Week 16: Conference Weekend!!

After conference Pic with the Bronx in the background at the train station. 

Hey everyone!

This has been such a good week with conference and just tons of lessons and good things happening here in New York! 

First off, conference was soooooo awesome this past weekend! I hope all of you got a chance to see some of it, cause it was seriously one of the best ones I've seen. President Uchtdorf'ss first talk on Saturday morning was awesome. That morning we had just met with a member who was going through a super hard time and didn't really have confidence in the church or God. His talk was all about knowing that we aren't alone and that God will give us strength. There was a super cool quote I took from it that says, "there are two things we get from living the gospel of Jesus Christ. 1. More happiness in our lives. 2. The chance to help others receive more happiness in their lives." so not only can we receive real happiness, but we can bring that happiness and joy to others! That's the whole reason I'm out here on a mission, to help people have real joy! It's so cool to be able to listen to the prophets twice a year and receive inspiration and revelation from them. 

 At a members house playing with baby hamsters 😂

 Holding the big momma hamster and I swear I'm not smiling I'm getting bit by that thing

. They're so freaking tiny and cute!

Alright so on Saturday we were able to get a new investigator named C____, who is this old lady from the Dominican republic. We were sharing the restoration with her and got to talking about the Book of Mormon, and she had a super hard time just accepting the fact that there's only one true church. I bore testimony to her about the validity of the Book of Mormon and that our church is the exact same church that Jesus Christ established when he was on the earth, but then she asked me WHY I say that. I thought about it for a second, and then gave her kind of why I'm on a mission and how I came to know that this church was true. In the middle of it I totally started bawling and could feel the spirit so strong, and she started crying too right after and said that made sense and that she felt something during my testimony. It was so awesome. It's so cool to be able to share my experiences with people and be able to see how my simple testimony about this church can change someones life! 

 p-day in Manhattan

Another cool thing was that we got to do some service for this school for children with disabilities on tuesday. It's this company called Kaboom who works with Disney, and basically we're building a park in 3 days. Its pretty sweet and we got a ton done just cutting wood and digging holes and stuff getting it all set up for the final day on Thursday. It's pretty sweet and we are actually probably going to be on ABC news for new York on Thursday or friday! So be watching lol! It's super cool though to be able to help the community out! It's funny cause like all of the volunteers there were missionaries! 

Also yesterday we had some cool stuff happen, first off, we got two new investigators! They work at the laundromat we go to every pday and they told the other elders that they want to be Mormon so we went and taught them a little bit and ended up setting a lesson for Saturday! They're hilarious though and always make fun of Elder Steven's cause he doesn't speak Spanish 😂 they are super interested though which is awesome and they said they'll read from the Book of Mormon before our next meeting! Also that night we got home late from service and didn't know what to do with the hour we had left. So we went out and tried seeing some people but nobody answered, until we went to this less actives house named J_______! She answered for the first time in forever and we had an awesome talk with her and just saw how she was doing and then we were actually able to bless her house! That was pretty cool to be able to offer a prayer and leave a blessing on a home. She's super cool and really wants to come back to church, just has some stuff going on. It's cool to see how much she loves the missionaries and the church though. 😊

Also one last thing, last night we go outside at like 7 and there's tons of cops and ambulances at the park across our street. We ask what's going on and apparently some dude got his throat slit in the Bodega we always go to like every day! Idk if he lived or not but it didn't sound good that's for sure. This place is wild sometimes but we're always careful so don't worry momma! 😂 

That's it for this week, love you guys! I'll be down in Manhattan today so I'll probably send pictures later! 
Love, Elder Allen