel that we will be able to start a branch in Yarrabah. I know it is possible and I know we can baptize heaps with the Lords help! We are planning to have a big showing of Meet the Mormons soon and hopefully a sacrament meeting there one sunday, so that will be soo good! the work is hastening people! 

Also, update on Patty and Thomas, so they came again to church this week which was so good! and also another miracle, Thomas's dad who is a pastor from another church brought them and told us that he would come and bring Patty and Thomas next week!!!! 

Oh, Good news! President and Sister Henderson are coming up this weekend for interviews and a zone conference! Wooh! I am so excited to see them! 

But i love you all! and sorry this is a crazy scattered email, but just know i love you and I am so happy here serving the Lord! There is no where else i would rather be right now!!! 

love, Sister Alldredge

This past week has probably been the best week of my mission so far! first of all, general conference was soooo good! and it went by so fast! but i sure loved it! plus we saw so many miracles this week... ahh i just feel so blessed! I love being able to share this gospel with people and seeing how it can change lives!

So one of the many miracles that happened this week.... so we were watching the sunday afternoon session of general conference and it was just about to end and none of our investigators had came which we were pretty bummed about, but as we were listening to the closing song, the branch president's daughter told us that someone outside wanted to talk to us, so we went out and it was our investigators, patty and thomas! and they had biked all the way from our area to the elders area (where the chapel is) through the pouring rain to get to church! we were so bummed that they missed it but man, it was a miracle that they came!!!! Fasting works miracles, let me tell you!! :) but they said that they would come back next week, now that they knew where it was! 

Another miracle we had.. we were deciding who to go see because our appointments had all fallen through, so we were prompted to go see this former investigator and as we got there, we were talking to the 2 daughters and the mom pulls up in her car and then comes and talks to us. but then she tells us that she was wondering why the sisters stopped coming around and that she wants to join the church! ahh man! heavenly father is preparing people everywhere, we just have to be worthy and listening to the spirit to know who is ready! 

So this past week for our district meeting, our awesome senior couple, who i love sooo much (named elder and sister boyce from st george), told us that we would be getting trained on something that the rest of the mission wouldn't be getting until december, but president henderson said that they could train us on it because the cairns district is already ahead of the rest of the mission anyways, :) so they trained us and challengened us to memorize the living christ. so ive memorized the first 8 paragraphs so far, so its been really good! so i challenge you all to memorize it! it has brought me closer to my savior so far and i know it will help you feel closer as you do it as well! 

well i love you!!! and im soo grateful for this gospel!! It is such a blessing to have it in our lives!

love, Sister Alldredge

Ni Hao family! (sis yee has been teaching me chinese :)) well sorry i didn't email you yesterday, it was a public holiday so they decided to have a proselyte yesterday and change p-day to today! But i am glad that they did because we had heaps of miracles yesterday! But this past week has been sooo good! I know i say it a lot but i love being a missionary! even though its tough and the alarm goes off in the morning right after my head hits the pillow at night, there is a joy that you can't explain that comes from sharing the gospel and seeing people feel of the spirit and changing their lives because they know the church is true! I love love love it.

well this past week i have prawns (shrimp) and had to break off the head and shell and everything to eat it, it wasn't too bad actually... and apparently we are having homemade sushi at this japanese ladies house this week so I guess i will just have to get used to sea food, but its not too bad! also funny story, we were at the japanese ladies house (member in the ward) last week and we were talking about her cats and she told us that one of them died and she goes over to her shelf and pulls something out of it covered in a white sheet and it was her cat that had died, she had got it stuffed but it was so funny! me and sister yee were trying so hard not to laugh... ahh oh man! i love sister yee, we get along so good! 

Also this week we were in gordonvale, a small town that has the sugar cane fields, and we were walking around and we kept seeing people all dressed up fancy and stuff and then someone told us that they were having a big horse race! and so later on that day we drove by the horse track and it looked just like off of my fair lady! ahh it was so cool! 

So another funny story, so our assistant branch mission leader, who actually served in our mission and finished right before i got here, got up to bear his testimony and for his job he works with troubled youth and so he had said that 3 of his boys(age 11) he was looking after one night told him that they had seen jesus, so he asked them more about it, and they said that jesus was actually two girls, an american and a chinese. and then they showed him the pass along card and he realized that we must have talked to them! but apparently they had run away from the home but since we stopped them and gave them a pass along card and told them that they were children of God, they decided to go back home. Funny huh! 

So a miracle that happened this week, we were trying to figure out which street we should go knock and neither one of us were getting any feelings or impressions so we picked a street and it ended up just being a bunch of car garages so we walked to the next street and we finally remembered this less active that lived close by so we went to his flat and no one was there so as we were leaving his neighbor poked his head out the door and asked what we were doing. so we started talking to him and we found out he was from sweeden and he didn't believe in God but we told him what we do and started teaching him and by the end we were able to get him to pray right there on the spot! but it was so cool! For someone who didn't believe in God 5 minutes before to praying to him, wow what a cool experience! Also another cool experience, we were visiting this less active family and we sat outside for like 5 minutes trying to figure out what we should teach them because we didn't feel good about teaching them what we had planned, so after awhile sister yee mentioned the mormon message "hope of gods light" because it always made her feel the spirit so we decided to do that and it was sooo cool! the spirit was sooo strong and the father, who is really rough looking and has tatoos and piercing all over his face and stuff who never talks in our lessons in the past really opened up and told us about experiences when he knew that God was there and when he felt the spirit and the mom as well and she started crying. but it was just the best feeling ever! Those feelings right there make coming on a mission worth every second! Seeing people feel the spirit and have a desire to change because of it.. ahhh its sooo cool! and i am so grateful that the spirit is the real teacher and not me because then lessons wouldn't go over very well... :) God knows exactly what they need to hear and as long as we listen to the spirit, we can be that instrument so they hear exactly what God wants to tell them. 

Also, do you know if we have a relative named Alan Alldredge who served in sydney in like the 1970s? Because I met this man named Brother Jennings in the first branch who was baptized by him and he was wondering if i'm related to him, so thats pretty cool! 

Also quick last funny story... so you know the trick where you have someone sit with their legs apart and then you pour water and give them 2 forks to hold on to and then you tell them they have to stab your hand before you wipe up all the water?.. if you don't know ask kaylee or kyle, but i decided to do it to sister taulagia, so i told her i wanted to show her an object lesson that kaylee did on her mission and so i sat her down and gave her the forks and poured the water and told her i was going to try to wipe it up and stuff and also that she needed to think of what each thing represents in the gospel ( they really didn't represent anything, but it made the game less suspicious) so she was really concentrating and thinking hard about what it would represent and getting ready to stab my hands so i say, "go" and then i throw the towel over her head and pulled her legs so her bum dragged over the puddle of water... oh man, it was the funniest thing i have ever seen! we were all dying! she totally fell for it! hahahahah i sure love the sisters that we live with! :) 

Well i love you all sooo much! i hope you have a good week! and i hope dad's surgery goes ok! Let me know how it goes, and please send me pictures of the family each week, i forgot what you all look like. ;)  Also i cant even wait for conference this weekend..... i'm sooo excited!!!!!! LOVE YOUS!!!!

love, Sister Alldredge