Hey family!!!!! :)

This was a really great week! The best thing that happened what that we had a all sisters meeting with Sister McSwain, all day long on wednesday! It was so fun and i got to see Sister Sweet, Enero and Lilo. My companions that I miss soo much... but i will send you pictures of it when they put them up on the ABM blog. They had a guest speaker and the STLs and well as Sister and President McSwain gave trainings, and we had lunch and dinner that the assistants served to us. And they had us all introduce ourselves, and it was so funny... our region went up and i introduced myself, and i mentioned that i like to play sports and exercise, and then Sister Costa went, and the first thing she said was, "i testify that that is true! She kills me every morning when we exercise!" hahaha so everyone thought that was pretty funny. :)

But we were able to do lots of service this week, mowing lawns, washing cars, folding laundry, vaccuuming and mopping, sewing pillows.. lots of service! which i love!

But i am so sorry for sending short emials for 2 weeks in a row.. i will repent and try to send you a longer one next week with more details...

Just know that life is good, training is a great learning experience and Sister Costa is heaps of fun!

Love you all!!!

love, Sister Alldredge

                                                                   1. Chae's baptism

                                          2. i may be smiling, but im not enjoying this at all.

        

              3. during our fun family home evening we are doing as a flat on friday nights :)

      

                                                              4. my dear sister sweet

5. me and my little golden

Oi Tudo bem! :)

hahah i think i have had companions from just about everywhere! So cool! Well this past week was crazy! On wednesday the goldens arrived and we drove to the mission home to meet them.. i was nervous! hahaha When we got there all of the trainers and the sister training leaders and zone leaders were there, and guess who i got to see... sister Enero!!!!!! i haven't seen her since may! It was a happy reunion and she totally started crying. :) ahhaha i missed her a lot! Then after awhile we went downstairs where President was talking to all of the goldens and then they looked back and all of us and started freaking out. hahahah it was so funny. It made me remember back to my first day on the mission... soo scary! haha Then the assistants started calling the goldens up one by one, and then describing their trainer, and then announce who it was, and the trainer would come up and hug their golden and get a picture. A lot of the time everyone is so awkward walking up and then giving an awkward side hug.. so its pretty funny to watch. :) so as I was looking at all of the goldens, i was trying to see which one was my companion (because i knew her name) and then in the very back of the room, i saw this tiny tiny little sister going crazy hugging onto her thai mtc companions as she sat there waiting. hahah and of course they call me her last... so when she went up, one of the assistants was describing me, saying even though i wasn't "large in stature" that i was mighty or whatever.. and then he called my name and before they could announce which area it was, i had already ran to the front of the room and almost knocked her over when we hugged. ahahahah and as we were laughing and hugging, sister costa says, "OH! shes small like me! " and so then everyone was laughing! She is hilarious, let me just tell you that right now. :) So that was a fun experience!

So Sister Costa is from Favela, Rio, Brazil. She has been baptized for 3 years and she is 26 years old. She was brought up in a pretty rough environment, and has lots of scary stories about bandits and things that happen in her home town. She has good english, but struggles to understand aussies because they speak so fast, but that doesn't stop her! It was so funny, the first door we knock on, someone opens it and sis Costa says, "does mary live here?" i kind of looked at her confused, becuase it caught me off guard.. hahaah then she introduced who we were and stuff, and then when the lady responded, she just looked at me really puzzled because she couldn't understand. ahahhaah so funny. also she will clap outside of houses and yell random names to get people to come outside. I try to tell her that we aren't in Brazil anymore but she doesn't care. hahah She did serve in Brazil for a transfer before going to the provo MTC for 9 weeks so she has been out for 3 months already. But one super cool thing about her... so awhile ago when Elder Anderson of the quorum of the 12 came to our mission, he was asking people to raise their hands from different countries, and when he said south america, no one raised their hands. So then he said, "well, when you get a missionary from south america here, you will know that i assigned them to come here." and Sister Costa is the first one in ages that has been assigned to the ABM! How cool is that?! I feel so honored to be her trainer. :)

Ok, funniest experience this week... we were door knocking and after talking to this guy for a bit, he said, "man, you two are short. When i first opened the door i thought you were hobbits!"... hahahahahahahahahha we were laughing so hard afterwards. hahah and a few more people have mentioned our height since then, so it will probably continue. :)

Well I love you sooo much! thanks for all of your support and love. Have a great week!

love, sister Alldredge

 

Me and Sister Costa!  My little Brazilian Golden!

Love love love these girls!

My family away from home!

Sister Costa trying to stay awake during planning....hahahahaha so funny.  She was pacing the floor and doing wall sits because she kept dozing off and not paying attention sitting down.  Just a tad bit of jet lag.

The 4 Sisters in the flat: Sister Salu from Samoa, Sister Custan from the Philippines, Sister Costa, and me

I know you are all dying to know what happened with transfers.......... so i'm staying, and training. woot woot. But i'm soooo sad that Sister Lilo is leaving! I will miss her sooo sooo much. But I'm excited to train! Plus they are adding 2 other sistesr in marsden and so there will be 4 of us in the flat. my favorite! Heavenly Father is so kind to me. But i think my golden will be from Brazil! But ill find out for sure on wednesday :)

but this past week was really good! I'll send you pictures next week when I get them from sister Lilo. Like last p-day, we had a nerf gun war with our zone. It was the best p-day ever! the elders set up this cool obstacle course in the cultural hall and we split up into teams and if you got hit you had to run to this room and recite a scripture before going back in. hahah it was so fun!

Also we got another sister, Sister Malau to come and stay with us this week to help her know how to train for this coming transfer.  And so one day we saw this part member family we have really been working with and the mom, Amy, broke down and was having a really hard time with everything. So we came back and cleaned and I did the dishes for 3 hours while sister Lilo and Malau cleaned the family room. It was so dirty and nasty, but somehow I made it through. :) And then afterwards Amy asked us what we were doing for dinner the next day, but i did NOT want to eat there. And so i was just like, well.. ill have to check my schedule but I think we may have an appointment,... so she said, thats alright, you can just come the next day. So i knew we were not going to get out of it.... so we went and had dinner and it wasn't too bad! I just tried not to think about what she used to make the food with and if she washed her hands or not... but i'm still alive so no worries. :)

also family, thanks for the letters and pictures! I loved them! :D kyle looks so cute in his mission clothes. :)

Well I love you!!!!

                                                                  1. nerf gun war

                                              2. our favorite family!!!!!! the sweet Taylors!

TELOFA! as you can see from the pictures, we had a pretty eventful week... from talking sister Lilo into letting me cut her hair.. to stake conference with elder walker of the 70 in our puletasi's.. to just enjoying this great work!!!

And as you have probably figured out, we find out this saturday about transfers..... pretty scary because will probably determine where i finish my mission and who my comp might be for the rest of it too... i would love love love to stay with sister Lilo, but we will see what happens. Apparently there are 10 new sisters coming in, and so from the big intake last transfer too that will need to be follow up training, and with all the elders, almost half of the mission will be training next transfer! So we will see what happens.... 

But quick funny story, so we were at stake conference and we went back to say hi to Chris and Emaunel and Chris says, "why do yous look pretty today?.." uhhh hahaaha #awkward. apparently we usually don't look pretty. hahahah 

Also we got to go on tradeoffs, so i went to pacific pines in the gold coast with Sister Evans. It is a very rich area where all of queenslands big amusement parks are. It was really beautiful and so fun to be with sister evans! Crazy that she is now my STL because i was hers when she first got in the mission! Its fun to see not only how investigators change and improve but missionaries as well. 

OH! We had another miracle! So wehad dinner planned with a member, and

she was telling us to come to her sisters house who is less active that had just moved into our ward boundary and have dinner there. So when she sent us the address it ended up being our next door neighbor in our apartment complex, hahah! crazy! and when we went, they told us that the less active's daughter is 9 and is wanting to be baptized with her cousin on the 25th of this month! So... miracle! and the mom said that she wants to come back to church, so that is a blessing as well! 

Well i love you all soo much

                                                1. I love all of the beautiful trees in this place!!!

                                                  2. With chris and emanuel at stake conference

                3. The puletasi (samoan dress) that Sister Lilos family gave me, so sweet of them!!

                                                                                

                                                                               4. Before....

                                                                               

                                                                                5. After! :D

         6. Stake Conference with some of our zone and our sweet Mission President & his Wife!

                                                   7.  New Zealand food with Sister Evans

                                            8. Tradeoffs with Sister Kunz and Sister Evans

Telofa! i hope your week was as great as my week! :)

I just want you all to know that Heavenly Father is such a merciful and loving Father... We were able to have the greatest miracle this week!... we had a baptism, well actually 2!! remember the first week in marsden when i told you about how a man in our ward called us and told us the family he home taught wanted their kids to be baptized... well we saw them that first week but they are always so busy so we haven't been able to teach them a ton leading up to this week but we texted her on tuesday this past week and she told us she had talked to Bishop on sunday and they planned the baptism for yesterday! so we literally had 4 days to pull together a baptism and finish all of the lessons. So let me tell you, this week was crazy! hahah! but i love these kids sooo much! So Marley (age 10) and TeManawa (age 9) were convert baptisms and then Leilani (8) and Kingston (8) were child of record. But Leading up to their baptism, Satan was working soo hard on them. We watched it, and the mom, Anahera noticed it as well. Everything seemed to be going wrong! Her son who has a lot of health problems started getting sick, her kids, who usually are really well behaved, were missed behaving, their car didn't start when they were coming to church.. But they stayed strong and it was a beautiful baptism with a lot of their nonmember family members there. I am so grateful for being able to witness these miracles, and i know they will continue to happen if we are exactly obedient.

Also another funny story from this week.. we were following up a former investigator, and we go and knock on his door and this old man comes to the door and starts yelling at us and asking if we know how to read english (because he has a "do not knock" and then it says "no salespeople" and everyone and their dog has one, so we aren't sales people so we always knock :)) and tells us that he told us to never come back when we came before. And so we just kept smiling and apologized and asked if we could do anything to help him. And then he said, :do you want me to throw tomato juice at you?" and we tried to respond but he didn't give us a chance, he runs back inside so we start walking away, and i hear sister lilo say, " he is coming back!!" So i turn around right as he opens the front door and throws dirty fish water at us! Good thing we were out of his reach..hhahah

but yeah, that was my week in a quick short summary. But i love you!!

love, Sister Alldredge

The 4 kids being baptized :)

The sweet Wairepo Family!

Baptism table

Finding in the rain!  My absolute favorite!

Door knocking... hahahahaha

This one is for you daddy 

A painting someone in north pine painted of me

YOU WILL NOT BELIEVE WHAT HAPPENED THIS PAST WEEKEND......

sooooo as you know, it was Chris's baptism... So friday afternoon he got his interview and everything was great, he was excited and we were pumped. So saturday morning, we woke up and got ready and went to the chapel to get ready for the day. As we pull up, there was this huge blow up princess bounce house on the chapel grounds and there was music pumping inside. So me and sister Lilo go in there and the cultural hall was all decked out for what looked like a wedding reception but what was actually like a 3 year olds birthday party. Samoans dont mess around. :) But then they turned off their music for their dance practice and they soon after left. So we waited for a bit for the zone leaders to come and they started filling up the font and setting things up. Then the member that was supposed to pick up Chris came, without Chris. So we asked him where he was, and he said that he had gone to his house but Chris's brother told him that Chris had went somewhere the night before and hadn't been home yet. But we weren't too worried because it was only like 9:15.

Then after a while, he went to pick him up again and came back.. without Chris. The problem with Chris is that he doesn't have a phone.. so me and Sister Lilo just said a prayer and tried to stay calm. ha, then we told the member to go back and wait at his house until got Chris. Then it was 9:45... so me and Sister Lilo decide to go for a drive around Marsden looking for him as heaps of members in the ward pass us to come to the baptism. So we were just driving around and so we went to Chris's house and the member was there, and so we talked to him and then he starts saying, "don't worry you wont be held accountable if he doesn't get baptized" and stuff, and so that made me start crying. So we left and were crying and laughing and praying and not really knowing what to do.. so we went back to the chapel at 10 and called the zone leaders to come out to the parking lot, because we didn't want to have to tell everyone to go home. So they came out and we decided to say another prayer.. as soon as it ended, i felt at peace. I had faith that Chris would come but I also knew, and had faith that if he didn't, that it was God's will. And as soon as I thought that, the member pulled up with Chris is the passenger seat. AHAHAHAH you shouldve seen Sister Lilo and I... hahahhaah So we rushed in and he got changed quickly and we only started the baptism about 10 minutes late. :) The baptism was really good and the spirit was soo strong when he was baptized. Then after he got to bear his testimony and he talked about how he really felt how satan was trying to tempt him last night because he knew he was going to be baptized. Then he said that he knew Joseph Smith was a prophet and that Jesus Christ is the son of God. The spirit was so strong. It was such a special experience! Then on sunday he was confirmed, and after he received the gift of the holy ghost, he was walking back to his seat and wiping his eyes form crying. So special. I LOVE those tender mercies that God so mercifully allows us to experience. Those moments make all the heart ache worth it. Even though Chris almost gave us a heart attack. hahahah

Well just know that Heavenly Father is sooo aware of you. He knows what you need, He knows why you are going through the things you are going through, and He also is soo loving that He would not allow you to go through the pain and suffering and hard trials unless it truly did help us to become more like our Savior and to ultimately return to Him someday. Never doubt that. And at times when you may not understand, instead of wondering why we are going through something, ask, "what does Heavenly Father want me to learn? or How can I become more like the Savior because of this?" always rembmer and focus on the Savior and think about Him and the pains that he suffered and went through, and then yours may not seem so bad. :)

Well I LOVE YOU SOO MUCH! But i love my Savior and my Heavenly Father more. I hope you have a great week and that you know and can experience the power of prayer in your life.

Love always, Sister Alldredge

Chris' Baptism!

Baptism day!

Princess bounce house :)  Someone must have got really excited for Chris' baptism !:))

Selfie sisters

A birthday party our zone helped with for a girl in our ward

10 Commandments matching game

MALO! so im so sorry,  this will be a short email.....

So today was temple p-day, ahhh what a blessing. i didn't want to leave. :) We got up nice and early and took the train as a zone to the city and then walked up to the temple. 

This past week was really long, but it was good! We are starting to build up our teaching pool a bit and Heavenly Father is sure blessing us with miracles daily. thanks for all your prayers, they are sure felt! But please pray for Sister Lilo. I am doing my best to really help her to enjoy the work and to focus on it, but its easier said than done. :) And I know that Heavenly Father can help her and bless her much better than I can, so please keep her in your prayers. 

But this past week was great! We had the blessing of speaking in church and afterwards a ysa came up to me and told me that she had been baptized last year and that her sister also wanted to be baptized but that she wanted to be taught by someone like the missionary that taught her, and so when she saw me speak she said that i reminded her a lot of that missionary and so she asked if we would be able to teach her sister! So i am pumped to be able to meet her!! :) 

Also we are having a baptism this week, his name is Chris, he is from africa and he is about 20. Sister Lilo started teaching him and I have been able to teach him a few times and so we are soo excited for saturday! So yesterday we were going over the baptismal interveiw questions with him and Sister Lilo asked him what is meant for him that we have a living prophet on earth today, and he said, "it is just more convicincing evidence that the book of mormon is true and that Joseph Smith is a prophet." When he said that, man, the spirit was so strong, it melted our hearts. haha i love seeing when people understand and apply the gospel. ahhh its the best feeling ever!!!! But i will tell you more about it on monday. :)  

Also, thank you soo much Heather for your sweet gift! She sent me 2 scarves, one of them i am wearing in the picture with us 4 sisters, but that was such a sweet surprise! 

Well i love you! And ill talk to you in a few days. hopefully you can send me some pictures of what you have all been up to... :) thanks OTE ALOFA IA TE OI!

LOVE, Sister Alldredge

Temple trip!

Bike ride on P-Day

District on P-day

Zone lunch

We love our wraps!

Our favorite little Samoan investigators

In the car

Emanuel and Chris

Favorite snack

More Clif bars

Me and my fellow Samoan princesses :)

Car selfie

More car pics

Temple trip

Temple trip

Watch out for swooping birds